Alexander had grown up with The Iliad, where Achilles and Patroclus share a bed with two women – I bet you’ll want to read it more carefully now, huh? He’d been seduced by his own mother who was an adept in bacchanal orgies, and he took his pleasure wherever and however he felt like it. It suited him, although it wasn’t a perfect example of these times either. In these times, women were supposed to remain faithful, but men could have harems.
‘What is the matter?’ Alexander came into the room and sat on the bed with me.
I opened my eyes and sighed. ‘I’m jealous of you and Nearchus.’
‘Oh?’ His eyes widened. ‘Then I will not sleep with him again.’ He shrugged.
I narrowed my eyes. ‘Are you serious?’
‘Yes.’
‘But, but …’ I sat up. ‘Don’t you love him?’
‘Yes, but not the way I love you. He’s been begging me for years to make love with him. We did. He should be happy now, for a few more years at least.’ He shrugged.
‘Will his feelings be hurt?’
Alexander spread his hands. ‘I doubt it. He will do as he likes, I do as I like, and you do as you like. Isn’t that how it’s always been with us?’
‘Yes, but now I’m afraid.’
Alexander looked at me sadly. ‘So am I,’ he admitted.
‘Why are you afraid?’ I was confused.
‘Because I feel the wind in my bones. There is something about you I don’t understand. I can tell when you go back to your own time. It is so different from mine that the very air around you changes. Your voice changes, your face, your words. It makes me afraid. Afraid that you will never accept living, here and now, with me, and that somehow you’ll find a way to return to your own time.’
‘Even if I had the chance now, I wouldn’t take it. I won’t leave you, Alexander, unless you ask me to.’
Alexander turned to face me. ‘If you are afraid I will leave you for Nearchus, you are wrong,’ he said.
I blushed. When he said it aloud like that it did sound silly. ‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered. ‘I never wanted to ask anything of you.’
Alexander smiled then. His eyes softened. ‘I know. I know that. You are like a man I once knew in Macedonia. He was considered very strange by the people in the village.’
I bristled. ‘Oh, thanks a lot, you’re making me feel better already.’
‘No, let me finish. He had a herd of horses. His horses were the most beautiful in the kingdom. The horse he loved the most was a pure white mare. Everyone wanted her, but he never sold her. It made the people around him crazy, because not only did he never sell her, he never even rode her. He never put a bridle on her or touched her in any way. He left her free. He would climb into the high meadows and watch her for hours, but he never tried to own her. That’s what your love has always been for me. You left me my freedom, all the while loving me.’ His smile was blinding. ‘O, Ashley of the Sacred Sandals, of all the people I have ever known or loved, only Plexis and you love me for myself, and not for what I am. Now, kiss me and tell me you love me. Don’t be afraid of anyone else.’
‘The same goes for you,’ I said shakily, when I could speak again. His kisses were as sweet and slow as honey.
‘I feel like making another little baby.’ His voice was almost teasing. ‘I miss Cleopatra so much that my heart aches some days.’
I giggled and swatted his hand away. ‘No, not now. I don’t want to get as fat as a hippo right now; I want to make a good impression on my ancestors.’
‘Well,’ he said philosophically, ‘I’ll just have to assuage my needs with Nearchus. He won’t be having babies.’
‘In my time men can have babies,’ I told him.
His eyes widened. ‘Really? By Zeus and Aphrodite, that sounds so strange.’
‘It seemed natural to me. The babies are born in artificial wombs. A real pregnancy and birth are rare. That’s why my mother didn’t realize she was pregnant until I was nearly ready to be born. Although it’s a good thing she didn’t realize it, or she would have aborted me.’ My voice was forlorn.
Alexander shook my shoulders. ‘Come back from the future,’ he ordered me. ‘Stay here, with me. My world is yours now. You have my love, for what it’s worth; Paul, Chiron, Cleopatra, and Plexis are all yours.’
‘Mine too are the blisters from walking, the sore butt from riding, the itching lice and the biting fleas. Mine is the cold that freezes and the lye soap that burns.’
‘It’s not all bad, is it?’ he asked worriedly.
