Alexander and Alestria (24 page)

I pulled on the reins and stopped Bucephalus's frantic galloping. About turn! The king will return to the queen's city! Shouts of joy went up from the army, and soldiers hurried back to the encampment to hot meals, dry beds, and their wives' arms.

I galloped out in front, ahead of these men who no longer wanted to make war.

Alestria, Alexander is coming back to you. Alexander is on his way.

"The king is on his way!" A hundred horsemen stormed into the city, calling for the great gates to be opened. Behind the walls, men and women spilled out of their tents and ran toward the road. Crowds formed on both sides of the road, bubbling with excitement like boiling water. The cries and whinnying drew closer; soon the clinking of weapons could be heard. The king is on his way, the king is galloping right up to the royal tent. The king lifts the door of the tent, the king is in the middle of this tomb where I, Ania, have lain prostrated for three days.

I did not move, just held Alestria's hand.

I heard Alexander's anxious voice:

"The queen? How is the queen?"

I did not look up and left a moment's silence before replying: "The queen is dead."

Alexander pushed me aside and threw himself at Alestria's inert body. He shook her and screamed her name, his harrowing cries piercing my ears:

"Alestria, wake up! Alestria, come back! Alestria, don't abandon me!"

He stood back up abruptly, glowered at me, and bellowed: "Get out! Alestria is mine. You won't have her. Leave us! Go back to where you came from!"

He drew his dagger from his belt and started thrashing the air with it as if fighting invisible warriors. The king had lost his mind.

In a flash I saw Alestria's lips quiver. I took her hand, and she moved slightly. The queen is alive! The queen has come back to us! I laughed and wept all at once, and fought with Alexander to kiss her forehead, her lips. The queen half opened her eyes.

Alestria had forgiven Alexander. She had come back for him.

"Abandon the child!" he ordered her. "It is you that I love!"

Alestria heard his soft but authoritative voice and obeyed her beloved king: she gave up the fight. She drank the infusion prepared by the sorcerer and that night was delivered of a boy. Neither she nor Alexander wanted to touch his cold, shriveled body. It was I, Ania, who wrapped the infant in white cloth, left the city, and went deep into the forest.

On and on I walked while the brightly colored eyes of wild animals flitted around me. I was not afraid and felt no pain. I walked until I came to a river. To us, the Amazons, watercourses were the revelation of the God of Ice. I untied the swaddling, spread the white cloth on the grass, and laid the naked body on it. Even though he was a boy, the son of the queen of the Amazons belonged to our god. I backed away: soon wild animals would eat his flesh and lick his bones; his body would return to the earth while his soul rose up to the heavens. This soul, which was more fierce than Alexander and more persevering than Alestria, had just been too eager, in too much of a hurry. Glory and strength and beauty were waiting for that soul, but our god had decided it should climb the glacier naked.

Wait, wait a little longer, my sister soul. Trust in our god; he will give you another life, another destiny.

Alexander did not wait until Alestria had completely recovered before breaking camp and riding out at the head of his army. To everyone's amazement, a covered carriage followed behind the military procession: the queen was accompanying the king. Nearby I, Ania, proudly led the twenty-nine girls of Siberia, complete with helmets and weapons.

The army snaked through the forest before spreading out over a plain where spiny yellow bushes blossomed from the ocher and black soil. The undulating silhouette of a mountain range appeared on the horizon, and birds hovered dizzyingly high above, tiny specks and dashes of movement. By the banks of the river, which had shrunk in recent droughts, near-naked men toiled through the mud, forming a long black line right out into the glinting silver waters. A hundred times, a thousand times they plunged their bamboo sieves into the river, shook them, making the sand and pebbles twinkle, then fingered through the contents before throwing them away.

The mountains drew nearer and grew taller. The forest-full of dark greens, oranges, and pinks-opened up to us and revealed Kristna's city, built vertically on a south-facing flank of the mountain. The ramparts wound their way through the trees, surrounding thatched houses on stilts and others made of beaten earth, while the track climbed and zigzagged to the very top, where a fortress rose into the skies, attracting clouds of birds.

