The Novels of Alexander the Great

by Mary Renault

  In Thessaly, Polyperchon himself awaited him, still faithful, despite Olympias, to Alexander’s son. He too was sidestepped; some troops were detached to tie him up, while the main force pressed on northeast. Skirting Olympos, they were soon on the borders of Macedon.

  The coastal fortress of Dion lay ahead. Kassandros’ envoys promised an end to the unlawful tyranny of women and a return to the ancient customs. After a short conclave within, the gates were opened. Here he held court, receiving all who offered support or brought him intelligence. Many kinsmen of Olympias’ victims, or men whom she had proscribed, came to join him, full of their wrongs and clamoring for vengeance. But others came by stealth who till lately would not have come; men who had refused to fight the mother of Alexander, and who said now that no one but Alexander could have held such a woman in check. These would go back, spreading news of Kassandros’ pledges, and his claim to the regency on behalf of Roxane’s son.

  One day, he remembered to ask of such a visitor, “And when they took Amyntas’ daughter, how did she die?”

  The man’s face lightened. “There at least I have good news for you. She was alive when I left, and Philip too. They are treated shockingly, walled up in a wretched sty; there is a great deal of anger among the people. I’m told they were in a very poor way, till even the guards took pity on them and gave them a little comfort. If you hurry, you can save them still.”

  Kassandros’ face had set in a moment’s stillness. “Shameful!” he said. “Olympias should have borne her good fortune more becomingly. Can they have lived so long?”

  “You can count on that, Kassandros I had it from one of the guard.”

  “Thank you for the news.” He leaned forward in his chair, and spoke with sudden animation. “Let it be known I mean to right their wrongs. They shall be restored to all their dignities. As for Olympias, I shall hand over her person to Queen Eurydike, to punish as she sees fit. Tell the people.”

  “Indeed I will; they will be glad to hear. I’ll get word, if I can, to the prison. It will cheer them to have hope at last.”

  He left, big with his mission. Kassandros sent for his officers, and told them he would delay his march for a few days more. It would give his friends time, he said, to gather more support.

  Three mornings later, Eurydike said, “How quiet it is. I don’t even hear the guard.”

  The first dawn was glimmering in the window-hole. The night had been cool, the flies were not yet awake. They had eaten well on what the night-guard had brought. The watch had changed just before dawn as usual; but the relief had been quiet, and now there was no sound of their movements. Had they deserted, mutinied? Or been called to help defend the city, which would mean Kassandros had come?

  She said to Philip, “Soon we shall be free, I feel it.”

  Scratching at his groin, he said, “Can I have a bath?”

  “Yes, we shall have baths and good clean clothes, and beds to sleep in.”

  “And I can have my stones back?”

  “Yes, and some new ones too.” Often in their close quarters his nearness, his smell, the way he ate and belched and relieved himself, had been barely endurable; she would gladly have exchanged him for a dog; but she knew that she owed him justice. She must care for her mind, if she was to be fit again for ruling. So she seldom scolded him, and, if she did, gave him a kind word after. He never sulked, always forgave, or perhaps simply forgot.

  “When will they let us out?” he said.

  “As soon as Kassandros wins.”

  “Listen. People are coming now.”

  It was true, there were footsteps; three or four men by the sound. They were on the door side, where the window did not look. Their voices muttered but she could not make out their words. Then, suddenly, came a sound there was no mistaking—a blow of a pick on the wall that closed the door.

  “Philip!” she cried. “They have come to rescue us!”

  He whooped like a child, and peered vainly through the window. She stood up in the space under the roof-point, listening to the fall of rubble and thud of stones. The work went quickly; the wall had been a shoddy job, by men without their hearts in it. She called out, “Are you Kassandros’ men?”

  There was a pause in the pick-strokes; then a thick foreign voice said, “Yes, Kassans men,” but she could tell he had not understood her. His next words, to his workmates, were not in Greek, and now she recognized the sound.

  “They are Thracians,” she said to Philip. “They are slaves sent to knock down the wall. When that’s done, someone will come to unbar the door.”

