Mary Renault - Greece 8 - Funeral Games

VIP免费

2024-12-23 0 0 1.24MB 127 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

had been half ruinous for a century and a half, ever since Xerxes had humbled

the gods of rebellious Babylon. The edges of its terraces had crumbled in

landslides of bitumen and baked brick; storks nested on its ragged top, which

had once held the god's golden bedchamber and his sacred concubine in his

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

golden bed. But this was only defacement; the ziggurat's huge bulk had defined

destruction. The walls of the inner city by the Marduk Gate were three hundred

feet high, but the ziggurat still towered over them. Near by was the god's

temple; this Xerxes' men had succeeded in half demolishing. The rest of the

roof was patched with thatch, and propped on shafts of rough-hewn timber. At

the inner end, where the columns were faced with splendid but chipped enamels,

there was still a venerable gloom, a smell of incense and burnt offerings. On

an altar of porphyry,. under a smoke-duct open to the sky, burned in its

bronze basket the sacred fire. It was low; the fuel-box was empty. Its shaven

acolyte looked from it to the priest. Abstracted though he was, it caught his

eye. "Fetch fuel. What are you about? Must a king die when it serves your

laziness? Move! You were got when your mother was asleep and snoring." The

acolyte made a sketchy obeisance; the temple discipline was not strict. The

priest said, after him, "It will not be yet. Maybe not even today. He is tough

as a mountain lion, he will die hard." Two tall shadows fell at the temple's

open end. The priests who entered wore the high felt miters of Chaldeans. They

approached the altar with ritual gestures, bowing with hand on mouth. The

priest of Marduk said, "Nothing yet?" "No," said the first Chaldean. "But it

will be soon. He cannot speak; indeed he can scarcely breathe. But when his

homeland soldiers made a clamor at the doors, demanding to see him, he had

them all admitted. Not the commanders; they were there already. The

spear-bearers, the common foot-men. They were half the morning passing through

his bedchamber, and he greeted them all by signs. That finished him, and now

he is in the death-sleep. A door behind the altar opened to let in two Marduk

priests. It gave a glimpse of a rich ulterior; embroidered hangings, a gleam

of gold. There was a smell of spiced meats cooking. The door closed on

it. The Chaldeans, reminded of an old scandal, exchanged glances. One of them

said, "We did our best to turn him from the city. But he had heard that the

temple had not been restored; and he thought we were afraid of him." A Marduk

priest said stiffly, "The year has not been auspicious for great works.

Nebuchadrezzar built in an inauspicious year. His foreign slaves rioted race

against race, and threw each other off the tower. As for Sikandar, he would

still be fortunate, sitting safe in Susa, if he had not defied the god." One

of the Chaldeans said, "It seems to me he did well enough by the god, for all

that he called him Herakles." He looked round, pointedly, at the half-ruined

building. He might as well have said aloud, "Where is the gold the King gave

you to rebuild, have you eaten and drunk it all?" There was a hostile

silence. The chief of the Marduk priests said, with emollient dignity,

"Certainly you gave him a true prediction. And since then have you read the

heavens?" The tall miters bent together in slow assent. The oldest Chaldean,

whose beard was silver against his dark face and purple robe, signed to the

Marduk priest, beckoning him to the broken end of the temple. "This," he said,

"is what is foretold for Babylon." He swept round his gold-starred wand,

taking in the crumbling walls, the threadbare roof, the leaning timber-props,

the fire-stained paving. "This for a while, and then... Babylon was." He

walked towards the entry and stood to listen; but the night noises were

unchanged. "The heavens say it begins with the death of the King." The priest

remembered the shining youth who, eight years before, had come offering

treasure and Arabian incense; and the man who had returned this year,

weathered and scarred, the red-gold hair sun-bleached and streaked with white;

but with the deep eyes still burning, still ready with the careless, reflex

charm of the youth beloved, still terrible in anger. The scent of the incense

had lasted long on the air, the gold much longer in the treasury; even among

men who liked good living, half was in the strongroom still. But for the

priest of Bel-Marduk the pleasure had drained out of it. It spoke now of

flames and blood. His spirit sank like the altar fire when the fuel was

low. "Shall we see it? Will a new Xerxes come?" The Chaldean shook his head.

"A dying, not a killing. Another city will rise and ours will wane. It is

under the sign of the King." "What? Will he live, then, after all?" "He is

dying, as I told you. But his sign is walking along the constellations,

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

further than we can reckon in years. You will not see it setting in your

day." "So? Well, in his life he did us no harm. Maybe he will spare us

dead." The astrologer frowned to himself, like an adult seeking words to

reach a child. "Remember, last year, the fire that fell from heaven. We heard

where it fell, and went there, a week's journey. It had lit the city brighter

than full moon. But we found, where it had struck, it had broken into red-hot

embers, which had charred the earth around them. One had been set up by a

farmer in his house, because that day his wife bore twin sons. But a neighbor

had stolen it for its power; they fought, and both men died. Another piece

fell at a dumb child's feet, and speech came back to him. A third had kindled

a fire that destroyed a forest. But the Magus of the place had taken the

greatest piece, and built it into the fire-altar, because of its great light

while it was in the sky. And all this from the one star. So it will be." The

priest bowed his head. A fragrance drifted to him from the precinct's kitchen.

Better to invite the Chaldeans than let the meat spoil with waiting. Whatever

the stars said, good food was good food. The old Chaldean said, looking into

the shadows, "Here where we stand, the leopard will rear her young." The

priest made a decent pause. No sound from the royal palace. With luck, they

might get something to eat before they heard the wailing. The walls of

Nebuchadrezzar's palace were four feet thick, and faced with blue-glazed tiles

for coolness; but the mid-summer heat seeped in through everything. The sweat

running down Eumenes' wrist blotted the ink on his papyrus. The wax glistened

moistly on the tablet he was fair-copying; he plunged it back into the

cold-water tub where his clerk had left it, with the other drafts, to keep the

surface set. Local scribes used wet clay; but that would have set hard before

one could revise on it. For the third time he went to the doorway, seeking a

slave to pull the punkah cord. Once again the dim hushed noises-soft feet,

soft voices furtive or awed or grieving-sent him back behind the drawn

door-curtain to his listless task. To clap the hands, to call, to shout an

order, were all unthinkable. He had not sought his clerk, a garrulous man;

but he could have done with the silent slave and the waft of the punkah. He

scanned the unfinished scroll pinned to his writing-board. It was twenty years

since he had written with his own hand any letter not of high secrecy; why now

was he writing one that would never go, short of a miracle? There had been

many miracles; but, surely, not now. It was something to do, it shut out the

unknown future. Sitting down again he retrieved the tablet, propped it, dried

his hand on the towel the clerk had left, and picked up his pen. And the

ships commanded by Niarchos will muster at the river-mouth, where I shall

review them while Perdikkas is bringing the army down from Babylon; and

sacrifices will be made there to the appropriate gods. I shall then take

command of the land force and begin the march to the west. The first

stage... When he was five, before he'd been taught to write, he came to me in

the King's business room. "What's that, Eumenes?" "A letter." "What's the

first word that you've written big?" "Your father's name PHILIP, king of the

Macedonians. Now I'm busy, run back to your play." "Make me my name. Do, dear

Eumenes. Please." I gave it him written, on the back of a spoiled despatch.

Next day he'd learned it, and carved it all over the wax for a royal letter to

Kersobleptes of Thrace. He had my ruler across his palm... Because of the

heat he had left open his massive door. A brisk stride, half hushed like all

other sounds, approached it. Ptolemy pushed aside the curtain and drew it to

behind him. His craggy war-weathered face was creased with fatigue; he had

been up all night, without the stimulus of action. He was forty-three, and

looked older. Eumenes waited, wordlessly. "He has given his ring to

Perdikkas," Ptolemy said. There was a pause. Eumenes' alert Greek face-not a

bookish one, he had had his share of soldiering- searched the impassive

Macedonian's. "For what? As deputy? Or as Regent?" "Since he could not

speak," said Ptolemy drily, "we shall never know." "If he has accepted

death," Eumenes reasoned, "we may presume the second. If not...?" "It's all

one, now. He neither sees nor hears. He is in the death-sleep." "Do not be

sure. I have heard of men who were thought already dead, and who said later

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

that they heard everything." Ptolemy suppressed an impatient gesture. These

wordy Greeks. Or what is he afraid of? "I came because you and I have known

him since he was born. Don't you want to be there?" "Do the Macedonians want

me there?" An ancient bitterness pinched, for a moment, Eumenes' mouth. "Oh,

come. Everyone trusts you. We shall need you before long." Slowly the

Secretary began to put his desk in order. He said, wiping his pen, "And

nothing, to the last, about an heir?" "Perdikkas asked him, while he could

still get a whisper out. He only said, 'To the best man. Hoti to

kratisto.'" Eumenes thought, They say dying men can prophesy. He

shivered. "Or," Ptolemy added, "so Perdikkas told us. He was leaning over.

