by Mary Renault
“Yes, go in,” he said. “I don’t care if he curses me after. I went in myself, when I came on guard. But he was asleep; I didn’t dare wake him.”
My heart nearly ceased its motion. “Asleep? Did you hear him breathing?”
“Oh, yes. But he looks half dead. Go in and try.”
The door made no noise. It was dark; he had put out the night-lamp. After the torch outside, at first I could only discern the glimmering windows. But there was a moon, and soon I saw him clearly. He was still asleep.
Someone had put a blanket on him, but it was tossed half off. He was still in his bloodstained robe. His hair was matted, his skin drawn. Fair though it was, his beard had begun to show. A filled pitcher stood untouched by him. His lips were cracked and dry; in his sleep he was trying to wet them with his tongue.
I filled my cup. Sitting by him, I dipped two fingers, and trickled the water on his mouth. He licked at it like a dog, still sleeping. I went on till I saw him start to wake; then I took his head on my arm, and tilted the cup gently. He drank, and gave a great sigh, and drank again. I refilled it, and he drank that too.
I stroked his hair and brow, and he did not draw away. I did not beg him to come back to us; he’d had enough of that. I said, “Don’t shut me out any longer. It is breaking my heart.”
“Poor Bagoas.” He laid a cold hand on mine. “You can come in tomorrow.”
I kissed his hand. He had broken his fast before he knew it; he would end it now. Yes, now, I thought; not with officious fools around him, urging him on like a fractious child.
I slipped out of the door, and whispered to Ismenios, “Send someone to wake a cook. Egg posset, with honey and wine, and soft cheese crumbled in. Hurry up, before he changes his mind.” His face lit up, and he gave me a great clap on the shoulder; which was more than Hermolaos would have done.
I went back to the bed. I didn’t want him falling asleep before the posset came, then waking to say he would have nothing. But his eyes were open. He knew what I’d been about, and understood. He waited quietly, and I talked of little things, such as Peritas’ doings, till Ismenios scratched at the door. The posset smelled good. I made no speeches, just lifted his head again. Soon he took the bowl from me, and finished it.
“Sleep now,” I said. “But you must send for me in the morning, or they won’t let me in. I shouldn’t be here now.”
“Enough people have been let in,” he said, “whom I didn’t want. You I do.” He kissed me, and turned on his side. When I showed Ismenios the empty bowl, he was so pleased that he kissed me, too.
So next day I bathed and shaved and combed him, and he looked almost himself again, though very worn. He kept his rooms; it would take more courage to show himself again, than to lead the charge at Gaugamela; so he would do it soon. The soldiers, hearing he’d taken food, were giving themselves the credit, because they had condemned Kleitos. This was best; they were welcome to it, for me.
Later, the priest of Dionysos came for audience. He had taken omens, and the god had spoken. It was his anger had caused it all. On his Macedonian feast-day, Kleitos had left his sacrifice unfinished (had not his unoffered victims followed him in reproach?) and Alexander had worshipped the Heavenly Twins, instead. For this, the deity’s sacred frenzy had been sent on both; and after that, neither was answerable for what he did.
I could see this gave Alexander comfort. I don’t know why he had chosen the Twins that day. But I remembered the talk at supper, about his exploits surpassing theirs (which was true) and his deserving the same divine honors; and I guessed he had tried once more to have his people share the prostration with the Persians. Who could have guessed it would end so cruelly? But Dionysos is a cruel god. I had found a dreadful play about him, in one of the books Alexander had had sent from Greece.
He gave orders for a great propitiation sacrifice. Then he spent the day with his closest friends, and looked a little better. He retired early; it was suffering more than fasting that had worn him out. When he was settled, I put out the great lamp and set the night-lamp by him. He took my hand, saying, “Before I woke last night, I dreamed of a good spirit.”
I thought of my life, and smiled. “The god sent that, to tell you his wrath was over. He released you then; that was why you drank.”
“I dreamed of a good presence; and it was true.”
