Empire of Ashes: A Novel of Alexander the Great (29 page)

When they were far enough away, he explained, “During the Ionian revolt against the Great King 150 years ago, the priests surrendered the sanctuary to the Persians. To spare them the fate they deserved from their countrymen, Darius the Great removed the Branchidae from Ionia and allowed them to resettle in Sogdia, far out of reach of retribution. Or so we all thought...”

Alexander, not wishing to alarm his guests, called them back and told them that he would camp near their town for the night. The next day, he said, he would return to them with an announcement.

As the betrayal of the Branchidae was foremost a crime against the people of the city of Miletus, Alexander decided to put the question of punishment to them. That evening, the King called a meeting of all the Milesians in his army. These numbered less than a hundred, but came from all divisions of his force, from cavalry officers to hypaspists to archers to quartermasters and engineers. In truth, it was quite a sight to see all these men, in their widely varying uniforms but common manner of speaking, wrestle with this dilemma. One man, a phalangite, argued for the punishment of the adult males.

“There is only one fate befitting traitors,” he declared, “whether they be father, son, or grandson. What good would any sacred oath, such as the one the Branchidae once took, if they could light out to foreign lands, and avoid all responsibility for their acts? It would be unfortunate for the women and children to lose their fathers, but their ancestors took this risk when they Medized. Any other course would invite Apollo’s displeasure.”

Some cheered this statement. Another man, an engineer, rose to disagree.

“One fate for traitors, of course! But these are not the traitors. They are not even the grandsons of the traitors. They are innocents one hundred and fifty years removed from the sins of another generation. The sons of many cities that Medized are with us today, including a fair number of Thebans! Shall we punish our own comrades too…?”

“What you make to seem absurd is but the work of Fate,” replied the phalangite. “These Branchidae will suffer no more than Croesus himself, when he paid the debt made five generations before by his ancestor, the bodyguard Gyges, when he overthrew the royal house of the Heraclidae for the sake of a faithless woman...”

And the debate went on like this for some time, with a vigor that would have done credit to deliberations in our own Assembly. When the King asked for a voice vote there was no clear majority for mercy or the sword. When the men were asked to raise their hands, the company was split down the middle.

“Damnable indecision!” cried Alexander. “You are all dismissed, then—your King will take the burden on himself.”

What he would do was not clear, as he had shown no bias toward either side in the debate. I did note a crease of agony on his face when the engineer alluded to the descendants of Persian collaborators in the army: Alexander’s predecessor a century and a half earlier—also named Alexander—had sent Xerxes tokens of water and earth, emblems of Macedon’s submission. Perhaps what followed had more to do with expiating this sin than any crime the Branchidae had committed.

The next morning the King went into the village with two guards. Upon arrival his small escort was surrounded by children bearing them garlands to wear. Decorated with blooms of anemone, asphodel, and gorse, the Macedonians were led by little hands to the village elder chosen by the rest of the Branchidae to represent them. When Alexander arrived the old man was on his knees weeding his flowerbeds. His host gave a little cry of surprise when he looked up to see the Lord of Asia at his garden gate.

“Welcome! You were expected, but I see the children found you first. So sorry I didn’t see you come…the hyacinths are such jealous mistresses! My name is Achilles.”

Alexander could not answer at first. He was noticeably rattled by the presence of the children, and the fact that his host had the same name as one of the ancestors he so publicly revered. When he opened his mouth and nothing came out, Achilles gestured back toward his garden.

“Many of these flowers came with us from our old home. The hyacinth is sacred to Apollo. We try to keep the old ways here, but as you must imagine it is difficult in such a strange land!”

“Yes, one would think,” the King answered.

The old man gave the king a short tour of his handiwork. The Macedonians were aloof, stone-faced, until the sweet perfume of the flowers began to work on them. The guards told me that the fragrance reminded them very much of the hills and meadows of their home near Lyncestis, northwest of Pella. Alexander, too, seemed affected by memories of home as he followed the houseproud Achilles. The weight seemed to lift from his shoulders; he began to ask gardening questions.

“You know, in my years I think I’ve done every kind of work there is to do in this village. But nothing gives me as much pleasure as this piece of ground,” said Achilles.

To which the King made an abrupt, bizarre declaration: “If I were not Alexander, I would tend a garden!”

Achilles nodded at this as if it made perfect sense.

“There is a story that the Temple at Didyma is surrounded by great hyacinths three feet tall, and in every color! I have never seen it, so don’t know whether to believe such stories.”

“You should…though the sanctuary is not what it once was...”

The talk of Didyma returned the subject to what Alexander had come to announce. His face hardened, and he turned away from Achilles’ pleasant beds. Yet he could not deliver an indictment with his neck draped with flowers and the naive eyes of the children looking up at him. Instead, he bid Achilles a sudden goodbye, turned on his heel, and rushed away. When he was out of sight of the village, he tore the garlands from his neck and threw them on the ground.

At camp, he disappeared into his tent and was not seen for the rest of the day. By the evening, Peithon was summoned, and left with an impassive expression on his face. I dogged him for information, but the frigid fellow would not divulge what Alexander had ordered him to do.

Before dawn the next morning, and in complete silence, 900 Foot Companions encircled the village of the Branchidae. For the occasion they had left their pikes stacked outside their tents and carried only their short swords.

The killing began that day with no warning—no rebuke, no recitation of the crimes of their father’s fathers. Most of the people were cut down as they fled their houses, and the ones that stayed inside were driven out by fire. How can I describe the screams to you? The cries of men in agony you have all heard, in battle. But have you heard how a mother sounds when her children are murdered before her eyes? It is an inhuman thing, something between a groan and a shriek. All the Macedonians in the village, and those lying idle in the camp a short distance away, heard it for all too long, as the Branchidae, of all ages, were pried, dug, or coaxed from their hiding places. I saw it with my own eyes as I came around to watch from the wooded side of the village. I saw fathers go down fighting against three and four assailants; I saw an entire family, parents and three children, stumble out of their burning house with the flesh melting from their bones. I saw soldiers with tears in their eyes cut soft throats of infants and lay them down in the street, as if to sleep.

You should not suppose this was easy for the men ordered to perform this labor. Hacking and stabbing many human bodies to death takes a steady hand; for a soldier with a family at home, murdering innocents is an implicit betrayal of every rationale used to excuse a life at war. After the deed was done, these Foot Companions, all hardened veterans of the third lochai of Peithon’s battalion, were useless for any further duty. Many of them seemed reduced to shades, with their eyes perpetually fixed on some distant place, as if they somehow might see behind the images that appeared unbidden in their minds. Their comrades avoided the pollution that adhered to them. Alexander took pity on these men, dismissing them from Marakanda with a talent each and a personal send-off from their King. Peithon himself, I should add, showed no ill effect from leading an action that ruined so many of his men.

The bodies—more than two hundred of them—were collected and dumped into a pit in the woods. When that was done, the heavy work began: an entire battalion under Coenus was commanded to come in and remove all evidence of human habitation. This meant more than just leveling the buildings. Everything, including the foundation stones, the fence posts, the street pavers, the roots of the trees in the orchards, was ripped from the ground. The remaining holes were filled in, and disguised with leaves and soil. Hundreds of men spent days smoothing over the plow furrows in the fields. Whether a scrap of lumber or a single olive or a child’s footprint on the ground, nothing was left that betrayed the existence of the Branchidae.

The work included the destruction of several small altars to Apollo and Zeus. This task drew the most resistance, and Perdiccas was forced to apply harsh discipline to see it done. Alexander, for his part, said that his father Zeus had vouchsafed his permission for the act. He said this several weeks later, at Marakanda, when he welcomed others to drink with him again. Still thinking of what I had seen, I sat with him all night, and managed to be the last to leave when the sun came up. But he raised his hand when I opened my mouth to speak.

 
“I know what you want to say, Machon. But before you say anything remember what you told me after Cleitus died: if the King does it, it is no sin. Remember that I warned you.”

It was true that he had warned me. But the principle of the consolation I offered was not to excuse any outrage at all, but only justice. To my discredit, I did not insist on this distinction, but remained silent as he rose from his cushions and dragged himself into the gloom of his apartment. Nor did I raise the issue again during any of the eventful months that followed. Perhaps it was fear that shut my mouth, perhaps ignorance of what he might do. That I kept this silence I accept as my greatest offense. If that was Aeschines’ charge against me here, I would not dispute it.

Let me say this: having watched the bitter work of that day, I have impeached myself in ways none of my enemies will ever know. The nights were most difficult when the camp had settled down for the night. That was when, in my dreams, the wind moaning over some nameless Asian peak became the dismal plaint of the Branchidae mothers. I awoke. Fretting, I threw aside the tentflap to lose myself in chatter with the guards. Once only I longed to put the question to some low-ranking son of an Orestan farmer: should a dangerous child like Alexander be allowed to grow up? Should we all run the risk of letting him look his nature in the face? Or are we all safer keeping him as pliant as a child—or just as well, as a god? I wonder what the guard would have said. Craterus’ description of Arridaeus in the temple of Heracles returned to me:

He is not unhappy. He thinks he is divine.

Unwilling ever to accept defeat, Alexander raised the blighted issue of prostration again. Low-ranking functionaries were simply ordered henceforward to grovel in Alexander’s presence. But prostration would never become the custom unless the superordinate Macedonians and Greeks—the generals and philosophers and diplomats from the mainland cities—also accepted it. Alexander, being anxious to avoid a confrontation like that with Black Cleitus, but also determined to display the kind of evenhandedness that would assure the loyalty of his Persian subjects, looked to his loyal Hephaestion for help with this problem. Together they hatched a plan that would introduce the practice is a more cunning fashion.

On the occasion of a dinner party, Alexander let it be known that those who performed prostration would earn the privilege of receiving a kiss from the King’s mouth. This offer, to receive a special favor for their abasement, was enough to convince the great majority of the Macedonians to succumb at last—Alexander was pleased to watch them all come before him one by one, touch their foreheads to the carpet, and come forward for their kisses, which the King gladly offered on the lips.

All of his Companions came—Leonnatus son of Anteas, Lysimachus son of Agathocles,
 
Perdiccas son of Orontes, Ptolemy son of Lagus. Of the generals, the single exception was Parmenion, who had contrived to be off on some self-appointed business. The Persians who were present, including old Artabazus and Arsaces, the new satrap of Media, were pleased by this show of respect for the traditional custom. All was proceeding well—until it was Callisthenes’s turn to approach the dais.

Taking his opportunity when Alexander was busy talking with Hephaestion, Callisthenes sauntered up for his kiss without prostrating himself. Alexander would have smacked the nephew of Aristotle anyway, until Peithon piped up that Callisthenes had not gone down as everyone else had, and so had not earned a kiss. Alexander turned his head away from the puckered face of the sophist, who merely shrugged and launched into a dangerous peroration, the essence of which was the following: