by Judith Tarr
The women were not here, they said. That was another tent behind this one. They offered, with much grinning and nudging, to guide the seekers to it.
Thaïs withered them with a glance, and went where they were pointing. That was out of the great tent across a courtyard walled in silk.
No one lingered there. There were guards on the door, men who did not take their duty as lightly as their fellows seemed to. It might have been distaste, or it might have been the presence of another guard in Persian dress. A giant, a Nubian; and by virtue of his presence here, and his beardless face, a eunuch.
“We have come,” Thaïs said in her clear uncompromising voice, “to speak with the royal ladies.”
“The king said no visitors,” said one of the Macedonian guards.
“The king wanted no men here.” Thaïs’ impatience was audible. “Come now, you know me. Would I rape or despoil a king’s daughter? Even a Persian?”
The guard wavered. No one offered to back him. He shrugged. “All right. But if there’s trouble, I’ll say you were the start of it.”
“So you should,” said Thaïs. “Come, Mariamne.”
o0o
Here still, unlike the Great King’s tent, was Persia unsullied. No Macedonian faces here; no male at all who was not a eunuch. The silence lay heavy, punctuated at intervals by a smothered sound: a woman’s weeping, a child’s cry. The scent of mingled perfumes was overpowering, a thick, trapped scent with no strength in it to mask the stink of fear. The air did not move here, the light did not change. Always the same air, the same lamplit half-gloom, the same endless, monotonous sameness.
“Even a bird in the cage can see the sky,” said Meriamon.
Thaïs made a sound. It might have been laughter. “It’s a richer prison than Athenian wives and daughters know. These walls are silk, and the floor has carpets, whole kingdoms’ worth. And they can travel with their man, though they travel in curtained wagons.”
“If a prison moves, is it any less a prison?”
“Philosophy,” said Thaïs, not quite mockingly, as a eunuch approached them.
He was old, thin-limbed but heavy-bellied, in a coat so rich it seemed to parody itself: deep crimson silk crusted with embroidery. He made Meriamon think of the baboon in Thoth’s temple, irascible and holy, with his too-long arms and his withered face. He bowed to them, a bow carefully calculated, neither low enough to grant them sovereignty nor slight enough to offer insult. His greeting was faultless, and expressed in court Persian.
Meriamon did not speak it well, but she understood its meaning. Too well. Conquerors these interlopers might be, but they would speak the language of Cyrus and Cambyses, or not speak at all.
She inclined her head a meticulous degree. “We return your sentiments, 0 prince of servants. This lady who accompanies me is a friend of the king. Will the great royal lady deign to grant her audience?”
His lip curled the merest degree: at her accent, no doubt, as much as at her presumption. But he was a courtier. His face changed no line of-its expression. “Is such a choice granted a prisoner?”
“A queen may always choose,” said Meriamon.
“I will ask,” said the eunuch. And went away.
Meriamon sat on a couch, finding it too soft, but better than nothing at all. Thaïs stayed where she was, standing by the opening in the inner wall. “What did he say?”
“He’s going to ask the queen if she will speak with you.” Meriamon sat back. Sekhmet left her shoulder and walked along the back of the couch, prowling, relaxed but wary. Once she sneezed. Meriamon smiled. Sekhmet did not like Persian perfumes, either.
“He was rude,” said Thaïs, “to speak Persian.”
“So he was,” Meriamon said. “And ruder yet to leave so abruptly, without a word of thanks or parting. He’s not happy at all to be where he is now.”
“He should be.” Thaïs left the door and sat beside Meriamon. After a moment she tucked up her feet and reclined against the long curving arm. “In any war that ever was, a conquering king would have taken his enemy’s women for his own. Alexander hasn’t come here at all.”
“Yet.”
“When he comes,” said Thais, “that’s not what he’ll come for.”
“So,” said Meriamon. “He’s Greek clear through.”
Thaïs let fall her veil, baring her face. “Greek enough, that’s true. But he’s Alexander. He won’t ever take a lover by force. He likes his pleasure willing, and he likes to have love if he can get it.”
“I can hardly see him wooing a Persian princess,” said Meriamon.
