Storms over Babylon

by Jennifer Macaire

  The Persian soldiers were thrilled; this was what they had been fighting for during the past ten years. The Greeks and the Macedonians were shocked. They had independent cities ruled by governors, and their king was a head of state, a figurehead in name only, like Alexander’s father Philip had been. They were suddenly frightened that their independence was threatened.

  The Egyptians said very little. They believed that Alexander was truly the son of Amon, and so they were content to wait and see what Alexander wanted. Meanwhile they prostrated themselves with the same fervour as the Persians, which shocked and angered the Greeks.

  Strains and tensions started partitioning the army. A real schism was starting. Alexander was helpless to stop this. He had to hold so many different peoples together – it was the eternal story of trying to please everyone and pleasing no one. However, this deep split would divide his kingdom in half. We didn’t feel it so much in Bampur; the differences were just beginning and things weren’t so bad yet. The army was on its way home, and the only complaints came from the Greeks. Since they’d been griping for ten years, no one paid them any attention.

  We travelled to the coast to meet Nearchus. Alexander had replenished his food and water stores, the army had recuperated well, Plexis said the horses were fit to move on, so on we went.

  We were marching at the head of the army now, Alexander and I, leading Chiron on the back of my mare Lenaia, who had survived the terrible desert. The sun was setting but we didn’t want to stop.

  We could see the sea, a bright gold flash between black hills. We wanted to see how many of the ships had survived. After losing so many men, Alexander was terrified about his navy. To him the sea voyage must have been even worse, with no supplies or fresh water. We picked up the pace. Alexander was muttering to himself, a sure sign he was nervous. Suddenly a man stood up. He had been sitting on a rock, watching us as we drew nearer.

  ‘Greetings, my good man,’ said Alexander, friendly as usual. ‘Is it far to the harbour from here? Would you know of a good place for my men to rest?’

  ‘Do you not know me?’ The voice was familiar, the figure, gaunt and dressed in tatters, was not.

  Alexander stopped as if he’d been shot. His breath whistled out of his throat and his eyes suddenly filled with tears. ‘Nearchus!’ he cried, and threw himself into the man’s arms.

  ‘Nearchus?’ I gasped. The admiral was long-haired, he had a beard, and his skin was burnt and peeling. I clapped my hands over my mouth, horrified.

  The two men clasped each other’s arms, tears sparkling on their faces. In the rays of the setting sun they were like black Chinese cut-outs capering in the middle of the dusty road, the golden sea glittering brightly behind them.

  Alexander stopped and took Nearchus’s face in his hands. ‘What happened?’ he asked, fear making his voice tremble. ‘Has the navy been destroyed? How did you live? By the gods, Nearchus, I’m so glad to see you,’ he broke off with a sob and kissed his friend hard on the mouth.

  Nearchus shook his head; he was nearly laughing now. ‘No, not at all, I’m fine. The voyage was difficult, to be sure, but the fleet is intact. We lost no boats and we lost but two men. Everyone is here. We are ready to sail. Come to the bay, you shall see.’

  We fêted the navy for another week. The men had accomplished an amazing feat of exploration. Nearchus had managed to find fresh water and enough food to keep everyone alive. He told stories of great fish as long as the biggest boats and of colourful snakes that swam around the boats and terrorized the sailors. He claimed to have seen the sirens that were like woman with tails and the strange, dark seals that swim in the Arabian Sea.

  ‘Did you really see a mermaid?’ I asked Nearchus.

  ‘I did,’ he said. ‘She was far away, and I saw but her profile. She waved and dived under the waves. She also cried something, before she disappeared under the water. She called out, ‘Great Alexander lives! And still rules!’ That’s how I knew you’d made it through the desert,’ he told Alexander.

  I was astounded. Nearchus, the most solid, unimaginative of men, had seen a mermaid? Well, why not? I cupped my hand on my chin and blinked at the red firelight while his voice droned on, telling of all the wonders he’d seen on the wide ocean. The ‘Outer Sea’, as he called it, to distinguish it from the ‘Inner Sea’ which was the Mediterranean.

