by Mary Renault
Having rejoined her troop, the lady put them through a very dashing display. The soldiers, eyeing all those bare breasts, nearly cheered their heads off. Alexander said to Ptolemy, “Atropates must be out of his mind. Warriors? Those are just girls. Do they look to you like whores?”
“No,” Ptolemy said. “They’ve been picked for their looks and riding.”
“What kind of fool does he take me for? Well, we must have them out of camp before the men get at them. Bagoas, do something for me. Tell them their show was so delightful, I’d like to see the musical ride again. Hydarnes, can you raise me an escort of sober, middle-aged Medes? And quickly?”
They looked prettier still, flushed from their riding; the men were licking their chops like dogs at a kitchen door. There were whistles and calls when the ride began again. In a great hurry, Alexander collected presents. He chose jewelry, not weaponry, but it was well received. The grizzled Medes led off their charges to a sound of groans.
We camped in the upland pastures of Nysa, the royal horse-lands. The brood-mares were still about fifty thousand, though so many had been lifted in the years of war. They were a delight to Alexander, who established a guard for them, and chose out some likely colts. He gave one to Eumenes. If it was by way of thanks for his thankless offer to Hephaistion, and a salve for pride, none of that was said; but Hephaistion, who had done the first wrong in the quarrel, may have read that into it. Certainly Eumenes’ faction did, and were saying that pride went before a fall.
I know, having seen the list, that Alexander had planned asking Hephaistion to dinner that night with some old friends. He’d have been charming to him before everyone, smoothed down his feathers, shown that Patroklos was Patroklos still.
That day, he came face to face with Eumenes in the camp.
I don’t know if it was design or chance. I had ridden out to see the horse-herds, and was coming back; they were well away by the time I heard the shouting. Hephaistion was saying that Greeks had been played out for a hundred years, that Philip had thrashed them everywhere, and Alexander had found them with only tongues for weapons; those they knew how to use. Eumenes said that swaggering braggarts needed no talebearers; their own noise told enough.
Each faction booed and cheered; the crowds were growing. It would be blood before long. I began to edge out. Already I heard the rasp of swords in scabbards; when there was a drumming of violent hooves, brought to a clattering halt. A high fierce voice shouted, once. All other sounds failed. Alexander, his bodyguard behind him, sat staring down, his mouth shut, his nostrils flaring. In the hush, one heard the shake of the horses’ bridles.
The long pause ended. Hephaistion and Eumenes stepped towards him, each starting to blame the other.
“Be silent!”
I jumped down and held my horse, making myself small in the crowd. I did not want my face ever remembered, along with what was coming.
“Not a word. Either of you.” His speed had flicked back the hair from his brow; he had it rather short, for the summer heat. His eyes had paled, anger furrowed his brow like pain. “I demand discipline from men I appoint to keep it. You are to lead my soldiers in battle, not in brawls. Both of you deserve to be put on a charge of mutiny. Hephaistion, I made you what you are. And not for this.”
Their eyes met. It was as if I saw them bleeding, letting the blood run down unheeding with faces of stone.
“I order you to renounce this quarrel. Under pain of death. If it breaks out again, you will both be on trial for treason. The proved aggressor will suffer the usual penalty. I shall not commute it.”
The crowd held its breath. It was not just the public reprimand of two such men, in itself a thing unheard of. They were Macedonians. They knew the legend.
The factions were sheathing their swords in furtive quiet. “At noon,” he said, “you will both report to me. You will shake hands before me and swear a reconcilement, which you will keep to in look, and word, and deed. Is that understood?”
He wheeled his horse and rode off. I slipped away in the crowd. I dared not look at Hephaistion’s face, in case he saw me there. I did not see it either when he took the oath before Alexander.
That night he had them both to supper. A gesture of forgiveness; but to both alike. That special kindness to Patroklos must be for another day.
