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

Old Konon, profoundly ill at ease, gave an old soldier’s salute, stood to attention, and said nothing till given leave.

“Sir, with permission. They’ve made my poor master sign a paper against you. I was in his bedroom, seeing to his things, they never thought to look. Sir, don’t hold him to blame. They took advantage of him. He never meant harm to you, not of his own accord.”

“I believe you,” said Perdikkas frowning. “But it seems that harm is done.”

“Sir. If he falls into your hands, don’t kill him, sir. He was never any trouble, not in King Alexander’s day.”

“Rest assured we have no such wish.” This man could be useful, his charge more useful still. “When the army returns to duty, I will have your master well cared for. Do you want to stay with him?”

“Sir, yes sir. I’ve been with him nearly from a boy. I don’t know how he’d go on without me.”

“Very good. Permission granted. Tell him, if he will understand you, that he has nothing to fear from me.”

“I will, sir, and God bless you.” He left, saluting smartly.

“An easy favor,” said Perdikkas to Ptolemy. “Did he think we could afford to kill Alexander’s brother? Meleager, now …”

Later, his day’s business done, Perdikkas was sitting down to supper when raised voices sounded outside. From the window he saw a company of a hundred foot-soldiers. The squires on duty numbered sixteen.

He was too old a campaigner to have changed into a supper-robe. In moments, with the speed of two decades’ practice, he had whipped his corselet from the stand and clasped it on. A panting squire dashed in, saluting with one hand while the other waved a paper.

“Sir! It’s a summons from the rebels. A royal warrant they call it.”

“Royal, eh?” said Perdikkas calmly. The missive was brief; he read it aloud.

“PHILIP SON OF PHILIP KING OF THE MACEDONIANS AND LORD OF ASIA, To the former Chiliarch Perdikkas.

You are hereby summoned to appear before me, to answer a charge of treason. If you resist, the escort has orders to use force.”

“Sir, we can hold them. Do you want a message sent?”

Not for nothing had Perdikkas served directly under Alexander. He laid his hand on the boy’s shoulder, shaping his austere face into the needed smile. “Good lad. No, no message. Guard, stand to arms. I will talk to this squad of Meleager’s.” The squire’s salute had the faint reflection of a remembered ardor. Perhaps, thought Perdikkas, I can show Acting Chiliarch Meleager why I, and not he, got promoted to the Bodyguard.

He had had twelve years to absorb a basic Alexander precept: Do it with style. Unlike Alexander, he had had to work for it, but he knew what it was worth. On his own account, needing instruction from no one, he could deliver a memorable dressing-down.

Striding bareheaded onto the porch, the summons in his hand, he paused formidably for effect, and began to speak.

He had recognized the officer—he had a good general’s memory—and reviewed in detail the last campaign in which they had all served under his own command. Alexander had once spoken highly of them. What did they suppose themselves to be doing, disgracing themselves like this; they who had once been men, and even, God help them, soldiers? Could they face Alexander now? Even before he was King, the wittol bastard had been used in intrigue against him; anyone else would have had him put out of the way; but he in the greatness of his heart had cared for him as a harmless innocent. If King Philip had wished a fool to bear his name, he would have said so. King Philip! King Ass. Who would believe that men of Alexander’s could come here as servants of Meleager, a man he had known too well to trust with a division, to sell the life of the man he himself had chosen to command them? Let them go back to their comrades, and remind them who they had been, and what they had sunk to now. Let them ask themselves how they liked it. They could now dismiss.

After an uneasy, shuffling silence, the troop captain rapped out gruffly, “About turn! March.”

Meantime, the squires on watch had been joined by every squire in hearing. When the troop departed, they gathered round Perdikkas and cheered. Without effort this time, he returned their triumphant grins. Almost, for a moment, he felt like Alexander.

No, he thought as he went in. People used to eat him alive. They had to touch him, his hands, his clothes. I’ve seen them fighting to reach him. Those fools at Opis, when he’d forgiven them for rioting, demanded the right to kiss him … Well, that was his mystery, which I shall never have. But then, nor will anyone else.

Slowly, against the stream, the rowers’ labor lightened sometimes by a flaw of wind from the south, the canopied barge meandered along the Tigris. On linen cushions stuffed with wool and down, waving their fans, the two princesses stretched like young cats, luxuriating in smooth movement and the cool air off the water, after the jolting heat of their covered wagon. Within the awning, their duenna was fast asleep. Along the towpath trundled the wagon and the baggage-cart, the escort of armed mounted eunuchs, the muleteers and the household slaves. When the caravan passed a village, all the peasants would gather on the bank to stare.

“If only,” sighed Stateira, “he had not told us to hurry. One could go all the way by water, downstream to the Gulf, and up the Euphrates to Babylon.” She settled the cushions in her back, which had the ache of pregnancy.

Drypetis, fingering her dark-blue widow’s veil, looked over her shoulder to be sure the duenna was sleeping. “Will he give me another husband?”

“I don’t know.” Stateira looked away at the riverbank. “Don’t ask him yet. He won’t like it. He thinks you still belong to Hephaistion. He won’t let Hephaistion’s regiment ever have another name.” Feeling a desolate silence behind her, she said, “If I have a boy, I’ll ask him.” She lay back in the cushions and closed her eyes.

The sun, splintering through tall clumps of papyrus, made shifting patterns in the rose-red light that filtered through her eyelids. It was like the sun-glowing crimson curtains of the wedding pavilion at Susa. Her face burned, as always when the memory came back to her.

She had been, of course, presented to the King before. Grandmother had ensured that she made the deepest curtsey, before he took his tall chair and she her low one. But the wedding ritual could not be evaded; it had followed the Persian rite. She had been led in by her dead mother’s brother, a fine tall man. Then the King had risen from his chair of state, as the bridegroom must, to greet her with a kiss and lead her to the chair beside him. She had performed, for the kiss, the little genuflection Grandmamma had taught her; but then she had had to stand up, there was no way out of it. She was half a head taller, and ready to die of shame.

When the trumpets had sounded, and the herald announced that they were man and wife, it was Drypetis’ turn. The King’s friend, Hephaistion, had stood up and come forward, the most beautiful man she had ever seen, stately and tall—with his dark-gold hair, he could have been one of the fair Persians—and taken her sister’s hand, matching her height to a hair. All the King’s friends, the other bridegrooms, had given a kind of sigh; she knew that when the King had stepped out to meet her they had been holding their breath. At the end, he and she had had to lead out the procession to the bridal chambers. She had wished that the earth might swallow her.

In the crimson pavilion with its golden bed, he had likened her to a daughter of the gods (her Greek was quite good by then), and she had seen that he meant well; but since nothing could do away those dreadful moments, she would have preferred him to keep silence. He was a powerful presence, and she was shy; though the defect was his, it was she who had felt like an ungainly tent-pole. All she had been able to think about in the marriage bed was that her father had run away in battle, and Grandmother would never speak his name. She must redeem the honor of her house by courage. He had been kind, and hardly hurt her; but it had all been so strange, so overpowering, she could hardly utter a word. No wonder she had not conceived, and that though he had paid her visits of compliment while still at Susa, and brought her gifts, he had never once had her to bed again.

To crown these miseries, she had known that somewhere in the palace was the King’s Bactrian wife, whom he had taken along to India. A stranger to sexual pleasure, Stateira knew no sexual jealousy; but its fiercest torments could hardly have been more wounding than her thoughts of Roxane, Little Star, favorite and confidante. She pictured them lying side by side in tender love-making, intimate talk, amusing gossip, laughter—perhaps at her. As for Bagoas the Persian, she had heard nothing of him at her father’s court, and nothing since. She had been carefully brought up.

The King’s sojourn at Susa had gone by, its great political events dimly heard of and little understood. Then he had gone on his summer progress to Ekbatana. He had called to take leave of her (would he have done even that, except to see Grandmother?) without a word of when he would send for her or where. He had gone, taking the Bactrian woman; and she had cried all night from shame and anger.

But last spring, when he had come to Susa after the mountain war, it had all been different; no ceremony, no crowds. He had been shut up alone with Grandmother, and it almost seemed that she had heard him weeping. In the evening they had all dined together; they were his family, he said. He looked lean, weather-beaten and weary; but he talked, as she had never heard him do before.

At the first sight of Drypetis in her widow’s veil, his face had frozen in a dreadful grief; but he had covered it quickly, and enthralled them with tales of India, its marvels and its customs. Then he spoke of his plans to explore the coast of Arabia, to make a road along north Africa and extend his empire westward. And he had said, “So much to do, so little time. My mother was right; long before now, I should have begotten an heir.”

He had looked at her; and she had known it was she, not the Bactrian, who was the chosen one. She had come to him in a passion of gratitude, which had proved as efficacious as any other ardor.

Soon after he had gone, she knew that she had conceived, and Grandmother had sent him word. It was good that he had summoned her to Babylon. If he was still sick, she would tend him with her own hands. She would make no jealous scenes about the Bactrian. A king was entitled to his concubines; and, as Grandmother had warned her, much trouble could spring from quarrels in the harem.

The soldiers sent to arrest Perdikkas had seen, as he had advised, what had become of them, and did not like it. They went among their comrades, reporting his courage and their discomfiture; and relating, what he himself had first revealed to them, that Meleager had meant to have his head. They had been anxious, restless, volatile. While Meleager was still digesting failure, suddenly they were roaring at his doors like a human sea. The guards on duty abandoned their posts and joined them. In a cold sweat, he saw himself dying, like a boar at bay, in a ring of spears. With the speed of desperation, he made for the royal rooms.

In a cheerful lamplight, Philip was seated at his evening meal, a favorite dish, spiced venison with pumpkin fritters. A jug of lemonade stood by him; he was not reliable if given wine. When Meleager burst in, he expressed annoyance with his eyes, since his mouth was full. Konon, who was waiting at table, looked up sharply. He was wearing his old sword; he had heard the noise.

“Sir,” panted Meleager, “the traitor Perdikkas has repented, and the soldiers want him spared. Please go and tell them you have pardoned him.”

Philip bolted his mouthful to reply indignantly, “I can’t come now. I’m having my dinner.”

Konon took a step forward. Looking Meleager in the eye, he said, “He was taken advantage of.” His hand rested, as if by chance, on his well-polished sword-belt.

Keeping his head, Meleager said, “My good man, the King will be safer on his throne than anywhere else in Babylon. You know that; you were at Assembly. Sir, come at once.” A persuasive argument occurred to him. “Your brother would have done so.”

Philip put down his knife and wiped his mouth. “Is that right, Konon? Would Alexander go?”

Konon’s hand fell to his side. “Yes, sir. Yes, he would go.”

As he was steered to the door, Philip looked back regretfully at his dinner-plate, and wondered why Konon was wiping his eyes.

The army was placated for the time, but far from satisfied. Audiences in the Throne Room were going badly. The envoys’ regrets for the late King’s untimely death grew less formal and more pointed. Meleager felt his power increasingly unstable, and discipline crumbling by the day.

Meantime, the cavalry had taken counsel. Suddenly one morning they were found to have disappeared. The park was empty of everything but horse-droppings. They had made their way through the crumbling outer walls, and deployed to invest the city. Babylon was under siege.

Much of the terrain outside was swampy; it needed no great force to close the solid causeways and the firm open ground. As planned, the refugees were unmolested. At all the gates, with a hubbub of shouting men, wailing children, burbling camels, bleating goats and cackling poultry, the country people who feared war were pouring into the city, and the city people who feared famine were pouring out.

Meleager could have dealt with a foreign enemy. But he knew too well that he could no longer trust his troops for even the briefest contact with their former comrades. They were forgetting the threat of unborn barbarian heirs, and homesick for the familiar discipline of the old triumphant days, the officers who had linked them to Alexander. Less than a month ago, they had been limbs of a well-knit body directed by a fiery spirit. Now each man felt his isolation in a foreign world. Soon they would take revenge for it.

In this extremity, he went to consult Eumenes.

Throughout the turmoil since Alexander’s death, the Secretary had gone quietly about his business. A man of humble origins, discovered and trained by Philip, advanced by Alexander, he had been, and remained, uncommitted in the present strife. He had neither joined the Companions nor denounced them. His work, he said, was to carry on the kingdom’s business. He had helped with replies to the envoys and the embassies, drawing on his records, and had drafted letters in the name of Philip, but without the title of King (it had been added by Meleager). When pressed to take sides, he would only say that he was a Greek, and politics were the concern of the Macedonians.

Meleager found him at his writing-table, dictating to his clerk, who was taking it down on wax.

Next day he bathed again, and sacrificed the appointed offerings, and after the sacrifice remained in constant fever. Yet even so, he sent for the officers, and ordered them to see that everything was ready for the expedition. He bathed again in the evening, and after that became gravely ill …

“Eumenes,” said Meleager, who had been standing ignored in the doorway, “let the dead rest awhile. You are needed by the living.”

“The living need the truth, before rumor pollutes it.” He motioned to his clerk, who folded his tablet and went out. Meleager outlined his dilemma, aware as he went that the Secretary had long since assessed it all, and was waiting impatiently for him to finish. He trailed to a lame conclusion.

Eumenes said without emotion, “My opinion, since you ask it, is that it is not too late to seek a compromise. And it is too late for anything else.”

Meleager had already been driven to this view, but wanted to have it confirmed by someone else, whom he could blame if things went wrong. “I accept your advice. That is, if the men agree.”

Eumenes said drily, “Perhaps the King can persuade them.”

Meleager ignored the double edge. “One man could do it: yourself. Your honor is unquestioned, your experience known. Will you address the Macedonians?”

Eumenes had long since taken his measure. His own sole loyalty was to the house of Philip and Alexander, who had lifted him from obscurity to prestige and power. Had Philip Arridaios been competent, he would have felt divided loyalties; but he knew what the elder Philip had thought about that, and was for the son of Alexander, unborn, unseen. Yet Philip was the son of Philip his benefactor, who had seen fit to acknowledge him; and Eumenes would protect him if he could. He was a dry, cool man, whose inward feelings few suspected; he had no taste for protestations. He said, “Very well.”

He was well received. A man in his fifties, spare and erect, with the subtler features of the south yet a soldier’s bearing, he said what was needed and no more. He made no attempt to emulate Alexander, whose sense of his audience had been an artist’s gift. Eumenes’ talent was for sounding reasonable, and keeping to the point. Reassured by hearing their confused misgivings reduced to logic, the Assembly accepted his conclusions with relief. Envoys were sent to the camp of Perdikkas, to treat for terms. As they rode out at sunrise from the Ishtar Gate, crowds of anxious Babylonians watched them off.

They were back before noon. Perdikkas would raise the siege and reconcile the armies, as soon as Meleager and his accomplices gave themselves up to justice.

By now, any discipline still left among the troops in Babylon was self-imposed from dim feelings of dignity, depending chiefly on the popularity of any officer concerned. The returning envoys shouted back their message to anyone who stopped them in the street to ask. While Meleager was still reading Perdikkas’ letter, the troops were pouring into the hall of audience, having called their own Assembly.

Eumenes in his business room listened to the rumble of conflicting voices, and the scrape of boot-nails continuing the ruin of the marble floor. A stair in the thickness of the wall had a window which overlooked the hall. He saw that the soldiers had not come armed only with token weapons; despite the heat, they had on their corselets; helmets were worn, not held. A visible division was starting; on one side the men who were for accepting the conditions; on the other, alarmed and angry, those who had committed themselves irretrievably to Meleager. The rest were waiting to have their minds made up for them. This, Eumenes thought, is how civil wars begin. He made his way to the royal rooms.

Meleager was there, standing over Philip and coaching him in a speech. Philip, more aware of his sweating desperation than of anything he said, was fidgeting, not taking in a word. “What,” asked Eumenes bluntly, “are you telling him to say?”

Meleager’s light-blue eyes, always prominent, were now bloodshot too. “To say no, of course.”

In the level voice to which even Alexander in anger had paid attention, Eumenes said, “If he says that, swords will be out before you can take breath. Have you looked in the hall? Look now.”

A big, heavy hand clutched Eumenes’ shoulder. He turned, startled. It had never occurred to him that Philip would be strong.

“I don’t want to say it. I can’t remember it. Tell him I’ve forgotten.”

“Never mind,” said Eumenes quietly. “We will think of something else.”

The royal fanfare made a brief silence in the hall. Philip came forward, Eumenes just behind him.

“Macedonians!” He paused, reminding himself of the words the kind, calm man had taught him. “There is no need for strife. The peacemakers will be the victors here.” He almost turned round for approval; but the kind man had told him not to.

A pleased murmur went round the hall. The King had sounded just like anyone else.

“Do not condemn free citizens …” prompted Eumenes softly.

“Do not condemn free citizens, unless you wish for civil war.” He paused again; Eumenes, screening his lips with his hand, gave him his lines. “Let us try again for reconcilement. Let us send another embassy.” He drew a breath of triumph. Eumenes whispered, “Don’t look round.”

There was no serious opposition. All welcomed a breathing-space, and argued only the ways and means; but as the voices grew louder, they brought back to Philip that dreadful day when he had run away from the hall, and they had given him a robe to make him come back again, and then … Alexander had been lying dead, as if he were carved in marble. Alexander had told him …

He felt at his head, at the gold diadem they always made him wear when he came out here. He took it off, and, holding it out, walked forward.

Behind him, Meleager and Eumenes gave a united gasp of dismay. He extended, confidingly, the crown to the staring soldiers. “Is it because I’m King? It doesn’t matter. I’d sooner not be King. Here, look; you can give it to someone else.”

It was a curious moment. Everyone had been at stretch, till the half-relief of borrowed time. Now this.

Always prone to emotion—a trait which Alexander had used with unfailing skill—the Macedonians were borne on a flood of sentiment. What a decent, good fellow; what a law-abiding King. Living under his brother’s shadow had made him over-modest. No one laughed as he looked about for someone to take the crown. There were reassuring cries of “Long live Philip, Philip for King!”

With happy surprise, Philip resumed his crown. He had got everything right, and the kind man would be pleased with him. He was still beaming when they shepherded him inside.

Perdikkas’ tent was pitched in the shade of a tall palmgrove. He was settled back into surroundings so familiar that he seemed never to have left them; the light bed and folding chair, the armor-stand, the chest (there had been a pile of chests in the days of victorious loot, but that was over), the trestle table.

His brother Alketas and his cousin Leonnatos were with him when the new envoys came. Leonnatos was a long-boned auburn-haired man, who reminded the world of his connections with the royal house by copying Alexander’s leonine haircut, even, said his enemies, reproducing its wave with the tongs. His ambitions, though high, were as yet inchoate; meantime he supported Perdikkas.

The envoys had been sent out while their message was considered. Peace was offered in King Philip’s name, if his claim was recognized, and his deputy, Meleager, was appointed to share the supreme command with Perdikkas.

Leonnatos tossed back his hair; a gesture rarely used by Alexander, which in his pupil had become a mannerism. “Insolence! Do we need to disturb the others?”

Perdikkas glanced up from the letter. “Here,” he said easily, “I see the hand of Eumenes.”

“No doubt,” said Alketas, surprised. “Who else would write it?”

“We will accept. Nothing could be better.”

“What?” said Leonnatos, staring. “You can’t take that brigand into the command!”

“I told you, I see the hand of Eumenes.” Perdikkas stroked the dark stubble on his chin. “He knew what bait would draw the beast from his lair. Yes, let us have him out. Then we shall see.”

The barge on the Tigris was nearing the bend where the ladies must disembark, to join their caravan and proceed by land.

Dusk was falling. Their tent had been pitched on grass, away from the river-damp and the mosquitoes. They stepped ashore as the first torches were kindled about the camp; there was a smell of burnt fat as the lamb for supper sizzled over the fire.

The chief eunuch of the escort, as he handed Stateira off the gangplank, said softly, “Madam. The villagers who came selling fruit are saying that the Great King is dead.”

“He warned me of it,” she answered calmly. “He said there was this rumor among the peasants. It is in his letter; he said we should not heed it.”

Holding up her gown from the rushes heavy with dew, she swept on towards the lamplit tent.

To a spirited music of trumpets and double flutes, the foot-soldiers marched out under the towers of the Ishtar Gate, watched by the relieved Babylonians, to seal their peace with the Companions.

At their head rode Meleager, the King beside him. Philip made a cheerful and seemly figure, wearing the scarlet shoulder-cloak that Alexander had once given him, sitting a well-trained, solid horse that would walk half a length ahead of Konon with the leading-rein. He hummed to himself the tune that the pipes were playing. The air was still fresh with morning. All would be well, everyone was to be friends again. It would be no trouble, now, to go on being King.

The Companions waited on their glossy horses, restive from leisure; their bridles sparkling with gold pendants and silver cheek-rosettes, a fashion set by Alexander for Boukephalas. Dressed in the workmanlike panoply of campaign, plain Thracian helmet and stamped leather cuirass, Perdikkas watched with grim satisfaction the marching phalanx, the gaudy rider leading it. Meleager had had his parade armor adorned with a large gold lion-mask, and his cloak was edged with bullion. So! The beast was drawn.

They accorded Philip the royal salute. Well coached, he acknowledged it and reached out his arm; Perdikkas bore, with resolute affability, the crushing of his huge paw. But Meleager, with a look offensively familiar, had pushed up after, his own hand ready for the clasp of reconciliation. It was with far greater reluctance that Perdikkas returned that grip. He told himself that Alexander had once had to break bread with the traitor Philotas, biding his time; and if he had balked at it, few of his advance force, including Perdikkas probably, would be alive today. “It was necessary,” was what Alexander had said.

It was settled that the absent Krateros, considering his high rank and royal lineage, should be appointed Philip’s guardian. Antipatros should keep the regency of Macedon. Perdikkas should be Chiliarch of all the Asian conquests, and, if Roxane bore a boy, should be joint guardian with Leonnatos. They were Alexander’s kinsmen, which Meleager could not claim; but since he was to share the high command, the distinction did not trouble him. He had begun already to give them his views on the management of the empire.

When all this business was done, Perdikkas made a last proposal. It was the ancient custom of Macedon, after civil war (another ancient custom) to exorcise discord with a sacrifice to Hekate. He proposed that all the troops in Babylon, horse and foot, should assemble on the plain for the Purification.

