The Novels of Alexander the Great

by Mary Renault

  Arridaios, already soothed by the kindly voice, now brightened visibly. No one had laughed; things were too urgent and too dangerous.

  “Can I keep it all the time?” he asked cannily. “You won’t lock it up?”

  “No, indeed. The moment you have it, you can put it on.”

  “And have it all day?”

  “All night too, if you wish.” As he began to guide his prize along the passage, a new thought struck him. “When the men called ‘Philip!’ it was you they meant. They are honoring you with your father’s name. You will be King Philip of Macedon.”

  King Philip, thought Arridaios. It gave him confidence. His father must be really dead, if his name could be given away, like a purple cloak. It would be well to take them both. He was still buoyed by this decision when Meleager steered him onto the dais.

  Smiling around at the exclamations, he saw at once the great swath of color draped upon the throne, and walked briskly towards it. Sounds which he had mistaken for friendly greetings died; the Assembly, arrested by his changed demeanor, watched the drama almost in silence.

  “There, sir, is our present to you,” said Meleager in his ear.

  To a ground-bass of restless murmurs, Philip Arridaios lifted the robe from the throne, and held it up before him.

  It was the robe of state, made at Susa for the marriage of Alexander to Stateira daughter of Darius, and of his eighty honored friends to their Persian brides, with the whole of his army as his wedding guests. In this robe he had given audience to envoys from half the known world, during his last progress down to Babylon. It was of a wool as dense as velvet and soft as silk, dyed with Tyrian murex to a soft glowing crimson just tinged with purple, pure as the red of a dark rose. The breast and back were worked with the sunburst, the Macedonian royal blazon, in balas rubies and gold. A sleeveless dalmatic, it was clasped on the shoulders with two gold lion-masks, worn at their weddings by three kings of Macedon. The hot afternoon sun slanted down from a high window on the lions’ emerald eyes. The new Philip gazed at it in rapture.

  Meleager said, “Let me help you to put it on.”

  He raised it, and slipped it over Philip’s head. Radiant with pleasure, he looked out at the cheering men. “Thank you,” he said, as he had been taught when he was a child.

  The cheers redoubled. The son of Philip had come in with dignity, looking like a king. At first he must simply have been abashed and modest. Now they were for the royal blood against the world.

  “Philip! Philip! Long live Philip!”

  Ptolemy felt almost choked with grief and anger. He remembered the wedding morning, when he and Hephaistion had gone to Alexander’s room in the Susa palace to dress the bridegroom. They had exchanged the jokes which were traditional, along with private ones of their own. Alexander, who had been planning for weeks this great ceremony of racial concord, had been almost incandescent; one could have taken him for a man in love. It was Hephaistion who had remembered the lion brooches and pinned them on the robe. To see it now on a grinning idiot made Ptolemy long to spit Meleager on his sword. Towards the poor fool himself he felt horror rather than anger. He knew him well; he had often gone, when Alexander was busy, to make sure he was not neglected or ill-used; such things, it was tacitly agreed, were better kept in the family. Philip …! Yes, it would stick.

  He said to Perdikkas, who was beside him, “Alexander should have had him smothered.”

  Perdikkas, unheeding, strode forward, blazing with rage, trying vainly to be heard above the din. Pointing at Philip, he made a sweeping gesture of rejection and scorn.

  Shouts of support came from just below him. The Companions, foremost by right or rank, had had the clearest view. They had heard of the fool; they had watched, in silent grief or sheer incredulity, the assumption of the robe. Now their outrage found vent. Their strong voices, trained in the piercing war-paean of the charging cavalry, overpowered all other sound.

  It was as if the robe of Alexander had been a battle-standard, suddenly unfurled. Men started to put their helmets on. The hammering of spears on shields grew to a volume like the sound of onset. Nearer, more deadly, came the hiss and whisper of the Companions’ unsheathed swords.

  In alarm Meleager saw the powerful aristocracy of Macedon rallying in force against him. Even his own faction might fall off from him, unless forced to commit themselves beyond retreat. Each common soldier now shouting “Philip!” was, after all, the tribesman of some lord. He must divide them from tribal allegiances, create new action. With the thought, the answer came to him. His own genius amazed him. How could Alexander have passed such a leader by?

  Firmly, but imperceptibly, he guided the smiling Philip to the edge of the dais. The impression that he meant to speak procured a moment’s quiet, if only from curiosity. Meleager spoke into it.

  “Macedonians! You have chosen your King! Do you mean to stand by him?” The spearmen replied with defiant cheers. “Then come with him now, and help him confirm his right. A King of Macedon must entomb his predecessor.”

  He paused. He had real silence now. A ripple of shock could almost be felt, passing through the packed, sweat-stinking hall.

  Meleager lifted his voice. “Come! The body of Alexander awaits its rites. Here is his heir to perform them. Don’t let them cheat him of his heritage. To the death-chamber! Come!”

  There was confused, seething movement. The sounds had changed. The most determined of the infantry surged forward; but they did not cheer. Many held back; there was a deep mutter of opposing voices. Companions began to clamber on the dais, to guard the inner doors. The generals, all trying to protest at once, only added to the confusion. Suddenly, rising above everything, came the cracked new-broken voice of a youth, hoarse with passionate fury.

  “Bastards! You bastards! You filthy, slave-born bastards!”

  From a corner of the hall alongside the Companions, shoving through everyone regardless of age or rank, yelling as if in battle, came the royal squires.

  The watch on duty had been with Alexander till he died, standing on after sunrise. They had been several years in attendance on him. Some of them had turned eighteen and had a vote, the rest had crowded into Assembly with them. They leaped and scrambled up on the dais, waving their drawn swords, wild-eyed, crop-headed, their fair Macedonian hair shorn raggedly almost to their scalps in mourning. There were nearly fifty of them. Perdikkas, seeing their fanatic rage, knew them at sight for the readiest killers in the hall. Unless stopped they would have Philip dead, and then there would be a massacre. “To me!” he shouted to them. “Follow me! Protect the body of Alexander!”

  He ran to the inner door, Ptolemy neck-and-neck with him, the other generals close behind, and then the squires, so fierce in their rush that they outdistanced the Companions. Pursued by the angry cries of the opposition, they ran through the King’s reception room, through his private sanctum, and on into the Bedchamber. The doors were closed, not locked. The foremost men burst through them.

  Ptolemy thought, with a shuddering realization, He has lain here since yesterday! In Babylon, in midsummer. Unconsciously, as the doors burst open, he held his breath.

  There was a faint scent of almost burned-out incense; of the dried flowers and herbs which scented the royal robes and bed, mixed with the scent of the living presence which Ptolemy had known since boyhood. In the vast forsaken room he lay on the great bed between its watchful daimons, a clean fresh sheet drawn over him. Some aromatic sprinkled on it had cheated even the flies. On the dais, half propped against the bed with an arm thrown over it, the Persian boy lay in an exhausted sleep.

  Roused by the clamor, he staggered dazedly to his feet, unaware of Ptolemy’s touch upon his shoulder. Ptolemy walked to the bed’s head and folded back the sheet.

  Alexander lay in an inscrutable composure. Even his color seemed hardly changed. His golden hair with its bright silver streaks felt, to the touch, still charged with life. Niarchos and Seleukos, who had followed Ptolemy, exclaimed that it wa
s a miracle, that it proved Alexander’s divinity. Ptolemy, who had been his fellow-student with Aristotle, looked down in silence, wondering how long a secret spark of that strong life had burned in the still body. He laid a hand on the heart; but it was over now, the corpse was stiffening. He drew the sheet over the marmoreal face, and turned to the ranks that were forming to hold the bolted doors.

  The squires, who knew the room in detail, dragged up the heavy clothes-chests to form a barricade. But it could not last for long. The men outside were well used to pushing. Six or seven ranks deep, they leaned upon the doors as, ten years back, they had leaned with their fifteen-foot sarissas on Darius’ levies; and, like the Persians at the Granikos, at Issos, at Gaugamela, the doors gave way. Grinding along the floor, the bronze-bound chests were heaved aside.

  As the foremost thrust in, Perdikkas knew himself unable to cut them down, and be first with the shame of bloodshed in this room. He called back his men to bar the way to the royal bed. In a brief pause, the attackers looked about them. The ranks of the defenders screened the body, they saw only the spread wings of the gold daimons and their fierce alien eyes. They shouted defiance, but came no nearer.

  There was movement behind them. Philip came in.

  Though Meleager was with him, he was here of his own accord. When a person died, his family must see to him. All motives of policy had passed over Philip like unmeaning noise; but he knew his duty.

  “Where’s Alexander?” he called to the bristling barrier before the bed. “I’m his brother. I want to bury him.”

  The generals gritted their teeth in silence. It was the squires whose yells of wrath and spat-out insults broke the loaded pause. They had no reverence for the dead, because in their central consciousness Alexander was still alive. They shouted for him as if he were lying on a battlefield senseless with wounds, beset by cowards who would not have faced him on his feet. Their whoops and war-cries set off all the young men in the Companions, who remembered their own days as squires. “Alexander! Alexander!”

  From somewhere in the press, making a little whiffling sound as the spin-strap launched it, a javelin hurtled across and rang on Perdikkas’ helmet.

  In moments more were flying. A Companion knelt pouring blood from a severed leg-vein; a squire who had come helmetless had a slashed scalp and was masked in scarlet, his blue eyes staring through. Till it came to close quarters, the defenders were sitting game. They had brought only their short curved cavalry sabers, symbol of their rank, to what should have been a purely civil occasion.

  Perdikkas picked up the javelin that had struck him and hurled it back. Others, plucking them from the bodies of the wounded, held them to serve as spears. Ptolemy, taking a step back to avoid a missile, collided with someone, cursed, and turned to look. It was the Persian boy, blood staining his linen sleeve from a gashed arm. He had thrown it up to ward a javelin from Alexander’s body.

  “Stop!” shouted Ptolemy across the room. “Are we wild beasts or men?”

  From beyond the doors, the hubbub still continued; but it trailed off, damped by the hush of those in front to a kind of shamefaced muttering. It was Niarchos the Cretan who said, “Let them look.”

  Grasping their weapons, the defenders made a gap. Niarchos uncovered Alexander’s face and stood back, silent.

  The opposing line fell still. The crowd behind, jostling to see, felt the change and paused. Presently in the front a grizzled phalanx captain stepped a pace forward and took his helmet off. Two or three veterans followed. The first faced around to the men behind him, lifted his arm and shouted, “Halt!” Somberly, in a kind of sullen grief, the parties looked at one another.

  By ones and twos the senior officers unhelmed themselves and stood forth to be known. The defenders lowered their weapons. The old captain began to speak.

  “There’s my brother!” Philip, who had been elbowed aside, pushed forward. He still had on the robe of Alexander, pushed askew and crumpled. “He has to have a funeral.”

  “Be quiet!” hissed Meleager. Obediently—moments like this were familiar in his life—Philip let himself be hustled out of sight. The old captain, red-faced, recovered his presence of mind.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, “you are outnumbered, as you see. We have all acted in haste, and I daresay we all regret it. I propose a parley.”

  Perdikkas said, “On one condition. The body of the King shall he left inviolate, and every man here shall swear it by the gods below. I will take my oath that when a fitting bier is ready, I will have it taken to the royal burial ground in Macedon. Unless these vows are solemnized, none of us will leave this place while we can stand and fight.” They agreed. They were all ashamed. Perdikkas’ words about the royal burial ground had brought them sharply down to earth. What would they have done with the body if they had taken it? Buried it in the park? One look at that remote proud face had sobered them. A miracle he was not stinking; yet you would have thought he was still alive. A superstitious shiver had run down many backs; Alexander would make a powerful ghost.

  On the terrace a goat was slaughtered; men touched the carcass or the blood, invoking the curse of Hades if they were forsworn. Owing to their numbers it took some time; as twilight fell they were still swearing by torchlight.

