The Ravens of Falkenau & Other Stories

by Jo Graham

  "Don't you need to get going?" she asked. "Mother's going to take me to the staging point at the gymnasium before she goes to the reviewing stand, but don't you need to go to the palace first so that you can do whatever you're doing?"

  "I do," I said. Of course I did, but I might savor another moment more with her. On a morning like this it seemed that the years had passed so swiftly. They were passing still. In a few short years she'd be married and here no more.

  "The boys have already left," she said. Her older brothers both had places in the parade, Isidoros with his regiment and Hephaistion with the ephebes of the city. "You're going to be late."

  "You are as bad as Bagoas," I said, getting to my feet. "Hurry, hurry, hurry. I'll hurry to the palace and stand around a century waiting for your grandfather when I might have breakfast in comfort here."

  Her eyes were grave. "Does he really mean to do it then?"

  "What better time?" I asked lightly, but I also wondered. Could it be done? I knew what Ptolemy contemplated was no mere ceremony. I, of all people, knew that.

  Demetria said nothing. She got to her feet and leaned up to kiss my cheek. "Good luck then," she said. "I'll see you in the parade. Well, I probably won't see you, because I can't actually lift my head wearing the city, but you'll see me!"

  "I'll see you," I said. "You'll be perfect."

  My litter was ready with my arms inside. They were too heavy to wear all day comfortably if I didn't have to, and for once I didn't have to. I would put them on when the time came. The bearers set off at a comfortable pace, and I opened the curtains to watch the sun rise over Alexandria.

  The Canopic Way was cordoned off because of the parade, though thousands of people on foot hurried along with sun shades and baskets to stake out a choice spot to watch. The street cleaners had been out, and the streets steamed from the water burning off in the first sun, cleaned in the night by their pumps so that the stones shone white in the dawn. Every façade, every building shone. The turquoise and gold of the House of Ptolemy hung from public buildings and private houses alike, but no bunting crossed the street. The floats were too big. They would foul in the banners if any across the street were allowed.

  I had to go by back streets. Even they were crowded. As we neared the palace we came close to where the regiments were to assemble, lined up in procession order. Hoplites stood about, sarissas in hand, gabbing and eating pockets of dough filled with fruit that an enterprising vendor was carrying about in a tray around her neck. They parted to let me through.

  Getting through the guardpost took a moment, mainly because the Indian envoys from Bindusara were ahead of me in half a dozen litters, the nearest occupied by a nobleman in scarlet silks and his companion whose bald head and saffron robes proclaimed him a priest. I leaned out to call my greetings in their own tongue, and the priest replied in good Greek. "Good morning to you as well, General Lydias. A very auspicious day!"

  "The gods grant it may be so," I replied before our bearers parted us. They were going to the reviewing stands for ambassadors, and I to Ptolemy.

  It was no longer easy to enter the palace. Thirty five years had passed since I had first come here, thirty five years since Alexandria rose from stakes and string. Then it had been a sad excuse for a palace, a great bleak building with little to recommend it. Now it was a palace in truth. There was a warren of fine colonnades opening on inner and outer courtyards, gardens and seaward vistas, promenades lined with fig trees and fountains with statues of deities Greek and Egyptian alike. Isis stood beneath a pair of groomed apricot trees, a sistrum in her hand, while at her feet amid carven shells a great galley rose with a sterncastle like a cornucopia, Isis Pelagia, Queen of the Seas.

  "Lydias!" Ptolemy said, coming across the colonnade, two attendants at his back.

  "My lord." I bent my head.

  He wore a turquoise chiton bordered in gold, but his movements were stiff and slow, deliberate rather than decisive as they once had been. How not? The man was nearly eighty-two.

  I straightened up. "You truly mean to do this?" I asked.

  "I do."

  "It is not too late to simply honor the King," I said.

  Ptolemy put one crabbed hand on my arm. "All very well for you to say," he said. "A strapping young man of sixty four! But no. I am certain." His eyes met mine, dark and keen as ever. "Don't you think I've earned some peace and quiet at my age?"