His hand felt warm. I remembered it before, stone cold. I said softly, “The god’s madness was truly there; I myself felt it. Do you know, my lord, I only went to have a look at the feast, and even so it seized me? I snatched at the wine as if compelled; and all that came after, I seemed to dream in madness. It was a visitation. I felt it everywhere.”
“Yes,” he said slowly. “Yes, it was strange. I was driven out of myself. Kleitos, too. Look how he came back. The god led him, as he led Pentheus to his fate, and caused his own mother to perform it.” He knew I had read the play.
“No one can help himself when a god possesses him. Sleep in peace, my lord. He has forgiven you; he was only angry because you’re dear to him. A slight from you hurt him more than from anyone else.”
I sat down by the wall, in case he should be wakeful and want to talk; but he slept soon, and lay quiet. I went away well content. What can compare with giving comfort to the one you love?
I had kept my promise to Hephaistion, too.
17
MOST OF THAT YEAR, and the next, we were in Baktria and Sogdiana. It was a long, hard war. You never know where you are with Sogdians. They are mostly at blood-feud with the tribe in the next hill-fort, over the rights to water, or women carried off while gathering wood. They would swear loyalty to Alexander till he had reduced these people; then, if he took their surrender and did not cut all their throats, would turn on him themselves. Spitamenes, their best general, was killed by Sogdian enemies; they sent Alexander his head, for a reward, but were no more to be trusted after. Our men never left a dying man on the field, however hard pressed they were, to be found by Sogdians. He would thank them for the death-stroke.
Alexander would be gone for weeks on these local wars. I missed him, and was forever anxious; but had my consolation. On campaign he was always sober. He had good mountain water. Soon he had sweated and rinsed the strong wine out of his blood, and was much as he used to be; enjoying sometimes a long night of spun-out talk and drinking, a long sleep after; moderate in between. The dreadful lesson of Marakanda lasted him all his days. He was never again seen disordered in his wine, let alone violent. Even his slanderers don’t deny it.
A lesser man might have held it against me, that I’d seen him in despair and shame. But he only remembered I had brought him comfort.
Once he had to recross the Oxos; it was easy this time, everything ready and better weather. I might hardly remember it, except that a miracle happened there. They had pitched the King’s tent, and I was seeing his things set out, when I heard the squires exclaiming. Right by the tent, which was not far from the river, was a dark welling spring. They had skimmed the scum off, in case it might serve for horses; and found that it was oil!
Alexander was fetched to see the wonder. We all rubbed it upon our arms, and it spread smoothly. He sent for Aristander the seer, to read the omen. He sacrificed, and announced that as oil anoints the wrestler before the games, the portent stood for labors, but its generous flow for victory and wealth.
We tried some in the King’s lamp at night. It burned quite well, but made a foul smoke; the lamp had to be taken outside. He wanted to taste it, but I said it might be as bad as Oxos water, which changed his mind. Leonnatos was for throwing a lighted torch into the pool, to see what happened; but Alexander thought it would be impious, towards a gift of the gods.
He had the labors it foretold. He was forever off in the mountains, often with small forces, for he had to divide his troops; he was resolved to bring Sogdiana under law. He learned wonderful skill and cunning in taking hill-forts. Many tales came back, of his endurance in cold or heat (you get extremes
of both in Sogdiana); of a frightful storm, thunder and lightning-bolts followed by hailstones, and bitter cold, when men were perishing of despair and terror, freezing in their tracks, till, seeking the stragglers out in the maze of a black forest, he shook them alive and got them making fires. He was at last sitting down to get warm himself, when a soldier came staggering up, half dead on his feet, hardly knowing where he was. Alexander took off with his own hands the icy armor whose straps made his fingers bleed, and sat the man in his own chair by the fire.
(King Ptolemy, who was there, is putting such things in his book, to be known by men to come. Sometimes about other matters he sends for me, and I tell him whatever I think my lord would like to be remembered for. Seeing I followed his golden bier all the way here to Egypt, King Ptolemy in kindness found room for me in his Household. He speaks louder than he knows, now he’s a little hard of hearing (he is my elder by twenty years), and sometimes I hear him say, quietly as he supposes, to a foreign guest, “Look there. Don’t you see there has been great beauty? That is Bagoas, who was Alexander’s boy.”)