Nobody else could hear." Eumenes put down the pen and looked up sharply. "Or

Kratero? You say he whispered, he was short of breath." They looked at one

another. Krateros, the highest-ranking of all Alexander's staff, was on the

march to Macedon, to take over the regency from Antipatros. "If he'd been in

the room..." Ptolemy shrugged. "Who knows?" To himself he thought, If

Hephaistion had been there... But if he’d lived, none of this would have

happened. He'd have done none of the crazy things he's dying of. Coming to

Babylon in midsummer-boating about in the filthy swamps down river... But one

did not discuss Hephaistion with Eumenes. "This door weighs like an elephant.

Do you want it shut?" Pausing on the threshold, Eumenes said, "Nothing about

Roxane and the child? Nothing?" "Four months to go. And what if it's a

girl?" They moved into the shadowy corridor, tall big-boned Macedonian and

slender Greek. A young Macedonian officer came blundering towards them, almost

ran into Ptolemy, and stammered an apology. Ptolemy said, "Is there any

change?" "No, sir, I don't think so." He swallowed violently; they saw that

he was crying. When he had gone, Ptolemy said, "That boy believes in it. I

can't yet." "Well, let us go." "Wait." Ptolemy took his arm, led him back

into the room, and dragged-to the great ebony door on its groaning hinges.

"I'd best tell you this while we've time. You should have known before,

but..." "Yes, yes?" said Eumenes impatiently. He had quarreled with

Hephaistion shortly before he died, and Alexander had never been easy with him

since. Ptolemy said, "Stateira is pregnant, too." Eumenes, who had been

fidgeting to be gone, was struck into stillness. "You mean Darius'

