Alexander and Alestria

by Shan Sa

  Fly, my bird, my love, my sun, fly toward our fate, toward our conquest.

  You alone will be my enemy, you alone will have the power to wound me and make me suffer.

  A DARK SHAPE appeared on the horizon, then a second. My heart skipped a beat. Alexander the Great and Talestria were riding together on a white stallion, followed by the chestnut mare. Talestria was held prisoner by the invincible warrior! I dared not move; not one of the Amazons dared to ready her bow, all frozen in terror. Not far from us Alexander’s soldiers seemed to be in the same state of stupefaction. Not one of them raised his weapon.

  The silhouettes drew closer, and all at once I realized that Talestria was in Alexander’s arms, but her hands were not tied. She was resting her head against the warrior’s chest, and he held her close to him. She was holding his horse’s reins! She was smiling! She looked radiant! My head reeled. A curse had just fallen on our tribe: my queen was in love!

  Both armies held their breath, paralyzed by the sight of their leaders approaching. Alexander’s eye swept authoritatively over the stupefied crowd, addressing not a single word to his men. My queen gave no orders. They continued to draw closer, still together, and stepped into the gap formed by the two armies so that we—the Amazons and Alexander’s soldiers—had to follow the queen and the king. I, Tania, followed Talestria toward the south, then toward the east, where a huge encampment stood out against the pale sky. Its gates opened: we entered the kingdom of men.

  Warriors in short skirts, wrestlers in scarlet leggings, and men in blue and yellow turbans milled between the tents. Women with white, black, or pink skin strolled about with their mixed-race children. Persian merchants prowled up and down, singing the praises of their wares. Aviaries, cages of tigers, and chained leopards were loaded onto carts, waiting for the order to leave. Monsters four times the size of horses, with snouts as long as a boa and ears as wide as a crane’s wingspan, filed past, making the ground shudder.

  Some women brought us a feast to eat, and a group of men with no hair came to play musical instruments. Slave women arrived with basins, pails of water, and clean clothes. They wanted to undress me, but I grew angry and threw them out of my tent. I sent round orders not to reveal our identity.

  I waited anxiously for Talestria, and it was three days before she reappeared, draped in necklaces and rings of gold, her eyes emphasized with blue lines and her head covered with a veil. I greeted my queen with one knee to the ground to demonstrate my sadness and indignation. She sent the slaves away with a wave of her hand, came into my tent, and let down the door.

  She threw off her veil with its feather trimming, took off her jewels, and flung them to the four corners of the tent. She tore off her embroidered tunic and asked for pails of water to wash herself. I too disliked the heady Persian perfumes that made her body unrecognizable, and I was quick to pour the water and wash her from head to foot.

  “You’re angry,” the queen said.

  “Tania is your serving woman. A serving woman never disobeys her queen.”

  “I know you resent me,” she went on. “Tania, the God of Ice has revealed my path to me: I am not the queen of the Amazons; I shall marry Alexander, but not out of weakness—this is my destiny.”

  Her words cut me to the core. I clenched my teeth and held back my tears.

  “The tribe cannot survive without a leader,” she said. “I appoint you as regent and entrust to you the task of finding my heir. Go back to the land of Siberia, Tania. I know your character; you will be unhappy if you stay here.”

  “Talestria, the indomitable queen of the Amazons, is captive to her own love for a man,” I cried, raising my voice. “If this is not out of weakness, then it must be a spell! Tell me Alexander made you drink a magic potion! Admit that he stole your soul and locked it in some evil casket! Wake up, Talestria! The Amazon queens of the past entrusted you with the tribe’s survival. You cannot abandon us!”

  “I shall never forget them. I shall never forget you.”

  Tears flowed over my queen’s cheeks, but her voice remained steady.

  “The queens were wrong. I am not Talestria: she should have been you. Be strong, Tania, be the invincible warrior woman who fears no separation and who does not suffer when she loses a sister. Go back to our country. You must teach the language of birds to the girl children who will be our heirs.”

