The Persian Boy (34 page)

Hephaistion got command of his own army. He was to cross Great Kaukasos by the good pass, which Sogdians call Khyber; when he reached the Indus, he was to bridge it for Alexander. Khyber being the easiest way (but for the men who live there) he was to take in his charge the followers and all the women, not leaving out the harem. Alexander, with his own army and the chief of the Companions, would take the hardest task; clearing the mountains which commanded the pass of anyone who threatened it.

As I listened, I thought, This is a crossroads in my life. Now or never.

I can’t remember what he came in for after; to get a cloak or some such thing. “Alexander,” I said, “I happened to overhear your war council”

“You always do. I only put up with it because you keep your mouth shut. Why tell me now?” He looked stern. He knew well enough what I was after.

“Don’t send me with the followers. Take me with you.”

“You should have listened better. Mine is a campaign, not a march. It may not be done by winter.”

“My lord, I know. It’s too long to leave you.”

He frowned. He wanted to take me; but he believed in doing without comforts in the field. “You’ve never been trained to hardship.”

“I come from the mountains that bred Kyros. Don’t put me to shame.”

He stood, still frowning, and looking about for what he’d come in for. I knew what it was without telling, and gave it him with a smile. “That’s all very well,” he said. “But war is war.”

“You take ?tanners and carpenters and cooks and bakers. You take slaves. Am I worth less?”

“Too much. I wish you knew what you’re asking for. And there won’t be much time for love.”

“For bed? I know. But for love, while I live, I shall always have time enough.”

He looked into my eyes, then said, “I meant not to do this.” He went to his coffer and took out a fistful of gold. “Get yourself more warm things, you’ll need them. Pack away your dress-clothes and your tent-trimmings. Buy sheepskin horse-blankets. You may take one servant and one pack-mule.”

In the passes it was already autumn. North of Khyber, the people were hunters and herders, whose second trade was robbery. They were reported fierce; Alexander wanted their submission.

Even up in the Parapamisos, I had not had mountain sickness. We were lower here than there; though Alexander climbed at first by slow stages, to temper our blood for the thin air. My childhood had not yet been lost in me; I went up without distress. Sometimes at evening I would count Alexander’s breaths against mine, and they were faster; but he had more work to do. He never owned to fatigue.

Some say the Wise God’s heaven is a rose garden. For me, it is in the heights. After all, he lives there. Watching the dawn on snows no bird had touched, I shivered with joy. We were invading a land of gods, whose cold hands would soon fall on us; there were wars to come; but I could feel no dread.

In the end, Alexander had let me take my Thracian groom as well as my body-servant. I think he’d really feared I might die of hardship. At night in his campaign tent (made to his order; Darius had never owned anything so simple) he’d ask if I was well. At last, guessing what he’d never utter, I said, “Al’skander, you think eunuchs are different in too many ways. If we’re shut up with women and live soft with them, then we grow like them; but so would any man. Just because we have women’s voices, it doesn’t mean we have women’s strength.”

He took my hand smiling. “You’ve not a woman’s voice; it is too pure. It’s like the aulos, the deep-toned flute.” He was glad to be free of the harem.

In the night with its fierce white stars, before the snow-clouds had gathered, as I sat by my pine-wood fire the young squires would leave their own to squat beside me. “Bagoas, tell us about Susa, tell us about Persepolis, tell us about the court in Darius’ day.” Or I would watch the blaze where Alexander sat with Ptolemy and Leonnatos and his other officers. They would pass round the wine and talk and laugh; but there was no night when Alexander turned in with steps less steady than mine.

He never had me to bed. Always before hard tasks he would gather himself together, wasting nothing. Fire is divine. He was glad of me; that was enough.

Then the wars began. The tribesmen’s forts clung to the crags, like martins’ nests. The first we came to looked impossible to storm. Alexander sent an interpreter, to offer terms, but they defied him. The Persian kings had never brought these lands under law.

The forts had done well against the assaults of other tribesmen, who had stones and arrows. Alexander had light catapults, whose bolts must have seemed to them like the darts of demons. He had scaling-ladders too. When they saw his men coming over their walls, they left the fort and fled on the mountainside. The Macedonians ran after them, and killed all they could overtake, while the fort was burned. I watched it from the camp. Though a long way off, I felt concern for these little figures, caught in the rocks or on old snowfields. I had taken calmly the deaths of many, because I had not seen them as single men. It was folly, for they would have roused other tribes against us, if they’d got away.

When the fight was over, I learned what had made Alexander’s troops so fierce. He had an arrow wound in the shoulder. He’d made light of it; the corselet had stopped it from sinking in its barb. No one ever made less of his wounds than he did in battle; but it was always the same, if he got one his men wen?t nearly mad. It was part love, part dread of being left without him.