Meleager willingly agreed. He planned an impressive appearance, proper to his new rank. He would have his helmet topped with a double crest, like Alexander’s at Gaugamela. Conspicuous; and a lucky omen.

Shortly before the rite, Perdikkas asked the Bodyguard to a private supper. He was back, now, at his house in the royal park. The generals rode or strolled over in the falling twilight, under the ornamental trees brought from far and wide by the Persian kings to adorn the paradise. A simple occasion, a meeting of old friends.

When the servants had left them with the wine, Perdikkas said, “I have chosen the men and briefed them. I think that Philip—I suppose we must get used to calling him that—will have learned his part.”

Till Krateros, his new guardian, could take charge of him, Perdikkas was doing so. Since he lived in his accustomed rooms, with his accustomed comforts, he had scarcely noticed the change, except for the welcome absence of Meleager. He was getting new lessons; but that was to be expected.

“He has taken to Eumenes,” Ptolemy said. “Eumenes doesn’t bully him.”

“Good. He can help to coach him. Let us hope the noise and spectacle won’t confuse him … There will be the elephants.”

“Surely,” said Leonnatos, “he has seen elephants by now?”

“Of course he has,” Ptolemy said impatiently. “He traveled from India with them, in Krateros’ convoy.”

“Yes, true.” Perdikkas paused. There was a silence, a sense of more to come. Seleukos, to whose command the elephant corps belonged, said, “Well?”

“King Omphis,” said Perdikkas slowly, “had a certain use for them in India.”

There were sharply drawn breaths all round the supper-couches. It was Niarchos who said distastefully, “Omphis maybe. Never Alexander,”

“Alexander was never in our dilemma,” said Leonnatos unwisely. “No,” returned Ptolemy. “Nor like to be.”

Perdikkas cut in, with brusque authority. “No matter. Alexander knew very well the power of fear.”

The men were astir at cockcrow, to march to the Field of Purgation at break of day, and get the rite finished before the crushing heat of noon.

The rich wheatfields, which bore three crops a year, had been lately harvested. The sun, floating up from the flat horizon, slanted its first beams over miles of stubble, gleaming like golden fur. Here and there, scarlet pennants marked the limits of the parade ground, which were significant to the rite.

Thick and squat, their ancient Assyrian brick mortared with black bitumen, jagged and crumbling with the centuries and with the lassitude of a long-conquered race, the walls of Babylon, impassive, overlooked the plain. They had seen many deeds of men, and looked incapable of amazement. A wide stretch of their battlements had been flattened down into a new, smooth platform. Its smoke-blackened bricks still smelled of burning; streams of molten pitch had hardened down its sides. In the ditch below was a great pile of debris; half-charred timber with broken carvings of lions and ships and wings and trophies, still dimly picked out with gilding. It was the remains of the two-hundred-foot pyre on which, not long before his death, Alexander had burned the body of Hephaistion.

Long before dawn, the crowds had started to gather along the walls. They had not forgotten the splendors of Alexander’s entry into Babylon; a free show, for it had surrendered peacefully, and he had forbidden his men to plunder it. They remembered the streets flower-strewn and wafted with frankincense; the procession of exotic gifts, gold-bedizened horses, lions and leopards in gilded cages; the Persian cavalry, the Macedonian cavalry; and the gold-plated state chariot with the slight, glittering figure of the victor like a transfigured boy. He had been twenty-five, then. They had hoped for more splendors when he came back from India; but he had given them only that stupendous funeral.

Now they waited, to see the Macedonian men of war march out in their pride, and offer their gods appeasement; the citizens, the soldiers’ women and children, the smiths and tentmakers and sutlers and wagoners and whores, the shipwrights and seamen from the galley-slips. They loved a show; but under expectation was a deep unease. A time had gone, a time was coming; and they did not like the auspices of its birth.

Most of the army had crossed the river overnight, by Queen Nitokris’ Bridge, or by the innumerable ferryboats of reed and pitch. They slept in the open, and polished their gear for the morrow. The watchers on the walls saw them getting up by torchlight, the sound of their stirring like a murmuring sea. Further away, the Companions’ horses whinnied.

Hooves drummed on the timbers of Nitokris’ Bridge. The leaders arrived, to direct the sacrifice which would cleanse men’s hearts from evil.

The rite was very old. The victim must be dedicated, killed and disemboweled, its four quarters and its entrails carried to the boundaries of the field. The army would march into the space thus purified, would parade, and sing a paean.

The sacrifice was, as it had always been, a dog. The finest and tallest wolfhound had been chosen from the royal kennels; pure white, handsomely feathered. Its docility, as the huntsman led it forward to the altar, promised the good omen of a consenting sacrifice; but when its leash was handed to the sacrificer, it growled and flew at him. Even for its size, it was immensely strong. It took four men to overpower it and get the knife to its throat; they finished with more of their own blood on them than the victim’s. To make things worse, in the midst of the struggle the King had rushed up shouting, and only with trouble had been coaxed away.

Hastily, before there could be brooding on the augury, the four horsemen, appointed to asperse the plain, galloped to its four corners with their bloody offerings. The lumps of white and scarlet were flung outward with averting invocations to Triple Hekate and the infernal gods; and the exorcised field was ready to receive the army of Alexander.

The squadrons and the phalanxes were ready. The burnished helmets of the horsemen gleamed; their crests of red or white horsehair, the pennants on their lances, stirred in the morning breeze. Their short sturdy Greek ponies whinnied at the tall horses of the Persian troops. Most of the Persian foot had melted away, trudging dusty caravan trails to their distant villages. The Macedonian foot was present to a man. They stood in close order, their whetted spear-tips making a glitter about them.

A square had formed on the wide stubbled plain. Its base was the wall of Babylon; its left side was the infantry; its right, the cavalry. Between them, making the fourth side, were the royal elephants.

Their mahouts, who had come with them from India, and knew them as a mother knows her child, had worked on them all yesterday in the high thatched elephant-sheds among the palm-trees; crooning and clucking and slapping, washing them in the canal; painting on their foreheads, in ochre or scarlet or green, sacred symbols enlaced with elaborate scrollwork; draping their wrinkled flanks with tasseled nets brilliantly dyed and threaded with gold bullion; fastening jeweled rosettes through slits in their leather ears; grooming their tails and toes.

It was a year since the mahouts had had a chance to make their children fine. They had had their schooling on the royal maidan at Taxila; their children also. They had talked to them softly, reminding them of old days beside the Indus, while they reddened their feet with henna, as the custom had always been for such occasions. Now in the pink early light they sat proudly on their necks, wearing their ceremonial silks and turbans with peacock feathers, their beards freshly dyed blue or green or crimson; each holding the gold-bound ivory goad, studded with gems, which King Omphis in his magnificence had presented with each elephant to King Iskandar. They had served two famous kings; the world should see that they and their children knew how things were done.

The generals, who had been pouring their libations at the bloody altar, went off to join their detachments. As Ptolemy and Niarchos rode side by side towards the ranks of the Companions, Niarchos rubbed a splash of blood from his bridle-arm, saying, “The gods below don’t seem disposed to cleanse us.”

“Are you surprised?” said Ptolemy. His craggy face was set in creases of disgust. “Well, God willing, I shall be far away before long.”

“And I, God willing … Do the dead watch us, as poets say?

“Homer says the unburied dead do … He never did let go easily.” He added, not altogether to Niarchos, “I shall make him what amends I can.”

It was time for the King to take his time-honored place at the right of the Companions. His horse was ready. He had been well rehearsed. Eager to produce him and get to business, Perdikkas was grinding his teeth in the effort to keep his temper.

“Sir, the army awaits you. The men are watching. You cannot let them see you cry. You are the King! Sir, compose yourself. What is a dog?”

“He was Eos!” Philip was scarlet-faced, tears running into his beard. “He knew me! We used to play tug-of-war. Alexander said he was strong enough to look after himself. He knew me!”

“Yes, yes,” said Perdikkas. Ptolemy was right, Alexander should have had him smothered. Most of the crowd had thought he was assisting in the sacrifice; but all the omens had been disquieting. “The gods required him. It is done now. Come.”

Obedient to authority and to a voice far more impressive than Meleager’s, Philip wiped his eyes and nose with the corner of his scarlet cloak, and let a groom hoist him up on his embroidered saddle-cloth. His horse, a seasoned veteran of parades, followed each maneuver of the one beside it. Philip felt the leading-rein must still be there.

The troops awaited the final ceremony; the sound of the trumpet, giving the note of the paean for them to sing.

Perdikkas, the King beside him, turned to the officers strung out behind him, leading their squadrons. “Forward!” he barked. “Slow—march!”

The pipers struck up, instead of the paean, the cavalry walk familiar at parades. The sleek and glittering lines paced smoothly forward, rank upon rank, stepping delicately as they had done on triumphant days in the years of miracle, at Memphis, at Tyre, at Taxila, at Persepolis, and here on this very field. At their head rode Perdikkas, and, carried by his wise charger, the King.

The infantry, taken unawares by this maneuver, stood in their ranks and muttered. The decay of discipline showed; spears dipped or leaned askew. They were light parade spears, not the tall sarissas; suddenly their bearers felt half-armed. The advancing cavalry looked formal and ceremonious; had there been some muddle in the briefing? Such doubts, once unthinkable, were common nowadays. Under Meleager their morale was low, their bonding shaky.

Perdikkas gave an order. The left and center wings reined to a halt; the right, the royal squadron, still advanced. He said to Philip, “When we stop, sir, make your speech. You remember?”

“Yes!” said Philip eagerly, “I’m to say—”

“Hush, sir, not now. When I have said ‘Halt!’”

Neatly, stylishly, the royal squadron advanced till it was fifty feet from the phalanx. Perdikkas halted it.

Philip lifted his arm. He was used by now to his comfortable horse. Set firmly on the embroidered saddle-cloth, in a loud and unexpectedly deep voice, surprising even to himself, he shouted, “Surrender the mutineers!”

There was a moment of absolute, stunned silence. This was their own, their chosen Macedonian King. The front ranks, staring across incredulous, saw his face strained in the simple effort of a child getting his lesson right; and knew at last what they had done.

Voices broke out among the lines, suddenly raised, appealing for support. They came from Meleager’s ringleaders. Among uncertain undertones, their own noise isolated them; it could be heard how few they were.

Slightly at first, looking almost accidental, spaces began to open around them. It was coming home to their former comrades that they themselves were not precisely threatened. And who, after all, had been to blame? Who had foisted on them this hollow King, the tool of anyone who, for the moment, owned him? They forgot the peasant spearman who had first called for Philip’s son; remembering only how Meleager had dressed the fool in Alexander’s robe, and tried to profane Alexander’s body. What did anyone owe his creatures?

Perdikkas beckoned the herald, who rode up with a paper in his hand. In his trained, carrying voice, he read out the names of Meleager’s thirty. Meleager’s own name was not called.

In his station of honor before the right-wing phalanx, he felt, around him, the last lees of loyalty ebb away, leaving him high and dry. If he stepped forward, challenged Perdikkas’ perfidy—that was the signal they were waiting for over there. He froze, the statue of a soldier, sweating cold under the brazen Babylonian sun.

Sixty men dismounted from Perdikkas’ squadron. On foot they formed pairs; one holding a set of fetters, the other a coil of rope.

There was a crucial pause. The thirty turned here and there, protesting. Some spears were waved, some voices urged resistance. In the confusion, the trumpet spoke again. Quietly, seeming only to confer with him, Perdikkas had been rehearsing Philip in his next speech.

“Deliver them up!” he shouted. “Or we will ride against you!” He began, unprompted, to gather up his reins.

“Not now!” hissed Perdikkas, to his relief. He had no wish to go any nearer the spears. They used to point all one way, when Alexander was there.

The spaces widened around the thirty as the fetter-men approached them. Some gave up and submitted; some struggled, but their captors had been picked for strength. All were soon standing, with fettered feet, in the space between the lines. They awaited they knew not what. There had been something odd in the faces of their captors, who had not met their eyes.

“Bind them,” said Perdikkas.

Their arms were trussed to their sides. The cavalry fell back to its first line, leaving once more a hollow square. The fetter-bearers pushed the bound men over; they fell forward helplessly, twisting in their bonds, alone under the sky in the field hallowed to Hekate.

From the far side came the shrilling of an eastern pipe and a roll of drums.

The hot sun flashed on the goads of gold and ivory, King Omphis’ gifts. Gently the mahouts pricked the necks of their good children, shouting the old command.

Rising like one, fifty trunks curled backward. The troops heard with awe the high blare of their war-cry. Slowly, then at a steady thudding roll, their tread felt through the ground, the huge bedizened beasts moved forward.

The mahouts in their gleaming silks flung off their well-trained silence. They drummed with their heels, hallooing, slapping the necks of their mounts with their jeweled hands or the butts of the goads. They sounded like boys let out of school. The elephants fanned out their great ears, and, squealing with excitement, began to run.

A kind of groan, of horror and a dreadful fascination, ran through the watching lines. Hearing it, the men on the ground writhed to their knees, staring about them. At first they looked at the goads; then one man, still struggling, saw the hennaed feet as they drummed closer, and understood. He screamed. Others tried to roll away in the thick grey dust. They had only time to move a yard or two.

With drawn hissing breath, the army of Alexander saw the treading of the human vintage; the bursting of the rind, the scarlet juices running from the pounded flattened flesh. The elephants moved with well-trained intelligence, catching the rolling bodies with their trunks, and steadying them while the feet came down, trumpeting as the war-smell steamed up from the ground.

From his station besides Perdikkas, Philip uttered little breathless cheers. This was not like the killing of Eos. He was fond of elephants—Alexander had let him ride one—but nobody was hurting them. His eye was filled with their splendid trappings, his ear with their proud brayings. He hardly noticed the bloody mash below them. In any case, Perdikkas had told him that those were all wicked men.

The mahouts, seeing the work well done, calmed and praised their children, who willingly came away. They had done such things in battle, and several still bore the scars. This had been painless and quick. Following their leader, an elephant of great age and wisdom, they formed in line, red to the knees; paraded past Perdikkas and the King, touching brow with trunk in a grave salute; then went their way to the shady elephant-houses, the reward of palm-kernels and melons, the cool pleasant bathe which would sluice off the scent of war.

As indrawn breaths escaped, and the silence in the ranks was breaking, Perdikkas signed to the herald to blow again, and rode forward, a length ahead of the King.

“Macedonians!” he said. “With the death of these traitors the army is truly cleansed, and fit again to defend the empire. If there is anyone among you who, deserving these men’s fate, has today escaped it, let him thank his fortune and learn loyalty. Trumpeter! The paean.”

The stirring air sang out; the cavalry took it up. After a dragging moment, the infantry came in. Its ancient fierceness was reassuring as a lullaby. It took them back to days when they knew who and what they were.

It was over. Meleager left the ground, alone. His confederates were dead; out of all his hangers-on, not one came near him. He might have had the plague.

The servant who had held his horse seemed to look at him not with meant insolence, but with an inquisitiveness which was worse. Behind, in the vacant square, two covered wagons had appeared, and men with pitchforks were heaving the corpses into them. Two cousins and a nephew of his were there; he ought to arrange their funerals, there was no one else. The thought of searching that trampled meat for shreds of identity revived his nausea; dismounting, he vomited till he was cold with emptiness. As he rode on, he was aware of two men behind him. When he stopped they had drawn rein while one adjusted his saddle-cloth. Now they moved on.

He had fought in many battles. Ambition, comradeship, the bright fierce certainty radiated by Alexander, enemies on whom one could revenge and redeem one’s fear, all these had carried him along and made him brave. Never before had he faced a lonely end. His mind began to run, like a hunted fox’s, upon likely refuge. Above him, thick and ragged and pitch-black, sullen with the blood of worked-out slaves, loomed the walls of Babylon and the crumbling ziggurat of Bel.

He rode through the tunneled gateway. The men were following. He turned off into narrow streets where women crushed themselves into doorways to give him room; filthy deep courts between eyeless houses, where huddles of thievish men stared at him dangerously. The pursuit was no longer in sight. Suddenly he came out into the wide Marduk Way, the temple just before him. A hallowed place, to Greeks as well as to barbarians. Everyone knew that Alexander had sacrificed there to Zeus and Herakles. Sanctuary!

He hitched his horse to a fig-tree in the weed-grown outer precinct. Through rank greenery a trodden path led to the ruined entry; from the gloom beyond came the universal temple smell of incense, burnt meat and wood-ash, the Babylonian smell of foreign unguents and foreign flesh. As he walked towards it in the dazzling heat, someone stood in the sunlight facing him. It was Alexander.

His heart stopped. Next moment he knew what he was looking at, but still he could not move. The statue was marble, tinted like life; a dedication eight years old from the first Babylonian triumph. It stood at ground-level, the plinth as yet unbuilt. Nude but for a ted chlamys across one shoulder, grasping a spear of gilded bronze, Alexander calmly awaited the new temple he had endowed. His deep-set eyes, with their smoke-grey enamel irises, gazed out at Meleager, saying “Well?”

He stared back, attempting defiance, at the searching face, the smooth young body. You were lean and sinewy and hacked about with scars. Your forehead was creased, you were drawn about the eyes, your hair was fading. What is that idol? An idea … But memory, once invoked, conjured all too potently the real presence. He had seen the living anger … He strode on into the temple.

At first the gloom almost blinded him after the harsh sun. Presently, by the light of a smoke-shaft high above, he saw looming in shadow the colossal image of Bel, Great King of Gods, enthroned with fists on knees. His towering miter almost touched the roof; he was flanked by winged lions with the heads of bearded men. His scepter was tall as a man; his robe, from which the gold leaf was peeling, glimmered dimly. His face was blackened with age and smoke, but his ivory-inlaid eyes glared fiercely yellow. Before him was the fire-altar, covered with dead ash. No one, it seemed, had told him there was a new King in Babylon.

No matter, an altar was an altar. Here he was safe. Content at first to get back his breath and enjoy the cool from the thick high walls, soon he started to peer about for signs of life. The place seemed deserted; yet he felt a sense of being observed, assessed, considered.

In the wall behind Bel, there was a door set in the dark-glazed tiles. He felt, rather than heard, stirrings of life behind it; but he dared not knock. Authority had drained from him. Time dragged by. He was a temple suppliant, someone should attend to him. He had not eaten since daybreak; behind the ebony door were men, food, wine. But he did not go to tell them he was there. He knew they knew it.

A rusty sunset light lowered in the courtyard. The shadows deepened round frowning Bel, drowning all but his yellow eye-whites. With the dark, he came into possession. The temple seemed peopled with the ghosts of men like stone, treading with stony feet the necks of their conquered enemies, offering their blood to this stone demon. More than for food, Meleager craved for the open skies of a mountain shrine in Macedon, the color and light of a Greek temple, the gracious and human countenance of its god.

The last light-ray left the courtyard; there was only a square of dusk, and, within, thick dark. Behind the door, low voices sounded and went away.

His horse stamped and snorted outside. He could not stay here and rot; under cover of dark he could be gone. Someone would take him in … but those who were safe were dead. Better to leave the city now, go west, hire out his sword to some satrap in nearer Asia. But he must get first to his rooms; he would need gold, he had taken bribes from scores of petitioners to the King … The dusk in the courtyard moved.

Two shadows showed in the glimmering square. They came on, into the broken entry. They were not the shadows of Babylonians. He heard the rasp of drawn swords. “Sanctuary!” he shouted. “Sanctuary!”

The door beyond Bel’s image opened a crack, lamplight bright in the darkness. He shouted again. The crack closed. The shadows approached, vanishing into blackness. He set his back to the unlit altar and drew his sword. As they came close, it seemed to him he knew them; but it was only the familiar smell and outline of men from home. He called their names aloud, recalling old friendships in the army of Alexander. But the names were wrong; and when they dragged back his head across the altar, it was remembering Alexander that they cut his throat.

Stripped of its banners and plumes, wreathed with cypress and weeping willow, the lamenting caravan paced slowly under the Ishtar Gate. Perdikkas and Leonnatos, warned by the forerunners of its coming, had ridden to meet the wife of Alexander and tell her that she was widowed. Bareheaded, their hair still cropped in mourning, they rode beside the wagon train, which had now the air of a cortege. The princesses sobbed, their women keened and chanted ritual threnodies. The keepers of the gate heard wondering these new tears, so long after the days prescribed.

In the harem, the rooms of the chief wife waited, perfumed and immaculate, as ordained by Bagoas two months before. The Warden had feared that after Alexander’s death Roxane would demand them; but to his deep relief she seemed settled where she was. No doubt her pregnancy had quieted her. So far, thought the Warden, so good.

Perdikkas escorted Stateira there, concealing his surprise at her arrival; he had supposed her established in Susa to bear her child in quiet. Alexander, she said, had summoned her. He must have done so without informing anyone. He had done some very odd things, after Hephaistion’s death.

Handing her down the wagon steps to the Warden, he thought her more beautiful than at the Susa wedding. Her features had purity of line, the Persian delicacy, fined down by pregnancy and fatigue, which had put smudges of faint cobalt under her large dark eyes; their lids with their long silky lashes looked almost transparent. The Persian kings had always bred for looks. Her hand on the curtain was long-fingered and smooth as cream. She had been wasted on Alexander; he himself, a good inch taller, could have stepped out with her very well. (His own Susa bride, a swarthy Median chosen for exalted birth, had greatly disappointed him.) At least, Alexander had finally had the sense to get a child on her. It should be certain of beauty, if nothing else.

Leonnatos, assisting Drypetis, noted that her face, though still immature, held distinguished promise. He too had a Persian wife; but this need not keep him from looking higher. He rode off in thought.

An obsequious train of eunuchs and waiting-women led the princesses through Nebuchadrezzar’s devious corridors to the once-familiar rooms. As in childhood, they felt after the space and light of the Susa palace the frowning Babylonian strength. But then they came through to the sunny courtyard, the fishpool where they had floated their boats of split bamboo in lily-leaf archipelagos, or reached shoulderdeep after the carp. In the room that had been their mother’s they were bathed and scented and fed. Nothing seemed changed since that summer eight years before, that watershed of time, when their father had brought them here before marching to meet the King of Macedon. Even the Warden had remembered them.

Their meal done, their attendants dismissed to be settled in their own quarters, they explored, their mother’s clothes-chest. The scarves and veils still released their memory-stirring scent. Sharing a divan, looking out on the sunlit pool, they recollected that other life; Stateira, who had been twelve when it ended, reminding Drypetis, who had been only nine. They talked of their father whom Grandmother would never name, remembering him in their mountain home before he had been King, laughing as he tossed them eight feet in the air. They thought of their mother’s perfect face, framed in the scarf with the seed-pearls and gold beads. Everyone gone—even Alexander—except for Grandmother.

They were growing sleepy when a shadow crossed the doorway. A child came in, with two silver cups on a silver tray. She was about seven years old, enchantingly pretty, with a blend of Persian and Indian looks, cream-skinned, dark-eyed. She dipped a knee without spilling a drop. “Honored ladies,” she said carefully. This, clearly, was all her Persian, learned by heart. They kissed and thanked her; she dimpled at them, said something in Babylonian, and trotted away.

The silver cups were misted with coolness, pleasant to touch. Drypetis said, “She had beautiful clothes, and gold earrings. She wasn’t a servant’s child.”

“No,” said Stateira, worldly-wise. “And if not, you know, she must be our half-sister. I remember, Father brought most of the harem here.”

“I’d forgotten.” Drypetis, a little shocked, looked around her mother’s room. Stateira had gone out into the courtyard, to call back the child again. But she had gone, and no one was in sight; they had told their women they wished to rest undisturbed.

Even the palms seemed bleached in the dazzling heat. They lifted the cups, admiring their chased birds and flowers. The drink tasted of wine and citron, with a delicate bitter-sweet tang.

“Delicious,” said Stateira. “One of the concubines must have sent it to make us welcome; she was too shy to come herself. Tomorrow we might invite her.”

The heavy air was still perfumed with their mother’s clothes. It felt homely, secure. Her grief for her parents, for Alexander, grew dim and drowsy. This would be a comforting place to bear his child in. Her eyelids closed.

The shadow of the palms had barely slanted when pain awoke her. She thought at first that her child must be miscarrying, till Drypetis clasped her belly and screamed aloud.

Perdikkas, as Regent of Asia, had moved into the palace. He was seeing petitioners in the small audience room when the Warden of the harem appeared, unheralded, his clay-grey face and evident terror having passed him through the guards. Perdikkas, after one look, had the room cleared and heard him.

When the princesses began to cry for help no one had dared go near them; everyone in hearing had guessed the cause. The Warden, desperate to exculpate himself (he had in fact had no hand in it) had not waited for them to breathe their last. Perdikkas ran with him to the harem.

Stateira lay sprawled on the divan, Drypetis on the floor where she had rolled in her death-throes. Stateira drew her last gasp as Perdikkas entered. At first, transfixed with horror, he was aware of no one else in the room. Then he perceived that in the ivory chair before the toilet-table a woman was sitting.

He strode across and stared down at her, silent, hardly able to keep his hands from her throat. She smiled at him.

“You did this!” he said.

Roxane raised her brows. “I? It was the new King. Both of them said so.” She did not add that, before the end, she had taken pleasure in undeceiving them.

“The King?” said Perdikkas furiously. “Who will believe that, you accursed barbarian bitch?”

“All your enemies. They will believe it because they wish. I shall say that he sent the draught to me too; but when these fell sick I had not yet drunk it.”

“You …” For a while he vented his rage in curses. She listened calmly. When he paused, for sufficient answer she laid her hand over her womb.

He looked away at the dead girl. “The child of Alexander.”

“Here,” she said, “is the child of Alexander. His only child … Say nothing, and so will I. She came here without ceremony. Very few will know.”

“It was you who sent for her!”

“Oh, yes. Alexander did not care for her. I did as he would have wished.”

For a moment she felt real fear; his hand had dropped to his sword-hilt. Still gripping it, he said, “Alexander is dead. But if ever again you say that of him, when your brat is born I will kill you with these hands. And if I knew it would take after you, I would kill you now.”

Growing cool again, she said, “There is an old well in the back court. No one draws from it, they say the water is foul. Let us take them there. No one will come.”

He followed her. The well-cover had lately been loosened from its seal of grime. As he lifted it a smell of ancient mold came out.

He had no choice and knew it. Proud as he was, ambitious and fond of power, he was loyal to Alexander, dead as alive. His son should not, if Perdikkas could prevent it, enter the world branded as a poisoner’s child.

He returned in silence, going first to Drypetis. Her face was soiled with vomit; he wiped it with a towel before he carried her to the dark hole of the well. When she had slipped from his hands, he heard her clothes brushing the brick till, about twenty feet down, she reached the bottom. He could tell, then, that the well was dry.

Stateira’s eyes were staring open, her fingers clutched the stuff of the divan. The eyes would not close; while Roxane waited impatiently, he went to the chest for something to cover her face, a veil stitched with scarab-wings. When he began to move her, he felt wet blood.

“What have you done to her?” He drew back in revulsion, wiping his hand on the coverlet.

Roxane shrugged. Stooping, she lifted the robe of embroidered linen. It could be seen that Alexander’s wife in her death-pangs had brought forth his heir.

He stared down at it, the four-month manikin, already human, the sex defined, even the nails beginning. One of the fists was clenched as if in anger, the face with its sealed eyes seemed to frown. It was still tied to its mother; she had died before she could pass the afterbirth. He drew his dagger and cut it free.

“Come, hurry,” said Roxane. “You can see that the thing is dead.”

“Yes,” said Perdikkas. It hardly filled his hands, the son of Alexander, the grandson of Philip and Darius, carrying in its threadlike veins the blood of Achilles and of Kyros the Great.

He went again to the chest. A scarf trailed out, stitched with seed-pearls and gold beads. Carefully, like a woman, he wrapped the creature in its royal shroud, and gave it its own journey to the burial-place, before returning to send its mother after it.

Queen Sisygambis sat playing chess with the Head Chamberlain. He was an elderly eunuch with a distinguished past going back to King Ochos’ reign. An expert survivor of countless court intrigues, he played a canny game, and offered more challenge than the waiting-ladies. She had invited him to relieve her boredom, and mere courtesy demanded that she should attend to him. She brooded over the ivory armies on the board. Now that the girls were gone with their young attendants, the harem seemed to have been left behind by time. Everyone here was old.

The Chamberlain saw her lethargy and guessed the cause. He fell into one or two of her traps and rescued himself, to enliven the game. In a pause, he said, “Did you find, when the King was here, that he had remembered your instruction? You said, before he marched east, that he had promise if he would apply his mind.”

She said smiling, “I did not test him. I knew he would have forgotten.” For a moment, reflected from the distance, rays of vitality seemed to surge through the muted room. “I used to tell him it was called the royal war-game, and for my sake he pretended to care who won. But when I scolded him and told him he could do better, he said, ‘But, Mother, these are things.’”

“He is not a man for sitting still, indeed.”

“He needed more rest. It was not the time to go down to Babylon. Babylon has always been to winter in.”

“It seems he means to winter in Arabia. We shall scarcely see him this year. But when he marches, for sure he will send Their Highnesses back to you, as soon as the child is born and the lady Stateira can travel.”

“Yes,” she said a little wistfully. “He will want me to see the child.” She returned to the board, and moved an elephant to threaten his vizier. A pity, he thought, that the boy had not sent for her; she doted on him still. But, as she had said, it was no time to go down to Babylon, and she was turned eighty.

They had finished the game, and were drinking citron, when the Chamberlain was summoned, urgently, by the commander of the garrison. When he came back, she looked at his face, and grasped the arms of her chair.

“Madam …”

“It is the King,” she said. “He is dead.”

He bowed his head. It was as if her body had known already; at his first word the chill had reached her heart. He came up quickly, in case she was going to fall; but after a moment she motioned him to his chair, and waited for him to speak.

He told her as much as he had learned, still watching her; her face was the color of old parchment. But she was not grieving only; she was thinking. Presently she turned to a table near her chair, opened an ivory casket, and took out a letter.

“Please read me this. Not the substance only. Word for word.”

His sight was not what it had been; but by bringing it close he could see quite clearly. He translated scrupulously. At I have been sick, and there is ignorant talk that I am dead, he looked up and met her eyes.

“Tell me,” she said, “is that his seal?”

He peered at it; at a few inches, the detail was sharp enough. “It is his likeness, and a good one. But it is not the royal seal. Has he used this before?”

Without speaking, she put the casket into his hands. He looked at the letters, written in elegant Persian by a scribe; his eye caught one ending: I commend you, dear Mother, both to your gods and mine, if indeed they are not the same, as I think they are. There were five or six letters. All had the royal seal, Olympian Zeus enthroned, his eagle perched on his hand. She read the answer in his face.

“When he did not write to me …” She took the casket and set it down beside her. Her face was pinched as if with cold, but without astonishment. All her middle years had been passed in the dangerous reign of Ochos. Her husband had had royal blood enough to be in danger whenever the King felt insecure. Trusting almost no one, he had trusted her and told her everything. Intrigue, revenge and treachery had been daily weather. In the end, Ochos had killed him. She had believed that he lived again in her tall son; his flight from Issos had almost killed her with shame. In the desolate tent, the young conqueror was announced, to visit the family his enemy had abandoned. For the children’s sake, performing dignity like a well-trained animal its trick, she had knelt to the tall handsome man before her. He stepped back; everyone’s dismay made her aware of a frightful error; she began to bow to the smaller man she had overlooked. He had taken her hands and raised her, and for the first time she saw his eyes. “Never mind, Mother …” She had had Greek enough for that.

The Chamberlain, the old survivor, almost as pale as she, was trying not to look at her. Just so someone had looked away when her husband had had his last summons to the court.

“They have murdered him.” She said it as something evident.

“This man says the marsh-fever. It is common at Babylon in summer.”

“No, they have poisoned him. And there is no word of my granddaughters?”

He shook his head. There was a pause while they sat silent, feeling disaster strike on their old age, a mortal illness, not to be shaken off.

She said, “He married Stateira for policy. It was my doing he got her with child.”

“They may still be safe. Perhaps in hiding.”

She shook her head. Suddenly she sat up in her chair, like a woman thinking, Why am I idling like this, when I have work to do?

“My friend, a time is over. I shall go to my room now. Farewell. Thank you for your good service in all these years.”

She read new fear in his face. She understood it; they had both known Ochos’ reign. “No one will suffer. No one will be charged with anything. At my age, to die is easy. When you go, will you send my women?”

The women found her composed and busy, laying out her jewels. She talked to them of their families, advised them, embraced them and divided her jewels among them, all but King Poros’ rubies, which she kept on.

When she had bidden them all farewell, she lay down on her bed in the inner room, and closed her eyes. They did not try, after her first refusals, to get her to eat or drink. It was no kindness to trouble her, still less to save her alive for the coming vengeance. For the first few days, they left her alone as she had ordered. On the fourth, seeing her begin to sink, one or other kept watch beside her; if she knew of them, she did not turn them away. On the fifth day at nightfall, they became aware that she was dead; her breathing had been so quiet, no one could be sure when it had ended.

