A Choice of Destinies

by Melissa Scott

  Alexander was bitterly angry. After the first meeting with his officers, informing them of the rebellion, he refused to discuss any details for sending troops to Antipater’s aid, or of returning to Greece himself. Instead, he turned his attention at once to the imprisoned pages, declaring that they should be tried at once, without waiting for Menidas to return from Alexandria Eschate. The Friends accepted his insistence without argument, and arrangements were made to clear the market square, the only place in Bactra large enough to hold all the Macedonians.

  Like an amphitheater on the morning of a festival, the market square began filling well before dawn, but it was full light by the time the last of the Macedonian soldiers had filed into the broad square. A crude platform had been set up in front of the low building that normally housed the city’s court. There the king and the Macedonians among the Friends—the others were not entitled even to hear the trial—took their places, listening to the mutter of conversation that made the market echo like a hollow shell.

  It was an unexpectedly bright winter’s day. The sun, rising at last above the low roofs of the shops that ringed the market, glittered from the sea of armor visible beneath the half-concealing cloaks. Every Macedonian who wished to attend was there. A mixture of trusted mercenaries and non-Macedonians who also acknowledged Alexander’s kingship—Agrianians and Paeonians and Thracians—guarded the city walls, while beyond the shuttered, empty shops a detachment of the Sacred Band stood watch at the approaches to the market, turning away any curious foreigners.

  At last, the door of the court buildings opened and a detachment of hypaspists appeared, escorting the accused pages. The noise of the crowd deepened as the first soldiers caught sight of them, a ripple spreading through the crowd as more and more soldiers craned to see. Then the prisoners had reached the platform, and Alexander held up his hand for silence. The sun, rising behind him, turned his hair to reddish gold, brighter than the royal diadem.

  The noise stopped gradually, the conversations dying away into a shuffling and then to nothing. The pages showed the marks of questioning, but walked without help.

  “Macedonians!” Alexander shouted in their language, his own mother tongue. His voice carried very clearly in the quiet air. “You already have heard most of the story that brings you here. It’s your right to hear the rest, and your duty to judge and punish. I accuse these pages you see before you of plotting to kill their king. I accuse them on the word of Epimenes son of Arseus, who revealed the plot, and on their own confession.”

  Standing well back in the knot of officers that waited at the king’s right hand, Ptolemy sighed, letting his eyes sweep across the attentive crowd. Alexander spoke well, as always, shaping words and gestures to match his audience. As always, the soldiers responded to the king’s will, listening with rising anger to the slow unfolding of the plot. It was too much like the drama for Ptolemy’s taste, though Alexander was unaware of the way he played the crowd—just as Ptolemy was unaware his king reserved a subtler magic for swaying him. The general looked away, shutting out the king’s clear voice to concentrate on the testimony he himself would have to give.

  Hephaestion caught the brief, unhappy movement but ignored it, watching the king instead. Alexander was more than merely convincing: even knowing the details of the plot perhaps better than the king himself did, the cavalry commander found his own emotions stirring in response. Then Alexander had finished, with only the briefest of allusions to the rebellion in Greece. Epimenes was brought forward to confirm what the king had said. He spoke very badly, mumbling and ashamed, so that the men at the far end of the marketplace could not hear at all, and had to have his words repeated to them by men closer to the platform. Ptolemy spoke next, gruffly adding his word to what Epimenes had said, and finally Hephaestion recounted the pages’ confessions. Only then did Alexander turn his attention to the prisoners.

  “What do you say in your defense?”

  The group of boys shifted sullenly, glancing at each other without speaking, and then a blocky, dark youth stepped forward slightly, throwing a contemptuous glance at the spear automatically lowered to block his path.

  “I am Hermolaus son of Cleon. I speak for us all.” Hermolaus had a high-pitched, carrying voice, and a look of white-lipped fanaticism. One of the others glanced at him sidelong, like a nervous horse, and moved away a little. “Yes, we planned to kill Alexander—to free the Macedonians from the chains of a tyrant, a tyrant whose rule grows more offensive every day.”

