But he was still alive.
Barsine caressed him and kissed him tenderly on the lips and on his eyes without knowing whether or not he recognized her, then she looked around, anguish-stricken, searching for some shelter. In the distance, up on a hill, she saw a stone house, perhaps some landowner’s home, and she asked the men of her escort to go and ask for hospitality for some days, or some hours . . . she knew not for how long.
‘I want a bed for my husband, I want to wash him and change his clothes, I want him to die like a man and not like an animal,’ she said.
The chief of the guards obeyed and shortly afterwards Memnon was transported to the house, where the Persian owner welcomed him with full honours. A bath was soon warmed and Barsine undressed her husband, washed him and dressed him in clean clothes. The servants cut his hair, Barsine perfumed it and applied a refreshing compress to his forehead before putting him to bed and sitting alongside him, holding his hand.
It was late now and the owner came to ask if the fine lady might care to come down to supper to eat with the men who had accompanied her, but Barsine courteously declined.
‘I have ridden day and night to be with him and I will not leave him now even for an instant for as long as he lives.’
The man left, closing the door behind him, and Barsine returned to her position alongside Memnon, touching him and moistening his lips every now and then. It was shortly after midnight when, exhausted by the fatigue, she dozed off on a chair and remained there, falling in and out of sleep for some time.
Suddenly she thought she heard her husband’s voice in her dreams, but the voice continued to repeat her name, insistently: ‘Bar . . . si . . . ne . . .’ She sat up with a start and opened her eyes – Memnon had woken from his torpor and was looking at her with his big, blue, feverish eyes.
‘My love,’ she murmured as she put out her hand to caress his face.
Memnon stared at her with a wild intensity and seemed to want to say something.
‘What do you want? Please speak.’
Memnon opened his lips again. It was as though some vitality had suddenly flowed into his limbs and his face seemed to have re-acquired the virile handsomeness it once had. Barsine moved her ear as close as possible to his mouth so as not to miss a single word.
‘I want . . .’
‘What do you want, my love? Whatever . . . anything, my beloved.’
‘I want . . . to see you.’
And Barsine recalled the last night they had spent together and she understood. She stood up purposefully, moved backwards slightly so that her body was illuminated as much as possible by the light of the two lamps that hung from the ceiling of the room and began to undress. She took off her bodice, undid the laces that held the Scythian leather trousers in place. And in doing so she also undid all of her innate modesty, so that she stood there naked and proud before him.
She saw his eyes moisten, and two large tears ran down his sunken cheeks, and she knew that she had interpreted his wish correctly. She felt his gaze caress her face and her body slowly, sweetly, and she felt that this was his way of making love with her one last time.
Memnon said, with what was left of his voice, ‘My boys . . .’ and he sought her eyes to pass on to her in one last burning and desperate look all that was left of his life and his passion for her, then he let his head fall to the pillow and took his last breath.
Barsine wrapped a cloak around herself and fell on to her husband’s inert body, covering him with kisses and caresses. The only sound in the house was her inconsolable crying, and the Greek mercenaries who were still awake outside, gathered around a fire, understood what had happened. They stood up and presented arms in silence to the honour of Commander Memnon of Rhodes, who had been denied a soldier’s death – sword in hand – by some cruel fate.
They waited until dawn before going up to the room to collect his body for the funeral.
‘We will burn him on the pyre, as is our custom,’ said the eldest of them, the one who came from Tegea. ‘For us the idea of abandoning a body to the dogs and the birds would be an unbearable shame – and this tells you just how different we are.’
And Barsine understood. She understood that at this final moment she had to step aside and let Memnon return among his people to receive his funeral honours according to the Greek rite.
They built a pyre in the midst of a meadow white with frost and placed their commander’s body on top of it, dressed in his armour and with his helmet, adorned with the silver rose of Rhodes.
And they set it alight.
The wind blowing over the highlands fed the flames and they crackled as they voraciously consumed the mortal remains of the great warrior. His soldiers, lined up with their spears in their hands, shouted his name ten times to the cold, leaden sky and when the last echo of their shouts faded away, they realized they were completely alone in the world – fatherless, motherless, without brothers, without homes, with no place to come to.
‘I swore I would follow him everywhere,’ said the eldest, ‘even to hell.’ He knelt down, unsheathed his sword, put its point to his heart and threw himself forward with all his weight.
‘So did I,’ repeated his companion as he pulled his weapon out.
‘As did we,’ said the other two. They fell one after another in pools of their own blood, while the first call of the cockerel tore through the spectral silence of the dawn like a trumpet blast.
44
ALEXANDER’S DOCTOR, PHILIP, reported the results of his autopsy on the body of the Persian messenger who had carried the Great King’s letter for Prince Amyntas.
‘He was most certainly poisoned, but it is a type of poison I have never come across before. For this reason I think it is pointless to interrogate the cook – a good lad who does not have the necessary knowledge to prepare such a thing. I couldn’t do it, let alone him.’
‘Is it possible that the prisoner took the poison himself?’ asked Alexander.
