UnHeralded Strength, Book I.37
Bagoas receives an unusual gift from Alexander.
*Sources for this chapter below.
Bagoas moved through the surrounding environs of the city, and camp encompassing it at a run, his high spirits pushing him on. Full out barely breathless, his long black hair spreading out behind him as though lifted by the very spirits of the air, he gave himself up to the joy coursing through him, his sore foot barely noticeable.
Voices, mostly good natured shouts reached out, then receded as he ran. He was elated as he had not been in many a year. Though Iskander had left him behind while he hunted the lions, something he did at first grieve, he had not forgotten him. Nearing the third hour of the afternoon, bathed, and dressed in fresh clothing, after his practice of the dance for Hephaistion's upcoming feast day was finished for the day, Setapas beckoned him from his own chamber and there as he took some refreshment, and rested handed him a package. Curiosity, the heart's blood of every man and youth of any consequence drew a smile which grew wider when he recognized Alexander's handwriting on a small scroll attached to a finely wrought string of silver and bronze colored threads.
He looked up, his eyes glowing with delight into Setapas' equally smiling face. "Aye, for you from the Great RA." At first Bagoas' fingers lingered anxiously about the parcel which from its shape and feel he imagined to be a scroll box. He tugged at the small scroll attached, only to be stopped with Setapas' hand.
"Non, you must open it first. There is a method to his deviousness." Bagoas giggled a bit feeling all of seven years, back in his Father's house, at his birth day celebration. Carefully, he set aside the richly worked peacock blue brocade cloth that covered the gift. Beneath lay a slim ivory and cedar wood box. He held it up, it smelt of rich spices. With great care, he pulled from it a scroll and stood puzzled as he found he could not read the scroll's title.
"Zenno…non, 'tis not correct" He paused a moment thinking hard then read it aloud, perfectly. "Xenophon's Cyropaedia. My Greek is good, but this I fear is beyond my abilities, some I recognize, but…" He frowned in dismay when he tried to read the first bit of the scroll.
"Look along the edges," Setapas suggested with a grin, and as Bagoas did he found notes in both Alexander and Hephaistion's own hand.
"I…I…" Reading the first of the notes, in Alexander's hand he began to tremble so that he set the scroll aside and sank down upon a cushion. Running a slender hand through his long hair, his voice full of concern he spoke. "Setapas, I do not understand…I was trained to pleasure the body and perhaps when older and no longer a youth, as other **saris do in administrative purposes within the Household, but never a warrior. Petisakas was a saris, aye, but he was a warrior, and rode at Kyrus' side. All my dreams will not make such reality for me. I am too old to learn the ways of the warrior."
"Kyrus' life as a ruler had many dreams in it, some of those the Great RA wishes to take as his own. He is sharing his dreams with you Bagoas, but more than that, he wishes you, and I can see from his comments, so does the great Lord Hephaistion, to share in the development of those dreams, as he asks others of like mind. Do not disappoint them they are placing great trust in you."
For a long moment Bagoas stood, almost unable to think clearly his own uncertainties warring with the honor being paid him. Then he picked the scroll back up and cradled it tenderly in his hands. "I will not fail them. I will learn and serve them as Petisakas served the Great King Kyrus." For the next hour, sitting on the floor, at Setapas' feet, he read the small scroll carrying Alexander's personal message and sat lost in wondrous dreams. Never, had he thought when he, at the age of eight, and under the direction of his uncle Izabates, a eunuch in good standing with the Great King's court at Babylonia, suggested he too enter into service that his life would have taken the path it had. So he had been taken to Nebuchadnezzar's palace, as his fourteen year old sister had the year before. Like his sister, whose beauty had granted her entrance into the Great King's harem, his too had garnered attention, and his Father, who had five other children by his mother, who was the youngest of his two wives, but none so beauteous as he and his sister, had willing given them both into service in exchange for the continued power and prestige he knew they would gain him in service to the Great King.
He had rebelled at first, and his uncle Izabates, who had undergone the same training nearly two decades before knew just how to quell that outrageous response. He had sent Bagoas to the city of Susa, to live for a time, with a man whom he knew while not of low morals, would make certain his nephew was acquainted with the harsher reality of a life outside the court. For a moment, Bagoas' hand began to tighten upon the fibrous papyrus of the Cyropaedia, but stopped when he realized what he was doing. He sighed deeply; he had never spoken to anyone of his younger days, preferring to forget them, best he could. Of his Mother, whom he had last seen a year prior to the death of the Great King, he deemed it best to forget as well. His father had died in battle at Issos, and he had not grieved for him. However, his uncle, Izabates lived still, though how he managed Bagoas did not know.
Here, in the military camp of Iskander, who had been his King's enemy, Bagoas knew he had found what he had so long dreamt of, acceptance and freedom on a level he had never known. Discipline was the byword here, aye, but along with its strict ways was also a different way of life that he found suited him, very well. Having lived within the hallowed, sophisticated, and dangerous halls of the Achaemenid court for so long, he found his spirit begin to rise and throw off the long lived spectre of deep grief and sadness of which he thought he would never be free.
