The King spoke once more: ‘We must move onwards! We have to seek them out, defeat them and establish our authority over all the empire that belonged to the Persians. If we fail to do this then all we have done so far will be wasted, all we have built will collapse, none of us will ever be sure of being able to return home. Men! Have I ever betrayed your trust? Have I ever deceived you? Have I not paid you generously for your labours, and don’t you think I will do even more for you when we bring this enterprise to its conclusion? I know, you are tired, but I also know that you are the best soldiers in the world, you have no equals in terms of bravery and daring. I have no wish to force you, no one knows more than I do just how much you deserve your rest and your recompense. So I will not detain you any longer – those who wish to leave may leave now, with honour and with my gratitude, but you must know that even if you should all abandon me now to return to Macedonia, I will go forward anyway with my Companions until my undertaking is complete, and if necessary . . . I will do it alone!’ He fell silent as he crossed his arms on his chest. There followed another interminable moment of silence.
Alexander’s Companions, those who years before had travelled through the snows of Illyria to join him in his exile and who at that moment stood behind him, took a step forward as though obeying some command, lining up alongside him with their hands on the hilts of their swords, and together with them Philotas and Cleitus the Black also stepped forward.
On seeing this, one of the men of the Vanguard, who had been ready for the off and was standing in the middle of the field, let his bundle of possessions fall at his feet as he unsheathed his sword and beat it against his shield so that it resounded like a thunderclap in the silence. Everyone turned towards him and another soldier replied immediately with a similar noise. A third joined in and then a fourth and soon all the horsemen of the Vanguard, wherever they were, near the gates or the fence or in the middle of the field or busy preparing their baggage, they all unsheathed their swords and one by one started beating them against their shields as they gradually approached the podium until they were standing there before the King, and they continued, incessantly, rhythmically, to make the deafening din of bronze on iron. After them came other soldiers – cavalrymen and infantrymen, assault troops and scouts, Thracians and Agrianians – they all lined up in ranks and joined in with the horsemen of the Vanguard in beating their swords on their shields. Then the standard-bearer of the first battalion lifted the red flag with the Argead star and everyone stopped and stood stock still where he was. The standard-bearer took a step forward, dipped the flag and shouted, ‘Your orders, Sire!’
Alexander, visibly moved, came forwards and lifted his arms to the sky to thank his soldiers for not abandoning him. Ptolemy, who was standing very close by, saw that his eyes were full of tears. He stood there for what seemed like a long time while the entire army shouted his name in a voice of thunder: Alexandre! Alexandre! Alexandre!
Then, flanked by his Companions, the King came down from the podium, crossed the field between two arrays of shining spears, and came to Bucephalas. The great horse stood waiting, stamping impatiently.
30
THE ARMY MOVED on to Zadracarta, the capital of the Hyrcanians, and there Alexander found the court of Darius III, which Bessus had abandoned in his retreat towards the farthest provinces of the empire. At this point the King discharged the Thessalian cavalry, giving the horsemen the possibility of remaining as mercenaries, and then ordered his army to prepare for the long march eastwards. They were to depart as soon as the new contingents they were waiting for arrived from Macedonia, reinforcements which Parmenion was to send on to them as quickly as possible.
The members of Darius’s court were all staying in one particular area of the city under the surveillance of the eunuchs and Alexander gave orders for them all to be put under the protection of his army. Indeed, he requested precise information regarding which members of the royal family were still part of the court.
The master of ceremonies – a man of about sixty, his body completely hairless and his head shaven – came before the King to report.
‘All the King’s concubines are here with their children, as is the Royal Princess Stateira.’
‘Stateira?’
‘Yes, my Lord.’
Alexander recalled the letter in which Darius had offered him dominion over Asia west of the Euphrates and the hand of his daughter in marriage, and he recalled how he had rejected this offer, going against Parmenion’s wishes.
‘I want you to arrange an audience with the Princess for me,’ he said. The eunuch took his leave and in the early afternoon sent a messenger to announce that the Princess would be expecting him after sunset in her apartments in the palace that had belonged to the Satrap of Parthia.
He arrived for the audience dressed in a very plain Greek chiton, white and ankle-length, together with a blue cloak held in place by a gold buckle.
The eunuch was at the door, ‘The Princess is in mourning, my Lord, and begs your pardon for not having been able to adorn herself in a mode befitting your presence, but she is glad to receive your visit because she has heard that you are a man of noble spirit and sentiment.’
‘Does she speak Greek?’
The eunuch nodded, ‘When King Darius offered you her hand in marriage, he had her instructed in your language, but then—’
‘Would you care to have me announced now?’
‘You may enter straight away,’ replied the eunuch. ‘The Princess is expecting you.’
Alexander entered and found himself in a small atrium decorated with floral motifs and festoons of fruit, and there before him was another door, framed in sculpted stone with a lintel supported by two griffins. The door opened and a handmaid showed him in before she herself left, closing the door behind her.
Princess Stateira stood before him, alongside a small reading table on which there were some rolls of papyrus and a bronze statuette representing a horseman of the steppes. She was dressed in an ivory-coloured tunic of coarse wool, tied round her waist with a leather belt and leather slippers decorated with stylish embroidery in blue wool. She wore no jewellery, apart from a small pendant of silver representing the god Ahura Mazda. She was not made up, but her strong and graceful features gave emphasis to her countenance – proud and delicate at one and the same time. She had her father’s dark, deep eyes and marked eyebrows, while her soft, moist and full lips must have come from her mother together with the slender neck, the firm and proud breasts, and the legs, which were certainly long and shapely.
Alexander moved forward until they were face to face, close enough to smell the delicate perfume of cassia and nard, close enough to feel himself being enveloped in the spell that he had now learned to recognize as characteristic of oriental women.
‘Stateira,’ he said, lowering his head. ‘I am deeply sorry for the death of your father, the King, and I have come to tell you . . .’
The young woman returned his bow with a sad smile and extended her hand, which Alexander held for a moment in his own.
‘Would you not care to sit down, my Lord?’ the girl asked, and the Greek language came from her lips with a strange but intensely musical lilt that reminded him very much of Barsine.
He felt his own heartbeat suddenly increase as he sat before her and began talking once again, ‘I wanted to tell you that Darius will receive the highest honours and he will be buried in his tomb in the rock at Persepolis.’
‘I thank you,’ replied the young woman.
‘I have also sworn to capture the assassin, the Satrap Bessus, who has fled toward Bactriana, and I will inflict on him the punishment that Persian law reserves for one who betrays and kills his own King.’
Stateira lowered her head with a light, graceful movement – a sign of approval, but she said nothing. In the meantime one of the handmaids entered with a tray and two cups full of snow and freshly squeezed pomegranate juice, brilliant pink in colour. The Princess handed one cup to her guest
, but she herself did not drink, in observance of the strict laws of mourning, and she watched him in silence – it seemed to her impossible that this young man whose features were so very perfect and whose bearing was so direct and noble could possibly be the inexorable exterminator who had crushed the most powerful armies on earth, the demon who had burned the palace of Persepolis and abandoned the city to looting and pillage. At that moment he seemed to her to be the kind young man who had treated all the Persian women he had taken prisoner with respect, the conqueror who had honoured his opponents and even won the affection of the Queen Mother.
‘How is my grandmother?’ she asked, completely naturally, but then she immediately corrected herself, ‘I mean, the Great Queen Mother.’
‘She is well enough. She is a noble and strong woman who bears fate’s blows with great dignity. And you, Princess, how are you?’
‘I, too, am well enough, my Lord, under the circumstances.’
Alexander caressed her hand once again, ‘You are beautiful, Stateira, and most charming. Your father must have been proud of you.’
Tears came to her eyes, ‘He was, poor Father. He would have been fifty years old today. But thank you for your kind words.’
‘They are sincerely felt words,’ replied Alexander.
