Free Alexander: Child of a Dream by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

stood and walked to the window to look out at the starry sky and recited the lines she had just read, her voice vibrant and melancholic:
‘Night is midway through its course, The moon and the Pleiades have set And I lie in my bed … alone.’*
Alexander moved towards his mother, and in the hesitant light of the moon he saw a tear tremble for a moment on her eyelash before descending slowly, leaving a track down her pale cheek.
* Sappho, fragment 8
the master of ceremonies ordered the fanfare to be sounded and the Persian dignitaries made their impressive entrance into the throne room. The head of the delegation was the Satrap of Phrygia, Arsames, accompanied by the province’s military governor and other notables who followed some steps behind.
They were flanked by an escort of twelve Immortals, the soldiers of the imperial guard, all chosen for their daunting stature, their majestic bearing and the dignity of their lineage.
The Satrap wore a soft tiara, the most prestigious headdress after the rigid tiara, which only the Emperor himself was allowed to wear. His gown was of green byssus embroidered with silver dragons and he wore it over a pair of elaborate trousers and on his feet were antelope-skin slippers. The other dignitaries were also dressed in incredibly rich and refined vestments.
But what most attracted the attention of the onlookers were the Great King’s Immortals. Almost six feet tall and olive-skinned, they sported frizzy black beards and their hair had been sumptuously dressed and curled with a calamistrum. They wore ankle-length gowns of golden samite over tunics of blue byssus and trousers of the same colour embroidered with golden bees. Over their shoulders they carried their deadly double-curved bows and their quivers of cedar wood, inlaid with ivory and silver.
They moved forward in a slow rhythmic march, touching the floor with the shafts of their spears which terminated in golden pommels in the shape of pomegranates. Hanging at his hip each Immortal wore the most beautiful weapon that any
     
armourer in the known world had ever made -the dazzling akinake, a solid gold dagger sheathed in a scabbard which carried embossed patterns of rampant griffins with eyes of rubies. The scabbard was also made of the purest gold and hung from a swivel joint hooked onto the Immortals’ belts. This meant that the weapon swayed freely with each step they took and the glinting light of the precious metal lent yet more rhythm to the majesty of the warriors’ movement.
Philip, who had been expecting a display of grandeur of this type, had prepared an appropriate welcome each
side of the room was lined with two rows of thirty-six pezhetairoi, the well-built soldiers of his heavy front-line infantry. Encased in their bronze armour, they presented their shields, emblazoned with the silver star of the Argeads, and they gripped their sarissae, pikes twelve feet in length with shafts of cornel-wood. Their bronze heads were polished like mirrors and almost touched the ceiling.
Alexander, dressed in his first suit of armour a
suit which he himself had designed for the craftsman who made it was
surrounded by his personal guard and stood on a stool at his father’s feet. On the other side, at Queen Olympias’ feet, sat his sister, Cleopatra, only just adolescent and already stunningly beautiful. She wore an Attic peplum gown that left her arms and shoulders bare as it fell into elegant folds around her young breasts, and her feet were clad in sandals made of ribbons of silver.
On Teaching the throne, Arsames bowed to the royal couple before moving aside to allow the dignitaries to come forward with the gifts they bore: a belt of knitted gold with aquamarines and tiger-eyes for the Queen, and an inlaid Indian breastplate made out of a turtle shell for the King.
Philip had the master of ceremonies move forward with his gifts for the Emperor and the Empress: a Scythian helmet in gold and a Cypriot necklace of coral set in