Alexander (Vol. 2)

by Manfredi, Valerio Massimo

  Alexander was struck by this scene and asked Aristander, who now followed him everywhere like a shadow, ‘What does all this mean? Is it an omen from the gods?’

  The seer lifted his gaze towards the burning disc of the sun and then looked with his pinpoint eyes at the crow struggling with its wings stuck in the glue-like bitumen. The bird gave another tug and finally managed to free itself, ripping out some feathers and leaving them trapped on the walls.

  ‘You will take Gaza, but if you do it today, you will be wounded.’

  Alexander decided to fight anyway, so that his army would not think that he was afraid of an omen of pain, and while his teams of miners set to digging tunnels under the walls to bring them down, he led a frontal attack on the city along the ramp that rose up to the city.

  Batis, counting on his favourable position, came out with the army and counterattacked violently, lining up his Persian soldiers together with ten thousand Arab and Ethiopian mercenaries, men with black skin whom Alexander’s soldiers had never seen before.

  Even though his old wound from Issus still caused him some pain, the King took his place in the front line with his foot-soldiers and sought a direct clash with Batis, a black giant gleaming with sweat as he valiantly led his Ethiopians.

  ‘By the gods!’ shouted Perdiccas. ‘That man has certainly got balls, even if he has been castrated!’

  Alexander used his sword to mow down the enemy soldiers who challenged him, but then a catapult crew at the top of a tower spotted his red standard, the crests of his helmet and his shining armour and took aim.

  Far off, up in another tower, in the palace at Pella, Olympias felt the mortal danger and sought desperately to cry out: ‘Alexandre!’ But her voice would not carry through the ether, blocked as it was by a bad omen, and the bolt was let loose from the catapult. It hissed through the stagnant air and hit its mark, passing through Alexander’s shield and his breastplate and planting itself in his shoulder. The King fell to the ground and a group of enemy soldiers rushed to finish him off and strip him of his weapons, but Perdiccas, Craterus and Leonnatus drove them all back with their shields and ran many of them through with their spears.

  The King, twisting in pain, cried out, ‘Call Philip!’

  The physician came immediately. ‘Quick! Out of the way! Out of my way!’ and two bearers put the King on a stretcher and swiftly carried him from the battle.

  Many saw him mortally pale with the heavy bolt protruding from his shoulder and so the rumour spread that the King was dead and the army began to waver against the enemy attack.

  Alexander realized what was happening from the shouts and cries that reached his ears: he took Philip’s hand – his physician was running alongside him – and said, ‘I have to return to the front line – pull out the bolt and cauterize the wound.’

  ‘But that won’t be enough!’ exclaimed the doctor. ‘Sire! If you go back down there you will die.’

  ‘No. I have already been wounded. The first part of the omen has come true. The second part remains to be fulfilled – I will enter Gaza before sunset.’

  They were at the royal tent now and Alexander repeated, ‘Extract the bolt now. That is an order.’

  Philip obeyed, and while the King bit the leather of his belt to stifle his cries, the physician cut his shoulder with a surgical instrument and extracted the point of the bolt. The blood flowed copiously from the wound, but Philip immediately took a red-hot blade from a brazier and plunged it into the cut. The tent filled with a nauseating smell of burning flesh and the King let out a long moan of pain.

  ‘Sew it up,’ he said through his clenched teeth.

  The doctor sewed, stemmed the flow of blood, and applied a tight bandage.

  ‘And now put my armour back on.’

  ‘Sire, I beg you . . .’ Philip tried to make him see reason.

  ‘Put my armour back on!’

  The men obeyed and Alexander returned to the battlefield where his army, disheartened now, was losing ground to the enemy thrust. This despite the fact that Parmenion had called out another two battalions of the phalanx in support.

  ‘The King is alive!’ shouted Leonnatus in his thunderous voice. ‘The King lives! Alalalài!’

  ‘Alalalài!’ replied the soldiers and they started fighting again with renewed vigour.

