The Persian Boy (9 page)

The soldiers had been paid from the Palace treasury. They brought the town trade; but being short of whores, caused much contention over honest women. When I went out riding, I soon learned to skirt the barracks of the Greeks. Their repute for liking boys is not unearned. Though they must have known I served the King, they would whistle and call, without any sense of propriety. However, it was their custom; and I respected their fidelity in disaster.

The last leaves fell from the lean and spiky trees, stripped by the wind even of snow. Drifts closed the roads. Each day passed like yesterday. I shot at a mark for pastime, and practiced my dancing, though it was hard to warm up and save myself from sprains.

The King’s days passed heavily. Oxathres his brother was hardly thirty, unlike him in looks and mind, and would be gone for days on hunting-trips with other young lords. The King would entertain the satraps and nobility by turns to supper; but he would sink into his thoughts, and forget to invite their conversation. He got me to dance, I think, chiefly to relieve him of the need to talk. But the guests, who had few diversions, were gracious and made me gifts.

I thought it would not h?ave been out of place to invite Patron, the Greek commander. But it never entered his head, to have such people indoors.

At last it thawed, and a messenger got through the half-flooded roads; a horse-coper from Susa, who came for the reward. We depended on such people now; they were always well paid, however bad their news was.

Alexander was in Susa. The city, though without the fulsomeness of Babylon, had opened its gates at once. He had taken entire the treasure, hoarded reign after reign; a sum so vast that, when I heard it, I could not believe there were such riches in all the world. Truly, enough to keep the wolf from the chariot.

As winter hardened, closing the roads again, shutting us up together week after week with only the muddy town or the barren hillsides, men grew prickly or dull or sour. The soldiers fell into tribal factions, reviving old feuds from home. Townsmen came up to complain that their wives, or daughters, or sons had been debauched. The King would not be troubled with such trifles; soon all petitioners sought Bessos or Nabarzanes. Yet idleness made him moodier; it fell on one man or another mostly by chance, but everyone was on edge from it. All that befell later, as I believe, was hatched in those long white empty days.

One night he sent for me, the first time in a long while. I saw Boubakes, as he withdrew from the Bedchamber, signal discreet congratulation. But from the first I was ill at ease with myself, uncertain of the King. I remembered the boy before me, packed off for being insipid. So I tried something which had amused him once at Susa. Suddenly he pushed me off, fetched me a great slap on the face, said I was insolent, and ordered me out of his sight.

My hands were shaking so, I could hardly get my clothes on. I stumbled down cold corridors, half blinded with tears of pain, anger and shock. Putting my sleeve to my eyes to wipe them, I ran clean into someone.

The feel of his clothes told me he was a lord. I stammered an apology. He put both hands on my shoulders, and looked at me by the light of the wall-sconce. It was Nabarzanes. I swallowed my weeping in shame. He had a biting turn of mockery when he chose.

“Why, Bagoas,” he said with the greatest gentleness. “What is it? Has someone been ill-using you? That lovely face of yours will be bruised tomorrow.”

He spoke as if to a woman. It was natural; yet, fresh from humiliation, I found it too much to bear. Without even dropping my voice, I said, “He struck me, for nothing. And if he is a man, then I reckon so am I.”

He looked down at me in silence. It sobered me; I had put my life in his hands. Then he said gravely, “I have nothing to say to that.” While I still stood rooted, feeling my words’ enormity, he put his finger-tips to my stinging cheek. “It is forgotten,” he said. “We must all learn to hold our tongues.”

I would have prostrated myself, but he raised me up. “Go to bed, Bagoas. And don’t lose sleep over your future, whatever may have been said. He will forget it, no doubt, tomorrow, or the day after.”

All night I scarcely closed my eyes; but not from fear for myself. He would not betray me. At Susa, I had grown used to the petty court intrigues; to office-seeking, backbiting of rivals, the endless play for favor. Now I knew that I had looked into far deeper places. He had not hidden his contempt; and it was not for me.

When my bruise was gone, the King sent for me to dance and gave me ten gold darics. But it was not the bruise that hung about my memory.

