The Road to Alexander

by Jennifer Macaire

  With Alexander’s army were doctors, biologists, priests, merchants, historians, minstrels, actors, whores, soldiers’ wives, children, and diplomats. And then there was myself.

  I was an only child of elderly parents; a freak accident that my mother, well into menopause, could never explain. She found she was pregnant when it was too late to do anything about it, and she resigned herself to being a mother at an age when most women are grandmothers.

  To say I was an embarrassment would be an understatement. My mother hardly dared tell her closest friends. I believe most people thought I was the cook’s daughter. When I was old enough to be toilet-trained, I was shipped off to boarding school. I came home for vacations and wandered around our huge, empty house alone. I had no friends in the neighbourhood, and my schoolmates were never allowed to visit. Summers were the worst. Our house was the biggest one in the village, my parents were the richest people, and the other children hated me. My mother had our chauffeur drive me to the country club for my lessons every day. I had swimming lessons, golf lessons, riding lessons, and tennis lessons. At home, there were piano lessons, and I was tutored in French and Italian. Everywhere I went I was alone, except for my various tutors and our ancient chauffeur, whose only attempt at conversation was to ask me every day if ‘Mademoiselle was well.’

  My father died of old age when I was ten. I dressed in black and paraded down the street behind the hearse to the cemetery. It was the first time I’d ever walked through the village. I walked behind the hearse, alone. My elderly mother rode in the car. I must have looked ridiculous, but the people lined up along the streets nodded sympathetically to me. I remember seeing them and wondered where the parade was. When I realized I was the parade, I was glad of the black veil hiding my face.

  At the cemetery, my mother and I stood in front of a huge crowd of mourners. I didn’t cry. I had already learned to smother my feelings. The mourners walked back to the house where a huge banquet was set up on the lawn. It was mid-July, and the whole atmosphere was like a garden party. Except for the black clothes, you would have thought it was a fiesta.

  After my father’s death, my mother took a bit more interest in me. It was the sort of interest one takes in a rough gemstone. She decided to polish me and put me in the best setting she could find. That’s how, when I was only sixteen years old, I found myself married to a French Baron.

  Married. I had been standing still, thinking about all this, while Alexander watched me. He had stopped poking holes in the map and his eyes had their jaguar look.

  I blushed. ‘I’m sorry, did you say something?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, but some day you’ll tell me about it. You’re face is thawing, my Ice Queen. You are turning into a human being.’

  I went outside and told Nassar he could stay. He was overjoyed and kept kissing my feet, which I found embarrassing. I gave him the coins and he tucked them in his belt. Then he bowed a few more times and danced off towards the village. Before he left, I asked him what time the play started.

  ‘At sunset,’ he said, and waved.

  I hesitated to go back into the tent. For one thing, I didn’t want to disturb Alexander who seemed to be concentrating on his task, and for another, I wanted to be alone. I needed to think. I wandered towards the river, but there was a crowd of men and women on the banks. The fields were full of farmers and under nearly every large tree someone was sitting in the shade. I ended up at the stables. I liked horses, even after years of boring riding lessons.

  Alexander’s horse snorted at me. I was afraid to touch him, he looked so wild. There were tamer-looking ponies in the corral, so I leaned over the fence and scratched their necks. They were shy at first, but soon crowded around me. Their eyes were so intelligent they looked like large dogs. Dogs have expressions and so did these ponies. One in particular was very sweet. She was a pale grey filly with a white mane and tail. I wondered if I could take her for a ride, and I went in search of a groom.

  The man in charge was Greek. He told me there was no problem if I wanted to ride the grey pony. He put a bridle on her, and I examined it. It was made of wide, thick leather to protect from sword cuts. The bit was a simple snaffle with a pretty, braided rein looped through two metal hoops on each side of the pony’s mouth and tied in a knot. The reins were short but easy to handle. There was no saddle; instead, a sheepskin was thrown over the pony’s back and cinched with a wide leather band. Over the sheepskin went a felt blanket. A breast strap was attached to the girth to keep the whole affair from slipping backwards. There were no stirrups, but I didn’t think I’d need any.

