Alexander (Vol. 2) (44 page)

The man was as white as a sheet and struggling to bring his facial muscles into something approaching a smile. ‘But Sire, my Lords, you cannot truly believe that I could ever have . . .’

‘Oh . . . most certainly,’ said the officer, turning to Alexander. ‘The Satrap of Syria, who is on his way now to pledge his allegiance to you, told me all about it.’

‘Bring him in here!’ ordered the King as he entered his tent. ‘He will be judged immediately.’

Alexander sat surrounded by his companions and asked the informer, ‘Is there anything you would like to say before you die?’

Eumolpus lowered his gaze and said nothing. His silence granted him an unexpected dignity, making him somehow very different from the jolly man – always ready with a joke – that they all knew.

‘Do you have nothing to say?’ repeated Eumenes. ‘How could you do that? They had every opportunity to cut us all to pieces. That message from your courier drew us into a blind trap.’

‘You’re a swine!’ swore Leonnatus. ‘If it were up to me, you wouldn’t get away with a quick death. I’d rip out all of your nails first, and then I’d . . .’

Eumolpus lifted his moist eyes to look into his judges’ faces.

‘Well?’ Alexander asked the question one last time.

‘Sire . . .’ began the informer, ‘I have always been a spy. As a child I earned my living spying on unfaithful wives for cuckolded husbands. I know no other trade. And I have always sought money, selling my services for the best offer. However . . .’

‘However?’ Eumenes pressed him, having assumed the role of principal interrogator.

‘However, from the day I first entered King Philip’s, your father’s, service, I have spied for him alone, I swear. And do you know why, my Lord? Because your father was an extraordinary man. Oh, of course he paid me well, but it was not only a question of money. When I used to meet him to make my reports, he would have me sit down like an old friend, he himself would pour something for me to drink, he would ask after my health and that sort of thing . . . do you understand?’

‘Why, have I perhaps not behaved as he did?’ asked Alexander. ‘Have I not always treated you as an old friend rather than a mercenary spy?’

‘That is true,’ said Eumolpus, ‘and I have been loyal to you for this very reason. But I would have been so anyway, if only for the simple fact that you are your father’s son.’

‘Then why did you betray me? There has to be a reason for betraying a friend!’

‘Fear, my Lord. The satrap who is now on his way to pledge loyalty to you, betraying as he does so the loyalty he has expressed previously to the Great King, frightened me to death by looking me in the eyes as he stripped a skewered thrush with his teeth as if to say, ‘This is what’s in store for you – you’ll be torn to pieces like this thrush.’ And then he took me to the window overlooking the courtyard.

‘My messenger was down there, that fine lad I always used to send you – they had skinned him alive, castrated him and tied his balls around his neck.’ Eumolpus’s voice was trembling now, and the watery eyes of the old man were brimming with real tears. ‘They had stripped his skin down to the bone . . . and that’s not the end of it. There was a barbarian there sharpening a stake of acacia wood, smoothing it with pumice stone. He was preparing it for me, if I refused to do what they asked me to do. Have you ever seen them impale a man, my Lord? I have. They put a stake up into his body, but without killing him, and that man simply suffers all that a man can possibly suffer for hours, sometimes for days. I betrayed you because I was afraid, because in my life no one has ever required such an act of courage from me.

‘And now, if you wish, have me killed . . . I deserve it, but please let it be a quick death. I know you have lost many men and that you had to face a bitter battle, but I knew that you would win, I knew it. And what satisfaction would it give you to torture an old man like me? An old man who would never have done you any harm if it had been up to him and who suffered so much in betraying you, much more than you can ever imagine, my boy.’

He said nothing else and sniffed loudly.

Alexander and his companions looked at one another and realized that none of them had the courage to find Eumolpus of Soloi guilty.

‘I should have you killed,’ said the King, ‘but you are right – what is there to gain from it? And what’s more . . .’ Eumolpus lifted his head, ‘. . . what’s more I know that courage is a quality the gods grant to few people. You have not received this gift, but you have others – wit, intelligence, and perhaps even loyalty.’

‘Does this mean I am not going to die?’ asked Eumolpus.

‘No.’

‘No?’ repeated the informer incredulously.

‘No,’ repeated Alexander, unable to prevent his face breaking into a half-smile.

‘And will I be able to work for you once more?’

‘What do you think?’ the King asked his companions.

‘I would give him a chance,’ proposed Ptolemy.

‘Why not?’ Seleucus approved. ‘When it comes down to it, he has always been an excellent spy. And after all, we are the victors now.’

‘So we are all agreed then,’ decided the King. ‘But you really will have to change that damn password, since the enemy have got hold of it.’

‘Oh, yes, of course,’ said Eumolpus, visibly relieved.

‘What password was that exactly?’ asked Seleucus.

‘Sheep’s brains,’ replied Alexander impassively.

‘I would have changed it in any case,’ said Seleucus. ‘It strikes me as the most bizarre password I have heard in my life.’

‘Indeed,’ said Alexander. He gestured to Eumolpus to move closer. ‘Now, tell me the new password.’

The informer whispered in his ear, ‘Skewered thrush.’

Then he bowed and saluted all present most respectfully. ‘I thank you, my Lords, my King, for your kind heart.’ And he left, his legs still slightly unsteady due to the fright he had had.

‘What’s the new password like?’ asked Seleucus as soon as Eumolpus had left.

Alexander shook his head. ‘Crazy.’

T
HE INHABITANTS OF
S
IDON
, who only a few years before had suffered terribly at the hands of the Persian garrison there, were enthusiastic about the arrival of Alexander and his promise to restore their institutions. But there were no survivors now of the reigning dynasty and a new King had to be chosen.

‘Why don’t you take care of it?’ Alexander asked Hephaestion.

