The Novels of Alexander the Great

by Mary Renault

  Behind the matrons the bridesmaids clustered whispering. Their song sung, their small rite done of turning back the bride-bed and sprinkling it with perfume, they had nothing to do. Among a little set of sisters and cousins and friends, the tittering began; dying away if one of the great ladies looked round, rustling like a faint breeze in leaves. Eurydike heard it; she too had nothing to do. Then suddenly she knew that the sounds from the hall had altered. Supper-couches scraped along the floor, the slurred singing stopped. They were getting up.

  Like a tense soldier released by the call to onset, she summoned up her courage. Soon all these people must go, and leave her alone to deal with him. She would talk to him, tell him stories. Old Konon had said he would not trouble her.

  Roxane too had heard the sounds. She turned, clashing her intricate ruby earrings. “Joy to the bride!” she said.

  Surrounded and pushed on by laughing, drunken, torch-bearing men, stumbling over his robe on the shallow stately stairs with their painted murals, Philip made his way towards the royal bedchamber.

  His head swam, he sweated in his purple robe; he was angry about the dog being chased away. He was angry with Perdikkas for fetching him from the table, and with all the men for mocking him, as he knew they were; they had stopped even pretending. They were laughing at him because they knew he was scared. He had heard the jokes in the hall; there was something he was expected to do with Eurydike, so bad that one must not do it even by oneself, if anyone could see. He had been beaten long ago for being seen. Now, he believed—no one had thought to tell him otherwise—they would all stand and watch him. He didn’t know how, and was sure Cousin Eurydike would not like it. Perdikkas was holding him by the arm, or he would have run away.

  He said, despairingly, “It’s my bedtime. I want to go to bed.”

  “We’ll put you to bed,” they chorused. “That’s why we’re here.” They roared with laughter. It was like the bad old days at home, before Alexander had taken him away.

  “Be quiet.” Perdikkas’ voice, suddenly unfestal, an angry martinet’s, sobered everyone down. They led Philip to an anteroom, and started to undress him.

  He let them take off the hot purple robe; but when they undid the girdle of his sweat-soaked tunic, he fought them, and knocked two flying. The rest all laughed; but Perdikkas, looming and awful, commanded him to remember he was King. So he let them strip him, and put him into a long white robe with a gold-embroidered hem. They let him use the chamber-pot (where was Konon?); then there was no more to stay for. They led him to the door. He could hear inside a murmur of women’s voices. They would be watching, too!

  The wide doors opened. There was Eurydike, sitting up in the great bed. A little brown slave-girl, laughing, ran before him with a long snuffer, ready to quench the hanging lamps. A great wave of anger and misery and fear built up in him. It hummed and boomed in his head, booom, booom, booom. He remembered, he knew that soon the white flash would come. Oh, where was Konon? He shouted, “The light! The light!” and it flashed, a lightning that struck all through him.

  Konon, who had been standing in shadow along the passage, ran in. Without apology he shoved aside the horrified group, shocked sober, which bent over the rigid figure on the floor; pulled from his belt-pouch a wooden wedge; prised Philip’s jaws apart, so that his tongue should not fall back and choke him. For a moment, he looked up at the men with bitter reproach and anger; then his face settled back into the blank mask of the soldier confronted with stupid officers. He said to Perdikkas, “Sir, I can see to him. I know what to do. If the ladies could leave, sir.”

  Disgusted and ashamed, the men stood aside to let the women go first. In panic disregard for precedence, the bridesmaids ran at once, their slippers pattering on the stairs. The matrons of middle rank, obsessed all day with etiquette and protocol, clustered helplessly, waiting for the queens.

  Eurydike sat in the bed, grasping around her the crimson gold-fringed coverlet, looking for help. She had on only her thin wedding shift; how could she get up in the presence of men; of Konon, who was staying? Her clothes were on an ivory stool, at the far end of this great room. Would none of them remember her, stand to shield her, put something round her?

