by Judith Tarr
“His wives must have worked hard and long over these,” said Thaïs, running a hand over an embroidered coat.
“Not his wives,” said Meriamon. “Ladies of the Parsa never spin and weave. That would be beneath them. His slaves would have made these; or he bought them in the market.”
“How odd,” said Thaïs. “You aren’t going to wear these, are you?”
Meriamon held a coat against her and laughed. “Hardly! It’s big enough for three of me. But I do need a change of clothes.”
“I can see to that,” said the maid Phylinna. She was a little older than her mistress, and she did not act at all as one might have expected a slave to act. She said what she thought, and seemed to fear no reprisal. “What can we put you in? It’s hardly proper for you to dress like a Persian, and a male at that. But a woman’s gown might bring you trouble in the camp. Men,” she said, “being what they are.”
“And I can’t wear what I wore at home,” Meriamon said. “I’d freeze.” She thought about it. “I suppose I’ll have to go on being improper. At least until it gets warmer. Does it ever do that in this part of the world?”
“It’s a furnace in the summer,” said Phylinna. “Trousers, then. And a gown for when you want to dress up. Shall I see to it, mistress?”
“Do,” said Thaïs. And when she had gone: “I should like to see you in a dress. I think you would be very pretty.” Her hand reached to touch Meriamon’s hair. “Such hair. And those eyes. Would you like a bath?”
Meriamon was growing used to Thaïs’ quicksilver shifts. “I would give one of my souls to be clean.”
“Then you shall be,” said Thaïs.
o0o
Phylinna was only the chief of the hetaira’s servants, and Thaïs seemed able to call on a fair few of soldiers as well. She had a great bronze basin brought in—more of the Persian plunder—and water for it, and everything else that one could possibly want for a bath. For the first time since she left Khemet, Meriamon shed her swathings of clothes down to the last bit of linen, and sank into steaming water scented with herbs and sweet oil, and felt deft servant-hands scouring away the weeks of her journey.
Sekhmet, disgusted by the unnatural human obsession with water, took herself away from it. Even Meriamon’s shadow was quiescent, sunk in the fragrant water.
It was cruelly hard to come out of it, even when it had begun to cool. Still harder to face her reeking and dirt-stiffened clothes with her skin singing clean, clean, clean.
Thaïs had gone out while Meriamon bathed. Now the hetaira came back, and her arms were full. She spread her booty on a table. “It’s not perfect, of course. We’ll need a little time for that. But will this do?”
Some prince must have brought his son with him. No grown Persian would be so small, and the quality of the garments was better even than what lay in Thaïs’ box. Undergarments of linen so fine that it must have been woven in Khemet, soft trousers of crimson wool to tuck into doeskin boots, coat of silk the color and sheen of lapis lazuli, embroidered with a frieze of lions, its belt inlaid with silver and clasped with lapis. There was a cap with it, rich green embroidered with silver. It all fit remarkably well, and it was warmer than what she had had, even without a cloak.
“Someday you’ll have to tell me how you happened to come here in Persian clothes, with no baggage to speak of,” said Thaïs.
“That’s simple enough,” Meriamon said. “I had a horse and a mule, and they carried me up from Egypt, and at good speed, too, with the gods’ help. Then I met a riding of the Parsa, somewhere south of Tyre. They decided that I owed them tribute. They took me by surprise, and they were too many for me to fight. I gave them most of what they wanted. They would have taken more, but something scared them off.”
Something, she did not say, had killed one of them as they fled, the one who had wanted more; and gained her her disguise. It was warmer than the thin linen she had had, and somewhat safer.
“You came all this way alone?” Thaïs was incredulous.
“Not... precisely alone,” said Meriamon. She could feel her shadow behind her, rousing from its somnolence.
“I’d call you rash, if you weren’t so obviously here, and no harm taken.”
Meriamon shook her head a very little. Her shadow subsided unwillingly, but she was stronger than its wariness.
o0o
The hospital was much as she had left it. Two of the worst wounded had died. One was the giant whom they called Ajax—his given name, she gathered, was something else altogether. The prick of tears surprised her. She had never known him, and yet he had, in his way, belonged to her.
Nikolaos was very much alive. They had moved him from his solitary eminence and set him closer to the door. He had a book balanced on his knees, and read from it by the light of a lamp; some of the men near him listened.
She did not recognize the verses—for they had to be that, melodious as they were, in a dialect that was not Attic, nor yet Macedonian.
“Immortal Aphrodite of the elaborate throne,
wile-weaving daughter of Zeus,
I beseech thee:
Vex not my soul, O lady,
with love’s sweet torments.”
He had a beautiful voice when he was not using it to complain. A surprising taste in poetry, too. Meriamon wondered whom he was thinking of as he dwelt on the liquid words.
Sekhmet’s coming barely made him pause. He opened his elbow for her to slip between, and finished out the poem. Then he rolled the book and bound it, one-handed, with impressive competence. For a moment his face seemed almost pleasant, though his brows knit soon enough.
“If you keep that up,” Meriamon said, “you’re going to have a furrow deep enough to plant a row of barley.”
“Then you can harvest it and make beer out of it,” he said. His tone was nasty. “That is what you do with it, isn’t it? Make beer?”
“Bread first,” she said, “then beer. What was it that you were reading?”
“Sappho,” he said. “She was a poet. She came from Lesbos—from Mytilene.”
Mytilene was where Barsine’s husband had died. Meriamon did not think that he would care to know that. “She wrote beautiful verses.”
“It’s my brother’s book. Thaïs gave it to him. He lent it to me, to give me something to do.” Since, he made it abundantly clear, he was not allowed to do anything else.
“He did well, then,” said Meriamon. “I’m going to tell the servants to let you have a little wine. I don’t think it will harm you; they’ll put something in it to help the pain.”
“I don’t need anything to help the pain.”
“Of course you don’t,” said Meriamon. “But the others might when you wake up screaming in the middle of the night.”
“It doesn’t hurt,” he said stubbornly.
“Have you tried to walk about yet?”
He flushed. “No. They won’t let me. Damn it, it’s not my leg that’s broken!”
“Tonight,” she said, “for a little while, you may get up. But not now. Drink the wine when they bring it, and eat what they give you.”
“Pap,” he muttered.
“I shall be interested to see,” she said, “what you are like when you’re not exerting yourself to be unpleasant.”
“I’m not—”
She patted him on the head. “Hush, child. It’s for your own good, you know that very well.”
If he could have bitten her, no doubt he would have. She was still laughing when she left him.
o0o
In a Persian bed in a conquered Persian tent, with Thaïs entertaining her patron at two rooms’ remove and Sekhmet purring on her middle, Meriamon rested as she had not since she began her journey. She had her solitude, she was full of wine and meat and barley bread, in the morning she would have duties that she was glad of. She would have liked a proper headrest instead of these smothering cushions, and the blankets smelled faintly of horses, but she was comfortable, stroking the cat, half-dreaming
in the nightlamp’s flicker.
Her shadow moved softly about the room, part in time with the lamp, part in rhythm with her breathing. It wanted to be freed, simply to go its own way, apart from her.
“No,” she said to it, barely to be heard. “Not among strangers.”
It reared up, a tall slender shape, upright like a man but longer-limbed, more sinuously supple. For an instant as it turned its head toward her she saw a long muzzle with a glint of fangs, sharp pointed ears, bright beast-eyes that gleamed in the dark.
“If that is the shape you wish,” she said, “then you certainly may not go out. The Hellenes have killed or conquered all the Parsa. There’s nothing left to hunt.”
Not hunt, the eyes said. Walk. Run. Fly. Be free. Sun’s rising would bring it back. That was its word. Would she doubt it?
“I don’t doubt you,” she said. “I fear for you.”
It would take care that no one caught it, or even saw it.
She was wavering. She firmed her will. “Tomorrow night. Maybe. If all is well.”
