The Novels of Alexander the Great

by Mary Renault

  Alexander loved the arts; but the games were his close concern. He presided over everything; always remembered the victor’s record in battle and in earlier games, when he gave the crowns. For such things the army loved him. After two or three days of this, came the day for the boys.

  I’d played truant from the men’s events, finding better pastime in the artists’ quarter; but I went to the stadium for the boys’ race, to see the breed Alexander was rearing up. He was sure to want to talk about it after.

  They looked healthy, having been well fed since he took them over; with features from nearly everywhere, all crossed with Macedonian; no doubt there’d be half-Indians too, when they were old enough. The half-Persians were far the handsomest. I sat just across the track from Alexander. At the march-past, they went off with their faces lit from his smile.

  They lined up; the trumpet sounded; they sped from the marks. They wore little breechcloths from respect for Persian modesty, no more. A pretty sight, I was thinking; when I was aware of a stir about the throne. Some messenger was standing by Alexander. He had jumped to his feet. The steps behind had closed up with people; he shoved them aside before they could make way, he nearly stepped on them. He was gone, with those nearest him scrambling after.

  I clambered from my place. I must know what it was; I might be needed. Being on the far side of the stadium delayed me. When I reached the Palace, the royal rooms were deserted. It was then I guessed.

  I went up the stairs, turned a crooked passage; I had no need to ask the way. I had heard from the stairway the dreadful sound of grief, which lifted the hair on my head.

  No one was guarding the door. A knot of men stood outside. I slipped in among them, unnoticed as a household dog. I had never been before in Hephaistion’s room. It was handsome, with red wall-hangings and a stand of silver vessels. A smell of sickness hung in the air. He lay on the bed, his face turned up, his mouth fallen open. Someone had closed his eyes. Grasping the body with both fists, lying across it, his mouth pressed to its face, was Alexander. He lifted his head, and gave again that dreadful cry; then buried his head in the dead hair.

  After a while Perdikkas, awkward with shame and pity (yes, and already fear), said, “Alexander.”

  He looked up. I stepped forward, caring for none of them. He had turned to me before, and knew that I understood. His gaze passed over me, empty. It seemed at that moment that for him I had never been. Lost, gone, possessed.

  I looked at this strange room, never forgotten, where I stood like a dead thing unmourned, unburied, tossed naked into the night; at the bed with its burden, the wall-hangings of stags and archers, the silver ewers; the bed-table shoved askew, with something on it: an empty wine-jar tumbled on its side, and a platter with the picked carcass of a chicken.

  Suddenly Alexander flung himself to his feet and stared at us, as if he might kill any one of us without caring which. “Where is the doctor?”

  Ptolemy looked round to ask the servants, but they had long since fled. He said, “He must have gone to the games.”

  I had withdrawn near the door, and was aware of something behind me. It was the man himself, slower than I had been to take alarm; just come, just aware of what he saw. Alexander sprang across like a beast of prey, fastened on him, and shook him to and fro. “You murderer! Why did you leave him? Why did you let him eat?”

  The man, almost past words, stammered that he had seemed to be out of danger, that he had ordered him chicken broth.

  Alexander said, “Hang him. Take him away and hang him. Do it now.”

  Perdikkas looked at Ptolemy. His eyes were on Alexander; without moving them, he nodded. The man was dragged away, under Seleukos’ escort. Alexander went back to the bed, stared down at it, and lay where he had been before. The corpse moved, shaken with his sobbing.

  More people were at the door, men of rank who’d just had the news. Those within all looked at one another helplessly. Peukestas touched my shoulder, and said softly in Persian, “You speak to him.”

  I shook my head. Only one thing was wanting to my heart’s death, that he should hate me for being the one who was left alive.

  So I ran away; through the city, through the stink and litter of the fair, through the street of the women, unseeing till I heard their laughter; into the country, I don’t know where. A cold stream I stumbled in waked my mind. I looked back at the city; the sun was sinking, the colored ramparts glowed. Did I run off, I thought, when his flesh was wounded? Now he is stricken in his mind and might hurt me in his madness, now I forsake him, a thing no dog would do.

  Dusk was falling. My clothes were torn, my hands bleeding, from thorns I could not recall. Without even thinking to make myself presentable, I went straight back. There was much the same knot about the door. Within, dead silence.

  Two or three men came out to talk apart. Ptolemy said softly, “We must get him out before it starts to stink, or he’ll lose his reason. Maybe for good.”

  “By force then?” said Perdikkas. “He won’t come else. It must be all of us; it’s no time to be singled out.”

  I slipped away. Nothing should get me in there, to see him look from that dead face to mine. I went to his room and waited.

  He was quiet when they brought him in, no one was handling him. They all stood round him expressing grief and praising the dead, I daresay the first chance they’d had. His eyes moved from face to face, as if he were at bay among their spears. Suddenly he cried, “Liars! You all hated and envied him, all of you. Go, leave me alone.”

  They exchanged looks and went. He stood in the state robe he’d worn for the games, white upon purple, all creased from being lain on. A groan burst from him, as if all the wounds he had borne in silence found voice at once. Then he turned and saw me.

  I could not read his face. He had no weapon; but his hands were very strong. I went and knelt, and reached for his hand and kissed it.

  He stared down at me and said, “You have mourned for him.”

  It took me a moment to remember my brier-torn clothes, my scratched face and hands. I grasped a tear in my coat, and ripped it top to bottom.

  He took me by the hair, and pulled back my face to look in it. I said to him with my eyes, When you come back I will be waiting, if I am alive. If not, it was my destiny. It seemed he would search me forever with his mad eyes, grasping my hair. Then he said, “You fetched him when Oxhead died. You honored him when he saved you from the desert. You never desired his death.”

  I praised the dead to him, kneeling, grasping his hand. It was my confession, though he did not know it. I had welcomed my rival’s faults, hated his virtues. Now I drew them out with pain from where my wishes had buried them, and offered them, his trophies, wet with my blood. He was the victor forever, now.

  Alexander’s eyes had wandered. He had not heard half I’d said. He let me go, returning to his solitude. Presently he lay down, and covered his face.

  All next day he lay there, accepting no consolation. Though he let me take no care of him, he did not send me out; he seldom knew I was there. The generals acted on their own, canceling the games, getting the banners changed to wreaths of mourning. Seleukos, who had kept the doctor unhanged lest the King should change his mind, dared not ask, and hanged him. The embalmers, summoned in time, did their work upon Hephaistion. There were many Egyptians with the camp.

  At night, without really seeing me, he let me give him water. Without his leave, I brought in cushions and slept there. At morning I saw him wake from a brief sleep, and endure remembrance. That day he wept, as if he had only now learned how. It was as if he had been stunned, and began to stir. Once he even thanked me. But his face was strange, and I dared not embrace him.

  Next morning he was awake before me. He was standing with a dagger in his hand, hacking off his hair.

  For a moment I thought his senses were quite gone, that he might next cut his throat or mine. Greeks in our day only lay one lock on the funeral pyre. Then I remembered Achilles, shearing his ha
ir for Patroklos. So I found the trimming-knife, and said, “Let me do it. I’ll do it just as you want.”

  “No,” he said, hacking away. “No, I must do it myself.” But he grew impatient with the back, and let me finish it, so that he could be off. Roused from his living death, staring wide awake, he went like a trail of fire.

  He asked where was Hephaistion; but the embalmers had him, steeped in niter. He asked if the doctor had been hanged (Seleukos had been prudent there) and commanded the body to be nailed on a cross. He ordered the manes of all army horses to be cropped in mourning. He ordered the gold and the silver to be stripped from the battlements of Ekbatana, and the colors painted over black.

  I followed where I could, in case he should lose the sense of where he was or become a child. I knew that he was mad. But he could tell where and with whom he was. He was obeyed in everything; Glaukias the doctor was black with crows.

  I was trailing him, not too near in case he saw me, when he happened on Eumenes, who had seen his swift course too late. His face I couldn’t see; but I saw the terror in Eumenes’. He knew he was suspect of wishing Hephaistion dead.

  Soon after, a rich catafalque appeared in the square before the Palace, hung with mourning wreaths. A message reached Alexander that friends of the dead had reared it, to dedicate their offerings. He came to see it. Eumenes was first; he dedicated his whole panoply of arms and armor, which were very costly. A whole procession followed him. Everyone came, who’d had a cross word with Hephaistion any time in the last five years.

  Alexander watched calmly, like a child who is lied to and not deceived. He spared them not for their pretenses, but for their penitence and their fear.

  When they had done, all who had really liked Hephaistion came and made offerings. I was surprised how many there were.

  Next day Alexander planned the funeral. It was to be in Babylon, the new empire’s center, where his memorial would stand forever. When Darius sued for peace after the fall of Tyre, he’d offered as ransom for his mother and wife and children ten thousand talents. On Hephaistion, Alexander was spending twelve.

  It quietened his mind, making these dispositions, choosing an architect for a royal pyre two hundred feet high, planning the funeral games, which were to have three thousand competitors. He was clear and precise in everything.

  At bedtime, he would talk to me of Hephaistion as if memory could give him life; what they did as boys, what he’d said of this or that, how he trained his dogs. Yet I felt something unsaid; I felt his eyes when I turned away. I knew; he was thinking that his taking me had grieved Hephaistion; that he should make amends. Quietly he would put me aside, punishing himself not me, making his gift to the dead. He would do it, if once his resolve was set.

  My mind ran like the hunted stag that scarcely knows it runs. I said, “It’s good that Eumenes and the rest made their dedications. He is at peace with them now. He has forgotten mortal anger. Of all men on earth he is only concerned with you, set as he is now among the immortals.”

  He stepped away, leaving the towel in my hands, and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, till I feared he’d harm them. I don’t know what he saw in that sparkling darkness. Coming out of it, he said, “Yes. Yes. Yes. So it must be, nothing else is possible.”

  I got him to bed and was going out, when he said, as briskly as he’d planned the games, “I shall send to Ammon’s oracle, tomorrow.”

  I made some soft answer and crept off. What new turn had I given his madness? I had been thinking in Persian, when I spoke of the immortals; the souls of faithful men, safe through the River into Paradise. But Alexander, he had thought in Greek. He would ask the oracle for Hephaistion to be a god.

  I tossed on my bed and wept. His resolve had set, he would do it. I thought of the Egyptians, the oldest people, scornful in their long history. They will mock him, I thought; they will mock him. Then I remembered; he is a deity himself already; Ammon acknowledged him. Without Hephaistion, he cannot bear even immortality.

  So perfect was my grief, it made my mind white and empty, and I slept.

  Next day he chose priests and envoys, and offerings for the god. The embassy left the day after.

  After this he was much calmer; his madness healed a little from day to day, though all lived in fear of it. His friends made donations towards the funeral. Eumenes gave the most, no doubt remembering when his tent burned down; he would still walk a mile to avoid crossing Alexander’s path.

  To throw off sorrow, I rode out to the hills. From there I looked back, and saw the sevenfold walls stripped of their glories, seven rings of black; and I wept again.

  28

  TIME PASSES, ALL THINGS pass. He ate, and began to sleep, and to meet his friends. He even gave one or two audiences. His shorn hair began to grow. He would talk to me, sometimes, of daily things. But he did not recall the embassy on its way to Siwah.

  Autumn drew to winter. It was past the time when the kings had been used to leave for Babylon. There were embassies from half over the empire and beyond, on their way to meet him there.

  The Egyptians had worked their skill upon Hephaistion. He lay in a gilded coffin, on a dais hung with precious cloths, in one of the state rooms. The trophies of arms, the dedications, were set up around him. They had not swaddled and cased and masked him, as they do it here in Egypt. A body they have treated, even unwrapped, will keep the features of life for many ages. Alexander often went to visit him. Once he took me, because I had worthily praised the dead, and lifted the lid for me to see him. He lay upon cloth of gold, in the pungent smell of spices and of niter; he would blaze like a torch, when they came to burn him in Babylon. His face was handsome and stern, the color of darkened ivory. His hands were crossed on his breast; they rested on the shorn locks of Alexander’s hair.

