Alexander: Child of a Dream (40 page)

 

Olympias nodded while copious tears ran down her cheeks. And only when the King’s steps had faded into the distance of the palace corridors did she manage to murmur:

 

‘Farewell, Alexandre.’

 

She stayed up all night just to see him one last time from her balcony. He put on his armour by torchlight, fitted his crested helmet, strapped his sword to his side, slipped his arm through the straps of his shield which bore the golden star of Argead. All of this while Bucephalas neighed and stamped impatiently and Peritas barked desperately as he tried to break free of his chain.

 

And Olympias stood there immobile watching her son as he sped off astride his stallion. She waited until the last echo of his gallop disappeared far off, swallowed up by the darkness.

 

49

admiral nearchus gave orders for the royal standard to be raised and the trumpets to sound, and the great quinquereme slipped smoothly through the waves. At the base of the main mast, in the centre of the deck, the gigantic drum of Chaeronaea had been fitted and four men beat the rhythm of the rowing with enormous mallets wrapped in leather. The thumping noise was carried on the wind and reached all the fleet as it followed behind.
Alexander stood at the bow wearing armour covered with silver laminate and on his head was a shining helmet of the same metal, but in the shape of a lion’s head with its jaws wide open. His greaves bore an embossed pattern and he carried a sword with an ivory hilt which had belonged to his father. In his right hand he gripped a spear with an ash-wood shaft and a head of gold; it flashed light at his every movement, like Zeus’s thunderbolt.
The King seemed intent on his dream and he stood there letting the brackish wind and the clear light of the sun caress his face, while all his men, from each of the one hundred and fifty ships of the fleet, kept their gaze firmly on the resplendent figure on the prow of the flagship. He looked like a statue of a god.
But suddenly he heard something and he cupped his hand to his ear. He turned round, worried, as if looking for something. Nearchus came closer. ‘What is it, Sire?’
‘Listen … can’t you hear it as well?’
Nearchus shook his head. ‘I can’t hear anything, Sire.’
‘Yes … listen. It’s like … but it can’t possibly be.’
He came down off the prow and walked along the gunnels
until he heard, clearer now, but increasingly weak, the barking of a dog. He looked back into the foamy waves and saw Peritas swimming desperately, on the verge of going under. He shouted, ‘It’s my dog! It’s Peritas, save him! Save him, by Hercules!’
Three sailors dived in immediately, tied ropes around the animal and hauled him aboard the ship.
He lay almost lifeless on the deck and Alexander, deeply moved, knelt next to him, petting and caressing his faithful dog. There was still a piece of chain around his neck and his paws were bleeding from the long journey.
‘Peritas, Peritas,’ he called, ‘don’t die.’
‘Don’t you worry, Sire,’ reassured an army vet who had hurried to offer assistance. ‘He’ll make it. He’s just half-dead from exhaustion.’
When the sun’s rays had dried and warmed him, Peritas began to show some signs of life and it wasn’t long before he was making himself heard once more. As the dog barked, Nearchus put his hand on the King’s shoulder, ‘Sire … Asia.’
Alexander started and ran to the prow. Ahead loomed the Asian coast, marked by small bays and dotted with villages nestling up in wooded hills and arranged around sunny beaches.
‘We are preparing to land,’ Nearchus added, while the sailors lowered the sail and made the anchor ready.
The ship continued forwards, cutting through the foamy waves with its big bronze rostrum, and Alexander looked intently at the land which was now ever closer, as if the dream he had cherished for so long was about to become reality.
The captain shouted, ‘Ship oars!’
And the rowers raised the dripping oars from the water, letting the craft slide under its own momentum towards the coast. When they were close to, Alexander grasped his spear, took a run up along the deck and let it fly with all his might.
The pointed shaft glided through the air in a wide arc, glinting in the sun like a meteor, then the golden head turned and plummeted straight earthward, gaining speed all the way until suddenly it landed and stuck deep, vibrating, in Asia.
ALEXANDER: THE SANDS OF AMMON
Continuing the epic saga of Alexander the Great, The Sands of Ammon brilliantly describes Alexander’s quest to conquer Asia, the limitless domain ruled by the great King of the Persians.
Journeying over land and sea to the mysterious land of Egypt, Alexander discovers the Oracle of Ammon, which will reveal an amazing truth. One that will change his already amazing life.
Turn the page to read the first chapter …
from the top of the hill Alexander turned towards the beach and beheld a scene that was almost an identical repetition of one that had been played out a thousand years earlier. Hundreds of ships were lined up along the coast, carrying thousands and thousands of soldiers, but the city behind him -Ilium,
heir to ancient Troy -rather
