The Persian Boy (50 page)

After a while, Perdikkas came in, to tell him the officers were still in the courtyard awaiting orders. He signed to bring them in. They crowded into the Bedchamber. He made a gesture of greeting; I saw him draw breath to speak, but he coughed instead and brought up blood. He motioned them to dismiss, and they went away. Not till the last had gone, did he press his hand to his side.

After this, the generals brought the doctors without his leave. Three came. Weak as he was, they feared him because of Glaukias; but he suffered quietly their fingers on his wrist, their ears laid to his chest. He watched them, as they looked at one another. When they brought a draught he took it and slept awhile. One of them stayed with him, so I rested an hour or two. He would need me there at night, with my wits about me.

At night he was in high fever. They would no longer leave him to me alone; three of the Companions watched with him. One of the doctors would have sat by his pillow; but he put out his hand and held my arm, so the doctor went.

It was a long night. The Companions dozed in their chairs. He coughed blood and then slept a little. About midnight his lips moved. I bent to hear. He said, “Don’t drive it away.” I looked about but saw nothing. “The snake,” he whispered, pointing to a shadowy corner. “Nobody harm him. He is sent.”

“No one shall harm him,” I said, “upon pain of death.”

He slept again. Then he said, “Hephaistion.”

His eyes were closed. I kissed his forehead and did not speak. He smiled, and was quiet.

In the morning he knew me, and where he was. The generals came in and stood about his bed. All over the room one could hear his labored breathing. He looked from one to the other. He knew well enough what it meant.

Perdikkas came forward and bent towards him. “Alexander. We all pray the gods will spare you for many years. But if their will is otherwise, to whom do you leave your kingdom?”

He forced his voice, so as to speak aloud. He began, this I have always believed, to pronounce the name of Krateros. But his breath caught, and he finished with a gasp. Perdikkas murmured to the others, “He says, To the strongest.”

Krateros, kratistos. The sounds so much alike, the meaning, even, of the name. Krateros, whom he had always trusted, was on his way to Macedon; I am persuaded he meant to leave him regent for the unborn child; King even, if it should be a girl, or die. But Krateros was a long way off; his cause was no one’s here.

Nor was it mine. What was Macedon to me, what did I care who ruled it? I looked only at my lord, to see if he was troubled; but he had not heard. While he was at peace, it was all one to me. If I gave offense to the others, they might take me from him. I held my tongue.

Presently he beckoned Perdikkas back; then drew from his finger the royal signet carved with Zeus enthroned, and gave it him. He had chosen a deputy, while he was too sick to rule. It need have meant no more than that.

Sitting quiet by the bed, only the Persian boy, I saw the faces begin to watch each other, reckoning policy and power, looking sideways at the ring.

He saw them. His eyes had been on the distance; but they moved, and I know he saw. I bent over him with the sponge; I thought he had seen enough. He looked at me as if we shared a secret. I laid my hand on his; there was a white band on his finger, where the ring had kept off the sun.

All was silent, but for his quick rough breath. In the quiet, I heard outside a deep stir, a many-voiced murmur. Ptolemy went out to see. When he did not return, Peukestas followed, then the others. Soon after, they all came in again.

Perdikkas said, “Alexander. It’s the Macedonians outside; al?l the men. They-they want to see you. I’ve told them it’s impossible, that you’re too ill. Do you. think if I let in just a few, a score or so, to represent the others, do you think you could bear with that?”

His eyes opened wide. He began to cough. While I held the towel for the blood, he made a gesture of command, meaning, Wait till I am ready. Then he said, “All. Every man.”

Wherever the ring might be, the King was here. Perdikkas went out.

Alexander pushed himself a little sideways, and looked at me. I moved the pillows, to prop him there. Someone opened the private postern, for the men to leave by when they had passed the bed. Their muttering voices approached. Peukestas looked at me with kindness, and made a little motion with his head. He had always shown me courtesy; so I understood him. I said to Alexander, “I will come back after,” and went out by the postern door.

As soldiers to their general, as Macedonians to their King, they had come to bid him farewell. Now at the last they must find him all their own, not with his Persian boy closer to him then they.

From the alcove where I stood unseen, I watched them leaving, a stream of men I thought would never end, one after one. They wept, or spoke in husky whispers; or just looked dazed, as if they had learned that the sun would not rise tomorrow.

They took hours to go by. The day wore towards noon. I heard one say, “He greeted me with his eyes. He knew me.” Another said, “He recognized me right away. He tried to smile.” A young one said, “He gave me a look, and I thought, The world is breaking.” A veteran answered, “No, lad, the world goes on. But the gods alone know where.”

At last, no more came. I went in. He lay as I’d left him; all that time, he had held himself eyes-front to them, not letting one pass without a look of greeting. Now he lay like the dead, but for his panting breath. I thought, They have drained the last life from him, and left me nothing. May the dogs eat them.

I lifted him on one arm, and changed the pillows so that he lay easier. He opened his eyes, and smiled. I understood that this gift of theirs, whatever it had cost him, was what he would have asked of his guardian god. How could I grudge it him? I put away my anger.

The generals had stood aside while the men passed by. Ptolemy wiped his eyes. Perdikkas stepped over to the bed. “Alexander. When you are received among the gods, at what times shall we offer you worship?”

I don’t think he expected any answer; just wanted, if he could still be heard, to make a gift of honor, as he felt it due. He was heard. Alexander came back to us, as if out of deep water. The smile still hung about him. He whispered, “When you are happy.” Then he closed his eyes, and returned where he had been.

All day he lay on the high pillows, between the gilded daimons with spread wings. All day the great men came and went. Towards evening, they brought Roxane. The child was big in her. She flung herself on him, beating her breast and tearing her hair, wailing as if he were already dead. I saw his eyelids creasing. Her I dared not speak to, for I had seen her look of hate; but I whispered to Peukestas, “He can hear, it troubles him,” and they made her eunuchs lead her out.

Sometimes I could rouse him to take a drink of water; sometimes he seemed already in the death-sleep and would not stir for me; yet I felt his presence, and thought that he felt mine. I thought, I will not ask heaven for any sign from him; let him not be troubled by my love, only know of it if God pleases; for love is life to him, he has never turned it away.

Night fell and the lamps were kindled. Ptolemy stood by the bed, looking down, remembering him, I suppose, in Macedon as a child. Peukestas came up and said that he and a few friends were going to keep vigil for him at the shrine of Serapis. Alexander had brought the god’s cult from Egypt; he is a form of the risen Osiris; they would ask his oracle whether he would heal Alexander, if he were carried to the shrine.

It is man’s nature to ho?pe even in extremity. As the flickering lamplight moved on his quiet face, mocking me with false shadows of life, I awaited some promise from the god. But my body knew. My body weighed with his death, as heavy as clay.

The night passed for me in starts and stretches. It was long since I had slept; sometimes I found myself with my head leaned on his pillow, and looked if he had stirred; but he slept on, with quick shallow breaths, broken with deep sighs. The lamps faded, the first pallor of dawn showed the shapes of the tall windows. His breathing had changed its sound, and something said to me, He is here.

I drew close and whispered, “I love you, Alexander,” and kissed him. Never mind, I thought, from whom his heart accepts it. Let it be according to his wish.

My hair had fallen on his breast. His eyes opened; his hand moved, and touched a strand, and ran it between his fingers.

He knew me. To that I will take my oath before the gods. It was to me that he bade farewell.

The others, who had seen him move, rose to their feet. But he had gone away. He was on the threshold of his journey.

Someone was at the door. Peukestas stood there. Ptolemy and Perdikkas went to meet him. He said, “We watched all night, and at dawn we went to the oracle. The god said it would be better for him here.”

When his breath ceased, the eunuchs all bewailed him. I suppose that I did too. Outside the Palace it was heard, and the sound spread through the city; there was no need to give out that the King was dead. As we took the high pillows from behind him, and laid him straight, the squires on guard came in and stood there bewildered, and walked out crying.

He had died with closed eyes and mouth, as seemly as in sleep. His hair was tousled from the tossing of his fever, and I combed it; I could not keep from doing it as if he could still feel. Then I looked for the great men who had half filled the Bedchamber, for someone to order how he was to be cared for. But they had all gone. The world had broken; the pieces lay like shattered gold, spoil for the strongest. They had gone to gather them up.

