The Novels of Alexander the Great

by Mary Renault

  The sound aroused the generals. Their reflexes’, trained to a hair by the dead man on the bed, snapped into action. Panic must be dealt with instantly. They ran out to the great platform above the forecourt. A herald, wavering at his post, was barked at by Perdikkas, lifted his long-stemmed trumpet, and blew the assembly call.

  The response was ragged. Only yesterday, believing the call to be from Alexander, they would in silent minutes have sorted themselves into their files and phalanxes, each troop competing to get into formation first. Now, nature’s laws were suspended. Those in front had to shout back to the rear that it was Perdikkas. Since Hephaistion’s death he had been Alexander’s second in command. When he roared at them, it gave them some sense of security; they shuffled and shoved themselves into a semblance of order.

  The Persian soldiers fell in with the rest. Their mourning outcries had counterpointed the Macedonians’ clamor. Now they grew quiet. They were—they had been—soldiers of Alexander, who had made them forget they were a conquered people, given them pride in themselves, made the Macedonians accept them. The early frictions had been almost over, Greek soldier slang was full of Persian words, a comradeship had begun. Now, suddenly, feeling themselves once more defeated natives on sufferance in an alien army, they looked at each other sidelong, planning desertion.

  At Perdikkas’ signal, Peukestes strode forward, a reassuring figure; a man renowned for valor, who had saved Alexander’s life in India when he took his near-mortal wound. Now, tall, handsome, commanding, bearded in the fashion of his satrapy, he addressed them in Persian as correct and aristocratic as his dress. Formally he announced to them the death of the Great King. In due course, his successor would be proclaimed to them. They might now dismiss.

  The Persians were calmed. But a deep muttering growl arose from the Macedonians. By their ancestral law, the right to choose a king belonged to them; to the Assembly of all male Macedonians able to bear arms. What was this talk of a proclamation?

  Peukestes stood back for Perdikkas. There was a pause. For twelve years, both of them had watched Alexander dealing with Macedonians. They were not men who could be told to hold their peace and await authority’s pleasure. They had to be talked to, and he had done it; only once, in all the twelve years, without success. Even then, once they had made him turn back from India, they were all his own. Now, faced with this disorder, for a moment Perdikkas expected to hear approaching the brisk impatient footsteps; the crisp low-spoken reprimand, the high ringing voice creating instant stillness.

  He did not come; and Perdikkas, though he lacked magic, understood authority. He fell, as Alexander had done at need, into the Doric patois of the homeland, their own boyhood tongue before they were schooled into polite Greek. They had all lost, he said, the greatest of kings, the bravest and best of warriors, that the world had seen since the sons of the gods forsook the earth.

  Here he was stopped by a huge swelling groan; no voluntary tribute, but an outburst of naked misery and bereavement. When he could be heard again, he said, “And the grandsons of your grandsons will say so still. Remember, then, that your loss is measured by your former fortune. You out of all men, past or to come, have had your share in the glory of Alexander. And now it is for you, his Macedonians, to whom he has bequeathed the mastery of half the world, to keep your courage, and show you are the men he made you. All will be done according to the law.”

  The hushed crowd gazed up in expectation. When Alexander had talked them quiet, he had always had something to tell them. Perdikkas knew it; but all he had to tell was that he himself was now, effectively, the King in Asia. It was too soon; they knew only one King, alive or dead. He told them to go back to camp and wait for further orders.

  Under his eye they began to leave the forecourt; but when he had gone in, many came back by ones and twos, and settled down with their arms beside them, ready for night, to keep the death-watch.

  Down in the city the sound of lamentation, like a brush-fire with a high wind behind it, spread from the crowded streets nearest the palace, on through the suburbs to the houses built along the walls. Above the temples the tall thin smoke-plumes, which had been rising upright in the still air from the sacred fires, one after another dipped and died. By the heap of damp ashes in Bel-Marduk’s brazier, the priests reminded each other that this was the second time in little more than a month. The King had ordered it on the day of his friend’s funeral. “We warned him of the omen, but he would hear nothing. He was a foreigner, when all is said.”