than preparing for years of siege and resistance, was now getting ready to open its gates and welcome him, descendant of Achilles and of Priam.
He saw his companions coming up towards him on horseback and spurred Bucephalus on towards the top. He wanted to be the first to enter the ancient shrine of Athena in Troy and he wanted to do it alone. He dismounted, handed the reins to a servant and crossed the threshold of the temple.
Inside, objects glimmered in the darkness, difficult to make out, draped deep in the half-shadow. Their shape was indefinite and his eyes took some time to become accustomed to the gloom because up to just a moment before they had been coping with the dazzlingly bright sky of the Troad region with the sun at its highest.
The ancient building was full of relics, of weapons displayed in memory of the war described by Homer in his epic of the ten-year siege of the city built by the gods themselves. On each of the time-worn souvenirs was a dedication, an inscription: Paris’s lyre was here, as were Achilles’s weapons and his great shield.
He looked around, his eyes resting on these mementoes which unseen hands had kept shining for the reverence and the
curiosity of the faithful over the centuries. They hung from the columns, from the ceiling beams, from the walls of the cella -but how much of all this was real? How much was simply the product of the priests’ cunning, of their will to exploit it all for their own ends?
At that moment he felt as though the only genuine thing in the confused jumble -more
like the clutter of objects displayed in a market than fitting decor for a sanctuary -was
his own passion for the ancient blind poet, his boundless admiration for the heroes who had been reduced to ashes by time and by the countless events that had taken place between the two shores of the Straits.
He had arrived out of the blue, just as his father Philip had done one day at the temple of Apollo, at Delphi, when no one was expecting him. He heard some light footsteps and hid behind a column near the statue of Athena, a striking image of the goddess carved in stone, painted in various colours and bearing real metal weapons: this primitive simulacrum was sculpted from a single block of dark stone, and her mother-of-pearl eyes stood out starkly from a face darkened by the years and by the smoke of the votive lamps.
A girl wearing a white peplum, her hair gathered into a headdress of the same colour, moved towards the statue. She carried a bucket in one hand and a sponge in the other.
She climbed up on to the pedestal and began wiping the surface of the sculpture, spreading as she did so an intense, penetrating perfume of ‘aloe and wild nard throughout the temple. Alexander moved up to her silently.
‘Who are you?’ he asked.
The girl jumped and the bucket fell from her hand, bouncing once and then rolling over the floor before coming to a halt against a column.
‘Do not be afraid,’ the King reassured her. ‘I am only a pilgrim who seeks to pay homage to the goddess. Who are you? What is your name?’
‘My name is Daunia and I am one of the sacred slaves,’ the young girl, intimidated by Alexander’s appearance, which was certainly not what one would have expected of an ordinary pilgrim. His breastplate and greaves glinted under his cloak and when he moved there came the noise of his chainmail belt clanking against his armour.
‘A sacred slave? I would never have guessed. You have fine features -aristocratic
-and
there is such pride in your eyes.’
‘Perhaps you are more used to seeing the sacred slaves of Aphrodite: they really are slaves, before being sacred, slaves of men’s lust.’
‘And you aren’t?’ asked Alexander as he picked up her bucket from the floor.
‘I am a virgin, like the goddess. Have you never heard of the city of women? That is where I am from.’
She had an unusual accent that the King had never heard before.
‘I had no idea there was such a place as the city of women. Where is it?’
‘In Italy, it bears the name of Locri and its aristocracy is exclusively female. It was founded by a hundred families, all originating from Locris in Greece. They were all widowed and legend has it they formed unions with their slaves.’
‘And why are you here, so far from home?’
‘To atone for a sin.’
‘A sin? But what sin can such a young girl have committed?’
‘Not my sin. A thousand years ago, on the night of the fall of Troy, Ajax Oileus, our national hero, raped Princess Cassandra, daughter of Priam, right here on the pedestal bearing the sacred Palladium, the miraculous image of Athena that had fallen from the heavens. Since then the Locrians have paid for Ajax’s sacrilege with the gift of two maids from their finest aristocracy, both of whom serve for a full year in the goddess’s shrine.’
Alexander shook his head as if unable to believe what he was hearing. He looked around while outside the cobbles surrounding the temple resounded with the noise of horses’ hooves -his
companions had arrived.
Just at that moment, however, a priest entered and immediately realized who the man standing before him was. He bowed respectfully.
