by Judith Tarr
“You may also believe that I have duties waiting. Pleasant as this is,” Meriamon said, “it’s keeping me from my work.”
She heard the hiss of breath caught. More than one; and that was anger, tainting the air. Her shadow drew closer about her.
Barsine’s smile did not waver. “They say,” she said, “that the king reckons you a friend.”
“Not to me,” said Meriamon.
“They do,” Barsine said. “And they say that you could have been more than a friend.”
“They say much too much.”
“Only if that is a lie.”
Meriamon’s eyes narrowed. That word, that sin, was the worst of any the Parsa knew. To ride, to shoot, to abhor the Lie—that was all the learning a Persian lord expected to need; and if it was simpler in the saying than in the doing, then that was only the way of the world.
She spoke very carefully. “What I could have been, the gods know. What I am, you see before you. The king is not a lover of women.”
“The king—” Barsine paused. “The king has asked me... to be—”
Meriamon bit her lip. That, coiling in her—that was jealousy. And laughter: at herself, at the king, at Barsine. Who surely was not devious enough to do this to wound, Parsa though she was. Meriamon kept her eyes half-lidded, lest they betray her. “And you ask my advice?”
“I ask the one who could—who should—have been the one he chose.”
“Why do you think that?”
“It should have been one of the Great King’s daughters. We know that, all of us. But he refuses, of his courtesy, and because he dreams of a kingly gesture. You are as royal as they, as he would think of it, and worthy of him.”
“And you’re not?”
“I am old,” said Barsine, who could not have been more than a handful of years older than Meriamon; and Meriamon was a bare season older than Alexander. “And I am no maiden, and no princess royal.”
“Maybe that’s why he wants you.”
Barsine looked up, startled.
Meriamon smiled. It was not difficult, once she began. “‘And you’re very beautiful, but it’s a beauty he can approach. He likes to talk to people, you know. That could be hard when the lamps are out, to have an interpreter lying between you.”
Barsine pressed her palms to her cheeks. She looked as if she could not decide whether to laugh or to be outraged.
“And of course,” said Meriamon, “there’s Parmenion. He has all Macedon behind him, and Macedon wants its king to get heirs. Its king will get them when, and only when, he chooses. Was he always so stubborn about having his own way?”
“Always,” murmured Barsine. She lowered her hands from her cheeks. “How did you know that I knew him?”
“I guessed. Your father took you with him, then, when he went to exile in Macedon.”
“He took us all. The Great King would have killed us else.”
“So,” said Meriamon, “you knew Alexander when he was small.”
Barsine smiled. “Small he may have been, but his will was a giant’s. He was into everything. They had me running after him, because I was quick, and small enough to go where he went, but strong enough to pull him out if coaxing failed. It usually did. He could never bear to be told what to do.”
“I can believe it,” Meriamon said dryly. “Now you see why he asked for you. You know him, and maybe he remembers you; and it’s his choosing. Since he must choose at all.”
Barsine smoothed a fold of her gown, refolded it, pressed it into a pleat. “He came to me himself. He was very abrupt. ‘I should like you to be my mistress,’ he said. ‘If it suits you.’”
“Does it?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Yes.” Barsine smoothed another fold, refolded it, pressed another pleat. Meriamon spoke more softly. “Did he insult you? Not asking you to be queen?”
“No!” Barsine seemed shocked at the thought. “Oh, no. I never wanted to be a queen; nor expected it. But for him to pretend that I can choose... it’s cruel.”
“Not cruel,” said Meriamon. “Simply Alexander. He’s better at wooing armies than women, I think. And he’s used to men, who can say no.”
“If I did,” said Barsine, “what would he do?”
She was frightened. Meriamon could see it clearly. But brave, and trying hard to understand. “What would he have done,” asked Meriamon, “when you were children?”
“He’s no child now,” Barsine said. “He is the king.”
“He’s still Alexander.”