  I was sitting next to Plexis. The march had tired me out. I laid my head on his lap and fell asleep while he stroked my hair. I felt at peace.

  But some people looked at me sleeping on Plexis’s lap and frowned. Already the mantle of the king was subtly taking over that of the war-leader’s armour. A king was not a captain. Alexander would be expected to place himself above all men. I would be expected to shut myself in the gynaeceum. No man could look upon the wife of a king. Plexis was actually touching me. In Persia, he would be instantly put to death.

  Strange tensions wove into my dreams as I lay on my lover’s lap. It didn’t help any when Chiron woke up and toddled into the wide circle of men, looking for me. He saw Plexis and smiled. ‘Papa!’ he said proudly. It was still his only word and he used it for all the men in our tent. But now the men looked at the child with the triangular face, so like Plexis’s, and his clear, hazel eyes, and they murmured between themselves. Alexander was deep in conversation with Nearchus but, even if he’d been watching carefully, he wouldn’t have picked up the quick, flickering looks that were exchanged between his men. In some ways, he was an innocent.

  Chapter Three

  The army packed up and moved on after a week, and the navy continued along the coast. Nearchus was heading towards Babylon, we were going to Suze. Before he left though, Alexander asked Nearchus to look for Paul. We still had no idea when he would arrive in Babylon. Nearchus said he would protect him with his life, and I felt much better. Nearchus could be trusted.

  We celebrated Chiron’s second birthday. Two years old already! He was a deceptively fragile-looking child, with fine bones and eyes that took up most of his face. But his eyes were full of bright intelligence and he had started talking. After Papa, he added Cala, for Kalanos, Brazza was Baza, and Axiom was Ax. I was ‘Mummy’, and he called Alexander ‘Dada’. He also started naming things around the tent, and Plexis was proud that one of his first words had been ‘horse’.

  Nearchus had offered to take Chiron and me on the boat but I didn’t want to leave Alexander. I knew the march would be difficult, but it would only be another six weeks and then we’d be in Susa.

  We met Craterus’s part of the army a few days later. His journey had been long and arduous but he’d lost only about twenty men, all from accidents or sickness. It lifted Alexander’s heart to the skies to see all his elephants looking so well.

  Roxanne looked well too. She had used the trip to tighten her grip on Lysimachus, the captain of the guards. She hardly even glanced at me, although she knelt at Alexander’s feet, playing the role of an obedient Persian queen.

  She had mellowed somewhat. I didn’t get the sharp looks from her I had in the past, and she sounded almost sincere when she greeted me. She came to my tent soon after I sent for her. I wanted to know what had happened to Paul.

  ‘Ashley! How was your journey?’ She was dressed in rich robes and her hair was braided into an intricate crown. For once she was wearing a decent skirt and her breasts were covered. She still wouldn’t meet my eyes.

  ‘Fine. Will you have some wine?’

  To my surprise, she nodded. ‘Thank you.’ She took the cup and sipped the wine, moving around the tent, her skirts making a swishing sound as she walked. ‘I suppose you want to hear about your son?’ It was said with a sigh.

  ‘I want to know why you sent for him, yes.’

  ‘I followed Olympias’s order. I didn’t dare refuse. If she gave you an order you would have to obey as well, or else be killed.’ I said nothing. Roxanne looked at me sharply, but the tight smile she had on her face slipped and faded. ‘Can we ever be friends?’ she asked me.r />
  I was startled. ‘I would very much like to be your friend,’ I said. ‘But, Roxanne, friendship must work both ways. I can promise you that I will never try to harm you or your children. But will you believe me?’

  She flushed. ‘If you swore by the goddess your mother, of course I would.’

  ‘Very well. I swear by the goddess my mother I will never try to harm you or your children.’

  Roxanne licked her lips nervously. ‘I will tell you this then. Olympias has written to me that she and Cassander have made an agreement. They want your son to rule Macedonia. Cassander has no sons, he only has daughters. They want to marry your man-child to Cassander’s eldest daughter.’

  I gasped. ‘But Paul is only ten years old.’

  Roxanne flipped her wrist. ‘Does it matter? Now I have told you something. Will you tell me something in return?’