  Theirs was the first fire quenched. In the temple of Mithra, guardian of the warrior’s honor, lord of loyalty and the given word, a young priest stood in the sanctuary with a water-ewer in his hand. Above the altar was carved the symbol of the winged sun, at war with the dark, age after age till the last victory. The fire still burned high, for the young man had been feeding it extravagantly, as if it had power to rekindle the sinking life of the King. Even now, when he had been ordered to extinguish it, he put down his ewer, ran to a coffer of Arabian incense, and flung a handful to sparkle into fragrance. Last of the officiants, it was not till his offering had lifted into the summer sky that he poured the water hissing upon the embers.

  On the Royal Road to Susa, a courier traveled, his racing dromedary eating the miles with its smooth loping stride. Before it needed rest he would have reached the next relay-post, whence a fresh man and beast would carry his charge on through the night.

  His stage was halfway of the journey. The parchment in his saddlebag had been passed to him by the man before, without pause for questions. Only the first stage out from Babylon had been run by a rider unknown to his relief. This stranger, when asked if it was true that the King was sick, had replied that it might be so for all he knew, but he had no time for gossiping. Silent haste was the first rule of the corps; the relief had saluted and sped away, showing, wordlessly, to the next man in the chain, that his letter was sealed with the image of the King.

  It was said that a despatch by Royal Messenger would outstrip even the birds. Winged rumor itself could not overtake it; for at night rumor stops to sleep.

  Two travelers, who had reined in to let the courier past, were nearly thrown as their horses squealed and reared at the detested smell of camel. The elder man, who was about thirty-five, stocky, freckled and red-haired, mastered his mount first, wresting back its head till the rough bit dripped blood. His brother, some ten years younger, auburn and conventionally good-looking, took longer because he had tried to reassure the horse. Kassandros watched his efforts with contempt. He was the eldest son of the Regent of Macedon, Antipatros, and was a stranger in Babylonia. He had reached it lately, sent by his father to find out why Alexander had summoned him to Macedon and sent Krateros to assume the regency in his stead.

  Iollas, the younger, had marched with Alexander, and till lately been his cupbearer. His appointment had been by way of an appeasing gesture to their father; Kassandros had been left behind on garrison duty in Macedon, because he and Alexander had disliked each other since they were boys.

  When the horse was quiet, Iollas said, “That was a Royal Messenger.”

  “May he and his brute drop dead.”

  “Why is he riding? Perhaps—it’s all over now.”

  Kassandros, looking back towards Babylon, said, “May the dog of Hades eat his soul.”

  For some time they rode in silence, Iollas looking at the road before him. At last he said, “Well, no one can turn Father out now. Now he can be King.”

  “King?” growled Kassandros. “Not he. He took his oath and he’ll keep it. Even to the barbarian’s brat, if it’s a boy.”

  Iollas’ horse started, feeling its rider’s shock. “Then why? Why did you make me do it? … Not for Father? … Only for hate! Almighty God, I should have known!”

  Kassandros leaned over and slashed his riding-quirt down on the young man’s knee. He gave a startled cry of pain and anger.

  “Don’t dare do that again! We’re not at home now, an
d I’m not a boy.”

  Kassandros pointed to the red weal. “Pain’s a reminder. You did nothing. Remember, nothing. Keep it in your head.” A little way further on, seeing tears in Iollas’ eyes, he said with grudging forbearance, “Like as not he took fever from the marsh air. By now he must have drunk dirty water often enough. The peasants down river drink swamp-water, and they don’t die of it. Keep your mouth shut. Or you might die of it.”

  Iollas swallowed and gulped. Dragging his hand across his eyes, and streaking his face with the black dust of the Babylonian plain, he said huskily, “He never got back his strength after that arrow-wound in India. He couldn’t afford a fever … He was good to me. I only did it for Father. Now you say he won’t be King.”

  “He won’t be King. But whatever name they call it, he’ll die the ruler of Macedon and all Greece. And he’s an old man now.”