‘Mine are the nights spent in my lover’s arms beneath a starry sky, with his voice whispering in my ear telling me all the wonders of the universe. Mine are the ancient cities that were buried beneath the dust for centuries, and that I saw as new and shining bright. The blue, gold, and green enamelled walls of Babylon were mine to behold, as was the new city of Alexandria in all her white and gold splendour. I saw lovely Ecbatana with its silver roofs and rose-coloured bricks. Mine too the lazy days spent swimming in the Euphrates with the date palms casting blue shade over curly-haired goats. The snow-covered mountains of the Himalayas and the mightiest river in Asia, the Indus, were mine. I slept with you in the palace of a rajah with the steaming jungle looking in. I held you in the desert sands, on a storm-tossed sea – with you seasick and an interesting shade of green, by the way – on an island surrounded by a night-time sea glowing with phosphorescence, and in a sacred oasis. Each time you took me in your arms, my heart sang with joy. All that is mine, Alexander. You gave it to me.’
He started crying. He cried easily. His emotions were so strong they often overwhelmed him. I took him in my arms again and crooned into his ear, telling him all the reasons why I loved him, and why I would never leave him. After ten years I had so many reasons I could hardly remember them all but, if you love your husband, I think it’s important to tell him these things now and then. He rewarded me in his own way, and we didn’t leave the bed until dinnertime made our stomachs growl like impatient lions.
Nearchus never slept with us again. He went back to being Alexander’s faithful admiral. A serious, canny-eyed man of above-average height with hair as blond as dark wheat. He polished his helmet, and taught Paul how to use the stars to navigate. He sat next to Alexander, but his hands never strayed toward him. His eyes still held the love they’d always held.
Alexander was the sun blazing in Nearchus’s sky. But I was no longer the small dark cloud on the horizon. Nearchus thought of me now as a friend, and our relationship became easier. He even asked me to play chess with him sometimes, real proof that he liked me. He was a consummate chess player, and I was only mediocre, at best. Playing with me must have been a bore. Usually he played chess with Axiom. Usse had been more on his level, but Axiom could sometimes surprise him.
Axiom was a quiet man. Years of slavery had made him incapable of sitting still and relaxing. He always had something to do and if he wasn’t working he was praying. Alexander had freed him ten years ago. He was free to go where he pleased. Alexander had given him gold for each year of service. I knew he had a large amount in a bank in Alexandria. Plexis and I had gone with him to open his account.
Sometimes, I wondered why he followed Alexander still, when he could have stayed in Alexandria, or gone anywhere he wanted. I never asked him. I had been raised in a society where personal questions were considered as rude as a slap in the face. No wonder my mother hated journalists. No wonder I had trouble relating to people who laughed when they saw someone trip, or cried when they heard a sad story.
Axiom and Nearchus were my friends, but there was still a wall between us, and they felt it. They had learned to respect it, though. It hurt them no longer. Where they might reach across the table, grasp each other by the wrist and even kiss each other fondly, to me they limited their show of affection to a sideways glance, a quirk of the lips, or a touch as light as a feather on the shoulder. Even that sometimes made me jump. Three thousand years is a formidable barrier.
/> Only Alexander had reached across the immense gulf of time that separated us. Was that the secret of his timelessness? The gift that made men wonder about him and create legends and stories about him three thousand years after his death?
I caught him looking at me and blushed. He smiled, and in that smile I saw all the ambiguity of his character written in his face. He sipped his beer, not taking his eyes off me, looking supremely sure of himself. At a word from Nearchus he put his beer down and turned away, but his hand crept onto my thigh under the table, and I smiled.
Chapter Twenty-seven
I wondered why no one ever recognized him. His picture had been painted a hundred times, his profile was on coins, and his likeness was everywhere; on statues, plates, even mugs. Nearly two years later, people were still talking about his death. But no one had ever pointed at him and cried out, ‘Why! It’s Iskander of Macedonia! As I live and breathe! By Hades! How did you escape the underworld?’
The voice boomed across the room, startling everyone.
I spilled my beer onto my plate and gaped up at the mountain of a man who was striding over to us.
‘Iskander! By Zeus and Hades! Don’t you recognize me? Say something! You remember me, don’t you?’