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Will I have more children?’ Her voice was carefully neutral, her eyes cast downwards.

  ‘Yes.’ I shrugged. It could do no harm to tell her that. ‘You will have another son.’

  She nodded, but didn’t smile. We chatted about the weather, she admired Chiron, who was in his playpen, and then we ran out of things to say. Not surprisingly, I had no idea what I could talk to her about. Poison? Lysimachus? Olympias? Even innocuous subjects like the weather took odd turns with her. She would inevitably tie the conversation into her strange gods, and I never knew what comment to make to a statement such as: ‘The rain certainly stimulated Ea. One of my servants died of the bloody flux when she didn’t burn a toad on his altar after she stepped in a puddle.’ Or, ‘One of my nipples is bigger than the other, I think it’s because I didn’t suckle the monkey’s baby long enough. My stupid slave killed it by accident. I’ve sacrificed to Anahita. Perhaps she’ll help me. Otherwise I’ll have to kill another one.’ Another what? Slave? Monkey’s baby? I didn’t dare ask her to explain anything.

  After a few moments of heavy silence, she finished her wine and left the tent. I stood back and watched her leave.

  When she was gone, I unclenched my fists. My nails had left little red crescents in my palm.

  I didn’t let my guard down though, and every gift she sent was instantly tossed in the latrine pit. I was mostly worried about Chiron; he was the biggest threat to Roxanne, and I decided to keep him out of the way of anybody who seemed to have sympathies with her.

  Plexis noticed what was going on right away and he became the child’s guardian, staying with him whenever I couldn’t. Brazza and Axiom helped us in our task, and between the four of us, the little boy was carefully protected.

  We were worried about poison, of course, because there were poisons and there were poisons. Some could even be painted on little toys, and there were tiny darts like little bees that stung and killed within hours.

  Kalanos, who had been with us since India and who had been with Nearchus on the sea voyage, now rejoined us. He was growing frail, and I worried to see him losing his appetite. He said it was old age.

  ‘Old people don’t sleep, and they don’t eat,’ he said, waving the bowl of lentils away. ‘We’re turning back into the dust that we came from.’ He chuckled; to him death was just another door he would enter.

  I told him not to be silly, that he was still a young, handsome man yet, and to eat his soup, please.

  He peered at me from under his brows, his black eyes half-mocking, half-sad. ‘You will never learn to accept fate.’ He sighed. ‘For you, life is a battle to be won, not a river to carry you peacefully along. I have tried to tell you this for months. Why will you not listen? When will you learn? We all have to meet our fate.’

  I frowned and stared at the steaming bowl of soup, then sighed and ate it myself. ‘What if …’ I began slowly. ‘What if you knew the future? Would it still be fate? If you could change something, would that mean that fate doesn’t exist?’

  Kalanos narrowed his eyes. He had the shrewdest stare. He brought to mind the canny gaze of Alexander sometimes, and hegot that look from Aristotle. ‘You cannot cheat fate,’ he said. ‘What changes you think you have wrought would in fact already be written in the great book of fate. Nothing can be changed. Everything has been ordered since the beginning.’

  ‘But what if I told you I knew what was going to happen?’ I cried.

  Kalanos smiled gently. ‘You think you do, child, but it’s like seeing the rapids in the river. You know what rapids are and what they look like, but you’ve never really been in rapids. You know you’re on a river, and perhaps you’ve seen the whole river in a dream, but it will never be the same until you actually sail upon it. You will see the people, the boats and the fish that the dream cannot show you. You will feel things that knowledge itself cannot make you feel.’

  I shook my head stubbornly. ‘It’s not like that at all,’ I said. My eyes were burning. I was in front of an insurmountable wall of belief, and I couldn’t get past it. What I wanted to know I couldn’t ask outright.

  ‘But it is, and you will see, some day. You must learn to live one day at a time as it comes to you. You must greet each sunrise as a new miracle, and live each instant of each new day as if it will be your last one. Only then can you go forward. Only then can you begin to accept. Once you do, you will find that everything is as easy as breathing. Even dying. From one world to the next, you must learn to go as easily between breathing in and breathing out. Do you remember our breathing lessons?’ He leaned forward anxiously. These lessons had been among the first he’d taught us, sitting cross-legged on the rug, taking smooth, deep breaths. Alexander’s asthma had improved dramatically since he’d learned to breathe.

