Alexander (Vol. 3) (Alexander Trilogy)

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  Eumenes stared at him, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘What sort of man are you?’ he asked. One of the pages, however, a boy by the name of Hermolaus, looked at him, his face full of admiration.

  *

  Alexander cried in desperation for three days and four nights, calling out the name of his murdered friend. He refused all food and water and was a shadow of his former self.

  In the end his Companions, worried that he would lose his sanity and eventually his life, asked Aristander to intervene. The seer entered and spoke to him for a long time, reminding him of the dream he had had and the evil omen of the sheep that had left the sacrificial altar – an event already written by fate. Ineluctable. In the end he managed to call Alexander back to life, but the shadow of Cleitus the Black was to torment his existence with pain and remorse for the rest of his days and nights.

  Alexander began drinking heavily again and the squires, who by tradition had the honour of taking turns in watching over the King’s sleep, began to develop a certain contempt for him. On several occasions they saw him come back drunk, dragged into his room unable to stand on his own feet, after which he would fall into a deep sleep, snoring and passing wind like an animal.

  Only Leptine continued to serve him with the same affection as before, as always, without asking anything in return, praying in silence to her gods to bring some tranquillity back to his life.

  At the beginning of autumn the two sections of the army were reunited at Samarkand and Craterus was much shocked by the news of the frightful events. In order to avoid the embarrassment of meeting the King, he set off on a march into the desert to give a final lesson to the Massagetae who supported Spitamenes’ revolt. However, the tribe, realizing that the Satrap had no hope of leading a successful uprising against Alexander in Bactriana and Sogdiana, and still terrorized by events on the River Artakoenes, had also learned from Dravas that the King who had come from the west was an invincible demigod who was able to appear suddenly wherever he wanted and to strike with devastating violence. They called a council of all their leaders and agreed that they had to establish good relations with the new conqueror so as not to provoke his wrath. They cunningly captured Spitamenes, taking him by surprise in his sleep, decapitated him and gave his head to Craterus as a token of their good faith.

  With the cold weather, the two parts of the Macedonian army, united once again at Samarkand, set off on the march to Bactra, to winter there.

  49

  DURING THE FOLLOWING SPRING Alexander set off on his march again towards Sogdiana to wipe out the last pockets of resistance, in particular a fortress up in the mountains known as the Sogdian Rock. This was a completely inaccessible eagles’ nest of a fortress, held by a lord of these lands by the name of Oxyartes, valiant and fearless, and unbeatable. The only way to reach the fortress was up a narrow, difficult pathway cut into the rock and leading to the only gate in the high walls, directly above the precipice. The rear area of the walls was built on a rocky peak that was covered in ice for almost all the year and which towered at least one thousand feet above the fortress.

  Alexander sent a herald with an interpreter up the pathway and asked for the keepers of the rock to surrender, but Oxyartes himself shouted from the heights of the battlements: ‘We will never surrender! We have enough foodstuffs to last for years while you all die of cold and hunger. Tell your King that the only soldiers capable of taking this rock of mine are soldiers with wings.’

  ‘Soldiers with wings!’ repeated Alexander as soon as the reply was reported to him. ‘Soldiers with wings . . .’ Diades of Larissa looked up, shielding his eyes from the dazzling snow with his hand. ‘If you’re thinking of Daedalus and Icarus, I have to remind you right now that their story, unfortunately, is just a legend. Man will never be able to fly, not even by making wings. Believe me, it’s impossible.’

  ‘I do not know the meaning of that word,’ replied the King, ‘and there was a time when you did not know it either, my friend. I am afraid you are getting old.’ Diades was silent in his embarrassment and moved on. No matter how much thought he gave to it, no idea for attacking such a place came to mind.

  Alexander, however, had already come up with a plan. He called the herald he had sent to negotiate and ordered him to go through the camp offering twenty talents to whoever volunteered to scale, under cover of darkness, the peak above the fortress – a climb of at least two thousand feet from where they were camped at that moment.

  ‘Twenty talents?’ asked Eumenes. ‘But that is too much money.’

  ‘The reward must be commensurate with the impossible nature of the undertaking,’ replied Alexander. ‘Enough to render a family rich for five generations. I am quite convinced that money can make men grow wings.’

  In less than an hour three hundred volunteers had come forward – more than half of them Agrianians, the others Macedonians from the more mountainous regions.

  ‘We have had an idea,’ said the man who seemed to be the leader. ‘The Agrianians’ knives are of no use to us in this situation. We will use the tent spikes, which are made of tempered iron, and we’ll hammer them into the ice, tie ropes around them and then we’ll pull ourselves up one by one. I am sure we can manage it.’

  ‘I am sure too,’ replied the King. ‘Have Eumenes give you a flag and fly it high as soon as you reach the top. We will then sound the trumpets and at that point all you will have to do is lean out so that they can see you from the fortress below.’

  As night began to fall, the incredible undertaking got under way. The men climbed up on foot as far as they could, carrying their bags over their shoulders together with ropes and spikes. Then they began hammering the spikes into the ice and pulling themselves up, one by one.

  Neither the King nor his companions slept that night; they were all awake, their faces turned skywards as they watched the men climbing slowly, struggling up the ice-covered face. Around midnight the wind started blowing, an icy wind that numbed their limbs and penetrated their bones to the marrow, but the warriors continued climbing and the dark line of their single-file formation could be made out against the impeccable white of the snow.

  Thirty men fell to their deaths, smashed on the rocks below, but two hundred and seventy reached the summit with the first light of dawn.

  ‘The flag!’ shouted Perdiccas, pointing to a small red dot moving way up there. ‘They’ve made it!’

  ‘Oh! Gods above!’ exclaimed Eumenes. ‘If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I would never have believed it. Quickly, sound the trumpets!’

  The silence down below was broken by the insistent blare, echoed and refracted and the warriors all leaned out and shouted so that the inhabitants of the rock could hear and see them. The sentries on the battlements struggled at first to understand where the voices were coming from, but then they lifted their eyes and saw Alexander’s men up on the mountaintop. They ran to wake up their leader, who rushed out on to the battlements. Shortly afterwards, Alexander’s herald again approached the fortress and shouted, ‘As you can see, we do have soldiers with wings, and we have many of them. What is your decision?’

  Oxyartes looked up, then looked down and looked up once more, ‘I surrender,’ he replied. ‘Tell your King I am ready to receive him.’

  Alexander, together with his Companions and the hetairoi of the Vanguard, went up to the fortress on the following day as darkness was falling. Formalities were exchanged and then the guest, together with his friends, was shown into the banquet hall, which had been prepared according to Sogdian custom – soft cushions in a double line on the floor with the tables in between. The King sat opposite Oxyartes, but his gaze was immediately caught by the person sitting to the right of the host – Oxyartes’ daughter, Roxane!

  She was an incredibly beautiful young woman with a godly figure who was already a legend among her people who called her by the name ‘Little Star’.

  She smiled at him and her teeth shone like pearls. Her face, a soft oval shape, was of a del
icate but absolute perfection, her eyelashes were long and shining, her skin was as smooth as marble and was suffused with a pale amber glow. Her hair was so dark it emanated a blue sheen, framing a most finely drawn forehead, and when she moved her head it shadowed the intense, sweet light of her large, dark, purple-tinted eyes.

  Their gazes met and they were caught up in a whirlwind – a magical, shimmering aura, liquid and rarefied, like a morning dream. Nothing else existed for them now, the voices of the others faded far away and it was as if the room was empty – only the melody of an Indian harp, wavering now through the dilated, vibrating space, entered their souls and their bodies and even their voices, voices with different languages and yet equal in the music of an ineffable sentiment, a sublime transport.

  Then Alexander understood that he had never really loved anyone up to that point, that he had lived through affairs of deep and intense passion, of burning desire, of affection, of admiration, but never love. This was love, the sensation he was feeling at that moment, this unquenchable thirst for her, that deep peace in his soul, accompanied at the same time by an uncontrollable perturbation, sheer happiness and undiluted fear. This was the love of which the poets wrote – an invincible, merciless god, an ineluctable force, a delirium of the mind and the senses, the only possible happiness. He forgot the bloody spectres of the past, the anguish and the terror, his anxious desire for infinity was appeased now and consumed in the light of those dark purple eyes, in that divine smile.

  When he came out of his reverie he realized that everyone was looking at them and everyone had understood. So he stood up before the noble Oxyartes and said, his voice firm, but his eyes liquid with emotion:

  ‘I know that we have been enemies up to just a few hours ago, but I now offer you a long and solid friendship and in exchange for this friendship and out of the sincere and deep love I feel in this moment, I ask you for the hand of your daughter in marriage,’ and as soon as the interpreter had finished translating, he turned to Roxane and added, ‘If she so wishes.’

  Roxane stood up and replied in her language, a tongue that was both so very strange and so very melodious at the same time, but she did pronounce his name just as she had heard it pronounced by his friends. She said, ‘I want you, Alexandre, for ever.’

  *

  The wedding took place in great style just three days later and Alexander asked for the Persian rite of the bread, but in the Macedonian manner, cutting it with his sword. The bride and the groom then ate of the bread, looking into each other’s eyes and feeling that they would love each other to the very end. And even beyond. Roxane was dressed in her ceremonial clothes – a red tunic with a blue overdress, and around her waist a belt in discs of gold, and on her head a veil from which hung a drop-shaped pendant of pure gold, decorated with lapis lazuli.

  During the supper that followed the rite, the King drank almost nothing and did very little apart from holding his bride by the hand and speaking to her quietly. He spoke words she could not understand – verses from great poets, images from his dreams, supplications, words of love. Alexander’s tormented soul sought some relief in the eyes of this young virgin, in the feelings of love that emanated from her hands while she caressed him, in her eyes when she looked at him with ingenuous and shameless desire, fiery and decorous at one and the same time. At each breath her blooming breasts rose and a slight blush spread over her cheeks, and in that breathing the King sought the meaning of this sudden and for the most part unknown feeling that he ardently hoped would live within him, immutable and eternal.

  When they were finally alone and Roxane began to undress, her eyes lowered as she slowly revealed her divine body, filling their earthly nuptial bed with the godlike fragrance of her skin and her hair, Alexander found himself in the grip of the strongest and deepest emotion. It was like sliding into a warm bath after having walked for ages through a cutting blizzard and numbing ice. It was like drinking clear spring water after having wandered through the desert. He felt himself to be a man once again after having lived through depravation, violence, and brutality.

  His eyes were moist with emotion when he pulled her to him and felt the touch of her naked skin, when he sought her inexpert lips, when he kissed her breasts, her belly, the inside of her thighs. He loved her with such intensity, with a total abandon he had never felt in his life before, and as their bodies writhed in the supreme spasm, he felt that he was pouring into her the life, the secret of that wild energy which had overwhelmed entire cities and armies, which had borne the pain of the most frightful wounds, which had crushed the most sacred sentiments, killed all pity and compassion. When he collapsed alongside her and abandoned himself to sleep, he dreamed of setting off along a long, difficult road under a black sun until he came to the shore of a flat, cold and motionless ocean, like a sheet of polished steel. But he had no fear because Roxane’s warmth enveloped him like a soft gown, like the mysterious happiness in a childhood memory.

  *

  When he woke up and found her lying there alongside him, more beautiful now and with the light of her dreams in her eyes, he caressed her with an infinite gentleness and said, ‘We must leave now, my love, and we will not stop until I see the ends of the earth and the cities of the Ganges, the herons in the golden lakes and the shimmering peacocks of Palimbothra.’

