The Novels of Alexander the Great by Mary Renault
To crown these miseries, she had known that somewhere in the palace was the King’s Bactrian wife, whom he had taken along to India. A stranger to sexual pleasure, Stateira knew no sexual jealousy; but its fiercest torments could hardly have been more wounding than her thoughts of Roxane, Little Star, favorite and confidante. She pictured them lying side by side in tender love-making, intimate talk, amusing gossip, laughter—perhaps at her. As for Bagoas the Persian, she had heard nothing of him at her father’s court, and nothing since. She had been carefully brought up.
The King’s sojourn at Susa had gone by, its great political events dimly heard of and little understood. Then he had gone on his summer progress to Ekbatana. He had called to take leave of her (would he have done even that, except to see Grandmother?) without a word of when he would send for her or where. He had gone, taking the Bactrian woman; and she had cried all night from shame and anger.
But last spring, when he had come to Susa after the mountain war, it had all been different; no ceremony, no crowds. He had been shut up alone with Grandmother, and it almost seemed that she had heard him weeping. In the evening they had all dined together; they were his family, he said. He looked lean, weather-beaten and weary; but he talked, as she had never heard him do before.
At the first sight of Drypetis in her widow’s veil, his face had frozen in a dreadful grief; but he had covered it quickly, and enthralled them with tales of India, its marvels and its customs. Then he spoke of his plans to explore the coast of Arabia, to make a road along north Africa and extend his empire westward. And he had said, “So much to do, so little time. My mother was right; long before now, I should have begotten an heir.”
He had looked at her; and she had known it was she, not the Bactrian, who was the chosen one. She had come to him in a passion of gratitude, which had proved as efficacious as any other ardor.
Soon after he had gone, she knew that she had conceived, and Grandmother had sent him word. It was good that he had summoned her to Babylon. If he was still sick, she would tend him with her own hands. She would make no jealous scenes about the Bactrian. A king was entitled to his concubines; and, as Grandmother had warned her, much trouble could spring from quarrels in the harem.
The soldiers sent to arrest Perdikkas had seen, as he had advised, what had become of them, and did not like it. They went among their comrades, reporting his courage and their discomfiture; and relating, what he himself had first revealed to them, that Meleager had meant to have his head. They had been anxious, restless, volatile. While Meleager was still digesting failure, suddenly they were roaring at his doors like a human sea. The guards on duty abandoned their posts and joined them. In a cold sweat, he saw himself dying, like a boar at bay, in a ring of spears. With the speed of desperation, he made for the royal rooms.
In a cheerful lamplight, Philip was seated at his evening meal, a favorite dish, spiced venison with pumpkin fritters. A jug of lemonade stood by him; he was not reliable if given wine. When Meleager burst in, he expressed annoyance with his eyes, since his mouth was full. Konon, who was waiting at table, looked up sharply. He was wearing his old sword; he had heard the noise.
“Sir,” panted Meleager, “the traitor Perdikkas has repented, and the soldiers want him spared. Please go and tell them you have pardoned him.”
Philip bolted his mouthful to reply indignantly, “I can’t come now. I’m having my dinner.”
Konon took a step forward. Looking Meleager in the eye, he said, “He was taken advantage of.” His hand rested, as if by chance, on his well-polished sword-belt.
Keeping his head, Meleager said, “My good man, the King will be safer on his throne than anywhere else in Babylon. You know that; you were at Assembly. Sir, come at once.” A persuasive argument occurred to him. “Your brother would have done so.”
Philip put down his knife and wiped his mouth. “Is that right, Konon? Would Alexander go?”
Konon’s hand fell to his side. “Yes, sir. Yes, he would go.”
As he was steered to the door, Philip looked back regretfully at his dinner-plate, and wondered why Konon was wiping his eyes.
The army was placated for the time, but far from satisfied. Audiences in the Throne Room were going badly. The envoys’ regrets for the late King’s untimely death grew less formal and more pointed. Meleager felt his power increasingly unstable, and discipline crumbling by the day.
Meantime, the cavalry had taken counsel. Suddenly one morning they were found to have disappeared. The park was empty of everything but horse-droppings. They had made their way through the crumbling outer walls, and deployed to invest the city. Babylon was under siege.
Much of the terrain outside was swampy; it needed no great force to close the solid causeways and the firm open ground. As planned, the refugees were unmolested. At all the gates, with a hubbub of shouting men, wailing children, burbling camels, bleating goats and cackling poultry, the country people who feared war were pouring into the city, and the city people who feared famine were pouring out.
Meleager could have dealt with a foreign enemy. But he knew too well that he could no longer trust his troops for even the briefest contact with their former comrades. They were forgetting the threat of unborn barbarian heirs, and homesick for the familiar discipline of the old triumphant days, the officers who had linked them to Alexander. Less than a month ago, they had been limbs of a well-knit body directed by a fiery spirit. Now each man felt his isolation in a foreign world. Soon they would take revenge for it.
In this extremity, he went to consult Eumenes.