  There was an angry murmur from the crowd at that, but the boy cried it down. “Yes! A tyrant! Haven’t we all noticed how Alexander has changed since Darius was beaten? How he apes Persian ways, favors only Persians, marries a barbarian female—and does anyone dare speak against this, as a Macedonian should be able to speak, freely to his king? What happened to Philotas when he tried it? He was charged with treason, too, and executed.”

  “He had a fair trial, you little bastard,” a hypaspist shouted, and there was a yelp of agreement from his neighbors.

  “Did his father?” Hermolaus shot back. “Did Cleitus?”

  The king’s face paled slowly, and one hand contracted into a fist. The soldiers’ roar of fury was reassuring, a sort of forgiveness. Alexander maintained his savage silence, waiting for the boy to finish.

  Hermolaus’s voice rose sharply, the words coming more and more quickly, so that the men in the back of the crowd shifted and strained to understand. Somehow the correctness, the pure philosophical logic of his argument, was not coming through. “These murders are just part of his tyranny,” he shouted. “Look at how he plays at being Great King—and he’d like to turn us all into Persians—into slaves, which is the same thing. Didn’t he ask us all, last winter, to bow down and adore him? Is that the way a man, a Macedonian, should act?”

  The crowd stirred at that, angry voices blending into a vast mutter of discontent, and Hermolaus shouted them all down, his voice cracking painfully. “No free-born Macedonian could tolerate this. The democracies of Greece have taught us how to deal with tyrants—”

  A new wave of shouting cut him off abruptly. Whatever chance Hermolaus had ever had of convincing anyone of anything was gone forever at the first mention of the Greek cities, and he knew it. He kept going, trying to outlast the torrent of abuse, but his voice was utterly lost in the noise. Alexander waited until he faltered, then held up his hand for silence. Grudgingly, the soldiers quieted.

  “Hear him out,” Alexander called, and waited until the last shouts died away. “Hermolaus, do you have anything more to say in your… defense?”

  There was renewed jeering from the crowd and Alexander lifted his hand again. When the noise died down again, the page said sulkily, “I have finished.”

  “And the rest of you?” Alexander asked.

  One, Sopolis, sighed and shook his head, and Anticles muttered bitterly, “What else is there to say?”

  The king waited a moment longer, and then, when it was clear that no one else would speak, turned to the assembly for the final time. “Macedonians, what is your verdict?”

  The crowd roared back, “Guilty!”

  Alexander nodded gravely, though no other verdict had been possible, and held up his hand for the last time. The soldiers quieted, eager for the kill. “Macedonians, you have found these four guilty of treason. It remains to carry out the sentence—outside the city.”

  Perdiccas had chosen for the execution a hollow, just far enough outside the city walls to avoid pollution. It was the sort of place that in Macedon would have been made into an amphitheater. Ptolemy made a face, thinking again of the drama, and looked away. A detachment of Agrianian javelin-men, squat, barbaric-looking men, made up the perimeter guard. At the king’s order, they saluted and backed away, revealing the waiting piles of stones.

  Perhaps half the army had come to take part in the execution; there would not be stones enough for all of them. Perdiccas grimaced irritably, uncertain if it was his own lack of foresight o
r the execution itself that he disapproved of. The impassive hypaspists bound the pages hands, then half shoved, half dragged them into the center of the natural amphitheater. The pages stood where they had been placed, huddling together as if that would protect them. Alexander waited until the hypaspists were clear, and said, “Begin.”

  The first rock landed far up the slope. As it passed him, Anticles instinctively dodged aside, as though it were one of the ball games the pages played off duty. The soldiers jeered, and Hermolaus snapped something at the other boy. Anticles froze, chin lifting proudly. A moment later a better aimed stone drove him to his knees.