In camp I read Herodotos with Philostratos. He begged my pardon for the choice of book; he had not many; but as I told him, it was no news to me that Xerxes had been beaten in Greece; my great-great-grandfather had served with him.
Philostratos and I had grown fond of one another; only as teacher and pupil, though I saw Kallisthenes sniffing. When the King was at war, and the chronicle was up to date, he had not much to do till the King got back with his squires, whom Kallisthenes had the teaching of. They being of noble birth, and likely to command men later, Alexander did not want them ignorant. He had never taken this work from the philosopher, even after they were estranged. I thought it overgenerous, myself; but then, he had Aristotle to consider.
Just now Kallisthenes was going over his library; we could see through his open tent-flap the racks of scrolls. Philostratos went in, and had another try at borrowing one, so that I could read Greek verse; he had only taught me what he knew by heart. I heard him get a dry No, and tell Kallisthenes he’d be lucky if one of his pupils showed half my promise. Kallisthenes said his pupils showed promise in the noble art of philosophy, not mere book-reading. Philostratos said, “Can they read?” and walked out. They did not speak for a month.
Next time Alexander came back, I asked him to give Philostratos a present. He loved being asked for things. I don’t think my story about Kallisthenes did the present any harm either. “But what for yourself?” he said. “Don’t you think I love you enough?”
“I had presents at Susa without love,” I said. “You give me all I need. And my best suit is still as good as new; or nearly.”
He laughed and said, “Buy another. I like to see you come out in something new; like a pheasant in spring feathers.” He added gravely, “My love you will always have. That is a sacred bond to me.”
Soon he was off again. I had my new suit made in deep red, embroidered with gold-spangled flowers. The buttons were jeweled roses. I put it away to wear when he came back.
I should soon be twenty. Alone in my tent, I often looked in the mirror. For people like me, it is a dangerous age.
Though my looks had changed, it seemed I had beauty still. I was slim as ever; my face had not coarsened but fined. There is no salve like love.
It did not matter that I was a boy no longer. I had hardly been that when he saw me first. He was not a boy-lover; it was the comely young men around him that pleased his eye. One of them, a squire called Philippos, had lately died for it. I could see Alexander was fond of him; maybe there had been some night upon campaign—I can think of it gently now. At all events, the youth felt a burning loyalty, which he longed to prove. They made a long pursuit after the Sogdians, in summer heat; his horse gave out, one of many; so he ran on foot by the King’s horse, fully armed, and refused a mount he was offered, to show what he was made of. At the end of the chase, they found and fought the enemy. He stood by the King in the van; then, when it was over, suddenly the life went out in him, like the flame of an emptied lamp. He lasted just long enough to die in Alexander’s arms. Even I could not grudge him that.
Yes, I thought at the mirror, he will always love me. He never takes love without return. But when desire begins to fail, it will be a day of grief. Holy Eros! (for I knew the god well by this time) let it not be yet.
As the country was subdued, he was founding cities. Hephaistion founded some of them. He had learned Alexander’s eye for a good site, and though rough-tongued among Macedonians, had good manners and good sense with foreigners. Gladly I gave him credit for all his virtues, once he was out of sight.
What use to scourge oneself with jealousy of the past? He’d not had ten years of it before me, my first guess; he had had fifteen. They had been together since I was a baby learning to walk. The future no man knows; the past has been, now and forever.
We wintered in a rocky sheltered place called Nautika, with a waterfall and a cave. Alexander was up in the citadel tower again; reaching his bedchamber through a trapdoor in the floor. I was scared to death he would stumble on the ladder, some night after supper, though he’d never been known to fall however drunk he was. The room had a big hearth under a hole in the roof; snow would come through it and hiss upon the fire. He and Hephaistion would sit by it talking, with Peritas stretched out like a great rug. But the nights were mine. Sometimes he’d say, “You can’t go out there, it’s freezing,” and take me in just to keep me warm. He was always a giver.
