Empire of Ashes: A Novel of Alexander the Great

XV

One of the more charming tales attached to Alexander involves his relationship with his horse, Bucephalus. Aeshines has done his part to perpetuate this myth. And it is true that the King had a special connection to this animal, which had begun when he was a boy in Macedon and lasted beyond the battle at the Hydaspes. Little Bucephalus would suffer no one else but little Alexander to ride him, and as the years and the distance accumulated, the King took care to lighten his burden as much as possible, to prolong his life.

What is less often remarked, however, is that Bucephalus was a cantankerous nag. Being the royal favorite, the animal seemed to believe that he himself was king. No other horses could be grazed with him, even ones much larger in size, because Bucephalus would pick fights. He would usually lose against bigger, stronger cavalry mounts, but the risk of injury to Bucephalus always resulted in the other horse being removed or killed. The grooms swore that the horse seemed to know this, and actively schemed to destroy his rivals. Even the people obliged to care for him grew to fear him. To care for the King’s mount became dangerous duty, as a long line of grooms were attacked or stepped upon. One boy, a Persian of long experience at the stables at Susa, was kicked fatally in the chest by Bucephalus.

Perhaps all this had something to do with the horse’s disappearance one day, when the army was camped several parasangs east of the Swat River. That horses died or vanished on campaign was not unusual: the Bactrians and Sodgians were accomplished rustlers, and wolves and lions lived in the more remote places. Difficult animals had a way of coming up lame or tied up when they injured the wrong person. Though ordinary cavalrymen were free to keep a close eye on their own horses, the King naturally could do no such thing.

Alexander flew into a rage at the loss of his horse. Where in other cases wild replacements could be captured out on the hoof, or found among reinforcements from home, Bucephalus himself could not be replaced. The King therefore summoned Peithon, who in turn called a meeting of all cavalry officers down to the tetrarchs. They were given a message to distribute to the natives: if Bucephalus was not returned alive by noon the next day, all their villages would be put to the torch, their men killed, and their women and children sold into slavery.

Bucephalus reappeared the next morning. He was hungry and muddy-flanked, but otherwise his old miserable self. The mystery of his disappearance and reappearance was never solved. That the King would make such a threat, however, said much about his precarious state of mind. I have no doubt he would have made good on it. At the very least, thousands of innocent people living over hundreds of square miles had been driven into panic-all for the sake of a horse. When the detestable creature did die, shortly after the battle at the Hydaspes River, there was quiet rejoicing all over the Macedonian camp.

Yes, I was to blame for encouraging Alexander in these whims because I wanted to save him from his despair over Cleitus. My goal was to save his sanity, but I discovered that his apotheosis had only bought us all a little time. In the end, his new, grand proportions only seemed to make his fallibilities more grand.

As it happened I did get one last glimpse of a younger, less encumbered Alexander. We had camped some miles west of the Indus on some high ground when the wind came in from the northern wastelands. The sudden cold sent the men scrambling for supplies of firewood, which was scarce at that altitude. We were fortunate, however, to find a good supply of cedar-wood boxes scattered over the slope, each filled with what we took to be flammable rags. After burning several hundred of these, the Macedonians were comfortable, but the people of the nearby town were in an uproar. It seems that we had burned the ancestors of these natives, who had a custom of leaving their coffins above ground.

Armed men sallied up from the valley. There was a brief clash; the attackers retired, and Alexander prepared to lay siege to their town. It was at this point that the townspeople sought a parley, and in a haunting repetition of our encounter with the Branchidae, they addressed us in Greek. Indeed, their dialect was an archaic one that was much closer to the Macedonian argot. Unlike the Branchidae, however, they did not request Alexander to spare their town, but demanded it. For it seems the founder of their city was Dionysus himself!

Fittingly, the name of the place was Nysa. In a bygone age the god of wine and ecstasy had passed this way, on his return journey from India. A number of the god’s followers, on seeing how appropriate the place was for cultivating the grape, decided to stay. Dionysus blessed their endeavor with prosperity. And indeed, all around them the Macedonians found reminders of home: vineyards of course, but also clematis, ivy, laurel and oak and poplar trees, acanthus and myrtle. None of these had been seen in such profusion since we had crossed the Hellespont. As a final proof, the Nysans said that the mountain above their town was called Meron, “the thigh.” To the Macedonians, this name was a clear reference to Dionysus’ birth out of the thigh of Zeus.

So instead of laying siege, Alexander made sacrifices to Dionysus and Zeus-Ammon. The Nysans, pleased, invited the King and his officers to sample the hospitality of the god. Craterus, Perdiccas and the rest thought themselves above such frivolity, however. Hephaestion was off managing the construction of a bridge over the Indus. So our party on the mountain was therefore a small one: just Alexander, myself, Rohjane, and Bagoas.

