Child of a Dream Read online

  VALERIO MASSIMO MANFREDI

  ALEXANDER

  CHILD OF A DREAM

  Translated from the Italian by Iain Halliday

  PAN BOOKS

  Contents

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  1

  OLYMPIAS HAD DECIDED to visit the Sanctuary of Dodona because of a strange premonition that had come to her as she slept alongside her husband – Philip II, King of the Macedonians, who lay that night in a wine- and food-sated slumber.

  She had dreamed of a snake slithering slowly along the corridor outside and then entering their bed chamber silently. She could see it, but she could not move, and neither could she shout for help. The coils of the great reptile slid over the stone floor and in the moonlight that penetrated the room through the window, its scales glinted with copper and bronze reflections.

  For a moment she wanted Philip to wake up and take her in his arms, to hold her against his strong, muscular chest, to caress her with his big warrior’s hands, but immediately she turned to look again on the drakon, on the huge animal that moved like a ghost, like a magic creature, like the creatures the gods summon from the bowels of the earth whenever the need arises.

  Now, strangely, she was no longer afraid of it. She felt no disgust for it, indeed she felt ever more attracted and almost charmed by the sinuous movement, by the graceful and silent force.

  The snake worked its way under the blankets, it slipped between her legs and between her breasts and she felt it take her, light and cold, without hurting her at all, without violence.

  She dreamed that its seed mingled with the seed her husband had already thrust into her with the strength of a bull, with all the vigour of a wild boar, before he had collapsed under the weight of exhaustion and of wine.

  The next day the King had put on his armour, dined with his generals on wild hog’s meat and sheep’s milk cheese, and had left to go to war. This was a war against a people more barbarous than his Macedonians: the Triballians, who dressed in bearskins, who wore hats of fox fur and lived along the banks of the Ister, the biggest river in Europe.

  All he had said to Olympias was, ‘Remember to offer sacrifices to the gods while I am away and bear me a man child, an heir who looks like me.’

  Then he had mounted his bay horse and set off at a gallop with his generals, the courtyard resounding with the noise of their steeds’ hooves, echoing with the clanging of their arms.

  Olympias took a warm bath following her husband’s departure and while her maidservants massaged her back with sponges steeped in essence of jasmine and Pierian roses, she sent for Artemisia, the woman who had been her wet-nurse. Artemisia was aged now, but her bosom was still ample, her hips still shapely and she came from a good family; Olympias had brought her here from Epirus when she had come to marry Philip.

  She recounted the dream and asked, ‘Good Artemisia, what does it mean?’

  Artemisia had her mistress come out of the warm bath and began to dry her with towels of Egyptian linen.

  ‘My child, dreams are always messages from the gods, but few people know how to interpret them. I think you should go to the most ancient of the sanctuaries in Epirus, our homeland, to consult the Oracle of Dodona. Since time immemorial the priests there have handed down the art of reading the voice of the great Zeus, father of the gods and of men. The voice speaks when the wind passes through the branches of the age-old oaks of the sanctuary, when it makes their leaves whisper in spring or summer, or when it stirs the dead leaves into movement around the trunks during autumn and winter.’

  And so it was that a few days later Olympias set off towards the sanctuary that had been built in a most impressive place, in a green valley nestling among wooded mountains.

  Tradition had it that this was among the oldest temples on earth – two doves were said to have flown from Zeus’s hand immediately after he chased Cronus, his father, from the skies. One dove had lighted on an oak at Dodona, the other on a palm tree at the Oasis of Siwa, in the midst of the burning sands of Libya. And since then, in those two places, the voice of the father of the gods had made itself heard.

  ‘What is the meaning of my dream?’ Olympias asked the priests of the sanctuary.

  They sat in a circle on stone seats, in the middle of a green meadow dotted with daisies and buttercups, and they listened to the wind through the leaves of the oaks. They seemed rapt in thought.

  Then one of them said, ‘It means that the child you will bear will be the offspring of Zeus and a mortal man. It means that in your womb the blood of a god has mixed with the blood of a man.

  ‘The child you will bear will shine with a wondrous energy, but just as the flame that burns most brightly consumes the walls of the lamp and uses up more quickly the oil that feeds it, his soul may burn up the heart that houses it.

  ‘Remember, my Queen, the story of Achilles, ancestor of your great family: he was given the choice of a brief but glorious life or a long and dull one. He chose the former, he sacrificed his life for a moment of blinding light.’

  ‘Is this an inevitable fate?’ Olympias asked, apprehensively.

  ‘It is but one possibility,’ replied another priest. ‘A man may take many roads, but some men are born with a strength that comes to them as a gift from the gods and which seeks always to return to the gods. Keep this secret in your heart until the moment comes when your child’s nature will be fully manifest. Be ready then for everything and anything, even to lose him, because no matter what you do you will never manage to stop him fulfilling his destiny, to stop his fame spreading to the ends of the earth.’

