Alexander: Child of a Dream by Valerio Massimo Manfredi Page B

question one of the labourers collapsed to the ground and almost ended up beneath his horse’s hooves. An overseer made sure the man was dead, then nodded to another two poor wretches who put their baskets to one side, took the body by the feet and dragged it away.
‘Why have you brought me here?’ Alexander asked again. And Philip saw the leaden sky reflected in the dark expression on his son’s face.
‘You have not yet seen the worst of it,’ he replied. ‘Do you feel up to going underground?’
‘I am not afraid of anything,’ stated the boy.
‘Follow me then.’
The King dismounted and moved towards the entrance of one of the caves. The overseer who challenged him, holding up his whip, suddenly stopped in shock, recognizing the golden star of the Argeads on Philip’s chest.
Philip simply nodded and the overseer stood back, lit a lantern and prepared to guide them underground.
Alexander followed his father, but as soon as he entered the cave he felt himself suffocating in the unbearable stench of human urine, sweat and excrement. They had to crouch, sometimes with their backs almost bent double, in a narrow passageway full of the din of continuous hammering, of a general breathlessness, of coughing, of the guttural rattles of death.
The overseer stopped occasionally where a group of men were working with their picks to extract the mineral-bearing rock. Here and there they stopped at the edge of a pit and down at the bottom the feeble glow of a lantern illuminated a bony back, joined to skeletal arms.
Once or twice the miners, down in these pits, on hearing the approach of footsteps or voices, lifted their heads and so Alexander witnessed the masks of men disfigured by fatigue, by illness and by the horror of living such a life.
Further on, at the bottom of one pit, they saw a corpse.
‘Many of them commit suicide,’ the overseer explained. ‘They throw themselves on their picks or stab themselves with their chisels.’
Philip turned to look at Alexander. The Prince was silent and
     
apparently numbed by this experience, and the darkness of death had fallen over his eyes.
They exited on the other side of the mountain through a narrow passage, and there were the horses and their escort waiting for them.
Alexander stared at his father. ‘What have these people done to deserve this?’ he asked, his face waxen pale.
‘Nothing,’ replied the King. ‘Apart from being born.’
they remounted their horses and went down to the pass through the rain which had started falling once more. Alexander rode in silence alongside his father.
‘I wanted you to know that there is a price to be paid for everything. And I wanted you to know exactly what type of price as well. Our grandeur, our conquests, our palaces and our finery … all this must be paid for.’
‘But why them?’
‘There is no why or wherefore. The world is governed by fate. When they were born it was written that they would die in that way, just as our own destinies were established at our births, and the outcome will be kept hidden from us until the final moment.
‘Only man, among all living things, is capable both of rising up to touch the dwelling of the gods, and of sinking lower than a beast. You have already seen the home of the gods, you have lived in the home of a king, but I felt it was right that you should see what fate may have in store for a human being. Among those wretches there are men who perhaps one day were chiefs or nobles, and who have suddenly been plunged into this misery by fate.’
‘But if this is the destiny that may await all men, why not be merciful for as long as fortune smiles upon us?’
‘That is what I wanted to hear you say. You must be merciful whenever you can, but remember that nothing can be done to change the nature of things.’
At that moment Alexander saw a girl just slightly younger
     
than himself coming up the path; she was carrying two heavy baskets full of broad beans and chickpeas, probably for the