Galloping day and night, by dromedary, by horse, by mountain mule as the terrain needed, man throwing to man the brief startling news, the King’s Messengers had carried their tidings of death from Babylon to Susa, Susa to Sardis, Sardis to Smyrna, along the Royal Road which Alexander had extended to reach the Middle Sea. At Smyrna, all through the sailing season, a despatch-boat was ready to carry his letters to Macedon.

The last courier of the long relay had arrived at Pella, and given Perdikkas’ letter to Antipatros.

The tall old man read in silence. Whenever Philip had gone to war he had ruled Macedon; since Alexander crossed to Asia he had ruled all Greece. The honor which had kept him loyal had also stiffened his pride; he looked far more regal than had Alexander, who had looked only like himself. It had been a joke of his among close friends that Antipatros was all white outside, with a purple lining.

Now, reading the letter, knowing he would not after all be replaced by Krateros (Perdikkas had made that clear) his first thought was that all south Greece would rise as soon as the news had broken. The news itself, though shocking, was a shock long half-expected. He had known Alexander from his cradle; it had always been inconceivable that he would make old bones. Antipatros had almost told him so outright, while he was preparing to march to Asia without begetting an heir.

It had been a false move to hint at his own daughter; the boy could hardly have done better, but it had made him feel trapped, or used. “Do you think I’ve time now to’ hold wedding feasts and wait about for children?” he had said. He could have had a half-grown son thought Antipatros, with our good blood in him. And now? Two unborn half-breeds; and meantime, a pride of young lions, slipped off the leash. He remembered, not without misgivings, his own eldest son.

He remembered, too, a scrap of gossip from the first year of the young King’s reign. He had told someone, “I don’t want a son of mine reared here while I’m away.”

And that was behind it all. That accursed woman! All through his boyhood she had made him hate his father, whom he might have admired if let alone; she’d shown him marriage as the poisoned shirt of Herakles (that, too, a woman’s doing!), then, when he’d reached the age for girls and could have had his pick, she was outraged that he’d taken refuge with another boy. He could have done far worse than Hephaistion—his father had, and got his death by it—but she could not live with what she’d brought about, had made an enemy where she could have had an ally; and all she’d achieved was to come second instead of first. No doubt she’d rejoiced to hear of Hephaistion’s death. Well, she had another to hear of now, and let her make the best of it.

He checked himself. It was unseemly to mock a mother’s grief for her only son. He would have to send her the news. He sat down at his writing-table with the wax before him, seeking some decent and kindly word for his old enemy, some fitting eulogy of the dead. A man, he reflected, whom he had not seen for more than a decade, whom he thought of still as a brilliantly precocious boy. What had he looked like, after those prodigious years? Perhaps one might still see, or guess. It would be something suitable with which to end his letter, that the body of the King had been embalmed to the likeness of life, and only awaited a worthy bier to begin its journey to the royal burial ground at Aigai.

TO QUEEN OLYMPIAS, HEALTH AND PROSPERITY …

It was full summer in Epiros. The high valley on its mountain shoulder was green and gold, watered from the deep winter snows which Homer had remembered. The calves were fattening, the sheep had yielded their fine soft wool, the trees bent, heavy with fruit. Though it was against all custom, the Molossians had prospered under a woman’s rule.

The widowed Queen Kleopatra, daughter of Philip and sister of Alexander, stood with the letter of Antipatros in her hand, looking out from the upper room of the royal house to the further mountains. The world had changed, it was too soon to know how. For Alexander’s death she felt awe without grief, as for his life she had felt awe without love. He had entered the world before her, to steal her mother’s care, her father’s notice. Their fights had stopped early, in the nursery; after that they had not been close enough. Her wedding day, the day of their father’s murder, had made her a pawn of state; him it had made a king. Soon he had become a phenomenon, growing with distance more dazzling and more strange.

Now for a while, the paper in her hand, she remembered the days when, boy and girl with only two years between them, their parents’ ceaseless strife had brought them together in defensive collusion; remembered, too, how if their mother had to be braved in one of her dreadful weeping rages, it had been he who would always go and face the storm.

She laid Antipatros’ letter down. The one for Olympias was on the table beside it. He would not face her now; she herself must do it.

She knew where she would find her; in the ground-floor state guest-room where she had been first received to attend the funeral of Kleopatra’s husband, and where she had since remained. The dead King had been her brother; more and more she had encroached on the kingdom’s business, while she pursued through a horde of agents the feud with Antipatros which had made her position in Macedon impossible.

Kleopatra set resolutely the square chin she had inherited from Philip, and, taking the letter, went down to her mother’s room.

The door was ajar. Olympias was dictating to her secretary. Kleopatra, pausing, could hear that she was drawing up a long indictment against Antipatros, going back ten years, a summary of old scores. “Question him on this, when he appears before you, and do not be deceived if he claims that …” She paced about impatiently while the scribe caught up.

Kleopatra had meant to behave, on so traditional an occasion, as a daughter should; to show the warning of a grave sad face, to utter the usual preparations. Just then her eleven-year-old son came in from a game of ball with his companion pages; a big-boned auburn boy with his father’s face. Seeing her hesitating at the door, he looked at her with an air of anxious complicity, as if sharing her caution before the seat of power.

She dismissed him gently, wanting to hug him to her and cry, “You are the King!” Through the door she saw the secretary busily scratching the wax. He was a man she hated, a creature of her mother’s from long ago in Macedon. There was no knowing what he had known.

Olympias was a few years over fifty. Straight as a spear, and slender still, she had begun to use cosmetics as a woman does who means only to be seen, not touched. Her greying hair had been washed with camomile and henna; her lashes and brows were lined in with antimony. Her face was whitened, her lips, not her cheeks, were faintly reddened. She had painted her own image of herself, not enticing Aphrodite but commanding Hera. When, catching sight of her daughter in the doorway, she swept round to rebuke the interruption, she was majestic, even formidable.

Suddenly, Kleopatra was swept by a red surge of anger. Stepping forward into the room, her face like stone, making no gesture to dismiss the scribe, she said harshly, “You need not write to him. He is dead.”

The perfect silence seemed deepened by each slight intrusive sound; the click of the man’s dropped stylus, a dove in a nearby tree, the voices of children playing a long way off. The white cream on Olympias’ face stood out like chalk. She looked straight before her. Kleopatra, nerved for she could not tell what elemental furies, waited till she could no longer bear it. Quiet with remorse, she said, “It was not in war. He died of fever.”

Olympias motioned to the scribe. He made off, leaving his papers in disorder. She turned towards Kleopatra.

“Is that the letter? Give it to me.”

Kleopatra put it into her hand. She held it, unopened, waiting, dismissive. Kleopatra shut the thick door behind her. No sound came from the room. His death was something between the two of them, as his life had been. She herself was excluded. That, too, was an old story.

Olympias grasped the stone mullion of the window, its carvings biting, unfelt, into her palms. A passing servant saw the staring face and thought, for a moment, that a tragic theater mask had been propped there. He hurried on lest her sightless gaze should light on him: She stared at the eastern sky.

It had been foretold her before his birth. Perhaps as she slept he had stirred within her—he had been restless, impatient for life—and it had made her dream. Billowing wings of fire had sprung from her body, beating and spreading till they were great enough to waft her into the sky. Still the fire had streamed from her, an ecstasy, flowing over mountains and seas till it filled the earth. Like a god she had surveyed it, floating on the flames. Then, in a moment, they were gone. From some desolate crag where they had abandoned her, she had seen the land black and smoking, sparked with hot embers like a burned-out hillside. She had started wide awake, and put out her hand for her husband. But she was eight months gone, he had long since found other bedfellows. She had lain till morning, remembering the dream.

When, later, the fire was running over the wondering world, she had said to herself that all life must die, the time was far off and she would not live to see it. Now all was fulfilled; she could only clench her hands upon the stone and affirm that it must not be. It had never been in her to accept necessity.

Down on the coast, where the waters of Acheron and Kokytos met, was the Nekromanteion, the Oracle of the Dead. She had gone there long ago, when for her sake Alexander had defied his father, and they had both come here in exile for a time. She remembered the dark and winding labyrinth, the sacred drink, the blood-libation which gave the shades strength to speak. Her father’s spirit had stirred in the gloom and spoken faintly, saying her troubles would soon end and fortune shine on her.

It would be a long day’s ride, she must set out at dawn. She would make the offering and take the draught and go into the dark, and her son would come to her. Even from Babylon, from the world’s end, he would come … Her mind paused. What if the first-comers were those who had died at home? Philip; with Pausanias’ dagger in his ribs? His new young wife, to whom she had offered poison or the rope? Even for a spirit, even for Alexander, it was two thousand miles from Babylon.

No; she would wait till his body came; that, surely, would bring his spirit nearer. When she had seen his body, his spirit would seem less strange. For she knew that she feared its strangeness. When he left, he had been still a boy to her; she would receive the body of a man nearing middle age. Would his shade obey her? He had loved her, but seldom obeyed.

The man, the ghost, slipped from her grasp. She stood there empty. Then, uninvoked, vivid to sight and touch, came the child. The scent of his hair, nuzzled into her neck; the light scratches on his fine skin, his grazed dirty knees; his laughter, his anger, his wide listening eyes. Her dry eyes filled; tears streaked her cheeks with eye-paint; she bit on her arm to muffle her crying.

By the evening fire, she had told him the old family tales of Achilles handed down by word of mouth, always reminding him that it was from her side that the hero’s blood came down to him. When schooldays began he had come eagerly to the Iliad, coloring it with the Achilles of the tales. Reaching the Odyssey, he came upon Odysseus’ visit to the land of shades. (“It was in my country, in Epiros, that he spoke with them.”) Slowly and solemnly, looking out past her at a reddening sunset sky, he had spoken the words.

“Achilleus,

no man before has been more blessed than you, nor ever will be. Before, when you were alive, we Argives honored you as we did the gods, and now in this place you have great authority over the dead. Do not grieve, even in death, Achilleus.”

So I spoke, and he in turn said to me in answer, “O shining Odysseus, never try to console me for dying. I would rather follow the plow as thrall to another man, one with no land allotted him and not much to live on, than be a king over all the perished dead.”

Because he did not cry when he was hurt, he was never ashamed of tears. She saw his eyes glitter, fixed on the glowing clouds, and knew that his grief was innocent; only for Achilles, parted from hope and expectation, the mere shadow of his glorious past, ruling over shadows of past men. He had not yet believed in his own mortality.

He said, as if it were her he was reassuring, “But Odysseus did console him for dying, after all, it says so.”

So I spoke, and the soul of the swift-footed scion of Aiakos stalked away in long strides across the meadow of asphodel, happy for what I had said of his son, and how he was famous.

“Yes,” she had said. “And after the war his son came to Epiros, and we are both descended from him.”

He had considered it. Then: “Would Achilles be happy if I were famous too?”

She had bent and ruffled his hair. “Of course he would. He would stride through the asphodel and sing.”