  The pony, calm and almost sleepy in the pen, turned into a racehorse when I got on its back. It wheeled around and galloped off towards the hills.

  I was left sitting in the dust, staring after its floating white tail. The groom didn’t seem perturbed. He pursed his lips and whistled. The pony whirled around again and galloped back, snorting and prancing in front of the groom. He handed me its reins and told me to squeeze with my knees and not to worry, when the filly got tired she would slow down. I got on again and off we went.

  I didn’t try to steer. It wouldn’t have mattered where I went, and the pony chose a shaded road that led towards a large wooded hillside. The pony galloped for about five minutes, which put us quite a way from the camp, and then it slowed and let me take control.

  I experimented with stopping and turning her, and I was impressed. She stopped so suddenly I nearly pitched over her head and she turned on a dime, literally. I picked myself off the dusty road and whistled, and the pony trotted over to me and stood while I climbed back on. Then we headed towards the woods. I needed to think and I was hoping to find a spring; my throat was parched.

  Behind me, the plains near the river had been planted recently with the winter wheat, and light green shoots were sprouting in the dark earth. Date palms grew in tall groves. White, curly-haired goats grazed beneath them, their soft bleating echoing through the blue shade. The road I was riding on was pale yellow, and dust rose in a talcum cloud with every step. A wood ahead of me seemed inviting. Pine trees and olive trees cast cool, dappled shadows.

  We picked our way through the forest, the docile pony weaving around the trees until we came to a small clearing. I spotted a simple stone temple marking a burbling spring. I lay on my stomach and drank deeply while the pony plunged its nose in and drank too. Afterwards, I tied the pony to a shady tree and walked around the meadow gathering flowers. When I had a colourful bouquet, I placed it near the spring then sat under a tree.

  The spicy pine scent was soothing and the buzzing of bees and the liquid chirping of birds soon lulled me to a half-sleep. I felt as content as I’d ever felt in my entire life and wanted to savour it, not ruin it with useless worry about my predicament. However, my mind was unable to relax. My body was slumped against a smooth tree trunk, but my mind was crashing against the bars of the time-cage in which I was caught.

  I had to accept the fact that I was trapped. I would have to live the rest of my life here, in this age and time, and I could do nothing, absolutely nothing, to change what must happen. I had to let events wash over me. I also had to shake off the strange, dreamlike state I had been in ever since I’d arrived. Somehow, the cold was still steeped in my bones, and my mind seemed half numbed.

  When I’d managed to convince myself I was sitting in a meadow, and there were, in fact, a pony, a temple and a spring, I started to work on convincing myself I was in Mesopotamia in the year 333 BC.

  I tried to remember all the pertinent things I’d need to know. We were in Mesopotamia, and we were heading towards Babylon. Alexander was not Greek, but from Macedonia. His father had conquered Greece and then had been assassinated.

  I closed my eyes and tried to stop shaking.

  Religions were important, and in Athens, Socrates had been put to death because he had been impious. Paradoxically, atheists were tolerated. They even mocked the gods in certain comedies. Not here, though, not in Ale
xander’s army. There was a herd of pure white cows and pitch-black bulls used for sacrifice. The black bulls, if I remembered correctly, were for the god of the dead, Hades – my supposed spouse.

  I paused and managed to relax my jaw. The spasms were ebbing, my stomach was unclenching and I found I could open my fingers. The stick fell from my hand. What I knew was not enough to survive. I had only planned to stay for twenty hours.

  I gasped and doubled over, my whole body writhing with cramps. They had told me what might happen if I didn’t come back. It was something to do with the space-time continuum – mass from the future coming back to the past. When one stayed a very short time, a day for instance, there was no need to adjust. My mass took up just a bit of space and the elasticity of time allowed for it. However, if my mass stayed then the space would try to reclaim its former shape. I didn’t belong here. There was a chance that everything would shift and I would find my place here. Until then there were waves of pain and dizziness as my mind was pulled towards the future and my body’s atoms fought to stay in this timeline.

