I was nearly running, to keep up and listen. "Italy, now. My sister's husband died making war there, he should have waited for me. They'll have to be brought into order before long, or that western tribe, the Romans, will have it all. Good fighters, I've heard. I should let them keep their own form of government; and I could use their troops to push the empire westward, along north Africa. I long to see the Pillars of Herakles; who knows what may lie beyond?"
There was much more. Sometimes snatches come back to me, and then I lose them; seeing only his face in the cool early light, worn and shining, worn fine like much-used gold; his deep eyes bright as a fire-altar; his tousled hair, faded yet still a boy's; and the strong obedient body forgetful of its wounds, ready to face the tasks of another life-span, pacing as if already on its way.
"So Babylon must be the capital, at the center. The harbor should have slips for a thousand galleys. I shall go straight from here, to get started, and prepare the fleet for Arabia ... Why are you looking sad?"
"Only at leaving Ekbatana. When do we go?"
"Oh, not till the cold begins. We will have our summer." He turned his eyes to the mountains, and would have walked naked to the balcony, if I’d not put a robe on him. "What a place for a festival! We'll have one before we go. It's time I offered something to the immortals."
We had our summer.
On the hills with the hounds crying, racing the clouds; in the rose garden with its lotus pools; in the high hall whose columns were sheathed with gold and silver, as I did my Dance of the River to the sound of flutes; in the great Bedchamber where I had been shamed and now was cherished, each day and night, I used to say to myself, I will miss nothing; I will never let my eye or my ear or my soul or my senses sleep, never forget to know that I am happy. For it will be a long campaign; who knows when we shall come back?
Thus the Wise God gives us prophecy enough, but not too much; as he does to birds, who foresee the winter, but not the night of ice that will drop them from the bough.
Alexander started at once to put in train his plans for the fleet, and the great harbor at Babylon, sending orders ahead. He wanted the north of the Hyrkanian Sea explored, to see how the coast led round to India. He also did much state business Darius would have handed to someone else; it was the custom for the King to take a holiday at Ekbatana. When I told Alexander so, he looked surprised, and said he was taking one; he had never been so idle in his life.
The summer before, we had been in Gedrosia. I would dabble my hand in the lotus pool, and think, I am happy. Let never a moment flow by me unthanked, unkissed. .
One night I said, "Are you happy, Al'skander?"
He said smiling, "Couldn't you tell?"
"Oh, yes, that. I mean here, in Ekbatana."
"Happy?" he said, turning it over. "What is happiness?" He stroked me, so that I should know him grateful. "To have achieved one's longing, yes. But also, when all one's mind and body are stretched to breaking, when one hasn't a thought beyond what to do next moment; one looks back after, and there it was."
"You will never settle down, will you, Al'skander? Not even here."
"Settle down? With all I have to do? I should hope not."
He was already planning the autumn festival, and sent word of it to Greece. Hordes of actors and poets, singers and kitharists would be on the way. He was not inviting athletes. In the old days, he said, they had been all-round men, the heroes of their cities in war; now they had trained themselves into mere machines for winning one event. "A catapult can throw further than any soldier, but it can't do anything else. It's not good for the men to have such people beat them. Nor for the boys to see it."
"The boys" now meant one thing to him. When the veterans left, returning to their wives and leaving, as soldiers do, the women who'd followed them with so much hardship, he had made the children his wards. He would not have them suffer in Macedon as unwanted foreign bastards; they should be reared for what they were, half Persian, half Macedonian, part of the harmony he'd prayed for at the Susa love-feast. Boys old enough to leave their mothers were at school already, and had come up here with the court. There were to be events for them at the games; he went sometimes to watch them training.
He went sometimes, too, along the latticed walk to the Harem. Roxane was like a sharp sauce to him; nauseous if one fills one's plate with it, yet a little now and then will make one crave for the taste again. It did not trouble me.
Summer fled by in the cool sweet hills; the roses rested before their autumn flowering. There came a day of change. His face was smoothed with joy; he could talk about nothing long without, "Hephaistion thinks . . ." or "Hephaistion was saying ..." Somewhere, perhaps up in the mountains riding alone, they had broken the wall, cast themselves into each other's arms, were once again Achilles and Patroklos; they would begin forgetting.
In the wisdom of my hard schooling, I'd done nothing to delay it; no malice could be remembered against me now. I had shut in my silent heart, as always, "Say that you love me best of all." So I kept what I had. He'd no need to forget the nights when he'd turned to me, and known that I understood, I had not defaced the legend.
Now that it was restored, polished and shining, I was aware of a relief. He'd not been himself without it. He had lived so long at stretch, in labors and wounds and sickness and endurance, it did not do for him to have the roots of his life disturbed.
Hephaistion must have known it; he was not a fool. I expect, indeed, in his heart he was still a lover. He'd felt he should be upheld against Eumenes, right or wrong. Just so the Macedonians felt about the Persians. Just so I felt, but had the sense to keep it quiet. Alexander attracted jealousy. He was much beloved; and he never turned love away.
Even in the cool air of Ekbatana, and doing no more than two men's work, he still tired sooner than he'd done before his wound. I was glad this other wound was healing. He'd go more rested to Babylon, where the real work would begin.
Banners went up on gilded poles with sculptured finials. A city of tents arose, for the artists at the festival. The racecourse and the stadium were cleared and leveled. The architects made a theater, with a crane to fly on the gods, and a machine for wheeling in murdered corpses, which Greek poets set such store by. Thettalos, Alexander's favorite actor, a handsome Thessalian in his fifties, was welcomed with open arms and given the best tent. They came pouring in, flute-players, chorus-boys, scene-painters, singers and dancers, rhapsodists, acrobats; high-class courtesans and low-class whores, among them some eunuchs so shameless and bedizened, I was ashamed to see them about. Traders swarmed everywhere, selling food and gewgaws and cloth and spices, and, of course, wine.
The Palace flowed with it. There was a parry every night, for the artists, or for Alexander's friends. Patroklos was back; he gave himself up to gaiety. For nights on end, I didn't get him sober to bed. He was never dead drunk, knowing he couldn't sleep it off next day; he had to be at the contests. His friends, not restrained by duty, often left the hall feet first. One gets used to this, when living among Macedonians.
While I was getting him into his state robe for the contest of choral odes, he said to me, "Hephaistion's not well. He's running a fever."
Once he used never to talk of him to me; now he often would, after all our unspoken secrets. I said I was sorry, and hoped it was nothing much.
"He must have had it on him last night, if he'd only known it. I wish I'd kept down the drinking." He went off, and the trumpets sounded.
Hephaistion was worse next day, and had cramps in his belly. Busy as he was, Alexander spent all his spare time with him. Achilles had always bound Patroklos' wounds. He got him the most noted doctor in Ekbatana, a Greek called Glaukias; to whom he gave advice, as he told me after. But he really had some knowledge; Aristotle had taught it him, and he had kept it up. It was agreed the patient should take no solid food. The priests were told to sacrifice for his healing.
The third day he was lower; weak as a babe, rambling in his talk, and full of fever, so Alexander said. It was the day for the comedies and farces; he did not sit them out, just came from the sickroom in time to give the prizes. When I asked the news at evening, he said, "He's better, I think. Restless and crotchety, a good sign. He's strong, he'll throw it off ... I was sorry to disappoint the artists, but that was necessary."
There was a party that night, but he left it early to see how Hephaistion was; reporting him asleep, and looking easier. Next day, though still with some fever, he was much better. Alexander attended all the contests; his absence had much upset the comedians. In the evening he found Hephaistion sitting up, and asking for food.
"I wish," he said to me later, "I could have sent him something good from supper." He was still fond of this pleasant custom. "But the belly-cramps leave a weakness in the entrails; I saw that often in the Oxos country. I told the doctor to be sure and keep him on slops."
He still kept his bed, much better, but with a little fever at night, when the artists' contest ended, and the games began.
Alexander loved the arts; but the games were his close concern. He presided over everything; always remembered the victor's record in battle and in earlier games, when he gave the crowns. For such things the army loved him. After two or three days of this, came the day for the boys.
