The Novels of Alexander the Great: Fire From Heaven, the Persian Boy, and Funeral Games

27

THE VETERANS WERE SENT off with love and money. Krateros was leading them. In Macedon, he was to take the regency; Antipatros would come out in his place.

This was high politics. Alexander just said that Krateros needed sick-leave. Some said he wanted sick-leave himself from his mother’s and regent’s endless intrigues and bickerings, which might end in civil war; others, that he thought Antipatros had ruled like a king so long, he might start to think he was one. He had been faithful; but all this while he’d expected Alexander to be coming back. He was getting rather too purple, was what Alexander said.

In his parting speech to the veterans, he said, “I honor you by trusting you to Krateros, my most loyal follower, whom I love as my own life.” Most loyal …? It passed well enough, in a speech of thanks and farewell.

To shake hands with Eumenes may well have been the first thing Hephaistion had refused to Alexander. Now every day made it harder. Eumenes had humbled himself to come forward first; no man of his standing, once rebuffed, was going to do it twice. Meeting they exchanged cold stares; apart, each said what he thought of the other to whoever would pass it on.

You may say that here was my chance. Anyone used to courts will say so. I would have said it once; I knew better now. Alexander, of whom men tell many legends, lived by his own. Achilles must have Patroklos. He might love his Briseis; but Patroklos was the friend till death. At their tombs in Troy, Alexander and Hephaistion had sacrificed together. Wound Patroklos, and Achilles will have your blood. Eumenes knew; he’d known them since they were boys.

So, instead of telling tales and making mischief, I gave no sign that I even knew of trouble. That legend was a limb of Alexander. His very blood flowed into it. If anyone bruised it, let it be Hephaistion himself, not I. Besides, there was that morning in the desert.

The court set out for Ekbatana. Stateira was left with her grandmother at Susa. Roxane was brought along.

We had a diversion on the way. Atropates satrap of Media, who’d heard of Alexander’s dealings with other satraps, planned a little treat for him. The first time he’d passed that way, he’d asked whether the race of Amazons, mentioned by Herodotos, was still alive. Atropates had had none to offer, and must have been brooding on it ever since.

One morning, a silvery bugle-call echoed back and forth along the pass we’d camped in. Up pranced a troop of cavalry, daintily armed with round shields and little axes. The leader leaped from her horse, saluted Alexander, and told him they had been sent by Atropates. She had the right breast bare, as in all the legends, and small enough. As the left was covered, there was no knowing if that one was any bigger.

Having rejoined her troop, the lady put them through a very dashing display. The soldiers, eyeing all those bare breasts, nearly cheered their heads off. Alexander said to Ptolemy, “Atropates must be out of his mind. Warriors? Those are just girls. Do they look to you like whores?”

“No,” Ptolemy said. “They’ve been picked for their looks and riding.”

“What kind of fool does he take me for? Well, we must have them out of camp before the men get at them. Bagoas, do something for me. Tell them their show was so delightful, I’d like to see the musical ride again. Hydarnes, can you raise me an escort of sober, middle-aged Medes? And quickly?”

They looked prettier still, flushed from their riding; the men were licking their chops like dogs at a kitchen door. There were whistles and calls when the ride began again. In a great hurry, Alexander collected presents. He chose jewelry, not weaponry, but it was well received. The grizzled Medes led off their charges to a sound of groans.

We camped in the upland pastures of Nysa, the royal horse-lands. The brood-mares were still about fifty thousand, though so many had been lifted in the years of war. They were a delight to Alexander, who established a guard for them, and chose out some likely colts. He gave one to Eumenes. If it was by way of thanks for his thankless offer to Hephaistion, and a salve for pride, none of that was said; but Hephaistion, who had done the first wrong in the quarrel, may have read that into it. Certainly Eumenes’ faction did, and were saying that pride went before a fall.

I know, having seen the list, that Alexander had planned asking Hephaistion to dinner that night with some old friends. He’d have been charming to him before everyone, smoothed down his feathers, shown that Patroklos was Patroklos still.

That day, he came face to face with Eumenes in the camp.

I don’t know if it was design or chance. I had ridden out to see the horse-herds, and was coming back; they were well away by the time I heard the shouting. Hephaistion was saying that Greeks had been played out for a hundred years, that Philip had thrashed them everywhere, and Alexander had found them with only tongues for weapons; those they knew how to use. Eumenes said that swaggering braggarts needed no talebearers; their own noise told enough.

Each faction booed and cheered; the crowds were growing. It would be blood before long. I began to edge out. Already I heard the rasp of swords in scabbards; when there was a drumming of violent hooves, brought to a clattering halt. A high fierce voice shouted, once. All other sounds failed. Alexander, his bodyguard behind him, sat staring down, his mouth shut, his nostrils flaring. In the hush, one heard the shake of the horses’ bridles.

The long pause ended. Hephaistion and Eumenes stepped towards him, each starting to blame the other.

“Be silent!”

I jumped down and held my horse, making myself small in the crowd. I did not want my face ever remembered, along with what was coming.

“Not a word. Either of you.” His speed had flicked back the hair from his brow; he had it rather short, for the summer heat. His eyes had paled, anger furrowed his brow like pain. “I demand discipline from men I appoint to keep it. You are to lead my soldiers in battle, not in brawls. Both of you deserve to be put on a charge of mutiny. Hephaistion, I made you what you are. And not for this.”

Their eyes met. It was as if I saw them bleeding, letting the blood run down unheeding with faces of stone.

“I order you to renounce this quarrel. Under pain of death. If it breaks out again, you will both be on trial for treason. The proved aggressor will suffer the usual penalty. I shall not commute it.”

The crowd held its breath. It was not just the public reprimand of two such men, in itself a thing unheard of. They were Macedonians. They knew the legend.

The factions were sheathing their swords in furtive quiet. “At noon,” he said, “you will both report to me. You will shake hands before me and swear a reconcilement, which you will keep to in look, and word, and deed. Is that understood?”

He wheeled his horse and rode off. I slipped away in the crowd. I dared not look at Hephaistion’s face, in case he saw me there. I did not see it either when he took the oath before Alexander.

That night he had them both to supper. A gesture of forgiveness; but to both alike. That special kindness to Patroklos must be for another day.

I’d barely seen him, till it was time to dress. It was worse than I’d thought. He looked haggard, and hardly spoke. I dared say nothing. But when I was doing his hair, I took his head in my hands and laid my cheek on it. He gave a deep sigh and closed his eyes. “I had to do it. Nothing else was possible.”

“There are wounds that only kings must suffer, for the sake of all.” I had been a long time thinking what to say, that he’d forgive me after.

“Yes. That is the thing.”

I longed to embrace him, and tell him I would never have made him suffer it. But, I thought, they will make it up; what then? Besides, there was always the desert. So I just kissed him once, and went on with what I was doing.

Supper broke up early. I thought he’d just been afraid of their getting drunk and starting again. But he loitered in his tent instead of coming to bed; then put a dark cloak on and went out. I saw him throw a fold about his head; he didn’t want it seen where he was going, though he must have known I’d guess.

He was not very long away. They must have patched it up, after a fashion; one could tell that after. But if it had gone as he wished, he’d not have finished the night as he did with me. Nothing was said in words; much was said all the same, perhaps too much. I loved him, and could not help it.

Time passes, edges wear down. We camped three or four days more among the tall glossy horse-herds. Hephaistion and Eumenes addressed each other with quiet courtesy. Alexander went riding with Hephaistion, to choose him a horse. They came back laughing, much as they used, except that one knew it had been worked for. Time alone will not heal it, I thought; only the will to forget. “I shall not commute it.” The one knows those words were forced from him, the other that they were said. None of it can be undone, or talked away. But they have been bound so long, they will agree to forget; it is necessary, nothing else is possible.

We went up the passes, eastward to Ekbatana.

No snow, now, on the sevenfold ramparts; they glowed like jeweled necklaces on the mountain’s breast. Not sleet, but cool delightful breezes blew through the high airy rooms. The makeshift shutters were cleared away; it was a summer palace, with the King expected. Beautiful carpets covered the royal floors. Lamps of fretted silver and gilded bronze hung from the gold-leafed rafters, in the Bedchamber where Darius had struck my face, and I had stumbled out weeping into Nabarzanes’ arms.

The hills were green and full of streams; one could smell the heights. I would ride in them at last; we were to stay all summer.

At night he walked out on his balcony, to cool his head from the wine. I stood beside him. The plant-tubs smelled of lemon flowers and roses; the breeze came pure from the mountains. He said, “When first I came here, chasing Darius, though it was full winter, I said to myself, Someday I must come back.”

“I too. When I was with Darius, being chased by you, I said the same.”

“And here we are. Longing performs all things.” He gazed at the brilliant stars, conceiving new longings, as a poet conceives a song.

I knew the signs. He was absent and exalted, and would pace with brows creased in thought, which I always knew from trouble. One must never ask till he was ready. He would come out with it of a sudden, as if he’d given birth.

He was delivered one morning, so early that I was the first to hear. I found him up and walking about stark naked, as he must have been doing since before dawn. “It’s Arabia,” he said the moment he saw me. “Not the inland parts, that’s just a matter of seeing the tribesmen don’t raid the ports. It’s the coast we need; and no one knows how far it runs south or west. Just think. We can make harbors along Gedrosia, now we know where there’s water. From Karmania up the Persian Sea, that’s easy sailing. But we need to round Arabia. Once up the Arabian Gulf—that end’s well charted—you’re in Egypt. And from there, do you know this, there’s a channel right through to the Middle Sea? Their King Neko started it; and Darius the Great carried it through. It needs clearing and widening, that’s all. Once we round Arabia, if we can, ships can go all the way from the Indus, not just to Susa—to Alexandria, Piraeus, Ephesos. Cities made from small towns, villages where there was nothing; poor savages like Niarchos’ Fish-Eaters brought into the world of men; and all the great peoples sending their best to one another, sharing their thought. The sea’s the great road. Man has hardly set his foot on it.”

I was nearly running, to keep up and listen. “Italy, now. My sister’s husband died making war there, he should have waited for me. They’ll have to be brought into order before long, or that western tribe, the Romans, will have it all. Good fighters, I’ve heard. I should let them keep their own form of government; and I could use their troops to push the empire westward, along north Africa. I long to see the Pillars of Herakles; who knows what may lie beyond?”

There was much more. Sometimes snatches come back to me, and then I lose them; seeing only his face in the cool early light, worn and shining, worn fine like much-used gold; his deep eyes bright as a fire-altar; his tousled hair, faded yet still a boy’s; and the strong obedient body forgetful of its wounds, ready to face the tasks of another life-span, pacing as if already on its way.

“So Babylon must be the capital, at the center. The harbor should have slips for a thousand galleys. I shall go straight from here, to get started, and prepare the fleet for Arabia … Why are you looking sad?”

“Only at leaving Ekbatana. When do we go?”

“Oh, not till the cold begins. We will have our summer.” He turned his eyes to the mountains, and would have walked naked to the balcony, if I’d not put a robe on him. “What a place for a festival! We’ll have one before we go. It’s time I offered something to the immortals.”

We had our summer.

On the hills with the hounds crying, racing the clouds; in the rose garden with its lotus pools; in the high hall whose columns were sheathed with gold and silver, as I did my Dance of the River to the sound of flutes; in the great Bedchamber where I had been shamed and now was cherished, each day and night, I used to say to myself, I will miss nothing; I will never let my eye or my ear or my soul or my senses sleep, never forget to know that I am happy. For it will be a long campaign; who knows when we shall come back?

Thus the Wise God gives us prophecy enough, but not too much; as he does to birds, who foresee the winter, but not the night of ice that will drop them from the bough.

Alexander started at once to put in train his plans for the fleet, and the great harbor at Babylon, sending orders ahead. He wanted the north of the Hyrkanian Sea explored, to see how the coast led round to India. He also did much state business Darius would have handed to someone else; it was the custom for the King to take a holiday at Ekbatana. When I told Alexander so, he looked surprised, and said he was taking one; he had never been so idle in his life.

The summer before, we had been in Gedrosia. I would dabble my hand in the lotus pool, and think, I am happy. Let never a moment flow by me unthanked, unkissed.

One night I said, “Are you happy, Al’skander?”

He said smiling, “Couldn’t you tell?”

“Oh, yes, that. I mean here, in Ekbatana.”

“Happy?” he said, turning it over. “What is happiness?” He stroked me, so that I should know him grateful. “To have achieved one’s longing, yes. But also, when all one’s mind and body are stretched to breaking, when one hasn’t a thought beyond what to do next moment; one looks back after, and there it was.”

“You will never settle down, will you, Al’skander? Not even here.”

“Settle down? With all I have to do? I should hope not.”

He was already planning the autumn festival, and sent word of it to Greece. Hordes of actors and poets, singers and kitharists would be on the way. He was not inviting athletes. In the old days, he said, they had been all-round men, the heroes of their cities in war; now they had trained themselves into mere machines for winning one event. “A catapult can throw further than any soldier, but it can’t do anything else. It’s not good for the men to have such people beat them. Nor for the boys to see it.”

“The boys” now meant one thing to him. When the veterans left, returning to their wives and leaving, as soldiers do, the women who’d followed them with so much hardship, he had made the children his wards. He would not have them suffer in Macedon as unwanted foreign bastards; they should be reared for what they were, half Persian, half Macedonian, part of the harmony he’d prayed for at the Susa love-feast. Boys old enough to leave their mothers were at school already, and had come up here with the court. There were to be events for them at the games; he went sometimes to watch them training.

He went sometimes, too, along the latticed walk to the Harem. Roxane was like a sharp sauce to him; nauseous if one fills one’s plate with it, yet a little now and then will make one crave for the taste again. It did not trouble me.

Summer fled by in the cool sweet hills; the roses rested before their autumn flowering. There came a day of change. His face was smoothed with joy; he could talk about nothing long without, “Hephaistion thinks …” or “Hephaistion was saying …” Somewhere, perhaps up in the mountains riding alone, they had broken the wall, cast themselves into each other’s arms, were once again Achilles and Patroklos; they would begin forgetting.

In the wisdom of my hard schooling, I’d done nothing to delay it; no malice could be remembered against me now. I had shut in my silent heart, as always, “Say that you love me best of all.” So I kept what I had. He’d no need to forget the nights when he’d turned to me, and known that I understood. I had not defaced the legend.

Now that it was restored, polished and shining, I was aware of a relief. He’d not been himself without it. He had lived so long at stretch, in labors and wounds and sickness and endurance, it did not do for him to have the roots of his life disturbed.

Hephaistion must have known it; he was not a fool. I expect, indeed, in his heart he was still a lover. He’d felt he should be upheld against Eumenes, right or wrong. Just so the Macedonians felt about the Persians. Just so I felt, but had the sense to keep it quiet. Alexander attracted jealousy. He was much beloved; and he never turned love away.

Even in the cool air of Ekbatana, and doing no more than two men’s work, he still tired sooner than he’d done before his wound. I was glad this other wound was healing. He’d go more rested to Babylon, where the real work would begin.

Banners went up on gilded poles with sculptured finials. A city of tents arose, for the artists at the festival. The racecourse and the stadium were cleared and leveled. The architects made a theater, with a crane to fly on the gods, and a machine for wheeling in murdered corpses, which Greek poets set such store by. Thettalos, Alexander’s favorite actor, a handsome Thessalian in his fifties, was welcomed with open arms and given the best tent. They came pouring in, flute-players, chorus-boys, scene-painters, singers and dancers, rhapsodists, acrobats; high-class courtesans and low-class whores, among them some eunuchs so shameless and bedizened, I was ashamed to see them about. Traders swarmed everywhere, selling food and gewgaws and cloth and spices, and, of course, wine.

The Palace flowed with it. There was a party every night, for the artists, or for Alexander’s friends. Patroklos was back; he gave himself up to gaiety. For nights on end, I didn’t get him sober to bed. He was never dead drunk, knowing he couldn’t sleep it off next day; he had to be at the contests. His friends, not restrained by duty, often left the hall feet first. One gets used to this, when living among Macedonians.

While I was getting him into his state robe for the contest of choral odes, he said to me, “Hephaistion’s not well. He’s running a fever.”

Once he used never to talk of him to me; now he often would, after all our unspoken secrets. I said I was sorry, and hoped it was nothing much.

“He must have had it on him last night, if he’d only known it. I wish I’d kept down the drinking.” He went off, and the trumpets sounded.

Hephaistion was worse next day, and had cramps in his belly. Busy as he was, Alexander spent all his spare time with him. Achilles had always bound Patroklos’ wounds. He got him the most noted doctor in Ekbatana, a Greek called Glaukias; to whom he gave advice, as he told me after. But he really had some knowledge; Aristotle had taught it him, and he had kept it up. It was agreed the patient should take no solid food. The priests were told to sacrifice for his healing.

The third day he was lower; weak as a babe, rambling in his talk, and full of fever, so Alexander said. It was the day for the comedies and farces; he did not sit them out, just came from the sickroom in time to give the prizes. When I asked the news at evening, he said, “He’s better, I think. Restless and crotchety, a good sign. He’s strong, he’ll throw it off … I was sorry to disappoint the artists, but that was necessary.”

There was a party that night, but he left it early to see how Hephaistion was; reporting him asleep, and looking easier. Next day, though still with some fever, he was much better. Alexander attended all the contests; his absence had much upset the comedians. In the evening he found Hephaistion sitting up, and asking for food.

“I wish,” he said to me later, “I could have sent him something good from supper.” He was still fond of this pleasant custom. “But the belly-cramps leave a weakness in the entrails; I saw that often in the Oxos country. I told the doctor to be sure and keep him on slops.”

He still kept his bed, much better, but with a little fever at night, when the artists’ contest ended, and the games began.

Alexander loved the arts; but the games were his close concern. He presided over everything; always remembered the victor’s record in battle and in earlier games, when he gave the crowns. For such things the army loved him. After two or three days of this, came the day for the boys.

I’d played truant from the men’s events, finding better pastime in the artists’ quarter; but I went to the stadium for the boys’ race, to see the breed Alexander was rearing up. He was sure to want to talk about it after.

They looked healthy, having been well fed since he took them over; with features from nearly everywhere, all crossed with Macedonian; no doubt there’d be half-Indians too, when they were old enough. The half-Persians were far the handsomest. I sat just across the track from Alexander. At the march-past, they went off with their faces lit from his smile.

They lined up; the trumpet sounded; they sped from the marks. They wore little breechcloths from respect for Persian modesty, no more. A pretty sight, I was thinking; when I was aware of a stir about the throne. Some messenger was standing by Alexander. He had jumped to his feet. The steps behind had closed up with people; he shoved them aside before they could make way, he nearly stepped on them. He was gone, with those nearest him scrambling after.

I clambered from my place. I must know what it was; I might be needed. Being on the far side of the stadium delayed me. When I reached the Palace, the royal rooms were deserted. It was then I guessed.

I went up the stairs, turned a crooked passage; I had no need to ask the way. I had heard from the stairway the dreadful sound of grief, which lifted the hair on my head.

No one was guarding the door. A knot of men stood outside. I slipped in among them, unnoticed as a household dog. I had never been before in Hephaistion’s room. It was handsome, with red wall-hangings and a stand of silver vessels. A smell of sickness hung in the air. He lay on the bed, his face turned up, his mouth fallen open. Someone had closed his eyes. Grasping the body with both fists, lying across it, his mouth pressed to its face, was Alexander. He lifted his head, and gave again that dreadful cry; then buried his head in the dead hair.

After a while Perdikkas, awkward with shame and pity (yes, and already fear), said, “Alexander.”

He looked up. I stepped forward, caring for none of them. He had turned to me before, and knew that I understood. His gaze passed over me, empty. It seemed at that moment that for him I had never been. Lost, gone, possessed.

I looked at this strange room, never forgotten, where I stood like a dead thing unmourned, unburied, tossed naked into the night; at the bed with its burden, the wall-hangings of stags and archers, the silver ewers; the bed-table shoved askew, with something on it: an empty wine-jar tumbled on its side, and a platter with the picked carcass of a chicken.

Suddenly Alexander flung himself to his feet and stared at us, as if he might kill any one of us without caring which. “Where is the doctor?”

Ptolemy looked round to ask the servants, but they had long since fled. He said, “He must have gone to the games.”