When the doctor had gone, I took off his bandage and sucked the place clear; who could say what such people put on their arrows? It was to do such things that I’d come, though I’d had too much sense to tell him so; the way to persuade him was always to beg a gift.

The camp was noisy; the soldiers had come without women, all but the hardiest who never left their men; now they had all those from the fort, tall broad-faced hillwomen with strong black hair and jewels stuck through their noses.

Alexander took a fancy for me that night. The wound opened and I was covered in blood; he just laughed, and made me wash in case the guard thought I’d murdered him. The wound felt easier, he said; no physician like love. It is true that when dry they often fester.

The next fort surrendered, having heard about the first; so everyone was spared, as his custom was. As we marched onward, the mountain gods sent winter.

We pushed through thick driving snow like barley-grains; our clothes and our horses and the men’s sheepskin cloaks were frosted white; the beasts slithered and stumbled on the drifted tracks, which we needed native guides to find. Then the sky would clear, and the white would dazzle till we rode with eyes almost closed; that light can blind a man.

We were amply fed, Alexander saw to that; and not climbing higher than timber grows, we had warm blazing fires at night. If the wind pushed cold fingers through my furs, I just wrapped my scarf to keep my face from burning, and thought of my luck to be here with no Roxane; above all with no Hephaistion.

Alexander took the hill-forts one by one, except those that surrendered. I hardly remember one from another now, though King Ptolemy remembers each one. He did some notable deeds of arms up there, among them a duel hand to hand with an important chief, whose shield he’s kept to this day. He has put them all in his book, and who shall blame him?

After many battles and sieges, we sighted Massaga, stretched across a hill-spur; no mere tribal fort, but a strong walled town.

It gave Alexander four days’ work. On the first, when they made a sortie from their gates, he fled to lure them out, then whipped round on them and caught a good many, though the rest got back inside. Then, lest they still thought he was scared, he marched up to the walls, for which he got an arrow in his ankle. By luck no sinew was cut; the doctor told him to rest it, as one might tell a river to run back up the hills.

Next day he brought up rams and breached the wall; but the breach was stoutly held. At night, he limped now and then when he forgot, but stopped himself next moment.

The day after, he ran a bridge across to the breach from a wooden siege-tower (he’d brought engineers to make such things on the spot) and led the assault himself. Before he’d crossed, so many had pressed up to be fighting next him, that the bridge broke in the middle.

I died many deaths, before they scrambled out from the rubble below, and I saw his white-winged helmet. He limped back all grazed and bruised, but only said he was lucky not to have broken a leg; he’d just come from seeing the wounded.

Next day, with a stronger bridge, he tried again and got over. While they fought on the walls, the tribal chief fell to a catapult bolt; and the town sued for a truce, which Alexander granted.

Seven thousand of their best fighting men turned out to have been hired, from somewhere beyond the rivers; they were shorter and darker than the rest. Alexander had them called out apart; he wanted to hire them himself. They had a different tongue from the hillmen’s, but the interpreter said he knew it. In the King’s presence he addressed them; the officers replied; after some parley, he said they agreed to the offered terms. So they camped by themselves on a hill nearby, while the townspeople were treated with; and Alexander set scouts to watch them, they being strangers whose good faith he did not know, in a force that could be? dangerous. He’d learned to take care, in Sogdiana.

“A good day’s work,” he said to me after supper. He had bathed, and I was dressing his ankle, which seemed to be healing clean in spite of everything.

A night-guard squire came in. “Sir. One of the outpost guards, asking to report.” Alexander said, “I’ll see him now.”

The man was young, but looked steady. “Alexander. The Indians on the hill are getting ready to go.”

He stood up, stepping on my clean bandage. “How do you know?”

“Well, King, the later it’s grown, with everyone else asleep, the more they’re stirring. It’s not so dark you can’t see them against the sky. Nobody’s lying down; the whole camp’s milling; the men are bearing arms, and I saw some leading pack-beasts. I’ve good eyes, Alexander, at night; I’m known for it. That’s why the commander sent me to report.”

Alexander’s face set. He nodded slowly. Nothing was new, after two years in Sogdiana. “Yes, you did well. Stand by outside. Bagoas, I’ll dress again.” He called back the squire. “Fetch the interpreter. And hurry.”

The man came, just out of bed. Alexander said, “The hired soldiers you treated with today; are you really fluent in their language?”

The man, looking scared, assured him that he was; he had gone to their country with the caravans, and bargained for the merchants.

“You are sure they agreed, and understood what they agreed to?”

“Great King, without any doubt.”

“Very good. You can go. Menestas, have General Ptolemy waked, and ask him to see me now.”

He came, looking as always alert, steady and tough as well-cured leather. Alexander said, “The Indian mercenaries are deserting. They must have sworn in to put us off guard. We can’t have them joining with the tribes and falling on the column. If they can’t be trusted they’re a standing danger, held or let go.”

“That’s true. They’re too many. And trained.” He paused, and looked at Alexander. “Now? Tonight?”

“Yes. We’ll take the whole force and do it quickly. Have the men turned out by word of mouth. No trumpets. While that’s doing, I’ll make the dispositions. There’s clear ground all round that hill. We’ve enough men to ring it.”

Ptolemy left. He called the squires to arm him. I heard the deep muttering stir as the camp was roused. The officers came for their orders. It seemed to take no time at all. His army was trained for swiftness, he only had to call for it. Soon the long files of men were stumbling and clanking off into the darkness.

After so much haste, the quiet seemed to last forever. Then the yells began. They seemed eternal, too. They crossed the valley like the sound of the last battle which, we are told, will end the world. But that will be between Light and Dark. Here all was night.

I thought I heard, in the din, shrill screams like women’s. I was right. They had been with the Indians; had picked up the arms of fallen men and were killed in the darkness, fighting.

At last the yells grew less, then were few and broken. Then there was only, here and there, a death-cry. After that, night’s silence.

Two hours before the late winter dawn, the camp sounded with men again. Alexander came back.

The squires unbuckled his blood-slimed armor, and took it out to clean. He looked drawn and grey; lines that had hardly showed, were cut across his forehead.

I took off his tunic; that was blood-soaked too, except where the armor had covered it. He seemed hardly aware of me, so that I looked at him as if myself unseen. Then his eyes turned to mine and knew them.

“It was necessary,” he said.

I had the slaves get a bath ready. That too was necessary; even his face was splashed with blood, his arms and his knees were red with it. When he was in bed, I asked if he was hungry. He said, “No. Just a little wine.” I brought him that, and the night-lamp, and was going away. “Bagoas,” he said, looking up into my face. So I bent and kissed him. He received it like a gift, thanking me with his eyes.

I lay in my tent, in the cold before the dawn, with the fire dying outsid?e, and thought, as I’d been thinking all night, that the interpreter was a Sogdian, and no Sogdian will own there is anything he cannot do. Still, if the Indians had believed they were free to go, they would have gone by day. Did they know they had broken faith, did they know they’d pledged it? Alexander had watched them. They must have looked as if they understood.

I thought of the heap of dead upon the hill, with the wolves and the jackals already tearing them; and I knew that other hands before his had sealed their death: the hand of Philotas; the hands of the dead squires; the hands of all those chiefs and satraps who had taken his right hand, sworn loyalty and been his welcome guests; then murdered his men whom he’d trusted to them, and fallen on his cities.

He had set out on his wars, as I knew while I still heard of him only from his enemies, looking for his own honor in all he met. Had he found it? Darius himself, if he’d lived to accept his mercy-would he have honored his given word unless from fear? I remembered the soldier’s tale of the hospital at Issos. Truly, my lord had not received as he had given. One by one I had seen the wounds fall on his trust. Tonight I had seen the scars.

And yet, I thought, this very grief I feel comes from him alone. Who else ever taught me mercy? While I served Darius, I would have said of this night’s work, Such things are always done.

Yes; if tonight he had wanted all from me, instead of only a kiss to pardon him, I would not have withheld even my heart; no, not with all those dead men’s souls drifting upon the air. It is better to believe in men too rashly, and regret, than believe too meanly. Men could be more than they are, if they would try for it. He has shown them that. How many have tried, because of him? Not only those I have seen; there will be men to come. Those who look in mankind only for their own littleness, and make them believe in that, kill more than he ever will in all his wars.

May he never cease believing, even though he grows angry at wasted trust. He is more weary than he knows, his breath comes fast in the thin air of the heights, and his sleep is broken. Yes, souls of the dead, I would go to him if he asked me.

But he did not ask. He lay alone with his thoughts, and when I came at morning I found him with open eyes.

-21-

WE CAME down towards the rivers, after more victories, the greatest being the capture of the Aornos Rock, said to have baffled even Herakles. Alexander added it to his chain of fortresses which secured the homeward road.

And there was the city of Nysa, pleasant in the spring air of the foothills, where the chief came out to meet him, asking mercy for the place, since, so said his interpreter, Dionysos himself had founded it; for proof, his sacred ivy grew there, alone in all the region. This interpreter was a Greek settler, who knew the right names of everything. I myself, going about the town, saw a shrine with the image of a beautiful youth playing a flute. I pointed him out to a passing Indian, saying, “Dionysos?” He answered, “Krishna”; but doubtless it was the god.

Alexander and the chief got on well together, and agreed on terms. Then, being a lover of marvels all his life, Alexander had a longing to see the god’s sacred hill behind the city. Not to have it overtrampled, he took only the Companions, the squires and me. Truly it was a paradise without art of man; green meadows and green shades, cedars and laurel groves; dark-leaved bushes with clusters of bright flowers like lilies; and the god’s ivy on all the rocks. Indeed the place was divine, for a pure happiness seized us all there. Someone wove Alexander a crown of ivy; soon we were all garlanded and singing, or hailing Dionysos by his sacred cry. A flute piped somewhere and I followed it, but never found the musician. As I walked by a brook that plashed down ferny rocks, I met Ismenios, whom I’d scarcely seen since he left the squires for the Companions. He had grown still handsomer with manhood. He came up smiling, embraced and kissed ?me; then he went singing on his way, and I on mine.

Rejoicing in spring after the harshness of winter war, we went down towards the rivers. The tall shade-trees and banks of flowers we left behind with the hills. Round the Indus is barren sand, scoured at its flood-times. A little above that, stretching a mile over dunes and scrub, Hephaistion had pitched the camp of the Macedonians. Across the river was his bridge.

He rode out to meet Alexander. He had worked well, he and his engineers. The bridge was of pointed boats linked side to side, with a firm road laid across them. It was longer than the river’s width, for that spreads quickly when the snows melt at its source; he had great cables stretched far inland, ready for this. Alexander said he’d done better than Xerxes had with the Hellespont.

Near the place reserved for Alexander’s tent was the camp of Roxane’s household. But, so I heard, after the King had greeted Hephaistion and commended him, his next words were, “How is Oxhead? Did the mountains tire him?”

He rode through the cheering soldiers, and then straight to the stables, hearing the old horse was short in the wind, and had been missing him. Then he held a war council. Sometime that day, he paid his respects in the harem.

Soon we crossed the river and were in real India, whose marvels I have been asked to recount so often that I could do it in my sleep. The first of them was King Omphis, waiting to receive Alexander with all his kingdom’s splendors; his whole army drawn up on the plain, flashing and bright, with its scarlet standards, its painted bedizened elephants, its clashing cymbals and booming gongs.

They were all armed to the teeth. Alexander had seen enough of treachery; he had the trumpets sounded, and came on in order of battle. Luckily, King Omphis had sense, and guessed something was wrong. He rode out in front with a couple of sons and princes; Alexander, always glad once more to believe in men, at once rode out to meet him.

We were all splendidly entertained and banqueted. King Omphis’ chief wife went in her curtained carriage drawn by pure white oxen, to fetch Roxane to a ladies’ feast. The soldiers, laden with pay they’d had no chance to spend for a year, filled the bazaars, bargaining by signs. They needed cloth, their tunics being in tatters. It dismayed them to find no good strong wool for any money. Even the linen was flimsy, made not from flax but from Indian tree-fluff; being either white or gaudy, it caused much discontent. However, they had no lack of women; they could be had there even in the temples.

I looked everywhere for more of the heavy silk I had bought from the caravan at Marakanda; I fancied another suit of it, now we were in India whence it came. But I could not find any at all.

On the city outskirts, I came on one of the Indian marvels; the offspring tree, which lets down from its branches roots that turn into other trees. A phalanx could have camped within its shade; this one tree spread like a wood. Walking up to look, I saw sitting under it groups of men, some quite venerable, naked as they were born.

Even after the Macedonians, this astonished me; even they did not sit about in such a state. Yet these old men seemed full of dignity, and did not vouchsafe me a glance. One, who seemed the chief of them, with an unkempt beard down to his middle, had a ring of pupils, old and young, who listened with admiration; another had for audience a young child and a white-haired ancient; yet another sat cross-legged, still as a block, his eyes cast down to his belly, hardly seeming to breathe. A passing woman laid before him a garland of yellow flowers, showing no shame for his nakedness; nor did he, he did not so much as move his eyes.

These, as I now remembered, must be the naked philosophers, whom Alexander had said he wanted to see. They were not much like Anaxarchos or Kallisthenes.

Sure enough, here was Alexander himself approaching with some friends, escorted by one of King Omphis’ sons. Neither teachers nor pupils rose, nor ind?eed paid any attention. The prince showed no anger, but seemed even to expect it. He called his interpreter, who addressed them, announcing Alexander; I heard his name.

At this, the chief man rose, followed by all the rest, except the cross-legged man still gazing at his belly. They stamped with their feet on the ground, two or three times, and then stood silent.

Alexander said, “Ask them why they did that.”

At the sound of his voice, for the first time the cross-legged man looked up, and fixed his eyes on him.

The leader spoke to the interpreter, who said in Greek, “He asks, lord King, why you have come so far with so much trouble, when wherever you go, nothing of earth is yours but what is under your feet, till you come to die, when you will have a little more, enough to lie in.”