I’d barely seen him, till it was time to dress. It was worse than I’d thought. He looked haggard, and hardly spoke. I dared say nothing. But when I was doing his hair, I took his head in my hands and laid my cheek on it. He gave a deep sigh and closed his eyes. “I had to do it. Nothing else was possible.”
“There are wounds that only kings must suffer, for the sake of all.” I had been a long time thinking what to say, that he’d forgive me after.
“Yes. That is the thing.”
I longed to embrace him, and tell him I would never have made him suffer it. But, I thought, they will make it up; what then? Besides, there was always the desert. So I just kissed him once, and went on with what I was doing.
Supper broke up early. I thought he’d just been afraid of their getting drunk and starting again. But he loitered in his tent instead of coming to bed; then put a dark cloak on and went out. I saw him throw a fold about his head; he didn’t want it seen where he was going, though he must have known I’d guess.
He was not very long away. They must have patched it up, after a fashion; one could tell that after. But if it had gone as he wished, he’d not have finished the night as he did with me. Nothing was said in words; much was said all the same, perhaps too much. I loved him, and could not help it.
Time passes, edges wear down. We camped three or four days more among the tall glossy horse-herds. Hephaistion and Eumenes addressed each other with quiet courtesy. Alexander went riding with Hephaistion, to choose him a horse. They came back laughing, much as they used, except that one knew it had been worked for. Time alone will not heal it, I thought; only the will to forget. “I shall not commute it.” The one knows those words were forced from him, the other that they were said. None of it can be undone, or talked away. But they have been bound so long, they will agree to forget; it is necessary, nothing else is possible.
We went up the passes, eastward to Ekbatana.
No snow, now, on the sevenfold ramparts; they glowed like jeweled necklaces on the mountain’s breast. Not sleet, but cool delightful breezes blew through the high airy rooms. The makeshift shutters were cleared away; it was a summer palace, with the King expected. Beautiful carpets covered the royal floors. Lamps of fretted silver and gilded bronze hung from the gold-leafed rafters, in the Bedchamber where Darius had struck my face, and I had stumbled out weeping into Nabarzanes’ arms.
The hills were green and full of streams; one could smell the heights. I would ride in them at last; we were to stay all summer.
At night he walked out on his balcony, to cool his head from the wine. I stood beside him. The plant-tubs smelled of lemon flowers and roses; the breeze came pure from the mountains. He said, “When first I came here, chasing Darius, though it was full winter, I said to myself, Someday I must come back.”
“I too. When I was with Darius, being chased by you, I said the same.”
“And here we are. Longing performs all things.” He gazed at the brilliant stars, conceiving new longings, as a poet conceives a song.
I knew the signs. He was absent and exalted, and would pace with brows creased in thought, which I always knew from trouble. One must never ask till he was ready. He would come out with it of a sudden, as if he’d given birth.
He was delivered one morning, so early that I was the first to hear. I found him up and walking about stark naked, as he must have been doing since before dawn. “It’s Arabia,” he said the moment he saw me. “Not the inland parts, that’s just a matter of seeing the tribesmen don’t raid the ports. It’s the coast we need; and no one knows how far it runs south or west. Just think. We can make harbors along Gedrosia, now we know where there’s water. From Ka
rmania up the Persian Sea, that’s easy sailing. But we need to round Arabia. Once up the Arabian Gulf—that end’s well charted—you’re in Egypt. And from there, do you know this, there’s a channel right through to the Middle Sea? Their King Neko started it; and Darius the Great carried it through. It needs clearing and widening, that’s all. Once we round Arabia, if we can, ships can go all the way from the Indus, not just to Susa—to Alexandria, Piraeus, Ephesos. Cities made from small towns, villages where there was nothing; poor savages like Niarchos’ Fish-Eaters brought into the world of men; and all the great peoples sending their best to one another, sharing their thought. The sea’s the great road. Man has hardly set his foot on it.”