  Meleager, the first to swear under Perdikkas’ eye, watched, brooding. He had lost support and knew it. Only some thirty, the hard core of his partisans, still rallied round him; and even those because they were now marked men, frightened of reprisals. He must keep them, at least. While the sunset dusk hummed with the noises of an anxious fermenting city, he had been giving the matter thought. If he could separate the Bodyguard … thirty to only eight …

  The last men had scrambled through their oaths. He approached Perdikkas with a sober placating face. “I acted rashly. The King’s death has overset us all. Tomorrow we can meet and take better counsel.”

  “So I hope.” Perdikkas frowned under his dark brows.

  “All of us would be ashamed,” went on Meleager smoothly, “if the near friends of Alexander were kept from watching beside him. I beg you”—his gesture embraced the Bodyguard—“return and keep your vigil,”

  “Thank you,” said Niarchos, quite sincerely. He had hoped to do it. Perdikkas paused, his soldier’s instinct indefinably wary. It was Ptolemy who said, “Meleager has taken his oath to respect Alexander’s body. Has he taken one for ours?”

  Perdikkas’ eyes sought Meleager’s, which shifted in spite of him. All together, with looks of profound contempt, the Bodyguard waited off to join the Companions encamped in the royal park.

  Presently they sent messengers to the Egyptian quarter, summoning the embalmers to begin their work at dawn.

  “Where were you all day, Konon?” said Philip, as his hot clothes were lifted off him. “Why didn’t they fetch you when I said?”

  Konon, an elderly veteran who had served him for ten years, said, “I was at Assembly, sir. Never mind, you shall have your nice bath now, with the scented oil.”

  “I’m King now, Konon. Did they tell you I’m the King?”

  “Yes, sir. Long life to you, sir.”

  “Konon, now I’m King, you won’t go away?”

  “No, sir, old Konon will look after you. Now let me have this beautiful new robe to brush it and keep it safe. It’s too good for every day … Why, come, come, sir, you’ve no call to cry.”

  In the Royal Bedchamber, as the evening cooled, the body of Alexander stiffened like stone. With a bloodstained towel round his arm, the Persian boy put by the bed the night-table of malachite and ivory, and kindled the nightlamp on it. The floor was strewn with the debris of the fighting. Someone had lurched against the console with the images of Hephaistion; they lay sprawled like the fallen after a battle. In the faint light, Bagoas took a long look at them, and turned away. But in a few minutes he went back and stood them up neatly, each in its place. Then, fetching a stool lest sitting on the dais he might sleep again, he folded his hands and composed himself to
watch, his dark eyes staring into the dark shadows.

  The harem at Susa was Persian, not Assyrian. Its proportions were elegantly balanced; its fluted columns had capitals sculpted with lotus-buds by craftsmen from Greece; its walls were faced with delicately enameled tiles, and the sunlight dappled them through lattices of milky alabaster.

  Queen Sisygambis, the mother of Darius, sat in her high-backed chair, a granddaughter on either side. At eighty she kept the hawk-nosed, ivorine face of the old Elamite nobility; the pure Persian strain, unmixed with Median. She was brittle now; in her youth she had been tall. She was robed and scarved in deep indigo, but for her breast, on which glowed a great necklace of polished pigeon-blood rubies, the gift of King Poros to Alexander, and of Alexander to her.

  Stateira, the elder girl, was reading a letter aloud, slowly, translating it from Greek to Persian. Alexander had had both girls taught to read Greek as well as speak it. From affection for him, Sisygambis had allowed him to indulge this whim, though in her view clerking was somewhat menial, and more properly left to the palace eunuchs. However, he must be allowed the customs of his people. He could not help his upbringing, and was never purposely discourteous. He should have been a Persian.

  Stateira read, stumbling a little, not from ignorance but from agitation.

  ALEXANDER KING OF THE MACEDONIANS AND LORD OF ASIA, to his honored wife Stateira.

  Wishing to look upon your face again, I desire you to set out for Babylon without delay, so that your child may be born here. If you bear a boy, I intend to proclaim him my heir. Hasten your journey. I have been sick, and my people tell me there is ignorant talk that I am dead. Do you pay no heed to it. My chamberlains are commanded to receive you with honor, as the mother of a Great King to be. Bring Drypetis your sister, who is my sister also for the sake of one who was dear to me as myself. May all be well with you.