Alexander and Alestria

by Shan Sa

  “I am already in the light!” she murmured.

  In her weak, halting voice she explained that Talaxia, Tankiasis, and all the dead warrior women had come down from the skies. They had gathered in that tent and were waiting for the arrival of the great king.

  She was delirious. She had been taken over by evil spirits who wanted to bear her away. Night drove out the day. I sat beside my queen with two daggers in my lap, cursing Alexander for abandoning her. I was powerless, listening to the rustle of the wind and night birds chattering and sniggering. Alestria’s body was racked with shaking and already looked as fragile as a pile of dead leaves.

  I greeted the dawn when it returned at last. My eyes scanned the inside of that tent and came to rest on the trunk full of Alexander’s gifts. I stood up stiffly and took those jewels and trinkets that had brought my queen so much joy and sadness, and laid them out around her inert body. I put my hand on her belly: the child had stopped moving. The monster had not found its path to life. Alestria, the invincible warrior, had lost this battle that so many other women would have won.

  Now I, Ania, who had not slept for three days, saw an army of lost souls. They had come for Alestria. Oh, that they would take me with my queen!

  Alestria’s hands were cold as ice. She was still breathing, but her soul had left her body. She was there among those wild spirits who loved victory and light, laughing, dancing, and occasionally peering at me out of curiosity.

  Alestria, it is I, Ania, your sister, your servant, your scribe!

  Alestria, have you forgotten those flat stones on which we started writing our story?

  Alestria, have you forgotten the smell of lily of the valley, the song of the white birds, the gold and red clouds rising on the horizon?

  Alestria, are you weary of Alexander, the man who brought an end to your galloping and who showed you all the pleasure and pain of being a woman?

  Alestria, come back! The life of kings is an illusion. We can return to our own land and go back to our novel of the stars.

  Come back to your body, Alestria!

  POROS. THE NAME obsessed me. People everywhere praised his intelligence and fine looks. His reputation for eloquence had spread along the banks of the Indus: he alone succeeded in rallying the princes to drive Alexander back out of their lands.

  I had left my queen to fight this fearsome rival. I offered pacts to the cities I had conquered, and promised those that surrendered the fertile lands that belonged to Poros. Right in the heart of the web woven for me by my adversary, I was building my own net. Where he had found friendship, I set up an army. In my progress toward the south I knew that Poros was riding out on his white elephant, sometimes ahead of me, sometimes following behind me. Neither he nor I had yet chosen when we would meet. But the battle was already inscribed in the stars.

  That night I saw Ania in my dreams. She was staring at me, her eyes full of hate, and hissing: “Alexander, the queen is dead.”

  I woke. It was not yet light outside. It was raining, and I thought I heard moaning from the queen I had abandoned for the toils of war. “Alexander, come back!” Ania, her faithful servant, called. “The queen is in labor! It’s a boy!”

  Alexander must not turn his back on war for a woman! He must show his soldiers that he can sacrifice his family for the sake of victory.

  Kristna, a young Indian prince, had secretly sent me a message offering me an alliance against Poros on condition that I left him his fields of hashna, the grass of happiness. Was this offer a trap or an opportunity? Was it bait put out by Poros or the whim of a prince who wanted to play one warrior king off against another? I drove Alestria and Ania from my mind and concentrated on the lands of the Indies reconstructed in miniature on the table before me. Different-colored stones represented the various kingdoms spread out between the forests and mountains. Blue was for allies, yellow for adversaries, and green for those who had not yet chosen between Alexander and Poros.

  I ordered my men to break camp and rode out at the head of my army toward Kristna’s enemies. By killing them I could offer this prince a poisoned gift: he would have to ally himself to me, he would no longer have any choice.

  Nothing—not Alestria’s tears nor the birth of my child—must interrupt my progress. Nothing must slow me down or break my concentration. I shall race headlong toward this duel, this great battle.

