Two or three men came out to talk apart. Ptolemy said softly, "We must get him out before it starts to stink, or he'll lose his reason. Maybe for good."
"By force then?" said Perdikkas. "He won't come else. It must be all of us; it's no time to be singled out."
I slipped away. Nothing should get me in there, to see him look from that dead face to mine. I went to his room and waited.
He was quiet when they brought him in, no one was handling him. They all stood round him expressing grief and praising the dead, I daresay the first chance they'd had. His eyes moved from face to face, as if he were at bay among their spears. Suddenly he cried, "Liars! You all hated and envied him, all of you. Go, leave me alone."
They exchanged looks and went. He stood in the state robe he'd worn for the games, white upon purple, all creased from being lain on. A groan burst from him, as if all the wounds he had borne in silence found voice at once. Then he turned and saw me.
I could not read his face. He had no weapon; but his hands were very strong. I went and knelt, and reached for his hand and kissed it.
He stared down at me and said, "You have mourned for him."
It took me a moment to remember my brier-torn clothes, my scratched face and hands. I grasped a tear in my coat, and ripped it top to bottom.
He took me by the hair, and pulled back my face to look in it. I said to him with my eyes, When you come back I will be waiting, if I am alive. If not, it was my destiny. It seemed he would search me forever with his mad eyes, grasping my hair. Then he said, "You fetched him when Oxhead died. You honored him when he saved you from the desert. You never desired his death."
I praised the dead to him, kneeling, grasping his hand. It was my confession, though he did not know it. I had welcomed my rival's faults, hated his virtues. Now I drew them out with pain from where my wishes had buried them, and offered them, his trophies, wet with my blood. He was the victor forever, now.
Alexander's eyes had wandered. He had not heard half I'd said. He let me go, returning to his solitude. Presently he lay down, and covered his face.
All next day he lay there, accepting no consolation.
Though he let me take no care of him, he did not send me out; he seldom knew I was there. The generals acted on their own, canceling the games, getting the banners changed to wreaths of mourning. Seleukos, who had kept the doctor unhanged lest the King should change his mind, dared not ask, and hanged him. The embalmers, summoned in time, did their work upon Hephaistion. There were many Egyptians with the camp.
At night, without really seeing me, he let me give him water. Without his leave, I brought in cushions and slept there. At morning I saw him wake from a brief sleep, and endure remembrance. That day he wept, as if he had only now learned how. It was as if he had been stunned, and began to stir. Once he even thanked me. But his face was strange, and I dared not embrace him.
Next morning he was awake before me. He was standing with a dagger in his hand, hacking off his hair.
For a moment I thought his senses were quite gone, that he might next cut his throat or mine. Greeks in our day only lay one lock on the funeral pyre. Then I remembered Achilles, shearing his hair for Patroklos. So I found the trimming-knife, and said, "Let me do it. I'll do it just as you want."
"No," he said, hacking away. "No, I must do it myself." But he grew impatient with the back, and let me finish it, so that he could be off. Roused from his living death, staring wide awake, he went like a trail of fire.
He asked where was Hephaistion; but the embalmers had him, steeped in niter. He asked if the doctor had been hanged (Seleukos had been prudent there) and commanded the body to be nailed on a cross. He ordered the manes of all army horses to be cropped in mourning. He ordered the gold and the silver to be stripped from the battlements of Ekbatana, and the colors painted over black.
I followed where I could, in case he should lose the sense of where he was, or become a child. I knew that he was mad. But he could tell where and with whom he was. He was obeyed in everything; Glaukias the doctor was black with crows.
I was trailing him, not too near in case he saw me, when he happened on Eumenes, who had seen his swift course too late. His face I couldn't see; but I saw the terror in Eumenes'. He knew he was suspect of wishing Hephaistion dead.
Soon after, a rich catafalque appeared in the square before the Palace, hung with mourning wreaths. A message reached Alexander that friends of the dead had reared it, to dedicate their offerings. He came to see it. Eumenes was first; he dedicated his whole panoply of arms and armor, which were very costly. A whole procession followed him. Everyone came, who'd had a cross word with Hephaistion any time in the last five years.
Alexander watched calmly, like a child who is lied to and not deceived. He spared them not for their pretenses, but for their penitence and their fear.
When they had done, all who had really liked Hephaistion came and made offerings. I was surprised how many there were.
Next day Alexander planned the funeral. It was to be in Babylon, the new empire's center, where his memorial would stand forever. When Darius sued for peace after the fall of Tyre, he'd offered as ransom for his mother and wife and children ten thousand talents. On Hephaistion, Alexander was spending twelve.
It quietened his mind, making these dispositions, choosing an architect for a royal pyre two hundred feet high, planning the funeral games, which were to have three thousand competitors. He was clear and precise in everything.
At bedtime, he would talk to me of Hephaistion as if memory could give him life; what they did as boys, what he'd said of this or that, how he trained his dogs. Yet I felt something unsaid; I felt his eyes when I turned away. I knew; he was thinking that his taking me had grieved Hephaistion; that he should make amends. Quietly he would put me aside, punishing himself not me, making his gift to the dead. He would do it, if once his resolve was set.
My mind ran like the hunted stag that scarcely knows it runs. I said, "It's good that Eumenes and the rest made their dedications. He is at peace with them now. He has forgotten mortal anger. Of all men on earth he is only concerned with you, set as he is now among the immortals."
He stepped away, leaving the towel in my hands, and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, till I feared he'd harm them. I don't know what he saw in that sparkling darkness. Coming out of it, he said, "Yes. Yes. Yes. So it must be, nothing else is possible."
I got him to bed and was going out, when he said, as briskly as he'd planned the games, "I shall send to Ammon's oracle, tomorrow."
I made some soft answer and crept off. What new turn had I given his madness? I had been thinking in Persian, when I spoke of the immortals; the souls of faithful men, safe through the River into Paradise. But Alexander, he had thought in Greek. He would ask the oracle for Hephaistion to be a god.
I tossed on my bed and wept. His resolve had set, he would do it. I thought of the Egyptians, the oldest people, scornful in their long history. They will mock him, I thought; they will mock him. Then I remembered; he is a deity himself already; Ammon acknowledged him. Without Hephaistion, he cannot bear even immortality.
So perfect was my grief, it made my mind white and empty, and I slept.
Next day he chose priests and envoys, and offerings for the god. The embassy left the day after.
After this he was much calmer; his madness healed a little from day to day, though all lived in fear of it. His friends made donations towards the funeral. Eumenes gave the most, no doubt remembering when his tent burned down; he would still walk a mile to avoid crossing Alexander's path.
To throw off sorrow, I rode out to the hills. From there I looked back, and saw the sevenfold walls stripped of their glories, seven rings of black; and I wept again.
28
TIME PASSES, all things pass. He ate, and began to sleep, and to meet his friends. He even gave one or two audiences. His shorn hair began to grow. He would talk to me, sometimes, of daily things. But he did not recall the embassy on its way to Siwah.
Autumn drew to winter. It was past the time when the kings had been used to leave for Babylon. There were embassies from half over the empire and beyond, on their way to meet him there.
The Egyptians had worked their skill upon Hephaistion. He lay in a gilded coffin, on a dais hung with precious cloths, in one of the state rooms. The trophies of arms, the dedications, were set up around him. They had not swaddled and cased and masked him, as they do it here in Egypt. A body they have treated, even unwrapped, will keep the features of life for many ages. Alexander often went to visit him. Once he took me, because I had worthily praised the dead, and lifted the lid for me to see him. He lay upon cloth of gold, in the pungent smell of spices and of niter; he would blaze like a torch, when they came to burn him in Babylon. His face was handsome and stern, the color of darkened ivory. His hands were crossed on his breast; they rested on the shorn locks of Alexander's hair.
Time passed; he could talk to his friends now; and then his generals in their soldiers' wisdom, doing what I could not, brought him the medicine that had power to do him good. Ptolemy came to him, to say that the Kossaians had sent to demand their tribute.
They were a tribe of famous brigands, who lived about the passes between Ekbatana and Babylon. Caravans which took that road would wait till they were big enough to hire a regiment of guards. Every year, it seems, even the kings had been raided, till they'd agreed to pay a sackful of gold darics before the autumn progress, to buy the Kossaians off. This toll was overdue, and they had sent to ask for it.