When at length he made his excuses to Setapas, and after safely tucking his new treasure away in his clothes' chest, he made way toward the tent of Chares where he found an early supper waiting. There he spent a goodly hour in conversation with the King's Chamberlin, who from his sly grin and obvious questions knew something of his gift. Usually their meals were spent in chatter, aye, always pleasant, but rarely pointed. This night however, Chares quizzed him on protocol, especially on various points pertaining toward the ritual greeting of the King. However, seeing and knowing the spirit of youth, as he himself had once been, and serving those clearly younger than he, and knowing the fire that quickened in their veins, at length with a good hearted smiled he released his young companion to his own resources.
So it was, giving feet to the fire in his blood, Bagoas sped like a falcon past the familiar faces of the guard at the city gate, pausing long enough to call out he would return before sundown. Dodging the unsuspecting traveler or rider with whom his path crossed he moved outward toward the great, empty expanse of road and meadow land beyond. Several children, coming out from small farms, their own blood high with youthful excitement matched him at first, their small feet beating the dust beside him, but at length they fell away laughing and shouting, as he left them in his dust.
High above him he heard the call of a great predator, glancing up he saw, heard the feathered god beating back Zephyr with his great, shining wings as he cried out announcing to all creation he alone ruled the skies. Bagoas laughed calling out to the bird, an eagle, are large one even from so high above, he could tell by the breadth of its wingspan it was a kingly being.
Across tall, golden grasses he sped, his movement fleet as the god of the ether abovse. He lifted his eyes and cried out- his voice rejoicing with him at the sight of the magnificent golden bird, "Lord of the Skies, most sacred one who governs all above, I honor you, worship you, will give thanks to Ahura Mazda that these eyes have found such joy in the heavenly firmament to gaze upon."
Ripping through a low grassland his pace swift and certain, feeling the breath of wind upon his bare face, reveling in the all out freedom and speed with which the world he passed through moved with him. Briefly he wondered if this was how horses felt when they ran, unencumbered, unknowing, unheeding of the concerns of man, for they in their wild, equine grace were unconcerned about those who sought to capture, to own them. For they knew the secret man did not, nothing could own them! In spirit there were freest! They, in their splendid majesty knew a sovereignty no man could give voice to. Heirs to a greater, older race that had truly brought thunder down upon the earth, and cleaved it with their hooves until it bled and flowered into men. He too, pounded the earth, shattering it with his power, the unknowable, yet certain knowledge he was as one with all things above and below him.
Perhaps today, perhaps now at this precious time he alone, by some grant of sacred trust with Ahura Mazda was given such realization He threw back his head, cried out wildly and hearing the cry echoed from high above laughed - ecstasy making his eternal being to dance, rejoice in worship, and picking up speed, a feat which even Iskander, were he present would wonder at, for Bagoas knew he moved as the wind through the golden grasses, long muscles rippling a grace only the gods knew barely touching down to light upon the earth beneath his winged feet.
As he ran he forgot all his sorrows, concerns, yea, even joys, for nothing in these moments was as sacred as the pace he kept with the heartbeat circling in the god above him and the great horse gods he believed man once served a long ago time. A time immemorial when all things, beings, creatures were as one and knew that great, sacred heartbeat of the Universe as their own.
With joyous voice that echoed to the vaults of the heavens themselves he called out wild even in the fire that inspired his heart and gave wing to his soul. It was not any one thing that had caused him this strange escape, but a hundred, the rays of gold that covered the earth, lighting it against the darkness, and the complete knowing that he, at last at seventeen could once again run unencumbered as he had when but a boy, with no heeding for any care but his heart's desire to feel the wind in his hair. He was as a thousand drums bounding joyous in time with the deer, the lion, and the horse god as they tread with Heaven's breath at their back through the grasslands, blazing through the tender shoots of green as they pushed their way through the rich dark earth toward illumination.
As he turned toward a grove of tall pines that began the way toward the great forests through which Alexander and his hunters had earlier passed, his vision caught the merest glimpse of something coming toward him, the rapid relentless pace flashed as gold in the distance. He gave pause, breath quickening at the speed at which the spirit flew. For it must be nothing else, what but spirit, the very essence of the gods themselves could move as such a shining fire loosed and flowing at godlike speed against all in its path.
He gave it name and called out as it gained on him, as with the certainty of the hunter he had never before been he caught it up and bore it to the ground. Then, standing tall though his breath trembled as his legs, he pulled the spear upright to study it, and wondered what enemy he had wrought who had sent it speeding toward him.
*Sources:, Xenophon, Cyropaedia, and Encyclopedia Iranica, Eunuchs, The Achaemenid Period. **Ancient Persian term for eunuch, its root being Akkadian, sa resi meaning "he is who chief."
To be continued….