The Persian Boy (8 page)

He said he would take his freedom, and if they killed him he would still die blessing my name. He prostrated himself, though he was nearly trampled doing it, before he ran off.

(He did get back to Egypt. I found him quite lately, the letter-writer in a good village not far from Memphis. He almost knew me; I have good bones, and have looked after my figure. But he could not place me, and I kept quiet. I said to myself it would not be proper, now where he was respected, to remind him of his slavery. But the truth is, too, that though the wise man knows all beauty is born to perish, one does not care to be reminded of that either. So I thanked him for pointing me out my road, and went my way.)

As I took Tiger out from his stall, a man ran up, and offered to buy him for twice what he was worth. I had been just in time; soon horses would be fought over. I was glad my dagger was in my sash.

At all the harem houses, there was a great packing and harnessing up; you could hear from outside a chittering like a bird-seller’s shop, and smell great drifts of scent from the stirred-up clothes. Each eunuch asked me where the King was going. I wished I knew, to set them on their way before their mules were stolen. I knew that some would be caught by the Macedonians, and hated leaving them to their fate; I was less needed where I was going, and my heart was not in it. But Boubakes had been right. Faithfulness in disaster, as my father would have told me, is the only guide.

As I turned back into Northgate Street, my errand done, there was a pause in the wailing, like a storm-wind dropping to silence, and a sound of dead-beat horses. Through the stillness drove the King.

He was still in his chariot, with his armor on. A handful of cavalry came behind him. His face was empty, like a blind man’s whose eyes can open.

There was dust on him, but no wound. I saw his escort, with faces slashed, or a limp arm, or a leg half blackened with clotted blood, gasping with thirst from their bleeding. These men had covered his flight.

On my fresh horse, in my clean clothes, with my whole skin, I had not the face to join this company. I made for the house by side-streets. This was the man who came forward to fight the Kadousian giant, when no other would. How long ago? Ten years-fifteen?

I thought of what he had come from now; the din, the dust-cloud; hurling of man on man and mass on mass; the heaving tide of battle; the sense of some plan reaching out for him, which was the mask for another plan; then the mask whipped off, the trap sprung; finding himself no more than a king of chaos. And then, the presence nearing him that he had seen and fled at Issos, that had haunted him all the way. Should I judge? I thought. On my own face there is not even dust.

It was the last time I could say so for many days. Within an hour, we were off towards the Armenian passes, making for Media.

-6-

FROM THE hills we climbed to the mountains. We were on the road to Ekbatana. There was no pursuit.

By troops and single stragglers, the remnant of the army caught us up. Soon, if you had not seen what had taken the field, you could have called us a great force. Bessos’ Baktrians were all there but for the dead. Being headed for their homeland, of course they had kept together. They were still nearly thirty thousand. The Immortals, and Royal Kin, and all the remnant of the Medes and Persians, both horse and foot, were now led by Nabarzanes.

We had, also, all the Greek mercenaries, about two thousand. It amazed me that, fighting only for hire, not one of them had deserted.

The most grievous loss was Mazai?os, satrap of Babylon, and all his men. They had held their line, long after the center had broken with the flight of the King, whose life they may well have saved; Alexander hot in chase of him, had had to turn back and deal with them. Not one of these brave warriors was with us now; they must all have perished.

Only about a third of the women’s wagons had escaped from Arbela; two of the King’s; the rest, the harems of lords who had stayed themselves to rescue them. But not one of the eunuchs had run off without his charges. What their fate was, I have never heard.

All the treasure was lost. But there were vaults of it at Ekbatana; the stewards had wisely loaded up with stores for the march, which we would need much more. Boubakes, I found, had had the King’s baggage wagon all packed since morning. In his wisdom he had loaded a second tent, with a few small comforts for the royal eunuchs.

Even so, it was a hard rough journey. It was early autumn by now; still hot in the plains, but cool in the hills, and already cold in the mountains.

Boubakes and I had horses; three eunuchs rode in the baggage wagon. No more of us were left, except those of the women.