I'd played truant from the men's events, finding better pastime in the artists' quarter; but I went to the stadium for the boys' race, to see the breed Alexander was rearing up. He was sure to want to talk about it after.
They looked healthy, having been well fed since he took them over; with features from nearly everywhere, all crossed with Macedonian; no doubt there'd be half-Indians too, when they were old enough. The half-Persians were far the handsomest. I sat just across the track from Alexander. At the march-past, they went off with their faces lit from his smile.
They lined up; the trumpet sounded; they sped from the marks. They wore little breechcloths from respect for Persian modesty, no more. A pretty sight, I was thinking; when I was aware of a stir about the throne. Some messenger was standing by Alexander. He had jumped to his feet. The steps behind had closed up with people; he shoved them aside before they could make way, he nearly stepped on them. He was gone, with those nearest him scrambling after.
I clambered from my place. I must know what it was; I might be needed. Being on the far side of the stadium delayed me. When I reached the Palace, the royal rooms were deserted. It was then I guessed.
I went up the stairs, turned a crooked passage; I had no need to ask the way. I had heard from the stairway the dreadful sound of grief, which lifted the hair on my head.
No one was guarding the door. A knot of men stood outside. I slipped in among them, unnoticed as a household dog. I had never been before in Hephaistion's room. It was handsome, with red wall-hangings and a stand of silver vessels. A smell of sickness hung in the air. He lay on the bed, his face turned up, his mouth fallen open. Someone had closed his eyes. Grasping the body with both fists, lying across it, his mouth pressed to its face, was Alexander. He lifted his head, and gave again that dreadful cry; then buried his head in the dead hair.
After a while Perdikkas, awkward with shame and pity (yes, and already fear), said, "Alexander."
He looked up. I stepped forward, caring for none of them. He had turned to me before, and knew that I understood. His gaze passed over me, empty. It seemed at that moment that for him I had never been. Lost, gone, possessed.
I looked at this strange room, never forgotten, where I stood like a dead thing unmourned, unburied, tossed naked into the night; at the bed with its burden, the wall-hangings of stags and archers, the silver ewers; the bed-table shoved askew, with something on it: an empty wine-jar tumbled on its side, and a platter with the picked carcass of a chicken.
Suddenly Alexander flung himself to his feet and stared at us, as if he might kill any one of us without caring which. "Where is the doctor?"
Ptolemy looked round to ask the servants, but they had long since fled. He said, "He must have gone to the games."
I had withdrawn near the door, and was aware of something behind me. It was the man himself, slower than I had been to take alarm; just come, just aware of what he saw. Alexander sprang across like a beast of prey, fastened on him, and shook him to and fro. "You murderer! Why did you leave him? Why did you let him eat?"
The man, almost past words, stammered that he had seemed to be out of danger, that he had ordered him chicken broth.
Alexander said, "Hang him. Take him away and hang him. Do it now."
Perdikkas looked at Ptolemy. His eyes were on Alexander; without moving them, he nodded. The man was dragged away, under Seleukos' escort. Alexander went back to the bed, stared down at it, and lay where he had been before. The corpse moved, shaken with his sobbing.
More people were at the door, men of rank who'd just had the news. Those within all looked at one another helplessly. Peukestas touched my shoulder, and said softly in Persian, "You speak to him."
I shook my head. Only one thing was wanting to my heart's death, that he should hate me for being the one who was left alive.
So I ran away; through the city, through the stink and litter of the fair, through the street of the women, unseeing till I heard their laughter; into the country, I don't know where. A cold stream I stumbled in waked my mind. I looked back at the city; the sun was sinking, the colored ramparts glowed. Did I run off, I thought, when his flesh was wounded? Now he is stricken in his mind and might hurt me in his madness, now I forsake him, a thing no dog would do.
Dusk was falling. My clothes were torn, my hands bleeding, from thorns I could not recall. Without even thinking to make myself presentable, I went straight back. There was much the same knot about the door. Within, dead silence.