  Alexander turned his attention again to the preparations and reorganized the army, enlisting thousands of Asians from the provinces of Bactriana and Sogdiana, whose loyalty was now doubly ensured and bound by virtue of the marriage with the Princess, Oxyartes’ daughter. Ten thousand Persians also arrived, trained and armed in the Macedonian manner, enlisted by his governors in the central provinces of the empire. So Alexander decided that for reasons of equality the custom of ‘prostration’ ought to be extended to all his subjects, but the Macedonians rebelled and Callisthenes faced him directly, reminding him just how absurd it was to expect this of his people. ‘What will you do when you return home?’ he asked. ‘Will you ask the Greeks, the freest among men, to pay homage to you in the same way we pay homage to the gods? They are different, not even Hercules was granted divine honours while he lived, and not even after his death for that matter, until the Oracle at Delphi requested it specifically. Do you want to be identified with these barbarian kings? Just think about what happened to them – Cambises was defeated by the Ethiopians, Darius by the Scythians, Xerxes by the Greeks and Artaxerxes by Xenophon’s “ten thousand”, which you know so well. They were all defeated by free men. It is certainly true that we are in foreign lands and to some extent we must think like these foreigners, but I beg you not to forget Greece! Remember the teachings of Aristotle. How can the Macedonians treat their King as though he were a god, and how can the Greeks treat the commander of their League as though he were a god? A man receives a handshake, a kiss; people build temples, offer sacrifices, sing hymns for gods. There is a difference between honouring a man and worshipping a god. You are worthy of the greatest honour among all men, because you have been the most valiant, the most courageous, the greatest, but please be satisfied with this, I beg you. Please accept the homage of free men and do not ask them to prostrate themselves before you like slaves!’

  Alexander, who at that moment was sitting in audience, lowered his head and those near him heard him murmur, ‘You don’t understand me . . . you simply don’t understand.’

  One person who heard him was one of the squires, Hermolaus, the young man who thought so much of Callisthenes and held the King in such contempt. He had become chief of the squires now because Cebalinus, who had saved Alexander’s life, had succumbed to the hard-420 ships of military life and the bitter climate, falling ill with a raging fever during the campaign against the Scythians and dying some days later. Hermolaus spent as much time as possible listening to Callisthenes’ advice and teachings and frequently neglected the work he was supposed to do.

  The King in any case decreed that all those who did not feel they wanted to pay homage to him throug
h the ‘prostration’ were not obliged to do so and he left the matter there, but not even this satisfied his critics. Many did not even tolerate the idea that he should accept ‘prostration’ from the Asians, for whom it was a perfectly natural, customary act, and they continued to label him as a presumptuous tyrant behind his back, blinded by power and by too much good luck.

  Unfortunately the discontent did not stop at moanings and grumblings. Once again a plot developed, a conspiracy to kill the King, and this time it was the younger soldiers, those who were most closely involved in looking after his person – the squires whose job it was to watch over Alexander while he slept.

  This terrible, painful event originated after the army returned to Bactra, on an occasion of relaxation and merriment. During a wild boar hunt, Hermolaus, as leader of the squires, was riding close by the King when suddenly, followed by Peritas and other dogs, a boar burst out of the undergrowth and charged at him. Alexander moved to one side and took aim with his javelin, but Hermolaus was so caught up in the excitement of the chase and was so anxious to have some hunting success for himself, that he struck first and killed the boar, completely ignoring the King’s right to precedence in the situation.

  It was a grave offence and a sign of arrogance and total contempt for court tradition and protocol. In such cases only the King himself was able to inflict corporal punishment on a squire or to decide who else could inflict it and Alexander made use of his prerogative: he had the boy tied up and beaten with canes.

  This was severe punishment indeed, but considered normal for the Macedonian court. In their youth and childhood the companions had all been punished in that way – Leonnatus still bore the marks on his back, but even Hephaestion and Lysimachus had paid more than once for their own lack of discipline, on King Philip’s orders or at Leonidas’s or their weapon instructor’s hand. The people who had written those rules perceived of them as a sort of exercise in bearing pain, a way of getting the youngsters used to obedience and of strengthening body and soul in the face of difficulties. In Sparta boys were whipped with almost no punitive purpose, but simply as a form of education in valour and sacrifice, an exercise in the ability to withstand pain.