  I was haunted by Alestria’s pale face. The dark foliage looked like her naked body giving birth. A snake the color of fire flew in front of me and bit a guard, killing him instantly. Hephaestion had toothache, and his gum was so swollen he could no longer talk. All these signs were bad omens and made me anxious. Alestria, forgive me, I am riding toward our glory! I am fighting for your beauty, for your radiance, for the future reign of our child! Alestria, do not weep. I shall return when I have won the battle. I shall return to give you Poros’s white elephant and a river of diamonds.

  The rain stopped, the wind blew, and the river Hydaspe roared. I heard Ania’s voice accusing me: Why did you beget a child if you are afraid of being a father? Why have you abandoned your wife like every other Alexandria you conquered? What have you done with your life? You killed your father, rejected your mother, burned every land you passed through! You claim you want the sun but forge your way through the shades.

  I galloped along the riverbank, fleeing this voice by urging my horse on, always faster. No, Ania, I am not an ordinary son, husband, or father. I am Alexander the conqueror, I am a phoenix flying above the flames, I am the man who brings about a new world, I am the son of Apollo and the father of all mixed-race children. Ania laughed bitterly and spat out these words: Then Alestria will die. She too will be a part of this charred path you leave behind you. You will stand alone with no wife, no heir, and no army. You will be a star condemned to flee, never knowing any rest. You will burn in a sky that never sees the light, in a frozen darkness where boundaries constantly retreat. You will slip away ever further, ever faster, ever more desperately into those eternal shades!

  I pulled on the reins and stopped Bucephalus’s frantic galloping. About turn! The king will return to the queen’s city! Shouts of joy went up from the army, and soldiers hurried back to the encampment to hot meals, dry beds, and their wives’ arms.

  I galloped out in front, ahead of these men who no longer wanted to make war.

  Alestria, Alexander is coming back to you. Alexander is on his way.

  “THE KING IS on his way!” A hundred horsemen stormed into the city, calling for the great gates to be opened. Behind the walls, men and women spilled out of their tents and ran toward the road. Crowds formed on both sides of the road, bubbling with excitement like boiling water. The cries and whinnying drew closer; soon the clinking of weapons could be heard. The king is on his way, the king is galloping right up to the royal tent. The king lifts the door of the tent, the king is in the middle of this tomb where I, Ania, have lain prostrated for three days.

  I did not move, just held Alestria’s hand.

  I heard Alexander’s anxious voice:

  “The queen? How is the queen?”

  I did not look up and left a moment’s silence before replying:

  “The queen is dead.”

  Alexander pushed me aside and threw himself at Alestria’s inert body. He shook her and screamed her name, his harrowing cries piercing my ears:

  “Alestria, wake up! Alestria, come back! Alestria, don’t abandon me!”

  He stood back up abruptly, glowered at me, and bellowed:

  “Get out! Alestria is mine. You won’t have her. Leave us! Go back to where you came from!”

  He drew his dagger from his belt and started thrashing the air with it as if fighting invisible warriors. The king had lost his mind.

  In a flash I saw Alestria’s lips quiver. I took her hand, and she moved slightly. The queen is alive! The queen has come back to us! I laughed and wept all at once, and fought with Alexander to kiss her forehead, her lips. The queen half opened her eyes.r />
  Alestria had forgiven Alexander. She had come back for him.

  “Abandon the child!” he ordered her. “It is you that I love!”

  Alestria heard his soft but authoritative voice and obeyed her beloved king: she gave up the fight. She drank the infusion prepared by the sorcerer and that night was delivered of a boy. Neither she nor Alexander wanted to touch his cold, shriveled body. It was I, Ania, who wrapped the infant in white cloth, left the city, and went deep into the forest.

  On and on I walked while the brightly colored eyes of wild animals flitted around me. I was not afraid and felt no pain. I walked until I came to a river. To us, the Amazons, watercourses were the revelation of the God of Ice. I untied the swaddling, spread the white cloth on the grass, and laid the naked body on it. Even though he was a boy, the son of the queen of the Amazons belonged to our god. I backed away: soon wild animals would eat his flesh and lick his bones; his body would return to the earth while his soul rose up to the heavens. This soul, which was more fierce than Alexander and more persevering than Alestria, had just been too eager, in too much of a hurry. Glory and strength and beauty were waiting for that soul, but our god had decided it should climb the glacier naked.

  Wait, wait a little longer, my sister soul. Trust in our god; he will give you another life, another destiny.

  ALEXANDER DID NOT wait until Alestria had completely recovered before breaking camp and riding out at the head of his army. To everyone’s amazement, a covered carriage followed behind the military procession: the queen was accompanying the king. Nearby I, Ania, proudly led the twenty-nine girls of Siberia, complete with helmets and weapons.

  The army snaked through the forest before spreading out over a plain where spiny yellow bushes blossomed from the ocher and black soil. The undulating silhouette of a mountain range appeared on the horizon, and birds hovered dizzyingly high above, tiny specks and dashes of movement. By the banks of the river, which had shrunk in recent droughts, near-naked men toiled through the mud, forming a long black line right out into the glinting silver waters. A hundred times, a thousand times they plunged their bamboo sieves into the river, shook them, making the sand and pebbles twinkle, then fingered through the contents before throwing them away.

  The mountains drew nearer and grew taller. The forest—full of dark greens, oranges, and pinks—opened up to us and revealed Kristna’s city, built vertically on a south-facing flank of the mountain. The ramparts wound their way through the trees, surrounding thatched houses on stilts and others made of beaten earth, while the track climbed and zigzagged to the very top, where a fortress rose into the skies, attracting clouds of birds.

  In the gateway stood richly attired soldiers playing the flute and burning incense. They stepped aside to let Alexander and his queen pass, showering them with fragrant petals. To demonstrate his peaceful intentions, the King of Asia had stationed his army far from the town, and his only entourage was made up of the queen’s thirty serving women, all of them veiled so that no one would suspect the daggers attached to their belts.

  Prince Kristna’s fortress was itself the size of a town, flaunting its countless palaces built one above the other. A long covered gallery linked their terraced gardens and ornamental ponds. Borne on sedan chairs, Alexander and Alestria made their way through this steeply raked labyrinth where the women wore dazzling, brightly colored cloth wound around them; they had rings in one nostril, a red spot drawn in the middle of their smooth foreheads, and a black line penciled in under their dark eyes. They greeted the visitors by bowing and joining their hands, which were embellished with red paint, then backed away to the clinking of their countless bangles and the tinkle of bells knotted round their ankles, leaving in their wake their perfume of white flowers.

  Well-muscled young men came to greet us, some wearing turbans that were less dramatic than the Persians’, others with their black curls falling freely. They wore fine cloth about their waists and knotted between their legs, where it floated in the wind. Some had scars, others not. Some wore bangles on their left forearms; others had diamonds embedded in their noses and earrings. As I saw more of these men, I realized that the number of bangles set with rubies and pearls was a mark of each warrior’s courage, an honor granted by their prince.

  Our procession passed a spiral of palaces and arrived in a banqueting hall. The high-vaulted ceiling, encrusted with gem-stones, was held up by columns of finely carved marble depicting fruit trees, waterfalls, and exotic birds. The walls were paneled with precious wood edged with gold, and against this background were bas-relief scenes carved in ivory: heroes on horseback, legendary cities, and fabulous animals. Kristna, the young prince, who wore a well-groomed mustache, came over to Alexander and welcomed him with his hands joined.

  The two men sat down, one at each end of a very long table. With his painted eyebrows and lips and the red powder emphasizing his cheeks, our host looked like a statuette completely covered in precious stones. A dozen necklaces coiled round his neck, covering his chest, which was squeezed into a tight tunic of silver cloth with gold threads woven through it. There was an emerald the size of an egg at the front of his turban, which dripped with white and pink pearls. The narrow sleeves of his tunic gleamed, although they could not compete with the truly remarkable piece of jewelry the prince wore on his right forearm: a wide gold cuff engraved with gods and goddesses dancing in a forest where monkeys, peacocks, tigers, and elephants played with rubies, pearls, and emeralds. Around his narrow waist he wore a belt shaped like a lotus flower, every petal stitched with diamonds and hung with miniature figures. He sat with one leg folded beneath him and rested one arm nonchalantly on the other leg. His foot peeped out from beneath his tunic: there was a ring on every toe, and one of these rings had a tiny cage made of gold holding minute precious stones.

