The Legacy of Grazia dei Rossi (47 page)

“And what of Clitus?”

My moment was up. “Arrian does not approve of Clitus,” I told him, “but he blames what happened on the drink and those types of men who, he says, can always be found at court currying the king’s favor with flattery.”

This observation earned an affirmative shake of the royal head. “Even otherwise gallant veterans can be looking to add a final laurel to their old exploits,” he said. “I could name you one or two.”

But he did not and I continued. “These flatterers went so far as to compare Alexander to the gods, even to Heracles . . . with Alexander’s encouragement.” I had to add that because all three historians make a point of Alexander’s claims to be the child of Zeus.

“And what of Clitus?”

According to Arrian, I told him, Clitus had been aggrieved by Alexander’s change-over to what he saw as the barbaric Persian style, and now under the influence of the wine the veteran warrior could not tolerate disrespect for the deeds of the heroes of old. But then . . . I hesitated.

“Yes?”

Nothing for it. I had to tell it as Arrian told it. “Clitus reminded the king that he had not achieved his great deeds by himself but that they were in great part Macedonian achievements dating from the times of his father. And, heated with wine . . .”

“Go on.” This is what he had been waiting for, I knew.

“What is more” — I might as well tell him the whole terrible story and be done with it — “Clitus held up his shield, waved it in the king’s face and, in front of the whole Macedonian assemblage, began to taunt him.”

A gasp from the Sultan. “Did he curse? Did he shout? What does Arrian say?”

“Arrian says that Clitus challenged the king to take note of the shield he held in his right hand. He reminded the king that it was the very shield that had protected Alexander when he was dumped bareheaded while fording the river. Then Clitus held up his sword hand and announced, ‘This very hand, Alexander, that saved your life at the Granicus.’

The Sultan fell back as if wounded by the words Clitus had hurled at his king. After a moment he raised his eyes to mine, black as tar and cold as ice.

“īskender had to kill the villain, he had no choice. That speech is sedition pure and simple.”

It was a judgment spoken not in the tones of Suleiman the
ghazi
, but in the tones of Suleiman the law-giver.

“Plutarch agrees with you,” I told him. “He calls Clitus an evil genius. Do you wish to hear from Plutarch?”

“No,” he answered. “I have heard enough. The man put a stain on the king’s honor. He had to die.” He lowered his head reverently, not, I think, out of respect for the death of Clitus, but in sympathy for a king who must kill to preserve his honor.

Then, as suddenly as the mood had come upon him, it was over. I was dismissed without thanks — kings give no thanks for services rendered — but with what I took to be a king’s way of gratitude.

“You have already given me much to ponder,” he said. “To such a valuable member of my entourage, I cannot deny the pleasure of the chase. From now on, when we take a day to hunt, I will look forward to your company.”

“And my weapon, sire? Will I be permitted to carry my
gerit
?”

His answer was a brusque question. “How can a man hunt without a weapon?”

“But my father, sire?”

Luckily, he did not take my query amiss. “Ah, yes, your father.”

Perhaps he had forgotten his promise to you that I would not be permitted to carry a weapon. But I doubt it. Whatever the case, he brushed it aside as if the matter had simply slipped his mind.

“I will write to your father to clarify the difference between using a weapon to hunt animals and using it to make war. The doctor is a rational man. He will, of course, understand.”

Of course I agree with him, Papa. I trust that you do, too. The prospect of a royal hunt in the Zagros Mountains is something I never dared to dream of. Certainly it is more than enough reward for the weeks I have spent questioning the point of this venture, ever since Konya. And, truthfully, Papa, I will be happy to leave Persia. Despite the richness of its past, it is now a forlorn place. Wherever you look, your eye falls on piles of trash that mark where houses and barns and chicken coops once stood. There are signs of abandonment in every street. When we arrived, laundry was still hanging on the tree branches by the river. Tahmasp’s men did not even take the time to set proper fires, and many of the buildings are still standing. But with no people in them. Hamedan is like a corpse from which the soul has escaped. This is an aspect of war I was not prepared for. But the Tigris and the Euphrates still beckon.

And something happened tonight that made me hope that my bumbling translations may not have fallen on deaf ears. As I was stepping out through the tent curtain, I was stopped by the sound of the Sultan’s voice. At first I thought he was talking to me, but then I realized he was talking to himself — about Gaugamela. And you know what I heard him say, Papa? Let me tell you his exact words: “The boy had it right!” I heard him say. “After Gaugamela, īskender was king of Asia. If he had been satisfied with that and stopped at Baghdad, none of the bad things would have happened to him.” His words.

Don’t be surprised if this is the last letter you receive from me for some time. The trek ahead takes us over mountains where the courier service between our encampment and the capital does not operate. But there is no cause for you to worry. The Grand Vizier has prepared the way. The passes are clear of Persians. And this is the preferred season in which to cross the Zagros Mountains.

Next stop, Baghdad.

As always, your devoted son,

D.

45

HANIKIYYE

From: Danilo del Medigo at Hanikiyye

To: Judah del Medigo at Topkapi Palace

Date: November 23, 1534

Dear Papa:

By the time you read this, word of our misadventures will have reached the capital via the Sultan’s courier system. But I doubt what is reported by the Grand Vizier’s staff will tell the whole of our calamitous encounter in the mountain pass. Remember, he is the one responsible for the change of route that brought us to this pass — excuse the pun, Papa. So his report will have every reason to discount the effects of his decision.

First, let me assure you that I am writing to you unharmed from the town of Hanikiyye, where we are now camped on the western slopes of the fearsome Zagros. This is the spot we hit when we finally blasted out of the Manisht pass.