It strained, resisting. After a moment, when she did not yield, it subsided. Its mood was so much like Niko’s that she laughed, which pleased it not at all. Yet, like Niko, for all its sulks and sullenness it was obedient. As she opened her will to sleep, her shadow came and stood over her, guarding her against the night.
o0o
On the third day after the battle, the king summoned Meriamon. He gave her time to prepare; to finish what she had been doing in the hospital, to run to the tent, even to manage a hasty toilet. Thaïs was there to help her, barely awake after a late night but alert enough to play lady’s maid.
She insisted that Meriamon wear the peplos Phylinna had just that morning finished, folds of soft cream-colored wool with embroidery round the hem. The mantle that went with it was purple—true Tyrian, and where Thaïs had got it, or how she had been able to pay for it, Meriamon was afraid to ask.
Not that she was given time. Thaïs had paints in plenty for lips and face and eyes, and she was determined that Meriamon use them.
It was strange to be a woman again, to look at herself in the little bronze mirror and see the Meriamon who had sung before the god in Thebes, but in the dress of a Greek lady, in wool that no priest would wear because he reckoned it unclean.
She had lost that compunction on the road south of Tyre. Still, she would have preferred a dress of fine Egyptian linen, a wig to cover her hair, and jewels to make her splendid. They would have been armor and banner before this alien king.
Thaïs could remedy that, somewhat. The earrings were Persian booty, beryl and carnelian set in soft pure gold. The necklace was from Athens, a collar of golden flowers. The bracelets were from somewhere far in the north, heavy gold with a dance of horsemen round a fabulous beast like a winged, eagle-headed sphinx.
“There,” said Thaïs, stepping back to survey her handiwork. “You look like a lady of quality.”
“Will that shock the king, do you think?” Meriamon asked.
Thaïs laughed. “Nothing shocks Alexander! Now go, you’re keeping him waiting.”
o0o
Even before Meriamon came into the king’s tent, she could hear the raised voices. To her considerable surprise, the guard not only admitted her, he sent a man along with her, a dour Macedonian whose beard showed a sprinkling of grey.
The anteroom was full of people, not all Macedonian by any means, and few of them soldiers. Their expressions ranged from squirming discomfort to unabashed curiosity. Not that they could have understood much of what went on within: the discussion was heated but the words indistinct.
Her guide led her past them to exchange words with the guard at the inner flap. The guard looked dubious, but he said, “Alexander told us to send her straight in.”
Her guide nodded with a touch of impatience, as if the other was belaboring the obvious. “I’ll take her, and answer for her if I have to.”
She bit her tongue. This was no time or place to object to being discussed as if she were not there. Maybe it was her gown. Not only did she look like a woman, she looked respectable.
The king and his animated discussion—she would not say quarrel, not quite—were not immediately within. There was another antechamber, a table covered with what looked like maps and dispatches and rolls of accounts, men sitting at it, busy and apparently unperturbed by the noise.
The room beyond looked like a council chamber. It was a moment before Meriamon realized that there were only a few people in it. Alexander, of course. Hephaistion, it seemed, inevitably. Ptolemy. One or two others whom she did not know, in what she had learned was the gold-and-purple cloak of the king’s Companions. And facing the king, grey beard bristling, in armor that had seen much use, a gnarled tree-trunk of a man whose age might have been anywhere from fifty to eighty. He was not more than a palm’s width taller than the king, but he took full advantage of it, bulking over the smaller, slighter man.
Alexander was angry, but controlling it. His lips were a thin line, his eyes as pale as water. They seized on Meriamon. She shivered: their touch was burning cold. “Ah, Mariamne. Will you sit down? I’ll be done in a bit.”
“You will not be done,” gritted the man in armor, “until you answer me. We’ve had enough of your evasion. Will you or will you not—”
“Parmenion,” said Alexander, light and deadly, “do you forget who I am?”
In the throbbing silence, Meriamon crept Sekhmet-quiet to a chair. There was someone else huddled near it, sitting on the floor, hugging knees to chest and staring with wide frightened eyes. Yet he was no child nor awed recruit; he was a man both tall and strong, bull-broad, bull-muscled, with a face that would have been handsome had not its features been so slack. As she stared at him, a trail of spittle found its way down his beard.
Addled, Meriamon thought. Someone took excellent care of him: his tunic was almost clean, his hair cut, his black brush of beard trimmed close to his jaw. He looked—she started. He looked like the portraits she had seen of Philip the king, Alexander’s father.
This would be Arrhidaios, then, Philip Arrhidaios, Alexander’s half-brother. She had not known that he would be here.
Something—maybe her shadow, maybe simple compassion—made her lay a hand on his shoulder. He started. “Hush,” she said softly. “I won’t hurt you.”
He stared at her. His attention was abrupt and complete. The fear began to fade from his eyes. They were round and brown and moist like a dog’s, with a dog’s eagerness to trust.
She smiled. She did not need to pretend to warmth. Big as he was, he was a gentle creature. The smile he gave her in return was remarkably like his brother’s. The same power, though dimmed and muddied. The same sweetness.
“Pretty lady,” he said. His voice was deep and rather muffled. “You come to see me?”
She could tell the strict truth, and confuse him. Or she could say what after all, at the moment, was true. “Yes, I came to see you. My name is Meriamon.”
“Meri,” he said. “Amon. Meri. That’s a funny name.”
“It’s my name. Don’t you like it?”
“Oh, I like it,” he said. He frowned. She could see how formidable his father must have been, in what that knotting of brows did to his face. “My brother and Parmenion are fighting again. I hate it when they fight.”
“Do you think they’d mind if you went somewhere else?” she asked.
He shook his head hard. “No. I want to stay. It’s nice here. Except when they fight.”
“You’re very brave.”
This smile lit up the whole of him. “That’s what Alexander says.”
Alexander was oblivious to him. The high voice had risen a notch or two higher. “I will do it when I am ready to do it!”
Parmenion slammed his fist into his palm. “And when will you be ready? You must beget sons. You should have begotten a pack of them before you left Macedon.”
“And had a war of succession raging behind my back?”
“You could die tomorrow. Then there would be a war because there is no succession. Look at your heir, by all the gods. Look at him!”
Arrhidaios shrank back. Meriamon reached without thinking, gathering him in, holding him. He was shaking.
“Alexander,” said Parmenion, gaining control of self and voice with visible effort. “Alexander, listen to me. Yes, you are young. Yes, by the span the gods allot a common man, you have years yet to sire your sons. But a king is not a common man. In that tent yonder are the daughters of a king. You need not marry one or all of them—Macedon should have a Macedonian queen. But for the gods’ sake, for the sake of your kingdom, at least consider taking a concubine. Even a half-Persian mongrel is better than no son at all.”
Alexander said nothing. His nostrils were pinched tight.
“Alexander,” said Hephaistion after a long moment. “I think he’s right.”
The king whirled. Hephaistion stood his ground.
Meriamon, looking at him, saw for a moment as through a glass. Love, this was. Love so deep, and so certain, that it could endure even this: to surrender its beloved for a kingdom’s sake. She blinked in the face of it. What she saw was not a man who loved a man. She saw a soul that loved a soul. Even beyond death. Even to the end of things.
Hephaistion’s voice brought her back into the world: light, cool, fearless. He did not use his height to tower over Alexander, but neither did he allow Alexander’s anger to diminish it. He set them on a level. “Think,” he said. “For a change. It’s only practical.”
Alexander spoke through clenched teeth. “I will not soil my bed with a coward’s get.”
“They may be Darius’ daughters,” said Hephaistion, “but they’re Sisygambis’ granddaughters.”
For a moment Alexander paused, taken out of his rage. “Sisygambis. Gods, what a woman!” Then his temper flooded back- “I won’t be someone’s heifer-tupping stud bull!”
“But, Alexander,” said Hephaistion, almost laughing: laughter that, to Meriamon’s ears, was half pain. “That’s what a king is.”
Alexander reared up. No one breathed. Hephaistion touched the king’s shoulder lightly, daring the lion’s claws. “Think about it,” he said.