I had withdrawn near the door, and was aware of something behind me. It was the man himself, slower than I had been to take alarm; just come, just aware of what he saw. Alexander sprang across like a beast of prey, fastened on him, and shook him to and fro. “You murderer! Why did you leave him? Why did you let him eat?”

The man, almost past words, stammered that he had seemed to be out of danger, that he had ordered him chicken broth.

Alexander said, “Hang him. Take him away and hang him. Do it now.”

Perdikkas looked at Ptolemy. His eyes were on Alexander; without moving them, he nodded. The man was dragged away, under Seleukos’ escort. Alexander went back to the bed, stared down at it, and lay where he had been before. The corpse moved, shaken with his sobbing.

More people were at the door, men of rank who’d just had the news. Those within all looked at one another helplessly. Peukestas touched my shoulder, and said softly in Persian, “You speak to him.”

I shook my head. Only one thing was wanting to my heart’s death, that he should hate me for being the one who was left alive.

So I ran away; through the city, through the stink and litter of the fair, through the street of the women, unseeing till I heard their laughter; into the country, I don’t know where. A cold stream I stumbled in waked my mind. I looked back at the city; the sun was sinking, the colored ramparts glowed. Did I run off, I thought, when his flesh was wounded? Now he is stricken in his mind and might hurt me in his madness, now I forsake him, a thing no dog would do.

Dusk was falling. My clothes were torn, my hands bleeding, from thorns I could not recall. Without even thinking to make myself presentable, I went straight back. There was much the same knot about the door. Within, dead silence.

Two or three men came out to talk apart. Ptolemy said softly, “We must get him out before it starts to stink, or he’ll lose his reason. Maybe for good.”

“By force then?” said Perdikkas. “He won’t come else. It must be all of us; it’s no time to be singled out.”

I slipped away. Nothing should get me in there, to see him look from that dead face to mine. I went to his room and waited.

He was quiet when they brought him in, no one was handling him. They all stood round him expressing grief and praising the dead, I daresay the first chance they’d had. His eyes moved from face to face, as if he were at bay among their spears. Suddenly he cried, “Liars! You all hated and envied him, all of you. Go, leave me alone.”

They exchanged looks and went. He stood in the state robe he’d worn for the games, white upon purple, all creased from being lain on. A groan burst from him, as if all the wounds he had borne in silence found voice at once. Then he turned and saw me.

I could not read his face. He had no weapon; but his hands were very strong. I went and knelt, and reached for his hand and kissed it.

He stared down at me and said, “You have mourned for him.”

It took me a moment to remember my brier-torn clothes, my scratched face and hands. I grasped a tear in my coat, and ripped it top to bottom.

He took me by the hair, and pulled back my face to look in it. I said to him with my eyes, When you come back I will be waiting, if I am alive. If not, it was my destiny. It seemed he would search me forever with his mad eyes, grasping my hair. Then he said, “You fetched him when Oxhead died. You honored him when he saved you from the desert. You never desired his death.”

I praised the dead to him, kneeling, grasping his hand. It was my confession, though he did not know it. I had welcomed my rival’s faults, hated his virtues. Now I drew them out with pain from where my wishes had buried them, and offered them, his trophies, wet with my blood. He was the victor forever, now.

Alexander’s eyes had wandered. He had not heard half I’d said. He let me go, returning to his solitude. Presently he lay down, and covered his face.

All next day he lay there, accepting no consolation. Though he let me take no care of him, he did not send me out; he seldom knew I was there. The generals acted on their own, canceling the games, getting the banners changed to wreaths of mourning. Seleukos, who had kept the doctor unhanged lest the King should change his mind, dared not ask, and hanged him. The embalmers, summoned in time, did their work upon Hephaistion. There were many Egyptians with the camp.

At night, without really seeing me, he let me give him water. Without his leave, I brought in cushions and slept there. At morning I saw him wake from a brief sleep, and endure remembrance. That day he wept, as if he had only now learned how. It was as if he had been stunned, and began to stir. Once he even thanked me. But his face was strange, and I dared not embrace him.

Next morning he was awake before me. He was standing with a dagger in his hand, hacking off his hair.

For a moment I thought his senses were quite gone, that he might next cut his throat or mine. Greeks in our day only lay one lock on the funeral pyre. Then I remembered Achilles, shearing his hair for Patroklos. So I found the trimming-knife, and said, “Let me do it. I’ll do it just as you want.”

“No,” he said, hacking away. “No, I must do it myself.” But he grew impatient with the back, and let me finish it, so that he could be off. Roused from his living death, staring wide awake, he went like a trail of fire.

He asked where was Hephaistion; but the embalmers had him, steeped in niter. He asked if the doctor had been hanged (Seleukos had been prudent there) and commanded the body to be nailed on a cross. He ordered the manes of all army horses to be cropped in mourning. He ordered the gold and the silver to be stripped from the battlements of Ekbatana, and the colors painted over black.

I followed where I could, in case he should lose the sense of where he was or become a child. I knew that he was mad. But he could tell where and with whom he was. He was obeyed in everything; Glaukias the doctor was black with crows.

I was trailing him, not too near in case he saw me, when he happened on Eumenes, who had seen his swift course too late. His face I couldn’t see; but I saw the terror in Eumenes’. He knew he was suspect of wishing Hephaistion dead.

Soon after, a rich catafalque appeared in the square before the Palace, hung with mourning wreaths. A message reached Alexander that friends of the dead had reared it, to dedicate their offerings. He came to see it. Eumenes was first; he dedicated his whole panoply of arms and armor, which were very costly. A whole procession followed him. Everyone came, who’d had a cross word with Hephaistion any time in the last five years.

Alexander watched calmly, like a child who is lied to and not deceived. He spared them not for their pretenses, but for their penitence and their fear.

When they had done, all who had really liked Hephaistion came and made offerings. I was surprised how many there were.

Next day Alexander planned the funeral. It was to be in Babylon, the new empire’s center, where his memorial would stand forever. When Darius sued for peace after the fall of Tyre, he’d offered as ransom for his mother and wife and children ten thousand talents. On Hephaistion, Alexander was spending twelve.

It quietened his mind, making these dispositions, choosing an architect for a royal pyre two hundred feet high, planning the funeral games, which were to have three thousand competitors. He was clear and precise in everything.

At bedtime, he would talk to me of Hephaistion as if memory could give him life; what they did as boys, what he’d said of this or that, how he trained his dogs. Yet I felt something unsaid; I felt his eyes when I turned away. I knew; he was thinking that his taking me had grieved Hephaistion; that he should make amends. Quietly he would put me aside, punishing himself not me, making his gift to the dead. He would do it, if once his resolve was set.

My mind ran like the hunted stag that scarcely knows it runs. I said, “It’s good that Eumenes and the rest made their dedications. He is at peace with them now. He has forgotten mortal anger. Of all men on earth he is only concerned with you, set as he is now among the immortals.”

He stepped away, leaving the towel in my hands, and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, till I feared he’d harm them. I don’t know what he saw in that sparkling darkness. Coming out of it, he said, “Yes. Yes. Yes. So it must be, nothing else is possible.”

I got him to bed and was going out, when he said, as briskly as he’d planned the games, “I shall send to Ammon’s oracle, tomorrow.”

I made some soft answer and crept off. What new turn had I given his madness? I had been thinking in Persian, when I spoke of the immortals; the souls of faithful men, safe through the River into Paradise. But Alexander, he had thought in Greek. He would ask the oracle for Hephaistion to be a god.

I tossed on my bed and wept. His resolve had set, he would do it. I thought of the Egyptians, the oldest people, scornful in their long history. They will mock him, I thought; they will mock him. Then I remembered; he is a deity himself already; Ammon acknowledged him. Without Hephaistion, he cannot bear even immortality.

So perfect was my grief, it made my mind white and empty, and I slept.

Next day he chose priests and envoys, and offerings for the god. The embassy left the day after.

After this he was much calmer; his madness healed a little from day to day, though all lived in fear of it. His friends made donations towards the funeral. Eumenes gave the most, no doubt remembering when his tent burned down; he would still walk a mile to avoid crossing Alexander’s path.

To throw off sorrow, I rode out to the hills. From there I looked back, and saw the sevenfold walls stripped of their glories, seven rings of black; and I wept again.