  She heard a sound from the floor. Philip, stiff as a board till now, had begun to twitch. In a moment he was in the throes of the clonic spasm, his whole frame jerking and thrashing, his robe flung up by his kicking legs.

  “Joy to the bride!” It was Roxane, looking down over her shoulder as she swept towards the door.

  “Come, ladies.” Kleopatra gathered in a glance the huddled matrons, averting her face from scandal. Making for the door she paused, and turned back to the bed. Eurydike saw the long look of contempt, the unwilling pity. “Will you come? We will find you something to wear.” Her eye moved to the clothes-stool; an officious matron bustled over.

  Eurydike looked after the widow of Alexander, whose gold embroideries gleamed beyond the door; she looked up at Alexander’s sister, to whom she was like a beaten whore, whose shame must be covered for the house’s honor. She thought, What do I know even of him, except that he killed my father? May the gods curse them all. If I die for it, I will make them kneel at my feet.

  The matron brought her himation of dyed saffron, the lucky color of fertility and joy. She took it in silence, and wrapped it round her as she rose. Philip’s tremor was growing weaker; Konon was holding his head, to keep it from striking the floor. Standing between him and the watching faces, she said, “No, lady, I will not come. The King is sick, and my place is with my husband. Please leave us and go away.”

  She fetched a pillow from the bed, and laid Philip’s head on it. He was hers now, they were both victims together. He had made her a queen, and she would be a king for both of them. Meantime, he must be put into bed and covered warmly. Konon would find her a place to sleep.

  321 B.C.

  SOUTH DOWN THE ANCIENT COAST ROAD that followed the eastern shore of the Middle Sea, the army of Perdikkas marched with its long following train: grooms and chandlers, smiths and carpenters and harness-makers, the elephants, the endless wagons, the soldiers’ women, the slaves. At Sidon, at Tyre, at Gaza, the people looked down from the mended walls. It was eleven years since Alexander had passed that way alive, whom they had just seen on his last progress, going to Egypt with a chime of bells. This army was no business of theirs; but it meant a war, and war has a way of spreading.

  Flanked by its guard of armed Bactrian and Persian eunuchs, Roxane’s wagon followed the march, as it had followed from Bactria to India, to Drangiana, to Susa, to Persepolis, to Babylon. Each part had been many times renewed as its journeys lengthened, but it seemed the same, smelling as before of the stamped dyed leather that roofed it, of the essences which at each new city her eunuchs had brought for her approval; even now, a drift of scent on a cushion could bring back the heat of Taxila. Here were the heavy turquoise-studded bowls and trinkets of her dowry, the vessels of chased gold from Susa, a censer from Babylon. It might all have been the same, except for the child.

  He was nearly two, and seen to be small for his age; but, as she said, his father must have been so. Otherwise, it was clearly her looks he favored; the soft dark hair, the bright dark eyes. He was lively, and seldom ill; curious and exploring; a terror to his nurses who must watch his safety at peril of their lives. Though he must be protected, she did not like him thwarted; he must learn from the beginning that he was a king.

  Perdikkas called on her every few days; he was the King’s guardian, as he reminded her whenever they fell out, which happened often. He was offended that the child shrank from him; it came, he said, of never seeing any other man. “His father, you should remember, was not reared among eunuchs.”

  “Among my people they leave the harem at five, and still make warriors.”

  “However, he beat them. That is why you are here.”

  “How dare you,” she cried, “call me a captive of the spear! You who were our wedding guest! Oh, if
he were here!”

  “You may well wish that,” Perdikkas said, and left to visit his other ward.

  When the army made camp, Philip had his tent just as before. Eurydike, as became a lady of rank, had her wagon; and in this she slept. It lacked Roxane’s splendors; but, as she had not seen them, she found it comfortable, and even handsome when her dowry things were set out. It had a roomy locker; and in this, disguised in a roll of blankets, at the hour of departure she had concealed her arms.

  Philip was quite happy with these arrangements. He would have been gravely disconcerted by her presence in his tent at night; she might even have wanted Konon to go. In the daytime he was delighted to have her company; would often ride beside her wagon, and point out the sights they passed. He had traversed this whole route in the train of Alexander, and from time to time something would jog an inconsequent flash of memory. He had been encamped for months before the huge walls of Tyre.

  In the evening, she dined with him in his tent. She hated at first to watch him eat, but with instruction he improved a little. Sometimes at sunset, if the camp was near the shore, she would walk with him, guarded by Konon, helping him to look for stones and shells; and then she talked to him, telling the legends of the royal house of Macedon she had heard from Kynna, right back to the boy who took the sunbeam for his wages. “You and I,” she said, “will be King and Queen there soon.”

  A dim anxiety stirred in his eyes. “But Alexander told me …”

  “That was because he was King himself. All that is over. You are the King. You must listen to me, now that we are married. I will tell you what we can do.”

  They had passed the Sinai, and in the lands of Egypt made camp by the flat green coast. A few miles ahead was the ancient port of Pelusion; beyond that, the spread-fingered Delta of the Nile, webbed with its intricate veins of canal and stream. Beyond the Nile was Alexandria.

  Among the date-palms and little black irrigation canals and clumps of tall papyrus, the army spread itself restlessly. The warm dry wind from the southern sand was just beginning; the Nile was low, the crops stood deep in the rich silt, the patient oxen toiled at the wooden water-wheels. By the elephant-lines, the mahouts stripped off their dhotis to wash their children in the canal, gaily splashing them as they showered themselves with their trunks after the hot trudge across Sinai. The camels, drinking prodigiously, refilled their secret storage tanks; the soldiers’ women washed their clothes and their children. The sutlers went out to find supplies. The soldiers prepared for war.

  Perdikkas and his staff scanned the terrain. He had been here with Alexander; but that was eleven years back, and for the last two, Ptolemy had been making himself at home. The land’s long vistas showed where, at vital points of access, where a mound or a rocky outcrop offered foundation, stout forts of brick or timber had appeared. He could get no further coastwise; Pelusion was well defended by the salt-marsh between. He must strike south, below the meshes of the Delta.

  The main camp must stay here. He would take a mobile force, light and unencumbered. Alexander had taught him that. He rode back to his tent in the quick-falling dusk which the breath of the desert reddened, to make his plans.

  Through the wide straggling camp, the cook-fires budded and bloomed; little fires of the women, big ones—for the nights were cold still—where twenty or thirty men would share their bean-soup and porridge, their bread and olives, with a relish of dates and cheese, washed down with rough wine.

  It was in the hour between food and sleep, when men talked idly, told tales or sang, that the voices began to sound around the camp, just beyond the reach of the firelight. They called softly, speaking good Macedonian; uttering familiar names, recalling old battles under Alexander, old fallen friends, old jokes. First unrebuffed, then hesitantly welcomed, the speaker would come up to the fire. Just a jar together for old times’ sake, seeing he’d brought one. Tomorrow, who could say, they might have to kill each other, but meantime, good health and no hard feelings. As for himself, he could only speak as he’d found; now Alexander was gone, Ptolemy was next best. He was a soldier and no one’s fool; but he looked after you, he had time for your troubles, and where else would you find that today? What wage, by the way, was Perdikkas paying veterans? What? (A shake of the head, a long contemptuous whistle.)

  “He promised you loot, I suppose? Oh, yes, it’s there; but not so you’ll ever get to it. This country’s murder to those who don’t know the waterways. Look out for the crocodiles; they’re bigger than in India, and cunning.”

  To a growing audience, he would go on to the comforts and pleasures of Alexandria, the shipping from everywhere, the good fresh food, the wineshops and the girls, the good air all the year round; and Alexander to bring the city luck.

  The wine-jar emptied, his mission done, the visitor would slip away, his footfalls merging into the uncanny noises of the Egyptian night. As he threaded his way back to his fort, he would reflect comfortably that he’d not given them a word of a lie, and doing old friends a kindness was a very good way of earning a hundred drachmas.

  Perdikkas made his last camp a little above the wrist of the Nile, from which the fingers of the Delta spread northwards. The noncombatants he had brought thus far would await him; among them the Kings, whom he wanted under his eye. From here he would make his march towards the river.

  They watched him and his soldiers go into the shimmer of morning mist, horse and foot, the pack-mules with the rations, the camel-train with the parts for the catapults, the elephants plodding after. For a long time they grew smaller in the flat distance, vanishing at last into a low horizon of tamarisk and palm.

  Pacing the royal tent, Eurydike waited restlessly for news. Konon had found an escort, and taken Philip riding. She too had liked to ride, free on the hills of Macedon, sitting astride; but she had to remember, now, what would be acceptable in a queen. Perdikkas had told her so.

  Now that for the first time she was with an army in the field, all her training and her nature rebelled at being laid aside with slaves and women. Her marriage she had felt as a grotesque necessity, something to be managed, altering nothing of herself; even more, now, she felt women an alien species, imposing no laws upon her.

  Over by her wagon, her two maids sat in its shade, chattering softly in Lydian. Both were slaves. She had been offered ladies-in-waiting, but had refused, telling Perdikkas she would not ask softly nurtured women to endure the hardships of the march. The truth was that she would not endure the tedium of female talk. To sex she was indifferent; in this respect she needed women even less than men. Her wedding night had killed the last of that. In adolescent dreams she had fought, like Hippolyta, at a hero’s side. Since then she had become ambitious, and her dreams were otherwise.

  By the third morning she was impatient even of ambition, which had no outlet. The day stretched before her, empty and flat as the land. Why should she endure it? She remembered the locker in the wagon which contained her arms. Her man’s tunic was there as well.

  She was the Queen; Perdikkas should have sent reports to her. If no one would bring her news, she would go and see.

  All she knew of the expedition she had heard from Konon, who had many friends in the camp. Perdikkas, he had said, had started out without telling anyone his objective, neither the camp commandant nor the senior officers who were going with him. He had heard there had been spies about the camp. The officers had not liked it; Seleukos, who commanded the elephants, liked to know how they would be used. Konon kept to himself much more than he had told; they were saying in camp that Perdikkas was far higher-handed these days than Alexander ever was; Alexander had known how to talk you round.

  He had confided, however, to Eurydike that with the stores and remounts they’d taken, he reckoned they would not be marching above thirty miles. And that was the distance to the Nile.

  Eurydike changed into her tunic, clasped on her tooled-hide corselet, laced down the shoulder-pieces, put on riding-boots and greaves. Her breasts were
small and the corselet hid their curve. Her helmet was a simple, unplumed Illyrian war-cap; her grandmother, Audata, had worn it on the border. The drowsy servants never saw her go. Down at the horse-lines the grooms took her for one of the royal squires, and at her imperious order led a sound horse out.

  Even after three days, the spoor of the troops was plain: the plowed-up grass, the bared dust, the horse and camel droppings, the trampled banks of the irrigation canals, the leaked water caking in the little fields. The peasants laboring to mend the dikes looked up with sullen hatred of all destructive soldiers.

  She was only a few miles out when she met the messenger.

  He was riding a camel; a dusty, drawn-faced man, who stared at her angrily for not making way for him. But he was a soldier; so she wheeled round and overtook him. Her horse shied from the camel; she called, “What news? Has there been a battle?”

  He leaned over to spit; but his mouth was dry, and only the sound came out. “Get out of my way, boy, I’ve no time for you. I’ve despatches for the camp. They must get ready to take the wounded … what are left of them.” He switched his mount; it bobbed its scornful head and left her in its dust.

  An hour or two later, she met the wagons. As they came nearer, she guessed their freight from the groaning, from the water-carriers on their donkeys, and the doctor leaning under one of the awnings. She rode down the line, hearing the humming flies, a curse or a cry when a wagon jolted.