Barsine pondered that. A faint line deepened between her brows. “Probably,” she said at last, slowly, “he would do nothing.” Her voice grew stronger, her words more certain. “He might try to persuade me, but he’d never force me. That’s not his way.”
Meriamon waited, listening.
“I’ve known him so long,” murmured Barsine, “yet you know him so well.”
“There’s nothing here that isn’t known to everybody.”
“But you understand.”
“My gods understand,” said Meriamon.
Barsine sat up. She could hardly be shocked at alien faith, she who had been wife to Hellenes. “I shall think on what you have said. They were right, who called you wise, and friend to the king.”
Meriamon’s gods were wise. As for friendship, that was part of it. She did not say it. The woman had needed someone to talk to, that was all, so that she could decide what she would do. There were greater ironies than a Parsa woman seeking wisdom from an Egyptian and an enemy, but at the moment Meriamon could not think of any.
The gods were wise, and incalculable in their wisdom. Her shadow only laughed. It saw nothing strange in that she should want to like a Persian, even a Persian who was half a Hellene.
She would like the Hellene, then, and hate the Parsa. Since the gods wished it. No matter what it did to mind and wits and sanity, or to good clean hate.
Seven
Alexander’s army came down into Phoenicia with the sea on the sunset side and the mountains of the Lebanon against the morning sky; and snow on them when cloud did not veil them, blinding white and alien to eyes that were born in Khemet.
This was a strange narrow country, mountain-walled, sea-bound: deep ravines and gorges, sudden rivers, brief levels where they could rest themselves and their wearied animals. Hellas was like this, they said, if never so narrow.
Macedon was wider, but its men knew mountains and called them home. They laughed at the steepest ascents, went bare-armed, bare-legged, even bare-bodied in the cold.
There were people here, clinging to the sea-cliffs, making their living out of the little land and the greater sea. They fled in their boats when the army came, and left their villages unguarded but for the dogs and the frantic fowl.
Alexander would not let his army plunder the villages. They took the fowl, those who were quick enough, but left the dogs alone. The more antic of them danced on the sea’s edge and sang to the boats, mocking or comforting, or sometimes both together.
Marathos was different. Marathos was a city, and not a small one, perched on its rock with its ships in harbor below.
Alexander took it without a blow struck. The prince of that country surrendered to the rumor of his army, and crowned him with gold in token of it.
Alexander took it as his due. His army—wild boys, the lot of them, even those who should have known better—celebrated the bloodless conquest with a festival, and Straton the king’s son gritted his teeth and paid for it.
Marathos was prosperous, a traders’ city, and could win back its losses; and his own city was safe, Arados on its lofty island where Alexander’s army could not go.
“Not without ships,” Niko said. He was not talking to Meriamon. She had gone to look at the market and maybe buy a frippery, and one or two of the king’s Companions had fallen in with her and her guardsman. She was well guarded, walled in by big ruddy Macedonians, and Niko for once seemed almost happy.
Not that
he had been at first. She had seen how he braced himself for mockery of his ignominious new duty. But his friends were like every other Hellene with sense: they looked at Meriamon and saw a woman and a foreigner, and that was worth a frown, but beyond that they saw the priestess and the oracle. They accorded her careful respect, because it was safest, and greeted Niko with honest pleasure. He eased quickly after that, and now he was talking about ships.
“If we had a fleet,” he said, “we’d be twice as dangerous as we are now. The Persians are strong on the sea; as long as we’re not, we’re vulnerable to a fleet at our backs.”
“Well, but when have we ever been a sea power?” one of the others wanted to know.
“We’ve never needed to be,” Niko said. “Our grandfathers were shepherds and hunters. They dressed in skins and counted themselves lucky to have a stoup of wine at festival time. Philip changed all that. He raised us up: he made us a power. He built the best army in the world. Now Alexander’s using that army. But if it’s going to do him any good at all, it has to have a fleet to go with it.”
“What for, if he’s just out to get Greek cities back from the Persians? They’ve got their own ships if he needs them.”