‘Welcome, most powerful lord. I am sorry you did not let us know of your arrival -we
would have given you a very different welcome.’ And he nodded to the girl to leave, but Alexander gestured for her to stay.
‘I preferred to arrive this way,’ he said, ‘and this maid has told me such an extraordinary story, something I could never have imagined. I have heard that in this temple there are relics of the Trojan War. Is this true?’
‘It certainly is. And this image you see before you is a Palladium: a likeness of an ancient statue of Athena that fell from the heavens and granted the gift of invincibility to whichever city held it in its possession.’
At that moment Hephaestion, Ptolemy, Perdiccas and Seleucus entered the temple.
‘And where is the original statue?’ asked Hephaestion as he came nearer.
‘Some say that the hero Diomedes carried it off to Argos; others say that Ulysses went to Italy and gave it to the King, Latinus; and then others again maintain that Aeneas placed it in a temple not far from Rome, where it is still housed. However, there are many cities which claim the original simulacrum as their own.’
‘I can well believe it,’ said Seleucus. ‘Such conviction must be a considerable source of courage.’
‘Indeed,’ nodded Ptolemy. ‘Aristotle would say that it is conviction, or the prophecy, which actually generates the event.’
‘But what is it that distinguishes the real Palladium from the other statues?’ asked Alexander.
‘The real simulacrum,’ declared the priest in his most solemn voice, ‘can close its eyes and shake its spear.’
‘That’s nothing special,’ Ptolemy said. ‘Any of our military engineers could build a toy of that kind.’
The priest threw him a disdainful look and even the King shook his head. ‘Is there anything you believe in, Ptolemy?’
‘Yes, of course,’ replied Ptolemy, placing his hand on the hilt of the sword. ‘This.’ And then he placed his other hand on Alexander’s shoulder and said, ‘Together with friendship.’
‘And yet,’ the priest said, ‘the objects you see here have been revered between these walls since time immemorial, and the tumuli along the river have always contained the bones of Achilles, Patroclus and Ajax.’
There came the sound of footsteps Callisthenes
had joined them to visit the famous sanctuary.
‘And what do you make of it all, Callisthenes?’ asked Ptolemy as he walked towards him and put his arm around him. ‘Do you believe that this really is Achilles’s armour? And this, hanging here from that column, is this really Paris’s lyre?’ He brushed the strings and the instrument produced a dull, out-of-tune chord.
Alexander no longer seemed to be listening. He was staring at the young Locrian woman as she now filled the lamps with perfumed oil, studying the perfection of her figure through the transparency of her peplum as a ray of light came through it. He was captivated by the mystery that glowed in her shy, meek eyes.
‘You well know that none of this really matters,’ replied Callisthenes. ‘At Sparta, in the Dioscurian temple, they have an egg on display from which Castor and Pollux, the two twins, brothers of Helen, were supposedly born, but I think it’s the egg of an ostrich, a Libyan bird as tall as a horse. Our sanctuaries are full of relics like this. The thing that matters is what the people want to believe and the people need to believe and need to be able to dream.’ As he spoke he turned towards Alexander.
The King moved towards the great panoply of bronze, adorned with tin and silver, and he gently stroked the shield carved in relief, with the scenes described by Homer and the helmet embellished with a triple crest.
‘And how did this armour come to be here?’ he asked the priest.
‘Ulysses brought it here, filled with remorse for having usurped Ajax’s right to it, and he placed it before the tomb as a votive gift, imploring Ajax to help him return to Ithaca. It was then gathered up and housed in this sanctuary.’
Alexander moved closer to the priest. ‘Do you know who I am?’
‘Yes. You are Alexander, King of Macedon.’
That’s right. And I am directly descended, on my mother’s side, from Pyrrhus, son of Achilles, founder of the dynasty of Epirus, and thus I am heir to Achilles. Therefore this armour is mine, and I want it.’
The priest’s face drained of all colour. ‘But Sire …’
‘What!’ exclaimed Ptolemy with a grin on his face. ‘We’re supposed to believe that this is Paris’s lyre, that these are Achilles’ weapons, made by the god Hephaestus in person, and you don’t believe that our King is a direct descendant of Achilles, son of Peleus?’
‘Oh no …” stammered the priest. ‘It’s simply that these are sacred objects which cannot be …”
‘Nonsense,’ said Perdiccas. ‘You can have other identical weapons made. No one will ever know the difference. Our King needs them, you see, and since they belonged to his ancestor…’ and he opened his arms as if to say, ‘an inheritance is an inheritance.’
‘Have it brought to our camp. It will be displayed before our army like a standard before every battle,’ came Alexander’s orders. ‘And now we must return our
visit is over.’
They left in dribs and drabs, hanging on to look around at the incredible jumble of objects hanging from the columns and the walls.