  He clapped his hands, and beautiful young serving men filed in, distributed quantities of little silver dishes over the table, then withdrew. Male and female dancers accompanied by musicians appeared and twirled between the columns, jingling the bells on their ankles.

  At the other end of the table Alexander pretended to eat and drink, but his lips barely touched his goblet, so afraid was he of being poisoned. That day he wore a scarlet tunic decorated down the front with three phoenixes in embossed gold thread; its wings had taken the most skilled Persian embroiderers three months to complete. His jewels conceded nothing in magnificence to those of the Indian prince, for it was important on this occasion to fight his opponent in wealth, not in power. That is why Alexander had put on ten rings, bearing fiery diamonds, rubies, and emeralds. His turban was wound round with gold thread hung with masses of dazzling precious stones from every corner of the world that Alexander the Great had conquered. Each countless sparkle of jewelry—tiger’s eye, moonstone, coral, turquoise, agate, amethyst, pearl, onyx, not to mention the beautiful sapphires and still other stones as yet unknown to man—represented the countless territories he owned. On his feet he wore leather sandals embroidered with gold and stitched with myriad tiny pearls.

  The Indian prince had seated his wives behind him, and each of them carried a small tray full of delicacies. These twenty young women—all of them beautiful and alluring—were of many different nationalities, and to counter them Alexander had only Alestria, who had also been given a small low table. She wore a white veil that covered her from head to foot, and one could see only her eyes emphasized with blue in the Persian style. On her head she wore a wreath adorned with the most beautiful diamonds in the world, the size of quail’s eggs, and the most talented craftsmen had spent ten years cutting their glittering inner facets, smoothing their outer shapes. Alestria wore no other jewelry, but still she was radiant, making all the other women pale in comparison. Prince Kristna immediately recognized these legendary diamonds that no one but the Great Kings of Persia could ever own. He was besotted with jewelry and could not help constantly commenting on their purity.

  The dishes had barely been put on the table b
efore they were cleared away and replaced by other delicacies. A hundred or more plates graced the king’s table that evening. As the night wore on the dancers wore fewer and fewer clothes: bare-breasted, they spun round the fountains, skipped down the alabaster steps, or strolled among peacocks and parrots. In the huge gardens torches and candles lit a flower bed of exotic blooms, their petals either ruffled or smooth, thick or thin, opaque or transparent. Each of them was shown off at its best by the ingenious lighting, thanks to which even the leaves competed in this pageant of beauty. Hundreds of different types of leaves—long and slender, short and notched, round and thick—stood out against the darkness and quivered as the dancers brushed past them.

  Indian warriors brandishing swords erupted onto the steps. I, Ania, and the queen’s Amazon guards ran to meet them with our daggers raised. They started dancing, and we danced with them by way of combat. Kristna’s eyes shone; he was watching Alexander: the king, unruffled, smiled and clapped in time to the music.

  The sun rose, and the banquet came to an end in feigned drunkenness and mutual mistrust. The two kings exchanged a good many polite niceties, bringing their hands together at chest height, touching their foreheads, and patting each other’s shoulders with their left hands while keeping their right hands over their hearts. Kristna accompanied Alexander to the gates of the city, where Hephaestion was waiting for him impatiently. To thank him for such a sumptuous reception, Alexander called for two soldiers to offer his host a pair of gold-plated silver caskets. Inside them were two severed heads: astonishment turned to smiles when the Indian prince recognized them; then he knelt and swore loyalty to Alexander.

  What was it that happened between those two men who barely spoke to each other all evening? I was told that the king had killed the Indian prince’s sworn enemies before visiting him. Now hated by the Indian tribes, Kristna was forced to follow Alexander.