  Philip’s face had altered. He withdrew as far from the door as he could without falling into the privy. Old days, before the benevolent reign of Konon, were coming back to him. “Don’t let them come in,” he said.

  She had begun to reassure him, when there was a laugh outside.

  She stiffened. It was not the laughter of slaves, complaisant or discreet. She knew, with a crawling of the flesh, the nature of this archetypal mirth.

  The last stones fell. The crossbar clattered from the door. It creaked open; the sunrise burst dazzling in.

  Four Thracians stood on the threshold, staring across the rubble.

  They choked, clapping hands to their mouths and noses; men bred in the clean hill air, with hundred-foot cliffs to receive the ordure of their villages. In this pause, she saw on their cheeks and foreheads their warrior tattoos, saw their pectorals of engraved bronze etched with silver, their cloaks with bands of tribal colors, the daggers in their hands.

  Sickly she thought, The Macedonians would not do it. She stood straight, in the center where the roof was high.

  The leading Thracian confronted her. He wore an arm-bracelet of a triple-coiled snake, and greaves with women’s faces embossed upon the kneecaps. Spiral blue tattoos on his brow, and on his cheeks to his dark-red beard, made his expression impenetrable. “Kill me then!” she cried, lifting her head. “You can boast that you killed a queen,”

  He put out his arm—not the right, with the dagger, but the left with the coiled bronze snake—and swept her out of his way. She lost her footing and fell.

  “You slave, don’t you dare hit my wife!” In a moment, the cowering form by the privy had hurled itself straight forward from a bent-kneed crouch. The Thracian, taken unawares with a butted midriff, had the breath knocked out of him. Philip, fighting like an ape enraged, using feet and knees and nails, struggled to get the dagger. He had sunk his teeth in the Thracian’s wrist when the others fell on him.

  Between his roars of pain as the knives went in, she thought that he called for Konon; then he gave a guttural choke, his head arched back gaping, he clawed at the dirt floor and lay still. One of the men shoved at him with a foot, but he did not move.

  They turned to each other, like men whose task is done.

  She rose on her hands and knees. A booted foot had trodden on her leg; she wondered that she could still move it. They were staring down at the body, comparing the bites and scratches Philip had given them. She caught in their unknown jargon a note of admiration; they had found, after all, a king.

  They saw her movement and turned to look at her. One of them laughed. A new horror gripped her; till now she had thought only of the knives.

  The man who had laughed had a round, smooth-skinned face and a pale scanty beard. He came towards her smiling. The leader who wore the greaves called something out, and the man turned away with a gesture which said he could do better for himself than this stinking drab. They looked at their red blades and wiped them on Philip’s tunic. One of them threw it back to show the groin; the leader, rebukingly, pulled it down again. They went out, picking their way over the scattered stones.

  She tottered to her feet, shaking and dazed and cold with shock. It had all taken, perhaps, two minutes from the time when the door gave way.

  Clear early sun streaming through the doorway picked out the stale filth, the fresh scarlet blood on the body. She blinked in the unaccustomed lig
ht. Two shadows fell across it.

  They were Macedonians, and unarmed, the second attendant on the first, for he stood half a pace behind and carried a bundle. The first came forward, a thickset middle-aged man in a decent drab tunic and shoulder-cloak. He gazed a few moments in silence at the scene, clicking his tongue in disapproval. Turning to the other he said, “Mere butchery. A disgrace.”

  He stepped into the entry, confronting the haggard, mat-haired woman with her grimy feet and black nails, and spoke in the flat, rather pompous voice of a minor functionary doing his office with regard for his own importance.

  “Eurydike, daughter of Amyntas. I act under command,” do you therefore hold me guiltless before the gods. Olympias, Queen of the Macedonians, says this by me. Because your father was born lawfully of royal blood, she does not condemn you to execution like the bastard your husband. She gives you leave to end your own life, and offers you a choice of means.”

  The second man came forward, and looked for somewhere to put his bundle down. Seeming disconcerted to find no table, he opened it on the ground, and, like a peddler, set out the contents on the cloth: a short fine dagger, a stoppered flask, and a cord of plaited flax with a running noose.