daughter?" "Who else do you suppose? She is Alexander's wife." "But this

changes everything. When did... ?” "Don't you remember? No, or course, you'd

gone on to Babylon. When he came to himself after Hephaistion died" (one could

not avoid the name forever)" he went to war with the Kossaians. My doing; I

told him they'd demanded road-toll, and got him angry. He needed to be doing

something. It did him good. When he'd dealt with them, and was heading here,

he stopped a week at Susa, to call upon Sisygambis." "That old witch," said

Eumenes bitterly. But for her, he thought, the King's friends would never have

been saddled with Persian wives. The mass wedding at Susa had gone by like

some drama of superhuman magnificence, till suddenly he had found himself

alone in a scented pavilion, in bed with a Persian noblewoman whose unguents

repelled him, and whose only Greek consisted of "Greeting, my lord." "A great

lady," said Ptolemy. "A pity his mother was not like her. She would have had

him married before he set out from Macedon, and seen that he got a son. He

could have had an heir of fourteen by this time. She'd not have sickened him

with marriage while he was a child. Whose fault was it that he wasn't ready

for a woman till he met the Bactrian?" Thus, unofficially, did most

Macedonians refer to Roxane. "Done is done. But Stateira... Does Perdikkas

know?" "That's why he asked him to name his heir." "And still he would

not?" " 'To the best,' he said. He left it to us, to the Macedonians, to

choose when they came of age. Yes, he's a Macedonian at the last." "If they

are boys," Eumenes reminded him. Ptolemy, who had been withdrawn into his

thought, said, "And if they come of age." Eumenes said nothing. They went

down the dim corridor with its blue-tiled walls towards the

death-chamber. Nebuchadrezzar's bedroom, once ponderously Assyrian, had been

Persianized by successive kings from Kyros on. Kambyses had hung its walls

with the trophies of conquered Egypt; Darius the Great had sheathed its

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

columns with gold and malachite; Xerxes had pegged across one side the

embroidered robe of Athene, looted from the Parthenon. The second Artaxerxes

had sent for craftsmen of Persepolis to make the great bed in which Alexander

now lay dying. Its dais was covered with crimson tapestries worked in

bullion. The bed was nine feet by six; Darius the Third, a man seven feet

tall, had had ample room. The high canopy was upheld by four golden

fire-daimons with silver wings and jeweled eyes. Propped on heaped pillows to

help him breathe, and looking small among all these splendors, the dying man

lay naked. A thin linen sheet had been spread half over him when he had ceased

to toss about and throw it off. Damp with sweat, it clung to him as if

sculpted. In a monotonous cycle, his shallow rattling breath grew gradually

louder, then ceased. After a pause during which no other breath was drawn in

the crowded room, it started again, slowly, the same crescendo. Until lately

there had been scarcely another sound. Now that he had ceased responding to

voice or touch, a soft muttering began to spread, too cautious and muted to be

located; a ground-bass to the strong rhythm of death. Perdikkas by the bed's

head lifted at Ptolemy his dark heavy eyebrows; a tall man, with the

Macedonian build but not the coloring, and a face on which authority, long

habitual, was growing. His silent gesture of the head signaled "No change

yet." The movement of a peacock fan drew Ptolemy's eye across the bed. There,

as he had been for days, seemingly without sleep, seated on the dais was the

Persian boy. So Ptolemy still thought of him though by now he must be

three-and-twenty; with eunuchs it was hard to tell. At sixteen, he had been

brought to Alexander by a Persian general involved in Darius' murder, to give

exonerating evidence. This he was well placed to do, having been the King's

minion, with inside knowledge of the court. He had stayed on to give his story

to the chroniclers, and had never been far from Alexander since. Not much was

on view today of the famous beauty which had dazzled two kings running. The

great dark eyes were sunk in a face more drawn than the fever-wasted one on

the pillows. He was dressed like a servant; did he think that if he was

noticed he would be turned out? What does he think, Ptolemy wondered. He must

have lain with Darius in this very bed. A fly hovered over Alexander's

sweat-glazed forehead. The Persian chased it off, then put down the fan to dip

a towel in a basin of mint-scented water, and wiped the unmoving face. At

first Ptolemy had disliked this exotic presence haunting Alexander's

living-quarters, encouraging him to assume the trappings of Persian royalty

and the manners of a Persian court, having his ear day and night. But he was a

fixture one had grown used to. Through Ptolemy's own grief and sense of

looming crisis, he felt a stir of pity. Walking over, he touched him on the

shoulder. "Get some rest, Bagoas. Let one of the other chamberlains do all

this." A knot of court eunuchs, ageing relicts of Darius and even of Ochos,

advanced officiously. Ptolemy said, "He won't know now, you know." Bagoas

looked round. It was as if he had been told he was condemned to immediate

execution, a sentence long expected. "Never mind," said Ptolemy gently. "It's

your right; stay if you wish." Bagoas touched his fingers to his forehead.

The interruption was over. With his eyes fixed once more on the closed eyes of

Alexander, he waved the fan, shifting the hot Babylonian air. He had staying

power, Ptolemy reflected. He had weathered even the brainstorm after

Hephaistion's death. Against the wall nearest the bed, on a massive table

like an altar, Hephaistion was still enshrined. Enshrined and multiplied; here

were the votive statuettes and busts presented by condolent friends, assiduous

place-seekers, scared men who had once had words with the dead; commissioned

by the best artists found at short notice, to comfort Alexander's grief.