I was nearly running, to keep up and listen. “Italy, now. My sister’s husband died making war there, he should have waited for me. They’ll have to be brought into order before long, or that western tribe, the Romans, will have it all. Good fighters, I’ve heard. I should let them keep their own form of government; and I could use their troops to push the empire westward, along north Africa. I long to see the Pillars of Herakles; who knows what may lie beyond?”
There was much more. Sometimes snatches come back to me, and then I lose them; seeing only his face in the cool early light, worn and shining, worn fine like much-used gold; his deep eyes bright as a fire-altar; his tousled hair, faded yet still a boy’s; and the strong obedient body forgetful of its wounds, ready to face the tasks of another life-span, pacing as if already on its way.
“So Babylon must be the capital, at the center. The harbor should have slips for a thousand galleys. I shall go straight from here, to get started, and prepare the fleet for Arabia … Why are you looking sad?”
“Only at leaving Ekbatana. When do we go?”
“Oh, not till the cold begins. We will have our summer.” He turned his eyes to the mountains, and would have walked naked to the balcony, if I’d not put a robe on him. “What a place for a festival! We’ll have one before we go. It’s time I offered something to the immortals.”
We had our summer.
On the hills with the hounds crying, racing the clouds; in the rose garden with its lotus pools; in the high hall whose columns were sheathed with gold and silver, as I did my Dance of the River to the sound of flutes; in the great Bedchamber where I had been shamed and now was cherished, each day and night, I used to say to myself, I will miss nothing; I will never let my eye or my ear or my soul or my senses sleep, never forget to know that I am happy. For it will be a long campaign; who knows when we shall come back?
Thus the Wise God gives us prophecy enough, but not too much; as he does to birds, who foresee the winter, but not the night of ice that will drop them from the bough.
Alexander started at once to put in train his plans for the fleet, and the great harbor at Babylon, sending orders ahead. He wanted the north of the Hyrkanian Sea explored, to see how the coast led round to India. He also did much state business Darius would have handed to someone else; it was the custom for the King to take a holiday at Ekbatana. When I told Alexander so, he looked surprised, and said he was taking one; he had never been so idle in his life.
The summer before, we had been in Gedrosia. I would dabble my hand in the lotus pool, and think, I am happy. Let never a moment flow by me unthanked, unkissed.
One night I said, “Are you happy, Al’skander?”
He said smiling, “Couldn’t you tell?”
“Oh, yes, that. I mean here, in Ekbatana.”
“Happy?” he said, turning it over. “What is happiness?” He stroked me, so that I should know him grateful. “To have achieved one’s longing, yes. But also, when all one’s mind and body are stretched to breaking, when one hasn’t a thought beyond what to do next moment; one looks back after, and there it was.”
“You will never settle down, will you, Al’skander? Not even here.”
“Settle down? With all I have to do? I should hope not.”
He was already planning the autumn festival, and sent word of it to Greece. Hordes of actors and poets, singers and kitharists would be on the way. He was not inviting athletes. In the old days, he said, they had been all-round men, the heroes of their cities in war; now they had trained themselves into mere machines for winning one event. “A catapult can throw further than any soldier, but it can’t do anything else. It’s not good for the men to have such people beat them. Nor for the boys to see it.”
“The boys” now meant one thing to him. When the veterans left, returning to their wives and leaving, as soldiers do, the women who’d followed them with so much hardship, he had made the children his wards. He would not have them suffer in Macedon as unwanted foreign bastards; they should be reared for what they were, half Persian, half Macedonian, part of the harmony he’d prayed for at the Susa love-feast. Boys old enough to leave their mothers were at school already, and had come up here with the court. There were to be events for them at the games; he went sometimes to watch them training.
He went sometimes, too, along the latticed walk to the Harem. Roxane was like a sharp sauce to him; nauseous if one fills one’s plate with it, yet a little now and then will make one crave for the taste again. It did not trouble me.
Summer fled by in the cool sweet hills; the roses rested before their autumn flowering. There came a day of change. His face was smoothed with joy; he could talk about nothing long without, “Hephaistion thinks …” or “Hephaistion was saying …” Somewhere, perhaps up in the mountains riding alone, they had broken the wall, cast themselves into each other’s arms, were once again Achilles and Patroklos; they would begin forgetting.