Breathe easy, Papa. We were not waylaid and attacked by Persian snipers. In fact, after what I have lived through in the last two days, I would most certainly rather have been menaced from the mountaintops by Persian sharpshooters than by what fell upon us with such pitiless ferocity in the Zagros pass.

Understand, there are two routes from Hamedan through the mountains that divide Persia from Mesopotamia. One is the winter route near the high desert in the east. The other is the easy summer route through the foothills. This being November, well before the onset of winter, we naturally took the easier one, and our journey along the Zagros foothills began uneventfully in mist and drizzle, normal for November in these parts.

On the third day out from Hamedan, the peaks of the Zagros loomed ahead of us like gods guarding the entrance to the pass on the eastern rim of the plain. Huge limestone, dolomite, and sandstone rocks a thousand feet straight up, they seemed closer to heaven than to us. But we were, after all, following the much traveled Silk Road to and from China that had been used for hundreds of years. And when the sun peered out from behind the peaks to welcome us to the land of the caliphs, I think I was not the only one who took it as a good omen as well as a source of warmth.

We moved quickly into the network of gullies that spreads out through the foothills. On both sides, the wind has stripped the ridges bare and blown furrows of snow into the shallow depressions left between the rocky outcroppings. Those patches might have served us as little flags signaling more snow to come, but these mountaintops are snow-capped year-round so the presence of a few loose flakes on the hillside was hardly noticed. Besides, the Grand Vizier had passed along this same route less than a week earlier and sent back a favorable report with only one warning: when we reach the tall mountains, we are to watch out for concealed Persian snipers.

It was afternoon when a breeze began to gust in from the east, but we were too busy setting up camp to pay it any heed. And by the time the tent poles were sunk, the animals safely tethered, and the food supplies distributed, everyone was much too tired to bother about the gusts of wind that, by then, had begun to seem more like blasts. It was an exhausted corps that bedded down behind our canvas walls into a deep sleep, too worn out even to think of weather.

The avalanche announced itself while we slept in a series of lightning strikes, which disrupted our slumber with a crackling that sounded like a giant with huge claws tearing up the sky. Then came a boom, as from a long way off. Then another, closer this time. Then another that sounded like a musket shot.

Now fully awake, we heard chunks of the cornice above us shearing off, breaking, tearing, cracking, the sound earsplitting, and picking up speed as they roared by us tumbling down the bank. You could tell when they were getting close because the ground under us began to shake. No one but the god of thunder himself could have created such a roar. At that moment I was certain I was going to die. Isn’t it odd what comes to your mind at such times? What came into mine was the voice of the Sultan speaking as he had many weeks ago in this very tent while we were encamped at Sivas.

“If I were offered a choice whether to be the god of gunpowder or the god of weather, I would choose weather every time.” That is what he said, Papa. Could he have had a premonition? Knowing your abomination of all forms of soothsaying and augury, I will not pursue this thought.

How long the avalanche lasted, I cannot tell you. I only know it seemed like hours that we lay there in the dark with only the sounds that filtered into the Sultan’s tent to tell us what was happening outside. Each time a piece of the snowbank broke off, there was this aching crack, then the beginnings of a rumble as the slab began to thunder down the mountain, getting bigger and noisier as the ice cake gathered snow and got closer and closer. And there was no way to judge whether it would roar right past your tent or gather you up and bury you alive in the snowpack.

Until that night, Papa, I had never really imagined that I might die. Yet, as we lay there in the path of the monster, aware at every moment that our shelter might be the next to cave in, I was convinced that I would not live to see the sun rise. And here is a strange thing. All I could think was,
Please, God, don’t let me die alone so far from home.

By morning, the wind had subsided, but the silence was somehow even more unearthly than the screams in the night. I do believe that I am not the only member of this party who awoke believing that I had died and gone to heaven. After all, we had been told that death by freezing is painless — like a slow, deep descent into sleep. But, after a bit, we could make out the muffled little cracks that ice makes when it starts to thaw. Then, a faint twitter.
Are there birds in heaven?
I wondered. Then came a shout. Then, a curse. Definitely, this was not heaven. And when we ventured out, what we saw began more and more to resemble hell.

Overnight, great mounds of debris had created hills where none had existed the day before, some man-sized, some large enough to bury several bodies — human and animal. Men drifted through the mist, silent as ghosts. Some managed to find shovels and were clawing away at the snow trying, beyond all reason, to release a comrade, or pulling with their bare hands at the reins of horses encased in snow. Whole regiments had been buried in the snowpack, along with flocks of animals and innumerable carts and wagons full of supplies, arms, and food.

Everywhere, pieces of canvas waved in the wind like the torn banners of a defeated army. Had it not been for the Sultan — his strength, his comfort, his inspiration — most of us, facing the burial of half our army, would simply have bowed to fate, curled up, and given ourselves over to the lure of painless sleep.

What stays in my mind are the small things. I shall never forget coming out of the tent and seeing directly ahead a pure white shape, similar in form to a sarcophagus, its top surface smooth as satin and marred only by what seemed to be a twig growing out of the center. As we approached, the twig began slowly to wave back and forth, and, lo and behold, when one of the pages jumped on top of the mound to examine it, he announced it was a human finger. No one said a word. All simply scattered in every direction in search of a digging implement, and within moments there was a crew burrowing into the snow to release the owner of the finger.

The body appeared as if conjured by a magician — a hand, an arm, an ear, a lock of hair. Pouring sweat, snow flying wildly, we were finally rewarded with a grunt. Whoever it was, was alive.