Hephaistion stood in bronze, a nude Ares with shield and spear; precious in

gold armor with ivory face and limbs; in tinted marble with a gilded laurel

crown; as a silver battle-standard for the squadron which was to bear his

name; and as a demigod, the first maquette for the cult-statue of his temple

in Alexandria. Someone had cleared a space to put down some sickroom object,

and a small Hephaistion in gilded bronze had fallen over. With a quick glance

at the blind face on the pillows, Ptolemy set it up again. Let them wait till

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

he's gone. The small sound drew Eumenes' eye, which quickly looked away

again. Ptolemy thought, You've nothing to fear now, have you? Oh yes, he

could be arrogant now and then. Towards the end, he thought he was the only

one who understood-and how far was he wrong? Accept it, Eumenes, he was good

for Alexander. I knew when they were boys at school. He was somebody in

himself and both of them knew it. That pride you didn't like was Alexander's

salvation; never fawning, never pushing, never envious, never false. He loved

Alexander and never used him, kept pace with him at Aristotle's lessons, never

on purpose lost a match to him. To the end of his days he could talk to

Alexander man to man, could tell him he was wrong, and never for a moment

feared him. He saved him from solitude, and who knows what else? Now he's

gone, and this is what we have. If he were alive, we'd all be feasting today

in Susa, whatever the Chaldeans say. A frightened physician, pushed from

behind by Perdikkas, laid a hand on Alexander's brow, fingered his wrist,

muttered gravely and backed away. As long as he could speak, Alexander had

refused to have a doctor near him; and even when he was light-headed, none

could be found to physic him, lest they should later be accused of having

given him poison. It was all one now; he was no longer swallowing. Curse that

fool quack, Ptolemy thought, who let Hephaistion die while he went off to the

games. I'd hang him again if I could. It had long seemed that when the harsh

breathing changed, it could only be for the death-rattle. But as if the

doctor's touch had stirred a flicker of life, the stridor took a more even

rhythm, and the eyelids were seen to move. Ptolemy and Perdikkas each took a

step forward. But the self-effacing Persian by the bed, whom everyone had

forgotten, put down the fan and, as if now one else were in sight, leaned

intimately over the pillowed head, his long light-brown hair falling around

it. He whispered softly. Alexander's grey eyes opened. Something disturbed the

silky cloak of hair. Perdikkas said, "He moved his hand." It was still now,

the eyes shut again, though Bagoas, as if transfixed, was still gazing down at

them. Perdikkas' mouth tightened; all lands of people were here. But before he

could walk up with a reprimand, the Persian had resumed his station and picked

up his fan. But for its movement, he could have been a statue carved from

ivory. Ptolemy became aware of Eumenes speaking to him. "What?" he said

harshly. He was near to tears. "Peukestes is coming." The huddled

functionaries parted to admit a tall well-built Macedonian dressed as a

Persian, even-to most of his countrymen's shocked disapproval-down to the

trousers. When given the satrapy of Persis he had adopted the native dress to

please Alexander, not unaware that it suited him. He strode forward, his eyes

on the bed. Perdikkas advanced to meet him. There was a low buzz of talk. The

eyes of the two men exchanged their message. Perdikkas said formally, for the

benefit of the company, "Did you receive an oracle from Sarapis?" Peukestes

bowed his head. "We kept the night-watch. The god said at dawn, 'Do not bring

the King to the temple. It will be better for him where he is.'" No, thought

Eumenes, there will be no more miracles. For a moment, when the hand had

moved, he had almost believed in another. He turned round looking for

Ptolemy; but he had gone off somewhere to put his face in order. It was

Peukestes who, coming away from the bedside, said to him, "Does Roxane

know?" The palace harem was a spacious cloister built around a lily-pond.

Here too were hushed voices, but differently pitched; the few men in this

female world were eunuchs. None of the women whose home the harem was had set

eyes on the dying King. They had heard well of him; they had been kept by him

in comfort and unmolested; they had awaited a visit that never came. And that

was all, except that they knew of no male heir who would inherit them; in a

little while there would even, it seemed, be no Great King. The voices were

muted with secretive fear. Here were all the women Darius had left behind him

when he marched to his fate at Gaugamela. His favorites, of course, he had

taken with him; those who remained were something of a mixture. His older

concubines, from his days as a nobleman unplaced in line for the throne, had

long been installed at Susa; here were girls found for him after his

accession, who had failed to retain his interest, or had come too late to be

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

noticed by him at all. As well as all these, there were the survivors of King

Ochos' harem, who could not in decency be put out of doors when he died. An

unwelcome legacy, they formed with one or two old eunuchs a little clique of

their own, hating the women of Darius, that usurper they suspected of

complicity in their master's death. For Darius' concubines it was another

matter. When brought there they had been fourteen, fifteen, eighteen at most.

They had known the real drama of the harem; the rumors and intrigues; the

bribery to get first news of a royal visit; the long intricacies of the

toilet, the inspired placing of a jewel; the envious despair when the

menstrual days enforced retirement; the triumph when a summons was received in

a rival's presence; the gift of honor after a successful night From a few

such nights had come one or two little girls of eight or so, who were dabbling

in the pool and telling each other solemnly that the King was dying. There had

been boys too. When Darius fell, they had been spirited away with every kind

of stratagem, their mothers taking it for granted that the new, barbarian King

would have them strangled. Nobody, however, had come looking for them; they

had returned in time and now, being of an age to be brought out from among

women, were being reared as men by distant kindred. With the long absence of

any King from Babylon, the harem had grown slack. At Susa, where Sisygambis

the Queen Mother lived, everything was impeccable. But here they had seen

little even of Darius, nothing of Alexander. One or two of the women had

managed to intrigue with men from outside and run away with them; the eunuchs,

whom Ochos would have impaled for negligence, had kept it quiet. Some girls in

the long idle days had had affairs with one another; the resulting jealousies

and scenes had enlivened many hot Assyrian nights. One girl had been poisoned

by a rival; but that too had been hushed up. The Chief Warden had taken to

smoking hemp, and disliked being disturbed. Then, after years in the unknown

east, after legendary victories, wounds, perils in deserts, the King sent word

of his return. The harem had aroused itself as if from sleep. The eunuchs had

fussed. All through the winter, the Babylonian season of gentle warmth, when

feasts were held, he was expected but did not come. Rumor reached the palace

that a boyhood friend had died-some said a lover-and it had sent him mad. Then

he had come to himself, but was at war with the mountain Kossaians. The harem

slipped back into its lethargy. At last he was on his way, but had broken his

march at Susa. Setting out again, he had been met by embassies from all the

peoples of the earth, bringing him golden crowns and asking him for counsel.

