Lord of the Two Lands (36 page)

He did not want to understand that. His face was set against her. He was growing angry: his scowl was as black as she had ever seen it.

Her hand tried to creep out, to smooth the scowl away. She clenched it at her side. But never as tight as she clenched her heart, lest she break down and cry. “I love you,” she said. “Don’t doubt it for a moment. When I can come back, I will. I promise you.”

“Will you come back? Will you ever?”

She looked into the grey glass of his eyes. There were visions there. “Yes,” she said. “I will come back. I will die in Khemet, in the Black Land where I was born.”

He shivered so hard that the bed shook. But his temper was stronger than his awe. “Maybe I’ll find another woman. Maybe I won’t care if I ever see you again.”

“Maybe,” she said. The word was soft and cold.

He rolled to his feet. “By the dog!” he cried. “Don’t you even care?”

She looked up at him. Remembering how she had first seen him: a shadow against uncertain light, towering, swaying just visibly. It had been pain then, of his wounds and his exhaustion. It was pain now, and if the wounds were of the heart, they were all the deeper for that.

No deeper than her own. “Your brother will be king in Egypt,” she said. “Did you know that?”

“What?” She had caught him off balance.

“I saw it,” she said. “Your eyes are like a scrying glass.”

He squeezed them shut. “Oh, gods. I wish I could hate you. It would be so much simpler.”

“You’re not even afraid of me.”

His eyes flew open. “Why should I be?”

She crooked a finger. Her shadow reared up. It grinned in Niko’s face.

He grinned back nastily. It shut its mouth, nonplussed.

“Is that your real shape,” he asked it, “or do you have one you were born with?”

It looked at Meriamon. Its eyes were, of all things, laughing.

She did not see what there was to laugh at. Her heart was going to Asia with Alexander. Her body wanted to cling to this beautiful fearless idiot and never let him go.

She went still. She could hardly—he would never—

And why not?

She stood. They towered over her, both of them, shadow and man. She stretched out her hand. She laid it flat over Niko’s heart. She looked him in the eye—eye to eye, and that was a feat. She hoped that he was properly in awe of it. “I am going with Alexander,” she said. “You are coming with me.”

His brows went up. “What if I won’t?”

“You will.”

“How? By sorcery?”

“Because you love me.”

“If you love me, you’ll stay in Egypt.”

“No,” she said.

If he was a fool, he would decide that she did not love him. He would break away, and rage at her, and fling himself out.

He raised his hand. Her shadow tensed. He laid it over hers, closed his fingers, turned her hand palm up. It was scarred still from the stone that had pierced it on the march to Siwah. The mark would not fade, she suspected. It was a reminder, and a remembrance.

“You have will enough to rule a world,” he said.

“That’s Alexander,” she said.

“And you.” He looked angry. Sulking. “What do I have to do to make you see sense?”

“Come with me.”

“Will we come back?”

Her heart leaped. She kept her face impassive. “I’ve told you we will.”

“Well then,” he said. “If we come back, and you promise—on your solemn word—that we will live in Alexandria, and build it, and make it beautiful—”

“And be as kings in it?”

“Plain good citizens will do,” he said. “Will you promise?”

“By my name,” said Meriamon.

“Then I’ll go,” he said. His anger was gone. His smile swelled, bloomed, blazed. “We’ll be the greatest army that has ever been. Our king is the greatest king who ever was. We’ll stride from horizon to horizon. We’ll conquer the world.”

Or at least, thought Meriamon, a goodly portion of it.

She closed her fingers over the memory of pain. She had not seen the last of it. Oh, no. When that day came, she would have come forth into another day than this which brightened the sky of the living earth, and stood in another Great House than this, in the Hall of the Two Truths, and the judges would be weighing the purity of her heart.

She was smiling. Broadly, she noticed. Grinning, for a fact. “We’ll conquer the world,” she agreed. “Tomorrow. Tonight—or what is left of tonight—”

“Tonight,” said Nikolaos, “we conquer Egypt.”

Fair was fair, Meriamon thought. Egypt, after all, had conquered Macedon. And would again; and years to do it in, and worlds to wander as they did it.

Even the Weigher of Hearts would be pleased to call that justice.

The life and achievements of Alexander III of Macedon (356-323 B.C.), with the exception of Mary Renault’s trilogy,
Fire from Heaven
,
The Persian Boy,
and
Funeral Games
, have inspired few recent novels in English. There has, however, been a plethora of monographs, biographies, and popular histories. Perhaps the best of the recent crop, with its summaries of prior scholarship and its meticulous recording of dates, events, and sources, is A.B. Bosworth’s
Conquest and Empire: The Reign of Alexander the Great
(Cambridge, 1988).