Alexander's "What?" was almost like old times. "Tribute?" he said. "Let them wait. I'll give them tribute."
"It's very difficult country," said clever Ptolemy, rubbing his chin. "Those forts are eagles' nests. Ochos could never reduce them."
"You and I will, though," said Alexander.
He set out within seven days. Any Kossaians he killed, he said, he would dedicate to Hephaistion, as Achilles had done the Trojans on Patroklos' pyre.
I packed my things without asking. He had given me no more of those hidden looks; he took me for granted, all that I asked just now. I had accepted in my heart that he might never take me to bed again, lest it grieve Hephaistion's spirit. That mourning had become an accustomed thing. I would live, if I could be near him.
In the passes, Alexander split his force between himself and Ptolemy. Up here it was already winter. We were an army camp, as in Great Kaukasos, moving light as the forts fell one by one. Each night he turned in, no longer brooding, but full of the day's campaign. On the seventh day, for the first time he laughed.
Though the Kossaians were robbers and murderers, without whom mankind is better, I had dreaded for his sake some sick-brained, furious slaughter. But he'd been brought to himself. Certainly he killed when battle called for it; perhaps Hephaistion was pleased, if the dead like blood as much as Homer says. But he took prisoners as his custom was, and held the chiefs for bargaining. His mind was as clear as ever. He saw every goat-track to the eagles' nests; his ruses and surprises were an artist's work. Artists are healed by their art.
After one such triumph, he gave supper in his tent to his chief officers. I said beforehand, easily, "Your hair wants trimming, Al'skander," and he let me take off the ragged ends. That night he got rather drunk. He had never done it since the death; it would have been base to drown that grief. Now he did it in victory, and as I helped him to bed my heart was lighter.
We moved on to the next stronghold. He set the siege-lines. The first snow whitened the tops, and the men drew close round the fires. He came in glowing from frost and flame, and greeted the guardian squires as he used to do. When I brought the night-lamp, he reached out and drew me by the hand.
I offered no art that night, or no more than had become my nature; only the tenderness from which pleasure springs of itself like flowers from rain. I had to rub my eyes on the pillow to hide my tears of joy. I saw on his sleeping face the marks of madness and pain and sleeplessness; but they were wounds turning to scars. He lay at peace.
I thought, He has rebuilt the legend in everlasting bronze. He will keep faith with it, if he lives to threescore and ten. Hephaistion's regiment is always to bear his name whoever may command it, just so he will be forever Alexander's lover; no one else will ever hear, "I love you best." But in that shrine will be only the legend dwelling; the man will be hissing blue flames, then dust. Let his place be in Olympos, with the immortals, so long as my place is here.
I stole off softly, before he woke. He was attacking the fort at daybreak; he would not have time to think of it overlong.
The Kossaians had never been hunted in midwinter, in all their wicked history. The last forts, starved out, surrendered in return for the captives' freedom. It had all taken forty days. Alexander garrisoned the strong-points along the pass, pulled down the rest, and the war was over. The caravans poured through. The Royal Household was sent for, to come down to Babylon. Already hard red buds gemmed the bare bushes shedding their snow.
But for his madness, he could have wintered down there, in the mild season, planning the new harbor and the Arabian fleet. Now he'd be there when the Persian kings would have been thinking of Persepolis. All through the Kossaian war, the troops of embassies had been kicking their heels, awaiting him.
They met him when he pitched camp beyond the Tigris. He had made ready for them in state; but no one had been prepared for what really came.
They were not just from the empire, but from most of the known world; from Libya, with a crown of African gold; from Ethiopia, with the teeth of hippo-camps and the tusks of enormous elephants; from Carthage, with lapis and pearls and spices; from Scythia, with Hyperborean amber. Huge blond Kelts came from the northwest, russet Etruscans from Italy; even Iberians from beyond the Pillars. They hailed him as King of Asia; they brought disputes from far beyond his frontiers, begging his wise judgment. They came with dedications, asking oracles, as Greeks go to the greatest shrines of their gods.