  He was still talking when the breeze that had been blowing through the leaves of the oaks changed, almost suddenly, into a strong, warm wind from the south. In no time at all it was strong enough to bend the tops of the trees and to make the priests cover their heads with their cloaks.

  The wind brought with it a thick reddish mist that darkened the entire valley, and Olympias too wrapped her cloak around her body and her head and sat motionless in the midst of the vortex, like the statue of a faceless god.

  The wind subsided just as it had begun, and when the mist cleared, the statues, the pillars and the altars that embellished the sacred place were all covered in a thin layer of red dust.

  The priest who had spoken last touched it with his fingertip and brought it to his lips: ‘This dust has been brought here on the Libyan wind, the breath of Zeus Ammon whose oracle sits among the palms of Siwa. This is an extraordinary happening, a remarkable portent, because the two most ancient oracles on earth, separated by enormous distances, have spoken at the same moment. Your son has heard voices that come from far away and perhaps he has understood the message. One day he will hear them again within the walls of a great sanctuary surrounded by the desert sands.’

  After list
ening to these words, the Queen returned to the capital, to Pella, the city whose roads were dusty in summer and muddy in winter, and there she waited in fear and trembling for the day on which her child would be born.

  *

  The labour pains came one spring evening, after sunset. The women lit the lamps and Artemisia sent word for the midwife and for the physician, Nicomachus, who had been doctor to the old King, Amyntas, and who had supervised the birth of many a royal scion, both legitimate and otherwise.

  Nicomachus was ready, knowing that the time was near. He put on an apron, had water heated and more lamps brought so that there would be sufficient light.

  But he let the midwife approach the Queen first, because a woman prefers to be touched by another woman at the moment when she brings her child into the world: only a woman truly knows of the pain and the solitude in which a new life is made.

  King Philip, at that very moment, was laying siege to the city of Potidaea and would not have left the front line for anything in the world.

  It was a long and difficult birth because Olympias had narrow hips and was of delicate constitution.

  Artemisia wiped her mistress’s brow. ‘Courage, my child, push! When you see your baby you will be consoled for all the pain you must suffer now.’ She moistened Olympias’ lips with spring water from a silver bowl, which the maids refreshed continuously.

  But when the pain grew to the point where Olympias almost fainted, Nicomachus intervened, guiding the midwife’s hands and ordering Artemisia to push on the Queen’s belly because she had no strength left and the baby was in distress.

  He put his ear to Olympias’ lower belly and could hear that the baby’s heart was slowing down.

  ‘Push as hard as you can,’ he ordered Artemisia. ‘The baby must be born now.’

  Artemisia leaned with all her weight on the Queen who let out one frightfully loud cry and gave birth.

  Nicomachus tied the umbilical cord with linen thread, then he cut it immediately with a pair of bronze scissors and cleaned the wound with wine.

  The baby began to cry and Nicomachus handed him to the women so that they could wash and dress him.

  It was Artemisia who first saw his face, and she was delighted: ‘Isn’t he wonderful?’ she asked as she wiped his eyelids and nose with some wool dipped in oil.

  The midwife washed his head and as she dried it she found herself exclaiming, ‘He has the hair of a child of six months and fine blond streaks. He looks like a little Eros!’

  Artemisia meanwhile was dressing him in a tiny linen tunic because Nicomachus did not agree with the practice followed in most families by which newborn babies were tightly swaddled.

  ‘What colour do you think his eyes are?’ she asked the midwife.

  The woman brought a lamp nearer and the baby’s eyes shone as they reflected the light. ‘I don’t know, it’s difficult to say. They seem to be blue, then dark, almost black. Perhaps it’s because his parents are so different from each other . . .’

  Nicomachus was taking care of the Queen who, as often happens with first-time mothers, was bleeding. This eventuality having been a worry to him beforehand, he had had snow gathered from the slopes of Mount Bermion.

  He made compresses of the snow and applied them to Olympias’ belly. The Queen shivered, tired and exhausted as she was, but the physician could not afford to let himself feel sorry for her and he continued to apply the ice-cold compresses until the bleeding stopped completely.

  Then, as he took off his apron and washed his hands, he left her to the care of the women. He let them change her sheets, wash her with soft sponges steeped in rosewater, change her gown with a clean one taken from her clothes chest, and give her something to drink.

  It was Nicomachus who presented the baby to Olympias: ‘Here is Philip’s son, my Queen. You have given birth to a beautiful boy.’

  Then he went out into the corridor where a horseman of the royal guard was waiting, dressed for a journey: ‘Go, fly to the King and tell him his child is born. Tell him it’s a boy, that he is beautiful, healthy and strong.’

  The horseman threw his cloak over his shoulders, put the strap of his satchel over his head and ran off. Before he disappeared at the end of the corridor, Nicomachus shouted after him, ‘Tell him too that the Queen is well.’