Both Bosworth and Renault draw ultimately from the ancient historians of Alexander’s life and times, all of whom are available in English translation: Plutarch and Curtius in Penguin editions (Plutarch,
The Age of Alexander
, tr. Ian Scott-Kilvert, 1973, and Quintus Curtius Rufus,
The History of Alexander
, tr. John Yardley, 1984), Arrian’s
The Campaigns of Alexander
in the translation of Aubrey de Selincourt (New York, 1958), and the histories of Diodorus Siculus (Diodorus of Sicily) in Loeb editions, especially volume 8, ed. and tr. C.B. Welles, and volume 9, ed. and tr. R.M. Geer (Cambridge, Mass., 1963, 1967). It should be noted that, since Renault’s assessment of Curtius as an irredeemably silly man with access to priceless sources, scholars have concluded that Curtius, for all his bombast, is in fact more accurate than Arrian.

There is also, and significantly for this novel, an odd, highly fantastical, and quite entertaining
Life of Alexander of Macedon
attributed to Alexander’s own chronicler, Callisthenes. Elizabeth Hazelton Haight in her translation (New York, 1955) sets its actual composition at about A.D. 300, but adds that certain incidents have been found on papyri dated not long after Alexander’s death. Here, in the work of the author commonly known as “Pseudo-Callisthenes,” is the story of Nectanebo, last native pharaoh of Egypt, and his attempt to create a savior for Egypt through the offices of the god Amon and the womb of the Queen of Macedon.

This novel adheres closely to actual historical events from the battle of Issus in the autumn of 333 B.C., through Alexander’s journey to the oracle of Zeus Amon at Siwah in the Libyan desert in the spring of 331 B.C. I have made occasional changes in the interests of theme, story, or narrative simplicity.

Although some sources, including Curtius, speak of Alexander’s crowning in Memphis, this probably does not refer to the native rite of accession. Alexander was not at that point interested in taking on the trappings of the country which he had taken. Most likely he held his Greek games, toured the sights (including the Pyramids and the tomb of the Apis Bull) as numerous foreigners had before him, and left promptly for Siwah.

The founding of Alexandria probably took place after his return from the oracle; to avoid an anticlimax, I have chosen to follow the tradition that sets the founding before the journey to the shrine. The story of the sandstorm and the miraculous rain seems to have been commonly accepted by ancient historians, likewise the account of the guides, whether serpents or ravens from the groves of the oasis. Some scholars have proposed that this story was originally told by Ptolemy in his memoirs. Alexander never spoke to anyone of his time alone with the oracle, not even to Hephaistion, who, as Curtius says, was privy to all his secrets.

Although Ptolemy claimed after Alexander’s death to be the king’s illegitimate half-brother, this was probably a political ploy—a means of laying claim to the kingship of Egypt. He died in 283 B.C., having preserved his kingdom intact through the Wars of Succession that followed Alexander’s death. His family ruled Egypt until the suicide of Cleopatra VII and her Roman consort, Mark Antony, in 30 B.C., when Egypt became a province of the Roman Empire.

The Athenian courtesan Thaïs probably did not join Alexander’s army until the siege of Tyre. At Issus the army was still under the regimen of Alexander’s father Philip, who mandated that no women or camp followers accompany the troops. Soldiers were not allowed wagons or large trains of belongings. Each company shared a servant, and each man carried his own possessions and armor as he marched.

After the capture of the Persian king’s women and treasure, the army’s discipline slackened, and it began to swell into the ambulatory city that accompanied Alexander on his journeys through Asia. For a short, thorough, and very useful account of the army and its logistics, see Donald W. Engels,
Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army
(Berkeley, 1978).

It was Thaïs who, the story goes, persuaded Alexander in the midst of a drunken revel to burn Persepolis. She bore Ptolemy three children, but she never became his wife. When Ptolemy claimed the kingship of Egypt, he took a properly respectable—and Greek—queen.

When Alexander died in Babylon at the age of thirty-two, worn out by fever, wounds, and grief for the death of Hephaistion, Philip Arrhidaios, Alexander’s half-brother, became King Philip III of Macedon. He was murdered in 317 B.C.—a common fate of Macedonian kings, addlepated or otherwise. Precisely what incapacity he suffered is not known, nor is it known whether it was congenital or the result of an accident (whether purely accidental or politically motivated) in his childhood. He was succeeded by Alexander’s son by the Bactrian princess Roxane, Alexander IV, who was murdered in his turn, at the age of about twelve, in 310 B.C.

His death ended the dynasty. For a good, brief analysis of Macedon’s history in general and Alexander III’s effect on it in particular, see R. Malcolm Errington’s
A History of Macedonia
, tr. Catherine Errington (Berkeley, 1990).

Likenesses of Alexander were frequent in ancient times. It has been said that he changed the standards of beauty from the austere Classical model to the fuller, lusher Hellenistic image.

A particularly interesting portrait, done from life, has been found in the tomb of Philip II at Vergina in northern Greece, and is reproduced in
The Search for Alexander: An Exhibition
(Boston, 1980). Manolis Andronikos’ essay in this volume, “The Royal Tombs at Vergina: A Brief Account of the Excavations,” pp. 26ff., despite its good grey title, is an archeological adventure story.