  Unspeaking, Alexander watched them die, his face as expressionless as a statue’s. When it was over he ordered Perdiccas to see to the burning of the bodies, and turned back toward the city. Behind his back, the Friends exchanged looks and followed. Craterus said, softly, “Now maybe he’ll attend to the Greek business. Hephaestion, you talk to him.”

  The cavalry commander, sickened by the executions, shot an angry glance in his direction, then lengthened his stride until he had almost overtaken the king. Ptolemy said, in the tones he would use to an importunate child, “Not now, Craterus. Let it go.”

  Craterus snorted, declining to acknowledge the insult. “If not now, when? If there aren’t some decisions made soon, well miss the sailing season. And then where will Antipater be?”

  Ptolemy said, in exactly the same tone as before, “Tomorrow, Craterus.” The brigadier subsided, grumbling.

  At the city walls, the group of Friends hesitated slightly, until it became clear the king had no further orders for them. Then the group began to break up, each officer returning to his own quarters. In the shadow of the gatehouse, Coenus put his hand on Hephaestion’s shoulder.

  “Walk with me.”

  Hephaestion gave the brigadier a startled glance—there was too great a difference in their ages for him to be a particular friend of Coenus’s—but their quarters lay in the same section of the city. “If you wish.”

  Coenus nodded, setting a slow, deliberate pace toward the better houses, avoiding the marketplace. There were things that needed to be said, he knew, but he doubted he was the man to say them. Still, it was a matter of duty, and at that thought he straightened his shoulders like a younger man. Hephaestion saw the movement, and lifted his head warily.

  “Walk ahead,” Coenus said to the servants who escorted them. Hephaestion nodded for his own men to do the same, and waited, watching the brigadier.

  Coenus sighed. “Craterus was right, you know.” He knew it was not the cleverest of openings, but having made that beginning, he had to continue. “The king must come to some decision, and soon.”

  Hephaestion’s face tightened again, then slowly relaxed. He would not be angry with Coenus, not when he was merely speaking what everyone knew was true. “I know that,” he said, softly, “and when the king asks me for my opinion, I’ll tell him that.”

  Coenus hesitated again, weighing the advisability of saying more, then shook his head thoughtfully. There had been enough said today; tomorrow or the next day would be a better time.

  The two men parted formally. Once inside his own quarters, Hephaestion shouted irritably for his Egyptian body-slave. When the man appeared, Hephaestion ordered his best chair to be placed in the wedge of sunlight that streamed in through the open window, then sent the library slave for one of the precious scrolls that stood in their travelling cases along the inner wall of the narrow bedchamber. The young man returned quickly and settled himself beneath the window. He read well—it had been for that skill, and his beautiful, unaccented Greek, that Hephaestion had bought him—but Diagoras’s words could not hold the cavalry commander’s attention. When the light faded, Hephaestion did not order the lamps lit, but dismissed the slave with thanks and sat for a while in the growing dark.

  There was a cough from the doorway, and Hephaestion looked up sharply. The Egyptian said, “Pardon me, sir, but there’s a message from the king.”

  “What is it?” Hephaestion asked, and an unfamiliar voice answered, “General, the king would like your company at dinner.”

  Hephaestion sighed. After the executions, and with the Greek rebellion still hanging over them, dinner with the king would not be a pleasant experience. But he also knew why he had been invited, and accepted the obligation willingly. “Tell the king I’ll be there directly.”

  The lamps were lit in the king’s chamber, casting pools of dappled light across the floor and walls. The servants had cleared away the dinner dishes some time before, leaving only the massive wine bowl on the table between the couches. Alexander stared into the depths of his wine cup, face remote. Hephaestion watched uneasily, waiting for the other to speak, and put aside his own emptied cup.

  After a long moment, Alexander said, not raising his voice, “Bastards.” He used the Macedonian epithet, the barracks-word he had learned as a boy, and followed it with other choice terms picked up in a lifetime of soldiering, cursing pages and demagogues alike with unrivaled fluency. His voice lost the overtones of polite Greek, becoming purely Macedonian.

  Hephaestion listened silently, as he had done from boyhood, half appalled by the outburst, half admiring. But this was not the time for admiration: it was this Alexander who killed Cleitus, and the shadow of that act was too dark. He said into the pause while Alexander drew breath, “I doubt that’s anatomically possible.”

  Alexander glanced sideways at him, startled by the sheer irrelevance of the comment. For a moment, his reaction hung in the balance, and then, irresistibly, his mouth twitched upward. He sobered quickly, and said without heat, “And damn Antipater, too. What did he think he was doing?”

  “He isn’t you,” Hephaestion said quietly, “or even Philip. And he’s getting old.”

  There was another, shorter silence, and Alexander said, “I don’t want to go back to Greece.”

  “You could send back part of the army,” Hephaestion began, “an expeditionary force under Craterus—”

  “Leaving me without the men I need to go into India?” Alexander asked. “And Craterus might lose.” The king glared blindly into the flame of a lamp, grieving for the campaign he had planned, as much discovery as conquest, across India to the encircling Ocean. “The League will pay for this.”

  “Let them,” Hephaestion said. “Let them literally.” He leaned forward, not sure if it were wine or inspiration speaking. “We’re both young yet, not even thirty; there’s time to settle things in Greece—and in Persia, by the gods—and then go on to the East. Fine the League cities a few dozen talents each, as much as they can bear, and let them pay for the campaign.”

  Alexander smiled and held out his hands. Hephaestion embraced him fiercely, offering that comfort as well. He rested his cheek against the king’s hair, wondering why he did not feel Alexander’s disappointment more keenly. He was angry at the rebels, of course, but did not grieve for the Indian campaign. Hephaestion locked that knowledge away with the few other things he did not share with Alexander, and bent to kiss the other’s hair in mute apology. Alexander gave a small, contented sigh, and pulled away.

  “It’s only justice that the League pays for India,” Alexander said at last. “Who would you choose for regent in Asia?”

  Only a little startled by the abrupt change of subject, Hephaestion said, “Peucestas. Who else?”

  “My thought exactly,” Alexander said. He stared into space again, reviewing all the things that would have to be done, both to get the army safely back to Greece and to secure his Asian conquests. Supplies would have to be found, a practical line of march chosen, satraps selected for these eastern provinces, the Asian regency arranged and financed, his own marriage to Darius’s daughter, which he had been putting off, would have to be celebrated at last… “Find Pasithea again,” he said. “See if the danger’s far enough past that she’ll accept a present.”

  To Hephaestion’s surprise, however, there was no need to seek out the Syrian. She prese
nted herself at the courtyard gate early the next morning, and, as Alexander had ordered, was brought immediately into his presence. The king, in the presence of his Friends, thanked her again for her warning, and asked her what gift would make her happy. She stammered and grew shy, but finally made her request: a servant to do her cooking. She asked for nothing more, but at the mention of a tent of her own her eyes grew wide. Tent and slave-girl, and a mule and male slave to look after the baggage, were all provided. Over the following weeks, Pasithea became less ragged, and her face lost its starved, feral look.

  His painful decision made, and the seeress provided for, Alexander turned his attention to planning the march back to the coast. He garrisoned Bactra, gathered settlers and soldiers for the chain of cities along the Scythian border, and began then to gather supplies for the three months’ march from Bactra to Ecbatana. The army’s evident delight at the chance to return to Greece, and, not incidentally, to sack Greek cities, seemed only to spur him on. Menidas returned from Alexandria Eschate with a frightened and bitter Theocritus as his prisoner. Alexander listened to both men’s stories, and seemed inclined to believe in Theocritus’s innocence, but ordered him held under guard regardless. Only on the last day before the army was to leave Bactra did the pace ease.

  As was his custom, Alexander spoke to the troops, going from unit to unit—Bactra had no single square large enough to contain all the army—accompanied by those of his Friends who had no other pressing duties.