Then, when late spring was heating up for summer, the earth had shaken under

the horses and the chariots, the elephants and the marching men; and the

palace had seethed with the long-forgotten bustle of a king's arrival. Next

day, it was announced that the King's Chief Eunuch of the Bedchamber would

inspect the harem. This formidable person was awaited with dread; but turned

out, shockingly, to be little more than a youth, none other than the notorious

Bagoas, minion of two kings. Not that he failed to impress. He was wearing

silk, stuff never seen within those walls, and shimmered like a peacock's

breast. He was Persian to his fingertips, which always made Babylonians feel

provincial; and ten years at courts had polished his manners like old silver.

He greeted without embarrassment any eunuchs he had met in Darius' day, and

bowed respectfully to some of the older ladies. Then he came to business. He

could not say when the King's urgent concerns would give him leisure to visit

the harem; no doubt he would find in any case the perfect order which declares

respect. One or two shortcomings were obliquely hinted at ("I believe the

custom is so-and-so at Susa") but the past was left unprobed. The wardens were

concealing sighs of relief, when he asked to see the rooms of the royal

ladies. They led him through. These rooms of state were secluded from the

rest, and had their own courtyard, exquisitely tiled. There had been some

dismay at their abandoned state, the dry plants and withered creepers, the

clogged fountain with green scum and dead fish. All this had been seen to, but

the rooms still had the dank smell of long disuse. Silently, just opening his

delicate nostrils, Bagoas indicated this. The rooms of the Royal Wife,

despite neglect, were still luxurious; Darius, though self-indulgent, had been

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

generous too. They led him on to the smaller, but still handsome rooms for the

Queen Mother. Sisygambis had stayed here in an early year of her son's short

reign. Bagoas looked them over, his head tilted slightly sideways.

Unconsciously, over the years, he had picked up this tic from

Alexander. "Very pleasant," he said. "At any rate it can be made so. As you

know, the lady Roxane is on her way here from Ekbatana. The King is anxious

that she should have an easy journey." The eunuchs pricked up their ears;

Roxane's pregnancy was not yet public news. "She will be here in about seven

days. I will order some things, and send in good craftsmen. Please see they do

all they should. In a speaking pause, the eunuchs' eyes turned towards the

rooms of the Royal Wife. Those of Bagoas followed them,

inexpressively. "Those rooms will be closed at present. Just see they are

well aired and kept sweet. You have a key for the outer door? Good." No one

said anything. He added, blandly, "There is no need to show these rooms to the

lady Roxane. If she should ask, say they are in disrepair." He left politely,

as he had come. At the time, they had decided that Bagoas must have some old

score to pay. Favorites and wives were traditional antagonists. The rumor ran

that early in her marriage Roxane had tried to poison him, but had never again

tried anything, so dreadful had been the anger of the King. The furniture and

hangings now sent in were costly, and the finished rooms lacked nothing of

royal splendor. "Don't be afraid of extravagance," Bagoas had said. "That is

to her taste." Her caravan duly arrived from Ekbatana. Handed down the steps

of her traveling-wagon she had proved to be a young woman of striking,

high-nosed beauty, with blue-black hair and dark brilliant eyes. Her pregnancy

hardly showed except in opulent softness. She spoke fluent Persian, though

with a Bactrian accent which her Bactrian suite did nothing to correct; and

had gained a fair command of Greek, a tongue unknown to her before her

marriage. Babylon was as foreign to her as India; she had settled without

demur in the rooms prepared for her, remarking that they were smaller than

those at Ekbatana, but much prettier. They had their own small courtyard,

elegant and shady. Darius, who had held his mother in awe as well as in

esteem, had always been attentive to her comfort. Next day a chamberlain,

this time of venerable age, announced the King. The eunuchs waited anxiously.

What if Bagoas had acted without authority? The King's anger was said to be

rare, but terrible. However, he greeted them courteously in his scanty, formal

Persian, and made no comment when shown to Roxane's rooms. Through chinks and

crannies known in the harem since the days of Nebuchadrezzar, the younger

concubines glimpsed him on his way. They reported him handsome in countenance,

for a westerner at least (fair coloring was not admired in Babylon); and he

was not tall, a grave defect, but this they had known already. Surely he must

be older than thirty-two, for his hair had grey in it; but they owned that he

had presence, and awaited his return to see him again. They expected a lengthy

vigil; but he was back in barely the time it would take a careful woman to

bathe and dress. This made the younger ladies hopeful. They cleaned their

jewels and reviewed their cosmetics. One or two, who from boredom had let

themselves get grossly fat, were derided and cried all day. For a week, each

morning dawned full of promise. But the King did not come. Instead, Bagoas

reappeared, and conferred in private with the Chief Warden. The heavy door of

the Royal Wife's room was opened, and they went inside. "Yes," said Bagoas.