She let go of the window-column. She felt faint and ill; going to her inner room she lay down and wept fiercely. It left her almost too weak to stand, and at last she slept. At dawn, she woke to the recollection of great grief, but her strength was almost recovered. She bathed and dressed and painted her face, and went to her writing-table. TO PERDIKKAS, REGENT OF THE ASIAN KINGDOMS, PROSPERITY …

On the roof of their house, a few miles inland from Pella, Kynna and Eurydike were practicing with the javelin.

Kynna, like Kleopatra, was one of Philip’s daughters, but by a minor marriage. Her mother had been an Illyrian princess, and a noted warrior, as the customs of her race allowed. After a border war against her formidable old father Bardelys, Philip had sealed the peace treaty with a wedding, as he had done several times before. The lady Audata would not have been his choice for her own sake; she was comely, but he had trouble remembering which sex he was in bed with. He had paid her attention enough to get one daughter on her, given them a house, maintained them, but seldom called on them till Kynna was of marriageable age. Then he had given her in wedlock to his nephew Amyntas, his elder brother’s child, the same whom the Macedonians had passed over in his infancy, to make Philip King.

Amyntas; obedient to the people’s will expressed in the Assembly, had lived peaceably through Philip’s reign. Only when conspirators were planning the King’s murder had he fallen to temptation, and agreed when the deed was done to accept the throne. For this, when it came to light, Alexander had put him on trial for treason, and the Assembly had condemned him.

Kynna, his wife, had withdrawn from the capital to his country estate. She had lived there ever since, rearing her daughter in the martial skills her Illyrian mother had taught her. It was her natural bent; it was an occupation; and she felt, instinctively, that one day it would be of use. She had never forgiven Amyntas’ death. Her daughter Eurydike, only child of an only child, had known as long as she could remember that she should have been a boy.

The core of the house was a rugged old fort going back to the civil wars; later the thatched house had been built beside it. It was on the flat roof of the fort that the woman and the girl were standing, throwing at a straw man propped on a pole.

A stranger could have taken them for sisters; Kynna was only just thirty, Eurydike was fifteen. They both took after the Illyrian side, tall, fresh-faced, athletic. In the short men’s tunics they wore for exercise, their brown hair plaited back out of their way, they looked like girls of Sparta, a land of which they knew almost nothing.

Eurydike’s javelin had left a splinter in her palm. She pulled it out, and called in slave Thracian to the tattooed boy who was bringing back the spears from the target, and who should have seen they were rubbed smooth. As he worked they sat to rest on a block of stone set for an archer, stretched and took deep breaths of the mountain air.

“I hate the plains,” said Eurydike. “I shall mind that more than anything.”

Her mother did not hear; she had been looking out at the hill-road that led between the village huts to their gate. “A courier is coming. Come down and change your clothes.”

They climbed down the wooden steps to the floor below, and put on their second-best dresses. A courier was a rare event, and such people reported what they saw.

His gravity and sense of drama almost made Kynna ask his errand before she broke the seal. But it would be undignified; she sent him off to be fed before she read Antipatros’ letter.

“Who is dead?” asked Eurydike. “Is it Arridaios?” Her voice was eager.

Her mother looked up. “No. It is Alexander.”

“Alexander!” She spoke with disappointment more than grief. Then her face lightened. “If the King is dead, I needn’t marry Arridaios.”

“Be quiet!” said her mother. “Let me read.” Her face had changed; it held defiance, resolution, triumph. The girl said anxiously, “I needn’t marry him, Mother? Need I? Need I?”

Kynna turned to her with glowing eyes. “Yes! Now indeed you must. The Macedonians have made him King.”

“King? How can they? Is he better, have his wits come back?”

“He is Alexander’s brother, that is all. He is to keep the throne warm for Alexander’s son by the barbarian. If she has a son.”

“And Antipatros says I am to marry him?”

“No, he does not. He says that Alexander had changed his mind. He may be lying, or not. It’s no matter which.”

Eurydike’s thick brows drew together. “But if it’s true, it might mean Arridaios is worse.”

“No, Alexander would have sent word; the man is lying, I know it. We must wait to hear from Perdikkas in Babylon.”

“Oh, Mother, let us not go. I don’t want to marry the fool.”

“Don’t call him the fool, he is King Philip, they have named him after your grandfather … Don’t you see? The gods have sent you this. They mean you to right the wrong that was done your father.”

Eurydike looked away. She had been barely two when Amyntas was executed, and did not remember him. He had been a burden on her all her life.

“Eurydike!” The voice of authority brought her to attention. Kynna had set herself to be father as well as mother, and done it well. “Listen to me. You were meant for great things, not to grow old in a village like a peasant. When Alexander offered you his brother’s hand to make peace between our houses, I knew that it was destiny. You are a true-born Macedonian and royal on both sides. Your father should have been King. If you were a man, they would have chosen you in Assembly.”

The girl listened in a growing quiet. Her face lost its sullenness; aspiration began to kindle in her eyes.

“If I die for it,” said Kynna, “you shall be reigning Queen.”

Peukestes, Satrap of Persia, had withdrawn from his audience chamber to his private room. It was furnished in the manner of the province, except for the Macedonian panoply on the armor-stand. He had changed from his formal robe to loose trousers and embroidered slippers. A tall fair man, with features of lean refinement, he had curled his hair Persian-style; but at Alexander’s death, conforming to Persian custom, had shaved it to the scalp, instead of cropping it as he would in Macedon. When exposed it still felt chilly; to warm his head he had put on his cap of office, the helmet-shaped kyrbasia. This gave him an unintended look of state; the man he had summoned approached him with downcast eyes, and prepared to go down in the prostration.

Peukestes looked at him startled, at first not knowing him; then he put out his hand. “No, Bagoas. Get up, be seated.”

Bagoas rose and obeyed, acknowledging, with some gesture of the face, Peukestes’ smile. His dark-circled eyes looked enormous; there was just enough flesh on him to display the elegance of his skull. His scalp was naked of hair; when it began to grow he must have shaved again. He looked like an ivory mask. Yes, something must be done for him, Peukestes thought.

“You know,” he said, “that Alexander died leaving no will?”

The young eunuch made an assenting gesture. After a pause he said, “Yes. He would not surrender.”

“True. And when he understood that the common fate of man had overtaken him, his voice had gone. Or he would not have forgotten his faithful servants … You know, I kept vigil for him at the shrine of Sarapis. It was a long night, and a man had time to think.”

“Yes,” said Bagoas. “That was a long night.”

“He told me once that your father had an estate neat Susa, but was unjustly dispossessed and killed while you were young.” No need to add that the boy had been castrated and enslaved, and sold to pleasure Darius. “If Alexander could have spoken, I think he would have bequeathed you your father’s land. So I shall buy out the man who has it, and give it you.”

“The bounty of my lord is like rain on a dry river-bed.” A beautiful movement of the hand went with it, like an absent-minded reflex; he had been a courtier since he was thirteen. “But my parents are both dead; so are my sisters, at least if they were fortunate. I had no brother; and I shall have no son. Our house was burned to the ground; and for whom should I rebuild it?”

He has made a grave-offering of his beauty, Peukestes thought; now he is waiting to die. “And yet, it might please your father’s shade to see his son restore his name with honor in the ancestral place.”

Bagoas’ hollow eyes seemed to consider it, like something infinitely distant. “If my lord, in his magnanimity, would give me a little time …?”

He wants only to be rid of me, Peukestes thought. Well, I can do no more.

That evening Ptolemy, on the eve of departing to the satrapy of Egypt, was his guest at supper. Since it seemed they might never meet again, their talk grew reminiscent. Presently it turned upon Bagoas.

“He could make Alexander laugh,” Ptolemy said. “I have heard them often.”

“You would not think so now.” Peukestes related the morning’s interview. The talk passed to other things; but Ptolemy, who had a mind that wasted nothing, pleaded tomorrow’s press of business and left the party early.

Bagoas’ house stood in the paradise a little way from the palace. It was small but elegant; often Alexander had spent an evening there. Ptolemy remembered the torches in their sconces by the door, the sound of harps and flutes and laughter, and, sometimes, the eunuch’s sweet alto singing.

At first sight all was dark. Nearer, he saw a dim single lamp yellowing a window. A small dog barked; after a while, a sleepy servant peered through the grille, and said the master had retired. These courtesies over, Ptolemy went round towards the window.

“Bagoas,” he said softly, “it’s Ptolemy. I am going away forever. Won’t you bid me goodbye?”

There was only a short silence. The light voice said, “Let the lord Ptolemy in. Light the lamps. Bring wine.”

Ptolemy entered, politely disclaiming ceremony, Bagoas politely insisting. A taper was brought, light shone on his ivory head. He was dressed, in the formal clothes he must have worn to call on Peukestes. They looked now as if he had slept in them; he was buttoning the jacket up. On the table was a tablet covered with score-marks; what was erased looked like an attempt to draw a face. He pushed them aside to make room for the wine-tray, and thanked Ptolemy for the honor of his visit with impeccable civility; peering at him blankly from deep hollow eyes, as the slave kindled the lamps, like an owl revealed in daylight. He looked a little mad. Ptolemy thought, Am I too late already?

He said, “You have truly mourned for him. I too. He was a good brother.”

Bagoas’ face remained inexpressive; but tears ran from his eyes in silence, like blood from an open wound. He brushed them absently away, as one might a lock of hair which has a habit of straying, and turned to pour the wine.

“We owed him tears,” Ptolemy said. “He would have wept for us.” He paused. “But, if the dead care for what concerned them in life, he may be needing more from his friends than that.”

The ivory mask under the lamp turned to a face; the eyes, in which desperation was tempered by older habits of gentle irony, riveted themselves on Ptolemy’s. “Yes?” he said.

“We both know what he valued most. While he lived, honor and love; and, after, undying fame.”

“Yes,” Bagoas. “So …?”

With his new attention had come a profound and weary skepticism. Why not, thought Ptolemy; three years among the labyrinthine intrigues of Darius’ court before he was sixteen—and, lately, why not indeed?

“What have you seen since he died? How long have you been shut up here?”

Raising his large dark disillusioned eyes, Bagoas said with a vicious quiet, “Since the day of the elephants.”

For a moment Ptolemy was silenced; the wraith had hardened, dauntingly. Presently he said, “Yes, that would have sickened him. Niarchos said so, and so did I. But we were overborne.”

Bagoas said, answering the unspoken words, “The ring would have gone to Krateros, if he had been there.”

There was a pause. Ptolemy considered his next move; Bagoas looked like a man just waked from sleep, considering his thoughts. Suddenly he looked up sharply. “Has anyone gone to Susa?”

“Bad news travels fast.”

“News?” said Bagoas with unconcealed impatience. “It is protection they will need.”

Suddenly, Ptolemy remembered something said by his Persian wife, Artakama, a lady of royal blood bestowed by Alexander. He was leaving her with her family till, as he had said, the affairs of Egypt were settled. He had been uneasy with a harem, its claustral and stifling femininity, after the free-and-easy Greek hetairas. He meant his heir to be a pure-bred Macedonian, and had, in fact, offered for one of Antipatros’ many daughters. But there had been some piece of gossip … Bagoas’ eyes were boring into his.