The Getty Museum in Malibu, California, has on display a marble portrait of the young Alexander, and rather more interesting, a likeness that has been identified by most scholars as that of Hephaistion. Likenesses of Ptolemy can be found in any book of classical coins; his lantern jaw and uncompromising nose are unmistakable.

Meriamon, like Nikolaos, is my invention, as is her mission to Alexander. Her father, however, was in fact a pharaoh of Egypt, Nectanebo II, last of the native rulers, defeated by the Persians in 341 B.C. and driven out, probably to his death. Pseudo-CalIisthenes makes him a great mage. This is true enough, insofar as Pharaoh (the title means “Great House”) was regarded as the living incarnation of the god Horus, the direct intercessor with the gods, by whose health and safety the realm prospered or failed.

Egypt in the fourth century B.C. was regarded as unimaginably ancient and profoundly mysterious. Magic had its source there, and magic pervaded the lives and minds of its people. Its practitioners guarded their secrets jealously, but their purposes were as profoundly practical as the rest of Egyptian culture: magical rituals and practices were designed to obtain specific results through manipulation of natural and supernatural forces.

Books on the subject are legion, and most are sheer nonsense. The few reliable sources are to be found, in general, in scholarly journals. I have made use, with caution, of Bob Brier’s
Ancient Egyptian Magic
(New York, 1981); in this book, while prospecting for tidbits useful to a novelist, I found the quotation from Pseudo-Callisthenes, on Nectanebo and Alexander, which inspired this novel.

A sampling of genuine Egyptian magic can be found in
Ancient Egyptian Magical Texts
, tr. J.F. Borghouts (Leiden, 1978). Words are vitally important, puns and double meanings frequent, and the name crucial to the mastery of the thing, whether god, demon, animal, or human.

There is no single, comprehensive, completely reliable book-length text on ancient Egypt. I have found useful J.E. Manchip White’s
Ancient Egypt: Its Culture and History
(New York, 1970), and B.G. Trigger, B.J. Kemp, D. O’Connor, and A.B. Lloyd,
Ancient Egypt: A Social History
(Cambridge, 1983). For the religion of the Egyptians, Siegfried Morenz,
Egyptian Religion
, tr. Ann E. Keep (Ithaca, N.Y., 1973), is sufficiently comprehensive for a beginning. Useful also is Adolf Erman’s
Life in Ancient Egypt
, tr. H.M. Tirard (New York, 1971). I have adapted Erman’s description of the accession of the king, rather than the version described in White, as more likely to have appealed to Alexander’s personality and imagination.

Meriamon herself appears—under the name of Ahmose Merit-Amon, a queen of the 18th dynasty, around 1550 B.C.—in Mohamed Saleh and Hourig Sourouzian,
Official Catalogue, The Egyptian Museum, Cairo
, tr. Peter Der Manuelian and Helen Jacquet-Gordon (Mainz, 1987). Her sarcophagus is listed as number 127.

Although Egypt never again saw the rule of native kings after the arrival of Alexander—all the Ptolemies, including the last and most famous Cleopatra, were Hellenes—its cults and gods thrived under Roman rule. The cult of Isis only failed completely with the triumph of Christianity. Even then, many attributes of the Blessed Virgin can be traced to Isis and other mother goddesses of the pagans.

Women in Egypt enjoyed more freedom than did women of the Persians or the Greeks. There was no pre-dynastic matriarchy. Egypt was always ruled primarily by men, but queens ruled and held regencies; even, once or twice, claimed the title of king. Under the Ptolemies, queens ruled often, and sometimes unassisted by kings.

Herodotus is incorrect in his statement that the Egyptian priesthoods were entirely male. The priesthood of Amon, at least, included a female high priestess, the Great Wife of Amon, and women singers and dancers in the temple. Ordinary women, even in Hellenistic times, were sometimes educated, were able to make contracts and own property, and, to some extent, had a say in the choosing of their husbands. Statues and paintings depict over and over an image of marriage as a bond of affection between near-equals.

Sarah B. Pomeroy’s
Women in Hellenistic Egypt from Alexander to Cleopatra
(New York, 1984) addresses the question of women in pharaonic times as well. A broader spectrum appears in the essays collected by Averil Cameron and Amelie Kuhrt, eds.
Images of Women in Antiquity
(London, 1983).

The Egyptian obsession with death was in fact an obsession with life. Elaborate tombs, meticulous preservation of the body, intricate magical rituals for the passage through the land of the dead, were all aimed at reproducing in eternity the image of mortal existence. The essential literary and magical guide to the afterlife, the so-called “Book of the Dead,” is actually and more properly titled “The Book of Coming Forth by Day.” That the land of the dead was perceived as lying beyond the western horizon of Egypt, in the Libyan desert, and that Alexander journeyed through these lands to reach Siwah, is one of the happy coincidences of the novelist’s trade.