  Silently she considered them, then looked from them to the sprawling corpse beside her. If she had joined him as he fought, perhaps it would all be over. Kneeling she picked up the phial; she had heard that the Athenian hemlock killed with a creeping cold, giving no pain. But this came from Olympias, and if she asked what it was they might lie. The dagger was sharp; but she knew she was too weak to strike it home; half dead, what would they do to her? She fingered the rope. It was smooth, well made and clean. She looked up at the peak of the hut where the roof stood eight feet high, and said, “This will do.”

  The man gave a businesslike nod. “A good choice, lady, and quickly over. We’ll soon have it fixed, you’ve a stool there, I see.” When the servant mounted it, she saw there was even an iron hook, fixed to a little crossbeam, such as is found in places where tools or tackle are kept. No, they would not be long.

  So, she thought, nothing at all remained. Not even style; she had seen hanged men. She looked down at Philip, left tumbled like a slaughtered beast. Yes, after all, something was still left. Piety remained to her. This was the King her husband, who had made her a queen, who had fought and died for her. As the executioner, his task done, stepped down from the stool, she said, “You must wait awhile.”

  The jug of watered wine, left by the night-guard for their comfort, stood untouched in the window. She knelt beside him, and wetting a corner of her tunic hem, washed his wounds as well as she could, and cleaned his face. She straightened his legs, laid his left arm on his breast and his right beside him, closed his eyes and mouth and smoothed his hair. Set in the gravity of death he looked a comely man. She saw the executioners looking at him with a new respect; she had done that at least for him. Scraping her hand along the earth floor, she strewed on him the ritual pinch of dust which would free him to cross the River.

  There was one thing still, she thought; something for herself. It was not for nothing that her blood came down from the warring Macedonian kings and the chieftains of Illyria. She had her blood-feud; and if she could not pursue it, the powers whose work it was must do it for her. She stood up from the body, stretching her hands palms downwards over the trampled and bloodstained earth.

  “Witness, you gods below,” she cried aloud, “that I received these gifts from Olympias. I call upon you, by the waters of Styx, and by the power of Hades, and by this blood, to give her in her turn such gifts as these.” She turned to the men, saying, “I am ready.”

  She kicked the stool away for herself, not flinching or leaving them to take it, as they had seen strong men do many a time. All in all they thought she had shown a good deal of spirit, not unworthy of her ancestry; and when it seemed that her struggle might last longer than was needful, they dragged her down by the knees, to pull the noose tight and help her die.

  Olympias, these needful things attended to, summoned her council. Few of the men about her were bound, now, by loyalty to her person. Some had blood-feuds with the Antipatrids; many knew they had given Kassandros cause for vengeance; others, she guessed, were loyal only to the son of Alexander. She sat at the great table of gilt and hardstone where her husband Philip had sat, a young king, in the old days of the civil wars which men of no more than sixty could still remember, and men of seventy had fought in. She did not ask them for advice. Her own will sufficed for her. The old men and soldiers sitting before her saw her impenetrable solitude, her enclosure in her will.

  She did not mean, she told them, to sit at ease in Pella while rebels and traitors overran her frontiers. She would go south to Pydna; it was only some fifteen miles north of Dion where Kassandros had insolently set up his standard. Pydna had a harbor; it was well fortified; from there she would direct the war.

  The soldiers approved. They thought of the bloodless victory in the west.

  “Good,” she said. “In two days I shall move the court to Pydna.”

  The soldiers stared. This was another thing entirely. It meant a horde of women, servants and noncombatants taking up room, getting under the feet of the garrison, having to be fed. After a pause in which everyone waited for someone else to speak first, they told her so.

  She said, unmoved, “Our allies can join us by sea, without losses from fighting on the march. When we are in full strength, when Polyperchon has joined us, we will meet Kassandros.”

  Agenor, a veteran of the east who had been given the chief command, cleared his throat and said, “No one questions the honor of Polyperchon. But it is said he has had desertions.” He paused; everyone wondered if he would dare go on. “And, as you know, we can expect nothing now from Epiros.”

  She stiffened in her ivory-inlaid chair. The Epirotes who had followed her to the border had mutinied when ordered to fight in Macedon, and gone home. Only a handful of Molossians was left. She had shut herself up for two days to nurse her pride, and Kassandros’ secret partisans had made the most of them. The councilors looked angrily at Agenor; they had seen her face harden. She fixed on him her inflexible dangerous eyes, looking out from her mask of will. She said, “The court will move to Pydna. This session is closed.”

  The men left, looking at one another, not speaking till they were in the open. Agenor said, “Let her have her way. But she must be out before the winter.”

  Kassandros had had good news from the officer he had sent to deal with Polyperchon. Avoiding battle, he had infiltrated the straggling camp with men who had a clansman or kinsman there. They spread the news that Olympias had shed the royal blood of Macedon, herself a foreigner and a usurper; and offered a bounty of fifty drachmas to any good Macedonian who would join Kassandros’ force. Every morning the numbers in Polyperchon’s camp were fewer; soon he and his faithful remnant were too few to consider more than their own defense. They dug themselves into the best of the local hill-forts, mended its walls, provisioned it, and waited upon events.

  The corn and the olives ripened, the grapes were trodden, the women took to the mountains to honor Dionysos; in the dark before dawn the shrill Bacchic cry answered the first cockcrow. In Pydna, the watchers on the harbor walls scanned the sea, which the first autumn winds were ruffling. No sails appeared but those of the fisher-boats, already running for home.

  Before the first gales began, Kassandros appeared from the passes he now commanded, and surrounded Pydna with a palisade.

  316 B.C.

  IT WAS SPRING IN THE VALLEYS. The peaks of Olympos still dazzled with winter snow under a clear pale sky. A single wreath of cloud hid the Throne of Zeus. His eagles had forsaken its lifeless purity to fend for themselves on the lower crags. Around the summits, only sheer cliffs that would not hold a snowflake slashed the white cloak with black.

  In the foothills, the waters of the thaw scoured ravines and gullies in torrents that ground the boulders like thunder. Below, u
nder the walls of Pydna, a mild sun warmed the corpses which the cold had stiffened, releasing their carrion reek, and the kites returned to them.

  Olympias, pacing the walls, looked out beyond the siege-lines to the wild mountain ranges where the lynxes and wolves ran free, where the pines were shrugging the snow from their furry shoulders like awakening bears.

  Her gaunt face looked out from a shapeless mass of clothing, layer upon layer. She had come in mild autumn weather, resolved that the war would be over in a month and Kassandros dead. Alexander had always done what he resolved, that she knew. He had seldom discussed with her the complex calculations which had preceded action. There was a sharp wind today; she was wearing even her state robe heaped over her shoulders like a wrap. With hunger one felt the cold.

  The other women were huddled indoors over their tiny fire. The men upon the ramparts, skull-faced, glanced dully at her as she passed, their vitality too low to nourish a hot hate. All through the winter there had been no assault upon the walls; the corpses in the ditch were all dead of starvation. They had been flung there not from callousness but necessity; there was no room left in the fort to dig more graves.

  Scattered among them were the huge bones of the elephants. The horses and mules had soon been eaten; but elephants were instruments of war, and, besides, no one had dared to slaughter them. They had tried to keep them alive on sawdust; for a time their complaining moans and forlorn trumpetings had disturbed the night, then one by one they had sunk down in their stalls, and what meat was left on them, all sinew, had been something to chew on for a while. The mahouts, who were useless now, had been taken off the ration list; they too were below the walls.

  Somewhere in the fort a camp-woman’s child was crying; new born, soon gone. The young Alexander was too old to cry. She had seen to it that he still had enough; he was a king and must not have the strength of his manhood crippled in his youth. Though the food was wretched he-had been unexpectedly good, telling her that his father had gone hungry with his men. But often she would find herself looking through him, seeing the tall grandson she could have had if her son had obeyed her, and married before he rode to war. Why, she asked herself; why?