Throughout the turmoil since Alexander’s death, the Secretary had gone quietly about his business. A man of humble origins, discovered and trained by Philip, advanced by Alexander, he had been, and remained, uncommitted in the present strife. He had neither joined the Companions nor denounced them. His work, he said, was to carry on the kingdom’s business. He had helped with replies to the envoys and the embassies, drawing on his records, and had drafted letters in the name of Philip, but without the title of King (it had been added by Meleager). When pressed to take sides, he would only say that he was a Greek, and politics were the concern of the Macedonians.
Meleager found him at his writing-table, dictating to his clerk, who was taking it down on wax.
Next day he bathed again, and sacrificed the appointed offerings, and after the sacrifice remained in constant fever. Yet even so, he sent for the officers, and ordered them to see that everything was ready for the expedition. He bathed again in the evening, and after that became gravely ill …
“Eumenes,” said Meleager, who had been standing ignored in the doorway, “let the dead rest awhile. You are needed by the living.”
“The living need the truth, before rumor pollutes it.” He motioned to his clerk, who folded his tablet and went out. Meleager outlined his dilemma, aware as he went that the Secretary had long since assessed it all, and was waiting impatiently for him to finish. He trailed to a lame conclusion.
Eumenes said without emotion, “My opinion, since you ask it, is that it is not too late to seek a compromise. And it is too late for anything else.”
Meleager had already been driven to this view, but wanted to have it confirmed by someone else, whom he could blame if things went wrong. “I accept your advice. That is, if the men agree.”
Eumenes said drily, “Perhaps the King can persuade them.”
Meleager ignored the double edge. “One man could do it: yourself. Your honor is unquestioned, your experience known. Will you address the Macedonians?”
Eumenes had long since taken his measure. His own sole loyalty was to the house of Philip and Alexander, who had lifted him from obscurity to prestige and power. Had Philip Arridaios been competent, he would have felt divided loyalties; but he knew what the elder Philip had thought about that, and was for the son of Alexander, unborn, unseen. Yet Philip was the son of Philip his benefactor, who had seen fit to acknowledge him; and Eumenes would protect him if he could.
He was well received. A man in his fifties, spare and erect, with the subtler features of the south yet a soldier’s bearing, he said what was needed and no more. He made no attempt to emulate Alexander, whose sense of his audience had been an artist’s gift. Eumenes’ talent was for sounding reasonable, and keeping to the point. Reassured by hearing their confused misgivings reduced to logic, the Assembly accepted his conclusions with relief. Envoys were sent to the camp of Perdikkas, to treat for terms. As they rode out at sunrise from the Ishtar Gate, crowds of anxious Babylonians watched them off.
They were back before noon. Perdikkas would raise the siege and reconcile the armies, as soon as Meleager and his accomplices gave themselves up to justice.
By now, any discipline still left among the troops in Babylon was self-imposed from dim feelings of dignity, depending chiefly on the popularity of any officer concerned. The returning envoys shouted back their message to anyone who stopped them in the street to ask. While Meleager was still reading Perdikkas’ letter, the troops were pouring into the hall of audience, having called their own Assembly.
Eumenes in his business room listened to the rumble of conflicting voices, and the scrape of boot-nails continuing the ruin of the marble floor. A stair in the thickness of the wall had a window which overlooked the hall. He saw that the soldiers had not come armed only with token weapons; despite the heat, they had on their corselets; helmets were worn, not held. A visible division was starting; on one side the men who were for accepting the conditions; on the other, alarmed and angry, those who had committed themselves irretrievably to Meleager. The rest were waiting to have their minds made up for them. This, Eumenes thought, is how civil wars begin. He made his way to the royal rooms.
Meleager was there, standing over Philip and coaching him in a speech. Philip, more aware of his sweating desperation than of anything he said, was fidgeting, not taking in a word. “What,” asked Eumenes bluntly, “are you telling him to say?”
Meleager’s light-blue eyes, always prominent, were now bloodshot too. “To say no, of course.”
In the level voice to which even Alexander in anger had paid attention, Eumenes said, “If he says that, swords will be out before you can take breath. Have you looked in the hall? Look now.”
A big, heavy hand clutched Eumenes’ shoulder. He turned, startled. It had never occurred to him that Philip would be strong.
“I don’t want to say it. I can’t remember it. Tell him I’ve forgotten.”
“Never mind,” said Eumenes quietly. “We will think of something else.”
The royal fanfare made a brief silence in the hall. Philip came forward, Eumenes just behind him.
“Macedonians!” He paused, reminding himself of the words the kind, calm man had taught him. “There is no need for strife. The peacemakers will be the victors here.” He almost turned round for approval; but the kind man had told him not to.
A pleased murmur went round the hall. The King had sounded just like anyone else.
“Do not condemn free citizens …” prompted Eumenes softly.
“Do not condemn free citizens, unless you wish for civil war.” He paused again; Eumenes, screening his lips with his hand, gave him his lines. “Let us try again for reconcilement. Let us send another embassy.” He drew a breath of triumph. Eumenes whispered, “Don’t look round.”