“I can,” said Thaïs. “He’d like the challenge.”
“Not that she’d be worth it once he won her,” said Meriamon. “Cage-birds seldom learn to fly.”
“One with spirit, maybe,” said Thaïs. “One who wants to be free.”
“Spirit goes sour fast in a harem. It goes to wine or it goes to fat, or it takes to poisoning people.”
“In Egypt, too?” asked Thaïs.
“Not in Egypt,” said Meriamon, but softly. Sekhmet returned from her quartering of the room and curled in Meriamon’s lap. She stroked the sleek fur, taking comfort from it. “Not... for a very long time.”
Thaïs’ eyes begged to differ, but she held her peace. She was like a cat herself, relaxed and supple, but ready to leap at a word.
They were not kept waiting long. Neither were they brought the cups of wine and the sweets that would have been proper.
The eunuch who came for them was another than the one who had taken their message, younger though still no youth, who looked as if he might have been beautiful once. His eyes were lovely still, great frightened doe-eyes, taking in the Greek woman and the Egyptian in Persian dress without seeming to comprehend them.
His voice was strong and piercing sweet as eunuchs’ voices sometimes were. Meriamon wondered if he was a singer. “You will come with me, please,” he said.
They followed him in silence. Sekhmet walked in Meriamon’s shadow, quiet as a shadow herself, all but invisible.
The inner rooms were full of women. Meriamon could hear them through the walls like birds in an aviary, fluttering, murmuring, and once a sharp cry, abruptly cut off.
The room to which the eunuch took them seemed to be the centermost. A slender central pillar held up the roof, and its furnishings were like those in the king’s tent, improbably, almost garishly rich. There were a handful of eunuchs huddled together as if for warmth, three or four veiled women who sat by the wall and did not speak, and in the center, the back of her chair set against the pole, a woman. Another stood beside and a little behind her.
Neither was veiled. The one who stood was young, though not perhaps in Persian reckoning, and her face was pure Persian, beauty as flawless as a carving in ivory.
The other was old. Her bones were magnificent; she would have been a great beauty in her day. She was still handsome, with her haughty eagle’s face and her deep eyes. She was still straight, and still, even sitting, imperially tall.
Darius the king was a giant among his people. It was clear to see where he had come by his height, if never his cowardice. Sisygambis his mother, Queen Mother of Persia, sat on what could only be a throne, and spoke a greeting in a clear strong voice. The woman behind her rendered it in Greek, speaking it well and with very little accent.
Thaïs inclined her head as if she herself had been a queen. “I greet you in return, great lady. And you, Barsine. How is it that they left you here, and not in Damascus with the rest of the noblewomen?”
The Queen Mother understood. Meriamon could see it in her eyes. Barsine glanced at her, gained a flicker of permission. “I chose to stay,” she said.
“You know that your father is fled with the king,” said Thaïs. Calm, level. Not cruel. Not precisely.
“I know it,” Barsine said.
“Barsine,” said Thaïs to Meriamon, “is a satrap’s daughter. Her father was a friend of Alexander in his childhood, and a friend of
Greeks lifelong. Her first husband was a Greek. When he died she married his brother. That one died last year in the siege of Mytilene; and she went back to her father, and now she is here. She should have gone with the rest to Damascus.”
“Alexander would simply have found me there,” Barsine said. Her calm was a splendid thing.
The Queen Mother spoke in Persian and Barsine in Greek. “What does an Egyptian do in the following of the Macedonian king? Does she know that the satrap of her province is dead?”
“Is he, then?” asked Meriamon in Greek for Thaïs’ sake. “No doubt his women will mourn him.”
“You do not answer my question,” Sisygambis said.
Direct, she, for a Persian. “Egypt is no province of mine or any other,” said Meriamon. “I came here to serve Alexander.”
“Why?”
“My father was Nekhtharhab, Nectanebo of Egypt,” Meriamon said.
The Queen Mother’s eyes hooded. Meriamon thought of cobras. And yet there was no enmity there. Necessity only, and indissoluble division. “Ah,” said Sisygambis. There was a world of understanding in the syllable.
Meriamon almost smiled. “The rebel, yes. He died for it. But I live. I speak for him.”
“That is your duty,” said Sisygambis.
Sekhmet flowed out of Meriamon’s shadow, approaching the Queen Mother. Sisygambis regarded her without surprise but with considerable interest. “That is a sacred cat?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Meriamon.
Sekhmet considered the height of the silk-swathed knees and sprang. Sisygambis did not move. The cat preened against her, purring. Scent-marking her; seducing her.
She was proof against anything a human creature could send against her. But Sekhmet was the image of a goddess. Sisygambis yielded warily, touching a finger to the back that arched against her breast. Sekhmet slid under her hand, butting it with a hard round head.
Meriamon released a slow breath. One never knew with Sekhmet. “Be wary,” she said. “Be respectful. Her claws are sharp.”
“So they would be,” said Sisygambis. She did not retreat. How unlike her son; how immeasurably more kingly.
A eunuch brought chairs at last, little silver cups filled with sweet wine, a box of appallingly sweet Persian confections. Thaïs was amused: her eyes glinted as they met Meriamon’s. “Your cat is an excellent ambassador,” she said.
“She is not my cat.” As if to contradict her, Sekhmet abandoned the Queen Mother for Meriamon’s lap and a pose of watchful interest, erect like an image in a temple.
Meriamon smoothed the elegant gold-brown ear where it was pierced for a ring. That was left behind in Amon’s temple, so much the less temptation for bandits on the road.
She eyed the cup of wine that had been given her, steeled herself to drink it. A flurry made her pause. A eunuch ran in, green with terror, and flung himself on his face before the Queen Mother. “Lady,” he gasped. “Oh, lady, they have come, they are here, they want—they say—”
Sisygambis regarded the messenger with massive calm. “‘They’?” she inquired.
“The enemy!” the eunuch cried. Then he seemed to master himself. “Great lady, the king, the Hellenes’ king.”
Sisygambis drew even more rigidly erect. “The king himself? He is here?”
“Yes, great lady. And—Ahuramazda protect us, Immortals defend us—he asks to speak with you.”
“To speak with me?” She seemed to be thinking aloud. “But we are his. He won us. He can do whatever he pleases.”
“He is a barbarian,” said the eunuch.
“He is king.” Sisygambis’ voice was cold. “Tell him that he may speak with us.”
The eunuch picked himself up and fled. Sisygambis sat still. Her long hands flexed on the arms of her chair, clenching, unclenching. Her voice was calm. Dismissing her daughters and their women to the sanctuary of seclusion, leaving herself and her companion and the eldest of the eunuchs. Deliberately, steadily, she drew her veil over her face. After a moment Barsine followed suit.
o0o
They could follow the king’s coming in the sounds of the tent: sudden stirring, sudden stillness. Thaïs sat at her ease, not quite smiling. Meriamon was enjoying the moment much too much. To see the Queen Mother of Persia afraid and mastering her fear—that was sweet.
There were two of them who walked in behind the eunuch, side by side and easy with one another, even in this alien place. Hephaistion was a little ahead, on guard, scanning the room with wary eyes. Alexander was half-lost in his shadow. Walking so, he seemed smaller and much slighter than he was, a bareheaded boy in a simple chiton, keeping no ceremony.
Sisygambis rose. She was tall indeed, a fair handsbreadth taller than Hephaistion. As he paused, hand dropping to swordhilt, she went down in the prostration.
He stared, blank with astonishment. Then he flushed. “Lady,” he said. “Lady, I’m not the king.”
Barsine’s voice echoed his, trembling a little itself, but clear, rendering the Persian of his Greek.
The Queen Mother rose. Her face was as calm as ever, but her lips were white. She saw Alexander then, starting slightly, then fixing on him. She began again to sink down.
He caught her. “No, mother. You don’t have to do that to me.”
“You are the king,” she said, Barsine’s voice her echo, a bare half-breath behind. “My error—your pardon—whatever penalty your majesty will exact—”
“That’s all right, mother,” he said lightly, helping her back to her chair. “He’s Alexander, too.”