If there is one truth in life, it is that we remember every moment of a dull party but too little of a good one. Our day and night on the slopes of Mt. Meron exists in my mind now as images only, savored to be sure, but without a story to put them to. I do know that we began by drinking wine neat from silver cups. Somehow, as the god took hold, Alexander ended up in women’s clothes, with fawn skin tunic, fennel garland and rouge smeared on his cheeks. Looking down, I saw I was dressed the same way, though I must have made a very ugly woman! Then we were running under the pines, on the soft grass, leaping and laughing like delighted children. As our intoxication deepened, we were encouraged by attributes of Dionysus that seemed miraculously placed for our use: musical instruments hanging from boughs, more wine, figs out of season. At the base of the bay tree Bagoas found a thrysus wound with ivy, and for reasons known only to himself, used it to strike the ground there. From where the thrysus struck the earth flowed a stream of thick goat’s milk. We fell to our knees and elbows, lapping up the milk as Dionysus seemed to stand over us, a tinkle of cymbals like laughter wafting down from unseen branches. Bagoas, his mouth and jaw lathered in cream, looked up at Alexander and kissed him on the lips. Then he did the same to me as Rohjane sat back against the trunk, caressing herself down the neck and between the breasts in beastly, contented remoteness.

I think there must have been something in the milk, for my recollections get more indistinct from there. There was more running, and calling of the Bacchic refrain Euoi saboi, Euoi saboi. A nest of fat snakes appeared in our path. The snakes seemed drugged, sluggish; Rohjane tore into one of them with her teeth, ripped off the living flesh, and swallowed the chunks. Alexander, pleased, took the head for himself, while Bagoas performed a sinuous, serpent-like dance. Much aroused by this, the King grasped him by the flanks and buggered him in the sight of Heaven. Yet not even this seemed strange to me, as Rohjane and I shared a winking glance, and the Queen lay back in my arms with her thin, blood-caked fingers entwined in mine.

Through our frenzy we became conscious of an urgent sensation in our throats. We had to come upon a cold, clear stream before we realized that this sensation was thirst, and that we were parched from what must have been hours of exertion. We bowed and drank like things of the forest, stopping only when our bellies were full and we could barely turn our backs to the smooth creek side rocks warmed by the sun. Lulled by the song of the cicada, we fell into a deep, untroubled sleep.

When we awoke the sun was down near the shoulder of Meron. My head was a bit clearer, and I could see the evidence Bagoas and Rohjane bore of their experience: cuts on their feet, burrs in their hair, blood and milk on their chins. Alexander was standing some distance away, looking through the trees down to the valley below.

Evening shadow had fallen on the Macedonian camp. Torches winked in the distance, arranged along the ranks of tents. The King had an odd expression on his face, both curious and wistful, as if he were regarding evidence of an ancestor’s life. I plucked the half-crushed garland from his head and tossed it aside.

“The sundown watch must be coming on,” he told me. “Look-the Third battalion of footmen still can’t pitch a straight line of tents.”

“Shall we get back?”

He sighed, and putting his weight on my shoulder, remarked, “It’s always there, is it not? Somewhere around me like the Furies. Jealousy, Blood Avenger, Unceasing Pursuit! Other men had gone abroad, explored foreign lands. I must take an army with me to see new places! The original blunt instrument! I love them so much I would run away right now. I wonder if you understand, dear Machon.”

I thought it best to say I did not. But he continued to walk with me as we descended the mountain, Bagoas and Rohjane stumbling behind us in the twilight. As we proceeded it became clear that we had waited too long to start back: the light was failing, and the path was little more than a deer track. We lost our way, but pressed on down the slope. Finally the ground leveled, and we came upon the outskirts of a village we hadn’t passed on the way up. Alexander called for the little column to halt.

“Is this Nysa?” he asked.

“I doubt it,” I answered, “but I may not have seen it from this side.”

“There-someone’s coming,” Bagoas pointed.

Three women appeared. They were neither girls, nor particularly old-young mothers, perhaps. Their heads were covered with parti-colored cloths, their hands hidden behind the folds of their dresses. They were approaching a flat stone scattered with flowers and spice-leaves. Spreading a cloth on the ground there, one of the women dumped a handful of small objects in the center-in the gloom it was hard to see what, but they appeared to be either chickpeas or some kind of nut. As the woman in the middle set about picking chaff out of her nuts or peas, the other two looked reverently at the flat rock. It occurred to me then that they may have come together to a village shrine for some kind of observance. To be watching them secretly therefore seemed to be something of a transgression, though of what faith I had no idea. I swallowed my qualms, though, when it was clear that the others would not move on.

The woman in the center began to speak in a language I couldn’t understand. Cocking her ear, Rohjane gave a little gasp, then a smile of recognition. We all looked to her.

“She is not speaking Sogdian, but I understand some of it. They are performing the rite we call ‘Miserable Peas.’ It is done by women only, in times of trouble in the family. I used to see it done by my grandmother. We also used chickpeas.”

As the woman spoke, the others knelt by her, giving affirmations now and then, though they did it somewhat perfunctorily, as if they had heard her words many times before.

“What’s going on now?” asked Bagoas.

“There is a tale that must be told before the peas are purified and given away. In my father’s kingdom the story is about the wise daughter of a goatherd. There was a drought, and there was no food for the girl, her father, or the goats. The goatherd prayed to Ameretat for aid, and the yazata appeared to them with the gift of a handful of chickpeas. The shining one said: ‘Purify these as you know how, and after the rite give them away as best serves the good.’ The father gave thanks, but when Ameretat was gone he complained that the spenta had given no help at all, for they had been given only a few miserable chickpeas. And he was about to share them with his daughter for eating, when she begged him to purify them first.

“‘Foolish girl!’ her father said. ‘Purified or not, these miserable peas will not save us.’ But her piety shamed him, and he relented, saying the words that consecrated them in the sight of Ahuramazda. Again, he was about to eat them, when his daughter objected, saying she wanted to give her share to the goats. ‘Foolish child!’ the goatherd chided her. ‘What good will a few miserable peas do for our whole flock?’ The wise daughter replied: ‘I know not, father, but I cannot eat while others suffer, even if they are animals.’ At these words the goatherd was proud of his daughter’s sense of duty to asha, and ashamed at having indulged his despair. He bid her to eat her share of the peas and give his to the goats instead. When she threw her father’s peas among the flock, a miracle happened: where each pea hit the ground a beautiful green tree sprouted, grew, and ripened before her eyes, until she was standing in a grove of myrtle trees, each with boughs groaning under the weight of berries.

“In this way the goats, the father, and the daughter ate, and were saved from the drought. Soon the prince of the kingdom came by, and seeing a grove of myrtle more splendid than in any of his father’s gardens, came to the door to congratulate the owner. There he saw the goatherd’s daughter, and fell in love. When she came of age, he married her, and in due course she became Queen. But for the rest of her life, in times of trouble or not, she was sure to perform this rite of the chickpeas, to protect her family from harm.”

Rohjane finished the tale long before the other did. When the village woman was finished she said a short prayer over the chickpeas in a different tongue I took to be Avestan, the language of Zarathushtra’s revelation. When that was done, the three women solemnly scattered some of the chickpeas on the shrine, and threw others on the roofs of the houses around them.

“This land is not in drought,” Alexander remarked in too loud a voice. The women looked in his direction, and seeing us crouching there, turned away in fear. Alexander stepped into the open to appeal to them.

“Maids, stop! You have nothing but compassion to expect from the hand of your King!”

His words had the opposite effect. Instead of just running away, the women began to shriek ‘Daeva! Daeva!’ When he followed them through the narrow lanes of the village the people scattered. Women dropped their baskets and ran into their houses; little children fled into their mothers’ arms, crying ‘Daeva! Daeva!’ Alexander, still convinced he could soothe their fears, went from door to door as they slammed in his face. And though he was oblivious to it, he was a frightful sight, with his face rouged with snake blood and his woman’s dress caked in mud. Persistent, he chased them all, holding out his arms in a supplicatory gesture that promised to swallow them up.

At last he relented, sitting against a wall. We caught up to him as he slumped there.

“I take it, then, that we are not in Nysa,” said Bagoas.

Not in Nysa indeed. For it was clear that the Macedonian foraging parties had already visited this place, and their exactions had caused the hunger that the ‘Miserable Peas’ were supposed to remedy. More than mere thievery seemed involved: I had seen the same headlong flight, the same abject terror among the women of a small village before, in Doris north of Amphissa, after Philip’s army had come through in the maneuvers that led to Chaeronea. It must have been much the same in Thebes, or Attica during the Persian occupation, or in Ionia after the revolt failed. Places where men once lived, worked, made love became haunted places; the presence of those missing was still palpable, and every pair of eyes, including the children’s, seemed to contain a story that they would sooner forget, but otherwise tell for the rest of their lives.

I should add that Alexander, like Philip before him, expressly forbade disrespect of women, the elderly, or children. In Bactria there had been a man in my battalion, the Second Hypaspists, who had been given the rather arbitrary-sounding punishment of one hundred and eighty two strokes of the lash. The number was based on an estimate of the number of women he had raped in the lands of Persia, Hyrcania, and Bactria. The man did not survive the putrefaction of the wounds he received during the scourging. Yet not even this example had brought safety, it seemed, to the people of that village at the foot of Mt. Meron.

“I think…” said Alexander very deliberately, “that I shall be glad when this is all over.”