There was no serious opposition. All welcomed a breathing-space, and argued only the ways and means; but as the voices grew louder, they brought back to Philip that dreadful day when he had run away from the hall, and they had given him a robe to make him come back again, and then … Alexander had been lying dead, as if he were carved in marble. Alexander had told him …
He felt at his head, at the gold diadem they always made him wear when he came out here. He took it off, and, holding it out, walked forward.
Behind him, Meleager and Eumenes gave a united gasp of dismay. He extended, confidingly, the crown to the staring soldiers. “Is it because I’m King? It doesn’t matter. I’d sooner not be King. Here, look; you can give it to someone else.”
It was a curious moment. Everyone had been at stretch, till the half-relief of borrowed time. Now this.
Always prone to emotion—a trait which Alexander had used with unfailing skill—the Macedonians were borne on a flood of sentiment. What a decent, good fellow; what a law-abiding King. Living under his brother’s shadow had made him over-modest. No one laughed as he looked about for someone to take the crown. There were reassuring cries of “Long live Philip, Philip for King!”
With happy surprise, Philip resumed his crown. He had got everything right, and the kind man would be pleased with him. He was still beaming when they shepherded him inside.
Perdikkas’ tent was pitched in the shade of a tall palmgrove. He was settled back into surroundings so familiar that he seemed never to have left them; the light bed and folding chair, the armor-stand, the chest (there had been a pile of chests in the days of victorious loot, but that was over), the trestle table.
His brother Alketas and his cousin Leonnatos were with him when the new envoys came. Leonnatos was a long-boned auburn-haired man, who reminded the world of his connections with the royal house by copying Alexander’s leonine haircut, even, said his enemies, reproducing its wave with the tongs. His ambitions, though high, were as yet inchoate; meantime he supported Perdikkas.
The envoys had been sent out while their message was considered. Peace was offered in King Philip’s name, if his claim was recognized, and his deputy, Meleager, was appointed to share the supreme command with Perdikkas.
Leonnatos tossed back his hair; a gesture rarely used by Alexander, which in his pupil had become a mannerism. “Insolence! Do we need to disturb the others?”
Perdikkas glanced up from the letter. “Here,” he said easily, “I see the hand of Eumenes.”
“No doubt,” said Alketas, surprised. “Who else would write it?”
“We will accept. Nothing could be better.”
“What?” said Leonnatos, staring. “You can’t take that brigand into the command!”
“I told you, I see the hand of Eumenes.” Perdikkas stroked the dark stubble on his chin. “He knew what bait would draw the beast from his lair. Yes, let us have him out. Then we shall see.”
The barge on the Tigris was nearing the bend where the ladies must disembark, to join their caravan and proceed by land.
Dusk was falling. Their tent had been pitched on grass, away from the river-damp and the mosquitoes. They stepped ashore as the first torches were kindled about the camp; there was a smell of burnt fat as the lamb for supper sizzled over the fire.
The chief eunuch of the escort, as he handed Stateira off the gangplank, said softly, “Madam. The villagers who came selling fruit are saying that the Great King is dead.”
“He warned me of it,” she answered calmly. “He said there was this rumor among the peasants. It is in his letter; he said we should not heed it.”
Holding up her gown from the rushes heavy with dew, she swept on towards the lamplit tent.
To a spirited music of trumpets and double flutes, the foot-soldiers marched out under the towers of the Ishtar Gate, watched by the relieved Babylonians, to seal their peace with the Companions.
At their head rode Meleager, the King beside him. Philip made a cheerful and seemly figure, wearing the scarlet shoulder-cloak that Alexander had once given him, sitting a well-trained, solid horse that would walk half a length ahead of Konon with the leading-rein. He hummed to himself the tune that the pipes were playing. The air was still fresh with morning. All would be well, everyone was to be friends again. It would be no trouble, now, to go on being King.
The Companions waited on their glossy horses, restive from leisure; their bridles sparkling with gold pendants and silver cheek-rosettes, a fashion set by Alexander for Boukephalas. Dressed in t
They accorded Philip the royal salute. Well coached, he acknowledged it and reached out his arm; Perdikkas bore, with resolute affability, the crushing of his huge paw. But Meleager, with a look offensively familiar, had pushed up after, his own hand ready for the clasp of reconciliation. It was with far greater reluctance that Perdikkas returned that grip. He told himself that Alexander had once had to break bread with the traitor Philotas, biding his time; and if he had balked at it, few of his advance force, including Perdikkas probably, would be alive today. “It was necessary,” was what Alexander had said.
It was settled that the absent Krateros, considering his high rank and royal lineage, should be appointed Philip’s guardian. Antipatros should keep the regency of Macedon. Perdikkas should be Chiliarch of all the Asian conquests, and, if Roxane bore a boy, should be joint guardian with Leonnatos. They were Alexander’s kinsmen, which Meleager could not claim; but since he was to share the high command, the distinction did not trouble him. He had begun already to give them his views on the management of the empire.