Alexander: Child of a Dream (2 page)

 
‘What colour do you think his eyes are” she asked the midwife
The woman brought a lamp nearer and the baby’s eyes shone as they reflected the light ‘I don’t know, it’s difficult to say They seem to be blue, then dark, almost black Perhaps it’s because his parents are so different from each other
Nicomachus was taking care of the Queen who, as often happens with first time mothers, was bleeding This eventuality having been a worry to him beforehand, he had had snow gathered from the slopes of Mount Bermion
He made compresses of the snow and applied them to Olympias’ belly The Queen shivered, tired and exhausted as she was, but the physician could not afford to let himself feel sorry for her and he continued to apply the ice cold compresses until the bleeding stopped completely
Then, as he took off his apron and washed his hands, he left her to the care of the women He let them change her sheets, wash her with soft sponges steeped in rosewater, change her gown with a clean one taken from her clothes chest, and give her something to drink
It was Nicomachus who presented the baby to Olympias ‘Here is Philip’s son, my Queen. You have given birth to a beautiful boy ‘
Then he went out into the comdor where a horseman of the royal guard was waiting, dressed for a journey ‘Go, fly to the King and tell him his child is born Tell him it’s a boy, that he is beautiful, healthy and strong ‘
The horseman threw his cloak over his shoulders, put the strap of his satchel over his head and ran off Before he disappeared at the end of the corridor, Nicomachus shouted after him, ‘Tell him too that the Queen is well’
The cavalryman did not even stop and an instant later there came the noise of a horse neighing in the courtyard below and then the clatter of galloping which soon faded to silence along the roads of the sleeping city
artemisia took the baby and put him on the bed alongside the Queen Olympias lifted herself up on her elbows, her back resting on the pillows, and she looked upon her child
He was beautiful His lips were full, his features delicate, his complexion rosy His hair, a light brown colour, shone with golden reflections and at the very centre of his forehead was what the midwife described as a cowlick a
small tuft of hair that stood up above the rest
His eyes appeared blue, but deep in the left one was a sort of black shadow that made it seem darker as the light changed
Olympias lifted him up, held him to her and rocked him until he stopped crying Then she bared her breast to feed him, but Artemisia moved closer and said, ‘My child, the wet nurse will take care of that Don’t ruin your breasts The king will soon be back home from the war and you will have to be more beautiful and desirable than ever ‘
Artemisia held out her arms to take the baby, but instead of giving him to her, Olympias moved him towards her breast and fed him with her milk until he fell asleep peacefully
In the meantime the messenger continued his gallop to reach the King as quickly as possible He came to the river Axios in the middle of the night and spurred the horse on across the bridge of boats that united the two banks It was still dark when he changed his mount at Thermal and he continued on towards the interior of the Chalcidice peninsula
Dawn found him on the coast where the vast gulf blazed

 
with the rising sun like a mirror set before a fire. He wove his way up the mountainous mass of the Kalauros, through an increasingly harsh and bitter landscape, among impervious rocks which here and there formed sheer cliffs above the sea, fringed below by the white boiling spume of the sea.
The King was besieging the ancient city of Potidaea, which for almost half a century had been under Athenian control. He was doing this not because he wanted conflict with Athens, but because he considered the city to be in Macedonian territory and it was his intention to affirm his domination throughout the region that extended between the Gulf of Thermai and the Bosphorus. At that moment, cramped in an assault tower together with his warriors, Philip armed,
covered in dust, sweat and blood was
about to launch the decisive attack.
‘Men!‘he shouted. ‘If you are truly worthy soldiers, now is the time to prove it! I will give the finest horse in my stables to the first who has the guts to attack the enemy walls together with me, but, by Zeus, if I see even just one of you turn weak-kneed when the time comes, I swear I will flay him skinless. And I will do it personally. Do you hear me?’
‘We hear you, King!’
‘Now then, let us begin!’ ordered Philip as he nodded to his men to take the brakes off the winches. The bridge came down on the walls that had already been breached and half demolished by the battering rams and the King rushed forward shouting
and striking out with his sword, so quickly that it was difficult to keep up with him. But his soldiers knew well that their King always kept his promises and all as one they pushed forward too, barging one against another with their shields and sending the enemy reeling down from the sides and the battlements. This was an enemy already weakened by the hardships of the siege, by the sleepless nights and the fatigue of months and months of continuous fighting. Behind Philip and his guard the rest of the army came flowing, engaging in brutal hand-to-hand
combat with the last defenders who were barricading the roads and house entrances.
At sunset Potidaea, brought to its knees, asked for truce.
It was almost night when the messenger arrived, having exhausted another two horses. When he looked down from the hills surrounding Potidaea he saw a circle of fires around the walls and he could hear the shouts of the Macedonian soldiers celebrating their victory.
He dug his heel into the horse’s ribs and in no time at all he reached the encampment. He asked to be taken to the King’s tent.
‘What’s it about?’ asked the officer on guard, from the north judging by his accent. The King is busy. The city has fallen and its government has sent a delegation to negotiate.’
‘The Prince is born,’ replied the messenger.
The news brought the officer instantly to attention. ‘Follow me,’ he said.
The King was still in his battle armour and was sitting in his tent surrounded by his generals. Just behind him was his deputy, Antipater. All around them were the representatives of Potidaea who rather than negotiating were in fact listening to Philip dictate his conditions.
The officer, realizing that his intrusion would not be tolerated, but that any delay in announcing such an important event would have been tolerated even less, said immediately: ‘Sire, news from the palace your
son is born!’
The delegates from Potidaea, pale and drawn, looked at one another, stood up from the stools they had been told to sit on and moved aside. Antipater took up position with his arms crossed over his chest, the posture of one who awaits orders or a word from the King.
Philip had been interrupted in mid-sentence, ‘Your city will be required to provide a …” and he had continued, with quite a different voice, ‘a … son.’

 
The delegates, who failed to understand what was happening, looked at one another dumbstruck, but Philip was already on his feet, his chair crashing to the floor; he pushed the officer aside and grabbed the messenger by the shoulders.
The flames from the lamps sculpted his face into the sharpest light and shadow, igniting his gaze. ‘Tell me what he looks like,’ he ordered with the same tone he had used in ordering his warriors to their death for the glory of Macedonia.
The messenger felt hopelessly at a loss, realizing that he had only three words to give his King. He cleared his throat and announced in a stentorian voice: ‘Sire, your son is beautiful, healthy and strong!’
‘And how do you know? Have you seen him?’
‘I would never have presumed, Sire. I was in the corridor, as ordered -my
cloak, my satchel and my weapons ready. Nicomachus came out and said … these were his very words, “Go, fly to the King and tell him his son is born. Tell him he is beautiful, healthy and strong.”’
‘Did he say the boy looks like me?’
The messenger hesitated, then replied, ‘No, he did not say so, but I am sure he looks like you.’
Philip turned towards Antipater who came forward to embrace his King, and just then the messenger remembered he had heard something else as he was running down the stairs in the palace.
‘The physician also said that…’
Philip turned suddenly. ‘What?’
‘That the Queen is well,’ concluded the messenger in a single breath.
‘When did it happen?’
The night before last, just after sunset. I flew here without stopping I
haven’t eaten, I only drank from my flask and only ever dismounted to change horses … I could not wait to bring you this news.’
Philip came back and clapped him on the shoulder.
‘Get something to eat and drink for our friend whatever
he
wants. And make sure he has a good night’s sleep because he has brought me the best of news.’
The emissaries congratulated the King and sought to take advantage of the auspicious moment to conclude their negotiations to some extra advantage, given that Philip’s mood had improved so much, but the King said firmly, ‘Not now,’ and out he went, followed by his field adjutant.
He immediately summoned the commanders of his army’s forces; he had wine brought and asked them all to drink with him. Then he issued orders: ‘Sound the trumpets for fall in. Have my army lined up in perfect order infantry
and cavalry. I want them all assembled here.’
The noise of the trumpets resounded throughout the camp and the men, many of them already drunk or half naked in the tents with prostitutes, scrambled to their feet, put on their armour, took up their spears and hurried to fall in because the noise of the trumpets was as urgent as the voice of the King himself shouting into the night.
Philip was already standing on a podium, surrounded by his officers, and when the ranks were formed the eldest soldier, as custom dictated, shouted, ‘Why have you summoned us, Sire? What do you require of your soldiers?’
Philip stepped forward. He had put on his iron and gold parade armour with a long white cloak; his legs were sheathed in greaves of embossed silver.
The silence was broken only by the snorting of the horses and by the calls of nocturnal animals attracted by the camp fires. The generals standing alongside the King could see that his face was red, as if he had been sitting by the camp fire, and his eyes were moist.
Then of Macedon!’ he roared. ‘In my house, in Pella, the Queen has borne me a son. I declare here before you now that he is my legitimate heir and I entrust him to you. His name is
ALEXANDROS!’

