Such was my fate.
A hot spring ran through a meadow, and there, sheltered from men's eyes, women bathed, rubbing each other's backs, combing each other's hair, and lying on the banks dotted with flowers I had never seen before. A Persian woman told me they were called orchids: they waved their slender leaves at me and watched me with their petal-eyes. They fussed and hid behind each other, jostling and whispering together. Alestria sat on a flat stone, sadly gazing at her reflection while her serving women poured water over her with golden ladles, and cooled her limbs with fragrant mint leaves.
I knew she was still thinking of Alexander. When she looked at herself in the water, it was him she saw. My queen's sorrow made me suffer, and to distract her, I made a little boat drawn by butterflies. Sitting on its prow, she smiled at last and I, Ania, took up the oars and followed the flow of the source, singing:
Alestria turned a deaf ear as she gazed aimlessly and smiled stupidly at the clouds.
I led her over to an anthill.
"Look at the way they go forward, retreat, turn round, and set off again. Ants have no eyes; they respond only to their queen's thoughts. She hides in her underground palace, directing all of them, just as a soul coordinates the limbs of the body it inhabits. Without their queen ants have no sense of direction, they dare not go out for fear of not finding their way home. They wander through the underground tunnels, getting cold and hungry. If attacked they are incapable of defending themselves and die one after the other."
Alestria said nothing; she was not listening to me. Alexander had taken her ears with him so that he could whisper his incantations of love to her and keep his spell over her from afar.
I dragged Alestria by the hand and showed her some bees gathering pollen from flowers.
"I hate bees!" I cried. "They're thieves and assassins! Drawn by the flower's fragrance, they dance round it, singing it songs and swearing their undying devotion to it. The flower naively opens its petals and welcomes the bee into its heart. The bee kisses the flower until it finds the nectar, but once it has, it flies away. The flower, now pregnant to the bee, bears its fruit and dies of sorrow."
Still Alestria said nothing, and tears came to my eyes. I caught a grasshopper and spoke to it:
"You who are so small and so swift, you who travel the earth so tirelessly, be my messenger! Climb mountains, follow rivers, fly toward the steppes! Fly to the land of Siberia! From flower to leaf, from leaf to branch, from stone to tree… one morning you will leap into the open hand of one of our sisters! Tell her we are not dead, we will come back, the queen is well and thinking of her sisters. Then, grasshopper, do not waste any time, come back quickly to give us news of Siberia. You will tell us: everyone is well back there, the babies have grown and can already run and ride. One of the great-aunts has gone away to die. We were attacked, but we defended ourselves and our queen would be proud of us. Come back, Talestria! Come back, Tania!"
Alestria started to run. I ran after her, crying:
"Wherever Alexander goes, the earth shakes beneath his feet and birds fly away. Where Alexander's army goes, the grass is trampled, flowers cut down, trees uprooted, and rivers filled with bodies. Where there are no paths, Alexander burns down the forests. Where men resist him, he massacres them and carries off their women. You have been blinded, my queen!"
I held back my tears and gave one last scream:
"I hate Alexander!"
My voice was carried by the wind and resonated round the valley for a long time before going to join the clouds. I had never cried so loudly; that one scream set me free. I realized I was no longer afraid of the assassins who had torn me from my mother's breast.
Chapter 8
The rain kept falling. Rain mingled with hailstones spattered on the soldiers, who covered their heads with their shields. Violent winds pushed them over, battering them with broken branches. They struggled through the icy mud, looking in vain for some purchase by prodding their lances into the ground. The first row fell backward onto the second, who took all the rest with them. As they fell, they injured themselves on each other's weapons. Their terrified horses whinnied and tried to clamber back to their feet. Lightning tore through the darkness, striking the earth with a terrible crackling and briefly illuminating the trees so that they looked like Titans looming out of the earth. The Persians knelt to pray while the Greeks and Macedonians looked for a means of escape.
Still riding Bucephalus, I forged a route through the chaos. As the thunderclaps covered my men's desperate cries, I shouted at them, forcing them to get back up, to form orderly ranks and advance. The rain blinded me and turned my limbs to ice, rain that wanted to wipe Alexander's army from the face of the earth, rain acting as a messenger for unknown powers that wanted to stop me in my headlong race against myself.
The rain kept falling, weaker but persistent. We had pitched our tents and lit fires when a Persian soldier burst into my tent to report the pitiful state of his regiment, and then himself collapsed. I had him carried to my bed and continued my discussions with my generals. When the poor boy came to, he was startled: ashamed and terrified to find himself sleeping in Alexander's place, he prostrated himself at my feet and begged me to punish him.
"Soldier," I said, "Darius would have condemned you to death for sullying his throne. Alexander asked for you to be carried to his bed in order to save your life. With Darius your life had barely any value; you were an armed slave who could be broken and abandoned. With Alexander you are a free man, a respected warrior. Go back to your regiment and tell them to rest before the next battle."
That rain heralded painful ordeals. A young page called Hermolaus, the son of a noble Macedonian warrior called Sopo-lis, was secretly plotting to assassinate me. When his scheme was denounced by one of his accomplices, he was taken before an assembly of Macedonian soldiers because the law of our native land granted them the right to try him and condemn him. The young page acknowledged his crime without shame and used the opportunity to whip up the crowd.
"You, Alexander, have killed innocent people! Attalus, Par-menion, Philotas, Alexander of Lyncestis, and Cleitos all protected you with their shields in the face of enemies; they suffered injuries to guarantee victory and glory for you. But this is how you thanked them: Cleitos drenched your table with his blood, Philotas was tortured and exposed to jeering from the Persians he himself had defeated, you used Parmenion to kill Attalus and then had him assassinated too. That is how you rewarded your Macedonians!"