Each pass wound up higher and steeper; we looked down great clefts into stony gorges; wild goats gazed at us from the crags, and were shot for food by the Baktrian archers. At night, short of blankets in our little tent, the five of us huddled like birds for warmth. Boubakes, who had taken me into his grace and behaved to me as a father, shared blankets with me so that we had them double. He favored some scent with musk, but I was grateful. We were lucky to have a tent at all; nearly all the soldiers, their baggage lost, were sleeping under the sky.

From them, I pieced together the battle as best I could. Later on, I was to hear it gone over by men who knew; tactic by tactic, order by order, blow by blow. I have it by heart; I can’t bring myself to go over it all again. To cut it short, our men all started tired, having stood to all night because the King expected surprise. Alexander, hoping for that very thing, gave his own men a good night’s rest, and, when he’d finished his battle plan, turned in himself. He slept like a log; at sunrise they had to shake him. He told them it was because his mind had been at ease.

Darius leading the center, Alexander the right, he was expected to sweep centerwards at the onset. Instead, he wheeled round to outflank our left. The King sent troops to prevent this; Alexander lured more and more of them to the left, thinning out our center. Then he formed up the royal squadron, set himself at its head, gave the note for a deafening war-yell, and came thundering straight for the King.

Darius had fled early, but not, after all, the first. His charioteer had been shot with a flying javelin; when he fell, he had been taken for the King. The first flight began from this.

Perhaps he would have stood in a single fight, as long ago in Kadousia. If he had only seized the chariot reins, and given his war-cry, and dashed in among the enemy! It would have been quick, his name would have lived in honor. How often, before the end, he must have wished it too. But, caught in the panic like a leaf in storm, seeing Alexander on his black horse loom up through the dust towards him, he wheeled the chariot and joined the rout. From that, the plain of Gaugamela became a slaughterhouse.

One more thing I learned from the soldiers. Darius had detailed a troop to sortie behind the Macedonian lines, and rescue his captive family. They had reached the base-camp, shielded by the confusion; freed some captive Persians, and, getting to the ladies, called on them to fly. All had started up, except Sisygambis the Queen Mother. She neither rose, nor spoke, nor made any sign to the rescuers. They rescued no one; the Macedonians drove them off; but the last they saw of her, she was still sitting upright in her chair, her hands laid in her lap, looking before her.

I asked one captain why we were going to Ekbatana, instead of holding? out in Babylon. “That whore of cities?” he said. “She’ll open-her legs to Alexander the moment he comes in sight. And hand the King over, if she had him there.” Another said sourly, “When wolves are after your chariot, you either stay and fight them, or throw them something out, to keep them busy. The King’s thrown Babylon. And with Babylon goes Susa.”

I fell back to ride beside Boubakes, who did not think it proper I should talk too long with the men. As if he had read my thoughts, he said, “Did you say, once, you had never seen Persepolis?”

“The King never went there since I joined the Household. Is it better than Susa?”

He sighed and said, “There is no king’s house more beautiful . . . Once Susa is gone, I doubt they can hold Persepolis.”

We went on through the passes. The road was clear behind us. Alexander had chosen Babylon and Susa. When the column’s pace grew tedious, I practiced archery. Some time before, I had picked up the bow of a dead Scythian, who had fled to the hills and then died of his wounds. He had been a smallish man and I could pull it easily. The first game I got was a sitting hare; but the King was pleased to have it for supper, as a change from goat.

He was quiet of an evening, and for some nights slept alone, till the air grew sharp, when he had a girl from the Harem. He never sent for me. Perhaps he remembered the song of my father’s warriors, that I used to sing him. I do not know.

The high peaks were touched with white, when from the head of the last pass we saw Ekbatana.

It is, if you like, a palace and walled city. But it seemed more like some splendid sculpture wrought from the mountainside. The westering sun warmed the rich faded colors that crested its sevenfold walls, rising in tiers with the slope; the white, the black, the scarlet and blue and orange. The inmost two, which enclose the Palace and treasuries, had a fiery gleam. The outer was sheathed with silver, the innermost with gold.

