Alexander (Vol. 3) (Alexander Trilogy) (20 page)

Callisthenes stopped speaking and let his gaze run silently over the death throes of the great capital – rare plants brought to the
pairidaeza
from remote provinces burning now like torches, the porticoes and the buildings all blackened with smoke. He looked on the roads full of soldiers drunk with looting and raping and all kinds of unspeakable excess, the fountains that continued to gurgle although they were now full of bodies, the blood-red water overflowing into the streets. The historian beheld the broken statues, the columns, the profaned sanctuaries; he turned to Eumenes and saw in his eyes the same expression of terror and confusion.

‘This sublime palace,’ he continued in the same voice, ‘was called the “Palace of the New Year” because the Great King came here to celebrate the first day of each year, on the morning of the summer solstice, so as to receive on his forehead the first ray of clear light that rose from the east, illuminating his countenance, and he reflected it, almost as though the King himself were a new sun.

‘Throughout the eve of that dawn, until morning, the priests’ prayers rose up, insistently, towards the stars, invoking light for the Great King, for he who was the living terrestrial symbol of Ahura Mazda. Everything here is a symbol, the entire city is a symbol and so are all the images and the reliefs we see around us in this building.’

‘We are burning a . . . symbol,’ stammered Eumenes.

‘A symbol, and much more than that. The city was designed the day following a total eclipse of the sun that took place seventy years and six months ago: it was to be a monument to this people’s faith, the faith according to which the world would never again be the dominion of the powers of darkness. Look here, and you see the lion tearing into the bull, the light defeating the darkness, the light of their supreme god Ahura Mazda who for them was incarnate in their King.

‘As dawn broke, while the palace was still in shadow, hundreds of delegations waited in religious silence until the light spread through the halls of purple and gold, through the huge courtyards. Then began the grand procession of which Ctesias and other Greek and barbarian authors who were lucky enough to have witnessed it have written; many of the reliefs that adorn the terraces and the stairways depict this procession too.

‘And now . . . now this people is bearing witness to an abomination, the ultimate and most atrocious of all sacrileges – fire, which for them is sacred, consumes their capital and burns their corpses.’

‘And yet they too, in their time, have carried out all sorts of bloody deeds,’ replied Eumenes. ‘You saw those poor souls, you have heard them tell of the inhuman tortures inflicted on them. Those who built this wonder, the Great Kings Darius and Xerxes, were the same kings who invaded our land – razing and torching it, decapitating and crucifying the maimed body of King Leonidas at the Thermopylae pass, burning the temples of our gods after having besmirched them in every way imaginable.’

‘Certainly, and do you know why? Look here,’ he said, pointing to an inscription on one of the walls. ‘Do you know what this says? “I have burned the temples of the
daiwa”,
the temples of the demons. That’s the explanation – our gods, for them, were manifestations of the demons that their evil god, Ahriman, unleashed on the earth to bring about disaster. They believed they were carrying out an act of piety. All of the world’s peoples see evil in others, in foreigners and in their gods, and I fear there is no remedy for this. Thus they destroyed the most beautiful expressions of our civilization. Thus we destroy the most beautiful expressions of theirs.’

He stopped because he had nothing more to say now and their silence was soon filled with the cries and the laments of the dying city.

*

The Queen Mother heard of the devastation of Persepolis three days later, from a horseman of the Immortals who had crossed the snow-covered passes without ever stopping. She burst into tears as he gave her a few details of the massacre of the defenceless city, the destruction of such beautiful works of art.

The warrior wept as he prostrated himself before her, ‘Great Mother,’ he said, ‘kill me because I deserve death. I know the little
yauna
demon and I am responsible for everything. Many years ago I was the one who saved his life during a lion hunt in Macedonia, and when he saved my life on the battlefield at Issus and set me free, I did not understand that this is how the demons conceal their true, ferocious nature. Instead of plunging my dagger into his throat, I thanked him, I showed him all my gratitude. Now this is the result. Have me killed, Great Mother, and perhaps my death will appease the gods and will bring them to take our side, to lead us out of the darkness of humiliation and defeat.’