  Iollas gazed at him in silence; then spurred his horse and galloped ahead through the yellow wheatfields, his sobs catching their rhythm from the pounding of the hooves.

  Next day in Babylon the leading generals prepared for the Assembly that was to choose a ruler of the Macedonians. Their law did not demand primogeniture as inalienable. It was the right of the men in arms to choose among the royal family.

  When Philip had died, it had been simple. Almost all the fighting-men were still at home. Alexander at twenty had already made a name for himself, and no other claimant had been so much as named. Even when Philip, a younger brother, had been chosen before the child of King Perdikkas, lately fallen in battle, that had been simple too; Philip had been a tried commander, the child an infant in arms, and they were at war.

  Now, Macedonian troops were scattered in strongpoints all over central Asia. Ten thousand veterans were marching home for discharge under the command of Krateros, a youngish man, whom Alexander had ranked next after Hephaistion, and who was one of the royal kindred. There were the garrison troops in Macedon, and in the great stone forts which commanded the passes into southern Greece. All this the men at Babylon knew. But no one of them questioned that theirs was the right to choose a king. They were the army of Alexander, and that was everything.

  Outside on the hot parade ground they waited, disputing, conjecturing, passing rumors on. Sometimes, as their impatience and disquiet mounted, the noise would surge like a breaker on a pebbled beach.

  The generals inside, the high command known as the Royal Bodyguard, had been trying to get hold of the chief officers of the aristocratic Companions, with whom they wished to confer in their dilemma. Failing in this, they ordered the herald to blow a call for quiet, and summon them by name. The herald, knowing no army call for quiet alone, blew “Assemble for orders.” It was received by the impatient men as “Come to Assembly.”

  Clamorously they poured through the great doors into the audience hall, while the herald shouted against the din the names he had been given, and the officers he named, those who could hear him, tried to shove themselves through the crowd. The crush inside grew dangerous; the doors were shut, in desperation, on everyone who had entered, authorized or not. The herald, gazing helplessly at the milling, cursing mob left in the courtyard, said to himself that if Alexander had seen it, someone would soon be wishing he’d never been born.

  First to get in, because others had made way for them, were the men of the Companions, the horse-owning lords of Macedon, and any officers who had been near the doors. The rest of the crowd was a mixture of high and low, thrown anyhow together. The one thing they had in common was a deep unease, and the aggressiveness of worried men. It had come home to them that they were isolated troops in conquered country, half their world away from home. They had come here through faith in Alexander, in him alone. What they craved now was not a king but a leader.

  The doors once closed, all eyes sought the royal dais. There, as often before, were the great men, Alexander’s nearest friends, standing around the throne, the ancient throne of Babylon; its arms carved into crouching Assyrian bulls, its back recarved for Xerxes into the winged image of the unconquered sun. Here they had seen the small, compact, bright figure, needing a footstoll, glowing like a jewel in too large a box, the spread wings of Ahura-Mazda above his head. Now the throne was empty. Across its back was the royal robe, and on its seat the diadem.

  A low, sighing groan ran through the pillared hall. Ptolemy, who read the poets, thought it was like the climax of a tragedy, when the upstage doors are flung open, disclosing to the chorus that their fears are true and the King is dead.

  Perdikkas stepped forward. All Alexander’s friends here present, he said, would witness that the King had given him the royal ring. But, being speechless, he could not say what powers he was conferring. “He looked at me fixedly, and it was clear he wished to speak, but his breath failed him. So, men of Macedon, here is the ring.” He drew it off, and laid it beside the crown. “Bestow it as you choose, according to ancestral law.”

  There were murmurs of admiration and suspense, as at a play. He waited, still downstage, like a good actor who could time his lines. So Ptolemy thought, glancing at the alert arrogant face, now set in impassive dignity; a well-carved mask; a mask for a king?

  Perdikkas said, “Our loss is beyond all measure, that we know. We know it is not to be thought of that the throne should pass to anyone not of his blood. Roxane his wife is five months with child; let us pray it will be a boy. He must first be born, and then he must come of age. Meantime, whom do you wish to rule you? It is for you to say.”