To me, bred in the hills, it was lovelier than Susa a thousand times. I almost shed tears beholding it. I saw that Boubakes too seemed near to weeping. But what grieved him, he said, was that the King should be driven to his summer palace with winter coming on, and no other left for him.

We entered the city gate, and went up through the sevenfold walls to the Palace above the golden battlements. It was all airy balconies, looking to the mountains. The soldiers, overflowing the town, built themselves huts of timber roofed with brush. Winter came on.

The snow that had tipped the mountains crept lower and filled their clefts. My room (there were rooms to spare, for so small a Household) was high in one of the towers. Each day I could see the white descending; till one morning, as in my childhood, I opened my eyes to the snow-light. Snow lay on the city, on the thatched huts of the soldiers, on the sevenfold walls. A raven lighted on the nearest, loosing a little slide, and there showed under his claws a patch of gold. I could have gazed forever, except that I was freezing. I had to break the ice in my water-ewer; and winter was only starting.

I had no warm clothes, and told Boubakes I must go to the bazaar. “Don’t do that, my boy,” he said. “I have been going through the wardrobe. There are things that have been lying there since King Ochos’ day. I have just the thing for you. No one will miss it.”

It was a splendid coat, of lynx-skin lined with scarlet; it must have belonged to one of the princes. This was good of Boubakes. He may have noticed the King had not lately sent for me, and wanted to make me pretty.

The mountain air was like health after long sickness. I daresay it did more for my looks than the coat; at all events, the King sent for me before long. But he had changed since the battle. He was restless and hard to please; and I felt, as I never had before, that without warning he might turn against me. It put me on edge; I wanted only to get it over.

However, I could understand, and did not hold it against him. He had just had news of how ?Babylon the Whore had opened her bed to Alexander.

Even against him, I should think those great walls could have held out a year. But the Royal Gate was opened. The Royal Way was strewn with flowers, and lined each side with altars and tripods burning precious incense. A procession met him bringing kingly gifts; purebred Nisaian horses, flower-wreathed oxen, gilded cars with leopards and lions in cages. The Magi and Chaldeans chanted praises, to the sound of harps and lutes. The cavalry of the garrison paraded without their weapons. Compared with this, the welcome to Darius had been like that for some third-rate governor.

Even this was not the worst. The envoy who met Alexander on his march, and put the keys of the citadel in his hands, had been the satrap, Mazaios, whom we had mourned for dead.

He had done his duty in the battle. No doubt in the dust and din he had not known at first that the King had fled. He had hoped for support, for victory. When he knew, he made his choice. He had led back his men at speed, lest he should be too late for Alexander. He had been in time; Alexander had reappointed him. He was still satrap of Babylon.

For all Mazaios’ homage, Alexander had marched warily on the city, in battle order, leading the van himself. However, it was not too good to be true. He had Darius’ gilded chariot brought, and entered in proper style.

I tried to picture this wild and strange young barbarian in the Palace I knew so well. For some reason, perhaps because the first thing he did in Darius’ captured tent was to take a bath (by all accounts, he seemed as clean as a Persian) I saw him in the bathhouse, with its lapis tiles and gold fish, splashing in the sun-warmed water. It was an envious thought, at Ekbatana.

The servants fared well; their quarters had been unchanged for centuries, since the Median kings had lived there all through the year. It was only the royal rooms which, when the empire grew, had been made open and airy, to catch the mountain breezes in summer heats. Snow blew in at the windows.

We got shutters made, with fifty carpenters at it, and filled the place with braziers. But nothing could really warm it. I could see how it irked the King, to think of Alexander basking in Babylon’s mild air.

The Baktrians, who have hard winters at home, would have been well clad, had they not stripped down in the heat of Gaugamela and then lost their baggage. The Persians and the Greeks were no better off. The men from mountain satrapies went hunting their own furs; others bought in the bazaar, or rode into the country and robbed the peasants.

Prince Oxathres, and the lords and satraps, had quarters in the Palace. Bessos laughed at the cold through his black beard; but Nabarzanes noted we had tried to give him some comfort, and thanked us civilly. He was one of the antique school.