-7-

WITH THE turn of winter, we had good news from the north. The Scythians, those in alliance with Bessos, were to send us ten thousand bowmen, as soon as spring cleared the passes. The Kadousians, who live by the Hyrkanian Sea, had answered the King’s summons with a promise of five thousand foot.

The governor of Persis, Ariobarzanes, also got a message through. He had walled, clean across, the great gorge of the Persian Gates, the pass into Persepolis. It could be held forever; any army that went in would be destroyed? from the heights above, with rocks and boulders. Alexander would, with any luck, be dead with his men before they reached the wall.

I overheard Bessos saying, as he passed me with a friend, “Ah, it’s there we should be, not here.” Happy for him, had some god fulfilled his wish.

It’s a long hard ride from Persis to Ekbatana, with only one spare horse. Before that news even reached us, if we had known it, Alexander was in Persepolis.

He had tried the Persian Gates; soon found them deadly, and withdrew his men. They had thought him gone. But he’d heard from a shepherd, whom he later made rich for life, of some dizzy goat-track, by which, if he did not break his neck, he could outflank the pass. Over this he led his men, through darkness and deep snow. He fell on the Persians from their rear, while the rest of his people forced the pass, now freed of its defenders. Our men were grain between the millstones. Meantime, we rejoiced at Ekbatana.

Days passed; the snow lay crisp, the sky was clear and windless. From the Palace windows I could see, between the orange battlements and the blue, the town lads throwing snowballs.

Long used to being with men, I had scarcely thought how it would be, to be a boy among others. I had just turned sixteen; now I would never know it. It came to me that I had no friends, as those boys down there would understand it. I had only patrons.

Well, I thought, no use lamenting; it won’t put back what the slave-dealer cut away. There is the Light and the Dark, the Magus used to tell us, and all things that live have the power to choose.

So I rode out alone, to see the sevenfold walls with their colors and their metals, shining in the snow. On the hills a new air touched me, a scent of delight breaking through the whiteness. It was the first breath of spring.

The icicles melted from the waterspouts. Brown rusty grass showed through the snow; everyone went out riding. The King called a war council, to plan for when the roads were open and the new troops came. I took out my bow, and shot a fox in a gully. It had a beautiful pelt, with a silver sheen. When I had taken it to a furrier in the town, to have a hat made out of it, I went back to tell Boubakes. Some servant said he was in his room, he had taken the news hard.

From the passage I heard him weeping. Once, I would not have dared go in, but those days were done.

He lay prone on his bed, crying his heart out. I sat down by him and touched his shoulders. He lifted a face all blotched with tears.

“He has burned it. Burned it to the ground. Everything gone, ashes, cinders, dust.” “Burned what?” I asked. He said, “The Palace of Persepolis.”

He sat up and clutched a towel, fresh tears pouring down as soon as he had wiped his face. “Has the King asked for me? I can’t lie here like this.” I said, “Never mind, someone will attend to him.” He went on, gasping and sobbing, about the lotus columns, the beautiful wall-carvings, the hangings, the gilded and coffered ceilings. It all sounded to me pretty much like Susa; but I grieved with him in his loss.

“What a barbarian!” I said. “And a fool, to burn it when it belonged to him.” We had had that news some time.

“He was drunk, they say. You should not ride out so long, just because the King’s in council. He would think it a liberty if he knew; it would do you harm.”

“I am sorry. Here, give me your towel, you need cold water.” I wrung it out for him, then ran down to the guard hall. I wanted to hear the messenger, before he was sick of telling his tale.

Those who had heard were still milling it over; but they had plied him with so much wine that he was now pretty near speechless, and was dozing on a pile of blankets. There was a crowd of Palace people, and some soldiers off duty.

A chamberlain told me, “They were at a feast, all roaring drunk. Some whore from Athens asked him to set the place alight, because Xerxes had burned their temples. Alexander threw the first torch himself.”

“But he was living there!” I said.

“Where else? He sacked ?the city when first he took it.”

This too I had heard. “But why? He never sacked Babylon. Or Susa.” I had thought, to tell the truth, of some houses there I would gladly have seen in flames.

A grizzled soldier, a captain of a hundred, said, “Ah, there you have it. Babylon surrendered. So did Susa. Now in Persepolis, the garrison made a run for it, or started getting what they could out of the Palace for themselves. So no one surrendered, not in form. Well, now; Alexander gave out prize-money to his men at Babylon, and again at Susa. But it’s not the same. Two great cities fallen, and never a chance to loot. No troops will stand that forever.”

His loud voice had roused the messenger. He had stolen two horses from the stables, while the Palace burned, and had enjoyed his importance here, till the wine had quenched him. “No,” he said thickly, “it was those Greeks. The King’s slaves. They got free, they met him on the way, four thousand of them. Nobody knew there were so many, not till they came together.” His voice droned off. The soldier said, “Never mind, I’ll tell you later.”

“He cried over them.” The messenger gave a belch. “One of them told me so; they’re all free now, free and rich. He said he’d send them all home with enough to live on; but they didn’t want to be seen there, not as they are now. They asked for some land they could farm together, being used to the sight of each other. Well, then he was angry like nobody ever saw him, and marched straight up to the city and let loose his men. Just kept the Palace for himself, till he burned that too.”

I remembered Susa, and the Greek slaves of the royal jeweler; their leg-stumps, their branded and noseless faces. Four thousand! Most must have been there since King Ochos’ day. Four thousand! I recalled Boubakes, bewailing the ravaged beauty. I don’t suppose such people had come much in his way; or not more than two or three of them.

“So,” said the soldier, “there’s an end to the New Year festivals. I was posted there once, it was the sight of a lifetime. Well, it’s war. I was with Ochos’ force in Egypt . . .”He frowned to himself. Presently he looked up. “I don’t know how drunk he was. He saved his bonfire, till he was ready to be leaving.”

I understood him. Spring was breaking everywhere. But no soldier expects a eunuch to know anything.

“He’s burned his quarters behind him. And you know where he’ll be coming now? He’ll be coming here.”

-8-

IT WAS a day of late spring rain, with brown torrents in the gullies, when the King ordered the women to be sent north. They were to go through the pass of the Kaspian Gates, to safekeeping in Kadousia.

I helped load them into the wagons. You could see at a glance the favorites; they looked worn out, with blue streaks under their eyes. Even after these farewells, there were figures lingering on the Palace roof, gazing after them.

To the common soldiers it meant nothing, unless it shortened their lords’ tempers. Their own women would trudge behind them, with the sacks that were their households, as soldiers’ women have done since wars began. Being more used than the ladies to shifting for themselves, not a few had scrambled off from Gaugamela.

Alexander had set out for Media. He seemed in no great haste, attending to this and that on his way. We would soon be on the north road, where the Kadousian and Scythian troops would march to meet us. With them, we would await him, and contest his passage to Hyrkania. So it was said. It was said also, though not so loudly, that if he were heard of within a hundred miles, we would be off through the passes ourselves, to Hyrkania and east to Baktria. “When we serve the great, they are our destiny.” I tried to live each day as it came.

On a clear day in early summer we started out. Where the road turned into the hills, I turned as I rode, to see the light of sunrise gleam on the golden battlements. Beautiful city, I thought, I shall never see you again. Had I only known!

As we passed mountain hamlets, I noticed how lean the peasants were, ?and how sullenly they watched us. It was a poor countryside for an army to have lived off. Yet, when the King passed by, they all did reverence. He was godlike to them, set above his servants’ deeds. It has been in the blood of us Persians a thousand years. It was even still in mine, who knew what the god was made of.

We rode through bare open hills, under blue skies. The birds were singing. The cavalry sang as they rode; Baktrians mostly, on their stocky rough-coated mounts. Up here, it was hard to think one would not live forever.

But as we advanced, the singing fell silent. We were nearing the meeting-place appointed with the Scythians. They had sent no forerunners; nor had the Kadousians. Our own scouts had seen no signs of them.

The King retired early. Though the women were gone, he did not send for me. Perhaps what happened at Ekbatana had killed desire; or perhaps it had only happened because desire was waning. If so, I must prepare to be just a Household eunuch, with my little daily duties. Had we been at court, I might already have been allotted them.

If that happens, I thought, I will take a lover. I remembered Oromedon; he had had the sheen on him that, when I looked back, told its tale. I myself had had plenty of offers; discreet, of course, for fear of the King, but I had been let know where I was wanted.