  The voices murmured; the generals on the dais looked restively at each other; Perdikkas had not presented another speaker. Suddenly, unannounced, Niarchos, the admiral, stepped forward; a spare, lean-waisted Cretan, with a brown weathered face. The hardships of the dreadful voyage down the Gedrosian coast had put ten years on him; he looked fifty, but still wiry and fit. The men quieted to hear him; he had seen monsters of the deep, and put them to flight with trumpets. Unused to public speaking upon the land, he used the voice with which he hailed ships at sea, startling them with its loudness.

  “Macedonians, I put before you as Alexander’s heir the son of Darius’ daughter Stateira. The King left her pregnant when last he passed through Susa.” There were surprised, disconcerted murmurs; he raised his voice over them, as he would have done in a noisy storm. “You saw their wedding. You saw it was a royal one. He meant to send for her here. He told me so.”

  This wholly unexpected news of a woman who, barely glimpsed on her bridal day, had vanished at once into the recesses of the Susa harem, caused a surge of confusion and dismay. Presently a broad-spoken peasant voice called out, “Ah, but did he say aught about the bairn?”

  “No,” said Niarchos. “In my belief he meant to bring up both sons under his eye, if both were sons, and choose the better one. But he’s not lived to do it; and Stateira’s child has right of rank.”

  He stepped back; he had nothing more to say. He had done what seemed his duty, and that was all. Looking out over the sea of heads, he remembered how Alexander, lean as a bone and hollow-eyed from the desert march, had greeted him when he brought the fleet safe back, embracing him with tears of relief and joy. Since they were boys, Niarchos had been in love with him in an unsexual, undemanding way; that moment had been the climax of his life. What he would do with the rest of it, he could not begin to think.

  Perdikkas’ teeth were set with anger. He had urged the men to appoint a regent—who but himself? Now, they had been sidetracked into debating the succession. Two unborn children, who might both be girls. It was in the family; Philip had sired a horde of daughters, and only one son unless you counted the fool. The regency was the thing. Philip himself had started out as regent for an infant heir, but the Macedonians had not wasted much time in electing him King. Perdikkas himself had a good strain of the royal blood … What had possessed Niarchos? There was no heading the men off now.

  Their debate grew noisy and acrimonious. If, in their view, Alexander had had a fault, it was let
ting himself get Persianized. The Susa weddings, a serious manifesto, had caused much more unease than the campaign marriage with Roxane, the sort of thing his father used to do time and again. They had been indulgent towards the dancing-boy, as towards a pet monkey or dog; but why could he not have married a girl from a decent old Macedonian family, instead of two barbarians? Now this was what had come of it.

  Some argued that any offspring of his must be accepted, half-breed or not. Others said there was no knowing if he would have acknowledged either; and you could be sure, if either of those women had a stillbirth or a girl, they would smuggle something in. They were crawling on their bellies to no Persian changeling …

  Ptolemy watched the scene with grief and anger, longing to be gone. From the time when Alexander’s death had become a certainty, he had known where he wished to go. Ever since Egypt had opened its arms to Alexander as its liberator from the Persian yoke, Ptolemy had been entranced by it, its immemorial mellow civilization, its stupendous monuments and temples, the rich life of its sustaining river. It was defensible as an island, protected by sea and desert and wilderness; one had only to win the people’s trust to hold it secure forever. Perdikkas and the rest would gladly give him the satrapy; they wanted him out of the way.

  He was dangerous, a man who could claim to be Alexander’s brother, even though from adultery when Philip was in his teens. His paternity was unproved and unacknowledged; but Alexander had always had a special place for him, and everyone knew it. Yes, Perdikkas would be glad to see him off to Africa. But did the man think he could make himself Alexander’s heir? That was what he was after; it was written all over him. Something must be done; and now.

  The soldiers, when Ptolemy stepped forward, broke off their disputes to give him a hearing. He had been a boyhood friend of Alexander; he had presence without Perdikkas’ arrogance; men who had served under him liked him. A group of them gave him a cheer.