Stateira bowed her head, ‘It is strange to hear that from the young man who refused my hand in marriage.’
‘I didn’t know you.’
‘Would that have changed anything?’
‘Perhaps. One glance can change the destiny of a man.’
‘Or a woman,’ she replied, staring at him intensely with her shining, liquid eyes. ‘Why have you come here? Why did you leave your land? Is it not a beautiful land?’
‘Oh yes,’ replied Alexander. ‘It is indeed. There are mountains covered with snow, red in the light of the sunset and silver in the moonlight, there are lakes as pure and clear as the eyes of young maids and meadows covered with flowers and woods of blue spruce.’
‘Don’t you have a mother, a sister? Don’t you think of them?’
‘Every evening. And every time the wind blows towards the west I entrust it with words that come from my heart and I pray that it might carry them to Pella, to the palace where I was born, and to Buthrotum, where my sister lives, like a swallow, in a stone nest high above the sea.’
‘So why this enterprise?’
Alexander hesitated, as though afraid he might be about to reveal his very soul to this young stranger, and he let his gaze wander far away, beyond the walls, out across the landscape of wooded mountains and green pastures. At that moment from the road below there came voices – the sound of men selling wares, and women chattering as they spun wool and then came the gruff call of the Bactrian camels as they walked along in their caravans.
‘It is difficult to answer,’ he said suddenly, as though having just woken up. ‘I have always dreamed of going beyond the horizon that presented itself there before my eyes, of going to the very ends of the earth, to the waves of the Ocean . . .’
‘And then? What will you do when you have conquered the entire world? Do you think you will be happy then? Will you have achieved everything that you really want? Or perhaps you will find yourself in the grip of an even stronger, deeper anxiety – invincible this time?’
‘Perhaps, but I will never know these things until I reach the limits that the gods have assigned to human beings.’
Stateira looked at him in silence and for a moment she had the feeling, on looking into his eyes, that she was gazing into a mysterious, unknown world, into a desert inhabited by demons and ghosts. She felt a sense of vertigo, but together with it came an all-consuming sense of attraction and instinctively she closed her eyes. Alexander kissed her and she felt the caress of his hair over her face and her neck.
When she opened her eyes again, he was no longer there.
On the following day Eumenes, the Secretary General, came to her and asked for her hand in marriage for his King.
31
THE WEDDING TOOK place according to Macedonian tradition – the bridegroom cut a loaf of bread with his sword and offered some to the bride who then ate it together with him. It was a simple and yet evocative rite that Stateira enjoyed. The celebration following the ceremony was also conducted after the Macedonian fashion with great libations, an interminable feast, singing, shows and dancing. Stateira did not take part because she was still in mourning for her father’s death, and she waited for her husband in her bed chamber, a cedar wood pavilion at the top of the palace, equipped with wide drapes in Egyptian linen and illuminated by lamps.
When Alexander came to her the bawdy songs of his soldiers down in the courtyard could still be heard, but as soon as their din faded there came a solitary song through the night, a gentle air that flew like the nightingale’s song above the canopies of the trees all covered in blossom.
‘What’s that?’ the King asked.
Stateira moved towards him dressed in a light Indian gown and put her head on his shoulder, ‘It is one of our love songs – do you know the story of Abrocome and Anthia?’
Alexander put his arm around her waist and pulled her to him, ‘Of course I know it, in Greek. One of our authors described it in a work entitled The Education of Cyrus, but it is beautiful to hear it in Persian, even though I do not understand your language. It is a wonderful story.’
‘It is the story of a love that goes beyond death,’ said Stateira, her voice trembling.
Alexander undid her gown and looked at her there, naked before him, then he lifted her up in his arms as though she were a child and laid her on the bed. He loved her with such intense tenderness, almost as though repaying her for everything that had been taken away from her – her homeland, her father, her carefree youth. She responded with passion and ardour, guided by her instinct as a young, intact woman and by the instruction in the ageless acts of love imparted by her handmaids so that she would not disappoint her husband in their wedding bed.