The Queen sat motionless on the throne, her cheeks wet with tears. She looked at him, her expression full of compassion, and said, ‘Stand up, my loyal friend. Stand up and do not lay the blame on your generosity and your courage. What happened was inevitable. When Cyrus took the city of Sardis and torched it, what did the Lydians think in their misery? And what did the Babylonians think when he changed the course of the Euphrates and took control of the capital, putting their King in chains? We too have burned and pillaged, we have drowned many revolts in blood, we have burned temples and sanctuaries. King Cambises killed the bull Apis in Egypt, committing the most heinous of sacrileges in the eyes of that people. King Xerxes torched the temples of the Acropolis in Athens and razed the city to the ground – all the inhabitants abandoned their city and fled to a small island from which they watched the glow of the flames in the night sky as they consumed their homes. I was told this by those who keep the books of our history.

‘Now the same fate has touched us and our wonderful cities, our sanctuaries, but not because Alexander is evil. I know him, I know his feelings, I know the tenderness and the concern of which he is capable and had I been present I am sure I would have succeeded in obtaining clemency from him, in illuminating him with the light of Ahura Mazda against the darkness of Ahriman. Have you ever looked into his eyes?’

‘Yes, my Lady, and I was afraid.’

The Queen Mother was silent for a few moments, then she lifted her head and asked, ‘Where will you go now?’

‘North, to Ecbatana, to King Darius and I will fight alongside him, I will die for him if necessary; but please give me your blessing, Great Mother, for it will keep me warm in the snow and the cold, it will help me bear the hunger, the thirst, the ordeals, the pain.’

He knelt down and bowed his head. The Queen Mother raised her trembling hand and placed it on his head, ‘I bless you, my boy. Tell my troubled son that I am praying for him.’

‘I will tell him,’ replied the Immortal. He then begged leave to be allowed to go, and left.

I
T WAS NOT UNTIL
the following day that Alexander himself visited Darius’s palace. He had got up early and had looked around him with a strange expression, almost as though waking up from a nightmare. His Companions were already in formation alongside the throne, armed and ready for his orders.

‘Where is Parmenion?’ he asked.

He’s outside the city, in his camp together with those of his men who did not take part in yesterday’s events,’ replied Seleucus.

‘And the Black?’

‘The same. He says he feels unwell and asks if you will excuse him for not being present.’

‘They’ve left me on my own,’ murmured the King as though thinking to himself.

‘But we are with you, Alexander!’ exclaimed Hephaestion. ‘Whatever you may do and whatever may happen. Isn’t that right?’ he asked as he turned to their companions.

‘Exactly,’ they all replied.

‘Enough now,’ said Alexander. ‘Take some patrols of assault troops and cross the city with a proclamation. All soldiers – Greeks, Macedonians, Thessalians, Thracians and Agrianians, all of them with no exceptions – must leave Persepolis and move back to the camps outside the city walls. Only the Vanguard and my guards will remain here.’

The companions left to carry out the orders they had just received.

Alexander, Eumenes and Callisthenes, accompanied by an interpreter and a group of still terrified eunuchs, began their tour of the palace. They went from the
apadana
to the throne room true and proper. It was huge, more than two hundred feet wide and equally long, supported by one hundred columns in cedar wood, its walls painted in gold and purple with the capitals and the ceilings adorned with engravings and paintings. The throne was of wood with inlays in ivory and behind it, propped up against the wall, were the parasol and the ostrich-feather fans operated by servants in full dress on audience days.