‘It is possible. There are men in the Great King’s guard who take an oath to serve him until death. I am afraid that for the moment it is going to be difficult to gather further information on this matter.’
Several days passed without any news of the reinforcements that were due from Macedonia and the morale of the soldiers began to wane in the lack of activity and the boredom of waiting. One morning Alexander decided to climb up to the sanctuary of the Great Mother of the gods at Gordium, which was said to have been founded by King Midas.
His friends and his priests accompanied him, these last having decided to dress for the occasion in their ceremonial gowns.
The temple was an ancient local sanctuary which housed a simulacrum of the goddess sculpted in wood and suffering much from woodworm. It was adorned with an incredible quantity of jewels and talismans, offerings from the faithful over the centuries. From the walls hung relics and votive gifts of all kinds and many representations of human limbs in terracotta and wood which testified to cures achieved or petitions for such cures.
There were feet and hands with marks of scabies represented in bright colours – eyes, noses and ears and barren uteruses which called for fertility and penises which in the same way were incapable of fulfilling their procreative function.
Each one of these objects represented numerous miseries, illnesses and pains which since time immemorial had afflicted the human race, ever since the halfwit Epimetheus had opened Pandora’s box, freeing all the bad things which had invaded the world.
‘All that was left at the bottom was hope,’ recalled Eumenes, looking around him. ‘And what are these things if not an expression of hope that is almost always disappointed and is yet such a close, even indispensable companion of mankind?’
Seleucus, who was standing alongside, was somewhat puzzled by this sudden manifestation of philosophic pedantry, and he looked Eumenes up and down. But there was no time for discussion because the priests were now leading them into a side chamber where the most precious relic of
all was kept – King Midas’s chariot.
It was a strange, four-wheeled vehicle of very primitive construction with a semicircular parapet on its upper part. The steering gear consisted of a rudder which terminated with a bar connected to the axle of the rear bogey, while the yoke was fixed to the rudder by means of a hemp rope in a knot that was most complex and indeed was held to be impossible to untie.
An ancient legend said that whoever did untie that knot would one day reign over all Asia, and Alexander had decided to attempt a solution to the problem. Both Eumenes and Ptolemy, together with Seleucus, had insisted that he try.
‘You cannot not attempt it,’ Eumenes had pointed out to him. ‘Everyone knows of this legend – if you choose to ignore it then they will all think that you have no faith in yourself, that you do not believe you can defeat the Great King.’
‘Eumenes is right,’ Seleucus had said. ‘The knot is a symbol – it represents the junction of many roads and caravan trails in the city of Gordium, roads which lead to the ends of the earth. The fact is that you are already in control of that knot because you have conquered it by force of arms, but you must also undo the symbol, otherwise your efforts may not be sufficient.’
Alexander had then turned to Aristander. ‘And you, seer, what do you have to say?’
Aristander had few words to offer, ‘That knot is the sign of an absolute perfection, an established harmony, the binding of primeval energies which created life on this earth. You will undo the knot and you will dominate Asia and the entire world.’
This response comforted everyone, but Eumenes did not want to run any risks and had called for one of Admiral Nearchus’s officers, a man who knew every single type of knot used on war and merchant ships to teach the King his secrets, so that Alexander might feel confident about being able to solve the problem.
Furthermore, it was clear that the priests of the sanctuary would do all they could to simplify things for the new master and would never expose him to the ridicule of a failure.
‘Here is the chariot of King Midas,’ said one of them, pointing to the ancient woodwormed vehicle. Then with a smile he added, for Alexander’s benefit, ‘And here is the knot.’ The smile was such that all those present, especially Eumenes, Seleucus and Ptolemy, were sure that everything would go well. They even called the lower-ranking officers to come and witness the King’s feat.
But when Alexander bent down and started fiddling with the knot, he realized that he had been too optimistic. The hemp was pulled incredibly tight, and he could find no end to it – neither above nor below, nor on either side – with which to start undoing the tangle. The crowd in the meantime had increased in number and there was no space left at all inside the room – even the priests, wearing their ceremonial gowns, were standing crushed against one another, dripping with sweat.
The King felt himself suffocating and his anger and impatience were growing – he began to feel that in just a matter of instants his personal prestige, won so dearly on the battlefield with his spear and his sword, was about to be ruined by this situation, which offered no apparent way out.
He looked at Eumenes, who shrugged his shoulders slightly to indicate that this time he had no ready-made solution, and then at the mask of stone of Aristander of Termessus, the seer who had spoken once and would clearly not speak a second time.
He looked at Seleucus and Ptolemy, Craterus and Perdiccas, and saw only consternation and embarrassment in their eyes. While he knelt down again at the inextricable knot, he felt the hilt of his sword pressing against his side and he knew that this was a sign from the gods. At that very same moment, a ray of sun penetrated the room through the skylight above, making his hair shine like a golden cloud and making the drops of sweat on his forehead sparkle like pearls.
In the deep silence which had fallen in the room, there came the metallic swish of the King’s sword being pulled from its scabbard; the blade flashed like a lightning bolt in the strip of sunlight before it struck the Gordian knot with immeasurable force.
The hemp was cut clean through and released its hold on the yoke, which fell to the ground with a dry thump.
The priests looked at one another in amazement and then at Alexander, standing straight and firm on his legs and putting the sword back into its scabbard. When he lifted his head, they all saw that his left eye had darkened, it shone now between the light and the shadow of the ray that came down from above, black as the night.
Ptolemy cried, ‘The King has undone the Gordian knot! Our King is Lord of Asia!’
All the companions shouted loud and the ovation was heard outside as well, by all the soldiers of the army who had gathered around the temple. They too started rejoicing, freeing all the joy which up until then had been repressed by fear and superstition, and they accompanied their shouts by beating their weapons against their shields to the point where the very walls of the ancient sanctuary shook.
When the King appeared, resplendent in his silver armour, they lifted him on to their shoulders and carried him around the camp in triumph, like the statue of a god. No one looked at Aristander, who moved off on his own, an expression of unease and discomfort written on his face.
45
A FEW DAYS LATER the long-awaited reinforcements arrived – both the new recruits and the young husbands who had left from Halicarnassus to spend the winter with their wives. These last were welcomed with whistles, hissing and booing from their comrades, who instead had faced all the rigours of the war and the winter and now were intent on shouting all sorts of obscenities. Some of them, waving enormous wooden phalluses, shouted at the tops of their voices: ‘Did you enjoy the pussy? Now you have to pay for it!’
The officer leading them was one of Antipater’s men, a battalion commander originally from Orestis by the name of Thrasyllus. He went straight to the King to make his report.
‘Why did it take you so long to reach us?’ asked Alexander.
‘Because of the Persian fleet’s blockade of the Straits; the regent Antipater had no intention of risking our forces in an open clash with Memnon. Then, one day, the enemy’s ships suddenly raised their anchors and sailed southwards, making the most of a northerly wind, and we crossed the Straits.’
‘A very strange event,’ said Alexander, ‘which certainly does not bode well. Memnon would never have loosened his grip unless it was to strike in some other place yet more vulnerable. I hope that Antipater . . .’
‘Rumour has it that Memnon is dead, Sire,’ the officer interrupted him.
‘What?’
‘This is what we have heard from our informers in Bithynia.’
‘And how is he supposed to have died?’
‘No one knows exactly. They say of some strange illness . . .’
‘An illness. That’s difficult to credit.’
‘It is not confirmed, Sire. As I have already said, they are rumours which have yet to be substantiated.’
‘Yes, of course. But go now and sort yourself and your men out, because we will be leaving as soon as possible. You will have one day’s rest at the most, we have already waited too long.’
The officer saluted and Alexander was left alone in his tent to meditate on this unexpected news, which gave him neither relief nor satisfaction. In his mind and in his soul he had decided that Memnon was the only opponent worthy of himself, like the only Hector capable of fighting the new Achilles, and for some time he had been readying himself to face him in a duel, like a Homeric champion. Not even the idea of a personal clash with the Great King had the same resonant meaning for him.
He remembered perfectly the commander’s imposing figure, the helmet covering his face, the timbre of his voice and the sense of dark oppression he felt knowing that he was always watching and was always ready to strike – indefatigable, elusive. An illness . . . that was not what he wanted, this was not a fitting coda to the epic clash he had set his mind on.
He called Parmenion and Cleitus the Black to arrange their departure within two
days and communicated to them the news he had received. ‘The commander of the reinforcements has told me that there are rumours to the effect that Memnon is dead.’
‘That would be a great advantage for us,’ replied the old general, without concealing his surprise. ‘His fleet controlling the sea between us and Macedon was a most serious threat. The gods are on your side, Sire.’
‘The gods have deprived me of fair combat with the only enemy worthy of me,’ replied Alexander, his face as dark as thunder. But at that moment, all of a sudden, he thought of Barsine, of her dark and sensual beauty and he thought that fate perhaps had worked in such a way, with Memnon dying because of an illness, that Barsine would not hate him. He was ready at that moment to deal with any obstacle that might appear between himself and her, if only he knew where she was.
‘Apparently somewhere between Damascus and the Syrian Gates,’ came Black’s voice, waking him up from his reverie.
Alexander turned suddenly towards him, as if the officer had read his thoughts. The Black returned his gaze in amazement, shocked by the reaction.
‘What are you talking about, Black?’ asked the King.
‘I was talking about the dispatch that Eumolpus of Soloi has sent us.’
‘That’s right,’ said Parmenion. ‘He sent us a messenger with an oral report.’
‘When?’
‘Around mid-morning. He asked to speak with you, but you were out with Hephaestion and the rest of the guard inspecting the new recruits and so I received him.’
‘You did the right thing, General,’ replied Alexander, ‘but are we sure he comes from Eumolpus?’
‘The messenger communicated the password, which you know well enough.’
Alexander shook his head, ‘“Sheep’s brains!” Have you ever heard such an absurd password?’
‘It’s his favourite dish,’ said the Black, raising his arms in resignation.
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