Losing our footing on the frozen scree slopes, we finally managed to pass through the narrow gorge. Suddenly, the view opened up beneath our eyes, and spring, at long last, came forward to greet us. The snow-capped rocky mountains yielded to meadows lush with fresh greenery; a gentle breeze rustled through the branches of the ash trees. Here and there, the whistling birds I heard were perhaps blackbirds, or perhaps wrens. The wind was chilly, but the weather was pleasant. I found myself thinking that the King would surely favor this view, and that our campsite for today would undoubtedly be around here. Before long, the horn signaling the halt of the march echoed through the valley.
With a collective sigh of relief, the soldiers began unloading the baggage. Although the sun was still high, the dusk of early spring would soon approach, and before long, a freezing mountain gale would come sweeping down from the Hindu Kush. There was no time to idle. While everyone else gathered firewood, kindled flames, and pitched tents, I stretched a sheet of cloth between the trees to create a canopy against the sun, arranged a table and chairs, and laid out my writing instruments. It was hardly an ideal place for tutoring. For some time now, her attention had been entirely stolen by the yellow violets blooming in the crevices of the rocks and the white butterflies fluttering across the blue sky.
The King had commanded me to teach her Greek. She had been raised in a household where only Persian was spoken. Even now, I myself am poor at Persian. Yet, having faced each other like this every day for about three months now, I found that when forced into a situation where communication is essential, one mysteriously becomes capable of everyday conversation before realizing it. Since this was a rare opportunity, I intended to familiarize myself with Persian while teaching her Greek.
Today, I was to teach her the Greek alphabet. Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta…
“For instance, your name is written like this: Alpha, Mu, Alpha, Sigma, Tau, Rho, Iota, Epsilon. AMASTRIE. Now, please try writing it yourself.”
“So my name is written as AMASTRIE? What strange characters. It feels as though it does not belong to me at all.”
Her speech was a whimsical mixture of the Greek she had only just begun to learn and her native Persian. No doubt I, too, spoke a rather bizarre sort of Persian.
“You will soon grow accustomed to it, Lady Amastrie.”
“Master Eumenes.” Sticking her goose-quill pen into the inkwell, she crossed her arms and turned toward me. “I have something I wish to consult you about, as I know not whom else to ask.”
She spoke with an unusual formality. I wondered what it could be.
“My Princess. Is it something in which I might be of assistance?”
“I hear the King already has a wife and child in Macedonia.”
“Yes. That is correct. Has that given you pause?”
“If both his queen and heir are in his homeland, why then did the King take my sister as his wife as well?”
For a brief moment, the image of Barsine—a middle-aged woman with a round, full-cheeked face—and the face of Heracles, the son she had borne, crossed my mind. It was unlikely the Princess wished to hear about the King’s relationship with her, nor was there any need for me to voice the convoluted affairs of the Macedonian royal house. Like the Macedonians, the House of Hakhamanish (the Achaemenids) traditionally allowed their kings to have multiple wives. Surely the Princess was not ignorant of this. Furthermore, Barsine and Heracles were not currently in the Macedonian homeland but on the island of Rhodes, Barsine’s ancestral home. But there was no need to explain such tedious details to the Princess one by one. In any case, for now, I should not be selective about the topics; I should let her ask whatever troubled her mind and keep her talking. That would naturally aid her language studies.
“That would be because Lady Raoxhuna (Roxana) is not only beautiful but also of the direct lineage of the House of Hakhamanish. The King holds the bloodline of the Persian royal house in high regard.”
Some two hundred and fifty years ago, a man who called himself “Hakhamanish” (meaning friendship) appeared in the Zagros Mountains. His descendants, through their martial valor, united the Aryan peoples, consolidated Asia, and established the Persian Empire. That Barsine, too, must somewhere be linked to the posterity of the founder, Hakhamanish. Today, that bloodline had branched into hundreds of lineages, stretching from Europe to Libya and all the way to India.
“Will I, too, be forced to marry some Greek, just like my sister?”
Whether from shyness or something else, Amastrie offered a clumsy smile as she spoke. She was a beautiful woman, with skin as translucent as a fairy’s, quite a match for her sister Raoxhuna, but she was still young—too young for marriage.
“In all likelihood, yes. For the King desires that the Greeks and Persians, who have hated and fought each other for so long, achieve harmony as swiftly as possible.”
“My heart feels heavy. I wonder who my partner will be. Will my husband also have multiple wives, I wonder?”
“Well. As to that, I cannot say for certain.”
“If only women could have as many husbands as they pleased. It is quite unfair.”
“That is precisely as you say.”
It seemed that the Princess, despite her youth, was already worrying about her future spouse.
“Is Master Eumenes also from Macedonia?”
This time, it was the maidservant, Apama, who inquired. By the King’s command, Apama constantly attended to Amastrie and Raoxhuna. She was of an age where it would not be strange for her to be married, yet she remained single. She always wore a melancholy expression, as if burdened by some lingering sorrow.
“No, though I am a Greek, I am not a Macedonian.”
“Since both Macedonians and Greeks speak the Greek language, are they not both Greeks?”
“Just as you say. The Persian Empire is a melting pot of races; amidst the infinite variety of peoples from ten thousand nations under heaven, our features and spoken tongue must make us look almost identical to your eyes. However, there are many differences. Greeks are highly individualistic and self-centered. Unlike the Persians or Macedonians, a man in Greece takes only one wife. A woman, too, remains with a single husband for life.”
