I was wearing a soldier’s chiton over a naked body. I had been carrying rocks. I imagine that I smelled.
Both women rose to their feet and offered deep curtsies. I returned them – I’m a gentleman, despite being dressed as a slave.
Thais stayed seated. ‘My lover, the taxiarch Ptolemy,’ she said in a matter-of-fact manner.
Both women curtsied again.
Bella brought Eurydike into the tent, and Thais gave her a big hug and a kiss, while Eurydike looked out from the safety of her mother’s embrace at the two women. ‘Ooh!’ she said. ‘Real princesses!’ She had just begun to speak well. She was a little more than two, and she was never shy.
The two women laughed easily, and Barsines reached out for the child, who came to her quickly enough – an amazing thing, if you know children.
‘You are blessed,’ she said, touching our child.
Thais nodded.
Banugul turned to me. ‘You wanted a son?’ she asked.
I suppose that I frowned. I wanted Eurydike. I couldn’t remember a time when I had wanted anything else. ‘No,’ I said.
‘You
And her sister kissed our daughter on the forehead. ‘I never had a child by Memnon,’ she said, with what sounded to me like genuine sadness. ‘You are very brave. Yes?’
Thais shrugged.
Women can be such cats to each other. But these two seemed to be above such stuff. Barsines leaned forward. ‘I was afraid to bear him,’ she said. And then looked confused, because she had said too much. ‘I loved him – too much.’ She looked at the rug on the floor of the tent.
‘Memnon?’ Thais said. And I realised that she had killed this woman’s husband – that Barsines, for all her seductive ways, had loved Memnon – it was graven on her face – and that Thais was just now understanding what every soldier learns – that every corpse you make had a sister and a brother and a wife and some children.
Eurydike had had enough of the strange princesses and came to me, and then raised her head. ‘You smell,’ she said. And giggled, aware that she was the centre of attention, and happy about it.
‘And you will have another child,’ Banugul said. She was openly curious. ‘You, who were reputed to be as beautiful as we?’
Thais laughed aloud. Whatever she had been thinking, the sheer hubris of Banugul’s comment didn’t gall her – it amused her. ‘I don’t think I was ever as honey-golden-beautiful as you,’ she said, coining a fine Greek word like any good poet. ‘But I do hate being pregnant. And yet . . .’ She took Eurydike back. The child glowed, put her arms around Thais, and said ‘Mummmmmy’, in her too-cute-to-live little-girl voice.
Thais rolled her eyes, and all three women laughed.
‘Beauty fades,’ Thais said.
Barsines nodded. ‘I try to make myself ready,’ she said. ‘Because I do love it.’
Banugul laughed. It was a laugh of bitterness.
Thais clutched her child. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said suddenly to Memnon’s wife.
Barsines had tears in her eyes. ‘Whatever for?’ she asked.
The next day I donned a good chiton and military sandals and went to attend the king. He’d received a formal letter from the Great King of Persia. He presented it to us – a plain letter on good papyrus, not a purple parchment with golden ink, as I’d been led to expect by Herodotus, but such things are often exaggerated.
Darius referred to Alexander, not as a fellow king, but in a slighting manner, and asked for the return of his wife and mother and his eldest son, and he offered to cede to Alexander about a third of the empire. It was a curious letter, full of false pomp and oddly arrogant for a man who ‘begged’ for the return of his wife.
We debated the letter after a fine dinner, the way Athenians debate the role of love after a symposium. As you might expect, it broke down into an argument – a nasty argument – between the two factions. The older men, Philip’s men, were for agreeing to its terms, and the younger men were for rejecting them out of hand. Despite the slowness of the siege, every one of us was sure we’d take the place. It would take time. But we were winning. The Persian Empire was beginning to shred itself – satraps were negotiating through Thais’s people, or directly with our king. Athens continued to sit on the fence.
Alexander stayed carefully silent.
When everyone had had too much wine, Parmenio rose to his feet and raised his cup. ‘If I were Alexander, great King of Macedon, I would accept this offer, and be done with war – victorious King of Asia.’ He raised the cup and drank.
Alexander took the cup next and smiled into Parmenio’s eyes. I thought for a moment that he meant the two of them to be reconciled.
He raised the cup. ‘If I were Parmenio,’ he said with careful malice, ‘I would accept.’ He drank the wine, and Parmenio’s face flamed with humiliation.
I helped draft the letter to Darius. A group of us did – Hephaestion, Amyntas, Nearchus, who was down in our camp for a visit.
But Alexander set the tone.
‘Your ancestors invaded Macedonia and the rest of Greece and did us harm although we had not done you any previous injury. I have been appointed commander-in-chief of the Greeks, and it is with the aim of punishing the Persians that I have crossed into Asia, since you are the aggressors. You gave support to the people of Perinthus, who had done my father harm, and Ochus sent a force to Thrace, which was under our rule. My father died at the hand of conspirators instigated by you, as you yourself boasted to everybody in your letters, you killed Arses with the help of Bagoas and gained your throne through unjust means, in defiance of Persian custom and doing wrong to the Persians. You sent unfriendly letters to the Greeks about me, to push them to war against me, and sent money to the Spartans and some other Greeks, which none of the other cities would accept apart from the Spartans. Your envoys corrupted my friends and sought to destroy the peace that I had established among the Greeks.
‘I therefore led an expedition against you, and you started the quarrel. But now I have defeated in battle first your generals and satraps, and now you in person and your army, and by the grace of the gods I control the country. All those who fought on your side and did not die in battle but came over to me, I hold myself responsible for them; they are not on my side under duress but are taking part in the expedition of their own free will. Approach me therefore as the lord of all Asia. If you are afraid of suffering harm at my hands by coming in person, send some of your friends to receive proper assurances. Come to me to ask and receive your mother, your wife, your children and anything else you wish. Whatever you can persuade me to give shall be yours.
‘In future whenever you communicate with me, send to me as King of Asia; do not write to me as an equal, but state your demands to the master of all your possessions. If not, I shall deal with you as a wrongdoer. If you wish to lay claim to the title of king, then stand your ground and fight for it; do not take to flight, as I shall pursue you wherever you may be.’
Humble, really. That was Alexander in full stride.
Outside, the mole got longer, and in his tent, Banugul, or Barsines, or Darius’s wife – perhaps all three at once – lay on his couch.
TWENTY-FOUR
I spent a significant portion of my life at Tyre. None of it is in the Military Journal.
After about six weeks, the Tyrians saw what was going to happen, and they became active in their defence. They flooded the sea in front of the mole with small boats, and shot arrows into the work parties. Cleomenes took an arrow through the bicep, and Marsyas stood over him with a pair of nested wicker baskets and kept him from death, and they were friends again. Thank the gods, they’d been tiresome as enemies, and Thais’s best efforts to reconcile them had failed on the twin rocks of pride and fatigue.
The next day, under fire, men from my taxeis, in full armour and with more men covering them with great