  ‘I remember,’ I said bleakly. Two tears rolled down my cheeks and fell with audible plops into my soup.

  ‘Lentils not salty enough?’ he asked, his eyes twinkling.

  ‘I want to save those I love,’ I said. ‘It has nothing to do with me. I could let myself go downriver, but I couldn’t go and leave those I love behind.’

  Kalanos patted my hand. ‘You’re such a new soul.’

  I laughed shakily. I was younger than he by a good three thousand years. My soup got saltier as the tears fell faster.

  ‘I love too,’ he said. ‘But I have learned to let go. That is the final lesson. You are still too young. No one can ever teach you. It has to be learned alone. When you have learned to let go, then you will be free and you will see that everything that ever held you back from the river’s flow hurt you, and everything that let you go forward was beneficial. Love can be both. Will you listen to an old man who has come to the end of his journey?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said.

  ‘Let go. Don’t try to change what cannot be changed. You will just be swimming against the current and you could drown. Who will look after Chiron when you are gone? I told you once before, gold and silver are not the riches of the earth – the real treasures are children.’

  I thought of Paul and my sobs redoubled. Kalanos shook his head pityingly. I was a backward, recalcitrant pupil, but his patience knew no limits. ‘Child, child. Dry your tears. Perhaps I am wrong. Real knowledge is believing that you know nothing.’

  I looked up at him and tried to smile. ‘Well, that’s a relief,’ I said.

  He shook his head some more. ‘Ah, I can see that you will do what you believe is right. Didn’t you hear me?’

  ‘I did.’ I leaned over and kissed his cheek.

  ‘Hey!’ He rubbed his cheek, glaring at me. ‘You’re not supposed to kiss holy men!’ His eyes were twinkling though.

  ‘That’s my present to you,’ I said. ‘It’s the only thing I have to give to you.’

  ‘That’s what you think,’ he said. He took my hand, kissed the inside of my palm and folded my fingers over it. ‘You keep that. That’s the only thing I will give you. You can take it with you downriver, and it will not weigh you down.’

  We arrived on the endless plains of Persepolis. We’d camped here, nearly
a decade ago. Back then, we’d been chasing Darius, who’d kidnapped our son, Paul. Alexander had met Darius’s army on this plain and had triumphed. Barsine had been with us and she’d organized great games on these fields. There had been a stadium, bleachers, and a goatball field. Banquets had been held in the great palace.

  Everything had changed. Darius was dead. The stadium had vanished. The palace was in ruins. Now, ten years after Alexander had destroyed the beautiful buildings, dust had swept in and wild asses roamed the echoing rooms. Vines grew along the stairs and over the broken walls. A crushed skull lay by the empty throne, and pale bones had been scattered and gnawed by jackals. Wind whistled through the few marble pillars left standing. Great statues lay in the rubble, their unseeing eyes staring at the sky. White marble sparkled in the sunlight. I clenched my teeth as we approached, and bile rose in my throat. It was a haunting, melancholy place.

  Alexander picked his way through the palace. He bent down and dusted off a piece of marble. A young boy’s face stared up at him. He jerked backwards, dropping it, then stood and sighed. “Perhaps I should have left it standing,” he said. However, I couldn’t tell if there was regret in his voice.

  We left. I didn’t look back.

  In Susa, we celebrated another huge wedding. To reward soldiers who had followed him to the ends of the earth and back, Alexander offered money and land to the men who wanted to leave his army. The last wedding at Susa had been an unqualified success, so he repeated it, with ten thousand men and women. All the children who had been born on the voyage were to be provided for until their deaths, and their education was assured by the schools Alexander had founded in each of his cities.

  We had arrived in the heart of Persia and the people still reacted with the hysterical fervour of pilgrims seeing their messiah whenever Alexander appeared in public. It was beginning to annoy his Macedonian and Greek generals, who grumbled whenever they could find someone who would listen.