  "Of course," I said. I glanced at his two attendants who stepped back out of earshot respectfully, as though I were a man to be feared. "But it's never been done, Manetho says. It's never been done, to call Horus Indwelling out of a living Pharaoh and invite him into the body of his son. It's supposed to be done with your body when life has left it. What will happen if we try to do this while you live…"

  "I've had eight decades and more," Ptolemy said. "More than enough for any man. And you know as well as I that the work of the state has become too much for me. Would you have me linger on into my dotage, making chaos of the work of my life in senility? Philadelphos is a man grown, a man of full years and trained to be king, not a child heir or an unworthy son. It's time for him to be Pharaoh. It's time for me to put it down and let him take it up."

  I shook my head. "I know that well enough," I said. "But for any man to take off the crown… How does one even do it?"

  He smiled at me. "The same way he took it up. All improvisation." He lifted his hand from my arm. "Come, my friend. Manetho and Bagoas are waiting."

  I raised an eyebrow. "Has not Bagoas enough to do with the procession and banquet?"

  "He does." Ptolemy looked amused. "He's been driving us all for days. But Manetho thought that if this were to work it would be best if the same companions stood with me as at the original ceremony all those years ago. And that would be you and Bagoas."

  We did not go to a tomb, but rather to an inner chamber. Ptolemy was not a dead man. Instead, it was his office, the clutter and work put carefully away to make room for us — Ptolemy and I, Manetho and his two assistants, and as I washed my hands and face, Bagoas entered with Philadelphos. He caught my eye over the prince's head.

  Philadelphos looked nervous, as well he might. He was a plain young man, brown haired and clean shaven, with a slight tendency toward pudginess inherited from his mother, Berenice. Later in life he might run to fat, but at present he looked ordinary and cheerful, like any young advocate or teacher. Well, any who in an hour might be Pharaoh of Egypt.

  "Ready?" Ptolemy asked warmly.

  "As much as ever," Philadelphos said. His brows knit. "I suppose I would be no more ready if you were really dead. But then the enormity would be eclipsed by grief. To invite a god into one's self, to share one's body…"

  Ptolemy patted his arm, veins standing out in the back of his hands. "Horus isn't such a bad guest," he said. "And I should know, having shared with him for thirty four years. You'll get along. You're not too young."

  Young to us, I thought. But we had been a decade younger when we conquered the world.

  "No, Father," Philadelphos said dutifully with a doubtful expression that looked exactly like Demetria. He was, after all, her mother's half brother.

  Ptolemy smiled. "I'll have a few years yet, I hope. Time to raise cats and write my memoirs. That's worth doing, I think."

  "May we begin?" Bagoas asked sharply. "There is still the procession and the banquet." And the other ceremony besides. No wonder Bagoas seemed a bit on edge.

  Ptolemy took no offense. He had had decades of being ordered about by his chamberlain. "Let us," he said mildly.

  The door opened to admit the two friends of Philadelphos who would stand as his companions, his trusted friends his own age who might walk through life with him if the gods allowed it, and the last priest who carried the ebony box containing the funerary tools.

  Manetho looked around, and I settled into position at Ptolemy's right side, just as I had stood in the tomb at Saqqara all those years ago. Manetho looked little different, save spare
r than ever. "We begin," he said.

  In those days I had not understood the words. I had not spoken enough Egyptian to follow the phrases of the rites, and I knew little of their customs. Now I understood enough. These were the rites usually performed at a funeral, seventy days after death, to honor the departed and to release their ka to Amenti. They were abbreviated, of course. There was no need to reanimate each sense, sight and hearing and scent. Ptolemy had all his senses. There was no need to open his mouth or give him the breath of life. Ptolemy breathed still. He stood unmoving in his embroidered chiton, grave and solemn, a curious peace about his face. I wondered if he spoke with Horus within. I wondered what he said.

  Manetho's voice quickened. "Come forth!" he said. "Come forth, son of Isis! Come forth from the king who has been your host, from he who is now Osiris! Come forth, and dwell within this prince, this man prepared!"

  Ptolemy let out a long breath, his eyes closing as though in concentration.

  To the other side of him I saw Bagoas stiffen, his fine face going taut.

  "Now," Manetho said quietly. "Sem-priest."

  With the expression of a man about to plunge into water he knows is cold, Philadelphos reached into the open box and took out a dagger of meteoric iron, the same one that we had used so long ago to open the mouth of Alexander. He lifted it out carefully and his eyes met his father's.

  "Go on," Ptolemy said evenly.

  Philadelphos swallowed, and then lifted the blade so that the very tip touched his father's lips.

  There was no sound, and yet it felt like a breath of wind through the room, as though every lamp guttered in a sudden gust. Philadelphos' eyes closed and he swayed as though the wind pushed at him.

  And then all was still.

  Manetho lifted his voice. "All hail Horus, Lord of the Two Lands! All hail Ptolemy Philadelphos, the Great House of Egypt!"

  Philadelphos' eyes opened and he blinked, as ordinary and unassuming as before, himself and still himself. One of his friends let out an exhalation, but he did not know as I did how little it changed a man. And how much, though in ways that could not be seen.

  Carefully, he laid the dagger back in the box and then raised his eyes. "I am Pharaoh," he said.

  "You are, my son," Ptolemy said. He looked shrunken somehow, though he had not moved. Scarcely a quarter hour had passed, and yet without Horus indwelling he seemed smaller, frailer, as though that mighty power had held him up.

  Philadelphos nodded. "Right. Then. Pharaoh." He had been bred for this moment, and yet it settled onto his shoulders like a heavy shield.

  "Your coronation?" Bagoas prompted.

  "My coronation." Philadelphos squared his shoulders. "Let's do this."

  "As you wish, my Pharaoh," Ptolemy said.

  The reviewing stand had sixty couches and a canopy of pure white linen overhead to keep off the sun. My couch was in the second row, as befitted a veteran of Alexander's army, a retired general of my years who happened to also be Ptolemy's son in law.

  Chloe was there ahead of me, reclining on her elbow, her hair elaborately pinned up with pins in the shape of butterflies. She looked up pensively as I came down the steps. "How is he?" she asked, and I knew she didn't mean Philadelphos.

  "He seems fine," I said, sitting at her knees. "He's not dead, if that's what you mean."

  "I was afraid he would be," she said. "Only my father would have his own funeral while he's still alive!"

  "He said he didn’t want to miss the party," I said. I took her hand and squeezed it. "Really, he's well."

  "And Philadelphos?" she asked. They were not terribly close, Chloe and this half brother young enough almost to be her son.

  "He feels the weight of it." I looked out at the parade route, where the first troops were passing the review stand, horse archers in turquoise silk on prancing horses, musicians following them with trumpets and drums. Chloe and I could not have been heard at the next couch over that din. "But he will come to terms with it. He's as prepared as any man may be."

  "I hope so," Chloe said, and then speech became impossible as the musicians drew near.

  Behind them came the first cohort of the Elephant Corps, fine in their embroidered caparisons, and the crowds gave them a cheer. Elephants always make a fine show.

  The first of the floats followed, Alexander and Ptolemy three times life size, gilded statues enthroned side by side, the founders of the dynasty. Alexander wore ram's horns on his head, and Ptolemy held a cornucopia on his lap like Serapis, pouring out grain.

  Once, I thought, far away in a green land on the other side of the sea, there were two brothers born to a mountain chief, one on the right side of the blanket and one on the wrong. And now they sit enthroned as Egyptian gods.

  Behind them maidens dressed in white emptied baskets of sweet cakes, tossing them into the crowd adorned with ribbons. Children scrambled to catch them, riches from the wealth of the Ptolemies.

  Lest the generative message be missed, the next float was a giant phallus the height of third floor windows, painted gold and tied about with scarlet ribbons.

  Chloe's eyebrows rose. "Really?"

  I leaned close so that no one would overhear. "No one has a bigger one than the Ptolemies?"

  "There she is!" Chloe sat up and pointed. Behind the marching hoplites that followed the giant phallus marched the Cities of Asia. Demetria was in the first row, stepping along with a look of concentration probably occasioned by her unwieldy hat. We shouted and cheered for her as any parents would, though of course she could not pick us out in the crowd, but I saw her tip her head as she passed the reviewing stand, smiling upwards as though the sun rested in her face.

  And then she was past, down the street toward the temples.

  "There's Hephaistion," I said. The ephebes had come around the corner on horseback. He was riding smartly, with less hemming and hawing and more staying neatly in line than most of the boys. A better rider, I thought, my heart filling with pride.

  A page came up beside me. "General Lydias? Pharaoh… er… I mean, Ptolemy, would like to see you."

  "Of course," I said, and got up leaving Chloe to cheer for Hephaistion.

  Philadelphos sat on the throne, the double crown of red land and black on his head, his face a study in concentration. Ptolemy had the first couch to the right, the place of honor, and a page swept a fan to keep the flies away. "Come sit with me a moment," he said, and I did, aware of the honor. "What do you think of our parade?"

  "It's splendid, of course," I said.

  "And overdue," he said. "Long overdue." He squinted down the street and I saw what he saw, a sight once altogether too familiar.

  Alexander's hearse rolled along for the last time. Pulled by forty oxen, it lumbered along, splendid as it had been the first time I saw it on the road from Lebanon, gilded victories at the corners lifting their wreaths to the sky. Splendid and beautiful, but it seemed antique somehow, a little off, as though it belonged to another era from the beauties that surrounded it. As we were.

  "The final journey," I said.

  Ptolemy nodded, and I saw him swallow the lump in his throat. "He was disembarked in the harbor before dawn," Ptolemy said. "The last stage of the road from Memphis. And now to his tomb in his city."

  I had seen it, of course, many times in the last years, many times in the decade it had been building. It was a tomb to rival the famed Mausoleum in Halicarnassus, a confection of marble grander by far than the tombs of the Persian kings, than the tomb of Cyrus at Pasargadae, a tomb to fit Egyptian ideas of the grandeur due to dead kings but made as Greeks preferred, the perfect marriage of styles and splendors, as though the best of the lands Alexander had ruled were all laid at his feet.

  Ptolemy smiled. "God, how you hated that funeral wagon!"

  I laughed. "I did. It maneuvers like a barge!"

  "Some other man's job today," Ptolemy said.

  "Thank the gods."

  It came closer and I came to my feet as one should in the
presence of one's general. Within it, Alexander lay still as he would lie for all time in the city that bore his name. At my side Ptolemy came to his feet too, and a silence swept over the crowd. Here and there within it gray heads bent.

  "Most of these children never knew him," Ptolemy said, his eyes bright.

  "No, sir," I said. I had not either, not really. Perhaps he had spoken to me half a dozen times, half a dozen anecdotes told and retold. Yet I had marched with Alexander.

  We stood, and the hearse passed.

  "We have been in such a story," I said.

  Ptolemy looked at me sideways. "Tell it, my friend," he said. "I mean to."

  I shook my head. "I have no words," I said. "I am not a learned man, and I cannot write this as it was."

  "Perhaps in time you will find the words," Ptolemy said, and clasped my arm. "Find the words and tell the story."

  The trumpeters played a fanfare. The hearse passed on toward the Soma. Another regiment of hoplites followed, eyes front. The elephants came on, the second cohort leading a float made in the shape of a great ship, Isis on her prow. I stood with Ptolemy under the endless azure sky.

  Paradise

  641 AD

  In a way, this is a Hand of Isis story too — about our main character's return to Alexandria many years later, only to find Dion still keeping the flame alight.

  We watched them leave the harbor as agreed, ship upon ship of them. The siege was over, and if they wished they could go under safe conduct. For one more day they could go. Whatever was left after that was ours.

  In the dawn light we rode into empty streets. Those who were left, the poor, the helpless — they stayed, cowered in cellars and prayed. I rode through empty streets, my horse restive, tossing her head and setting all her bells singing. I rode through white streets wider than buildings, past markets with their shutters nailed closed, past deserted houses, past strange temples with pointed monuments ten times the height of a man, past their churches. I followed my lord 'Amr ibn al-As through the city.