  Blood spattered onto my hands and soaked into the ground as my nose started to bleed. I sat up and spat the blood out of my mouth. I peered through dazzling sunshine towards the spring. The sound of the cool water gurgling became a roar in my ears. Another wave of cramps rushed over me. The earth next to me dipped, as if an invisible weight had settled on it. I knew it was just the mass evening itself out. Soon it would be done and I would either be absorbed into the timeline, or left here.

  My mind balked. I drew my knees up against my chest and huddled. My mind was trying to process all the information and it was having a hard time. The part about being trapped bothered it, as did the possibility I’d be erased if I made a wrong move. Then the pain stopped, the headache disappeared and the sunlight ceased to stab my eyes. My muscles all relaxed at once and I sprawled onto the soft ground, into the hollow that the earth had made for me. The earth had let me stay.

  I stood up and shook myself. I had to stop separating my mind from myself. I had to ...

  I had to stop right where I was and not move a muscle. A very small snake was curling itself into a tight coil just inches from my right foot. It was a pretty snake, as snakes go, but I knew nothing about them and distrusted its bright colours. I froze. The snake darted its tongue at me, and I started to shake. I don’t know how long I would have stayed frozen like that, but the snake became bored and slithered away. I walked back to my pony and leaned against her withers. She seemed to sympathize, nuzzling my shoulder and whickering. When I stopped trembling, I washed my face, drank deeply, untied the pony, and rode slowly back to the camp.

  Chapter Four

  Alexander had gone to see his soldiers, so I lay down on the bed and had a nap.

  When I woke up Alexander and I went for our evening swim. We washed each other’s hair, and I plucked a willow branch and proceeded to clean my teeth. I had been cleaning them this way since I’d arrived, although I would have liked some fresh mint toothpaste to go along with it. I was just starting to nibble at the wood, to make it softer, when Alexander asked me what I was doing.

  ‘I’m cleaning my teeth,’ I explained. I showed him how it was done, and told him I did it three times a day.

  Alexander raised his eyebrows. ‘We use little brushes and put paste made of chalk and lemon juice on them. The Egyptians use urine, white wood ashes and ass’s milk,’ he added. ‘What does your mother use? What do you use in the underworld? Are there trees there? It must be dreadfully cold.’ He stopped talking and waited for me to answer all of his questions in the order he’d asked them.

  I hadn’t known about their toothbrushes. I was put off by the description of the Egyptians’ toothpaste, though. ‘My mother had little brushes that we used; the ones she liked had hog’s bristles. And as for the underworld ...’ I stopped and groped for something to say about that, ‘... well, it’s cold in the wintertime and hot in the summer.’ I left it at that and he seemed content. Except for one thing.

  ‘What about the trees?’

  ‘Oh. Well, no, there are no trees underground.’ I frowned. This was getting tricky. ‘You know, I can’t talk about any of that, I hope you’ll understand.’

  He nodded. ‘I should have known. I won’t ask you any more about it. It must have been dreadful and you want to forget it, is that it?’

  ‘Exactly.’ I smiled and then swam against the current. ‘Shall we get dressed for the theatre? I don’t want to be late.’

  ‘No, I don’t want to get dressed just yet.’ He drifted alongside me and rolled over in the water like a playful dolphin. I noticed his erection and grinned; he was about as subtle as a tank. We splashed about in the water together. It was fun swimming against the current and making love at the same time. I started giggling and nearly choked and he found that hilarious. He held me up and then moaned, putting his face in the crook of my neck. The current took us downstream, and we had to wade back to our beach.

  He caught me watching him, and his face shifted. He smiled and shook his head. ‘You mustn’t look at me like that,’ he said gravely. ‘The gods will be jealous and they’ll take you away again.’ He caught me by the arm and pulled me to him, holding me tightly. ‘I don’t want to lose you,’ he whispered in my ear. ‘So don’t tempt the gods, please.’

