by Mary Renault
“I hate the plains,” said Eurydike. “I shall mind that more than anything.”
Her mother did not hear; she had been looking out at the hill-road that led between the village huts to their gate. “A courier is coming. Come down and change your clothes.”
They climbed down the wooden steps to the floor below, and put on their second-best dresses. A courier was a rare event, and such people reported what they saw.
His gravity and sense of drama almost made Kynna ask his errand before she broke the seal. But it would be undignified; she sent him off to be fed before she read Antipatros’ letter.
“Who is dead?” asked Eurydike. “Is it Arridaios?” Her voice was eager.
Her mother looked up. “No. It is Alexander.”
“Alexander!” She spoke with disappointment more than grief. Then her face lightened. “If the King is dead, I needn’t marry Arridaios.”
“Be quiet!” said her mother. “Let me read.” Her face had changed; it held defiance, resolution, triumph. The girl said anxiously, “I needn’t marry him, Mother? Need I? Need I?”
Kynna turned to her with glowing eyes. “Yes! Now indeed you must. The Macedonians have made him King.”
“King? How can they? Is he better, have his wits come back?”
“He is Alexander’s brother, that is all. He is to keep the throne warm for Alexander’s son by the barbarian. If she has a son.”
“And Antipatros says I am to marry him?”
“No, he does not. He says that Alexander had changed his mind. He may be lying, or not. It’s no matter which.”
Eurydike’s thick brows drew together. “But if it’s true, it might mean Arridaios is worse.”
“No, Alexander would have sent word; the man is lying, I know it. We must wait to hear from Perdikkas in Babylon.”
“Oh, Mother, let us not go. I don’t want to marry the fool.”
“Don’t call him the fool, he is King Philip, they have named him after your grandfather … Don’t you see? The gods have sent you this. They mean you to right the wrong that was done your father.”
Eurydike looked away. She had been barely two when Amyntas was executed, and did not remember him. He had been a burden on her all her life.
“Eurydike!” The voice of authority brought her to attention. Kynna had set herself to be father as well as mother, and done it well. “Listen to me. You were meant for great things, not to grow old in a village like a peasant. When Alexander offered you his brother’s hand to make peace between our houses, I knew that it was destiny. You are a true-born Macedonian and royal on both sides. Your father should have been King. If you were a man, they would have chosen you in Assembly.”
The girl listened in a growing quiet. Her face lost its sullenness; aspiration began to kindle in her eyes.
“If I die for it,” said Kynna, “you shall be reigning Queen.”
Peukestes, Satrap of Persia, had withdrawn from his audience chamber to his private room. It was furnished in the manner of the province, except for the Macedonian panoply on the armor-stand. He had changed from his formal robe to loose trousers and embroidered slippers. A tall fair man, with features of lean refinement, he had curled his hair Persian-style; but at Alexander’s death, conforming to Persian custom, had shaved it to the scalp, instead of cropping it as he would in Macedon. When exposed it still felt chilly; to warm his head he had put on his cap of office, the helmet-shaped kyrbasia. This gave him an unintended look of state; the man he had summoned approached him with downcast eyes, and prepared to go down in the prostration.
Peukestes looked at him startled, at first not knowing him; then he put out his hand. “No, Bagoas. Get up, be seated.”
Bagoas rose and obeyed, acknowledging, with some gesture of the face, Peukestes’ smile. His dark-circled eyes looked enormous; there was just enough flesh on him to display the elegance of his skull. His scalp was naked of hair; when it began to grow he must have shaved again. He looked like an ivory mask. Yes, something must be done for him, Peukestes thought.
“You know,” he said, “that Alexander died leaving no will?”
The young eunuch made an assenting gesture. After a pause he said, “Yes. He would not surrender.”
“True. And when he understood that the common fate of man had overtaken him, his voice had gone. Or he would not have forgotten his faithful servants … You know, I kept vigil for him at the shrine of Sarapis. It was a long night, and a man had time to think.”
“Yes,” said Bagoas. “That was a long night.”
“He told me once that your father had an estate neat Susa, but was unjustly dispossessed and killed while you were young.” No need to add that the boy had been castrated and enslaved, and sold to pleasure Darius. “If Alexander could have spoken, I think he would have bequeathed you your father’s land. So I shall buy out the man who has it, and give it you.”
“The bounty of my lord is like rain on a dry river-bed.” A beautiful movement of the hand went with it, like an absent-minded reflex; he had been a courtier since he was thirteen. “But my parents are both dead; so are my sisters, at least if they were fortunate. I had no brother; and I shall have no son. Our house was burned to the ground; and for whom should I rebuild it?”
He has made a grave-offering of his beauty, Peukestes thought; now he is waiting to die. “And yet, it might please your father’s shade to see his son restore his name with honor in the ancestral place.”
Bagoas’ hollow eyes seemed to consider it, like something infinitely distant. “If my lord, in his magnanimity, would give me a little time …?”
He wants only to be rid of me, Peukestes thought. Well, I can do no more.
That evening Ptolemy, on the eve of departing to the satrapy of Egypt, was his guest at supper. Since it seemed they might never meet again, their talk grew reminiscent. Presently it turned upon Bagoas.
“He could make Alexander laugh,” Ptolemy said. “I have heard them often.”
“You would not think so now.” Peukestes related the morning’s interview. The talk passed to other things; but Ptolemy, who had a mind that wasted nothing, pleaded tomorrow’s press of business and left the party early.
Bagoas’ house stood in the paradise a little way from the palace. It was small but elegant; often Alexander had spent an evening there. Ptolemy remembered the torches in their sconces by the door, the sound of harps and flutes and laughter, and, sometimes, the eunuch’s sweet alto singing.
At first sight all was dark. Nearer, he saw a dim single lamp yellowing a window. A small dog barked; after a while, a sleepy servant peered through the grille, and said the master had retired. These courtesies over, Ptolemy went round towards the window.
“Bagoas,” he said softly, “it’s Ptolemy. I am going away forever. Won’t you bid me goodbye?”
There was only a short silence. The light voice said, “Let the lord Ptolemy in. Light the lamps. Bring wine.”
Ptolemy entered, politely disclaiming ceremony, Bagoas politely insisting. A taper was brought, light shone on his ivory head. He was dressed, in the formal clothes he must have worn to call on Peukestes. They looked now as if he had slept in them; he was buttoning the jacket up. On the table was a tablet covered with score-marks; what was erased looked like an attempt to draw a face. He pushed them aside to make room for the wine-tray, and thanked Ptolemy for the honor of his visit with impeccable civility; peering at him blankly from deep hollow eyes, as the slave kindled the lamps, like an owl revealed in daylight. He looked a little mad. Ptolemy thought, Am I too late already?
He said, “You have truly mourned for him. I too. He was a good brother.”
Bagoas’ face remained inexpressive; but tears ran from his eyes in silence, like blood from an open wound. He brushed them absently away, as one might a lock of hair which has a habit of straying, and turned to pour the wine.
“We owed him tears,” Ptolemy said. “He would have wept for us.” He paused. “But, if the dead care for what conc
erned them in life, he may be needing more from his friends than that.”
The ivory mask under the lamp turned to a face; the eyes, in which desperation was tempered by older habits of gentle irony, riveted themselves on Ptolemy’s. “Yes?” he said.
“We both know what he valued most. While he lived, honor and love; and, after, undying fame.”
“Yes,” Bagoas. “So …?”
With his new attention had come a profound and weary skepticism. Why not, thought Ptolemy; three years among the labyrinthine intrigues of Darius’ court before he was sixteen—and, lately, why not indeed?
“What have you seen since he died? How long have you been shut up here?”
Raising his large dark disillusioned eyes, Bagoas said with a vicious quiet, “Since the day of the elephants.”
For a moment Ptolemy was silenced; the wraith had hardened, dauntingly. Presently he said, “Yes, that would have sickened him. Niarchos said so, and so did I. But we were overborne.”
Bagoas said, answering the unspoken words, “The ring would have gone to Krateros, if he had been there.”
There was a pause. Ptolemy considered his next move; Bagoas looked like a man just waked from sleep, considering his thoughts. Suddenly he looked up sharply. “Has anyone gone to Susa?”
“Bad news travels fast.”
“News?” said Bagoas with unconcealed impatience. “It is protection they will need.”
Suddenly, Ptolemy remembered something said by his Persian wife, Artakama, a lady of royal blood bestowed by Alexander. He was leaving her with her family till, as he had said, the affairs of Egypt were settled. He had been uneasy with a harem, its claustral and stifling femininity, after the free-and-easy Greek hetairas. He meant his heir to be a pure-bred Macedonian, and had, in fact, offered for one of Antipatros’ many daughters. But there had been some piece of gossip … Bagoas’ eyes were boring into his.
“I have heard a rumor—worth nothing I daresay—that a Persian lady came from Susa to the harem here, and was taken sick and died. But—”
Bagoas’ breath hissed through his teeth. “If Stateira has come to Babylon,” he said in a soft, deadly voice, “of course she has been taken sick and died. When first the Bactrian knew of me, I would have died of the same sickness, if I had not given some sweetmeats to a dog.”
Ptolemy felt a sickening conviction. He had been with Alexander on that last visit to Susa, been brought once to dine with Sisygambis and the family. Pity and disgust contended with the thought that if this had happened, and Perdikkas had condoned it, his own design was justified.
“Alexander’s fame,” he said, “has not been very well served since the gods received him. Men who cannot match his greatness of soul should try at least to honor it.”
Bagoas brooded on him, thoughtful, in a grey calm; as if he stood on the threshold of a door he had been going out of, and could not be sure it was worth while to turn back. “Why have you come?” he said.
The dead are not respectful, Ptolemy reflected. Good, it saves time.
“I will tell you why. I am concerned for the fate of Alexander’s body.”
Bagoas hardly stirred, but his whole frame seemed to change, losing its lethargy, becoming wiry and tense. “They took their oath!” he said. “They took it on the Styx.”
“Oath …? Oh, all that is over. I’m not talking of Babylon.”
He looked up. His heater had come in from the threshold; the door of life had swung to behind him. He listened, rigidly.
“They are making him a golden bier; nothing less is due to him. It will take the craftsmen a year to finish. Then, Perdikkas will have it sent to Macedon,”
“To Macedon!” The look of stunned shock quite startled Ptolemy, his homeland customs taken for granted. Well, so much the better.
“That is the custom. Did he not tell you how he buried his father?”
“Yes. But it was here they …”
“Meleager? A rogue and a halfwit, and the rogue is dead. But in Macedon, that is different. The Regent is nearly eighty; he may be gone before the bier arrives. And his heir is Kassandros, whom you know of.”
Bagoas’ slender hand closed in a sinewy fist. “Why did Alexander let him live? If he had only given me leave. No one would have been the wiser.”
I don’t doubt it, thought Ptolemy, glancing at his face. “Well, in Macedon the King is entombed by his rightful heir; it confirms his succession. So, Kassandros will be waiting. So will Perdikkas; he will claim it in the name of Roxane’s son—and, if there is no son, maybe for himself. There is also Olympias, who is no mean fighter either. It will be a bitter war. Sooner or later, whoever holds the coffin and the bier will need the gold.”
Ptolemy looked for a moment, and looked away. He had come remembering the elegant, epicene favorite; devoted certainly, he had not doubted that, but still, a frivolity, the plaything of two kings’ leisure. He had not foreseen this profound and private grief in its priestlike austerity. What memories moved behind those guarded eyes?
“This, then,” he said inexpressively, “is why you came?”
“Yes. I can prevent it, if I have help that I can trust.”
Bagoas said, half to himself, “I never thought they would be taking him away.” His face changed and grew wary. “What do you mean to do?”
“If I have word of when the bier sets out, I will march from Egypt to meet it. Then, if I can treat with the escort—and I think I can—I will take him to his own city, and entomb him in Alexandria.”