 
The officers gave the order to present arms: the infantry raised their sarissae, enormous battle pikes, twelve feet in length, and the cavalry lifted up to the sky a forest of javelins, while the horses stamped their hooves and neighed as their teeth ground into the bit.
Then, in rhythmic unison, they all began to shout the Prince’s name:
Alexandre! Alexandre! Alexandre!
and they beat the handles of their spears against their shields, sending the clamour up to the stars.
They believed that in this way the glory of Philip’s son would rise, with their voices, like the tumult made by their weapons, up to the home of the gods, among the constellations of the firmament.
When the assembly was dismissed, the King returned together with Antipater and his adjutants to the tent where the delegates from Potidaea were still waiting for him, patient and resigned. Philip confessed, ‘My only sadness is that Parmenion is not here to rejoice with us now.’
Indeed, at that moment General Parmenion was encamped with his army in the mountains of Illyria, not far from Lake Lychnidos, their mission being to secure the Macedonian border in that area. Later some would say that on the very day Philip received news of the birth of his son, he had conquered the city of Potidaea and had received news of another two victories: Parmenion’s against the Illyrians and that of his four-horsed chariot in the races at Olympia. For this reason the fortune tellers said that the child born on the day of three victories would surely be invincible.
In truth Parmenion defeated the Illyrians at the beginning of the summer and soon after came the Olympic games and the chariot races, nevertheless Alexander was born into a wonderfully auspicious year and the omens pointed towards a future more akin to a god’s than a man’s.
The Potidaean delegates tried to resume their negotiations where they had left off, but Philip gestured to indicate his deputy: ‘General Antipater knows my feelings on the matter, speak with him.’
‘But, Sire,’ Antipater intervened, ‘it is absolutely imperative that the King should …”
Before he had even finished the sentence Philip had put his cloak on his shoulders and whistled for his horse. Antipater followed him, ‘Sire, this campaign has involved months of siege and fierce battle to reach this point and you cannot…”
‘Of course I can!’ exclaimed the King, leaping onto his horse and spurring it on. Antipater shook his head and was turning to go back into the royal tent when Philip called out, ‘Here! Take this,’ and he slipped the seal ring from his finger and threw it to his second in command. ‘You’ll need it. Make sure it’s a good treaty, Antipater, this has been a most costly war!’
He caught the ring with the royal seal and stood for an instant watching his King gallop through the camp and exit by the northern gate. He shouted to the guardsmen: ‘Follow him, you idiots! How can you let him leave alone? Move, damn you!’
As the guards set off at full tilt, Antipater could still see Philip’s cloak gleaming in the moonlight on the mountainside and then he was gone. He returned to the tent, had the increasingly bewildered delegates from Potidaea sit themselves down, and said, as he himself took a stool, ‘Well, where were we?’
Philip rode all through the night and all through the next day, stopping only to change mount and to drink, with his horse, from streams or springs. He came within sight of Pella after sunset, just as the last rays gave a purple hue to the far off snow-coloured peaks of Mount Bermion. Down on the plain herds of galloping horses flowed like a sea swell and thousands of birds descended to sleep on the quiet waters of Lake Borboros.
The evening star shone so brightly as to compete in splendour with the moon which was rising slowly from the liquid

 
surface of the sea. This was the star of the Argeads, the dynasty that since Hercules’ time had reigned over these lands, an immortal star, more beautiful than any other in the sky.
Philip drew rein, pulling up his horse to contemplate and invoke the star. ‘Watch over my son,’ he said from his heart, ‘let him reign after me and let his children reign after him and his children’s children after that.’
Then he went up to the palace, unannounced, exhausted and soaked in sweat. A buzz of activity greeted him: a rustling of women’s clothes as they fussed along the corridors, a clanking of arms among the guards.
When he looked in through the door of the bed chamber, the Queen was sitting on a grand, high-backed armchair, her naked body only just covered by an Ionian undergown gathered into the finest pleats; the room was perfumed with Pierian roses and Artemisia was holding the boy in her arms.
Two attendants undid the shoulder plates of the King’s armour and unhooked the sword from his side so that he might feel the child’s skin on his. He took Alexander in his arms and held him tenderly, the baby’s head nestled between his father’s neck and shoulder. He felt his son’s lips on the hardened scar tissue there, he breathed the scent of his lily-soft skin.
Philip closed his eyes and stood upright and immobile in the middle of the silent room. In that moment the roar of battle, the creaking wood of the siege engines, the furious galloping of the horses all faded away; he simply stood stock still and listened to his son’s breathing.
The following year Queen Olympias bore Philip a baby girl who was given the name Cleopatra. The child looked like her mother and really was most beautiful, so lovely that the maids played with her as if she were a doll, dressing and undressing her continuously.
Alexander, who had started walking three months previously, was only allowed into his sister’s room several days after the birth, and he bore with him a small gift the nurse had prepared. He approached the crib carefully and stood there looking at Cleopatra, his eyes wide open with curiosity, his head leaning to one side. A maid came closer, worried that the boy might be jealous of the new arrival and might harm her, but Alexander took his sister’s hand and squeezed it as though he actually realized that this little baby was united to him by a deep and special bond and that for some time she would be his only companion.
Cleopatra gurgled and Artemisia said, ‘See? She’s very pleased to meet you. Why don’t you give her your present?’
Alexander unhooked a metal ring with small silver bells from his belt and started to shake it in front of the baby who seemed to stretch out her hands to grab it. Olympias was very much moved as she watched them: ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could stop time right now?’ she said, thinking out loud.
For a long time after the birth of his children Philip was involved continuously in bloody wars. He had secured the borders to the north where Parmenion had defeated the Illyrians;