Empire of Ashes: A Novel of Alexander the Great

XVIII

That Aeschines accuses me of plotting against Alexander is not surprising. What is unexpected is that he indicts me for my association with Rohjane, when in fact this was one of the great services I did for the King! There was a desperate need to civilize the girl, and the oafs and thugs who surrounded Alexander were useless for this work. That I was a Greek and an Athenian seemed further to recommend me for the job. The Macedonians, after all, prided themselves on knowing more about horses than women, and what was a “Greekling” to them, anyway, but a particularly useless kind of woman?

After the breaking of bread with Oxyartes the honeymoon lasted just a few days. Divine Alexander’s side of what happened has gone with him to Olympus, but for Rohjane’s part it was a peculiar induction into the ways of men and women. She came to him, of course, as a maiden. For those unfamiliar with the customs of royalty, her virginity meant she had experience only with her handmaids, and that restricted to what may be indulged away from spying eyes. Her curiosity about men was therefore strong, and she could be excused for expecting that the Lord of All Asia would be unequivocally a man. She found herself instead cast in a much more complex role than simple receptacle for the royal seed. Unprepared, confused, she plied me with questions that gave more information than they got.

Though some would call her lucky, Rohjane did not have many natural allies in her husband’s retinue. There was a growing number of noblewomen attached to his camp as hostages to their families’ loyalty, but few of these saw her as their equal. She had no friends among his other companions, the rough-hewn Crateruses or Ptolemies or Parmenions, and certainly not the best wishes of Hephaestion or Bagoas. Certainly because she was a barbarian, but possibly because she was beautiful, Callithenes the historian treated her with deliberate contempt.

Sogdian nobles educate all their children, male and female. Their native language is impossible for outsiders to learn, so full of such arbitrary complexities that it makes every other language seem easy by comparison. Rohjane therefore had knowledge of Persian and Greek, could recite the names of important historical figures, and even knew something of Hellenic and Indian philosophies. Of the skills that are more immediately useful to a Macedonian wife she knew nothing-not how to dress, nor how to display the appropriate courtesies, nor how to be silent. I decided to start at the beginning: to wean her away from her trousers, furs and animal skins, and into appropriate clothes.

There were garments of all kinds for trade among the merchants and thieves who followed Alexander through Asia. Bearing a simple chiton of Ionic type, made of good linen, I arrived at Rohjane’s tent and asked to be admitted. Inside, I found her with Youtab, the sole handmaid permitted to follow her in her new life. The two women were sitting around a small fire, turning a wild piglet on a spit. Rohjane had a hunting knife on her hip. She had apparently used this to cut an impromptu smoke-hole in the roof.

“Machon! You are just in time to eat with us-”

I explained that my purpose had to do with gentler arts than the roasting of meat.

“That is your loss,” said Youtab as she extracted one of the boar’s eyes with her knife and offered it to the Queen.

“You have Greek clothes…” Rohjane said to me with her mouth full of eyeball. “…I have those too…”

She rose and threw open a cedar chest. Inside was a large woolen garment. Inspecting it, I saw it was a peplos of Doric cut, with no armholes or neckhole. The dress was meant to be fastened at the shoulder with fibulae.

“This won’t do,” I told her.

“The wool is good. It was bought in Sardis.”

“Dresses like this have been out of favor in Athens for many years.”

“I like the hardware,” she said, showing me a pair of long, sharp pins that might have served as daggers.

As this was a good opportunity to begin her education in Greek history, I told her the myth of why Athenian women were forbidden to wear dresses of Doric style. Once, in the city’s distant past, the army had been humiliated by the Aeginetans in battle. A single soldier returned home to report the disaster. The women of Athens, outraged by the loss of their husbands, pulled the stickpins from their dresses and flayed the messenger on the spot. Needless to say, the elders of the city were disturbed by this incident. From that day Athenian women were forbidden to fasten their dresses with pins. Or so says Herodotus.

“The Athenian men would have done better to win their battles, than to tell their women what to wear!” Rohjane cried.

It took much coaxing to get her to try the dress I brought for her. As she went behind a screen to change, I found myself awkwardly confronted by Youtab, who was as delicate as a Bactrian camel and possibly less attractive.

“Wanna go?” she asked me. Then she held up the two long fingers of her left hand, with knuckles pressed together and slightly flexed. In the moment, I had no idea what this signified. She laughed at me.