In the gateway stood richly attired soldiers playing the flute and burning incense. They stepped aside to let Alexander and his queen pass, showering them with fragrant petals. To demonstrate his peaceful intentions, the King of Asia had stationed his army far from the town, and his only entourage was made up of the queen's thirty serving women, all of them veiled so that no one would suspect the daggers attached to their belts.

Prince Kristna's fortress was itself the size of a town, flaunting its countless palaces built one above the other. A long covered gallery linked their terraced gardens and ornamental ponds. Borne on sedan chairs, Alexander and Alestria made their way through this steeply raked labyrinth where the women wore dazzling, brightly colored cloth wound around them; they had rings in one nostril, a red spot drawn in the middle of their smooth foreheads, and a black line penciled in under their dark eyes. They greeted the visitors by bowing and joining their hands, which were embellished with red paint, then backed away to the clinking of their countless bangles and the tinkle of bells knotted round their ankles, leaving in their wake their perfume of white flowers.

Well-muscled young men came to greet us, some wearing turbans that were less dramatic than the Persians', others with their black curls falling freely. They wore fine cloth about their waists and knotted between their legs, where it floated in the wind. Some had scars, others not. Some wore bangles on their left forearms; others had diamonds embedded in their noses and earrings. As I saw more of these men, I realized that the number of bangles set with rubies and pearls was a mark of each warrior's courage, an honor granted by their prince.

Our procession passed a spiral of palaces and arrived in a banqueting hall. The high-vaulted ceiling, encrusted with gem-stones, was held up by columns of finely carved marble depicting fruit trees, waterfalls, and exotic birds. The walls were paneled with precious wood edged with gold, and against this background were bas-relief scenes carved in ivory: heroes on horseback, legendary cities, and fabulous animals. Kristna, the young prince, who wore a well-groomed mustache, came over to Alexander and welcomed him with his hands joined.

The two men sat down, one at each end of a very long table. With his painted eyebrows and lips and the red powder emphasizing his cheeks, our host looked like a statuette completely covered in precious stones. A dozen necklaces coiled round his neck, covering his chest, which was squeezed into a tight tunic of silver cloth with gold threads woven through it. There was an emerald the size of an egg at the front of his turban, which dripped with white and pink pearls. The narrow sleeves of his tunic gleamed, although they could not compete with the truly remarkable piece of jewelry the prince wore on his right forearm: a wide gold cuff engraved with gods and goddesses dancing in a forest where monkeys, peacocks, tigers, and elephants played with rubies, pearls, and emeralds. Around his narrow waist he wore a belt shaped like a lotus flower, every petal stitched with diamonds and hung with miniature figures. He sat with one leg folded beneath him and rested one arm nonchalantly on the other leg. His foot peeped out from beneath his tunic: there was a ring on every toe, and one of these rings had a tiny cage made of gold holding minute precious stones.

He clapped his hands, and beautiful young serving men filed in, distributed quantities of little silver dishes over the table, then withdrew. Male and female dancers accompanied by musicians appeared and twirled between the columns, jingling the bells on their ankles.

At the other end of the table Alexander pretended to eat and drink, but his lips barely touched his goblet, so afraid was he of being poisoned. That day he wore a scarlet tunic decorated down the front with three phoenixes in embossed gold thread; its wings had taken the most skilled Persian embroiderers three months to complete. His jewels conceded nothing in magnificence to those of the Indian prince, for it was important on this occasion to fight his opponent in wealth, not in power. That is why Alexander had put on ten rings, bearing fiery diamonds, rubies, and emeralds. His turban was wound round with gold thread hung with masses of dazzling precious stones from every corner of the world that Alexander the Great had conquered. Each countless sparkle of jewelry-tiger's eye, moonstone, coral, turquoise, agate, amethyst, pearl, onyx, not to mention the beautiful sapphires and still other stones as yet unknown to man-represented the countless territories he owned. On his feet he wore leather sandals embroidered with gold and stitched with myriad tiny pearls.

The Indian prince had seated his wives behind him, and each of them carried a small tray full of delicacies. These twenty young women-all of them beautiful and alluring-were of many different nationalities, and to counter them Alexander had only Alestria, who had also been given a small low table. She wore a white veil that covered her from head to foot, and one could see only her eyes emphasized with blue in the Persian style. On her head she wore a wreath adorned with the most beautiful diamonds in the world, the size of quail's eggs, and the most talented craftsmen had spent ten years cutting their glittering inner facets, smoothing their outer shapes. Alestria wore no other jewelry, but still she was radiant, making all the other women pale in comparison. Prince Kristna immediately recognized these legendary diamonds that no one but the Great Kings of Persia could ever own. He was besotted with jewelry and could not help constantly commenting on their purity.

The dishes had barely been put on the table before they were cleared away and replaced by other delicacies. A hundred or more plates graced the king's table that evening. As the night wore on the dancers wore fewer and fewer clothes: bare-breasted, they spun round the fountains, skipped down the alabaster steps, or strolled among peacocks and parrots. In the huge gardens torches and candles lit a flower bed of exotic blooms, their petals either ruffled or smooth, thick or thin, opaque or transparent. Each of them was shown off at its best by the ingenious lighting, thanks to which even the leaves competed in this pageant of beauty. Hundreds of different types of leaves-long and slender, short and notched, round and thick-stood out against the darkness and quivered as the dancers brushed past them.

Indian warriors brandishing swords erupted onto the steps. I, Ania, and the queen's Amazon guards ran to meet them with our daggers raised. They started dancing, and we danced with them by way of combat. Kristna's eyes shone; he was watching Alexander: the king, unruffled, smiled and clapped in time to the music.

The sun rose, and the banquet came to an end in feigned drunkenness and mutual mistrust. The two kings exchanged a good many polite niceties, bringing their hands together at chest height, touching their foreheads, and patting each other's shoulders with their left hands while keeping their right hands over their hearts. Kristna accompanied Alexander to the gates of the city, where Hephaestion was waiting for him impatiently. To thank him for such a sumptuous reception, Alexander called for two soldiers to offer his host a pair of gold-plated silver caskets. Inside them were two severed heads: astonishment turned to smiles when the Indian prince recognized them; then he knelt and swore loyalty to Alexander.

What was it that happened between those two men who barely spoke to each other all evening? I was told that the king had killed the Indian prince's sworn enemies before visiting him. Now hated by the Indian tribes, Kristna was forced to follow Alexander.

As soon as we were back at the encampment, Alestria lay down beside Alexander, and the two lovers spent the day asleep.

Alestria was exhausted.

Alexander was relieved.

The army set up camp and broke camp. We were hounded by groups of Indian warriors: arrows fell, elephants trumpeted, and men screamed in their native languages. These skirmishes erupted more rapidly than summer storms and abated just as quickly. Everyone knew that the king was marching toward one murderous battle. He had an appointment with Poros, a fine, strong Indian king. The two men had never met but had loathed each other through intermediary wars. Each of them had sworn he would have his rival's head and, with it, glory and immortality.

Rivers grew wider, becoming major waterways, and in between them paddy fields flashed like mirrors beneath the sky. Forests surrounded us, then opened out, only to swallow us up again in the shadows of their giant trees. The king rode, and the queen went with him. Side by side they marched toward the greatest war that Indian soil had ever seen.

Alexander gathered his troops on the banks of the Hydaspe.

The wide, peaceful river with its muddy waters glinted yellow. Soldiers and horses arrived along the earth track and down the river. Slaves set out from the encampment with picks. The king disappeared for days on end, and every time he returned, another regiment left to take up its position in the forest.

Alexander had set up a table in his tent, and on it he had had a model of the entire region made with its forests, rocks, rivers, and swamps. I, Ania, who slept in front of the tent to ensure the king and queen's safety, saw Alexander's shadow bending over that table. I could see Alestria's silhouette when she woke and joined her husband. Their two shadows met and forged into one. I no longer tried to decipher signs: I did not want to read the future. Alexander had sought out his wife in the kingdom of souls, and Alestria had followed him and come back to earth. According to steppe tradition, they were both already dead. They were both now living outside time.