‘Me? But I don’t know anyone, I wouldn’t even know where to start looking and then . . .’

‘So we’re agreed then,’ the King cut him short. ‘You will take care of it. I have to negotiate with the other Greek cities along the coast.’

So Hephaestion sought out an interpreter and began wandering around Sidon incognito, looking in the markets, eating in all the taverns and making sure he was invited to all the official dinners in the most prestigious residences. But he could find no one worthy of the role.

‘No success yet?’ Alexander asked him when they met at war councils. And Hephaestion would shake his head.

One day, still accompanied by his interpreter, he passed close by a small dry stone wall that wound its way up towards the far off hills and above which the canopies of all sorts of trees appeared – majestic cedars of Lebanon, cascades of pistachios and sweet clovers, and ancient fig trees spreading their rough, grey branches. He looked through the gate and was astounded at the wonders there before his eyes – fruit trees of every imaginable type, wonderfully composed and pruned bushes, fountains and streams, rocks from which succulent, spiny plants grew, plants he had never seen before in his life.

‘They come from a city in Libya by the name of Lixus,’ explained the interpreter.

Just then a man appeared leading a small donkey pulling a cart full of manure. He began spreading the fertilizer on the plants one by one, carrying out the job most diligently and lovingly.

‘When the uprising against the Persian governor took place, the rebels decided to torch this garden,’ the interpreter recounted, ‘but that man stood before the gate and said that anyone who wished to commit such a crime would have first to dirty their hands with his own blood.’

‘He is the King,’ said Hephaestion.

‘A gardener?’ asked the interpreter in amazement.

‘Yes. A man who is prepared to die to save the plants in a garden that is not even his, what would that man not do to protect his people and to make sure his city grows and thrives?’

And so it was. One day the humble gardener saw a procession of dignitaries arrive, escorted by Alexander’s guard. They led him in full pomp and circumstance to the royal palace for his investiture. The man wore a peaceful, serene smile and his great calloused hands brought Lysippus to the King’s mind. His name was Abdalonymus and he was the best king in living memory.

*

From Sidon the army continued advancing southwards towards Tyre, where there was a grand temple to Melkarth, the Phoenicians’ Hercules. There were two parts to the city – an old quarter on dry land and a new city on an island one stadium from the coast. It had been built recently and was most impressive due to its size and its imposing buildings. It had two fortified harbours and a wall one hundred and fifty feet high, the highest ever constructed by human hands.

‘Let us hope they welcome us as they did at Byblos, Aradus and Sidon,’ said Seleucus. ‘That fortress is impregnable.’

‘What are you thinking of doing?’ Hephaestion asked him, looking at the reflection of the formidable wall in the blue waters of the gulf.

‘Aristander has advised me to offer a sacrifice in the temple of my ancestor Hercules, whom the inhabitants of Tyre call Melkarth,’ replied Alexander. ‘There is our delegation setting off now,’ he added, pointing to a launch that was slowly crossing the narrow channel which separated the city from dry land.

The answer came that afternoon and it infuriated the King.

‘They say that if you wish to make a sacrifice to Hercules, then there is a temple in the old quarter here on the mainland.’

‘I knew it,’ said Hephaestion. ‘That lot are over there in their stone nest on that little island and they think they can ridicule whoever they like.’

‘They cannot ridicule me,’ said Alexander. ‘Get another delegation ready. This time I will be more explicit.’

The new envoys set out the following day with a message which read: ‘If you wish, you may enter into a pact of peace and alliance with Alexander. Otherwise, the King will do battle with you because you are allies of the Persians.’

The response, unfortunately, was equally unequivocal – the members of the delegation were thrown from the heights of the walls, dying horrendously and bloodily on the rocks below. Among them were friends and childhood companions of the King and this gruesome event dragged him down into a state of dark confusion which slowly simmered into the blindest fury. For two days he stayed in his quarters without receiving anyone; only Hephaestion dared enter on the evening of the second day and found him strangely calm.

Alexander was sitting reading by lamplight.

‘Is it Xenophon as usual?’ Hephaestion asked.

‘Xenophon no longer has anything to teach us, and he has not had anything to teach us since we left the Syrian Gates. I am reading Philistus.’

‘Isn’t he a Sicilian writer?’

‘He is the historian of Dionysius of Syracuse who seventy years ago conquered a Phoenician city on an island, just like Tyre – Motya.’

‘And how?’

‘Sit down and look,’ Alexander took a straw and some ink and began sketching out a drawing on a sheet. ‘This is the island and this is the mainland. Dionysius built a causeway to the island and had his siege machines transported along it, then he lined up his newly devised harpoon catapults, and sank many ships by puncturing their hulls and burned all the others by launching fireballs.’

‘You want to build a causeway to Tyre? But that’s a distance of at least two stadia.’

‘Just like Motya. If Dionysius managed it, I can manage it too. Tomorrow we will start demolishing the old city and we will use the material for the causeway. They have to realize that I am not joking.’

Hephaestion gulped, ‘Demolish the old city?’

‘That’s it exactly – demolish the old city and throw it into the sea.’

‘As you wish, Alexander.’

Hephaestion left to pass the orders on to his companions while the King returned to his reading.

The next day he summoned all the engineers and mechanics who were on the expedition. They came with their instruments and with material for drawing and taking notes. Diades of Larissa, a pupil of Phayllus, who had been Philip’s chief engineer, was their leader; he was the man who had built the assault towers which had demolished the walls of Perinthus.

‘My illustrious engineers,’ said the King, ‘this is a battle which cannot be won without you. We will defeat the enemy on your drawing boards rather than on the battlefield. Indeed there will be no battlefield here at Tyre.’

From the window they could see reflections from the water around the high bastions of the city and the engineers understood exactly what the King meant.