‘By all the gods,’ breathed Alexander, putting his beer down very carefully. ‘Is it you? Is it really you?’
‘Afraid so.’ The man spread his hands out in front of him almost apologetically.
‘But, I thought you were dead?’ The question hung in the air, rather comically.
‘Well, I thought the same for you. Perhaps this is Hades’ underworld, and all that I’ve believed for twelve years is just dust.’
‘Has it been twelve years already?’ Alexander shook his head.
‘Time is a strange thing,’ said the man.
‘More than you’ll ever know,’ murmured Alexander. He took a deep breath. ‘You never met Nearchus. He is, no, was my admiral. This is my lady wife, Ashley. This is Axiom, and this is my son Paul. And this is Yovanix.’ He added. Yovanix blushed. ‘Everyone, this is Charidemus.’
The man bowed. I raised my eyebrows. Charidemus? The name sounded familiar, but I’d never seen him before.
‘What have you been doing?’ asked Alexander, making room for him between us. I shifted over obligingly. The man sat down slowly, like old warriors tend to do when half their bones have been broken and limbs bend with some resistance. He appeared to be around forty-five, give or take a decade. It was hard to tell. His hair was long and brown, with silver streaks. His face was clean-shaven. He had dark eyes, pale skin, and a nose that had been broken too many times to tell what shape it had been to start with. His size was his most obvious feature. He towered over all of us, even Nearchus, and he would have made Millis seem slight. He saw me staring at him and grinned. His teeth were mostly all there, but the ones that were missing had been replaced with gold.
‘Don’t you mean how did I manage not to be killed by Darius?’ he chuckled. ‘He condemned me to death, but I managed to escape. I had one or two friends in the prison. Then I travelled. I went to Carthage, to Iberia, and then started trading with the Gauls. It’s a good life. I miss Athens, but I go back now and then. What about you? It seems impossible to see you here, but I suppose there is an explanation. Would you give it to me? Why did you abandon your new kingdom?’ He cocked his head. ‘No, don’t answer that one. I lived with Darius; I know what it must have been like. You weren’t made to be divine, were you?’ he chortled. ‘The news came regularly. I was in and out of Athens during your campaign against Bessus, and then when you went to India and came home again. I heard Demosthenes ranting in the market place that you’d set yourself up as a god.’
‘I’m sure that’s not all you heard,’ said Alexander quietly.
‘To be sure it wasn’t. I nearly went to join you at least a dozen times. But I thought you wouldn’t want me.’
‘It’s a good thing for me that Darius didn’t want you. You and Memnon were perhaps the only two who could have defeated me in the beginning.’
‘The gods decided otherwise, didn’t they? At least they didn’t make me sicken and die like poor Memnon. What a general he was, eh? The best tactician the Persian army ever had. If Darius had listened to me, and taken up Memnon’s plans, you would have been finished before you’d even started.’
‘But he didn’t, did he? He had you executed.’
‘Darius always was a fool,’ said Charidemus thoughtfully.
‘I’ve heard that before,’ Alexander said. ‘But I loved him, silly fool that he was. I would have saved him from that traitor Bessus.’
‘I know you would have.’ Charidemus put his arm around Alexander’s shoulders, nearly hiding him. ‘So, tell me, what brings you to this place? Granted it is a nice village, as villages go. But you’re used to cities, and to opulence.’
‘I’m used to everything by now,’ Alexander said. His voice was growing stronger. He looked up at the man and grinned. ‘By the gods, Charidemus, it is good to see you.’ ‘Call me Demos, everyone here does.’
‘They don’t really. They probably call you something like Charidemus-big-guy-vix.’
He grinned back. ‘Probably, but not you. Ah, Iskander, so many years. I never thought to see you again or that it would be like this. I thought I would be begging for my life at your feet. A mercenary in front of a king. And I would have begged, yes, begged to be allowed to fight with you. By Zeus, what an adventure you must have had!’ His voice grew dreamy. ‘Travelling seems to be in your bones, though, to have brought you all the way to the land of the savage Gaul. Where are you heading?’
‘To the land of the Eaters of the Dead,’ said Alexander.
There was a silence. We all looked at each other. Charidemus spread his fingers on the table like nine fat sausages – he was missing one – and frowned. He looked at Alexander, then at Nearchus, Axiom, and Yovanix, and he seemed to be weighing each man against the hordes of savages in the far north. Finally he sighed deeply. ‘Well, Iskander, it looks as if the gods have put me in your path again, but this time I won’t ignore them. I missed my chance before; I won’t let it go by again. If you’ll have me with you, I’ll come. I have a few more grey hairs, and it takes a few more minutes for me to get up in the morning, but I can still wield a sword and lance, by Ares, and against the best I’ll still win. I’ll stand between you and death. See if I won’t.’ His voice was gruff, but his words were clear.
Alexander was too choked up to speak, but he managed a smile.
The big man clasped Alexander to his chest and bellowed for another round of beer. Tears as big as raindrops rolled down his cheeks. ‘A toast to the adventure!’ he cried, and we all raised our auroch horns and drank the honeyed beer.
Our heads were swimming by the end of the evening. We were full of that strange magic that happens when old enemies meet after a lifetime and become fast friends.
The stories went on all night. Alexander and Nearchus told of their adventures, and Demos told of his. He’d travelled to the land of ice and snow, and he’d seen the northern lights. He’d visited Carthage, Rome, and Iberia. He’d searched for Atlantis with pirates, sailed to the Canary Islands, and went as far as Iceland, a place he described like ‘Hades on Earth’, with volcanoes and icebergs side by side. We listened, our eyes as round as shiny coins.
When the beer slurred the men’s words into unintelligible sentences, we shook ourselves awake and crawled upstairs. Axiom picked up a soundly sleeping Paul and carried him to the room he was sharing with Yovanix. Alexander and I made it to the bed, but Nearchus and Demos fell like toppled trees to the floor and snored loudly for the rest of the night.
In the morning, I opened my eyes before anyone else. The light hurt my head. Too much Gallic beer. Those auroch horns held a litre, and I’d drunk at least three. I had to pee so badly, I thought I’d explode. Carefully, I crept out of bed. Nearchus was sleeping rolled up tightly in his cloak next to the fireplace, but Demos was f
lat on his back, snoring, his arms flung wide, his legs splayed. In the morning light he looked almost harmless, a friendly giant snoozing on the floor. I eased one leg over his and held my breath. I didn’t want to wake anyone.
There was a sort of ‘whump’ as the air was displaced. Demos rolled over and grabbed my shin, jerking my feet out from under me. I found myself with a knife at my throat and a growing puddle of urine under me. My teeth were chattering. I didn’t dare breathe. Then Demos opened his eyes and saw he’d saved Alexander – from me.
He blinked. He looked at me, at the knife, and at the closed door.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said contritely.
‘Me too,’ I said heartily. ‘Believe me!’
‘I usually sleep alone, I forgot where I was,’ he explained.
‘May I get up now?’ I asked. ‘Not that there’s any more need to hurry.’
‘Sorry.’ His face became bright red as he realized my predicament.
‘If you really want to help, you’ll let me up and then mop up the mess before it runs all over. It’s heading toward Nearchus now.’ I said helpfully. I was past being embarrassed. Demos was embarrassed enough for both of us.
Alexander woke up and looked over the side of the bed at us. His handsome face was marred by a frown. ‘Ashley, you should go bathe,’ he said finally.
I got up, and with as much dignity as I could salvage, grabbed a towel, my bath things and some clean clothes, and stepped over the puddle.
I left the room before Nearchus woke up. If there were any justice at all, he would think that Demos had done it.
Chapter Twenty-eight
After breakfast, we left the village. We were only three days from Lutetia. I was impatient to get there. Somehow, I guess, I had imagined a city like the ones I’d seen in Mesopotamia. The cities there were more beautiful than any in my own time. Grey cement and stone can’t compare to bricks enamelled all the colours of the rainbow and roofs covered in gold, silver, and copper.
Chants to Persephone: The Future of the World Hangs on a Knife's Edge - and Only a Human Sacrifice Can Save It Page 16