After a while the Palace eunuchs grew uneasy, not knowing who was King. One after another went off, to see how things stood; the lesser followed the greater. I did not notice at first that I was there alone.

I stayed, for I could not think of anywhere else to be. Someone will come, I thought; he is mine until they claim him. I uncovered his body, and looked at his wounds which I had known by touch in the dark, and covered him again. Then I sat down by the bed, and leaned my head on it, and I think that I fell asleep.

I woke to the slanting light of evening. No one had come. The air was heavy with heat. I thought, They must come soon, his body will not withstand it. But no breath of corruption came from him; he seemed no more than sleeping.

Always the life in him was stronger than in other men. I felt at his heart in vain; his breath did not mist the mirror; yet somewhere deep within him the soul might still remain, preparing to depart, but not yet gone. I spoke to that; not to his ears, I knew they would not hear me, but to whatever of him might hear.

“Go to the gods, unconquered Alexander. May the River of Ordeal be mild as milk to you, and bathe you in light, not fire. May your dead forgive you; you have given more life to men than you brought death. God made the bull to eat grass, but the lion not; and God alone will judge between them. You were never without love; where you go, may you find it waiting.”

At this, the memory came to me of Kalanos singing on his flower-wreathed bier. I thought, He has kept his word; he has put off for his sake being born again; himself having passed in peace through fire, he is here to lead him across the River. It eased my heart, to know he was not alone.

Suddenly, in this stillness, a great clamor approached the room. Ptolemy and Perdikkas rushed in with a band of soldiers, and the royal squires. Perdikkas shouted, “Bolt the doors!” and they crashed them to. The?re were shouts and hammerings; those outside broke in the doors. Perdikkas and Ptolemy called to their men to defend the King’s body from traitors and pretenders. I was almost crushed as they backed around the bed. The wars for the world had started; these people were fighting to possess him, as if he were a thing, a symbol, like the Mitra or the throne. I turned to him. When I saw him still lie calm, bearing all this without resentment, then I knew he was truly dead.

They had begun to fight, and were throwing javelins. I stood to shield him, and one of them grazed my arm. I have the scar to this day, the only wound I ever took for him.

Presently they parleyed, and went away to go on with their dispute outside. I bound up my arm with a bit of towel, and waited, for it was not proper he should be without attendance. I lit the night-lamp and set it by the bed, and watched with him, till at morning the embalmers came to take him from me, and fill him with everlasting myrrh.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

ALL PUBLIC acts of Alexander here recounted are based upon the sources, the most dramatic being the most authentic. It has been impossible to find room for all the major events, even, of his crowded life, or to demonstrate the full scope of his genius. This book attempts only an angle shot, with certain highlights.

Source histories all commend the “moderation” of his sex life. None suggest that he was celibate; had he been, it would of course have been assumed that he was impotent; the Christian ideal of chastity was still unborn. A general pattern emerges of a fairly low physical drive-unsurprising, when such immense energies were spent elsewhere-coupled with a passionate capacity for affection. We know as little as we do of his love affairs, partly because they were few, partly because he was a good picker; none of his partners involved him in scandal.

That Hephaistion was his lover seems, on the evidence, probable to the verge of certainty, but is nowhere actually stated. Plutarch’s account of a child by Memnon’s widow after the fall of Damascus is, for sound reasons, doubted by modern historians, and there is no other record of his having had a mistress. Bagoas is the only person explicitly named in the sources as Alexander’s eromenos.

He first appears in Curtius: Nabarzanes, having received a safe-conduct, met him [Alexander] bringing great gifts. Among these was Bagoas, a eunuch of remarkable beauty and in the very flower of boyhood, who had been loved by Darius, and was afterwards to be loved by Alexander; and it was especially because of the boy’s pleadings that he was led to pardon Nabarzanes. This last is typical Curtius embroidery; the safe-conduct shows that Alexander was willing to hear Nabarzanes’ account of himself, and no doubt this decided the issue. How Bagoas came into his hands, when none of Darius’ suite was allowed with him after his arrest, and Nabarzanes himself escaped with only six hundred horsemen, is not explained.