“I have heard a rumor—worth nothing I daresay—that a Persian lady came from Susa to the harem here, and was taken sick and died. But—”

Bagoas’ breath hissed through his teeth. “If Stateira has come to Babylon,” he said in a soft, deadly voice, “of course she has been taken sick and died. When first the Bactrian knew of me, I would have died of the same sickness, if I had not given some sweetmeats to a dog.”

Ptolemy felt a sickening conviction. He had been with Alexander on that last visit to Susa, been brought once to dine with Sisygambis and the family. Pity and disgust contended with the thought that if this had happened, and Perdikkas had condoned it, his own design was justified.

“Alexander’s fame,” he said, “has not been very well served since the gods received him. Men who cannot match his greatness of soul should try at least to honor it.”

Bagoas brooded on him, thoughtful, in a grey calm; as if he stood on the threshold of a door he had been going out of, and could not be sure it was worth while to turn back. “Why have you come?” he said.

The dead are not respectful, Ptolemy reflected. Good, it saves time.

“I will tell you why. I am concerned for the fate of Alexander’s body.”

Bagoas hardly stirred, but his whole frame seemed to change, losing its lethargy, becoming wiry and tense. “They took their oath!” he said. “They took it on the Styx.”

“Oath …? Oh, all that is over. I’m not talking of Babylon.”

He looked up. His heater had come in from the threshold; the door of life had swung to behind him. He listened, rigidly.

“They are making him a golden bier; nothing less is due to him. It will take the craftsmen a year to finish. Then, Perdikkas will have it sent to Macedon,”

“To Macedon!” The look of stunned shock quite startled Ptolemy, his homeland customs taken for granted. Well, so much the better.

“That is the custom. Did he not tell you how he buried his father?”

“Yes. But it was here they …”

“Meleager? A rogue and a halfwit, and the rogue is dead. But in Macedon, that is different. The Regent is nearly eighty; he may be gone before the bier arrives. And his heir is Kassandros, whom you know of.”

Bagoas’ slender hand closed in a sinewy fist. “Why did Alexander let him live? If he had only given me leave. No one would have been the wiser.”

I don’t doubt it, thought Ptolemy, glancing at his face. “Well, in Macedon the King is entombed by his rightful heir; it confirms his succession. So, Kassandros will be waiting. So will Perdikkas; he will claim it in the name of Roxane’s son—and, if there is no son, maybe for himself. There is also Olympias, who is no mean fighter either. It will be a bitter war. Sooner or later, whoever holds the coffin and the bier will need the gold.”

Ptolemy looked for a moment, and looked away. He had come remembering the elegant, epicene favorite; devoted certainly, he had not doubted that, but still, a frivolity, the plaything of two kings’ leisure. He had not foreseen this profound and private grief in its priestlike austerity. What memories moved behind those guarded eyes?

“This, then,” he said inexpressively, “is why you came?”

“Yes. I can prevent it, if I have help that I can trust.”

Bagoas said, half to himself, “I never thought they would be taking him away.” His face changed and grew wary. “What do you mean to do?”

“If I have word of when the bier sets out, I will march from Egypt to meet it. Then, if I can treat with the escort—and I think I can—I will take him to his own city, and entomb him in Alexandria.”

Ptolemy waited. He saw himself being, weighed. At least there were no old scores between them. Less than delighted when Alexander took a Persian to his heart and bed, he had been distant to the boy, but never insolent. Later, when it was clear the youth was neither venal nor ambitious, simply a tactful and well-mannered concubine, their chance meetings had been unstrained and easy. However, one did not sleep with two kings and remain naive. One could see the assessment he was making now.

“You are thinking of what I stand to gain; and why not? A great deal, of course. It may even make me a king. But—and this I swear before the gods—never a king of Macedon and Asia. No man alive can wear the mantle of Alexander, and those who grasp at it will destroy themselves. Egypt I can hold, and rule it as he wanted. You were not there, it was before your time; but he was proud of Alexandria.”

“Yes,” said Bagoas. “I know.”

“I was with him,” said Ptolemy, “when he went to Amnion’s oracle at Siwah in the desert, to learn his destiny.”

He began to tell of it. Almost at once the worldly alertness in his hearer’s face had faded; he saw the single-minded absorption of a listening child. How often, he thought, must that look have drawn the tale from Alexander! The boy’s memory must read like a written scroll. But to hear it from someone else would give some new and precious detail, some new sight-line.

He took trouble, therefore, describing the desert march, the rescuing rain, the guiding ravens, the serpents pointing as they lay, the sands’ mysterious voices; the great oasis with its pools and palm-glades and wondering white-robed people; the rocky acropolis where the temple was, with its famous courtyard where the sign of the god was given.

“There is a spring in a basin of red rock; we had to wash our gold and silver offerings in it, to cleanse them for the god, and ourselves as well. It was icy cold in the hot dry air. Alexander of course they did not purify. He was Pharaoh. He carried his own divinity. They led him into the sanctuary. Outside, the light was all shimmering white, and everything seemed to ripple in it. The entrance looked black as night, you’d have thought it would have blinded him. But he went in as though his eyes were on distant mountains.”

Bagoas nodded, as if to say, “Of course; go on.”

“Presently we heard singing, and harps and cymbals and sistra, and the oracle came out. There is not room for it inside the sanctuary. He stood there to watch it, somewhere in the dark.

“The priests came out, forty pairs of them, twenty before and twenty behind the god. They carried the oracle like a litter, with long shoulder-poles. The oracle is a boat. I don’t know why the god should speak through a boat on land … Ammon has a very old shrine at Thebes. Alexander used to say it must have come first from the river.”

“Tell me about the boat.” He spoke like a child who prompts an old bedtime story.

“It was long and light, like the bird-hunters’ punts on the Nile. But sheathed all over with gold, and hung with gold and silver votives, all kinds of little precious things swinging and glittering and tinkling. In the middle was the Presence of the god. Just a simple sphere.

“The priest came out into the court with Alexander’s question. He had written it on a strip of gold and folded the gold together. He laid it on the pavement before the god, and prayed in his own tongue. Then the boat began to live. It stayed where it was, but you could see it quicken.”

“You saw it,” said Bagoas suddenly. “Alexander said he was too far.”

“Yes, I saw. The carriers stood with empty faces, waiting; but they were like flotsam on a still river-pool, before the flow of the river lifts it. It does not stir yet; but you know the river is under all.

“The question lay shining in the sun. The cymbals sounded a slow beat and the flutes played louder. Then the carriers began to sway a little where they stood, just as flotsam sways. You know how the god answers: back for no, forward for yes. They moved forward like all one thing, a skein of water-weed, a drift of leaves, till before the question they stopped, and the prow dipped. Then the trumpets sounded, and we waved our hands and cheered.

“We waited, then, for Alexander to come out from the sanctuary. It was hot; or we thought so, not having yet been in Gedrosia.” A shadowy smile replied to him. They were both survivors of that dreadful march.

“At last he came out with the high priest. I think more had happened than he had come to ask. He came out with the awe still in him. Then, I remember, he blinked in the sudden brightness, and shaded his eyes with his hand. He saw us all, and looked across and smiled.”

He had looked across at Hephaistion and smiled; but there was no need to say so.

“Egypt loved him. They welcomed him with hymns as their savior from the Persians. He honored all their temples that Ochos had profaned. I wish you had seen him laying out Alexandria. I don’t know how far it has gone up now, I don’t trust the governor; but I know what he wanted, and when I am there I shall see it done. There is only one thing he left no mark for: the tomb where we shall honor him. But I know the place, by the sea. I remember him standing there.”

Bagoas’ eyes had been fixed upon a light-point on his silver cup. He raised them. “What is it you want done?”

Silently, Ptolemy caught his breath. He had been in time.

“Stay here in Babylon. You refused Peukestes’ offer; no one else will make you his concern. Bear with it if they take your house for some creature of Perdikkas. Stay till the bier is ready and you know when it will set out. Then come to me. You shall have a house in Alexandria near where he lies. You know that in Macedon that could not be.”

In Macedon, he thought, the children would stone you in the street. But you have guessed that; there is no need to be cruel.

“Will you take my hand on it?” he said.

He held out his big-boned right hand, calloused from the spear-shaft and the sword, its seams picked out by the lamp as he held it open. Pale, slender and icy cold, Bagoas’ hand took it in a precise and steady grip. Ptolemy remembered that he had been a dancer.

In a last fierce spasm, Roxane felt her infant’s head thrust out of her. More gently, with swift relief, turned by a skillful midwife, the moist body slid after. She stretched her legs out, dripping with sweat and panting; then heard the child’s thin angry cry.

Shrill with exhaustion, she cried out, “A boy, is it a boy?”

Acclamation and praise and good-luck invocations rose in chorus, She gave a great groan of triumph. The midwife lifted the child to view, still on its blue-white cord. From the half-screened corner where he had vigilantly watched the birth, Perdikkas came forward, confirmed the sex, uttered a conventional phrase of good omen, and left the room.

The cord was tied, the afterbirth delivered; mother and child were washed with warm rose-water, dried, anointed. Alexander the Fourth, joint King of Macedon and Asia, was laid in his mother’s arms.

He nuzzled for warmth, but she held him at arms’ length to look at him. He was dark-haired.

The midwife, touching the fine fluff, said it was birth-hair that would fall away. He was still red and crumpled, his face closed up in the indignation of the newly born; but she could see through the flush an olive, not a rosy coloring. He would be dark, a Bactrian. And why not? Alone in a harsh alien element, missing the womb’s blind comfort, he began to cry.

She lowered him to her body, to take the weight from her arms. He hushed; the slave-girl with the feather fan had come back to the bedside; after the bustle, the women with silence and soft feet were setting to rights the rooms of the Royal Wife. Beyond the door, the courtyard with its fishpool lay under the mild winter sun. Reflected light fell on the dressing-table, and on the gold and silver toilet-set that had been Queen Stateita’s; her jewel-box stood beside it. All was triumph and tranquility.

The nurse came fussing up with the antique royal cradle, plated with gold and time-yellowed ivory. Roxane drew the coverlet over the sleeping child. Under her fingers, almost disguised by the elaborate embroidery, was a smear of blood.

Her stomach heaved. When she had moved into this room it had all been refurbished and redraped. But the bed was a fine one and they had not changed it.

She had stood by while Stateira writhed and tried to clutch at her and moaned “Help me! Help me!” and fumbled blindly with her clothes. Roxane had flung them back to see her beaten enemy, her son’s rival, come naked into the world he would never rule. Could it be true that the thing had opened its mouth and cried? Disturbed by her tightened fingers, the infant wailed.

“Shall I take him, madam?” said the nurse timidly by her side. “Would madam like to sleep?”

“Later.” She softened her grip; the child quieted and curled itself against her. He was a king and she was a king’s mother; no one could take it from her. “Where is Amestrin? Amestrin, who put this filthy cover on my bed? It stinks, it is disgusting, give me something clean. If I see it again, your back will know it.”

After panic scurryings, another cover was found; the state one, a year’s work in Artaxerxes’ day, was whisked out of sight. The baby slept. Roxane, her body loosening into comfort from its labor, sank into drowsiness. In a dream she saw a half-made child with the face of Alexander, lying in blood, its grey eyes staring with anger. Fear woke her. But all was well; he was dead and could do nothing, it was her son who would rule the world. She slept again.