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

286 B.C.

KING PTOLEMY’S BOOK-ROOM was on the upper floor of the palace, looking out over Alexandria harbor; it was cool and airy, its windows catching the sea-breeze. The King sat at his writing-table, a large surface of polished ebony which had once been crowded with the papers of his administration, for he had been a great planner and legislator. Now the space was clear but for some books, some writing things, and a sleeping cat. The business of Egypt went to his son, who was discharging it very capably. He had relinquished it by degrees, and with increasing satisfaction. He was eighty-three.

He looked over the writing on his tablet. It was a little shaky, but the wax was readably engraved. In any case, he hoped to live long enough to oversee the scribe.

Despite stiffness, fatigue and the other discomforts of old age, he was enjoying his retirement. He had never before had time to read enough; now he was making up for it. Besides he had had a task saved up, to whose completion he had long looked forward. Many things had hampered it in earlier years. He had had to exile his eldest son, who had proved incurably vicious (the mother, married too soon for policy, had been Kassandros’ sister) and it had taken time to train this much younger son for kingship. The crimes of the elder were the one sorrow of his age; often he reproached himself for not having killed him. But his thoughts today were serene.

They were interrupted by the entrance of his heir. Ptolemy the Younger was twenty-six, pure Macedonian; Ptolemy’s third wife had been his stepsister. Big-boned like his father, he entered softly, seeing the old man so quiet in his chair that he might be dozing. But his mere weight on a floorboard was enough to dislodge two scrolls from one of the crowded shelves that lined the walls. Ptolemy looked round smiling.

“Father, another chest of books has come from Athens. Where can they go?”

“Athens? Ah, good. Have them sent up here.”

“Where will you put them? You’ve books on the floor already. The rats will have them.”

Ptolemy reached out his wrinkled freckled hand and scratched the cat’s neck above its jeweled collar. Svelte and muscular, it flexed its smooth bronze-furred back and stretched luxuriously, uttering a resonant, growling purr.

“Still,” said his son, “you do need a bigger book-room. In fact, you need a house for them.”

“You can build one when I’m dead. I will give you another book for it.”

The young man noticed that his father was looking as complacent as the cat. Almost he had purred too.

“What? Father! Do you mean that your book is finished?”

“In this very hour.” He showed the tablet, on which was written above a flourish of the stylus, HERE ENDS THE HISTORY OF ALEXANDER. His son, who had an affectionate nature, leaned down and embraced him.

“We must have the readings,” he said. “In the Odeion of course. It’s nearly all copied already. I’ll arrange it for next month, then there will be time to give out word.” To this late-born child, his father had been always old, but never unimpressive. This work, he knew, had begun before he himself was born. He was in haste to see his father enjoy the fruits of it; old age was fragile. He ran over in his mind the names of actors and orators noted for beauty of voice. Ptolemy pursued his thoughts.

“This,” he said suddenly, “must kill Kassandros’ poison. I was there, as everyone knows, from the beginning to the end … I should have done it sooner. Too many wars.”

“Kassandros?” Dimly the young man recalled that King of Macedon, who had died during his boyhood and been succeeded by disastrous sons who were both dead too. He belonged to the distant past; whereas Alexander, who had died long before his birth, was as real to him as someone who might now walk in at the door. He had no need to read his father’s book, he had been hearing the tales since childhood. “Kassandros …?”

“In the pit of Tartaros, where he is if the gods are just, I hope he learns of it.” The slack folds of the old face had tightened; it looked, for a moment, formidable. “He killed Alexander’s son—I know it, though it was never proved—he hid him through all his growing years, so that his people never knew him, nor will he be known by men to come. The mother of Alexander, his wife, his son. And not content with that, he bought the Lyceum, which will never be the same again, and made a tool of it to blacken Alexander’s name. Well, he rotted alive before he died, and between them his sons murdered their mother … Yes, arrange the readings. And then the book can go to the copy-house. I want it sent to the Lyceum—the Academy—the school at Kos. And one to Rhodes, of course.”

“Of course,” said his son. “It’s not often the Rhodians get a book written by a god.” They grinned at each other. Ptolemy had been awarded divine honors there for his help in their famous siege. He gently stirred the cat, which presented its cream belly to be tickled.

The younger Ptolemy looked out of the window. A blinding flash made him close his eyes. The gold laurel-wreath above the tomb of Alexander had caught the sun. He turned back into the room.

“All those great men. When Alexander was alive, they pulled together like one chariot-team. And when he died, they bolted like chariot-horses when the driver falls. And broke their backs like horses, too.”

Ptolemy nodded slowly, stroking the cat. “Ah. That was Alexander.”

“But,” said the young man, startled, “you always said—”

“Yes, yes. And all of it true. That was Alexander. That was the cause.” He picked up the tablet, looked at it jealously, and put it down.

“We were right,” he said, “to offer him divinity. He had a mystery. He could make anything seem possible in which he himself believed. And we did it, too. His praise was precious, for his trust we would have died; we did impossible things. He was a man touched by a god; we were only men who had been touched by him; but we did not know it. We too had performed miracles, you see.”

“Yes,” said his son, “but they came to grief and you have prospered. Is it because you gave him burial here?”

“Perhaps. He liked things handsomely done. I kept him from Kassandros, and he never forgot a kindness. Yes, perhaps … But also, when he died I knew he had taken his mystery with him. Henceforward we were men like other men, with the limits that nature set us. Know yourself, says the god at Delphi. Nothing too much.”

The cat, resenting his inattention, jumped into his lap and began kneading itself a bed. He unhooked its claws from his robe and set it back on the table. “Not now, Perseus, I have work to do. My boy, get me Philistos, he knows my writing. I want to see this book set down on paper. It is only in Rhodes that I am immortal.”

When his son had gone, he gathered the new tablets together with shaky but determined hands, and set them neatly in order. Then he waited at the window, looking out at the gold laurel-wreath that stirred as if alive in the breeze of the Middle Sea.