“But they’re not his,” Niko said. “What did the gods give you eyes for, if you can’t see what’s right in front of your face?”
“I see a wineshop,” the other said, “and a potboy I’d give a fleet for. Hai! Sweetcheeks! Wait for me!”
He was gone, with the others galloping after. Niko watched them go. “Infants,” he muttered.
“You make perfect sense to me,” said Meriamon.
He started. He had forgotten all about her. His face closed in; he stiffened to attention.
She sighed. He would never let her forget that she was duty, and no pleasure. “I don’t suppose you know where I can find a goldsmith.”
“That way,” he said. “We passed it as we came.”
She had been too busy listening to notice. “Show me,” she said.
o0o
She bought a ring for Sekhmet’s ear, and wavered over something for Thaïs. Gods knew, the hetaira had gauds enough, and for her they were wages. Something else for her, then: something different.
Meriamon’s mood when she came out had been bright enough, but it had darkened to storm-color by the time she left the goldsmith. He was an Egyptian, and he had offered her beer of his wife’s own brewing. The sight of his thin brown face, the taste of his thin brown beer, struck her heart with longing for home. She hated to leave him, but hated worse to stay, and remember that she had cast in her lot with barbarians.
She did not go back to the market after that. She went straight to the camp outside the city’s walls and took refuge with the surgeons.
The hospital was all but empty of wounded now, the last and worst either dead or recovered enough to escape. There were a few men too sick with ordinary mortal ills to walk about, a malingerer or two being dosed with preparations as horrible as they were harmless, a horseboy who had got kicked, a servant who had burned himself in a cookfire. There was nothing for her to do. She could have made herself useful by combing the market for herbs and healing drugs, but she did not want to go back.
She went to her tent instead and thought about sulking in it.
Thaïs was there with Ptolemy and a whole army of revellers. They could not even wait for a decent hour; or had they stopped at all since last night? Someone had got hold of a barrel of apples, and someone else said Alexander would come when he was done with kinging it in the Great King’s tent, because Alexander loved apples with a rare passion. “Remember when we had boats on that river—was it the Kydnos? And we had an apple war, Alexander’s boat against Nearchos’, and Alexander won by a core?”
Nearchos himself, slender-waisted Cretan with his long lovelocks and his clever eyes, laughed with the rest of them. “Right to the heart, it went, and slew me fair. That was a rare sea-battle!”
Meriamon had no laughter in her. She was as cross-grained as Niko at his worst, and for no reason that she could think of. She escaped under cover of their merriment, little caring where she went, if only it was quiet.
She went clear to the horselines, in the end. Hellenes thought it the height of indignity to ride a gelding or a mare. Their stallions were fierce creatures, kept muzzled on strong leads and well separated from the captured Persian mares. But stallion-noise was beast-noise, comforting in its way; most of them were sensible enough, for stallions, standing hipshot and slack-eared and amenable to a moment’s tribute.
Alexander’s own horse had a tent of his own and an army of servants like a king, and like a king he ruled them with a fine and haughty air. He had guardsmen too, royal pages who did turn and turn here as with Alexander.
The two on guard did not seem to mind that Meriamon walked past them to the stallion’s run. Maybe it was the sight of Niko in his Companion’s cloak, which they had yet to earn. Maybe they welcomed the diversion. One even ventured to smile at her. She smiled back, discreetly.
The king’s horse was hobbled but not muzzled, with a long enough tether that he could almost roam free. He was nothing remarkable to look at compared with the Persians’ slender beauties, though he was said to be of Nisaian blood himself: not quite fifteen hands, Meriamon judged, a bit bow-nosed, heavy-necked and short-coupled. But even in a hobble he moved well, and the eye he turned on her was bright and wicked.
She approached him with respect. He watched her, ears up, nostrils flaring to catch her scent. She could see the brand on his shoulder, the oxhead that had given him his name.
“Boukephalas,” she said. He snorted. She smiled. She was close enough to touch. She laid her hand on his neck, cupped the velvet of his muzzle. He lipped her palm delicately, as if to belie every tale of warhorses that she had ever heard.
He was not a young horse. The hollows were sunk deep above his eyes; the flesh clung tightly to his skull. But he moved like a youngling, and rolled his eyes like one, informing her that yes, he was quiet for courtesy’s sake, for after all he was a king; but that was purely of his choosing.
He was the king’s age almost exactly—her own within a season. Her shadow felt the power in him. He was part of Alexander, part of the legend that had been building since the king was born. The king still rode him in battle, still chose him above younger and finer mounts, because he was Boukephalas.
He threw up his head and neighed. Meriamon clapped her hands over her ears. He tossed his head and sidled, snorting.
Mares. New mares coming in in a herd, with grooms and servants and hangers-on, and Persian trappings on every one of them.
Her shadow reared up. It knew the hot-iron scent of Parsa magic. Magi setting wards, guarding—who knew what. Doing gods knew what behind the walls, closing in on the king.
Meriamon did not remember bidding farewell to Boukephalas. Her shadow was all but gone; but for the sun knitting it to her, it would have sprung free. When she ran, it spread wings and flew.
A small supple person in Persian trousers could go where an obvious woman or a Macedonian soldier could not. Straight through the crowd that had gathered to watch the Persian embassy ride in, under arm and spear of the guards who held them back from the king seated under a canopy that had been the Great King’s, in an elaborate gilded chair that had belonged to Darius.
Alexander had had warning, and he had taken advantage of it. He was in his golden corselet, and he wore the heavy golden fillet of a king The ends of its purple ribbon stirred in a restless wind, but he was perfectly still.
Meriamon stopped on the inner rim of watchers, between a great ox of a Macedonian and a slender nervous Persian. The highest of the Persians stood in front of the king—stood erect; did Alexander know what an insult that was?
She did not need eyes to find the Magi. There were three of them in white from head to foot, one white-bearded but the others younger, perhaps his sons.
They were not aware of her. She was a shadow with eyes, a po
wer outside of their power, and maybe their gods did not speak to hers. They claimed the one and only Truth, which had served them very ill in Khemet.
The wind boomed in the gold-woven canopy. There was silence under it: a pause, in which the king’s voice was soft but very clear. “So. Darius has a message for me. What is it?”
One of the glittering personages crooked a finger. Another produced a roll hung and clashing with seals. Yet another presented it, bowing, to the king’s interpreter.
That dignitary could not be troubled to break the seals with his own hand. Another did it for him, with ceremony.
“It is written,” the interpreter said, “in Greek.”
Alexander was amused. Maybe. “Read it, Thyrsippos,” he said. It was polite, but it was an order.
The interpreter drew a breath and began. “‘Philip of Macedon rejoiced in the friendship of the Great King Artaxerxes; yet when Artaxerxes’ son succeeded him, Philip the king assaulted him without cause, and made war against him. Now Alexander rules in Philip’s place, and yet he has sent no word of alliance or of friendship. Rather, he has led his army into Asia, and wrought much harm to the king and the people of Persia. Thus Darius the king has ridden to war to defend his realm and the throne of his ancestors. A god willed that the battle end as it ended. Now Darius the king asks of Alexander the king that he free from captivity his lady wife and his mother and his children, and grant friendship and alliance. Thus he beseeches Alexander to send to him an embassy in the company of these his trusted servants, Arsimas and Meniskos, that they may exchange pledges of honor and of friendship.’“
The interpreter lowered the letter. The silence was deeper even than before.
Alexander sat under all their eyes, as still as if cast in bronze. When he moved it was startling, like a mountain shifting. He leaned forward, held out his hand. Thyrsippos set the letter in it. He read it quickly, his lips barely moving; Meriamon could not hear the whisper of the words.
He rolled the letter and held it so, tapping it lightly against his palm. His eyes were dark, liquid, almost drowsy.