  Alexander again took up his position in the front line, despite the fierce pain, and he pulled the rest of the army with him, amazed as they were by his sudden reappearance, as if they were being led not by a human being, but by some invincible and invulnerable god.

  Their opponents were soon overrun and pushed towards the gates of the city. Many of them fell wounded and subsequently died simply because they failed to reach safety on the other side of the walls.

  But while the gates were being closed and the Macedonians shouted their victory cry to the skies, a soldier who had seemed to be dead suddenly threw off the shield that was covering him and thrust his sword deep into Alexander’s left thigh.

  The King ran the man through with his javelin, but he collapsed immediately after this final effort, racked by pain from the wounds he had received.

  For three days and nights he was consumed by a raging fever while his men continued to dig ceaselessly into the depths of the great tumulus on which the city of Gaza rose.

  Barsine came to visit on the fourth day and she stood there looking at him for a long time, moved by the reckless courage which had led the young man to bear so much pain. She saw Leptine weeping sadly in a corner, then she moved over to her and kissed her lightly on the forehead before leaving, silently as she had entered.

  Alexander regained consciousness that evening, but the pain was unbearable. He looked at Philip, who was sitting by the side of the bed, his eyes red with so many sleepless nights and said: ‘Give me something for the pain . . . I cannot bear it. I think I am going mad.’

  The doctor hesitated, then, on seeing the King’s face contracted, almost distorted by the stabbing pains, he realized just how much he was suffering. ‘The drug I am about to administer,’ he said, ‘is a most potent one and as yet I do not know all of its effects, but you cannot bear this pain for long without going out of your mind, so we must take the risk.’

  At that moment they heard the distant noise of the walls of Gaza collapsing, thanks to the pits which had been dug under them, and soon came the shouting of the soldiers engaged in furious combat. The King began mumbling, as though completely out of his mind, ‘I must go to them . . . I must go . . . give me something to calm the pain.’

  Philip disappeared and returned shortly afterwards with a small jar from which he extracted a dark substance with a most intense smell. He took a little of it and handed it to the King, ‘Swallow it,’ he ordered, while only the look in his eyes gave away just how apprehensive he was.

  Alexander swallowed the substance his doctor had ordered and waited, hoping the pain would desist. The noise of the fighting from the walls provoked a strange and growing feeling of excitement, and, gradually, Alexander’s mind began to fill with the ghosts of great warriors from the Homeric epic he had read every evening since adolescence. Suddenly he stood up: the pain was still there, but it had changed now, it was something different and indefinable – a cruel, driving force which filled his breast with a dark, ruthless wrath. The wrath of Achilles.

  He walked from the tent as though in a dream. In his ears he heard the words of his physician begging him, ‘Do not go, Sire, you are not well. Please stay here.’ But these were words that made no sense. He was Achilles now and his duty was to run to the battlefield where his companions were in desperate need of his help.

  ‘Prepare my chariot,’ he ordered, and his adjutants, astounded, obeyed. His gaze was absent and glazed, his voice metallic, almost toneless. He climbed up on to the chariot and the driver whipped the horses, guiding them off towards the walls of Gaza.

  He lived everything that followed as though he were in some sort of nightmare. All he was aware
of was the fact that he was Achilles, driving victorious once, twice, three times around the walls of Troy, dragging behind him in the dust the body of Hector.

  When he came to himself he saw his driver pulling on the reins and bringing the chariot to a halt before the ranks of the assembled army. Behind him, tied to the chariot by means of two straps, he saw a body which had been reduced to a bloody mass. Someone explained to him that it was the body of Batis, the heroic defender of Gaza who had been brought to Alexander as a prisoner.

  He lowered his gaze in horror and left the scene as quickly as he possibly could, moving in the direction of the sea. There the pain returned, and, sharper than ever now, it racked his exhausted limbs. He returned to his tent in the deep of the night, overwhelmed by shame and remorse, and still tormented by the sharp pains in his shoulder, his chest and his legs.

  Barsine heard him moaning in a pain so deep and desperate that she had to go to him. When she arrived, Philip made a gesture telling Leptine to leave them alone.

  She sat on his bed, dried his brow which was shining with sweat and moistened his cracked lips with chilled water. When he embraced her and pulled her to himself in his delirium, she dared not push him away.

  57

  PHILIP WASHED HIS HANDS and began changing the dressings and the bandages on Alexander’s wounds. Five days had passed since the massacre of Batis and the King was still in shock because of his actions.

  ‘I think you were under the influence of the drug I had given you. Perhaps it relieved your pain, but it unleashed in you other forces beyond your control. I had no way of knowing . . . no one could have foreseen it.’

  ‘I attacked and tortured a man who was unable to defend himself, a man who merited respect for his valour and his loyalty. I will be judged for this . . .’

  Eumenes, sitting alongside Ptolemy on a stool on the other side of the bed, stood up and moved nearer. ‘You cannot be judged in the same way as other men,’ he said. ‘You went beyond all limits, you had frightful wounds, you withstood pain that no one else could ever have borne, you were victorious in combat that no one else would ever have dared engage in.’

  You are not like other men,’ continued Ptolemy. ‘You are of the same stamp as Hercules and Achilles. Now you have left the conditions and the rules that govern the life of ordinary mortals behind you. Do not torment yourself, Alexander, for the truth is that if Batis had taken you as his prisoner, he would have inflicted even greater atrocities on you.’

  Philip in the meantime had finished cleaning the wounds and changing the dressings and he gave his patient an infusion to help calm him and soothe the pain. As soon as Alexander had dozed off, Ptolemy sat down near him, while Eumenes followed Philip out of the tent. The physician understood immediately that the secretary had something to tell him in private.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

  ‘We have received bad news,’ replied Eumenes. ‘King Alexander of Epirus has been killed in an ambush in Italy. Queen Cleopatra is beside herself with grief and I do not know whether to give her letter to the King.’

  ‘Have you read it?’

  ‘I would never open a sealed letter addressed to Alexander. But the messenger gave me all the news.’

  Philip thought for a moment before replying. ‘I would say it’s better if we don’t give it to him. Physically and mentally he is in a delicate state. This news would only lower his spirits even further. It’s best if we wait.’

  ‘Until when?’

  ‘I will let you know, if you trust me, that is.’

  ‘I trust you. How is he really?’

  ‘There is and there will continue to be much pain, but he will come out of it. Perhaps you are right, perhaps he is not an ordinary man like the rest of us.’

  And Barsine too suffered much in this period, in the grip of remorse for having betrayed the memory of her husband. She simply could not forgive herself for having succumbed to Alexander, but at the same time she was aware of how much he was suffering and she wanted to be with him. She still had her old wet nurse with her, an elderly woman by the name of Artema who of course knew her well and had noticed how much she had changed recently and how preoccupied she appeared to be.

  She went to her mistress one evening and asked, ‘What is your torment, my girl?’

  Barsine lowered her head in silence and cried silently.

  ‘If you don’t want to tell me, I cannot make you,’ said Artema, but in truth Barsine felt the need to confide in a friend.

  ‘I have succumbed to Alexander, Artema. When he came back from the battle I heard him crying out and groaning, tormented by that immense suffering, and I could not resist. He has been good to me and my sons and I felt duty bound to help him at that moment . . . I went to him and I wiped the sweat from his brow, I caressed him. For me he was simply a young man burning up with fever, racked by nightmares, by images of blood and horror.’ Artema continued to listen, intent and thoughtful. ‘But suddenly he pulled me to himself and embraced me with an irresistible force and I knew not how to refuse him. I don’t know how it happened . . .’ she murmured, her voice quavering. ‘I do not know. His pain-racked body seemed to emanate some mysterious perfume and his feverish gaze had an unbearable intensity.’ She burst into tears.

  ‘Do not cry, my child,’ Artema consoled her. ‘You have done nothing wrong. You are young and the life that is left in you will reclaim all its rights in full. What is more, you are a mother living through a time of war and with your children you have fallen into the hands of foreign enemies. Instinct will lead you to seek a union with the man who has power over everyone and can protect your sons against all dangers.

  ‘This is the destiny of every beautiful, desirable woman – she knows that she is an item of prey and she knows that only by offering love or succumbing to man’s impulses can she hope for salvation and protection for herself and for her offspring.’ Barsine continued to cry, covering her face with her hands. ‘But Alexander truly is a most handsome young man who has always shown great kindness of spirit and respect in your regard, who has shown that he deserves your love. You are suffering now because there are two deep and terrible sentiments living within you at one and the same time – the love for a man who no longer exists, a love which has no reason to survive but which refuses to die nevertheless, and the unconscious love for a man whom you reject, because he is an enemy and in some way caused the death of the husband you loved. You have done nothing wrong. When a feeling grows within you, don’t repress it, because there is nothing which happens in the hearts of mankind which does not come from the will of Ahura Mazda, the eternal flame, origin of every celestial and terrestrial fire. But remember, Alexander is not like other men. He is like the wind that passes and disappears. And no one can imprison the wind. If you know that you cannot bear separation, then do not succumb to love.’

  Barsine dried her eyes and went out into the open air. It was a fine moonlit night, and the rays of the white disc drew a long wake of silver over the still waters. Not far off was the King’s pavilion and the flames of the lamps projected his solitary, troubled shadow on the wall. She walked seawards until the water reached her knees and suddenly she thought she smelled his fragrance and heard his voice whispering, ‘Barsine.’

  It was not possible, and yet he was there behind her, close enough for her to feel his breath.

  ‘I had a dream, I don’t remember when,’ he said quietly, ‘and the dream was that you gave your love to me, that I caressed you all over your body, that I took you gently. But when I awoke I found only this in my bed.’ And for a moment he held up a handkerchief of blue byssus before letting it fall and be swallowed up by the waves. ‘Is it yours?’

  ‘It was not a dream,’ replied Barsine without turning round. ‘I came to you because I heard you crying out in your suffering and I sat next to your bed. You embraced me with such strength that I knew not how to reject you.’

  Alexander put his hands on her hips and turned her round to face him. The
moonlight bathed her face in an ivory pallor and it shone in the depths of her dark gaze.

  ‘Now you may do so, Barsine. Now you may reject me while I ask you to take me into your arms. In a matter of a few months I have suffered and inflicted all sorts of wounds, I have lost all thoughts of my youth, I have touched the bottom of every abyss, I have forgotten that I ever was a child, that I ever had a father, a mother. The fire of war has scorched my heart and I live every instant seeing death riding by my side, yet death never manages to strike me. It is in those instants that I know what it means to be immortal and this fills me with amazement and with fear. Do not reject me, Barsine, now that my hands can finally caress your face, do not deny me your love, your embrace.’

  His body was as scarred as a battlefield – there was no part of his skin that was free of scratches, scars, or grazes. Only his face was wonderfully intact, and his long hair fell softly around his shoulders, framing his countenance with an intense and poignant grace.

  ‘Love me, Barsine,’ he said, pulling her to himself, holding her to his chest.

  The moon disappeared behind the clouds as they advanced from the west and he kissed her with passion. Barsine responded to that kiss as though she had suddenly been enveloped in the flames of a fire, but at that very same moment in the depths of her heart she felt the vicelike grip of a dark despair.

  *

  The army set off again on its march towards the desert, just as soon as the King was well enough to travel. After seven days they came to the city of Pelusium, gateway to Egypt, on the eastern side of the Nile delta. The Persian governor, aware that he was completely isolated, surrendered and handed over the city together with the royal treasure.

  ‘Egypt!’ exclaimed Perdiccas as he looked over the seemingly endless landscape from the towers of the fortress – the slow waters of the rivers, the waving heads of the papyruses along the banks of the canals, the palms loaded with dates as big as walnuts.