In the room below, heated by fire-baskets and full of drafts, he would do business most of the day. At one end was his chair of state and place of audience; at the other, behind a curtain, his working-table, full of tablets and records, and letters from half the world. The more lands he conquered, the more work he had.
There were the soldiers to look after, and keep in shape through the idle time till the passes opened. He held games, for which everyone had to be ready on the first fine day. Once we even had a play, with a proper stage and good actors out from Greece. Actors would go through water, fire and ice, to go home and say they had played before Alexander. Philostratos sat by me, and explained in whispers the finer points. Kallisthenes, sitting among some of the squires he favored, sniffed at us, and said something that made Hermolaos smirk.
Spring broke at last; huge snowslides thundered down the mountains; streams turned to brown cataracts, hurling along the wreckage caught in their rush. The best passes opened. Sogdian robbers came out from their dens, awaiting the first caravans, but met with troops instead.
The land seemed quiet under Alexander’s garrisons; till news came in that a powerful chief, who the year before had submitted and pledged fealty, was up in arms raising his tribesmen. An old story, except that he owned the Sogdian Rock.
It had the name of the strongest place in Asia; a huge sheer crag, its upper part full of caves. Generations of chiefs had burrowed there; it would hold a small army, with stores for years. They had tanks to catch the snow and rain, and store it against summer. It was reported snow still lay thick there; but the chief had already sent up his warriors, wealth and women, while he himself went rousing the countryside.
Alexander sent to him, offering a parley to his envoys. It was now known that envoys’ heads returned from Alexander still on their shoulders; so two swaggering tribesmen came. When he offered free pardon for free surrender, the envoys laughed, and said he could go or stay; he would take the Sogdian Rock on the day his men grew wings.
Calmly he ordered them to be fed, and they took their heads safely home. A Sogdian chief, getting that message, would have left their heads till the last, when they’d have been glad to part with them. Alexander merely decided to have the Rock, if it took a year.
The whole camp marched there. One could see it for miles. Closer up, it really seemed a task for eagles. There was no easy side; it was precipice all round, plunging down to ragged rocks. One could just trace the goat-track the people had gone up by, because it
had caught the snow; every yard was commanded by the mouths of the caves above.
The army made camp just out of bowshot. Behind them, the swarm of followers, sutlers and grooms and slaves, merchants and clerks and horse-traders, singers and painters and sculptors, carpenters and tanners, dancers and ironsmiths, jewelers and whores and bawds, spread about the Rock.
People have written of this enterprise, as if the King had been a boy taking up a dare. Of course that was always in him; he would have kept it into old age. But the Rock commanded leagues of country; he could not leave it unconquered in his rear. Also the Sogdians, who understand little except strength, would have despised his power, and cut his cities to bits as soon as he had moved on.
The chief, Oxyartes, did not live in this eyrie in peacetime. His house and his tribal village were at the foot of the trackway. Alexander would not let the soldiers burn them, lest it be read as a sign that he meant to give no quarter. In the cave-mouth, little figures, as small as if carved on rings, stood looking down. On the steeps below, where in summer one would not have seen foothold for a rock-rabbit, winter had picked out in white the tiny ledges, or the cracks that gashed the cliffs. It was full moon. Even at night, one saw the gleam of the snow. Alexander rode all round it, looking.
Next morning, he called for a muster of mountaineers. A small crowd reported; mostly hillmen born, who had climbed for him in other sieges. From all who came forward he picked three hundred. To the first man on the summit, he would give twelve talents, riches for life; to the next eleven, and so on for the first twelve. They were to go up that night, by the steepest side, which could not be seen from the caves. Each would carry a wallet of iron tent-pegs, a mallet to drive them in, and a strong light rope, to hitch himself to one peg while he fixed the next.
It was a cold clear night. I had everything ready, but he would not come to bed. This was the first really dangerous action he had not led himself. There could be no leader; each took his own way to the top. He had not the skill. But he could scarcely bear it, not to be risking his neck with them. When they had climbed too high to be seen in the dim light, he came in, but still paced about. “I saw three fall,” he said. “We shall never find them for burial. They lodged up there in the snow.” He lay down in his clothes, with orders to be called at the first light.