  Time passed; he could talk to his friends now; and then his generals in their soldiers’ wisdom, doing what I could not, brought him the medicine that had power to do him good. Ptolemy came to him, to say that the Kossaians had sent to demand their tribute.

  They were a tribe of famous brigands, who lived about the passes between Ekbatana and Babylon. Caravans which took that road would wait till they were big enough to hire a regiment of guards. Every year, it seems, even the kings had been raided, till they’d agreed to pay a sackful of gold darics before the autumn progress, to buy the Kossaians off. This toll was overdue, and they had sent to ask for it.

  Alexander’s “What?” was almost like old times. “Tribute?” he said. “Let them wait. I’ll give them tribute.”

  “It’s very difficult country,” said clever Ptolemy, rubbing his chin. “Those forts are eagles’ nests. Ochos could never reduce them.”

  “You and I will, though,” said Alexander.

  He set out within seven days. Any Kossaians he killed, he said, he would dedicate to Hephaistion, as Achilles had done the Trojans on Patroklos’ pyre.

  I packed my things without asking. He had given me no more of those hidden looks; he took me for granted, all that I asked just now. I had accepted in my heart that he might never take me to bed again, lest it grieve Hephaistion’s spirit. That mourning had become an accustomed thing. I would live, if I could be near him.

  In the passes, Alexander split his force between himself and Ptolemy. Up here it was already winter. We were an army camp, as in Great Kaukasos, moving light as the forts fell one by one. Each night he turned in, no longer brooding, but full of the day’s campaign. On the seventh day, for the first time he laughed.

  Though the Kossaians were robbers and murderers, without whom mankind is better, I had dreaded for his sake some sick-brained, furious slaughter. But he’d been brought to himself. Certainly he killed when battle called for it; perhaps Hephaistion was pleased, if the dead like blood as much as Homer says. But he took prisoners as his custom was, and held the chiefs for bargaining. His mind was as clear as ever. He saw every goat-track to the eagles’ nests; his ruses and surprises were an artist’s work. Artists are
healed by their art.

  After one such triumph, he gave supper in his tent to his chief officers. I said beforehand, easily, “Your hair wants trimming, Al’skander,” and he let me take off the ragged ends. That night he got rather drunk. He had never done it since the death; it would have been base to drown that grief. Now he did it in victory, and as I helped him to bed my heart was lighter.

  We moved on to the next stronghold. He set the siege-lines. The first snow whitened the tops, and the men drew close round the fires. He came in glowing from frost and flame, and greeted the guardian squires as he used to do. When I brought the night-lamp, he reached out and drew me by the hand.

  I offered no art that night, or no more than had become my nature; only the tenderness from which pleasure springs of itself like flowers from rain. I had to rub my eyes on the pillow to hide my tears of joy. I saw on his sleeping face the marks of madness and pain and sleeplessness; but they were wounds turning to scars. He lay at peace.

  I thought, He has rebuilt the legend in everlasting bronze. He will keep faith with it, if he lives to threescore and ten. Hephaistion’s regiment is always to bear his name whoever may command it, just so he will be forever Alexander’s lover; no one else will ever hear, “I love you best.” But in that shrine will be only the legend dwelling; the man will be hissing blue flames, then dust. Let his place be in Olympos, with the immortals, so long as my place is here.

  I stole off softly, before he woke. He was attacking the fort at daybreak; he would not have time to think of it overlong.

  The Kossaians had never been hunted in midwinter, in all their wicked history. The last forts, starved out, surrendered in return for the captives’ freedom. It had all taken forty days. Alexander garrisoned the strongpoints along the pass, pulled down the rest, and the war was over. The caravans poured through. The Royal Household was sent for, to come down to Babylon. Already hard red buds gemmed the bare bushes shedding their snow.