While he held her in his arms, kissing her breasts, her soft belly and her slender, supple thighs, her moans of pleasure blended with the ancient song of Abrocome and Anthia, the lost lovers, sounding through the fragrant air like the sweetest, most harrowing of hymns.
He took her more than once, consummating their union with potent tenderness. Then he let himself relax by her side while she curled up next to him, caressing his arms and chest until she fell asleep, and the song, too, faded away into the night. The sound of some unknown instrument, smoother and more harmonious than a lyre, lingered in the air and then nothing more.
The first light of the sun stirred Alexander at dawn. He started to get up and was about to call Leptine, as he usually did, when he saw that there before him was a long procession of people – men and women, all neatly lined up and evidently having waited for some time for his awakening.
In the partial awareness of being half awake, Alexander’s first instinct was to reach for his sword, but he stopped himself. He sat up in bed and rested his back against the headboard before asking, more in amazement than in anger, ‘Who are you?’
‘We are your personal servants,’ replied a eunuch, ‘and I am in charge of your morning ceremony.’
Alexander shook Stateira who was still asleep and she too sat up, covering herself with a robe. ‘What do I have to do now?’ he whispered to her.
‘Nothing, My Lord. They will take care of everything. That’s what they’re here for.’
Indeed, immediately afterwards the eunuch signalled to him to follow through to the bath chamber where two handmaids and another semi-naked eunuch washed, massaged and perfumed him, while Stateira was taken care of by her own maids.
Immediately afterwards the young and handsome eunuch approached and dried him gently, lingering diligently on the most sensitive areas of his body. Then it was time for them to dress him; one by one, on the supervising eunuch’s signal, the maids came forward, each of them bearing one item of clothing which they slipped on with
the most expert and delicate of movements – first of all underwear, which Alexander had never used up to that moment, and then the trousers of embroidered byssus. He rejected them with a movement of his hand.
The eunuch shook his head and exchanged puzzled looks with the wardrobe supervisor.
‘I don’t wear trousers,’ explained the King. ‘Give me my chiton.’
‘But, My Lord . . .’ said the wardrobe chief, for whom it seemed absurd that someone might put on underwear without actually putting on the top layer as well.
‘I don’t wear trousers,’ Alexander repeated categorically and, even though the man did not understand Greek, he understood the King’s tone and his gesture perfectly. The maids struggled to stifle their laughter. The eunuch and the wardrobe attendant exchanged looks and then they sent a servant to fetch his Greek chiton and put it on him. At that point, however, they were not sure how to proceed with dressing him. The young and handsome eunuch then decided to take the initiative and had a handmaid give him a kandys, the splendid royal over-gown with its wide pleated sleeves, and handed it to Alexander to put on. He looked at it, then looked at the wardrobe attendant who continued to stare at him in ever greater surprise, and then with some reluctance he put it on. They then brought him the veil and draped it around his forehead and his neck, letting it fall in many rich folds over his shoulders.
Other servants sprayed perfume over him and the young eunuch brought a mirror so that he might look at himself and said to him in Greek, ‘You look wonderful, my Lord.’
Alexander was surprised that this youngster spoke Greek so well and asked him, ‘What is your name?’
‘My name is Bagoas. I was King Darius’s personal servant and I was his favourite. No one knew how to please him as I did. Now I am yours, if you want me,’ and he said these words with a voice so suave and sensual that the King was taken aback. He did not answer as he looked at the image reflected in the sheet of polished silver and felt a sort of ingenuous satisfaction, feeling that the clothes actually suited him. He was about to go to Stateira to be admired, when the corridor suddenly resounded with the clacking of Macedonian studded shoes and immediately afterwards the Black appeared, armed to the teeth and visibly shaken. He began speaking before he even entered the room, ‘Sire, there is important news from—’ But, as soon as he saw Alexander, he stopped and his expression changed until he burst out laughing, ‘By Zeus! But who are all these people? All these women and all these ball-less wonders! And then . . . what on earth are you wearing?’