I sat down, and Hephaestion got up with an ill grace and made room for me.
‘I must get up,’ Alexander said.
I shook my head. ‘Parmenio is no fool. He’ll fight.’
But Alexander shook his head, and his whole body shook. ‘This is the battle!’ he said, with so much force that they must have heard him in the streets of Tarsus. ‘This is the battle. Not for Parmenio! For me!’ He all but writhed.
‘He just keeps saying that,’ Hephaestion complained. ‘I can’t get him to sleep.’
I took his hands. ‘There will be other fights, lord,’ I said. In fact, I had my doubts. The odds were long, and if we won, and Parmenio led us – well, I’ve said before that Alexander’s popularity with the troops was based on godlike demeanour and unbroken victory.
‘My battle!’ he said, and his eyes rolled back in his head.
Parmenio took the Thracians, all the light cavalry and his precious Thessalians and rode east. I should have gone, but Thais convinced me that Parmenio meant to kill Alexander with poison. Or that, rather, it was possible enough to warrant caution. But the king drank only water and ate only bread, and I didn’t see how he was getting poison.
Five days of this and the king was obviously losing weight, and his stomach had swelled in an odd and very bad way. His gut hurt all the time. He didn’t scream, but he lay on his camp bed and made grunting noises when he thought we couldn’t hear him.
He insisted on hearing every report, so that he knew that Darius was marching towards us by easy stages, a confident commander eager for battle, and that Parmenio had seized Issus.
There are only two passes over the mountains on to the plains of Cilicia from the headwaters of the Euphrates – the way the Great King was marching. To the north, there are the Amanic Gates, a good pass even for a large army and to the south, there is the pass of the Syrian Gates. Parmenio put scouting forces into both passes and then lay in wait at the Pinnacle of Jonah to see what Darius would do.
The news that Darius had a pontoon bridge over the Euphrates drove the king into a fever. He raged at his doctors, and none of them could agree what was wrong with him or how to fix it. And as more and more men suspected poison, the Greek doctors grew more and more afraid to take any action.
When Darius was estimated at five days’ march away, Parmenio came back for the army. He had the Great King where he wanted him, and he was ready to set his battlefield. He gathered all of us in the command tent, and laid out his plans of march. Like most of his plans, it was a simple one.
He was going to take the army to the Pinnacle of Jonah, with tripwire forces in both passes, and wherever the Great King went, Parmenio was going to meet him – in the pass where his superior numbers would be no match for our superior infantry.
I raised my hand. ‘Why would he fight us under those conditions?’ I asked.
‘Why does your foreigner do anything? Pride, foolish pride, young Ptolemy.’ Parmenio nodded. ‘Anyone else?’
Then he sent all the cavalry commanders away – except his sons. He kept Craterus and Philotas and Nicanor and Perdiccas, because this was to be an infantry fight.
I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the secret meeting, and I didn’t like the notion that Darius was a fool and would dance to our tune.
I went to the king’s tent, and found the king’s own physician, Philip of Arcarnia.
‘I won’t,’ he insisted as I entered the tent.
Alexander, remember, was in love with medicine. He’d studied it extensively under Aristotle, and if it had been one of us on that bed, he’d have been ordering concoctions by the cup.
Philip was standing with his arms crossed. Cleitus looked as if he’d been weeping, and Hephaestion had his jaw set.
I looked around.
‘I am your king. Do it.’ Alexander’s voice was so weak it barely registered.
Cleitus looked at me. ‘He’s ordered Philip to make him a powerful emetic. Kill or cure, he says.’
Alexander turned his head in my direction. I didn’t think he could see me. That’s how far gone he was.
‘Darius is five days away,’ he said, as clear as the sound of distant swordplay. ‘Parmenio will fail. I will not. This is my battle, and the Lord of Contagion will not keep me from it.’
Philip shook his head. ‘This is powerful, dangerous medicine,’ he said. ‘You will probably die.’
‘But if there’s something evil caught in my bowel, this will move it. Yes?’ Alexander said.
‘If you survive the experience. Yes.’ Philip sounded wary.
Alexander nodded. ‘This is my order. Do it.’
Philip looked at Hephaestion.
Hephaestion bit his lip and looked at me. But before I could say anything, he nodded. ‘It is what he wants,’ Hephaestion said.
He could be a nuisance, and a drama queen, our Hephaestion, and he was at best an average cavalry commander, but he made the right call that night.
Philip bowed. ‘You all heard him,’ he said.
The physicians were terrified, you see, because Darius had offered a fantastic reward – ten thousand talents of gold – for Alexander’s death. This is the same Darius who had tried to bribe Athens for three hundred talents, not three years earlier. Our price had increased.
Even old veterans in the pezhetaeroi openly joked about what they could do with ten thousand talents of gold.
It was such a staggering sum that it made me look at every man as a potential regicide, and I watched every flask of water, every pitcher of wine, every loaf of bread. I took samples from every one, as well. Thais wrote the labels for me.
I fed things to stray dogs.
The evening passed, and Parmenio came to visit the king.
‘Tell him I do not wish to see him,’ Alexander whispered, and Parmenio went away, but Hephaestion returned with a note.
‘Open it!’ Alexander urged me.
I still have it, right here, in my copy of the accurate journal. There’s the original, in the old man’s handwriting.
‘We understand you have urged Philip to make you a purge – it is poison. He has been bribed by the Great King. We beg you to throw out his medicine and order the false physician’s death.’
Alexander blinked a few times.
‘Damn,’ Hephaestion said.
‘I don’t believe it,’ Cleitus said.
‘Take no action,’ I said, and fled the tent. I went straight to Thais, who was writing in her tent, and gave her the note.
She took it, read it and then put it down with a sigh. She looked away from me.
‘Do not put this burden on me,’ she said.
‘So Parmenio is the traitor,’ I said.
‘You are far too intelligent for your face, Farm Boy,’ she said, and touched my hand. ‘That is why they always underestimate you. Yes. To me, this note merely proves that Parmenio poisoned him in the first place, and now fears that the king’s superhuman constitution, aided by some medicine, might yet triumph.’
I kissed her, and ran back to Alexander’s tent.
He was quite calm. I handed him the note, and he gave a slight smile. ‘What does your hetaera say?’ he asked.
‘She says that Parmenio is wrong,’ I answered.
Alexander took a deep breath, and released it slowly. ‘
I leaned over the king. ‘I think that right now, today, in the face of the enemy, it means nothing,’ I said.
Alexander gave a slow nod.
Philip came in with a horn cup.