"Not much is needed here. Just there, and there, fresh hangings. The

toilet-vessels will be in the treasury?" Thankfully (they had tempted him

more than once) the Warden sent for them; they were exquisite, silver inlaid

with gold. A great clothes-chest of cypress-wood stood against the wall.

Bagoas raised the lid; there was a drift of faded fragrance. He lifted out a

scarf stitched with seed-pearls and small gold beads. "These, I suppose, were

Queen Stateira's?" "Those she did not take with her. Darius thought nothing

too good for her." Except his life, each thought in the awkward pause. His

flight at Issos had left her to end her days under the protection of his

enemy. Under the scarf was a veil edged with green scarab-wings from Egypt.

Bagoas fingered it gently. "I never saw her. The loveliest woman of mortal

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

birth in Asia-was that true?" "Who has seen every woman in Asia? Yes, it well

may be." "At least I have seen her daughter." He put back the scarf and

closed the chest. "Leave all these things. The lady Stateira will like to have

them." "Has she set out from Susa yet?" A different question trembled on the

Warden's lips. Bagoas, well aware of it, said deliberately, "She will be

coming when the worst of the heat is over. The King is anxious she should have

an easy journey." The Warden caught a sharp breath. Fat old chamberlain and

slender glittering favorite, their eyes exchanged the immemorial communication

of their kind. It was the Warden who spoke first. "So far, everything has

gone smoothly there." He glanced towards the other set of rooms. "But as soon

as these apartments are opened, there will be talk. There is no preventing

it. You know that as well as I do. Does the King intend to tell the lady

Roxane?" For a moment, Bagoas' urbane polish cracked, revealing a deep

settled grief. He sealed it off again. "I will remind him if I can. It is not

easy just now. He is planning the funeral of his friend Hephaistion, who died

at Ekbatana." The Warden would have liked to ask if it was true that this

death had sent the King out of his mind for a month or more. But Bagoas'

polish had hardened, warningly. Quickly the Warden smoothed away curiosity.

They said of Bagoas that, if he chose, he could be the most dangerous man at

court. "In that case," said the Warden carefully, "we might delay the work

for a while? If I am asked questions, without any sanction from the King...

?" Bagoas paused, looking for a moment uncertain and still quite young. But

he answered crisply, "No, we have had our orders. He will expect to find them

obeyed." He left, and did not return. It was reported in the harem that the

funeral of the King's friend surpassed that of Queen Semiramis, renowned in

story; that the pyre had been a burning ziggurat two hundred feet high. But,

said the Warden to anyone who would listen, that was a little fire to the one

he had had to face when the Royal Wife's rooms were opened, and news reached

the lady Roxane. At her mountain home in Bactria, the harem eunuchs had been

family servants and slaves, who knew their place. The ancient dignities of the

palace chamberlains seemed to her mere insolence. When she ordered the Warden

a flogging, she was enraged to find no one empowered to inflict it. The old

Bactrian eunuch she had brought from home, despatched to tell the King,

reported that he had taken a flotilla down the Euphrates to explore the

swamps. When he got back she tried again; first he was busy, and then he was

indisposed. Her father, she was sure, would have seen to it that the Warden

was put to death. But the satrapy conferred on him by the King was on the

Indian frontier; by the time she could hear back from him, her son would have

been born. The thought appeased her. She said to her Bactrian ladies, "Let her

come, this great tall flagpole from Susa. The King cannot abide her. If he

must do this to please the Persians, what is that to me? Everyone knows that I

am his real wife, the mother of his son." The ladies said in secret, "I would

not be that child, if it is a girl." The King did not come, and Roxane's days

hung heavy. Here, at what was to be the center of her husband's empire, she

might as well be encamped in Drangjana. She could, if she wished, have

entertained the concubines. But these women had been living for years in royal

palaces, some of them since she had been a child on her father's mountain

crag. She thought with dread of assured Persian elegance, sophisticated talk

tossed spitefully over her head. Not one had crossed her threshold; she had

rather be thought haughty than afraid. One day however she found one of the

ancient crannies; it passed the time to lay an ear to it and hear them

talking. So it was that, when Alexander had been nine days down with

marsh-fever, she heard a palace chamberlain gossiping with a harem eunuch.

