The night wore on. Darius's eloquence frayed and tired. Tales-tria remained upright, motionless, and still she gave no answer. Dawn broke over the tent, and the birds' shadows could already be seen moving. The Persian scribe was asleep. Darius, exhausted and in despair, blinked his eyes to keep them open.
Suddenly the queen spoke:
"Darius, your destiny as king is at an end. The God of Ice is putting you to the test. You must climb the glacier without adornment, without a horse, without a royal turban. At its summit you will find a priceless treasure."
Darius's face lit up.
"To please you, I shall go in pursuit of it." Talestria smiled.
"This treasure is in your heart, but the road there has been barred. Try to find your way instead of making war. Life or death, you can still choose."
After a brief silence she gave an enigmatic smile and added:
"Dying is living."
Darius thought for a moment. I, Tania, had noted all this down without understanding it. My queen rose to her feet, arranged her crumpled tunic, and left the tent, and I followed behind.
We set off again toward the land of the white cranes with the crimson heads.
Chapter 5
Reinforcements came from Greece, and my Macedonian lieutenants put them in training with the Persian soldiers. I gathered information on the eastern territories and drew up better maps of them. At the head of a new army subjected to Macedonian discipline and reinforced with the battalions of camels and elephants abandoned by Darius, I marched toward eastern Persia.
Suse capitulated without a fight, but a riot erupted inside the city. The leader, a slave who had been driven out of the palace by the eunuchs after Darius's downfall, and who claimed he was the son of the winged god, had incited the poor to rebel. The uprising was swiftly quashed, and Bagoas chained and thrown at my feet. He was a slender young Persian with black hair and green eyes. The hatred, insolence, and religious fervor in those eyes bore right through me.
With that first glance from him, I forgot the order to have him executed and his body displayed for all to see. Kneeling at the foot of the dais, he seemed to know no fear, staring me down and making me uncomfortable. I, Alexander, master of the world, flushed as I ordered that he should be thrown into a dungeon. But I was haunted by his face, I could not sleep, and longed to hold him in my arms, to bring him suffering and pleasure.
I called for Hephaestion the very next morning and talked of my many concerns before tackling the question itself: I told him I would pardon the beautiful Bagoas, leader of the rioters, but that he would be punished with castration and would become my servant. Hephaestion smiled bitterly, understanding my message. He could not make me faithful, and did not know how to protect me from myself by saying no. He had always preferred my pleasure to his own happiness, and now, once again, his suffering would carpet the way to my delight.
Hephaestion had young Bagoas castrated, and was tender and patient with him while he healed, tolerating his insults and forgiving his attempts to murder him. One evening, when we were heading for Persepolis, he brought the youth to my tent, dressed in a eunuch's tunic.
I tore off Bagoas's clothing. Naked and backed into a corner, my captive had only his fierce emerald eyes as defense. His stare was so intense it paralyzed my desire. Instead of raping him, I held out my hand and stroked his face, which was rigid with loathing and pain. Bagoas loved me! That was why he suffered in silence. That was why he continued to appear cold and rebellious when his skin burned and moaned beneath my fingers. To prove my love for him, I put his tunic back on and sent him away.
I waited an eternity for Bagoas to come to me, and I waited another before he admitted he had desired me from our very first meeting. I did everything I could to make him a willing prisoner. He was a proud, tormented creature who showed me all the agonies of carnal passion. Bagoas was a wild bird I had forced into a gilded cage. He sang happily when he felt love, and raged for his lost manhood when hatred washed back over him. He dreamed up a thousand different ways to torture me. He told me Darius had let him mount him and had called him Little Bee. He chirped like a sparrow but refused to talk of his parents or homeland. One moment he would grovel at my feet, begging me to touch him; the next he would disappear for days on end, suffering and weeping over his infirmity. I was subjected to his mood swings and his determination to die, unable to impose my authority. His constant outbursts infuriated me, but as soon as he was away from me I missed his childlike voice, his honeyed skin, the blue shadows under his eyes, and the trace of tears on his cheeks. The Great Alexander capitulated, and Bagoas was given a place in my life: he oversaw my clothes and my meals. He was jealous of anyone close to me and complained that the Macedonians were brutal and the Greeks crude. He swept aside all rivals by intoxicating me with sensual delights of the Orient.
We headed east, then west, then north, then east again. Following the steep roads along which Darius had fled, I took cities by storm. To those that surrendered without resistance I gave their autonomy, setting up a garrison. I had scarcely arrived before I set off again, shield in hand, lance borne aloft. I no longer stopped to rest, there was not time. Towns, villages, fortresses, and fortifications reeled past, their names becoming confused. To simplify matters I called them all Alexandria. Every city that I embraced became my bride, but once married they were immediately abandoned.
The road forked in the mountains, and I always bore left. I sometimes rode for days on end, spurred on by my desire to advance ever faster. Sometimes, as I looked down on the deep valleys and torrential rivers beneath my feet, I thought of that young girl in red waiting for me at the summit of a rock. Where was she? Had I missed her by skirting round the mountain to the left? I smiled bitterly at the thought that she might be on a path I had already trodden, in a land I had already conquered.
Days of exultation alternated with times of despondency and sadness. I would shut myself away in my tent, refusing anyone entry. I wrote letter after letter to Olympias, one minute accusing her of failing to love me, the next praising her as the light of life. My mother was my only link with Macedonia, which grew a little more distant in my thoughts every day.
The road wound on through the endless snow. Only the barbarians' furs could protect us from the biting cold, and my Macedonian generals were forced to wear oriental clothes. In the evenings we lit large campfires, and the successive feast days of all the different tribes called for banquets, drinking, frenetic dancing, sacrifices, and incantations.
One morning Bessos, a Persian general, delivered Darius's body to me, an event that caused jubilation throughout the army but chilled me to the bone. A final victory without a battle is, for Alexander, a defeat. I leaned over my enemy's mutilated body, unable to accept that he was dead. Late in the night, while my soldiers slept, I came back secretly with Bagoas. Darius's former lover confirmed my doubts: this was the body of a double. Darius the coward was renouncing his throne by sending me his body: he wanted to live safely and to deprive me indefinitely of a face-to-face dual. "Dead," he hoped to pacify me with his cities and his lovers. Alive, he would remain a latent threat: he could always reappear, avenge himself, and take back what had belonged to him, what he had temporarily lost.
I pretended to fall into the trap by arranging a royal funeral for his double. I made the most of his "death" to take the pompous title of King of Asia. On the pretext that every Persian province had to submit to Alexander, I set off again along those steep roads to find the real Darius. Tracking a man who no longer existed, I ventured deeper and deeper into the shadows of the Orient.
I climbed every mountain, guided by eagles. They were not afraid of the cold or of solitude, flying high above life. Standing on those peaks, looking down at the world, I smiled to think I could die in the next battle… but Darius would have survived me. He would be the conqueror in a war in which he had been conquered.
***
Bessos, darius's accomplice, was flayed alive, and now no one but Bagoas knew my rival was still alive.
The world fell apart, and the world was reborn. Where there had been a narrow path, a wide road defended by garrisons appeared. In the wake of my army, inns cropped up and prospered, and caravans came and went, selling the West and buying up the East. My troops formed a thread stretching out across the land, coiling back, tumbling down hillsides and undulating along mountain crests. Still we marched on, my legend traveling before me and most tribes choosing to surrender without resistance. My army had grown: the soldiers from the League of Corinth had been joined by Persian recruits and warriors offered by vassal clans. I ordered them to take local wives and sow in their bellies the seeds of future warriors for my empire. I sent for scholars from Greece and Babylon to accompany me in my explorations. They were to study these hitherto unknown lands, their fauna and their peoples, to draw them and write about them. The blacksmiths and armorers worked nonstop. After each battle, traders who specialized in selling weapons gathered up enemy arsenals to supply us with the pots, fabrics, and furs we needed. Tailors and seamstresses traveled in my footsteps to clothe my army. Macedonian cobblers assisted by oriental slaves supplied us with tens of thousands of pairs of sandals and shoes whose soles wore away with the endless marching. I drew up a contract with tomb raiders: they gave me half of their gains and secretly sent the treasure to Ecbatana, where Parmenion managed our supplies.
Despite my glorious title of King of Asia, I slept on a carpet on the bare earth like my soldiers, and like them I took only two meals a day: at dawn we had bread, honey, and dried fruits; late in the afternoon, as the sun skimmed behind the treetops, cooked vegetables, broth, and meat. I allowed myself alcohol and copious meals only on feast days, when all those who followed me-soldiers from every land-were invited to share in these dishes.
The fighting was so easy that the long march became wearying. Veterans who had followed me for eight years grew homesick, and their discontent crept up to the ranks of my generals.
Not daring to cross me publicly, they sent Hephaestion to ask me one simple question: When do we go home?
Maintaining command of such a huge army was weighing on me. Much time was lost in discussions over its administration, and the moment the fighting ceased, intrigues flourished in court once more. Having set out to conquer, I found myself a king with countless menial responsibilities, making me a slave to my own subjects. The accumulated irritations eventually drained my enthusiasm for this unprecedented spree of victories: I was filled with doubt.
When Hephaestion pressed me, I invented a justification:
"Darius is dead, but those faithful to him still resist us as if he were alive. Until I have pacified the Persian territories in their entirety, there could be revolts, towns we have already conquered could turn against us, the Achemenides nobility could betray us. We must flush out those who will not submit and exterminate every last one of them."
I could not admit to him that I missed the exultation of war, that at twenty-eight I was covered in scars and sometimes longed for rest and the sweet pleasures of family life. But a living Darius was a poison dripping stealthily into my thoughts. I could not reveal this truth to my friends, who believed I was already victorious: I am tracking a rival who confronts my strength with his cunning; he and I are competing in a trial of endurance and perseverance. Darius's flight drew me inexorably in his pursuit.
"There is no room for discussion," I told him yet again. "We must advance!"
Hephaestion withdrew sadly. He had long since stepped aside for Bagoas, who had seen him as a rival and done everything to distance him from me. The young eunuch had put on weight, like a Persian cat fattening up the moment it was well treated. Other younger and more beautiful boys had taken his place in my bedchamber. Their bodies might be slender or solid, tall or small, sometimes sculpted by exercise, their eyes might be green, brown, blue, or tawny, alive with passion or intelligence… they were like so many landscapes drawing me onward and appeasing me. But Bagoas was still my favorite because there was no official replacement for him in my heart. Since I had been called Alexander the Great, surrounded by courtesans, eunuchs, and guards, I had lost my appetite for love. My one constancy was Olympias, a diffuse light, an outpost that still answered my missives. I had become impatient and irascible.
Riding the umpteenth stallion called Bucephalus, I saw my abandoned past reeling out behind me. From an illegitimate girl, I had revealed myself a man. From weakness, I had acquired strength. My fear of Philip and the pain of rape had allowed me to build a life on revenge. By putting myself at the forefront of my attacks on every city, I had made myself the king of kings, leading men who were taller, more adept, and stronger than myself. I had lived intensely, wasting nothing of the lessons Aristotle taught me. I had done nothing to disappoint the gods who adopted me.
My courage was now legendary. My strength had been crowned with glory. My determination had taken me to heights forbidden to the sons of men. All these earthly rewards did nothing to gratify me. I was no longer happy.
How could I forget that Hephaestion, Bagoas, and all my friends and lovers created an invisible rampart condemning me to endless sterile solitude? How could I forget that glory was shortlived, that death might take me naked, with no crown and no lands but only regrets?
What was missing, and painfully so, was a wife who could accompany me on my journeys and through my life. What was missing was a child to whom I could pass on the ring of command. The absence of a family weakened me. The conspiracies around me multiplied, all with a view to assassinating a king with no heir.