In the wisdom of my hard schooling, I’d done nothing to delay it; no malice could be remembered against me now. I had shut in my silent heart, as always, “Say that you love me best of all.” So I kept what I had. He’d no need to forget the nights when he’d turned to me, and known that I understood. I had not defaced the legend.
Now that it was restored, polished and shining, I was aware of a relief. He’d not been himself without it. He had lived so long at stretch, in labors and wounds and sickness and endurance, it did not do for him to have the roots of his life disturbed.
Hephaistion must have known it; he was not a fool. I expect, indeed, in his heart he was still a lover. He’d felt he should be upheld against Eumenes, right or wrong. Just so the Macedonians felt about the Persians. Just so I felt, but had the sense to keep it quiet. Alexander attracted jealousy. He was much beloved; and he never turned love away.
Even in the cool air of Ekbatana, and doing no more than two men’s work, he still tired sooner than he’d done before his wound. I was glad this other wound was healing. He’d go more rested to Babylon, where the real work would begin.
Banners went up on gilded poles with sculptured finials. A city of tents arose, for the artists at the festival. The racecourse and the stadium were cleared and leveled. The architects made a theater, with a crane to fly on the gods, and a machine for wheeling in murdered corpses, which Greek poets set such store by. Thettalos, Alexander’s favorite actor, a handsome Thessalian in his fifties, was welcomed with open arms and given the best tent. They came pouring in, flute-players, chorus-boys, scene-painters, singers and dancers, rhapsodists, acrobats; high-class courtesans and low-class whores, among them some eunuchs so shameless and bedizened, I was ashamed to see them about. Traders swarmed everywhere, selling food and gewgaws and cloth and spices, and, of course, wine.
The Palace flowed with it. There was a party every night, for the artists, or for Alexander’s friends. Patroklos was back; he gave himself up to gaiety. For nights on end, I didn’t get him sober to bed. He was never dead drunk, knowing he couldn’t sleep it off next day; he had to be at the contests. His friends, not restrained by duty, often left the hall feet first. One gets used to this, when living among Macedonians.
While I was getting him into his state robe for the contest of choral odes, he said to me, “Hephaistion’s not well. He’s running a fever.”
> Once he used never to talk of him to me; now he often would, after all our unspoken secrets. I said I was sorry, and hoped it was nothing much.
“He must have had it on him last night, if he’d only known it. I wish I’d kept down the drinking.” He went off, and the trumpets sounded.
Hephaistion was worse next day, and had cramps in his belly. Busy as he was, Alexander spent all his spare time with him. Achilles had always bound Patroklos’ wounds. He got him the most noted doctor in Ekbatana, a Greek called Glaukias; to whom he gave advice, as he told me after. But he really had some knowledge; Aristotle had taught it him, and he had kept it up. It was agreed the patient should take no solid food. The priests were told to sacrifice for his healing.
The third day he was lower; weak as a babe, rambling in his talk, and full of fever, so Alexander said. It was the day for the comedies and farces; he did not sit them out, just came from the sickroom in time to give the prizes. When I asked the news at evening, he said, “He’s better, I think. Restless and crotchety, a good sign. He’s strong, he’ll throw it off … I was sorry to disappoint the artists, but that was necessary.”
There was a party that night, but he left it early to see how Hephaistion was; reporting him asleep, and looking easier. Next day, though still with some fever, he was much better. Alexander attended all the contests; his absence had much upset the comedians. In the evening he found Hephaistion sitting up, and asking for food.
“I wish,” he said to me later, “I could have sent him something good from supper.” He was still fond of this pleasant custom. “But the belly-cramps leave a weakness in the entrails; I saw that often in the Oxos country. I told the doctor to be sure and keep him on slops.”
He still kept his bed, much better, but with a little fever at night, when the artists’ contest ended, and the games began.