  The cavalryman did not even stop and an instant later there came the noise of a horse neighing in the courtyard below and then the clatter of galloping which soon faded to silence along the roads of the sleeping city.

  2

  ARTEMISIA TOOK THE BABY and put him on the bed alongside the Queen. Olympias lifted herself up on her elbows, her back resting on the pillows, and she looked upon her child.

  He was beautiful. His lips were full, his features delicate, his complexion rosy. His hair, a light brown colour, shone with golden reflections and at the very centre of his forehead was what the midwife described as a cowlick – a small tuft of hair that stood up above the rest.

  His eyes appeared blue, but deep in the left one was a sort of black shadow that made it seem darker as the light changed.

  Olympias lifted him up, held him to her and rocked him until he stopped crying. Then she bared her breast to feed him, but Artemisia moved closer and said, ‘My child, the wet-nurse will take care of that. Don’t ruin your breasts. The king will soon be back home from the war and you will have to be more beautiful and desirable than ever.’

  Artemisia held out her arms to take the baby, but instead of giving him to her, Olympias moved him towards her breast and fed him with her milk until he fell asleep peacefully.

  In the meantime the messenger continued his gallop to reach the King as quickly as possible. He came to the river Axios in the middle of the night and spurred the horse on across the bridge of boats that united the two banks. It was still dark when he changed his mount at Thermai and he continued on towards the interior of the Chalcidice peninsula.

  Dawn found him on the coast where the vast gulf blazed with the rising sun like a mirror set before a fire. He wove his way up the mountainous mass of the Kalauros, through an increasingly harsh and bitter landscape, among impervious rocks which here and there formed sheer cliffs above the sea, fringed below by the white boiling spume of the sea.

  *

  The King was besieging the ancient city of Potidaea, which for almost half a century had been under Athenian control. He was doing this not because he wanted conflict with Athens, but because he considered the city to be in Macedonian territory and it was his intention to affirm his domination throughout the region that extended between the Gulf of Thermai and the Bosphorus. At that moment, cramped in an assault tower together with his warriors, Philip – armed, covered in dust, sweat and blood – was about to launch the decisive attack.

  ‘Men!’ he shouted. ‘If you are truly worthy soldiers, now is the time to prove it! I will give the finest horse in my stables to the first who has the guts to attack the enemy walls together with me, but, by Zeus, if I see even just one of you turn weak-kneed when the time comes, I swear I will flay him skinless. And I will do it personally. Do you hear me?’

  ‘We hear you, King!’

  ‘Now then, let us begin!’ ordered Philip as he nodded to his men to take the brakes off the winches. The bridge came down on the walls that had already been breached and half demolished by the battering rams and the King rushed forward – shouting and striking out with his sword, so quickly that it was difficult to keep up with him. But his soldiers knew well that their King always kept his promises and all as one they pushed forward too, barging one against another with their shields and sending the enemy reeling down from the sides and the battlements. This was an enemy already weakened by the hardships of the siege, by the sleepless nights and the fatigue of months and months of continuous fighting. Behind Philip and his guard the rest of the army came flowing, engaging in brutal hand-to-hand combat with the last defenders who were barricading the roads and house entrances.

  At sunset Po
tidaea, brought to its knees, asked for truce.

  *

  It was almost night when the messenger arrived, having exhausted another two horses. When he looked down from the hills surrounding Potidaea he saw a circle of fires around the walls and he could hear the shouts of the Macedonian soldiers celebrating their victory.

  He dug his heel into the horse’s ribs and in no time at all he reached the encampment. He asked to be taken to the King’s tent.

  ‘What’s it about?’ asked the officer on guard, from the north judging by his accent. ‘The King is busy. The city has fallen and its government has sent a delegation to negotiate.’

  ‘The Prince is born,’ replied the messenger.

  The news brought the officer instantly to attention. ‘Follow me,’ he said.

  The King was still in his battle armour and was sitting in his tent surrounded by his generals. Just behind him was his deputy, Antipater. All around them were the representatives of Potidaea who rather than negotiating were in fact listening to Philip dictate his conditions.

  The officer, realizing that his intrusion would not be tolerated, but that any delay in announcing such an important event would have been tolerated even less, said immediately: ‘Sire, news from the palace – your son is born!’

  The delegates from Potidaea, pale and drawn, looked at one another, stood up from the stools they had been told to sit on and moved aside. Antipater took up position with his arms crossed over his chest, the posture of one who awaits orders or a word from the King.

  Philip had been interrupted in mid-sentence, ‘Your city will be required to provide a . . .’ and he had continued, with quite a different voice, ‘a . . . son.’

  The delegates, who failed to understand what was happening, looked at one another dumbstruck, but Philip was already on his feet, his chair crashing to the floor; he pushed the officer aside and grabbed the messenger by the shoulders.