Virtues of War (18 page)

I turn coldly to Hephaestion. “Is this what you brought me out here for?”

I start back to the tent. My friend catches my arm. He begs me not to harden my heart to our comrades. Can't I see how much they love me?

I glance from face to face; grizzled sergeants, private soldiers, senior officers. Never have I beheld expressions of such abjection. Men are weeping. I am moved to tears myself, which I contain only by supreme effort of will. I am still furious at my countrymen. I will not let them off the hook.

At last, Socrates Redbeard comes forward—brow and limbs bound in bandages—he who, of all the army, has borne the sternest use and conducted himself with the loftiest integrity.

“Have we not been true to you, Alexander? Have we not bled for you, and died for you? Have we failed you ever, or served you with anything less than all our hearts?”

I can no longer contain my tears.

“What more do you want of us?” Redbeard's voice cracks with emotion.

“I want you to be . . . magnificent.”

A sigh breaks from the army entire.

“You want us to be you,” Redbeard cries.

“Yes!”

“But we cannot! We are only men!” And their misery ascends to yet more excruciating apogees.

All my fury has fled.

“Can you believe I am angry with you, Socrates? Or with you, my friends?”

I can never forgive myself for causing the mutilation of our sick and wounded. For letting Darius escape, so that we must pursue and fight him again. For rendering our triumph imperfect.

“My rage is at myself alone. I have failed you. . . .”

“No!” the army cries. “Never!”

Redbeard steps toward me. I open my arms. A sound goes up from the host, which is part moan and part cry of joy. The men sweep round me in a colossal press; we sob, together, as if our hearts would break. Not a fellow, it seems, will tear himself away until his hand has touched mine and he knows he has been received again within his king's graces.

Nine months later, in Egypt, I am hailed as Horus, divine son of Ra and Ammon. Rapturous throngs line the thoroughfares; I reign as Pharaoh and Defender of Isis and Osiris. But I am not the same man I was before this clash along the Pinarus.

The commander-at-arms manipulates the ungovernable and the unpredictable. In battle, he directs the unknowable amid the unintelligible. This has always been clear to me. But it was not until the mutilation of our comrades at Issus, not until the flight of Darius and the riot of our army, not till then that I reckoned truly how little dominion even he wields, who calls himself victor and conqueror.

B
ook
S
ix

P
ATIENCE

S
eventeen

THE SEA AND THE STORM

T
HIS DAY I HAVE MET AND SPOKEN
for the first time with Porus, our rival across this river of India.

You watched from shore, Itanes, with the army. The delegations met on Porus's royal barge, at midchannel. This was his idea, as was the council itself—in response, I imagined, to the rapid progress of our work of diverting the river, and, additionally, the arrival of nine hundred of our transport vessels, carted overland in sections from the Indus. I welcomed this invitation to riverborne parley. The air would be cooler on the water, and I admired the spectacle of it, although the dignity of the expedition suffered a bit of a drubbing, as you saw, when our ferry snapped a line halfway across and we went spooling downriver like the cat that fell into the vat. The craft dispatched to our rescue were manned by Indian boatmen, all over seventy years of age, honored for their seniority, so that our deputies, myself included, had to strip naked and plunge into the current to retrieve the line, then haul in, hand over hand, Macedonians at one end, Indians at the other. Both parties were drenched to the skin by the time they gained the barge, where they were welcomed with much good humor (and dry again in minutes, with the heat of the country, as were our garments spread over the rails), and, as all had been shorn of excessive dignity along with our clothes, the conference seemed off to an auspicious start.

Porus is a splendid-looking fellow, a foot taller than I. His arms are as big as my calves. His hair is jet, bound in a spotless linen tiara. It has never been cut. His skin is so black, it's blue, and his teeth, inset with gold and diamonds, dazzle when he smiles, which he does often, unlike any other potentate I have met. His tunic is bright green and yellow; he carries not a scepter but a parasol, which the Indians call a
chuttah
.

Porus is not a name, it seems, but a title, comparable to Raj or King. His real name is Amritatma, which means “boundless soul.” He laughs like a lion and rises from his chair like an elephant. It is impossible not to like the fellow.

His gift to me is a teak box, inlaid with ivory and gold. For a thousand years lords of the Punjab—he explains through an interpreter—have been presented with such a casket on the morn of their accession.

“What,” I ask, “does one keep in it?”

“Nothing.” The box is meant, Porus declares, to remind the sovereign of man's proper portion.

My gift to him is a bridle of gold, which had been Darius's.

“Why this?” he inquires.

“Because, of all I own, it is the most beautiful.”

Porus receives this answer with a brilliant smile. At this point, I confess, I find myself as nonplussed as ever in any negotiation. For, although the conventions by which the Raj and I correspond are familiar and the offices of respect unexceptional, the man himself confounds me with his easy, personable nature and his utter lack of pretense.