“Oh, don’t play the fool! I’ve heard all about you Greeks and your pleasures…” she said, inclining her head toward her mistress. “But she also tells me you never use your mouths down there on a woman. Is that true?”

If what she meant by “down there” was what I thought she meant, then I told her that the very thought would revolt any man.

“Don’t be so sure. The Persians make quite a practice of it.”

“That explains their performance on the battlefield,” I replied. Yet Youtab’s impertinence made me wonder about something else. Greek soldiers had a name for the Persians-“carpet-munchers”-that I had thought referred to their habit of bowing their heads at the feet of their masters. Perhaps, I thought, it referred to their bedroom perversities instead.

Rohjane came out with her head and arms in the right places, but with no sense of how to gather the chiton in the right places to make it drape. I helped the Queen as best I could without touching her, leaving it to Youtab to tie and retie the girdle around her hips. The result was very pleasing. It took some effort not to stare at the sheerness of the fabric, which clung in ways that would have given Praxiteles much to ponder.

“Not bad, but I can improve it. Youtab, my knife!”

Before I could utter a word, Rohjane cut the dress open to make a rude opening for her breasts to show through. She then covered them with a small square of silk, tied in Sogdian fashion at the neck.

“Better, no?” she asked me.

In most respects this was the kind of problem I faced. Asia now had a barbarian queen with a weaker sense of decorum than a young girl. Not only did she feel herself entitled to appear at drinking parties, speak her mind, and show her body as readily as any man, but she assumed that any other arrangement was inconceivable. To correct her was nothing less than a Sisyphisean task. No sooner had I convinced her that the casual display of her breasts was shameful, than she took to walking around with her chiton hiked up to her thighs. When I got her legs covered, down came her hair. Not even the finest of golden fillets would convince her to restrain that wild coif. Faced with whatever other little rebellions she could conceive, I decided to grant her that impropriety.

Where was Alexander in all this? At best, he was absent; at worst, drunk. As the weeks passed the novelty of his new bride wore off. By the end he spent no more than one night in five in her bed. Bagoas, on the other hand, was either a fixed presence around the King, or always in the vicinity to come running. When Alexander left to do the duty of a husband the eunuch would jeer or groan. In this I believe he was encouraged by Perdiccas, Ptolemy and Craterus, who had little interest in the production of a legitimate heir. If Youtab’s testimony is any guide, they had little grounds for fear in this regard.

Along with the unconstraint Rohjane displayed about her person went other strange habits. The Sogdians, like many people of Asia, had a particular dread of women at the time of their monthly flow. The Zoroastrian custom was not only complete separation of the “unclean” female from her family, but separation from all aspects of the seven creations. Their handling of food, drink, water, animals and fire were forbidden. Since ordinary clothes were ruined by contact with the woman’s body, she was required to wear special garments reserved for that time. For a menstruating woman even to breathe on another person was an assault that demanded vigorous ablutions. The same applied to her gaze, which was reputed to have the power to stifle the generative power of men. Many of the humble women of Asia therefore spend their days of corruption in small, dark, stifling hovels where their opportunities to pollute the cosmos-and therefore to aid the Hostile Spirit-are restricted.

Now I am aware that certain Greeks have queer beliefs about these matters. In Ionia, the influence of menstruating women is thought to be noxious enough to kill agricultural pests. Wives and daughters are sent in their vulnerable times to walk the fields, their dresses above their waists, to control beetles and worms. Even in Attica it is thought that the inception of flow at a time of lunar eclipse is bad luck. I have heard doctors debate over the dangers of sharing bathwater with women, menstruating or not. But even these beliefs are a far cry from utter segregation from the course of life, as is the custom in much of Asia.

A hovel would not do for a queen in her indisposition. Rohjane refused to spend those times in her usual tent either, claiming that it had too many corners.

“And what is wrong with corners?” I asked.

“Corners, O ignorant one, are places where the evil influences released by the menses may hide.”

Rohjane therefore required a special round tent be prepared for her use. She also could not touch the earth with her bare feet, or use utensils to eat. If she happened to touch any metal tools Youtab took them outside and washed them first with cow urine, then sand, then water. It was essential to observe the correct order of ablutions, or else some deity or another would be weakened in the struggle against the daevas…

“The defendant is warned again to confine his remarks to topics relevant to his defense,” Polycleitus interjected.

“I beg the magistrate’s indulgence, due to the breadth of the prosecution’s indictment. My intention is to show what difficulties the management of Rohjane presented for the Macedonians, and how my presence was beneficial to Alexander. I also believe it essential to my defense to establish the nature of my relationship with the Queen. If you recall, I was accused of using her in a plot against the King.”

“It is nothing to me if you squander your time, Machon,” said Polycleitus, waving his hand. “Only that you are aware that you will get no further indulgence from me.”

It would not be true to say that Rohjane was the most observant of Zoroastrians. How could she be, if she was obliged to spend her life in the company of unbelievers? Still, her customs raised so much curiosity around the camp that Alexander brought out Gobares to render some explanation. The question of cow urine was again raised, albeit in a less obviously dismissive way.

“What you Greeks don’t grasp is the comprehensiveness of the prophet’s vision,” he told us. “For when he tells us that Ahuramazda created the six Amesha Spentas, and they in turn made the elements of the world, and that Angra Mainyu seeks the ultimate corruption of all those elements, the revelation means what it implies. The corruption of fire is smoke; of living beings, death and decay. Water may also be polluted by contact with the things of the Hostile Spirit-dirt, blood, the dead. Therefore, we may not defile water by washing certain things with it, such as that which a menstruating woman has touched, gazed, or breathed upon.

“The effluent of the cow is holy to us, as it is to the Indians. It has special power to cleanse other substances without corruption adhering to it. So when we wish to purify something, we use the cow first, before exposing it to water.”

“And so you may refresh yourselves by standing under a pissing cow?” asked Perdiccas.

“More or less. Those with certain scruples may opt to strain it through muslin into a clean vessel.”

“Show us,” ordered Alexander.

We all went out to the stock pens. Since it was dark, we bore torches. The eyes of the animals shone back at us as we waited at the gate for the telltale sound of divinity manifesting itself upon the ground.

“It is not usual to wait for the pajow to appear, but to take it as a blessing when it does…” said Gobares.

“I feel the same about wine…” Craterus remarked. “…hand over that jug!”

At last Gobares heard what he was listening for. As he ran out into the yard with a basin in his outstretched hands, I looked to Alexander. Despite his drunk-or perhaps because of it-he had the look of a man who was hopeless to comprehend what he was seeing. In that moment I felt sympathy for him, for as the new Great King he took upon himself obligations as well as palaces. Everything inherent in his character compelled him to understand the people he would rule. Yet as he watched Gobares at his strange lustrations it was clear that, despite his new Persian diadem and tunic, he feared that he would never succeed. When he went back to his tent that night it was without Bagoas or Rohjane.

Alexander turned away from India, but that didn’t mean he wanted to go home. That left the alternatives of proceeding north, where there was nothing but savages and wasteland, and south, to the Indus delta. The choice was obvious: the entire army, the King decided, would sail down the great river to the sea, with the double objects of exploring this unknown territory and rounding out the limits of his empire. The plan was to go south along the Hydaspes just above the confluence with the Acesines. From there the other tributaries, the Hydraotes and the Hyphasis, would add to the great stream until they joined the Indus proper for the unknown distance to the ocean.

In the center would proceed a fleet of boats under the immediate command of Nearchus of Crete. This man had been with Alexander since the beginning, but not being a Macedonian had limited his prospects for advancement. On the water, however, Nearchus’ value was undeniable. In many respects he was the sort of man that complimented the best aspects of Alexander’s character: loyal, resourceful, possessed of a fervent curiosity. Would that there had been more Nearchuses and fewer Peithons on the campaign!

The floating contingent was made up of Alexander’s court, the lighter auxiliaries, a few select units of cavalry, and most of the supplies. The heavy infantry and cavalry marched on the right bank of the river with Craterus, while the elephants, siege train, and Hypaspists went on the left, under Hephaestion.

When all was prepared, Aristander the soothsayer conducted a sacrifice in the center of the Hydaspes. The blood of the bull was poured into the river to honor it, and also the deities of the Indus and all her tributaries, as well as father Zeus-Ammon, uncle Poseidon, brother Heracles, and Ocean. Afterward the Persian allies held rites in honor of Ahuramazda and Haurvatat, Zoroastrian god of water. Their libations did not use blood, but cow’s milk sprinkled with marjoram leaves, ladled into the river with a copper spoon. Alexander presided with equal reverence over both ceremonies, and for a moment the confluence of these rites, and therefore their peoples, seemed more propitious than ever before.

Many armies have come and gone in the eternal history of the Indus. Yet the river had probably never seen anything like the Macedonians who passed that way. On the stream were almost a thousand boats, their oars stroking the water to matched drumbeats, the colored flags of each unit snapping on their staffs. Along the banks marched 100,000 men, 50,000 followers, and 200 elephants, spread along columns that covered miles on both shores. The dust raised by their feet was visible as twin plumes towering and mingling as they rose into the sky. Villages surrendered days before this host was glimpsed; saffron-robed natives, awed by the spectacle, gaped from beaches and hilltops.

It was remarkable that anyone would dare resist such a force. Yet the Brahmins persisted in their defiance, convincing two of the local kings to oppose Alexander. The first, King Musicanus, first pretended to submit, then killed all the Macedonians left in his kingdom after Alexander had passed. Peithon was sent back to deal with him, assaulting his city walls with siege equipment the Indians had never seen before. The Indians died by the thousands, with the survivors sold as slaves under the auspices of Oxyartes, Rohjane’s father. Musicanus was brought before Alexander in chains and hung next to the Brahmins who provoked his treachery. But before the last Brahmin was killed, he cried out to Alexander.

“Beware O Alexander, lest you lose all!”

“What do you mean?” the King asked the man.

“The only ground any man truly owns,” he replied, “is that under his own feet.”

This advice, exclaimed Alexander, reminded him something Diogenes the Cynic might say. He therefore let this last Brahmin go free.

The other defiant kingdom was that of the Mallians. I was not present at the conquest of Multan, their capital, so I cannot appraise Aeschines’ account of what happened there. What is certain is that during his attack on the mud-brick wall of the town, he somehow got himself inside the city with his guards still outside. Alone among the Mallians, he drove off repeated attacks as he was heard to cry out, in a voice full of joy, random phrases that verged on nonsense, such as “There it is!” and “Upon the color of it!”. He was finally pierced by a lance, falling backward with only the shield of Achilles to protect him. Though almost a thousand years old, the relic warded off all blows until the outraged Macedonians broke in to his rescue. Alexander’s men, seeing the King fall, focused their wrath on the survivors. Every single Mallian in the town was slaughtered that day, down to the youths, the infants, and the unborn babes.

Alexander suffered a deep chest-wound in the brawl. His condition deteriorating to the point where it seemed he would die, he was carried in stages back to the river. There he hovered near death for a week.

Aeschines says his men kept up a constant vigil, but my memory is different. With each day that passed without sign of Alexander, more of his men were convinced that he had already died. Few protested when, with the necessary connivance of Perdiccas, Ptolemy and Craterus, Peithon began to issue orders in his place.

His first act was to separate the allied Persians from the Macedonian units they had joined. This was a popular order among the Macedonians, but divided the army against itself, bringing the camp to the brink of hostilities between the new imperial “partners.” After a few more days passed, Peithon was emboldened enough to put a golden fillet around his head. One day more, and he ordered a final inventory of the contents of Alexander’s tent. Objects of the Persian style-furniture, lamps, native clothing adopted by the King-were collected in a pile outside the tent, apparently waiting only for Peithon’s order to set them ablaze.

I was not alone in being concerned at this arrogance. Nearchus shared my feelings, but dared not defy the usurper or those backing him. We agreed that someone should get word to Hephaestion. To this end Nearchus lent me a few Cretan archers. Our party left early the next morning, just before the changing of the dawn watch.

It was just a few miles to the little camp upstream where Alexander lay. We arrived just as the sun rose on our right shoulders, illuminating the tent and wagons on a little knoll above the Hydaspes. Forming my men into two columns of sixteen each, we approached the place guardedly, not knowing what we would find.

The first movement we saw in the camp was the bent figure of the King’s doctor, Critobulus. From a distance I could see he held a water jug in his hands, and he turned his head toward us as I hailed him. With the sound of the stream so close to me I could not understand his replies. He began to point fretfully in the direction opposite to us, jumping up and down.

“On the run now, boys!” I ordered my archers, understanding his warning at last.