Ptolemy waited. He saw himself being, weighed. At least there were no old scores between them. Less than delighted when Alexander took a Persian to his heart and bed, he had been distant to the boy, but never insolent. Later, when it was clear the youth was neither venal nor ambitious, simply a tactful and well-mannered concubine, their chance meetings had been unstrained and easy. However, one did not sleep with two kings and remain naive. One could see the assessment he was making now.
“You are thinking of what I stand to gain; and why not? A great deal, of course. It may even make me a king. But—and this I swear before the gods—never a king of Macedon and Asia. No man alive can wear the mantle of Alexander, and those who grasp at it will destroy themselves. Egypt I can hold, and rule it as he wanted. You were not there, it was before your time; but he was proud of Alexandria.”
“Yes,” said Bagoas. “I know.”
“I was with him,” said Ptolemy, “when he went to Amnion’s oracle at Siwah in the desert, to learn his destiny.”
He began to tell of it. Almost at once the worldly alertness in his hearer’s face had faded; he saw the single-minded absorption of a listening child. How often, he thought, must that look have drawn the tale from Alexander! The boy’s memory must read like a written scroll. But to hear it from someone else would give some new and precious detail, some new sight-line.
He took trouble, therefore, describing the desert march, the rescuing rain, the guiding ravens, the serpents pointing as they lay, the sands’ mysterious voices; the great oasis with its pools and palm-glades and wondering white-robed people; the rocky acropolis where the temple was, with its famous courtyard where the sign of the god was given.
“There is a spring in a basin of red rock; we had to wash our gold and silver offerings in it, to cleanse them for the god, and ourselves as well. It was icy cold in the hot dry air. Alexander of course they did not purify. He was Pharaoh. He carried his own divinity. They led him into the sanctuary. Outside, the light was all shimmering white, and everything seemed to ripple in it. The entrance looked black as night, you’d have thought it would have blinded him. But he went in as though his eyes were on distant mountains.”
Bagoas nodded, as if to say, “Of course; go on.”
“Presently we heard singing, and harps and cymbals and sistra, and the oracle came out. There is not room for it inside the sanctuary. He stood there to watch it, somewhere in the dark.
“The priests came out, forty pairs of them, twenty
before and twenty behind the god. They carried the oracle like a litter, with long shoulder-poles. The oracle is a boat. I don’t know why the god should speak through a boat on land … Ammon has a very old shrine at Thebes. Alexander used to say it must have come first from the river.”
“Tell me about the boat.” He spoke like a child who prompts an old bedtime story.
“It was long and light, like the bird-hunters’ punts on the Nile. But sheathed all over with gold, and hung with gold and silver votives, all kinds of little precious things swinging and glittering and tinkling. In the middle was the Presence of the god. Just a simple sphere.
“The priest came out into the court with Alexander’s question. He had written it on a strip of gold and folded the gold together. He laid it on the pavement before the god, and prayed in his own tongue. Then the boat began to live. It stayed where it was, but you could see it quicken.”
“You saw it,” said Bagoas suddenly. “Alexander said he was too far.”
“Yes, I saw. The carriers stood with empty faces, waiting; but they were like flotsam on a still river-pool, before the flow of the river lifts it. It does not stir yet; but you know the river is under all.
“The question lay shining in the sun. The cymbals sounded a slow beat and the flutes played louder. Then the carriers began to sway a little where they stood, just as flotsam sways. You know how the god answers: back for no, forward for yes. They moved forward like all one thing, a skein of water-weed, a drift of leaves, till before the question they stopped, and the prow dipped. Then the trumpets sounded, and we waved our hands and cheered.
“We waited, then, for Alexander to come out from the sanctuary. It was hot; or we thought so, not having yet been in Gedrosia.” A shadowy smile replied to him. They were both survivors of that dreadful march.
“At last he came out with the high priest. I think more had happened than he had come to ask. He came out with the awe still in him. Then, I remember, he blinked in the sudden brightness, and shaded his eyes with his hand. He saw us all, and looked across and smiled.”