He speaks of Darius, whom he knew and respected. They have been friends. Porus, in fact, had dispatched a thousand of his Royal Horse and two thousand
ksatriyas
, Royal Archers, to reinforce Darius at Gaugamela.

Yes, I tell him, I remember them. His Indian cavalry broke through our double phalanx and raided our forward camp; in their fighting withdrawal, they nearly killed me. And the archers were the most formidable we had ever faced.

He, Porus, had not been at Gaugamela. But, he says—indicating two dashing-looking officers, nearly as imposing as he—his sons had. He declares he has studied my generalship of that fight, or as much as he could piece together from reports, and proclaims it inspired. I am, in his phrase, “the very incarnation of the warrior commander.”

I thank him and offer my own compliments.

Now things begin to run awry.

Porus has been sitting across from me, on a couch by himself, beneath the brightly colored canopy that shades both us and the company. He has just finished inviting me to tour his lands with him; it will be illuminating for me, he says, to see with my own eyes how well ordered is his kingdom, how productive the land, how happy the people, and how much they love him. He rises and crosses to the couch on which I sit, taking the place directly beside me. It is a disarming gesture, an act not just of affability but of affection.

“Stay with me,” he proposes of a sudden, gesturing to the far shore, beyond which extend his lands and kingdom. “I give you the hand of my daughter and declare you my own heir and successor. You shall be my son and inherit my kingdom”—he indicates his two splendid-looking scions—“even before these children of my own flesh.”

I am struck dumb at such munificence.

Porus flashes his dazzling smile. “Study with me,” he continues, setting a hand warmly upon my knee. “I will teach you how to be a king.”

I have glanced to Hephaestion in the interval; at these words I see his eyes go black with anger. Craterus beside him flinches, as if stung by a lash.

I feel my daimon enter, like a lion into a parlor.

I ask the interpreter to repeat the last phrase.

“‘I will teach you,' he enunciates in excellent Attic Greek, ‘how to be a king.'”

I am furious now. Telamon shoots me a glare that commands, Contain yourself. I do, barely.

“Does His Majesty believe”—I address the interpreter, not looking at Porus—“that I am not a king?”

“Of course you are not!” springs the answer from Porus, succeeded by a laugh and a genial swat of my knee. The idea that he has insulted me, I see, has not even crossed his mind. He believes not only that I share his view of my lack of kingliness but that I welcome the opportunity, proffered by him now, to set this deficit aright.

Hephaestion strides before Porus. The vein in his temple stands out like a rope. “Do you dare, sir, impute a deficiency of kingly virtue to this man? For by what measure does one identify a king, save that he rout in the field every monarch on earth?”

Porus's sons have stalked forward. Craterus's hand moves to his sword; Telamon steps into the breach, restraining.

Porus has turned to the interpreter, who is rattling off the translation as fast as his tongue can untangle. The Raj's expression is one of puzzlement, succeeded by a grand and mellifluous laugh. It is a laugh loosed among friends, whose meaning is, Oh come come, fellows, let us not be upset by trifles!

With a gesture, Porus mollifies his sons and the other princes of the Indian party. He himself resumes his seat on the couch across from me, though this time leaning forward, so that our knees nearly touch alongside the table set with pitchers and refreshments.

“Your friend springs to your defense like a panther!” Porus gifts Hephaestion with another radiant smile. My mate withdraws, suddenly sheepish.

Porus apologizes to him and to me. Perhaps, he suggests, his expression has been imprecise. He has studied my career, he affirms, with a thoroughness that might surprise me.

“What I meant, Alexander, is that you are the supreme warrior, conqueror, even liberator. But you have not yet become a king.”

“Like yourself,” I suggest, barely containing my wrath.

“You are a conqueror. I am a king. There is a difference.”

I ask what this might be.

“The difference between the sea and the storm.”

I regard him, less than edified. He explains.

“The storm is brilliant and terrifying. Godlike, it looses its bolts of power, rolling over all in its path, and passing on. The sea, in contrast, remains—profound, eternal, unfathomable. The tempest hurls its thunder and lightning; the ocean absorbs all, unmoved. Do you understand, my friend? You are the storm. I am the sea.”

Again he smiles.

My jaw is clenched so tight I could not reply if I wanted to. Only one aim animates me: to get clear of this parley before I dishonor myself by shedding my host's blood.

“Still I see,” the Raj continues, though somewhat less amiably, “from the umbrage you take at my words, the color that flushes your breast, and the anger that you can barely contain, that it is important to you to be a king, and that my words have offered offense, though, if your heart sets store by candor, you must confess, they sting only by their truth.” This need be no cause for distress, Porus continues, when one takes into account my extreme youth. “Who is a king at thirty, or even forty? That is why I have invited you to study with me, whose years might make me your father, mentor, and guide.”