  “My queen,” I said, beginning to sob, “you have forgotten the warnings of our ancestors! The Great Queen loved a man, she died for him, and the mountain was covered in snow for all eternity.”

  “I have forgotten nothing,” she said, and although her eyes shone, her calm demeanor chilled me to the bone. “I have forgotten nothing. I am not afraid of being cursed. I have faith in my god!”

  I spilled a great torrent of tears: my queen was under Alexander’s spell. Her life was in danger. How could I leave her?

  “So long as you are alive I will not be regent. That is the ancestral rule; there is no point insisting. I shall follow you to the ends of the earth, I shall not go back to our country.”

  I wept more and more copiously, and the queen, abandoning her reserve, wept with me. The night wore on, and she eventually fell asleep next to me…or perhaps she feigned sleep, as I did.

  Disgust, disappointment, and anger alternated with tenderness and regret. Like the Great Queen, Talestria was in love with a man: this meant the end for our tribe; our race was condemned to disappear, such was our fate. How was I, Tania, to whom Talestria had offered her braid and her power, how was I to stop the inexorable extinction of a tribe about to lose its queen? Talestria was asking me to cheat the prophecy: to go back to our country and announce that she had died in battle.

  How could I appease the anger of our god by hiding the truth? How could I tear myself away from Talestria, the queen of my heart, the sister I had watched over with all my vigilance, the one person my body and soul would fly to wherever I might be? How could I capitulate before Alexander without a fight? Without me, she would drown in an ocean of baubles and precious metals, things that could be bought and sold, and she would wither and fade in a corrupt world where people’s faces were distorted with greed, a world where they put birds in cages. My queen had betrayed the tribe. I, Tania, was responsible for this wrong: I had to exile myself with her, to die with her.

  I remembered happier times when we lay in the grass and the queen dictated the story written in the stars. I wrote her words down by candlelight and let them transport me to a magic world. The ink I used dried and turned white. But Alexander’s arrival had interrupted this writing; we had to pack our things away hastily and set off at a gallop.

  I wept and wept and wept again. I remembered Talestria fighting an unknown warrior, both of them crossing weapons, hurtling toward the horizon and disappearing. When they reappeared on the steppe, we no longer had a land or any ancestors. We will never see the white cranes with crimson heads again; we will no longer be called the girls who love horses.

  The following morning the queen called the twenty-nine warrior women together in my tent. I, Tania, her scribe and spokes-woman, announced Talestria’s decision and said:

  “I, Tania, who have acted as her scribe, shall be the firefly lighting her way right to the land of the dead. Who among you will take my braids and become regent?”

  Sitting around me in a semicircle, they began to sob. Not one of them wanted to be regent. Not one of them wanted to tell the tribe that Talestria and Tania had died in battle. Not one of them had the courage to lie or to tell the accursed truth: the queen was in love with a man and had run away with him. Not one of them wanted to be the one to go back to our country and announce the arrival of snow for all eternity. They all swore to keep the secret of our origins and to renounce our past.

  When a wound will not heal, we amputate the limb it is on. So that no one might know our secret—that the Amazons no longer had a queen—we removed the letter T from our names. We lost our family and our freedom. By choosing to be
loyal to the queen, we became nameless birds in Alexander’s aviary.

  I turned and glared furiously at Alestria, but she was staring impassively into space.

  Alestria, wake up!

  Alexander, torturer of the Amazons, I hate you not only in this life but into the next!

  WHEN HE SAW me coming back to the encampment with a woman on Bucephalus, surrounded by a crowd prostrating itself to welcome me, Bagoas went mad. He sprang up and ran to my tent, screaming. He ransacked my furniture and stabbed a slave who tried to stop him. Then he clawed at his own face and rolled on the ground, beating his chest with his fists. The Macedonian generals lowered their heads, the Persian military commanders looked away, women covered their children’s eyes and withdrew. Hephaestion and his guards managed to catch the ranting Bagoas and administer a substantial dose of a drug to calm him. That night silence reigned: not a murmur, not one clink of armor. My generals sat in painful, silent indignation. My soldiers wondered what lay in store for the empire.

  But I had made my decision, and no one could sway me. Neither the Persians’ amazement nor the Macedonians’ anger, neither Bagoas’s screaming nor Hephaestion’s reasoning, could make me change my mind: Alestria would be my queen.

  I summoned Oxyartes, the satrap of Bactria, and ordered him to recognize Alestria as one of his daughters. I chose the Persian name Roxana, “resplendent one,” for my future wife.

  Our marriage saw sumptuous celebrations in every conquered city in the Orient and right through to the West. Every people had to celebrate the union of Alexander the Great with an Asian woman, a symbolic gesture from the king who encouraged them all to follow his example.

  The celebrations in our encampment proved lackluster: the singing was far from exalted and the dancing listless. Cassander did not attend the banquet; neither did Bagoas, who had a fever and was unable to leave his bed. The Persian satraps came to touch the tips of my golden shoes and kiss the hem of the queen’s robes, then slipped away into the night. The Macedonian generals renewed their vows of loyalty to me, but their droning voices betrayed their disappointment: they would have liked a Macedonian queen who could have produced a prince with brown hair and green eyes. They would have liked one of their own to have found a way to temper her husband’s ambitions, slow his headlong journey east and take his troops back west.

  I let my eye rove over the shadows lit with firelight. Ox and mutton turned on spits, silhouettes spun in and out of the sparks. Alestria sat in pride of place beside me, wearing a crimson robe embroidered with three phoenixes in gold and silver thread, and stitched with precious stones. Her cheeks were painted and her eyes made up in Persian style. Her dark eyes shone as she viewed this gathering of dignitaries and drunken soldiers with pride and indulgence. I slipped my hand discreetly under her veil trimmed with gold bells and found hers. Our fingers sought each other and linked together, whispering to each other and silencing the hubbub of the outside world.

  I communicated my distress to Alestria: it was a long time since I had shared the same vision as the Macedonians. My own people thought of deserting the battlefields and returning to their native land even more than the Greeks and Persians. They had not fallen for the exotic fruit or spiced food, the fragrant orchids and soft tunics or the solid shoes that were so much more hygienic. They felt they had fought long enough and accumulated enough wealth. The lure of all the comforts they could now afford weakened their resolve: they no longer wanted to die, they did not want to suffer anymore.

  Her hand stroked mine and replied: I shall suffer for you. I shall die for you. I shall follow you to the ends of the earth. Keep advancing toward the sun, do not stop.

  How can I send the Macedonians away? I cried without words. They chose me when I was a young king with no glory. They bear the memories of terrible battles on their lacerated skin. They supported me in my rise to power, and fought for my title as King of Asia. Without them I would be simply Alexander, son of Philip.

  Do not look to your past, she replied; turn to the future. You are Alexander, and you are also Alestria. Everything that is beautiful in my body and soul, everything that I have lived, the vastness of my native land, the blessings of my millennial ancestors…all these are yours. Enriched by Alestria, you are the most powerful man on earth. I am the happiest woman under the heavens. We shall set out alone, side by side, without armies or slaves, to meet the sun.

  I squeezed her hand hard, feeling its rough skin and calluses, its strength and determination—a hand so like my own.

  A band of guards suddenly appeared, cutting through the crowd to tell us a group of foreigners had arrived and wanted to present the queen with a gift in private. It was a huge gold-painted box, and I asked for it to be delivered to my tent. Inside it lay a man with delicate features, wearing a blue turban adorned with golden leaves. It was Darius, already dead, a gold-handled dagger in his left breast. His face was drained of blood but artfully made up; his eyes were half closed, and he seemed to be smiling.

  One of the men veiled from head to foot presented Alestria with a clay tablet. She inhaled sharply, and I asked her to read the signs engraved on the tablet.

  You have the truth.

  You have the freedom to love.

  You have the freedom to choose.

  To choose is to love.

  I did not call for Bagoas to confirm the identity of the body; it no longer mattered to me whether Darius was dead or alive. Let him be buried in secret with the honor and ceremony that befits his rank. His poem was intended for me: Alestria had chosen me, I no longer had a rival.

  The campfires went out, and dawn broke.

  Outside my nuptial tent soldiers busied themselves and horses champed impatiently. I leaped to my feet and eased on my battle dress.

  Alestria, I entrust you with my encampment, which will now be called the Queen’s City. I leave you the women and children, the laborers and vendors and the ten thousand guards. I am advancing into battle, and you will join me later.

  Alestria, my queen, do not cry. We shall see each other in thirty days. Your god will protect me from the arrows of the enemies to my front, and my god will stop the lances thrown by conspirators to my rear. Wait for me, my little rain swallow, my red laurel. I shall return to shower your body with my seed. Our love will come to life, and that life will outlast all the seasons of eternity.

  I lifted the door of the tent, and my eunuchs fell to their knees and prostrated themselves on both sides of the red carpet that led to Bucephalus. I jumped into the saddle and turned round one last time.

  Alestria was standing outside the tent. She looked so small, weeping in the wind, and the sight of her pained me. She ran over to me, barefoot. To fight the urge to take her in my arms, I turned Bucephalus and kicked him straight into a gallop.

  Our horses jostled, our lances clashed, barked orders rang in the air. The barbarian horns announced our departure for a still more difficult war. The morning sun devoured me, and my dazzled eyes saw that succession of armies and cities and peoples. I had freed myself from them to marry a queen without a kingdom. Now I had to tear myself from her to fight other armies and conquer other cities.

  Such was my fate.

  A HOT SPRING ran through a meadow, and there, sheltered from men’s eyes, women bathed, rubbing each other’s backs, combing each other’s hair, and lying on the banks dotted with flowers I had never seen before. A Persian woman told me they were called orchids: they waved their slender leaves at me and watched me with their petal-eyes. They fussed and hid behind each other, jostling and whispering together. Alestria sat on a flat stone, sadly gazing at her reflection while her serving women poured water over her with golden ladles, and cooled her limbs with fragrant mint leaves.

  I knew she was still thinking of Alexander. When she looked at herself in the water, it was him she saw. My queen’s sorrow made me suffer, and to distract her, I made a little boat drawn by butterflies. Sitting on its prow, she smiled at last and I, Ania, took up the oars and
followed the flow of the source, singing:

  Butterflies are our sisters.

  Because they too love flowers.

  With their frail wings they can fly over mountaintops.

  They flutter among the clouds for days without food.

  We, the daughters of Siberia,

  We, the daughters of Siberia,

  Our bodies are just as robust,

  Our wings just as fragile.

  A butterfly with broken wings turns into a dead leaf.

  An Amazon with broken wings turns into a lost soul.

  A butterfly with broken wings turns into a dead leaf.

  An Amazon with broken wings turns into a lost soul.

  Alestria turned a deaf ear as she gazed aimlessly and smiled stupidly at the clouds.

  I led her over to an anthill.

  “Look at the way they go forward, retreat, turn round, and set off again. Ants have no eyes; they respond only to their queen’s thoughts. She hides in her underground palace, directing all of them, just as a soul coordinates the limbs of the body it inhabits. Without their queen ants have no sense of direction, they dare not go out for fear of not finding their way home. They wander through the underground tunnels, getting cold and hungry. If attacked they are incapable of defending themselves and die one after the other.”

  Alestria said nothing; she was not listening to me. Alexander had taken her ears with him so that he could whisper his incantations of love to her and keep his spell over her from afar.

  I dragged Alestria by the hand and showed her some bees gathering pollen from flowers.

  “I hate bees!” I cried. “They’re thieves and assassins! Drawn by the flower’s fragrance, they dance round it, singing it songs and swearing their undying devotion to it. The flower naively opens its petals and welcomes the bee into its heart. The bee kisses the flower until it finds the nectar, but once it has, it flies away. The flower, now pregnant to the bee, bears its fruit and dies of sorrow.”