Amastrie questioned me once more.
“Oh? Then do you also have a wife waiting in Greece?”
“No, I am single.”
“Why do you not marry?”
“A poor scholar like myself lacks the competence to support a wife and children, so it cannot be helped.”
“No, indeed, when you were in Greece, you may have been a mere impoverished secretary. But you have followed the King on his campaign, and the King has become the King of the World. Since you, too, are now one of the King’s high officials, it would not be strange for you to marry soon.”
Turning toward Amastrie as she spoke, I replied:
“That may be so. Yet, due to my naturally frugal disposition, the idea does not seem to register with me at all, though it concerns my own life.”
“Surely the King will make you marry a Persian woman as well.”
“That may very well be the case.”
I wondered what the King intended to do with Apama. Surely he did not mean for her to remain Amastrie’s maidservant for the rest of her life without ever marrying.
After a brief silence, during which she seemed to have grown weary of chatting, I was about to resume the lesson when Amastrie spoke up again.
“You seem remarkably close to the King. Are you a relative? You say you are not Macedonian. Are you a Greek nobleman?”
“No. I was born and raised in a tiny, almost negligible state called Cardia, among the countless Greek city-states. I am not of any distinguished lineage, nor, on the other hand, am I a slave. My father and mother were just ordinary commoners who happened to reside in Cardia for no particular reason, met, and married.”
“Commoners?”
“Yes.”
“What sort of commoners?”
“Even if you ask what sort… We lived in a fishing village, so we also caught fish from the sea.”
“Then how did you come to know the King? Did the King come to your village to go fishing?”
I smiled.
“No. I would not go so far as to say I was the King’s childhood friend, but I am one of those who studied under the same master during his youth, back when he was still the Crown Prince of Macedonia.”
“You relocated from Greece to Macedonia?”
“Yes. Mind you, my birthplace of Cardia is close enough to Macedonia to be considered a neighbor. As is the case with most Greek villages along the coast, in my native Cardia, my father traded in medicine with the fishermen while doing some fishing himself.”
“A physician’s dealer? Could it be that your father was conscripted into Macedonia as a military doctor?”
“No, no. Not at all. When I was still a child, my father thought to make me a more proper physician rather than a medicine seller in a rustic village, so he sent me to apprentice under a master. My father was slightly acquainted with him. As it turned out, that master had been invited by King Philip of Macedonia at the time to serve as the tutor to the Crown Prince.”
“You have been speaking of this ‘master’ for a while now—who exactly is he?”
How should I explain my master to her?
“He was known in the vicinity as the most celebrated physician. I hear he comes from a lineage that has served as the chief physicians to the kings of Macedonia for generations. Naturally, the King also places great trust in him. After all, the King is also one of his pupils.”
“Ah, I see. That Crown Prince is the current King of Macedonia, then.”
“Your intuition is correct. The master was granted a place called Mieza near the capital of Pella, where he established a school and became its head. It was there that I became acquainted with the King in his youth. Thanks to my studies under the master, I can read and write, and I can manage a fair imitation of medical arts. Thus, I now serve as the King’s confidant—prescribing medicine, tending to wounds, and making fair copies of letters and decrees.”
“Hmm. You are more occupied than I thought, Master. And where is this country called Cardia? Is it near Macedonia?”
“Yes, indeed. To put it simply…”
Taking the pen from Amastrie’s inkwell, I drew a map on a piece of paper to explain. I did so while thinking that instructing her in Greek geography was also part of my duty.
“If you head east from Macedonia along the coast, you arrive at a long, narrow stretch of sea called ‘Propontis’. At its narrowest point, this sea is a mere ten stadia wide. It is like a vast and long river, grander than any great river in Europe, yet it is undeniably a very narrow sea. Across this strait lies Asia, on the opposite side of Europe. In other words, we Greeks live spanning both Europe and Asia. And Cardia is located just before Asia, on the European side, around here.”
“Hmm. Then around where is the place we are in right now?”
I was momentarily perplexed.
“Master, if leaving Macedonia and heading east brings you to Cardia, and across that narrow sea lies Asia all the way forward, then we must be somewhere around here, yes?”
It seemed Amastrie at least understood that this place lay to the east from the perspective of Greece.
“No, no. Much further east. Allow me to draw another map, a map of the world, to explain.”
“What a waste of papyrus.”
“What are you saying? Unless you read and write maps without begrudging the paper, you will never master geography. Look here: to begin with, this world consists of Asia, centered roughly around the sacred Mount Ararat, surrounded by the lands of the Scythians, Indians, Libyans, and Europeans. Encircling the outside is a colossal, salty sea called Oceanus, and beyond that lies the edge of the world. Our Greece is situated right on the border between Europe and Asia. From here, the Caucasus Mountains—the backbone of the world—run straight east through Asia. Ararat is around here, and beyond that, starting around this area, is India. The border between Asia and India is called Gandhara, and that is where we are now.”
“Hmm. So this place is called Gandhara. Then, where is our birthplace, Bactria?”
“Yes. Roughly around here. It lies on the border between Asia and Scythia.”
“I see, Master Eumenes. You are remarkably knowledgeable. You seem to know everything.”
Amastrie smiled with a mischievous glint in her eye. I could only offer a wry smile.