From there they moved directly to the treasury, opened up for them by the four eunuchs who kept the keys. The massive bronze doors moved slowly on their hinges and the enormous room appeared before its new master. There were no windows at all, however, and Alexander could only see that part of the interior illuminated by the light that came through the door they had just opened, but what he was able to see left him amazed – thousands of gold and silver ingots bearing the seal of the Achaemenid monarchy – the effigy of King Darius I firing an arrow from his bow. That same effigy also appeared on the coins which for this reason were known as ‘darics’. There were many buckets filled to the brim with these coins, some of them lined up on shelves along the walls.

The eunuchs brought lanterns and the reflections of the thousands and thousands of polished surfaces glimmered in the half-darkness of the room as they moved.

The King, Eumenes and Callisthenes set off along the corridor that ran through the middle of the room and their wonder grew with each step they took. Not only was there metal in coin and ingots, there was even an area that functioned as a store for the precious objects accumulated over two hundred years of conquests and domination of a territory that extended from the Indus to the Ister. There were jewels in unbelievable quantities, chests full of precious stones of every shape and colour, white and black pearls, bronzes and pendants, candelabra, statues and votive images from ancient sanctuaries, weapons of all kinds, both parade and battle types – spears and swords, helmets adorned with the most impressive plumes, jewelled daggers with straight and curved and even snake-shaped blades, bronze shields covered with silver – or gold-leaf, or even wooden shields decorated with ivory and silver, greaves and sword-belts in gold chain mail with buckles adorned with lapis lazuli and coral, gold and silver enamelled tiles, masks of ebony and ivory, Indian, Assyrian and Egyptian neck – and chest-pieces in gold and silver. And then crowns and diadems that had adorned the heads of Egyptian Pharaohs, Greek Tyrants, Scythian chiefs, Indian Rajahs, sceptres and command staffs of ebony, ivory, gold, bronze, silver and electrum, all wonderfully decorated.

And fabrics – Egyptian linen, Syrian byssus, Ionian wool, Phoenician purple cloth, and even more cloths of incredible splendour in the most varied and rarest of colours. They all came from a far off country, it was explained, beyond the central deserts and beyond the Paropamisus range. Then again there were pieces of another type of fabric produced in India, as cool as linen, equally easy to dye, but infinitely lighter: ‘Wearing this material,’ said the eunuch, ‘is like wearing nothing at all.’

As they proceeded the eunuch repeated the list of the inventory in a monotonous voice: ‘Twelve buckets of one talent each of gold darics minted by His Majesty King Darius I, twenty talents of silver ingots with the seal of His Majesty King Xerxes, a turtle breastplate inlaid with ivory and coral which belonged to the Rajah of Taxila, a dress sabre which once belonged to the Scythian King Kurban II . . .’

Alexander realized that it would take a whole month to listen to the description of all those wonders, but he simply could not tear his gaze from the gleaming items, from these dazzling splendours, from those forms and those wonderful ornaments.

‘How much does it all come to, in coin and ingots?’ Eumenes suddenly asked.

The eunuch looked first at Alexander, as though expecting from him the permission to provide an answer and then, as soon as he had some indication of agreement, said in a low voice, ‘One hundred and twenty thousand talents.’

Eumenes went pale, ‘Did you say one hundred . . . one hundred and twenty thousand?’

‘That is exactly what I said,’ replied the eunuch impassively.

Thus, still astonished, they left the greatest accumulation of precious objects that existed on the earth and Eumenes continued repeating to himself, ‘I cannot believe it, by the gods on Olympus, I simply cannot believe it. If we consider that just a little more than three years ago we didn’t have enough money to buy hay for the horses and wheat for our men . . .’

‘Have ten minae distributed to each of them,’ Alexander ordered.

‘Did you say ten minae to each of our soldiers?’

‘That is what I said. They deserve it. I will also give an extra talent to the officers, five to the commanders of the bigger infantry and cavalry units, and ten to the generals. Let me know how much it all comes to.’

‘This will be the richest army on earth,’ grumbled Eumenes, ‘but I don’t know if it will still be the most valiant. Are you sure this is the right thing to do?’

‘I have never been more sure of anything. In any case, they are not going to have enough time to spend all that money.’