Craterus's eyes have read mine. He comes forward. “With respect, sir,” he says, addressing the Indian king, “this interview is over.”

The party of Macedon stands.

Our boats are hailed.

Porus's smile has vanished. His jaw works and his eyes go hooded and dark.

“I have offered you the hand of my daughter and the heirship to my kingdom,” he declares, “to which you have responded only with sullen and wrathful silence. Therefore I make you another offer. Return to the lands you have conquered. Make your people free and happy. Render each man lord over his own household and sovereign over his own heart, instead of the wretched slaves they are today. When you have done that,
then
come back to me, and I will set myself to study at
your
feet. You will teach
me
how to be a king. Until then—”

I have turned my back on him. Our party has boarded the barge. The boatmen shove off.

Porus looms at the rail, commanding as a fortress tower.

“How dare you advance in arms against my kingdom? By what right do you offer violence to him who has never harmed you or even spoken your name except in praise? Are you a law unto yourself? Have you no fear of heaven?”

I would strike him down now, but for the spectacle of leaping boat to boat like a pirate.

“I said you are no king, Alexander, and I repeat it. You do not rule the lands you have conquered. Neither Persia, nor Egypt, nor Greece from whence you came, which hates you and would eat you raw if she could. What offices have you established to promote your people's weal? None! You have set in power only those same dynasts who oppressed the populace before, and by the same means, while you and your army pass on, like a ship that is master only of that quadrant of ocean upon which it sails, and no more. You command not even here in your own camp, which boils over with sedition and unrest. Yes, I know! Nothing happens in my country that is not reported to me, not even within your own tent.”

I stand in our boat's prow. Every man's blood is up. Along both riverbanks, the armies cry out in anger and distress.

“So we shall have war, Alexander. I see you will stand for nothing else. Perhaps you shall win. Perhaps you are invincible, as all the world attests.” His dark eyes meet mine across the chasm between us. “But though you stand over my dead body and set your heel upon the throat of my realm, you will still not be a king. Not even if you march, as you intend, to the Shore of the Eastern Ocean itself. You will not be a king, and you know it.”

Once, when I was fourteen and served my father as a Page, I followed Philip as he stalked in fury to his quarters after an embassy with the Athenians. Hephaestion attended then as a Page, too, as did Love Locks and Ptolemy; we were all on duty that night, assigned to stand guard over the king's sleep.

“So Athens wishes peace? I'll give her hell first.” Philip slung his cloak in anger. “Peace is for women! Never permit there to be peace! The king who stands for peace is no king at all!” Then, turning to us Pages, my father launched into a monologue of such blistering ire that we lads stood there, each fixed upon his post, held spellbound by his passion. “The life of peace is fitting for a mule or an ass. I would be a lion!” Who prospers in peace, Philip demanded, save clerks and cowards? And as for the welfare of his people: “What do I care to ‘rule' or ‘govern'? Blast them both and all the mealy arts of amity! Glory and fame are the only pursuits worthy of a man. Happiness? I piss upon it! Was Macedon happier when our frontiers were straw, to be cast down by any foe—or now, when the wide world trembles before us? I have seen my country be the plaything of enemies. I shall never permit that state again, and neither will my son!”

We touch shore after the fiasco with Porus. I still have not spoken. My generals wish to confer at once. No. I insist on inspecting the works diverting the river. Diades, the engineer, is hailed and hastens to us. We descend to the site in a freight rig, suspended by tackle stout enough to support an ox. The works themselves are spectacular, a hundred feet deep and broad as a small city. At their head, where the floodgates will be opened to draw the river into the channel, stand two tablets of sandstone fifty feet tall. Sculptors labor on scaffolding, carving an image into the rock.

“Whose face is that?” I inquire.

Diades laughs. “The king's, of course.”

“Which king?”

“Why, you, lord.”

I look again. “That is not my face.”

All color drains from the engineer. He glances to Hephaestion, as if appealing for aid. “But it is, sire. . . .”

“Do you tell me I lie?”

“No, my lord.”

“It is my father's face. The masons carve the profile of Philip.”

The engineer shoots another frightened glance, this time to Craterus.

“Who told you to engrave my father's face?”

“Please! Look, lord. . . .”

“I am looking.”

“Philip wore a beard. See, the image is clean-shaven!”

The lying bastard. I punch him in the face. He shrieks like a woman and drops like a slaughtered sow.

Craterus and Telamon seize my arm. On towers and scaffolds, men are gaping by the thousands.

Hephaestion's hand presses my brow. “You have a fever.” Then, loudly, for all: “The king is burning up!”

Ptolemy helps Diades to his feet. The lift has halted forty feet into the pit. “Take us up!” Hephaestion commands.