  For once, I thought I knew what he was feeling, so I nodded, my face against his broad chest.

  We dressed for the theatre. I wrapped linen around myself like a sari, tied a yellow sash around my waist, and then wincing, put my sandals on again. My feet were not getting used to them.

  Alexander looked imposing with a white, pleated dress skirt and his military tunic. He slipped his breastplate on, then shook his head and took it off. ‘A bit ostentatious,’ he said. Instead, he took a deep purple cape.

  ‘Very handsome,’ I told him.

  He asked me to plait his hair into one long braid. His shoulder-length hair was naturally wavy and thick, and I wished mine would grow in faster. My stubble looked like hoarfrost on my head. I put my turban on.

  He kissed me before we left. He grinned at me, our foreheads touching. His was warm, mine cool.

  ‘Shall we go, my snow queen?’

  ‘We go, my sun prince,’ I answered, and our hands entwined as we walked down the road towards the setting sun. There was a marvellous feeling growing in my chest making it hard to breathe, but even harder to stop grinning.

  The theatre was crowded, but we had the best seats. First, one of the actors read a discourse from Plato’s Republic, in Phoenician, so I didn’t get a word of it. Then Alexander went to the stage and took a bow. He gave a long speech, also in Phoenician, and I had no idea what it was about, but I guessed it was a harangue on Greek culture. The people raised their arms into the air and snapped their fingers, which was their way of applauding.

  Afterwards there was a tragedy, and then a comedy.

  The tragedy was Oedipus Rex.

  Unwittingly, Oedipus killed his father and married his mother. Then he tried to find out why the gods were forsaking the city. No one would tell him. When he discovered the truth, he put out his own eyes and became a beggar.

  Everyone cried; some even sobbed aloud. I was embarrassed by the noisy outburst of emotion, and shrank into my seat. Alexander turned to me with tears on his face. When he saw my frozen expression he looked startled for an instant, then shutters seemed to come down over his eyes. He turned back to the play, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

  Afterwards, there was an intermission, and vendors swarmed over the amphitheatre offering food and drinks. Alexander bought me some honeyed nuts, and we drank watered wine that one of the soldiers carried in a goatskin. A section of the theatre was reserved for slaves, and I caught sight of Brazza, the mute, happily munching on nuts.

  Nassar was near the stage translating for some merchants who looked like Egyptians. He saw me, his face brightened, and he waved.

  Then the actors came back on the sta
ge, and the second half of the evening began. It was the comedy. Some women and children left, and I remembered that comedies could sometimes turn lascivious or impious. People with high moral standards departed after the tragedies.

  Most people stayed.

  It was Plato’s Banquet, which I’d never seen. I recognized the famous harangue In vino veritas, and the crowd was helpless with laughter at the actors’ drunken antics. The play was not a straight comedy, it seemed to have more to do with love than wine, and I was nearly moved to tears in the end. Everyone else did cry. I sat there feeling out of place, but I was used to that.

  Afterwards the actors took their masks off and came to meet Alexander. He praised their interpretation, even reciting several speeches by heart. More people came up to him, and he smiled and answered questions. His magnetism drew them. They crowded around him. He didn’t seem to notice. He was the same with everyone, be they slave, infant, or Queen of Egypt. He treated everyone with the same grave consideration. The people adored him.

  When the crowd thinned, we strolled back to the camp, the soldiers walking behind us. Alexander had his arm linked through mine, and every now and then we’d stop and he’d point out a constellation.

  The soldiers stopped when we did and walked when we walked. Alexander spoke to them as if they were all equals, and they looked at him in open admiration. He didn’t notice.

  He did notice when I started limping, though.

  ‘What happened to you? Let me see your feet.’ He motioned for a torch and looked at my sore feet, making clucking sounds as he did. ‘What awful sandals, where did you get them? I’ve never seen worse. Why don’t you get some leather ones? Lysimachus!’

  The captain of the guard came over. ‘Yes, sir!’

  ‘Captain, you will get some sandals for this woman tomorrow.’