From this she learned two things: that the sickness had flown to the King's

chest, and he was like to die; and that the daughter of Darius was with

child. She did not pause, even to hear them out. She called her Bactrian

eunuch and her ladies, threw on a veil, brushed past the stunned Nubian giant

who guarded the harem, and only answered his shrill cries with, "I must see

the King." The palace eunuchs came running. They could do nothing but run

after her. She was the King's wife, not a captive; she stayed in the harem

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

only because to leave it was unthinkable. On the long marches, out to India

and back to Persia and down to Babylon, wherever the King pitched camp her

baggage wagons had unpacked the wicker screens which had made her a traveling

courtyard, so that she could leave her covered wagon and take the air. In the

cities she had her curtained litter, her latticed balconies. All this was not

her sentence but her right; it was only whores whom men displayed. Now, when

the unprecedented happened, to lay hands on her was inconceivable. Guided by

her trembling eunuch, her progress followed by astonished eyes, she swept

through corridors, courtyards, anterooms, till she reached the Bedchamber. It

was the first time she had entered it; or, for that matter, his own

sleeping-place anywhere else. He had never summoned her to his bed, only gone

to hers. It was the custom of the Greeks, so he had told her. She paused in

the tall doorway, seeing the high cedar ceiling, the daimon-guarded bed. It

was like a hall of audience. Generals, physicians, chamberlains, stupid with

surprise, stood back as she made her way to him. The heaped pillows that

propped him upright gave him still the illusion of authority. His closed eyes,

his parted and gasping mouth, seemed like a willed withdrawal. She could not

be in his presence without believing that everything was still under his

control. "Sikandar!" she cried, slipping back into her native dialect.

"Sikandar!" His eyelids, creased and bloodless in sunken sockets, moved

faintly but did not open. The thin skin tightened, as if to shut out a harsh

glare of sun. She saw that his lips were cracked and dry; the deep scar in his

side, from the wound he had got in India, stretched and shrank with his

laboring breath. "Sikandar, Sikandar!" she cried aloud. She grasped him by

the arm. He took a deeper breath, and choked on it. Someone leaned over with

a towel, and wiped bloody froth from his lips. He did not open his eyes. As

if she had known nothing till now, a cold dagger of realization stabbed her.

He was gone out of reach; he would no longer direct her journeys. He would

decide nothing, ever again; would never tell her what she had come to ask. For

her, for the child within her, he was already dead. She began to wail, like a

mourner over a bier, clawing her face, beating her breast, tearing at her

clothes, shaking her disheveled hair. She flung herself forward, her arms

across the bed, burying her face in the sheet, hardly aware of the hot, still

living flesh beneath it. Someone was speaking; a light, young voice, the voice

of a eunuch. "He can hear all this; it troubles him." There was a strong

grasp on her shoulders, pulling her back. She might have recognized Ptolemy,

from the triumphs and processions seen from her lattices; but she was looking

across the bed, perceiving who had spoken. She would have guessed, even if she

had not seen him once in India, gliding down the Indus on Alexander's

flagship, dressed in the brilliant stuffs of Taxila, scarlet and gold. It was

the hated Persian boy, familiar of this room she had never entered; he, too, a

custom of the Greeks, though her husband had never told her so. His menial

clothes, his haggard exhausted face, conceded nothing. No longer desirable, he

had become commanding. Generals and satraps and captains, whose obedience

should be to her, who should be rousing the King to answer her, to name his

heir-they listened, submissive, to this dancing-boy. As for her, she was an

intrusion. She cursed him with her eyes, but already his attention was

withdrawn from her, as he beckoned a slave to take the bloodstained towel, and

checked the clean pile beside him. Ptolemy's hard hands released her; the

hands of her attendants, gentle, supplicating, insistent, guided her towards

the door. Someone picked up her veil from the bed and threw it over her. Back

in her own room, she flung herself down in a furious storm of weeping,

pummeling and biting the cushions of her divan. Her ladies, when they dared

speak to her, implored her to spare herself, lest the child miscarry. This

brought her to herself; she called for mare's milk and figs, which she chiefly

craved for lately. Dark fell; she tossed on her bed. At length, dry-eyed, she

got up, and paced to and fro in the moon-dappled courtyard, where the fountain

murmured like a conspirator in the hot Babylonian night. Once she felt the

child move strongly. Laying her hands over the place, she whispered, "Quiet,

my little king. I promise you... I promise..." She went back to bed, and fell

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

FUNERALGAMESCopyright©1981byMaryRenaultthezigguratofbel-mardukhadbeenhalfruinousforacenturyandahalf,eversinceXerxeshadhumbledthegodsofrebelliousBabylon.Theedgesofitsterraceshadcrumbledinlandslidesofbitumenandbakedbrick;storksnestedonitsraggedtop,whichhadonceheldthegod'sgoldenbedchamberandhissacredco...

展开>> 收起<<

Mary Renault - Greece 8 - Funeral Games.pdf

共127页,预览26页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

Mary Renault - Greece 8 - Funeral Games

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: