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

323 B. C.

THE ZIGGURAT OF BEL-MARDUK had been half ruinous for a century and a half, ever since Xerxes had humbled the gods of rebellious Babylon. The edges of its terraces had crumbled in landslides of bitumen and baked brick; storks nested on its ragged top, which had once held the god’s golden bedchamber and his sacred concubine in his golden bed. But this was only defacement; the ziggurat’s huge bulk had defied destruction. The walls of the inner city by the Marduk Gate were three hundred feet high, but the ziggurat still towered over them.

Near by was the god’s temple; this Xerxes’ men had succeeded in half demolishing. The rest of the roof was patched with thatch, and propped on shafts of rough-hewn timber. At the inner end, where the columns were faced with splendid but chipped enamels, there was still a venerable gloom, a smell of incense and burnt offerings. On an altar of porphyry, under a smoke-duct open to the sky, burned in its bronze basket the sacred fire. It was low; the fuel-box was empty. Its shaven acolyte looked from it to the priest. Abstracted though he was, it caught his eye.

“Fetch fuel. What are you about? Must a king die when it serves your laziness? Move! You were got when your mother was asleep and snoring.”

The acolyte made a sketchy obeisance; the temple discipline was not strict.

The priest said, after him, “It will not be yet. Maybe not even today. He is tough as a mountain lion, he will die hard.”

Two tall shadows fell at the temple’s open end. The priests who entered wore the high felt miters of Chaldeans. They approached the altar with ritual gestures, bowing with hand on mouth.

The priest of Marduk said, “Nothing yet?”

“No,” said the first Chaldean. “But it will be soon. He cannot speak; indeed he can scarcely breathe. But when his homeland soldiers made a clamor at the doors, demanding to see him, he had them all admitted. Not the commanders; they were there already. The spear-bearers, the common foot-men. They were half the morning passing through his bedchamber, and he greeted them all by signs. That finished him, and now he is in the death-sleep.”

A door behind the altar opened to let in two Marduk priests. It gave a glimpse of a rich interior; embroidered hangings, a gleam of gold. There was a smell of spiced meats cooking. The door closed on it.

The Chaldeans, reminded of an old scandal, exchanged glances. One of them said, “We did our best to turn him from the city. But he had heard that the temple had not been restored; and he thought we were afraid of him.”

A Marduk priest said stiffly, “The year has not been auspicious for great works. Nebuchadrezzar built in an inauspicious year. His foreign slaves rioted race against race, and threw each other off the tower. As for Sikandar, he would still be fortunate, sitting safe in Susa, if he had not defied the god.”

One of the Chaldeans said, “It seems to me he did well enough by the god, for all that he called him Herakles.” He looked round, pointedly, at the half-ruined building. He might as well have said aloud, “Where is the gold the King gave you to rebuild, have you eaten and drunk it all?”

There was a hostile silence. The chief of the Marduk priests said, with emollient dignity, “Certainly you gave him a true prediction. And since then have you read the heavens?”

The tall miters bent together in slow assent. The oldest Chaldean, whose beard was silver against his dark face and purple robe, signed to the Marduk priest, beckoning him to the broken end of the temple. “This,” he said, “is what is foretold for Babylon.” He swept round his gold-starred wand, taking in the crumbling walls, the threadbare roof, the leaning timber-props, the fire-stained paving. “This for a while, and then … Babylon was.”

He walked towards the entry and stood to listen; but the night noises were unchanged. “The heavens say it begins with the death of the King.”

The priest remembered the shining youth who, eight years before, had come offering treasure and Arabian incense; and the man who had returned this year, weathered and scarred, the red-gold hair sun-bleached and streaked with white; but with the deep eyes still burning, still ready with the careless, reflex charm of the youth beloved, still terrible in anger. The scent of the incense had lasted long on the air, the gold much longer in the treasury; even among men who liked good living, half was in the strongroom still. But for the priest of Bel-Marduk the pleasure had drained out of it. It spoke now of flames and blood. His spirit sank like the altar fire when the fuel was low.

“Shall we see it? Will a new Xerxes come?”

The Chaldean shook his head. “A dying, not a killing. Another city will rise and ours will wane. It is under the sign of the King.”

“What? Will he live, then, after all?”

“He is dying, as I told you. But his sign is walking along the constellations, further than we can reckon in years. You will not see it setting in your day.”

“So? Well, in his life he did us no harm. Maybe he will spare us dead.”

The astrologer frowned to himself, like an adult seeking words to reach a child. “Remember, last year, the fire that fell from heaven. We heard where it fell, and went there, a week’s journey. It had lit the city brighter than full moon. But we found, where it had struck, it had broken into red-hot embers, which had charred the earth around them. One had been set up by a farmer in his house, because that day his wife bore twin sons. But a neighbor had stolen it for its power; they fought, and both men died. Another piece fell at a dumb child’s feet, and speech came back to him. A third had kindled a fire that destroyed a forest. But the Magus of the place had taken the greatest piece, and built it into the fire-altar, because of its great light while it was in the sky. And all this from the one star. So it will be.”

The priest bowed his head. A fragrance drifted to him from the precinct’s kitchen. Better to invite the Chaldeans than let the meat spoil with waiting. Whatever the stars said, good food was good food.

The old Chaldean said, looking into the shadows, “Here where we stand, the leopard will rear her young.”

The priest made a decent pause. No sound from the royal palace. With luck, they might get something to eat before they heard the wailing.

The walls of Nebuchadrezzar’s palace were four feet thick, and faced with blue-glazed tiles for coolness; but the midsummer heat seeped in through everything. The sweat running down Eumenes’ wrist blotted the ink on his papyrus. The wax glistened moistly on the tablet he was fair-copying; he plunged it back into the cold-water tub where his clerk had left it, with the other drafts, to keep the surface set. Local scribes used wet clay; but that would have set hard before one could revise on it. For the third time he went to the doorway, seeking a slave to pull the punkah cord. Once again the dim hushed noises—soft feet, soft voices furtive or awed or grieving—sent him back behind the drawn door-curtain to his listless task. To clap the hands, to call, to shout an order, were all unthinkable.

He had not sought his clerk, a garrulous man; but he could have done with the silent slave and the waft of the punkah. He scanned the unfinished scroll pinned to his writing-board. It was twenty years since he had written with his own hand any letter not of high secrecy; why now was he writing one that would never go, short of a miracle? There had been many miracles; but, surely, not now. It was something to do, it shut out the unknown future. Sitting down again he retrieved the tablet, propped it, dried his hand on the towel the clerk had left, and picked up his pen.

And the ships commanded by Niarchos will muster at the river-mouth, where I shall review them while Perdikkas is bringing the army down from Babylon; and sacrifices will be made there to the appropriate gods. I shall then take command of the land force and begin the march to the west. The first stage …

When he was five, before he’d been taught to write, he came to me in the King’s business room. “What’s that, Eumenes?” “A letter.” “What’s the first word that you’ve written big?” “Your father’s name. PHILIP, King of the Macedonians. Now I’m busy, run back to your play.” “Make me my name. Do, dear Eumenes. Please.” I gave it him written, on the back of a spoiled despatch. Next day he’d learned it, and carved it all over the wax for a royal letter to Kersobleptes of Thrace. He had my ruler across his palm …

Because of the heat he had left open his massive door. A brisk stride, half hushed like all other sounds, approached it. Ptolemy pushed aside the curtain and drew it to behind him. His craggy war-weathered face was creased with fatigue; he had been up all night, without the stimulus of action. He was forty-three, and looked older. Eumenes waited, wordlessly.

“He has given his ring to Perdikkas,” Ptolemy said.

There was a pause. Eumenes’ alert Greek face—not a bookish one, he had had his share of soldiering—searched the impassive Macedonian’s. “For what? As deputy? Or as Regent?”

“Since he could not speak,” said Ptolemy drily, “we shall never know.”

“If he has accepted death,” Eumenes reasoned, “we may presume the second. If not …?”

“It’s all one, now. He neither sees nor hears. He is in the death-sleep.”

“Do not be sure. I have heard of men who were thought already dead, and who said later that they heard everything.”

Ptolemy suppressed an impatient gesture. These wordy Greeks. Or what is he afraid of? “I came because you and I have known him since he was born. Don’t you want to be there?”

“Do the Macedonians want me there?” An ancient bitterness pinched, for a moment, Eumenes’ mouth.

“Oh, come. Everyone trusts you. We shall need you before long.”

Slowly the Secretary began to put his desk in order. He said, wiping his pen, “And nothing, to the last, about an heir?”

“Perdikkas asked him, while he could still get a whisper out. He only said, ‘To the best man. Hoti to kratisto.’”

Eumenes thought, They say dying men can prophesy. He shivered.

“Or,” Ptolemy added, “so Perdikkas told us. He was leaning over. Nobody else could hear.”

Eumenes put down the pen and looked up sharply. “Or Krateros? You say he whispered, he was short of breath.” They looked at one another. Krateros, the highest-ranking of all Alexander’s staff, was on the march to Macedon, to take over the regency from Antipatros. “If he’d been in the room …”

Ptolemy shrugged. “Who knows?” To himself he thought. If Hephaistion had been there … But if he’d lived, none of this would have happened. He’d have done none of the crazy things he’s dying of. Coming to Babylon in midsummer—boating about in the filthy swamps down river … But one did not discuss Hephaistion with Eumenes. “This door weighs like an elephant. Do you want it shut?”

Pausing on the threshold, Eumenes said, “Nothing about Roxane and the child? Nothing?”

“Four months to go. And what if it’s a girl?”

They moved into the shadowy corridor, tall big-boned Macedonian and slender Greek. A young Macedonian officer came blundering towards them, almost ran into Ptolemy, and stammered an apology. Ptolemy said, “Is there any change?”

“No, sir, I don’t think so.” He swallowed violently; they saw that he was crying.

When he had gone, Ptolemy said, “That boy believes in it. I can’t yet.”

“Well, let us go.”

“Wait.” Ptolemy took his arm, led him back into the room, and dragged-to the great ebony door on its groaning hinges. “I’d best tell you this while we’ve time. You should have known before, but …”

“Yes, yes?” said Eumenes impatiently. He had quarreled with Hephaistion shortly before he died, and Alexander had never been easy with him since.

Ptolemy said, “Stateira is pregnant, too.”

Eumenes, who had been fidgeting to be gone, was struck into stillness. “You mean Darius’ daughter?”

“Who else do you suppose? She is Alexander’s wife.”

“But this changes everything. When did …?”

“Don’t you remember? No, of course, you’d gone on to Babylon. When he came to himself after Hephaistion died” (one could not avoid the name forever) “he went to war with the Kossaians. My doing; I told him they’d demanded road-toll, and got him angry. He needed to be doing something. It did him good. When he’d dealt with them, and was heading here, he stopped a week at Susa, to call upon Sisygambis.”

“That old witch,” said Eumenes bitterly. But for her, he thought, the King’s friends would never have been saddled with Persian wives. The mass wedding at Susa had gone by like some drama of superhuman magnificence, till suddenly he had found himself alone in a scented pavilion, in bed with a Persian noblewoman whose unguents repelled him, and whose only Greek consisted of “Greeting, my lord.”

“A great lady,” said Ptolemy. “A pity his mother was not like her. She would have had him married before he set out from Macedon, and seen that he got a son. He could have had an heir of fourteen by this time. She’d not have sickened him with marriage while he was a child. Whose fault was it that he wasn’t ready for a woman till he met the Bactrian?” Thus, unofficially, did most Macedonians refer to Roxane.

“Done is done. But Stateira … Does Perdikkas know?”

“That’s why he asked him to name his heir.”

“And still he would not?”

“‘To the best’, he said. He left it to us, to the Macedonians, to choose when they came of age. Yes, he’s a Macedonian at the last.”

“If they are boys,” Eumenes reminded him.

Ptolemy, who had been withdrawn into his thought, said, “And if they come of age.”

Eumenes said nothing. They went down the dim corridor with its blue-tiled walls towards the death-chamber.

Nebuchadrezzar’s bedroom, once ponderously Assyrian, had been Persianized by successive kings from Kyros on. Kambyses had hung its walls with the trophies of conquered Egypt; Darius the Great had sheathed its columns with gold and malachite; Xerxes had pegged across one side the embroidered robe of Athene, looted from the Parthenon. The second Artaxerxes had sent for craftsmen of Persepolis to make the great bed in which Alexander now lay dying.

Its dais was covered with crimson tapestries worked in bullion. The bed was nine feet by six; Darius the Third, a man seven feet tall, had had ample room. The high canopy was upheld by four golden fire-daimons with silver wings and jeweled eyes. Propped on heaped pillows to help him breathe, and looking small among all these splendors, the dying man lay naked. A thin linen sheet had been spread half over him when he had ceased to toss about and throw it off. Damp with sweat, it clung to him as if sculpted.

In a monotonous cycle, his shallow rattling breath grew gradually louder, then ceased. After a pause during which no other breath was drawn in the crowded room, it started again, slowly, the same crescendo.

Until lately there had been scarcely another sound. Now that he had ceased responding to voice or touch, a soft muttering began to spread, too cautious and muted to be located; a ground-bass to the strong rhythm of death.

Perdikkas by the bed’s head lifted at Ptolemy his dark heavy eyebrows; a tall man, with the Macedonian build but not the coloring, and a face on which authority, long habitual, was growing. His silent gesture of the head signaled “No change yet.”

The movement of a peacock fan drew Ptolemy’s eye across the bed. There, as he had been for days, seemingly without sleep, seated on the dais was the Persian boy. So Ptolemy still thought of him though by now he must be three-and-twenty; with eunuchs it was hard to tell. At sixteen, he had been brought to Alexander by a Persian general involved in Darius’ murder, to give exonerating evidence. This he was well placed to do, having been the King’s minion, with inside knowledge of the court. He had stayed on to give his story to the chroniclers, and had never been far from Alexander since. Not much was on view today of the famous beauty which had dazzled two kings running. The great dark eyes were sunk in a face more drawn than the fever-wasted one on the pillows. He was dressed like a servant; did he think that if he was noticed he would be turned out? What does he think, Ptolemy wondered. He must have lain with Darius in this very bed.

A fly hovered over Alexander’s sweat-glazed forehead. The Persian chased it off, then put down the fan to dip a towel in a basin of mint-scented water, and wipe the unmoving face.

At first Ptolemy had disliked this exotic presence haunting Alexander’s living-quarters, encouraging him to assume the trappings of Persian royalty and the manners of a Persian court, having his ear day and night. But he was a fixture one had grown used to. Through Ptolemy’s own grief and sense of looming crisis, he felt a stir of pity. Walking over, he touched him on the shoulder.

“Get some rest, Bagoas. Let one of the other chamberlains do all this.” A knot of court eunuchs, ageing relicts of Darius and even of Ochos, advanced officiously. Ptolemy said, “He won’t know now, you know.”

Bagoas looked round. It was as if he had been told he was condemned to immediate execution, a sentence long expected. “Never mind,” said Ptolemy gently. “It’s your right; stay if you wish.”

Bagoas touched his fingers to his forehead. The interruption was over. With his eyes fixed once more on the closed eyes of Alexander, he waved the fan, shifting the hot Babylonian air. He had staying power, Ptolemy reflected. He had weathered even the brainstorm after Hephaistion’s death.

Against the wall nearest the bed, on a massive table like an altar, Hephaistion was still enshrined. Enshrined and multiplied; here were the votive statuettes and busts presented by condolent friends, assiduous place-seekers, scared men who had once had words with the dead; commissioned by the best artists found at short notice, to comfort Alexander’s grief. Hephaistion stood in bronze, a nude Ares with shield and spear; precious in gold armor with ivory face and limbs; in tinted marble with a gilded laurel crown; as a silver battle-standard for the squadron which was to bear his name; and as a demigod, the first maquette for the cult-statue of his temple in Alexandria. Someone had cleared a space to put down some sickroom object, and a small Hephaistion in gilded bronze had fallen over. With a quick glance at the blind face on the pillows, Ptolemy set it up again. Let them wait till he’s gone.

The small sound drew Eumenes’ eye, which quickly looked away again.

Ptolemy thought, You’ve nothing to fear now, have you? Oh yes, he could be arrogant now and then. Towards the end, he thought he was the only one who understood—and how far was he wrong? Accept it, Eumenes, he was good for Alexander. I knew when they were boys at school. He was somebody in himself and both of them knew it. That pride you didn’t like was Alexander’s salvation; never fawning, never pushing, never envious, never false. He loved Alexander and never used him, kept pace with him at Aristotle’s lessons, never on purpose lost a match to him. To the end of his days he could talk to Alexander man to man, could tell him he was wrong, and never for a moment feared him. He saved him from solitude, and who knows what else? Now he’s gone, and this is what we have. If he were alive, we’d all be feasting today in Susa, whatever the Chaldeans say.

A frightened physician, pushed from behind by Perdikkas, laid a hand on Alexander’s brow, fingered his wrist, muttered gravely and backed away. As long as he could speak, Alexander had refused to have a doctor near him; and even when he was light-headed, none could be found to physic him, lest they should later be accused of having given him poison. It was all one now; he was no longer swallowing. Curse that fool quack, Ptolemy thought, who let Hephaistion die while he went off to the games. I’d hang him again if I could.

It had long seemed that when the harsh breathing changed, it could only be for the death-rattle. But as if the doctor’s touch had stirred a flicker of life, the stridor took a more even rhythm, and the eyelids were seen to move. Ptolemy and Perdikkas each took a step forward. But the self-effacing Persian by the bed, whom everyone had forgotten, put down the fan and, as if no one else were in sight, leaned intimately over the pillowed head, his long light-brown hair falling around it. He whispered softly. Alexander’s grey eyes opened. Something disturbed the silky cloak of hair.

Perdikkas said, “He moved his hand.”

It was still now, the eyes shut again, though Bagoas, as if transfixed, was still gazing down at them. Perdikkas’ mouth tightened; all kinds of people were here. But before he could walk up with a reprimand, the Persian had resumed his station and picked up his fan. But for its movement, he could have been a statue carved from ivory.

Ptolemy became aware of Eumenes speaking to him. “What?” he said harshly. He was near to tears.

“Peukestes is coming.”

The huddled functionaries parted to admit a tall well-built Macedonian dressed as a Persian, even—to most of his countrymen’s shocked disapproval—down to the trousers. When given the satrapy of Persis he had adopted the native dress to please Alexander, not unaware that it suited him. He strode forward, his eyes on the bed. Perdikkas advanced to meet him.

There was a low buzz of talk. The eyes of the two men exchanged their message. Perdikkas said formally, for the benefit of the company, “Did you receive an oracle from Sarapis?”

Peukestes bowed his head. “We kept the night-watch. The god said at dawn, ‘Do not bring the King to the temple. It will be better for him where he is.’”

No, thought Eumenes, there will be no more miracles. For a moment, when the hand had moved, he had almost believed in another.

He turned round looking for Ptolemy; but he had gone off somewhere to put his face in order. It was Peukestes who, coming away from the bedside, said to him, “Does Roxane know?”

The palace harem was a spacious cloister built around a lily-pond. Here too were hushed voices, but differently pitched; the few men in this female world were eunuchs.

None of the women whose home the harem was had set eyes on the dying King. They had heard well of him; they had been kept by him in comfort and unmolested; they had awaited a visit that never came. And that was all, except that they knew of no male heir who would inherit them; in a little while there would even, it seemed, be no Great King. The voices were muted with secretive fear.

Here were all the women Darius had left behind him when he marched to his fate at Gaugamela. His favorites, of course, he had taken with him; these who remained were something of a mixture. His older concubines, from his days as a nobleman unplaced in line for the throne, had long been installed at Susa; here were girls found for him after his accession, who had failed to retain his interest, or had come too late to be noticed by him at all. As well as all these, there were the survivors of King Ochos’ harem, who could not in decency be put out of doors when he died. An unwelcome legacy, they formed with one or two old eunuchs a little clique of their own, hating the women of Darius, that usurper they suspected of complicity in their master’s death.

For Darius’ concubines it was another matter. When brought there they had been fourteen, fifteen, eighteen at most. They had known the real drama of the harem; the rumors and intrigues; the bribery to get first news of a royal visit; the long intricacies of the toilet, the inspired placing of a jewel; the envious despair when the menstrual days enforced retirement; the triumph when a summons was received in a rival’s presence; the gift of honor after a successful night.

From a few such nights had come one or two little girls of eight or so, who were dabbling in the pool and telling each other solemnly that the King was dying. There had been boys too. When Darius fell, they had been spirited away with every kind of stratagem, their mothers taking it for granted that the new, barbarian King would have them strangled. Nobody, however, had come looking for them; they had returned in time and now, being of an age to be brought out from among women, were being reared as men by distant kindred.

With the long absence of any King from Babylon, the harem had grown slack. At Susa, where Sisygambis the Queen Mother lived, everything was impeccable. But here they had seen little even of Darius, nothing of Alexander. One or two of the women had managed to intrigue with men from outside and run away with them; the eunuchs, whom Ochos would have impaled for negligence, had kept it quiet. Some girls in the long idle days had had affairs with one another; the resulting jealousies and scenes had enlivened many hot Assyrian nights. One girl had been poisoned by a rival; but that too had been hushed up. The Chief Warden had taken to smoking hemp, and disliked being disturbed.

Then, after years in the unknown east, after legendary victories, wounds, perils in deserts, the King sent word of his return. The harem had aroused itself as if from sleep. The eunuchs had fussed. All through the winter, the Babylonian season of gentle warmth, when feasts were held, he was expected but did not come. Rumor reached the palace that a boyhood friend had died—some said a lover—and it had sent him mad. Then he had come to himself, but was at war with the mountain Kossaians. The harem slipped back into its lethargy. At last he was on his way, but had broken his march at Susa. Setting out again, he had been met by embassies from all the peoples of the earth, bringing him golden crowns and asking him for counsel. Then, when late spring was heating up for summer, the earth had shaken under the horses and the chariots, the elephants and the marching men; and the palace had seethed with the long-forgotten hustle of a king’s arrival.

Next day, it was announced that the King’s Chief Eunuch of the Bedchamber would inspect the harem. This formidable person was awaited with dread; but turned out, shockingly, to be little more than a youth, none other than the notorious Bagoas, minion of two kings. Not that he failed to impress. He was wearing silk, stuff never seen within those walls, and shimmered like a peacock’s breast. He was Persian to his fingertips, which always made Babylonians feel provincial; and ten years at courts had polished his manners like old silver. He greeted without embarrassment any eunuchs he had met in Darius’ day, and bowed respectfully to some of the older ladies. Then he came to business.

He could not say when the King’s urgent concerns would give him leisure to visit the harem; no doubt he would find in any case the perfect order which declares respect. One or two shortcomings were obliquely hinted at (“I believe the custom is so-and-so at Susa”) but the past was left unprobed. The wardens were concealing sighs of relief, when he asked to see the rooms of the royal ladies.

They led him through. These rooms of state were secluded from the rest, and had their own courtyard, exquisitely tiled. There had been some dismay at their abandoned state, the dry plants and withered creepers, the clogged fountain with green scum and dead fish. All this had been seen to, but the rooms still had the dank smell of long disuse. Silently, just opening his delicate nostrils, Bagoas indicated this.

The rooms of the Royal Wife, despite neglect, were still luxurious; Darius, though self-indulgent, had been generous too. They led him on to the smaller, but still handsome rooms for the Queen Mother. Sisygambis had stayed here in an early year of her son’s short reign. Bagoas looked them over, his head tilted slightly sideways. Unconsciously, over the years, he had picked up this tic from Alexander.

“Very pleasant,” he said. “At any rate it can be made so. As you know, the lady Roxane is on her way here from Ekbatana. The King is anxious that she should have an easy journey.” The eunuchs pricked up their ears; Roxane’s pregnancy was not yet public news. “She will be here in about seven days. I will order some things, and send in good craftsmen. Please see they do all they should.”

In a speaking pause, the eunuchs’ eyes turned towards the rooms of the Royal Wife. Those of Bagoas followed them, inexpressively.

“Those rooms will be closed at present. Just see they are well aired and kept sweet. You have a key for the outer door? Good.” No one said anything. He added, blandly, “There is no need to show these rooms to the lady Roxane. If she should ask, say they are in disrepair.” He left politely, as he had come.

At the time, they had decided that Bagoas must have some old score to pay. Favorites and wives were traditional antagonists. The rumor ran that early in her marriage Roxane had tried to poison him, but had never again tried anything, so dreadful had been the anger of the King. The furniture and hangings now sent in were costly, and the finished rooms lacked nothing of royal splendor. “Don’t be afraid of extravagance,” Bagoas had said. “That is to her taste.”

Her caravan duly arrived from Ekbatana. Handed down the steps of her traveling-wagon she had proved to be a young woman of striking, high-nosed beauty, with blueblack hair and dark brilliant eyes. Her pregnancy hardly showed except in opulent softness. She spoke fluent Persian, though with a Bactrian accent which her Bactrian suite did nothing to correct; and had gained a fair command of Greek, a tongue unknown to her before her marriage. Babylon was as foreign to her as India; she had settled without demur in the rooms prepared for her, remarking that they were smaller than those at Ekbatana, but much prettier. They had their own small courtyard, elegant and shady. Darius, who had held his mother in awe as well as in esteem, had always been attentive to her comfort.

Next day a chamberlain, this time of venerable age, announced the King.

The eunuchs waited anxiously. What if Bagoas had acted without authority? The King’s anger was said to be rare, but terrible. However, he greeted them courteously in his scanty, formal Persian, and made no comment when shown to Roxane’s rooms.

Through chinks and crannies known in the harem since the days of Nebuchadrezzar, the younger concubines glimpsed him on his way. They reported him handsome in countenance, for a westerner at least (fair coloring was not admired in Babylon); and he was not tall, a grave defect, but this they had known already. Surely he must be older than thirty-two, for his hair had grey in it; but they owned that he had presence, and awaited his return to see him again. They expected a lengthy vigil; but he was back in barely the time it would take a careful woman to bathe and dress.

This made the younger ladies hopeful. They cleaned their jewels and reviewed their cosmetics. One or two, who from boredom had let themselves get grossly fat, were derided and cried all day. For a week, each morning dawned full of promise. But the King did not come. Instead, Bagoas reappeared, and conferred in private with the Chief Warden. The heavy door of the Royal Wife’s room was opened, and they went inside.

“Yes,” said Bagoas. “Not much is needed here. Just there, and there, fresh hangings. The toilet-vessels will be in the treasury?”

Thankfully (they had tempted him more than once) the Warden sent for them; they were exquisite, silver inlaid with gold. A great clothes-chest of cypress-wood stood against the wall. Bagoas raised the lid; there was a drift of faded fragrance. He lifted out a scarf stitched with seed-pearls and small gold beads.

“These, I suppose, were Queen Stateira’s?”

“Those she did not take with her. Darius thought nothing too good for her.”

Except his life, each thought in the awkward pause. His flight at Issos had left her to end her days under the protection of his enemy. Under the scarf was a veil edged with green scarab-wings from Egypt. Bagoas fingered it gently. “I never saw her. The loveliest woman of mortal birth in Asia—was that true?”

“Who has seen every woman in Asia? Yes, it well may be.”

“At least I have seen her daughter.” He put back the scarf and closed the chest. “Leave all these things. The lady Stateira will like to have them.”

“Has she set out from Susa yet?” A different question trembled on the Warden’s lips.

Bagoas, well aware of it, said deliberately, “She will be coming when the worst of the heat is over. The King is anxious she should have an easy journey.”

The Warden caught a sharp breath. Fat old chamberlain and slender glittering favorite, their eyes exchanged the immemorial communication of their kind. It was the Warden who spoke first.

“So far, everything has gone smoothly there.” He glanced towards the other set of rooms. “But as soon as these apartments are opened, there will be talk. There is no preventing it. You know that as well as I do. Does the King intend to tell the lady Roxane?”

For a moment, Bagoas’ urbane polish cracked, revealing a deep settled grief. He sealed it off again. “I will remind him if I can. It is not easy just now. He is planning the funeral of his friend Hephaistion, who died at Ekbatana.”

The Warden would have liked to ask if it was true that this death had sent the King out of his mind for a month or more. But Bagoas’ polish had hardened, warningly. Quickly the Warden smoothed away curiosity. They said of Bagoas that, if he chose, he could be the most dangerous man at court.

“In that case,” said the Warden carefully, “we might delay the work for a while? If I am asked questions, without any sanction from the King …?”

Bagoas paused, looking for a moment uncertain and still quite young; but he answered crisply, “No, we have had our orders. He will expect to find them obeyed.”

He left, and did not return. It was reported in the harem that the funeral of the King’s friend surpassed that of Queen Semiramis, renowned in story; that the pyre had been a burning ziggurat two hundred feet high. But, said the Warden to anyone who would listen, that was a little fire to the one he had had to face when the Royal Wife’s rooms were opened, and news reached the lady Roxane.

At her mountain home in Bactria, the harem eunuchs had been family servants and slaves, who knew their place. The ancient dignities of the palace chamberlains seemed to her mere insolence. When she ordered the Warden a flogging, she was enraged to find no one empowered to inflict it. The old Bactrian eunuch she had brought from home, despatched to tell the King, reported that he had taken a flotilla down the Euphrates to explore the swamps. When he got back she tried again; first he was busy, and then he was indisposed.

Her father, she was sure, would have seen to it that the Warden was put to death. But the satrapy conferred on him by the King was on the Indian frontier; by the time she could hear back from him, her son would have been born. The thought appeased her. She said to her Bactrian ladies, “Let her come, this great tall flagpole from Susa. The King cannot abide her. If he must do this to please the Persians, what is that to me? Everyone knows that I am his real wife, the mother of his son.”

The ladies said in secret, “I would not be that child, if it is a girl.”

The King did not come, and Roxane’s days hung heavy. Here, at what was to be the center of her husband’s empire, she might as well be encamped in Drangiana. She could, if she wished, have entertained the concubines. But these women had been living for years in royal palaces, some of them since she had been a child on her father’s mountain crag. She thought with dread of assured Persian elegance, sophisticated talk tossed spitefully over her head. Not one had crossed her threshold; she had rather be thought haughty than afraid. One day however she found one of the ancient crannies; it passed the time to lay an ear to it and hear them talking.

So it was that, when Alexander had been nine days down with marsh-fever, she heard a palace chamberlain gossiping with a harem eunuch. From this she learned two things: that the sickness had flown to the King’s chest, and he was like to die; and that the daughter of Darius was with child.

She did not pause, even to hear them out. She called her Bactrian eunuch and her ladies, threw on a veil, brushed past the stunned Nubian giant who guarded the harem, and only answered his shrill cries with, “I must see the King.”

The palace eunuchs came running. They could do nothing but run after her. She was the King’s wife, not a captive; she stayed in the harem only because to leave it was unthinkable. On the long marches, out to India and back to Persia and down to Babylon, wherever the King pitched camp her baggage wagons had unpacked the wicker screens which had made her a traveling courtyard, so that she could leave her covered wagon and take the air. In the cities she had her curtained litter, her latticed balconies. All this was not her sentence but her right; it was only whores whom men displayed. Now, when the unprecedented happened, to lay hands on her was inconceivable. Guided by her trembling eunuch, her progress followed by astonished eyes, she swept through corridors, courtyards, anterooms, till she reached the Bedchamber. It was the first time she had entered it; or, for that matter, his own sleeping-place anywhere else. He had never summoned her to his bed, only gone to hers. It was the custom of the Greeks, so he had told her.

She paused in the tall doorway, seeing the high cedar ceiling, the daimon-guarded bed. It was like a hall of audience. Generals, physicians, chamberlains, stupid with surprise, stood back as she made her way to him.

The heaped pillows that propped him upright gave him still the illusion of authority. His closed eyes, his parted and gasping mouth, seemed like a willed withdrawal. She could not be in his presence without believing that everything was still under his control.

“Sikandar!” she cried, slipping back into her native dialect. “Sikandar!”

His eyelids, creased and bloodless in sunken sockets, moved faintly but did not open. The thin skin tightened, as if to shut out a harsh glare of sun. She saw that his lips were cracked and dry; the deep scar in his side, from the wound he had got in India, stretched and shrank with his laboring breath.

“Sikandar, Sikandar!” she cried aloud. She grasped him by the arm.

He took a deeper breath, and choked on it. Someone leaned over with a towel, and wiped bloody froth from his lips. He did not open his eyes.

As if she had known nothing till now, a cold dagger of realization stabbed her. He was gone out of reach; he would no longer direct her journeys. He would decide nothing, ever again; would never tell her what she had come to ask. For her, for the child within her, he was already dead.

She began to wail, like a mourner over a bier, clawing her face, beating her breast, tearing at her clothes, shaking her disheveled hair. She flung herself forward, her arms across the bed, burying her face in the sheet, hardly aware of the hot, still living flesh beneath it. Someone was speaking; a light, young voice, the voice of a eunuch.

“He can hear all this; it troubles him.”

There was a strong grasp on her shoulders, pulling her back. She might have recognized Ptolemy, from the triumphs and processions seen from her lattices; but she was looking across the bed, perceiving who had spoken. She would have guessed, even if she had not seen him once in India, gliding down the Indus on Alexander’s flagship, dressed in the brilliant stuffs of Taxila, scarlet and gold. It was the hated Persian boy, familiar of this room she had never entered; he, too, a custom of the Greeks, though her husband had never told her so.

His menial clothes, his haggard exhausted face, conceded nothing. No longer desirable, he had become commanding. Generals and satraps and captains, whose obedience should be to her, who should be rousing the King to answer her, to name his heir—they listened, submissive, to this dancing-boy. As for her, she was an intrusion.

She cursed him with her eyes, but already his attention was withdrawn from her, as he beckoned a slave to take the bloodstained towel, and checked the clean pile beside him. Ptolemy’s hard hands released her; the hands of her attendants, gentle, supplicating, insistent, guided her towards the door. Someone picked up her veil from the bed and threw it over her.

Back in her own room, she flung herself down in a furious storm of weeping, pummeling and biting the cushions of her divan. Her ladies, when they dared speak to her, implored her to spare herself, lest the child miscarry. This brought her to herself; she called for mare’s milk and figs, which she chiefly craved for lately. Dark fell; she tossed on her bed. At length, dry-eyed, she got up, and paced to and fro in the moon-dappled courtyard, where the fountain murmured like a conspirator in the hot Babylonian night. Once she felt the child move strongly. Laying her hands over the place, she whispered, “Quiet, my little king. I promise you … I promise …”

She went back to bed, and fell into a heavy sleep. She dreamed she was in her father’s fort on the Sogdian Rock, a rampart-guarded cavern under the mountain’s crest, with a thousand-foot drop below. The Macedonians were besieging it. She looked down at the swarming men, scattered like dark grains upon the snow; at the red starry campfires plumed with faint smoke; at the colored dots of the tents. The wind was rising, moaning over the crag. Her brother called to her to fit arrowheads with the other women; he rebuked her idleness, and shook her. She woke. Her woman let go her shoulder, but did not speak. She had slept late, the sun was hot in the courtyard. Yet the wind soughed on; the world was full of its noise, rising and falling, like its winter voice when it blew from the immeasurable ranges of the east … But this was Babylon.

Here it died down and there it rose, and now it came close at hand, the high wailing of the harem; she could hear now its formal rhythm. The woman beside her, seeing her awake, at once began lamenting, crying out the ancient phrases offered to the widows of Bactrian chieftains time out of mind. They were looking at her. It was for her to lead the dirge.

Obediently she sat up, dragged at her hair, drummed with her fists on her breast. She had known the words since her childhood: “Alas, alas! The light is fallen from the sky, the lion of men is fallen. When he lifted his sword, a thousand warriors trembled; when he opened his hand, it shed gold like the sands of the sea. When he rejoiced, it gladdened us like the sun. As the storm-wind rides the mountains, so he rode to war; like the tempest that fells great forest trees, he rode into the battle. His shield was a strong roof over his people. Darkness is his portion, his house is desolate. Alas! Alas! Alas!”

She laid her hands in her lap. Her wailing ceased. The women, startled, stared at her. She said, “I have lamented; I have finished now.” She beckoned her chief waiting-woman and waved the rest away.

“Bring my old traveling-gown, the dark-blue one.” It was found, and dust shaken out of it from the Ekbatana road. The stuff was strong; she had to nick it with her paring-knife before it would tear. When she had rent it here and there, she put it on. Leaving her hair uncombed, she ran her hand over a dusty cornice and smeared her face. Then she sent for her Bactrian eunuch.

“Go to the harem, and ask the lady Badia to visit me.”

“Hearing is obedience, madam.” How did she know the name of Ochos’ first-ranking concubine? But it was clearly no time for questions.

From her listening-place, Roxane could hear the fluster in the harem. Some were still wailing for the King, but most were chattering. After a short delay for preparation, Badia appeared, dressed in the mourning she had put on for King Ochos, fifteen years before, smelling of herbs and cedar-wood. For Darius she had not worn it.

Ochos had reigned for twenty years, and she had been a concubine of his youth. She was in her fifties, graceful once, now gaunt. Long before his death she had been left behind in Babylon while younger girls were taken along to Susa. But she had ruled the harem in her time, and did not forget.

Some minutes were passed in orthodox condolences. Badia lauded the valor of the King, his justice, his bounty. Roxane responded as was proper, swaying and keening softly. Presently she wiped her eyes, and made a few broken answers. Badia offered the immemorial consolation.

“The child will be his remembrance. You will see him grow to rival his father’s honor.”

All this was formula. Roxane abandoned it. “If he lives,” she sobbed. “If Darius’ accursed kindred let him live. But they will kill him. I know, I know it.” She grasped her hair in both hands and moaned.

Badia caught her breath, her lean face shocked with memory. “Oh, the good God! Will those days come again?”

Ochos had achieved the throne by wholesale fratricide, and died by poison. Roxane had no wish to hear reminiscences. She flung back her hair. “How can they not? Who murdered King Ochos when he lay sick? And the young King Arses and his loyal brothers? And Arses’ little son, still at the breast? And when it was done, who killed the Vizier his creature, to stop his mouth? Darius! Alexander told me so.”

(“I used to think so,” Alexander had told her not long before, “but that was before I’d fought him. He’d not spirit enough to be more than the Vizier’s tool. He killed him after because he was afraid of him. That was just like the man.”)

“Did the King say so? Ah, the lion of justice, the redresser of wrongs!” Her voice rose, ready to wail again; Roxane lifted a quick repressive hand.

“Yes, he avenged your lord. But my son, who will avenge him? Ah, if you knew!”

Badia raised sharp black eyes, avid with curiosity. “What is it, lady?”

Roxane told her. Alexander, still sick with grief for his boyhood friend, had gone before, leaving her in safety at Ekbatana, to purge of bandits the road to Babylon. Then, weary from the winter war, he had stayed to rest at Susa, and been beguiled by Queen Sisygambis; that old sorceress who, if truth were known, had set on her son, the usurper, to all his crimes. She had brought to the King the daughter of Darius, that clumsy, long-legged girl he had married to please the Persians. Very likely she had drugged him, she was skilled in potions. She had got her grandchild into the King’s bed, and told him she was with child by him, though who was to know the truth? And, since he had married her in state in the presence of the Persian and Macedonian lords, what could they do but accept her infant? “But he married her only for show, for policy. He told me so.”

(Indeed it was true that before the wedding, appalled by Roxane’s frenzy, deafened by her cries, and feeling remorseful, Alexander had said something to this effect. He had made no promises for the future, it being a principle of his to keep the future open; but he had dried her tears, and brought her some handsome earrings.)

“And so,” she cried, “under this roof she will bear a grandchild to Ochos’ murderer. And who will protect us, now that the King is gone?”

Badia began to cry. She thought of the long dull peaceful years in the quiet ageing harem, where the dangerous outside world was only rumor. She had outgrown the need of men and even of variety, living contentedly with her talking bird and her little red-coated monkey and her old gossiping eunuchs, maintained in comfort by the wandering, distant King. Now there opened before her dreadful ancient memories of betrayal, accusations, humiliation, the waking dread of the new day. It had been a cruel rival who had displaced her with King Ochos. The peaceful years fell from her. She sobbed and wailed; this time for herself.

“What can we do?” she cried. “What can we do?”

Roxane’s white, plump, short-fingered hand grasped Badia’s wrist. Her great dark eyes, which had cast their spell upon Alexander, were fixed on hers. “The King is dead. We must save ourselves as we best can.”

“Yes, lady.” The old days were back; once more it was a matter of survival. “Lady, what shall we do?”

Roxane drew her near and they talked softly, remembering the crannies in the wall.

Some time later, quietly by the servants’ door came an old eunuch from Badia’s household. He carried a box of polished wood. Roxane said, “It is true that you can write Greek?”

“Certainly, madam. King Ochos often called on me.”

“Have you good parchment? It is for a royal letter.”

“Yes, madam.” He opened the box. “When the usurper Darius gave my place to one of his people, I took a little with me.”

“Good. Sit down and write.”

When she gave him the superscription, he almost spoiled the scroll. But he had not come quite ignorant of his errand; and Badia had told him that if Darius’ daughter ruled the harem, she would turn all Ochos’ people out in the street to beg. He wrote on. She saw that the script was even and flowing, with the proper formal flourishes. When he had done, she gave him a silver daric and let him go. She did not swear him to silence; it was beneath her dignity, and Badia would have seen to it.

He had brought wax, but she had not sealed it in his presence. Now she drew off a ring Alexander had given her on their wedding night. It was set with a flawless amethyst the color of dark violets, on which Pyrgoletes, his favorite engraver, had carved his portrait. It was nothing like the royal ring of Macedon, with its Zeus enthroned. But Alexander had never been conventional, and she thought that it would serve.

She turned the stone in the light. The work was superb, and though somewhat idealized had caught a vivid look of him. He had given it her when they were at last alone in the bridal chamber; something to serve them in place of words, since neither could speak the other’s tongue. He had put it on her, finding a finger it would fit at the second try. She had kissed it respectfully, and then he had embraced her. She remembered how unexpectedly pleasing his body was, with a warm freshness like a young boy’s; but she had expected a harder grasp. He should have gone out to be undressed and have a wedding shift put on him; but, instead, he had just tossed off his clothes and stood there stark naked, in which state he had got into bed. She had been too shocked at first to think of anything else, and he had thought she was afraid of him. He had taken a good deal of trouble with her, some of it quite sophisticated; he had had expert tuition, though she did not yet know whose. But what she had really wanted was to be taken by storm. She had adopted postures of submission, proper in a virgin; for anything livelier on the first night, a Bactrian bridegroom would have strangled her. But she could feel he was at a loss, and had a dreadful fear that there would be an unstained bridal sheet for the guests to view next morning. She had nerved herself to embrace him; and afterwards all was well.

She dropped the hot wax on the scroll and pressed in the gem. Suddenly a piercing memory came to her of a day a few months ago in Ekbatana, one summer afternoon by the fishpool. He had been feeding the carp, coaxing the old sullen king of the pool to come to his hand from its lair under the lily-pads. He would not come in to make love till he had won. After, he had fallen asleep; she remembered the fair boyish skin with the deep dimpled scars, the soft margins of his strong hair. She had wanted to feel and smell him as if he were good to eat, like fresh-baked bread. When she buried her face in him, he half woke and held her comfortably, and slept again. The sense of his physical presence came back to her like life. At last, alone, in silence, she shed real tears.

She wiped them soon. She had business that would not wait.

In the Bedchamber, the long days of dying were over. Alexander had ceased to breathe. The lamenting eunuchs had drawn out the heaped-up pillows; he lay straight and flat in the great bed, restored by stillness to a monumental dignity, but, to the watchers, shocking in his passiveness. A dead man, a corpse.

The generals, hastily called when the end was plainly coming, stood staring blankly. For two days they had been thinking what to do now. Yet, now, it was as if the awaited certainty had been some mere contingency with which their imaginations had been playing. They gazed stupefied at the familiar face, so finally untenanted; feeling almost resentment, so impossible did it seem that anything could happen to Alexander without consent of his. How could he die and leave them in this confusion? How could he throw off responsibility? It was quite unlike him.

A cracked young voice at the outer door suddenly cried out, “He’s gone, he’s gone!” It was a youth of eighteen, one of the royal body-squires, who had been taking his turn on guard duty. He broke into hysterical weeping, which rose above the keening of the eunuchs around the bed. Someone must have led him away, for his voice could be heard receding, raw with uncontainable grief.

It was as if he had invoked an ocean. He had blundered, sobbing, into half the Macedonian army, gathered around the palace to await the news.

Most of them had passed through the Bedchamber the day before; but he had known them still, he had remembered them; they, most of all, had good cause to expect a miracle. Now a huge clamor rose; of grief, of ritual mourning; of protest, as if some authority could be found to blame; of dismay at the uncertainties of the shattered future.

The sound aroused the generals. Their reflexes’, trained to a hair by the dead man on the bed, snapped into action. Panic must be dealt with instantly. They ran out to the great platform above the forecourt. A herald, wavering at his post, was barked at by Perdikkas, lifted his long-stemmed trumpet, and blew the assembly call.

The response was ragged. Only yesterday, believing the call to be from Alexander, they would in silent minutes have sorted themselves into their files and phalanxes, each troop competing to get into formation first. Now, nature’s laws were suspended. Those in front had to shout back to the rear that it was Perdikkas. Since Hephaistion’s death he had been Alexander’s second in command. When he roared at them, it gave them some sense of security; they shuffled and shoved themselves into a semblance of order.

The Persian soldiers fell in with the rest. Their mourning outcries had counterpointed the Macedonians’ clamor. Now they grew quiet. They were—they had been—soldiers of Alexander, who had made them forget they were a conquered people, given them pride in themselves, made the Macedonians accept them. The early frictions had been almost over, Greek soldier slang was full of Persian words, a comradeship had begun. Now, suddenly, feeling themselves once more defeated natives on sufferance in an alien army, they looked at each other sidelong, planning desertion.

At Perdikkas’ signal, Peukestes strode forward, a reassuring figure; a man renowned for valor, who had saved Alexander’s life in India when he took his near-mortal wound. Now, tall, handsome, commanding, bearded in the fashion of his satrapy, he addressed them in Persian as correct and aristocratic as his dress. Formally he announced to them the death of the Great King. In due course, his successor would be proclaimed to them. They might now dismiss.

The Persians were calmed. But a deep muttering growl arose from the Macedonians. By their ancestral law, the right to choose a king belonged to them; to the Assembly of all male Macedonians able to bear arms. What was this talk of a proclamation?

Peukestes stood back for Perdikkas. There was a pause. For twelve years, both of them had watched Alexander dealing with Macedonians. They were not men who could be told to hold their peace and await authority’s pleasure. They had to be talked to, and he had done it; only once, in all the twelve years, without success. Even then, once they had made him turn back from India, they were all his own. Now, faced with this disorder, for a moment Perdikkas expected to hear approaching the brisk impatient footsteps; the crisp low-spoken reprimand, the high ringing voice creating instant stillness.

He did not come; and Perdikkas, though he lacked magic, understood authority. He fell, as Alexander had done at need, into the Doric patois of the homeland, their own boyhood tongue before they were schooled into polite Greek. They had all lost, he said, the greatest of kings, the bravest and best of warriors, that the world had seen since the sons of the gods forsook the earth.

Here he was stopped by a huge swelling groan; no voluntary tribute, but an outburst of naked misery and bereavement. When he could be heard again, he said, “And the grandsons of your grandsons will say so still. Remember, then, that your loss is measured by your former fortune. You out of all men, past or to come, have had your share in the glory of Alexander. And now it is for you, his Macedonians, to whom he has bequeathed the mastery of half the world, to keep your courage, and show you are the men he made you. All will be done according to the law.”

The hushed crowd gazed up in expectation. When Alexander had talked them quiet, he had always had something to tell them. Perdikkas knew it; but all he had to tell was that he himself was now, effectively, the King in Asia. It was too soon; they knew only one King, alive or dead. He told them to go back to camp and wait for further orders.

Under his eye they began to leave the forecourt; but when he had gone in, many came back by ones and twos, and settled down with their arms beside them, ready for night, to keep the death-watch.

Down in the city the sound of lamentation, like a brush-fire with a high wind behind it, spread from the crowded streets nearest the palace, on through the suburbs to the houses built along the walls. Above the temples the tall thin smoke-plumes, which had been rising upright in the still air from the sacred fires, one after another dipped and died. By the heap of damp ashes in Bel-Marduk’s brazier, the priests reminded each other that this was the second time in little more than a month. The King had ordered it on the day of his friend’s funeral. “We warned him of the omen, but he would hear nothing. He was a foreigner, when all is said.”

Theirs was the first fire quenched. In the temple of Mithra, guardian of the warrior’s honor, lord of loyalty and the given word, a young priest stood in the sanctuary with a water-ewer in his hand. Above the altar was carved the symbol of the winged sun, at war with the dark, age after age till the last victory. The fire still burned high, for the young man had been feeding it extravagantly, as if it had power to rekindle the sinking life of the King. Even now, when he had been ordered to extinguish it, he put down his ewer, ran to a coffer of Arabian incense, and flung a handful to sparkle into fragrance. Last of the officiants, it was not till his offering had lifted into the summer sky that he poured the water hissing upon the embers.

On the Royal Road to Susa, a courier traveled, his racing dromedary eating the miles with its smooth loping stride. Before it needed rest he would have reached the next relay-post, whence a fresh man and beast would carry his charge on through the night.

His stage was halfway of the journey. The parchment in his saddlebag had been passed to him by the man before, without pause for questions. Only the first stage out from Babylon had been run by a rider unknown to his relief. This stranger, when asked if it was true that the King was sick, had replied that it might be so for all he knew, but he had no time for gossiping. Silent haste was the first rule of the corps; the relief had saluted and sped away, showing, wordlessly, to the next man in the chain, that his letter was sealed with the image of the King.

It was said that a despatch by Royal Messenger would outstrip even the birds. Winged rumor itself could not overtake it; for at night rumor stops to sleep.

Two travelers, who had reined in to let the courier past, were nearly thrown as their horses squealed and reared at the detested smell of camel. The elder man, who was about thirty-five, stocky, freckled and red-haired, mastered his mount first, wresting back its head till the rough bit dripped blood. His brother, some ten years younger, auburn and conventionally good-looking, took longer because he had tried to reassure the horse. Kassandros watched his efforts with contempt. He was the eldest son of the Regent of Macedon, Antipatros, and was a stranger in Babylonia. He had reached it lately, sent by his father to find out why Alexander had summoned him to Macedon and sent Krateros to assume the regency in his stead.

Iollas, the younger, had marched with Alexander, and till lately been his cupbearer. His appointment had been by way of an appeasing gesture to their father; Kassandros had been left behind on garrison duty in Macedon, because he and Alexander had disliked each other since they were boys.

When the horse was quiet, Iollas said, “That was a Royal Messenger.”

“May he and his brute drop dead.”

“Why is he riding? Perhaps—it’s all over now.”

Kassandros, looking back towards Babylon, said, “May the dog of Hades eat his soul.”

For some time they rode in silence, Iollas looking at the road before him. At last he said, “Well, no one can turn Father out now. Now he can be King.”

“King?” growled Kassandros. “Not he. He took his oath and he’ll keep it. Even to the barbarian’s brat, if it’s a boy.”

Iollas’ horse started, feeling its rider’s shock. “Then why? Why did you make me do it? … Not for Father? … Only for hate! Almighty God, I should have known!”

Kassandros leaned over and slashed his riding-quirt down on the young man’s knee. He gave a startled cry of pain and anger.

“Don’t dare do that again! We’re not at home now, and I’m not a boy.”

Kassandros pointed to the red weal. “Pain’s a reminder. You did nothing. Remember, nothing. Keep it in your head.” A little way further on, seeing tears in Iollas’ eyes, he said with grudging forbearance, “Like as not he took fever from the marsh air. By now he must have drunk dirty water often enough. The peasants down river drink swamp-water, and they don’t die of it. Keep your mouth shut. Or you might die of it.”

Iollas swallowed and gulped. Dragging his hand across his eyes, and streaking his face with the black dust of the Babylonian plain, he said huskily, “He never got back his strength after that arrow-wound in India. He couldn’t afford a fever … He was good to me. I only did it for Father. Now you say he won’t be King.”

“He won’t be King. But whatever name they call it, he’ll die the ruler of Macedon and all Greece. And he’s an old man now.”

Iollas gazed at him in silence; then spurred his horse and galloped ahead through the yellow wheatfields, his sobs catching their rhythm from the pounding of the hooves.

Next day in Babylon the leading generals prepared for the Assembly that was to choose a ruler of the Macedonians. Their law did not demand primogeniture as inalienable. It was the right of the men in arms to choose among the royal family.

When Philip had died, it had been simple. Almost all the fighting-men were still at home. Alexander at twenty had already made a name for himself, and no other claimant had been so much as named. Even when Philip, a younger brother, had been chosen before the child of King Perdikkas, lately fallen in battle, that had been simple too; Philip had been a tried commander, the child an infant in arms, and they were at war.

Now, Macedonian troops were scattered in strongpoints all over central Asia. Ten thousand veterans were marching home for discharge under the command of Krateros, a youngish man, whom Alexander had ranked next after Hephaistion, and who was one of the royal kindred. There were the garrison troops in Macedon, and in the great stone forts which commanded the passes into southern Greece. All this the men at Babylon knew. But no one of them questioned that theirs was the right to choose a king. They were the army of Alexander, and that was everything.

Outside on the hot parade ground they waited, disputing, conjecturing, passing rumors on. Sometimes, as their impatience and disquiet mounted, the noise would surge like a breaker on a pebbled beach.

The generals inside, the high command known as the Royal Bodyguard, had been trying to get hold of the chief officers of the aristocratic Companions, with whom they wished to confer in their dilemma. Failing in this, they ordered the herald to blow a call for quiet, and summon them by name. The herald, knowing no army call for quiet alone, blew “Assemble for orders.” It was received by the impatient men as “Come to Assembly.”

Clamorously they poured through the great doors into the audience hall, while the herald shouted against the din the names he had been given, and the officers he named, those who could hear him, tried to shove themselves through the crowd. The crush inside grew dangerous; the doors were shut, in desperation, on everyone who had entered, authorized or not. The herald, gazing helplessly at the milling, cursing mob left in the courtyard, said to himself that if Alexander had seen it, someone would soon be wishing he’d never been born.

First to get in, because others had made way for them, were the men of the Companions, the horse-owning lords of Macedon, and any officers who had been near the doors. The rest of the crowd was a mixture of high and low, thrown anyhow together. The one thing they had in common was a deep unease, and the aggressiveness of worried men. It had come home to them that they were isolated troops in conquered country, half their world away from home. They had come here through faith in Alexander, in him alone. What they craved now was not a king but a leader.

The doors once closed, all eyes sought the royal dais. There, as often before, were the great men, Alexander’s nearest friends, standing around the throne, the ancient throne of Babylon; its arms carved into crouching Assyrian bulls, its back recarved for Xerxes into the winged image of the unconquered sun. Here they had seen the small, compact, bright figure, needing a footstoll, glowing like a jewel in too large a box, the spread wings of Ahura-Mazda above his head. Now the throne was empty. Across its back was the royal robe, and on its seat the diadem.

A low, sighing groan ran through the pillared hall. Ptolemy, who read the poets, thought it was like the climax of a tragedy, when the upstage doors are flung open, disclosing to the chorus that their fears are true and the King is dead.

Perdikkas stepped forward. All Alexander’s friends here present, he said, would witness that the King had given him the royal ring. But, being speechless, he could not say what powers he was conferring. “He looked at me fixedly, and it was clear he wished to speak, but his breath failed him. So, men of Macedon, here is the ring.” He drew it off, and laid it beside the crown. “Bestow it as you choose, according to ancestral law.”

There were murmurs of admiration and suspense, as at a play. He waited, still downstage, like a good actor who could time his lines. So Ptolemy thought, glancing at the alert arrogant face, now set in impassive dignity; a well-carved mask; a mask for a king?

Perdikkas said, “Our loss is beyond all measure, that we know. We know it is not to be thought of that the throne should pass to anyone not of his blood. Roxane his wife is five months with child; let us pray it will be a boy. He must first be born, and then he must come of age. Meantime, whom do you wish to rule you? It is for you to say.”

The voices murmured; the generals on the dais looked restively at each other; Perdikkas had not presented another speaker. Suddenly, unannounced, Niarchos, the admiral, stepped forward; a spare, lean-waisted Cretan, with a brown weathered face. The hardships of the dreadful voyage down the Gedrosian coast had put ten years on him; he looked fifty, but still wiry and fit. The men quieted to hear him; he had seen monsters of the deep, and put them to flight with trumpets. Unused to public speaking upon the land, he used the voice with which he hailed ships at sea, startling them with its loudness.

“Macedonians, I put before you as Alexander’s heir the son of Darius’ daughter Stateira. The King left her pregnant when last he passed through Susa.” There were surprised, disconcerted murmurs; he raised his voice over them, as he would have done in a noisy storm. “You saw their wedding. You saw it was a royal one. He meant to send for her here. He told me so.”

This wholly unexpected news of a woman who, barely glimpsed on her bridal day, had vanished at once into the recesses of the Susa harem, caused a surge of confusion and dismay. Presently a broad-spoken peasant voice called out, “Ah, but did he say aught about the bairn?”

“No,” said Niarchos. “In my belief he meant to bring up both sons under his eye, if both were sons, and choose the better one. But he’s not lived to do it; and Stateira’s child has right of rank.”

He stepped back; he had nothing more to say. He had done what seemed his duty, and that was all. Looking out over the sea of heads, he remembered how Alexander, lean as a bone and hollow-eyed from the desert march, had greeted him when he brought the fleet safe back, embracing him with tears of relief and joy. Since they were boys, Niarchos had been in love with him in an unsexual, undemanding way; that moment had been the climax of his life. What he would do with the rest of it, he could not begin to think.

Perdikkas’ teeth were set with anger. He had urged the men to appoint a regent—who but himself? Now, they had been sidetracked into debating the succession. Two unborn children, who might both be girls. It was in the family; Philip had sired a horde of daughters, and only one son unless you counted the fool. The regency was the thing. Philip himself had started out as regent for an infant heir, but the Macedonians had not wasted much time in electing him King. Perdikkas himself had a good strain of the royal blood … What had possessed Niarchos? There was no heading the men off now.

Their debate grew noisy and acrimonious. If, in their view, Alexander had had a fault, it was letting himself get Persianized. The Susa weddings, a serious manifesto, had caused much more unease than the campaign marriage with Roxane, the sort of thing his father used to do time and again. They had been indulgent towards the dancing-boy, as towards a pet monkey or dog; but why could he not have married a girl from a decent old Macedonian family, instead of two barbarians? Now this was what had come of it.

Some argued that any offspring of his must be accepted, half-breed or not. Others said there was no knowing if he would have acknowledged either; and you could be sure, if either of those women had a stillbirth or a girl, they would smuggle something in. They were crawling on their bellies to no Persian changeling …

Ptolemy watched the scene with grief and anger, longing to be gone. From the time when Alexander’s death had become a certainty, he had known where he wished to go. Ever since Egypt had opened its arms to Alexander as its liberator from the Persian yoke, Ptolemy had been entranced by it, its immemorial mellow civilization, its stupendous monuments and temples, the rich life of its sustaining river. It was defensible as an island, protected by sea and desert and wilderness; one had only to win the people’s trust to hold it secure forever. Perdikkas and the rest would gladly give him the satrapy; they wanted him out of the way.

He was dangerous, a man who could claim to be Alexander’s brother, even though from adultery when Philip was in his teens. His paternity was unproved and unacknowledged; but Alexander had always had a special place for him, and everyone knew it. Yes, Perdikkas would be glad to see him off to Africa. But did the man think he could make himself Alexander’s heir? That was what he was after; it was written all over him. Something must be done; and now.

The soldiers, when Ptolemy stepped forward, broke off their disputes to give him a hearing. He had been a boyhood friend of Alexander; he had presence without Perdikkas’ arrogance; men who had served under him liked him. A group of them gave him a cheer.

“Macedonians. I see you do not wish to choose a king from the offspring of the conquered.”

There was loud applause. The men, who had all come armed—it was the proof of their voting right—beat their spears on their shields till the high hall echoed. Ptolemy raised a hand for quiet.

“We do not know if either wife of Alexander will bear a boy. If one or both should, when they come of age they must be brought before you and your sons, for Assembly to decide whom the Macedonians will accept. In the meantime, you await Alexander’s heir. But who will act for him? Here before you are those whom Alexander honored with trust. Lest too much power go to one man, I propose a Council Of Regency.”

The voices were tempered. Reminded that in fifteen years or so they could still reject both claimants, they saw where the day’s serious business lay. Ptolemy said into the new quiet, “Remember Krateros. Alexander trusted him like himself. He sent him to govern Macedon. That is why he is not present now.”

That got home to them. They honored Krateros next to Alexander; he was of royal stock, capable, brave, handsome and careful of their needs. Ptolemy could feel the eyes of Perdikkas, red-hot in his back. Let him make the best of it; I did as I had to do.

As they buzzed and muttered below, Ptolemy thought suddenly, Only a few days back we were all alike the Friends of Alexander, just waiting for him to get up again and lead us. What are we now, and what am I?

He had never set great store on being Philip’s son; it had cost him too much in childhood. Philip had been a nobody, a younger son held hostage by the Thebans, when he was born. “Can’t you make your bastard behave?” his father would say to his mother when he was in trouble. Philip had won him more than one boy’s share of beatings. Later, when Philip was King and he himself a royal squire, his luck had turned; but what he had learned to care for was not being Philip’s son, if indeed he was. He had cared, with affection and with growing pride, to be Alexander’s brother. Never mind, he thought, whether it is the truth of my blood, or not. It is the truth of my heart.

A new voice broke his brief reverie. Aristonous, one of the Bodyguard, came forward to point out that whatever Alexander might have meant, he had given his ring to Perdikkas. He had looked around first, and knew what he was doing. This was fact, not guesswork; and Aristonous was for abiding by it.

He spoke simply and frankly, and carried the Assembly. They shouted Perdikkas’ name, and many called to him to take back the ring. Slowly, scanning them, he took a few steps forward towards it. For a moment his eye met Ptolemy’s, noting him in the way a man notes a newfound enemy.

It would not yet do, Perdikkas thought, to look over-eager. He needed another voice in Aristonous’ support.

The hall, crowded with sweating men, was stiflingly close and hot. To the stink of humanity was added that of urine, where a few men had surreptitiously relieved themselves in corners. The generals on the dais were growing stupefied by their varied feelings of grief, anxiety, resentment, impatience and frustration. Suddenly, shouting something indistinct, an officer elbowed his way forward through the crowd. What, they all thought, can Meleager have to say?

He had been a phalanx commander since Alexander’s first campaign, but had risen no higher. Alexander had confided to Perdikkas, one night at supper, that he was a good soldier if one did not stretch his mind.

He arrived below the dais, red-faced with the heat, with anger, and, by his looks, with wine; then lifted a harsh furious voice which stunned the crowd almost silent. “That’s the royal ring! Are you letting that fellow take it? Give it him now, he’ll keep it till he dies! No wonder he wants a king who’s not yet born!”

The generals, calling for order, were barely heard above the sudden roar. Meleager had aroused, from a kind of restless torpor, a mass of men who had not been heard before, the mental lees of the crowd. They took notice now, as they would of a knife-duel in the street, a man beating his wife, or a vicious dogfight; and shouted for Meleager, as if for the winning dog.

In the camp, Perdikkas could have restored order in minutes. But this was Assembly; he was not so much Commander-in-Chief as candidate. Repression might seem to forecast tyranny. He made a gesture of tolerant contempt, meaning “Even such a man must be heard.”

He had seen the naked hatred in Meleager’s face. The rank of their fathers had been much the same; they had both been royal squires to Philip; both had looked with secret envy at the tight-knit circle round the young Alexander. Then, when Philip was assassinated, Perdikkas had been the first to run down the fleeing assassin. Alexander had praised him, noticed and promoted him. With promotion came opportunity; he had never looked back. When Hephaistion died, he had been given his command. Meleager had remained an infantry phalanx leader, useful if not too much was put on him. And, as Perdikkas saw, the knowledge that burned him was that they had started equal.

“How do we know,” Meleager shouted, “that Alexander gave him anything? Whose word do we have for it? His and his friends’! And what are they after? Alexander’s treasure here, which all of us helped to win! Will you stand for that?”

The noise turned to turmoil. The generals, who had thought that they knew men, saw incredulously that Meleager was beginning to lead a mob; men ready to sack the palace like a conquered town. Chaos broke out around it.

Perdikkas summoned, desperately, all his expert powers of dominance.

“Halt!” he thundered. There was a reflex response. He barked his orders; sufficient men obeyed them. Solid ranks with locked shields formed before the inner doors. The yelling sank to growls. “I am glad to see,” said Perdikkas in his deep voice, “that we still have here some soldiers of Alexander.”

There was a hush, as if he had invoked the name of an offended god. The mob began to lose itself in the crowd. The shields were lowered.

In the uncertain pause, a rustic voice, from somewhere deep in the press, made itself heard. “Shame on you all, I say! Like the Commander says, we’re soldiers of Alexander. It’s his blood we want to rule us, not regents for foreign children. When we’ve Alexander’s true-born brother, here in this very house.”

There was an astonished silence. Ptolemy, stunned, felt all his well-considered decisions shaken by a surge of primitive instinct. The ancient throne of Macedon, with its savage history of tribal rivalries and fratricidal wars, reached out its beckoning spell. Philip—Alexander—Ptolemy …

The peasant spearman below, having gained a hearing, went on with gathering confidence. “His own brother which King Philip himself acknowledged, as every one of you knows. Alexander always cared for him like his own. I do hear say he was backward as a boy, but it’s not a month since the both of them were sacrificing for their father’s soul at the household altar. I was on escort, and so were my mates here. He done everything right.” There were sounds of assent. Ptolemy could barely repress the stare and dropped jaw of utter stupefaction. Arridaios! They must be mad.

“King Philip,” persisted the soldier, “married Philinna lawful, which was his right to have more wives than one. So I say, pass by the foreign babes, and let’s have his son, which is his rightful heir.”

There was applause from law-abiding men, who had been shocked by Meleager. On the dais, the silence was general and appalled. Simple or devious, not one of them had thought of this.

“Is it true?” said Perdikkas quickly to Ptolemy through the noise. “Did Alexander take him to the shrine?” Urgency overcame enmity; Ptolemy would surely know.

“Yes.” Ptolemy remembered the two heads side by side, dark and fair, the apprentice piece and the sculptor’s. “He’s been better lately. He’s not had a fit in a year. Alexander said he must be kept in mind of who his father was.”

“Airidaios!” came a growing shout. “Give us Alexander’s brother! Long live Macedon! Arridaios!”

“How many saw him?” said Perdikkas.

“The Companion escort and the foot-guard, and anyone looking on. He behaved quite properly. He always does … did, with Alexander.”

“We can’t have this. They don’t know what they’re doing. This must be stopped.”

The speaker, Peithon, was a short wiry man with a foxily pointed, rufous face and a sharp foxy bark. He was one of the Bodyguard, a good commander, but not known for the spirit of persuasion. He stepped out, forestalling Perdikkas, and snapped, “Alexander’s brother! You’d do better to choose his horse!”

The bite in his voice produced a brief, but not friendly silence; he was not on the parade ground now. He went on, “The fellow’s a halfwit. Dropped on his head as a baby, and falls down in fits. Alexander’s kept him like a child, with a nurse to tend him. Do you want an idiot for a king?”

Perdikkas swallowed a curse. Why had this man ever been promoted? Competent in the field, but no grip on morale in quarters. He himself, if this fool had not stepped in, would have recalled to the men the romantic winning of Roxane, the storming of the Sogdian Rock, the victor’s chivalry; winning back their minds to Alexander’s son. Now their feelings had been offended. They saw Arridaios as a victim of obscure intrigues. They had seen the man, and he had behaved like anyone else.

Alexander was always fortunate, thought Ptolemy. Already people wore his image cut on rings, for luck-charms. What spiteful fate inspired him, so near his end, with this kindly impulse towards a harmless fool? But, of course, there was a ceremony to come, at which he must appear. Perhaps Alexander had thought of that …

“Shame!” the men were shouting up to Peithon. “Arridaios, Arridaios, we want Arridaios!” He yapped at them; but they drowned his voice with boos.

Nobody noticed, till too late, that Meleager was missing.

It had been a long, dull day for Arridaios. No one had come to see him except the slave with his meals, which had been overcooked and half cold. He would have liked to hit the slave, but Alexander did not allow him. Someone from Alexander came nearly every day to see how he was, but today there had been no one to tell about the food. Even old Konon, who looked after him, had gone off just after getting-up time, saying he had to attend a meeting or some such thing, and hardly listening to a word he said.

He needed Konon for several things: to see he had something nice for supper, to find him a favorite striped stone he had mislaid, and to say why there had been such a terrible noise that morning, wailing and howling which seemed to come from everywhere, as if thousands of people were being beaten at once. From his window on the park, he had seen a crowd of men all running towards the palace. Perhaps, soon, Alexander would come to see him, and tell him what it was all about.

Sometimes he did not come for a very long time, and they said he was away on a campaign. Arridaios would stay in camp, or sometimes, as now, in a palace, till he came back again. Often he brought presents, colored sweets, carved painted horses and lions, a piece of crystal for his collection, and once a beautiful scarlet cloak. Then the slaves would fold the tents and they would all move on. Perhaps this was going to happen now.

Meantime, he wanted the scarlet cloak to play with. Konon had said it was far too hot for cloaks, he would only make it dirty and spoil it. It was locked in the chest, and Konon had the key.

He got out all his stones, except the striped one, and laid them out in pictures; but not having the best one spoiled it. A flush of anger came over him; he picked up the biggest stone and beat it on the table-top again and again. A stick would have been better, but he was not allowed one, Alexander himself had taken it away.

A long time ago, when he lived at home, he had been left mostly with the slaves. No one else wanted to see him. Some were kind when they had time, but some had mocked him and knocked him about. As soon as he began to travel with Alexander, the slaves were different and more polite, and one was even afraid of him. It seemed a good time to get his own back, so he had beaten the man till his head bled and he fell down on the floor. Arridaios had never known till then how strong he was. He had gone on hitting till they carried the man away. Then, suddenly, Alexander had appeared; not dressed for dinner, but with armor on, all dirty and splashed with mud, and out of breath. He had looked quite frightening, like a different person, his eyes pale grey and large in his dirty face; and he had made Arridaios swear on their father’s head never to do such a thing again. He had remembered it today when his food was late. He did not want his father’s ghost to come after him. He had been terrified of him, and had sung with joy on hearing he was dead.

It was time for his ride in the park, but he was not allowed to go without Konon, who kept him on a leading-rein. He wished Alexander would come, and take him again to the shrine. He had held everything nicely, and poured on the wine and oil and incense after Alexander did, and had let them take the gold cups away though he would have liked to keep them; and afterwards, Alexander had said he had done splendidly.

Someone was coming! Heavy feet, and a clank of armor. Alexander was quicker and lighter than that. A soldier came in whom he had never seen before; a tallish man with a red face and straw-colored hair, holding his helmet under his arm. They looked at one another.

Arridaios, who knew nothing of his own appearance, knew still less that Meleager was thinking, Great Zeus! Philip’s face. What is inside it? The young man had, in fact, much of his father’s structure, square face, dark brows and beard, broad shoulders and short neck. Since eating was his chief pleasure he was overweight, though Konon had never allowed him to get gross. Delighted to see a visitor at last, he said eagerly, “Are you going to take me to the park?”

“No, sir.” He stared avidly at Arridaios, who, disconcerted, tried to think if he had done anything wrong. Alexander had never sent this man before. “Sir. I have come to escort you to Assembly. The Macedonians have elected you their King.”

Arridaios stared at him with alarm, followed by a certain shrewdness. “You’re telling lies. I’m not the King, my brother is. He said to me, Alexander said, “If I didn’t look after you, someone would try to make you King, and you’d end up being killed.” He backed away, eyeing Meleager with growing agitation. “I won’t go to the park with you. I’ll go with Konon. You fetch him here. If you don’t, I’ll tell Alexander of you.”

His retreat was blocked by the heavy table. The soldier walked right up to him, so that he flinched instinctively, remembering boyhood beatings. But the man just stared into his eyes, and, very slowly, spoke.

“Sir. Your brother is dead. King Alexander is dead. The Macedonians are calling for you. Come with me.”

Since Arridaios did not move, he grasped his arm and guided him to the door. He came unresisting, not heeding where he was led, striving to come to terms with a world which Alexander did not rule.

So expeditious had Meleager been that the crowd in the hall was still shouting “Arridaios!” when he himself appeared upon the dais. Confronted by this sounding sea of men, he gazed in a numb astonishment, giving a brief illusion of dignified reserve.

Most of the dumbfounded generals had never seen him before; only a few of the men had glimpsed him. But every Macedonian over thirty had seen King Philip. There was a pause of perfect silence; then the cheers began.

“Philip! Philip! Philip!”

Arridaios sent a terrified look over his shoulder. Was his father coming, had he never been really dead? Meleager beside him caught the revealing change of countenance and whispered swiftly, “They are cheering you.” Arridaios gazed about, slightly reassured, but still bewildered. Why did they call so for his father? His father was dead. Alexander was dead …

Meleager stepped forward. So much, he thought triumphantly, for that upstart Perdikkas and his unborn ward. “Here, Macedonians, is the son of Philip, the brother of Alexander. Here is your rightful King.”

Spoken loudly and almost in his ear, it reached Arridaios with awful comprehension. He knew why all these men were here and what was happening. “No!” he cried, his high plaintive voice issuing incongruously from his large hirsute face. “I’m not the King! I told you, I can’t be King. Alexander told me not to.”

But he had addressed himself to Meleager, and was inaudible beyond the dais, drowned by the cheering. The generals, appalled, all turned upon Meleager, talking across him. He listened with mounting fear to the loud angry voices. Clearly he recalled Alexander’s large deep-set eyes, fixed upon his, warning him of what would happen if they tried to make him King. While Meleager was quarreling with the tall dark man in the middle of the dais, he bolted for the now unguarded inner door. Outside, in the warren-like passages of the ancient palace, he wandered sobbing to himself, seeking the way back to his familiar room.

In the hall, new uproar began. None of this had precedent. Both the last two kings had been elected by acclamation, and led with traditional paeans to the royal palace at Aigai, whence each had confirmed his accession by directing his predecessor’s funeral.

Meleager, wrangling with Perdikkas, had not missed his fugitive candidate till he was warned by sounds of derision from the floor. Feeling was swinging against him; the powerful presence of Perdikkas had appeal for men seeking some source of confidence and strength. Meleager saw that only instant resource would avail. He turned and ran, followed by boos, through the door Arridaios had used. The most vocal of his supporters—not the loot-hungry mob, but kinsmen and fellow-clansmen and men with grudges against Perdikkas—took alarm and hurried after.

Before long they ran down their quarry, standing where two passages met, debating with himself which way to turn. At sight of them he cried out, “No! Go away!” and started to run. Meleager grasped his shoulder. He submitted, looking terror-stricken. Clearly in this state he could not appear. Gently, calmingly, Meleager changed his grip to a protective caress.

“Sir, you must listen. Sir, you’ve nothing to fear. You were a good brother to Alexander. He was the rightful King; it would have been wrong, just as he said, for you to take his throne. But now he is dead, and you are the rightful King. The throne is yours.” A flash of inspiration came to him. “There is a present for you on it. A beautiful purple cloak.”

Arridaios, already soothed by the kindly voice, now brightened visibly. No one had laughed; things were too urgent and too dangerous.

“Can I keep it all the time?” he asked cannily. “You won’t lock it up?”

“No, indeed. The moment you have it, you can put it on.”

“And have it all day?”

“All night too, if you wish.” As he began to guide his prize along the passage, a new thought struck him. “When the men called ‘Philip!’ it was you they meant. They are honoring you with your father’s name. You will be King Philip of Macedon.”

King Philip, thought Arridaios. It gave him confidence. His father must be really dead, if his name could be given away, like a purple cloak. It would be well to take them both. He was still buoyed by this decision when Meleager steered him onto the dais.

Smiling around at the exclamations, he saw at once the great swath of color draped upon the throne, and walked briskly towards it. Sounds which he had mistaken for friendly greetings died; the Assembly, arrested by his changed demeanor, watched the drama almost in silence.

“There, sir, is our present to you,” said Meleager in his ear.

To a ground-bass of restless murmurs, Philip Arridaios lifted the robe from the throne, and held it up before him.

It was the robe of state, made at Susa for the marriage of Alexander to Stateira daughter of Darius, and of his eighty honored friends to their Persian brides, with the whole of his army as his wedding guests. In this robe he had given audience to envoys from half the known world, during his last progress down to Babylon. It was of a wool as dense as velvet and soft as silk, dyed with Tyrian murex to a soft glowing crimson just tinged with purple, pure as the red of a dark rose. The breast and back were worked with the sunburst, the Macedonian royal blazon, in balas rubies and gold. A sleeveless dalmatic, it was clasped on the shoulders with two gold lion-masks, worn at their weddings by three kings of Macedon. The hot afternoon sun slanted down from a high window on the lions’ emerald eyes. The new Philip gazed at it in rapture.

Meleager said, “Let me help you to put it on.”

He raised it, and slipped it over Philip’s head. Radiant with pleasure, he looked out at the cheering men. “Thank you,” he said, as he had been taught when he was a child.

The cheers redoubled. The son of Philip had come in with dignity, looking like a king. At first he must simply have been abashed and modest. Now they were for the royal blood against the world.

“Philip! Philip! Long live Philip!”

Ptolemy felt almost choked with grief and anger. He remembered the wedding morning, when he and Hephaistion had gone to Alexander’s room in the Susa palace to dress the bridegroom. They had exchanged the jokes which were traditional, along with private ones of their own. Alexander, who had been planning for weeks this great ceremony of racial concord, had been almost incandescent; one could have taken him for a man in love. It was Hephaistion who had remembered the lion brooches and pinned them on the robe. To see it now on a grinning idiot made Ptolemy long to spit Meleager on his sword. Towards the poor fool himself he felt horror rather than anger. He knew him well; he had often gone, when Alexander was busy, to make sure he was not neglected or ill-used; such things, it was tacitly agreed, were better kept in the family. Philip …! Yes, it would stick.

He said to Perdikkas, who was beside him, “Alexander should have had him smothered.”

Perdikkas, unheeding, strode forward, blazing with rage, trying vainly to be heard above the din. Pointing at Philip, he made a sweeping gesture of rejection and scorn.

Shouts of support came from just below him. The Companions, foremost by right or rank, had had the clearest view. They had heard of the fool; they had watched, in silent grief or sheer incredulity, the assumption of the robe. Now their outrage found vent. Their strong voices, trained in the piercing war-paean of the charging cavalry, overpowered all other sound.

It was as if the robe of Alexander had been a battle-standard, suddenly unfurled. Men started to put their helmets on. The hammering of spears on shields grew to a volume like the sound of onset. Nearer, more deadly, came the hiss and whisper of the Companions’ unsheathed swords.

In alarm Meleager saw the powerful aristocracy of Macedon rallying in force against him. Even his own faction might fall off from him, unless forced to commit themselves beyond retreat. Each common soldier now shouting “Philip!” was, after all, the tribesman of some lord. He must divide them from tribal allegiances, create new action. With the thought, the answer came to him. His own genius amazed him. How could Alexander have passed such a leader by?

Firmly, but imperceptibly, he guided the smiling Philip to the edge of the dais. The impression that he meant to speak procured a moment’s quiet, if only from curiosity. Meleager spoke into it.

“Macedonians! You have chosen your King! Do you mean to stand by him?” The spearmen replied with defiant cheers. “Then come with him now, and help him confirm his right. A King of Macedon must entomb his predecessor.”

He paused. He had real silence now. A ripple of shock could almost be felt, passing through the packed, sweat-stinking hall.

Meleager lifted his voice. “Come! The body of Alexander awaits its rites. Here is his heir to perform them. Don’t let them cheat him of his heritage. To the death-chamber! Come!”

There was confused, seething movement. The sounds had changed. The most determined of the infantry surged forward; but they did not cheer. Many held back; there was a deep mutter of opposing voices. Companions began to clamber on the dais, to guard the inner doors. The generals, all trying to protest at once, only added to the confusion. Suddenly, rising above everything, came the cracked new-broken voice of a youth, hoarse with passionate fury.

“Bastards! You bastards! You filthy, slave-born bastards!”

From a corner of the hall alongside the Companions, shoving through everyone regardless of age or rank, yelling as if in battle, came the royal squires.

The watch on duty had been with Alexander till he died, standing on after sunrise. They had been several years in attendance on him. Some of them had turned eighteen and had a vote, the rest had crowded into Assembly with them. They leaped and scrambled up on the dais, waving their drawn swords, wild-eyed, crop-headed, their fair Macedonian hair shorn raggedly almost to their scalps in mourning. There were nearly fifty of them. Perdikkas, seeing their fanatic rage, knew them at sight for the readiest killers in the hall. Unless stopped they would have Philip dead, and then there would be a massacre. “To me!” he shouted to them. “Follow me! Protect the body of Alexander!”

He ran to the inner door, Ptolemy neck-and-neck with him, the other generals close behind, and then the squires, so fierce in their rush that they outdistanced the Companions. Pursued by the angry cries of the opposition, they ran through the King’s reception room, through his private sanctum, and on into the Bedchamber. The doors were closed, not locked. The foremost men burst through them.

Ptolemy thought, with a shuddering realization, He has lain here since yesterday! In Babylon, in midsummer. Unconsciously, as the doors burst open, he held his breath.

There was a faint scent of almost burned-out incense; of the dried flowers and herbs which scented the royal robes and bed, mixed with the scent of the living presence which Ptolemy had known since boyhood. In the vast forsaken room he lay on the great bed between its watchful daimons, a clean fresh sheet drawn over him. Some aromatic sprinkled on it had cheated even the flies. On the dais, half propped against the bed with an arm thrown over it, the Persian boy lay in an exhausted sleep.

Roused by the clamor, he staggered dazedly to his feet, unaware of Ptolemy’s touch upon his shoulder. Ptolemy walked to the bed’s head and folded back the sheet.

Alexander lay in an inscrutable composure. Even his color seemed hardly changed. His golden hair with its bright silver streaks felt, to the touch, still charged with life. Niarchos and Seleukos, who had followed Ptolemy, exclaimed that it was a miracle, that it proved Alexander’s divinity. Ptolemy, who had been his fellow-student with Aristotle, looked down in silence, wondering how long a secret spark of that strong life had burned in the still body. He laid a hand on the heart; but it was over now, the corpse was stiffening. He drew the sheet over the marmoreal face, and turned to the ranks that were forming to hold the bolted doors.

The squires, who knew the room in detail, dragged up the heavy clothes-chests to form a barricade. But it could not last for long. The men outside were well used to pushing. Six or seven ranks deep, they leaned upon the doors as, ten years back, they had leaned with their fifteen-foot sarissas on Darius’ levies; and, like the Persians at the Granikos, at Issos, at Gaugamela, the doors gave way. Grinding along the floor, the bronze-bound chests were heaved aside.

As the foremost thrust in, Perdikkas knew himself unable to cut them down, and be first with the shame of bloodshed in this room. He called back his men to bar the way to the royal bed. In a brief pause, the attackers looked about them. The ranks of the defenders screened the body, they saw only the spread wings of the gold daimons and their fierce alien eyes. They shouted defiance, but came no nearer.

There was movement behind them. Philip came in.

Though Meleager was with him, he was here of his own accord. When a person died, his family must see to him. All motives of policy had passed over Philip like unmeaning noise; but he knew his duty.

“Where’s Alexander?” he called to the bristling barrier before the bed. “I’m his brother. I want to bury him.”

The generals gritted their teeth in silence. It was the squires whose yells of wrath and spat-out insults broke the loaded pause. They had no reverence for the dead, because in their central consciousness Alexander was still alive. They shouted for him as if he were lying on a battlefield senseless with wounds, beset by cowards who would not have faced him on his feet. Their whoops and war-cries set off all the young men in the Companions, who remembered their own days as squires. “Alexander! Alexander!”

From somewhere in the press, making a little whiffling sound as the spin-strap launched it, a javelin hurtled across and rang on Perdikkas’ helmet.

In moments more were flying. A Companion knelt pouring blood from a severed leg-vein; a squire who had come helmetless had a slashed scalp and was masked in scarlet, his blue eyes staring through. Till it came to close quarters, the defenders were sitting game. They had brought only their short curved cavalry sabers, symbol of their rank, to what should have been a purely civil occasion.

Perdikkas picked up the javelin that had struck him and hurled it back. Others, plucking them from the bodies of the wounded, held them to serve as spears. Ptolemy, taking a step back to avoid a missile, collided with someone, cursed, and turned to look. It was the Persian boy, blood staining his linen sleeve from a gashed arm. He had thrown it up to ward a javelin from Alexander’s body.

“Stop!” shouted Ptolemy across the room. “Are we wild beasts or men?”

From beyond the doors, the hubbub still continued; but it trailed off, damped by the hush of those in front to a kind of shamefaced muttering. It was Niarchos the Cretan who said, “Let them look.”

Grasping their weapons, the defenders made a gap. Niarchos uncovered Alexander’s face and stood back, silent.

The opposing line fell still. The crowd behind, jostling to see, felt the change and paused. Presently in the front a grizzled phalanx captain stepped a pace forward and took his helmet off. Two or three veterans followed. The first faced around to the men behind him, lifted his arm and shouted, “Halt!” Somberly, in a kind of sullen grief, the parties looked at one another.

By ones and twos the senior officers unhelmed themselves and stood forth to be known. The defenders lowered their weapons. The old captain began to speak.

“There’s my brother!” Philip, who had been elbowed aside, pushed forward. He still had on the robe of Alexander, pushed askew and crumpled. “He has to have a funeral.”

“Be quiet!” hissed Meleager. Obediently—moments like this were familiar in his life—Philip let himself be hustled out of sight. The old captain, red-faced, recovered his presence of mind.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “you are outnumbered, as you see. We have all acted in haste, and I daresay we all regret it. I propose a parley.”

Perdikkas said, “On one condition. The body of the King shall he left inviolate, and every man here shall swear it by the gods below. I will take my oath that when a fitting bier is ready, I will have it taken to the royal burial ground in Macedon. Unless these vows are solemnized, none of us will leave this place while we can stand and fight.” They agreed. They were all ashamed. Perdikkas’ words about the royal burial ground had brought them sharply down to earth. What would they have done with the body if they had taken it? Buried it in the park? One look at that remote proud face had sobered them. A miracle he was not stinking; yet you would have thought he was still alive. A superstitious shiver had run down many backs; Alexander would make a powerful ghost.

On the terrace a goat was slaughtered; men touched the carcass or the blood, invoking the curse of Hades if they were forsworn. Owing to their numbers it took some time; as twilight fell they were still swearing by torchlight.

Meleager, the first to swear under Perdikkas’ eye, watched, brooding. He had lost support and knew it. Only some thirty, the hard core of his partisans, still rallied round him; and even those because they were now marked men, frightened of reprisals. He must keep them, at least. While the sunset dusk hummed with the noises of an anxious fermenting city, he had been giving the matter thought. If he could separate the Bodyguard … thirty to only eight …

The last men had scrambled through their oaths. He approached Perdikkas with a sober placating face. “I acted rashly. The King’s death has overset us all. Tomorrow we can meet and take better counsel.”

“So I hope.” Perdikkas frowned under his dark brows.

“All of us would be ashamed,” went on Meleager smoothly, “if the near friends of Alexander were kept from watching beside him. I beg you”—his gesture embraced the Bodyguard—“return and keep your vigil,”

“Thank you,” said Niarchos, quite sincerely. He had hoped to do it. Perdikkas paused, his soldier’s instinct indefinably wary. It was Ptolemy who said, “Meleager has taken his oath to respect Alexander’s body. Has he taken one for ours?”

Perdikkas’ eyes sought Meleager’s, which shifted in spite of him. All together, with looks of profound contempt, the Bodyguard waited off to join the Companions encamped in the royal park.

Presently they sent messengers to the Egyptian quarter, summoning the embalmers to begin their work at dawn.

“Where were you all day, Konon?” said Philip, as his hot clothes were lifted off him. “Why didn’t they fetch you when I said?”

Konon, an elderly veteran who had served him for ten years, said, “I was at Assembly, sir. Never mind, you shall have your nice bath now, with the scented oil.”

“I’m King now, Konon. Did they tell you I’m the King?”

“Yes, sir. Long life to you, sir.”

“Konon, now I’m King, you won’t go away?”

“No, sir, old Konon will look after you. Now let me have this beautiful new robe to brush it and keep it safe. It’s too good for every day … Why, come, come, sir, you’ve no call to cry.”

In the Royal Bedchamber, as the evening cooled, the body of Alexander stiffened like stone. With a bloodstained towel round his arm, the Persian boy put by the bed the night-table of malachite and ivory, and kindled the nightlamp on it. The floor was strewn with the debris of the fighting. Someone had lurched against the console with the images of Hephaistion; they lay sprawled like the fallen after a battle. In the faint light, Bagoas took a long look at them, and turned away. But in a few minutes he went back and stood them up neatly, each in its place. Then, fetching a stool lest sitting on the dais he might sleep again, he folded his hands and composed himself to watch, his dark eyes staring into the dark shadows.

The harem at Susa was Persian, not Assyrian. Its proportions were elegantly balanced; its fluted columns had capitals sculpted with lotus-buds by craftsmen from Greece; its walls were faced with delicately enameled tiles, and the sunlight dappled them through lattices of milky alabaster.

Queen Sisygambis, the mother of Darius, sat in her high-backed chair, a granddaughter on either side. At eighty she kept the hawk-nosed, ivorine face of the old Elamite nobility; the pure Persian strain, unmixed with Median. She was brittle now; in her youth she had been tall. She was robed and scarved in deep indigo, but for her breast, on which glowed a great necklace of polished pigeon-blood rubies, the gift of King Poros to Alexander, and of Alexander to her.

Stateira, the elder girl, was reading a letter aloud, slowly, translating it from Greek to Persian. Alexander had had both girls taught to read Greek as well as speak it. From affection for him, Sisygambis had allowed him to indulge this whim, though in her view clerking was somewhat menial, and more properly left to the palace eunuchs. However, he must be allowed the customs of his people. He could not help his upbringing, and was never purposely discourteous. He should have been a Persian.

Stateira read, stumbling a little, not from ignorance but from agitation.

ALEXANDER KING OF THE MACEDONIANS AND LORD OF ASIA, to his honored wife Stateira.

Wishing to look upon your face again, I desire you to set out for Babylon without delay, so that your child may be born here. If you bear a boy, I intend to proclaim him my heir. Hasten your journey. I have been sick, and my people tell me there is ignorant talk that I am dead. Do you pay no heed to it. My chamberlains are commanded to receive you with honor, as the mother of a Great King to be. Bring Drypetis your sister, who is my sister also for the sake of one who was dear to me as myself. May all be well with you.

Stateira lowered the letter and looked down at her grandmother. The child of two tall parents, she stood nearly six feet without her slippers. Much of her mother’s famous beauty had passed to her. She was queenly in everything but pride. “What shall we do?” she said.

Sisygambis looked up impatiently under her white brows. “First finish the King’s letter.”

“Madam grandmother, that is all.”

“No,” said Sisygambis with irritation. “Look again, child. What does he say to me?”

“Madam grandmother, that is the end.”

“You must be mistaken. Women should not meddle with writing; I told him so, but he would have his way. You had better call a clerk, to read it properly.”

“Truly, there is no more writing on the paper. May all be well with you. See, it stops here.”

The strong lines of Sisygambis’ face slackened’ a little; her years showed like sickness. “Is the messenger still here? Fetch him, see if he has another letter. These men tire on the road and it makes them stupid.”

The rider was brought, gulping from his meal. He pledged his head he had received one letter only, one from the King. He shook out his wallet before them.

When he had gone, Sisygambis said, “Never has he sent to Susa without a word to me. Show me the seal.” But her sight had lengthened with age, and even at arms’ length she could not make out the figure.

“It is his likeness, madam grandmother. It is like the one on my emerald, that he gave me on my wedding day; only here he has a wreath, and on mine he wears a diadem.”

Sisygambis nodded, and sat awhile in silence. There were earlier royal letters in the care of the Head Chamberlain; but she did not like to let such people know that her eyes were failing.

Presently she said, “He writes that he has been sick. He will be behindhand with all his business. Now he is overtaxing himself, as his nature is. When he was here, I saw he was short of breath … Go child, fetch me your women; you too, Drypetis. I must tell them what to pack for you.”

Young Drypetis, the widow of Hephaistion (she was seventeen) moved to obey, then ran back to kneel beside the chair. “Baba, please come with us to Babylon.”

Sisygambis rested her fine-boned old ivory hand on the young girl’s head. “The King has told you to hurry on the road. I am too old. And besides, he has not summoned me.”

When the women had been instructed, and all the flurry had moved to the girls’ bedchamber, she sat on in her straight-backed chair, tears trickling down her cheeks and falling upon King Poros’ rubies.

In the Royal Bedchamber of Babylon, now redolent of spices and of niter, the Egyptians who were the heirs of their fathers’ art pursued the elaborate task of embalming the latest Pharaoh. Shocked at the delay which would surely undo their skill, they had tiptoed in by dawnlight, and beheld the corpse with awed amazement. As their slaves brought in the instruments, the vessels and fluids and aromatics of their art, the single watcher, a white-faced Persian youth, extinguished his lamp and vanished like a ghost in silence.

Before slitting the torso to remove the entrails, they remembered, far though they were from the Valley of the Kings, to lift their hands in the traditional prayer, that it might be lawful for mortals to handle the body of a god.

The narrow streets of ancient Babylon hummed with rumor and counterrumor. There were lamps burning all night. Days passed; the armies of Perdikkas and Meleager waited in armed truce; the infantry around the palace, the cavalry in the royal park, beside the horse-lines where Nebuchadrezzar had kept his chariots for the lion-hunt.

Outnumbered four to one, they had discussed moving to the plains outside, where there was room for horse to deploy. “No,” said Perdikkas. “That would concede defeat. Give them time to take a look at their booby King. They’ll come round. Alexander’s army has never been divided.”

On the parade ground and in the palace gardens, the men of the phalanx bivouacked as best they could. Stubbornly they clung to their victors’ pride and their rooted xenophobia. No barbarian should rule their sons, they told each other across the campfires, where their Persian women, whom Alexander had induced them to marry lawfully, were stirring their supper-pots. They had long ago spent Alexander’s dowries; not one man in a hundred meant to take home his woman when he was paid off.

They thought with confused resentment of the young bloods in the Companions, drinking and hunting beside the sons of Persian lords with their curled beards and inlaid weapons and bedizened horses. It was well enough for the cavalry; they could afford to Persianize without losing face. But the foot-men, sons of Macedonian farmers, herdsmen and hunters, masons and carpenters, owned only what the wars had won them, their little hoards of loot, and, above all, the just reward for all their toils and dangers, the knowledge that whoever their fathers might have been, they were Alexander’s Macedonians, masters of the world. Clinging to this treasure of self-esteem, they spoke well of Philip, his modesty, his likeness to his great father, his pure Macedonian blood.

Their officers, whose affairs took them into the royal presence, came back increasingly taciturn. The enormous business of Alexander’s empire could not come to a standstill. Envoys, tax-collectors, shipbuilders, officers of the commissariat, architects, disputing satraps seeking arbitration, still appeared in the anterooms; indeed, in augmented numbers, many having waited for audience through Alexander’s illness. Not only had they to be dealt with; they had to find a visible, believable King.

Before each appearance, Meleager briefed Philip carefully. He had learned to go, unled, straight to his throne, without wandering off to speak to some chance person who had caught his eye; to keep his voice down so that he was seen, but not heard to speak, enabling Meleager beside him to proclaim suitable replies. He had learned not to call while enthroned for lemonade or sweets, or to ask permission from his guard of honor when he wanted to go outside. His scratching himself, picking his nose and fidgeting could never be quite controlled; but if his appearances were kept short, he presented as a rule a quiet and sober figure.

Meleager had appointed himself to the post of Chiliarch, or Grand Vizier, created for Hephaistion and inherited by Perdikkas. Standing at the King’s right hand, flamboyantly panoplied, he knew that he looked impressive; but he knew too, all too well, what a soldier thinks when the chief to whom he has come for orders speaks through an intermediary and never looks him in the face. His officers, all of whom had had free access to Alexander, could not be kept out; nor could the royal guard. And all of them, he felt it through his skin, were looking at the stout stocky figure on the throne, the slack mouth and wandering stare, and seeing in mind’s eye the dynamic vanished presence, the alert responsive face, the serene authority, that now lay stilled forever in the locked Bedchamber, submerged in the embalmers’ bath of niter, preparing to abide the centuries.

Beyond all this, Persian officers appointed by Alexander could not be refused audience, and were not fools. The thought of a concerted rising, against a mutinous divided army, gave him waking nightmares.

Like other men who have indulged a long rancorous hate, he blamed all adversity upon its object, never considering that his hatred, not his enemy, had created his predicament. Like other such men before and after him, he saw only one remedy, and resolved to seek it.

Philip was still in his old apartments, which, having been chosen for him by Alexander, were pleasant and cool, at least for Babylon in midsummer. When Meleager had tried to move him into more regal quarters, he had refused with shouts so loud that the palace guard had come running, thinking murder was being done. Here Meleager sought him, taking with him a kinsman, a certain Duris, who carried writing things.

The King was occupied happily with his stones. He had a chest full, collected over thousands of miles of Asia as he trailed along after the army; pebbles he had picked up for himself, mixed with bits of amber, quartz, agate, old seals, and colored glass jewels from Egypt, which Alexander or Ptolemy or Hephaistion had brought him when they happened to remember. He had arranged them in a long winding path across the room, and was on his hands and knees improving it.

At Meleager’s entrance he scrambled guiltily to his feet, clutching a favorite lump of Scythian turquoise, which he hid behind his back lest it be taken away.

“Sire!” said Meleager harshly.

Philip, recognizing this as a severe rebuke, hastened over to the most important chair, carefully stuffing the turquoise under the cushion.

“Sir,” said Meleager standing over him, “I have come to tell you that you are in grave danger. No, don’t be afraid, I will defend you. But the traitor Perdikkas, who tried to steal Alexander’s body and rob you of the throne, is plotting to take your life, and make himself King.”

Philip jumped to his feet, stammering incoherently. Presently Meleager made out, “He said … Alexander said … He can be King if he wants to. I don’t mind. Alexander told me they mustn’t make me King.”

With some trouble, Meleager freed his arm from a grip he had feared would break it. “Sir, if he is King his first act will be to kill you. Your only safety is in killing him. See, here is the paper ordering his death.” Duris set it, with pen and ink, upon the table. “Just write PHILIP here, as I taught you. I will help you, if you like.”

“And then you’ll kill him before he kills me?”

“Yes, and all our troubles will be over. Write it here.”

The blot with which he began did not efface the writing; and he produced, after that, a quite tolerable signature.

Perdikkas’ lodging was one of the grace-and-favor houses built in the royal park by the Persian kings, and bestowed on his friends by Alexander. Around it were encamped the royal squires. They had attached themselves to Perdikkas as Alexander’s chosen Regent. Though they had not offered to wait upon his person, and he had known better than to ask it, they rode with his messages, and guarded him in their accustomed rota by day and night.

He was consulting with Ptolemy when one of them came in. “Sir. An old man is asking for you.”

“Thirty at least,” said Ptolemy flippantly. Perdikkas said crisply, “Well?”

“He says, sir, he’s the servant of Arridaios.” The honorific Philip was not used on the Companions’ side of the river. “He says it’s urgent.”

“Is his name Konon?” said Ptolemy sharply. “Perdikkas, I know this man. You had better see him.”

“So I intended.” Perdikkas spoke rather stiffly. He found Ptolemy too easygoing and informal, traits which Alexander had regrettably not discouraged. “Bring him in, but search him for weapons first.”