She clutched his arm as if without it she would fall, and looked hard into his face. He gazed back, as intent as she.
Her eyes dropped first. She let go his arm. The marks of her fingers were scarlet on the fair skin; there would be bruises later. He did not seem to notice. Slowly Sisygambis lowered her veil.
Maybe Alexander understood what she was doing. He looked about for a chair, found one, pulled it up beside her. The eunuchs gasped. Not that he should dare, but that he should do it so completely without ceremony. He took Sisygambis’ hand, direct as if no one stood between them, no mind but his and hers, no wall of speech or understanding.
“There, mother. I’m afraid I’ve cost you no little anxiety, leaving you alone like this for so long. I’m sorry for that. I had too much to do, it got a bit ahead of me. Will you pardon me for it?”
“I do not think,” said Sisygambis, “that anything gets ahead of you.”
He smiled his sudden smile. Her eyes flickered, dazzled. “Oh, you’d be surprised. I do want you to know that you’ll all be safe here; and the other ladies, too, when we catch up with them.”
Again she studied his face. Not as if she doubted him. As if she needed to assure herself that he was real; that she had not dreamed him. “Why do you do this?” she asked.
He shrugged, boylike, tilting his head at that angle which was his and no one else’s. “I don’t make war on women.”
“Then,” she said with bitterness that was shocking, coming out of so calm a face, “you will not be fighting any longer against my son.”
He did not seem surprised. “There are men in his army,” he said. “They deserve a chance at honor.”
“Perhaps,” said Sisygambis.
He patted her hand where it lay in his. “I have to go, unfortunately. But I’ll come back, if you’ll receive me.”
“I will always receive you,” she said.
“Good!” said Alexander with every evidence of delight. “I hope you’ll be more at ease now. You’re in no danger as long as I have you in my keeping.”
“I am no longer afraid,” said Sisygambis, “now that I know what you are.”
Alexander rose, laying her hand in her lap as gently as if it had been a new-hatched bird. “Good day, mother. May the gods protect you.”
“May Ahuramazda and the good gods defend you,” said Sisygambis, “my lord king.”
Four
“That,” said Thaïs, “wa
s pure theater.”
Meriamon was dizzy with her lungs full of clean air after the scented closeness of the harem, and silly with the freedom of sky over her head and clean earth under her feet.
Sekhmet nipped her ear, bringing her back somewhat to herself. She glanced at Thaïs. “The king meant every word he said.”
“Of course he did.” Thaïs stepped round a soldier who had had a little more wine than was good for him. He grabbed for Meriamon, got Sekhmet’s lightning-swift rake of claws for his pains. “That doesn’t mean he didn’t know what it looked like. Or the old queen, either. Isn’t she impressive? She should have been king. Then we wouldn’t be here, celebrating a victory.”
“I for one am glad that she is a woman.”
Thaïs laughed. “I could tell, even when you were being civil. Was it so bad in Egypt?”
“Yes.” Meriamon wrapped herself tighter in her mantle. She did not want to speak of it, to be compelled to remember. “I should go back to the hospital. There are things I left undone.”
“Not yet,” said Thaïs. “They’ve put you with Philippos’ boys, haven’t they?”
“Yes.”
“Not any longer. I’ve a bigger tent than I need now: Ptolemy gave me a present after the battle. It even has rooms, like the Great King’s. You’ll be quite comfortable in one.”
“But—” said Meriamon.
“You also need clothes. And a place to keep them. Philippos should have you on the rolls and drawing rations; if not, you’d best speak to him. We all earn our way here, and draw our pay for it.”
Slow heat crawled up Meriamon’s cheeks. Mercifully Thaïs was not looking at her.
“I’ll show you where my tent is,” said Thaïs. “Phylinna is my maid, she’ll look after you, too; she won’t mind. She’s always complaining that I don’t give her enough to do.”
There was no stopping her once she had set her mind on a thing. Meriamon found herself in a tent that was large enough for a tradesman’s house in Thebes, divided into rooms: one in front, one in the middle, three small ones in the back. The furnishings must have belonged to a minor lord. There was even a chest full of clothing, plain stuff but beautifully made.
