He said, “You have truly mourned for him. I too. He was a good brother.”
Bagoas’ face remained inexpressive; but tears ran from his eyes in silence, like blood from an open wound. He brushed them absently away, as one might a lock of hair which has a habit of straying, and turned to pour the wine.
“We owed him tears,” Ptolemy said. “He would have wept for us.” He paused. “But, if the dead care for what concerned them in life, he may be needing more from his friends than that.”
The ivory mask under the lamp turned to a face; the eyes, in which desperation was tempered by older habits of gentle irony, riveted themselves on Ptolemy’s. “Yes?” he said.
“We both know what he valued most. While he lived, honor and love; and, after, undying fame.”
“Yes,” Bagoas. “So …?”
With his new attention had come a profound and weary skepticism. Why not, thought Ptolemy; three years among the labyrinthine intrigues of Darius’ court before he was sixteen—and, lately, why not indeed?
“What have you seen since he died? How long have you been shut up here?”
Raising his large dark disillusioned eyes, Bagoas said with a vicious quiet, “Since the day of the elephants.”
For a moment Ptolemy was silenced; the wraith had hardened, dauntingly. Presently he said, “Yes, that would have sickened him. Niarchos said so, and so did I. But we were overborne.”
Bagoas said, answering the unspoken words, “The ring would have gone to Krateros, if he had been there.”
There was a pause. Ptolemy considered his next move; Bagoas looked like a man just waked from sleep, considering his thoughts. Suddenly he looked up sharply. “Has anyone gone to Susa?”
“Bad news travels fast.”
“News?” said Bagoas with unconcealed impatience. “It is protection they will need.”
Suddenly, Ptolemy remembered something said by his Persian wife, Artakama, a lady of royal blood bestowed by Alexander. He was leaving her with her family till, as he had said, the affairs of Egypt were settled. He had been uneasy with a harem, its claustral and stifling femininity, after the free-and-easy Greek hetairas. He meant his heir to be a pure-bred Macedonian, and had, in fact, offered for one of Antipatros’ many daughters. But there had been some piece of gossip … Bagoas’ eyes were boring into his.
“I have heard a rumor—worth nothing I daresay—that a Persian lady came from Susa to the harem here, and was taken sick and died. But—”
Bagoas’ breath hissed through his teeth. “If Stateira has come to Babylon,” he said in a soft, deadly voice, “of course she has been taken sick and died. When first the Bactrian knew of me, I would have died of the same sickness, if I had not given some sweetmeats to a dog.”
Ptolemy felt a sickening conviction. He had been with Alexander on that last visit to Susa, been brought once to dine with Sisygambis and the family. Pity and disgust contended with the thought that if this had happened, and Perdikkas had condoned it, his own design was justified.
“Alexander’s fame,” he said, “has not been very well served since the gods received him. Men who cannot match his greatness of soul should try at least to honor it.”
Bagoas brooded on him, thoughtful, in a grey calm; as if he stood on the threshold of a door he had been going out of, and could not be sure it was worth while to turn back. “Why have you come?” he said.
The dead are not respectful, Ptolemy reflected. Good, it saves time.
“I will tell you why. I am concerned for the fate of Alexander’s body.”
Bagoas hardly stirred, but his whole frame seemed to change, losing its lethargy, becoming wiry and tense. “They took their oath!” he said. “They took it on the Styx.”
“Oath …? Oh, all that is over. I’m not talking of Babylon.”
He looked up. His heater had come in from the threshold; the door of life had swung to behind him. He listened, rigidly.
“They are making him a golden bier; nothing less is due to him. It will take the craftsmen a year to finish. Then, Perdikkas will have it sent to Macedon,”
“To Macedon!” The look of stunned shock quite startled Ptolemy, his homeland customs taken for granted. Well, so much the better.
“That is the custom. Did he not tell you how he buried his father?”
“Yes. But it was here they …”
“Meleager? A rogue and a halfwit, and the rogue is dead. But in Macedon, that is different. The Regent is nearly eighty; he may be gone before the bier arrives. And his heir is Kassandros, whom you know of.”
Bagoas’ slender hand closed in a sinewy fist. “Why did Alexander let him live? If he had only given me leave. No one would have been the wiser.”
I don’t doubt it, thought Ptolemy, glancing at his face. “Well, in Macedon the King is entombed by his rightful heir; it confirms his succession. So, Kassandros will be waiting. So will Perdikkas; he will claim it in the name of Roxane’s son—and, if there is no son, maybe for himself. There is also Olympias, who is no mean fighter either. It will be a bitter war. Sooner or later, whoever holds the coffin and the bier will need the gold.”
Ptolemy looked for a moment, and looked away. He had come remembering the elegant, epicene favorite; devoted certainly, he had not doubted that, but still, a frivolity, the plaything of two kings’ leisure. He had not foreseen this profound and private grief in its priestlike austerity. What memories moved behind those guarded eyes?
“This, then,” he said inexpressively, “is why you came?”
“Yes. I can prevent it, if I have help that I can trust.”
Bagoas said, half to himself, “I never thought they would be taking him away.” His face changed and grew wary. “What do you mean to do?”
“If I have word of when the bier sets out, I will march from Egypt to meet it. Then, if I can treat with the escort—and I think I can—I will take him to his own city, and entomb him in Alexandria.”
Ptolemy waited. He saw himself being, weighed. At least there were no old scores between them. Less than delighted when Alexander took a Persian to his heart and bed, he had been distant to the boy, but never insolent. Later, when it was clear the youth was neither venal nor ambitious, simply a tactful and well-mannered concubine, their chance meetings had been unstrained and easy. However, one did not sleep with two kings and remain naive. One could see the assessment he was making now.
“You are thinking of what I stand to gain; and why not? A great deal, of course. It may even make me a king. But—and this I swear before the gods—never a king of Macedon and Asia. No man alive can wear the mantle of Alexander, and those who grasp at it will destroy themselves. Egypt I can hold, and rule it as he wanted. You were not there, it was before your time; but he was proud of Alexandria.”
“Yes,” said Bagoas. “I know.”
“I was with him,” said Ptolemy, “when he went to Amnion’s oracle at Siwah in the desert, to learn his destiny.”
He began to tell of it. Almost at once the worldly alertness in his hearer’s face had faded; he saw the single-minded absorption of a listening child. How often, he thought, must that look have drawn the tale from Alexander! The boy’s memory must read like a written scroll. But to hear it from someone else would give some new and precious detail, some new sight-line.