Fire From Heaven 4 страница

Alexander did not weep. He had understood the whole business of the appointment. No one had needed to tell him that if he did not obey this man, it would lose his mother a battle in her war; nor that the next one would then be fought over himself. He was scarred within by such battles. When another threatened, the scars throbbed like old wounds before the rain.

Hellanike combed his tangled hair, making him clench his teeth. He cried easily at old war-songs where sworn comrades died together, at a falling cadence of the flute. He had cried half a day, when his dog fell sick and died. Already he knew what it was to mourn the fallen; for Agis he had wept his heart out. But to cry for his own wounds would make Herakles forsake him. This had long been a part of their secret compact.

Bathed, combed and dressed, he was summoned to the Perseus Room, where Olympias and the guest sat in chairs of honour. The boy had expected an aged scholar; he saw a spruce upright man in the forties, his dark beard scarcely grizzled, looking about like a general who, though off duty, will remember it all tomorrow. The boy knew a good deal about officers, mostly from below. His friends kept his secrets, and he kept theirs.

Leonidas was genial, kissed him on both cheeks, set firm hands on his shoulders, was sure he would be a credit to his ancestors. Alexander submitted civilly; his sense of the realities made him stand through it all like a soldier on parade. Leonidas had not hoped to see the Spartan training so well begun. The boy, though too beautiful for safety, looked healthy and alert; no doubt he would prove teachable. 'You have reared a fine child, Olympias. These pretty baby-clothes show your care. Now we must find him something for a boy. '

His eyes moved to his mother, who had embroidered herself his tunic of soft combed wool. Sitting straight in her chair, she gave him a little nod, and looked away.

Leonidas moved into his palace quarters. To negotiate for suitable teachers would take time. Those eminent enough would have schools to leave; some must be looked into, for dangerous thoughts. His own work must begin at once; he saw it could not be too soon.

The drilled look had been illusion. The boy had done as he liked; got up at cocklight or had his sleep out; run about with boys or men. Though grossly spoilt, one must own him not a milksop; but his speech was dreadful. Not only was he nearly Greekless; but where had he learned his Macedonian? One might suppose he had been begotten against a barrack wall.

Clearly, school hours were insufficient. His life must be taken in hand from dawn till dusk.

Every morning before sun-up he was at exercise; twice round the running-track, swinging the hand-weights, leaping and hurling. When breakfast came at last, it was never quite enough. If he said he was still hungry, he was told to say it in proper Greek; to be answered, in proper Greek, that spare breakfasts were good for the health.

His clothes had been changed for homespun, harsh to the skin and unadorned. It was good enough for the kings' sons of Sparta. Autumn came on; in colder and colder weather, he was hardened-off by going cloakless. Running about to keep warm made him much hungrier, but he did not get much more food.

Leonidas found himself obeyed; doggedly, without complaint, with steady unconcealed resentment. It was all too clear that he and his regime were simply a detested ordeal, which the boy endured for his mother's sake, sustained by pride.

He was uneasy, but could not breach the wall. He was one of those men in whom the role of father, once achieved, blots out all memories of childhood. His own sons could have told him so, had they ever told him anything. He would do his duty by the boy, and knew of no one who could do it better.

Greek lessons began. It soon appeared that Alexander was in fact quite fluent. He simply disliked it; a disgrace, as his tutor told him, when his father spoke it so well. He repeated it briskly; soon learned to write it; and expected, as soon as he left the schoolroom, to lapse into broad Macedonian and the argot of the phalanx.

When he understood he had to speak Greek all day, he could scarcely credit it. Even slaves could use their home tongue to one another.

He had respites. To Olympias, the tongue of the north was the heroes' unspoilt heritage, Greek a degenerate patois. She spoke it to Greeks as a courtesy to inferiors, and to them alone. Leonidas had social duties, during which his captive could escape. If he could get to the barracks at mess-time, there was always porridge to spare.

Riding he still enjoyed; but he soon lost his favourite escort, a young officer of the Companions, to whom he offered an accustomed kiss as the man lifted him down. Leonidas saw from the stable yard. Ordered out of hearing, and seeing his friend flush scarlet, the boy thought a limit had been passed. He walked back, and stood between.

'I kissed him first. And he has never tried to have me. ' He used the barrack term, knowing no other.

After a speechless pause, he was marched away in silence. In the schoolroom, still without a word, Leonidas beat him.

He had given far worse to his own sons. Rank and Olympias had their claims. But it was a boy's beating, not a child's. Leonidas did not own to himself that he had been waiting for the chance, to see how his, charge would take it.

He heard no sound but the blows. He had meant at the end to bid the boy turn and face him; but was forestalled. He had looked only for a Spartan fortitude, or self-pity. He confronted dry wide eyes, their irises stretched to a pale rim round the black; hard-shut white lips and dilated nostrils; a blazing rage, condensed by silence like the core of a furnace. For a moment, he had a sense of actual menace.

Alone among those at Pella, he had seen Olympias' childhood. But she would have flown in straight away with her nails; her nurse's face had been scored with them. This containment was another thing. One even dreaded lest it break.

His first instinct was to take the boy by his scruff, and thrash the defiance out of him. But though a narrow man he was by his lights a just one, with an exacting self-esteem. Moreover, he had been brought here to rear a fighting King of Macedon, not to break in a slave. The boy had at least controlled himself.

‘The silence of a soldier. I approve a man who can bear his wounds. No further work today. '

He received in exchange the look which accords grudging respect to a mortal enemy. As the boy went out, Leonidas saw a bloodstain on the back of his homespun chiton. It would have been nothing in Sparta; yet he found himself wishing he had not hit quite so hard.

The boy said nothing to his mother; but she found the weals. In the room where they had shared many secrets, she clasped him weeping, and presently they wept together. He stopped first; went to the loose stone under the hearth, pulled out a wax mammet he had seen there, and urged her to bewitch Leonidas. She took it quickly away, saying he must not touch, and besides it was not for that. It had a long thorn stuck through its phallos, but had failed to work on Philip, though often tried. She had not known the child was watching.

For him, the comfort of tears had been brief and false. He felt betrayed, when he met Herakles in the garden. He had not cried for the pain, but for his lost happiness; he could have held back if she had not softened him. Next time she must not know.

They shared a plot, however. She had never been reconciled to the Spartan clothes; she had loved to dress him. Reared in a house where ladies sat in Hall like the queens of Homer, to hear the ancestral heroes sung by bards, she was contemptuous of Spartans, a race of faceless obedient infantry, and unwashed women half soldier, half brood-mare. That her son should be forced into the likeness of this grey and plebeian race would have enraged her, had she thought it could be done. Resenting even the attempt, she brought him a new chiton worked in blue and scarlet, saying, as she tucked it into his clothes chest, that there was no harm in his looking like a gentleman when his uncle was away. Later she added Corinthian sandals, a chlamys of Milesian wool, and a gold brooch for its shoulder.

Good clothes made him feel himself again. Discreet at first, he grew careless with success. Leonidas, knowing where to lay the blame, said nothing. He merely went to the chest and took the new clothes away, along with an extra blanket he found hidden there.

He had challenged the gods at last, thought Alexander; this must be the end of him. But she only smiled ruefully, and asked how he could have let himself be found out. Leonidas must not be defied; he might be offended and go home. 'And then, my darling, we might find our troubles only starting. '

Toys were toys, power was power. Nothing to be had for nothing. Later she smuggled him other gifts. He was more wary, but Leonidas was more vigilant, and took to searching the chest every so often, as a matter of course.

More manly gifts, he was allowed to keep. A friend had made him a quiver, a perfect miniature with a shoulder-sling. Finding it hang too low on him, he sat in the Palace forecourt to undo the buckle. The tongue was awkward, the leather stiff. He was about to go in and find an awl to prise it, when a bigger child walked up and stood in the light. He was handsome and sturdy with bronze-gold hair and dark grey eyes. Holding out his hand he said, ‘I’ll try, let me. ' He spoke with confidence, in a Greek which had got beyond the schoolroom.

'It'snew, that's why it's stiff. ' He had had his day's work of Greek, and answered in Macedonian.

The stranger squatted beside him. 'It's like a real one, like a man's. Did your father make it? '

'Of course not. Doreios the Cretan did. He can't make me a Cretan bow, those are horn, only men can pull them. Koragos will make a bow for me. '

'Why do you want to undo it? '

'It's too long. '

'It looks right to me. No, but you're smaller. Here, I'll do it. '

'I've measured it. It wants taking in two holes. '

'You can let it out when you're bigger. It's stiff, but I'll do it. My father's seeing the King. '

'What does he want? '

'I don't know, he said to wait for him. '

'Does he make you speak Greek all day? '

'It's what we all speak at home. My father's a guest-friend of the King. When I'm older, I'll have to go to Court. '

'Don't you want to come? '

'Not much; I like it at home. Look, up on that hill; no, not the first one, the second; all that land's ours. Can't you speak Greek at all? '

'Yes, I can if I want. I stop when I get sick of it. '

'Why, you speak it nearly as well as I do. Why did you talk like that, then? People will think you're a farm boy. '

'My tutor makes me wear these clothes to be like the Spartans. I do have good ones; I wear them at the feasts. '

'They beat all the boys in Sparta. '

'Oh, he drew blood on me once. But I didn't cry. '

'He's no right to beat you, he should only tell your father. How much did he cost? '

'He's my mother's uncle. '

'Mm, I see. My father bought my pedagogue, just for me. '

'Well, it teaches you to bear your wounds when you go to war. '

'War? But you're only six. '

'Of course not, I'm eight next Lion Month. You can see that. '

'So am I. But you don't look it, you look six. '

'Oh, let me do that, you're too slow. '

He snatched away the sling-strap. The leather slipped back into the buckle. The stranger grabbed it angrily. 'Silly fool, I'd nearly done it. '

Alexander swore at him in barrack Macedonian. The other boy opened his mouth and eyes, and listened riveted. Alexander, who could keep it up for some time, became aware of respect and did so. With the quiver between them, they crouched in the pose of their forgotten strife.

'Hephaistion! ' came a roar from the columned stoa. The boys sat like scuffling dogs over whom a bucket has been emptied.

The lord Amyntor, his audience over, had seen with concern that his son had left the porch where he had been told to wait, invaded the Prince's playground and snatched his toy. At that age they were not safe a moment out of one's sight. Amyntor blamed his own vanity; he liked to show the boy off, but to have brought him here was stupid. Angry with himself, he strode over, grabbed him by the back of his clothes, and gave him a clout on the ear.

Alexander jumped to his feet. He had already forgotten why he had been angry. 'Don't hit him. I don't mind him. He came to help me. '

'You are good to say so, Alexander. But he disobeyed. '

For a moment the boys exchanged looks, confusedly sharing their sense of human mutability, as the culprit was dragged away.

It was six years before they met again.

'He lacks application and discipline, ' said Timanthes the grammarian.

Most of the teachers Leonidas had engaged found the drinking in Hall too much for them, and would escape, with excuses which amused the Macedonians, to bed, or to talk in each other's rooms.

'Maybe, ' said the music-master, Epikrates. 'But one values the horse above the bridle. '

'He applies when it suits him, ' said Naukles the mathematician. 'At first he could not have enough. He can work out the height of the Palace from its noon shadow, and if you ask him how many men in fifteen phalanxes, he hardly has to pause. But I have never brought him to perceive the beauty of numbers. Have you, Epikrates? '

The musician, a thin dark Ephesian Greek, shook his head smiling. 'With you he makes them serve the use; with me, the feeling. Still, as we know, music is ethical; and I've a king to train, not a concert artist. '

'He will get no further with me, ' said the mathematician. 'I would say I don't know why I stay, if I thought I should be believed. '

A roar of bawdy laughter sounded from the hall, where someone with talent was improving a traditional skolion. For the seventh time they bawled the chorus.

'Yes, we are well paid, ' said Epikrates. 'But I could earn as much in Ephesos, between teaching and concert work; and earn it as a musician. Here I am a conjurer, I call up dreams. It's not what I came to do. Yet it holds me. Does it never hold you, Timanthes? '

Timanthes sniffed. He thought Epikrates' compositions too modern and emotional. He himself was an Athenian, pre-eminent for the purity of his style; he had in fact been the teacher of Leonidas. He had closed his school to come, finding at his age the work grow burdensome, and glad to provide for his last years. He had read everything worth reading, and when young had once known what the poets meant.

'It appears to me, ' he said, 'that here in Macedon they have enough of the passions. One heard a great deal about the culture of Archelaos, in my student days. With the late wars of succession, it seems chaos returned. I will not say the court is without refinements; but on the whole, we are in the wilds. Do you know youths come of age here when they have killed a boar and a man? One might suppose oneself in the age of Troy. '

'That should lighten your task, ' said Epikrates, 'when you proceed to Homer. '

'System and application are what we need for that. The boy has a good memory, when he cares to use it. At first he learned his lists quite well. But he cannot keep his mind on system. One explains the construction; one quotes the proper example. But apply it? No. It is " Why did they chain Prometheus to the rock? " or, " Who was Hekabe mourning for? " '

'Did you tell him? Kings should learn to pity Hekabe. '

'Kings should learn self-discipline. This morning he brought the lesson to a stop, because, purely for syntax, I gave him some lines from Seven against Thebes. Why, if you please, were there seven generals, which led the cavalry, the phalanx, the light-armed skirmishers? " It is not to the purpose, " I said, " not to the purpose; attend to syntax. " He had the insolence to answer in Macedonian. I had to put my thong across his palm. '

The singing in Hall was broken by quarrelsome drunken shouts. Crockery crashed. The King's voice roared out; the noise subsided; a different song began.

'Discipline, ' said Timanthes meaningly. 'Moderation, restraint, respect for law. If we do not ground him in them, who will? His mother? '

There was a pause while Naukles, whose room it was, nervously opened the door and looked outside. Epikrates said, 'If you want to compete with her, Timanthes, you had best sweeten your medicine, as I do mine. '

'He must make the effort to apply. It is the root of all education. '

'I don't know what you are all talking about, ' said Derkylos, the gymnastic trainer, suddenly. The others had thought he was asleep. He was reclining on Naukles' bed; he thought effort should alternate with relaxation. He was in his mid thirties, with the oval head and short curls admired by sculptors, and a fine body kept painstakingly in shape; as an example to pupils, he used to say, but, thought the envious schoolmasters, no doubt from vanity. He had a list of crowned victors to his credit, and no pretensions to intellect.

'We were wishing, ' said Timanthes with patronage, 'that the boy would make more effort. '

'I heard you. ' The athlete raised himself on one elbow, looking aggressively statuesque. 'You have spoken words of ill omen. Spit for luck. '

The grammarian shrugged. Naukles said tartly, 'Will you tell us, Derkylos, you don't know why you stay? '

'It seems I'm the one with the best reason. To keep him, if I can, from killing himself too young. He has no safety-stop. Surely you've seen that? '

'I fear, ' said Timanthes, 'that the terms of the palaestra are to me arcane. '

'I've seen it, ' said Epikrates, 'if you mean what I suppose. '

'I don't know all your life-histories, ' said Derkylos. 'But if any of you has seen red in battle, or been frightened out of his skin, you may remember putting out strength you had never known was in you. At exercise, even in a contest, you could not find it. There is a lock on it, put there by nature or the gods' wisdom. It is the reserve against extremity. '

'I remember, ' said Naukles presently, 'in the earthquake, when the house fell on our mother, I lifted the beams. Yet later I could not move them. '

'Nature wrung it out of you. Few men are born whose own will can do it. This boy will be one. '

Epikrates said, 'Yes, you may well be right. '

'And I reckon it something off a man's life each time. I have to watch him already. He told me once that Achilles chose between glory and length of days. '

'What? ' said Timanthes startled. 'But we've scarcely begun Book One. '

Derkylos gazed at him in silence, then said mildly, 'You forget his maternal ancestry. '

Timanthes clicked his tongue, and bade them good night. Naukles fidgeted; he wanted to get to bed. The musician and the athlete strolled off through the park.

'It's useless talking to him, ' said Derkylos. 'But I doubt the boy gets enough to eat. '

'You must be joking. Here? '

'It's the regime of that stiff-necked old fool Leonidas. I check his height each month; he's not growing fast enough. Of course you can't call him starved; but he burns it all up, he could take as much again. He's very quick-thinking, and his body has to keep pace, he won't take a no from it. Do you know he can hit the mark with a javelin while he's running? '

'You let him handle edged weapons? At his age? '

'I wish grown men were all as neat with them. It keeps him quiet.... What is it drives him like this? '

Epikrates looked round. They were in the open, no one near. 'His mother has made a good many enemies. She's a foreigner from Epiros; she has the name of a witch. Have you never heard whispers about his birth? '

'I remember once - But who'd dare let him hear word of it? '

'He seems to me to have a burden of proof upon him. Well, he enjoys his music for itself, he finds release in it. I have studied that side of the art a little. '

'I must speak to Leonidas again about his diet. Last time, I was told that in Sparta it would be one spare meal a day, and find the rest off the land. Don't tell it abroad, but I feed him myself sometimes. I used to do it now and then at Argos, for some good boy from a poor home-----These tales - do you believe them? '

'Not with my reason. He has Philip's capacity, if not his face or his soul. No, no, I don't believe them.... Do you know that old song about Orpheus, how he played his lyre on the mountainside, and found a lion had crouched at his feet to listen? I'm no Orpheus, I know; but sometimes I see the lion's eyes. Where did it go, after the music, what became of it? The story doesn't say. '

'Today, ' said Timanthes, 'you have made better progress. For the next lesson, you may memorize eight lines. Here they are. Copy them on the wax, on the right side of the diptych. On the left, list the archaic word-forms. See you have them correctly; I shall expect you to repeat those first. ' He handed over the tablet, and put away the roll, his stiff blue-veined hands shaking as he worked it into its leather case. 'Yes, that is all. You may go. '

'Please, may I borrow the book? '

Timanthes looked up, amazed and outraged.

'The book? Most certainly you may not, it is a valuable recension. What do you want with the book? '

'I want to see what happened. I'll keep it in my casket, and wash my hands each time. '

'We should all like, no doubt, to run before we can walk. Learn your passage, and pay attention to the Ionic forms. Your accent is still too Doric. This, Alexander, is not some supper-time diversion. This is Homer. Master his language, then you may talk of reading him. ' He tied the strings of the case.

The lines were those in which vengeful Apollo comes striding down the peaks of Olympos with his arrows rattling at his back. Worked over in the schoolroom, hammered out piecemeal like some store-list being inventoried by kitchen slaves, once the boy was alone they came together: a great landscape of clanging gloom lit by funereal fires. He knew Olympos. He pictured the dead light of an eclipse; the tall striding darkness, and round it a faint rim of fire, such as they said the hidden sun had, able to strike men blind. He came down like the fall of night.

He walked in the grove above Pella, hearing the deep shuddering note of the bowstring, the hiss of the shafts, and thinking it into Macedonian. It found its way, next day, into his repetition. Timanthes rebuked at length his idleness, inattention, and lack of interest in his work, and set him at once to copy the passage twenty times, with the mistakes again by themselves.

He dug away at the wax, the vision dispersed and faded. Timanthes, whom something had caused to look up, found the grey eyes considering him with a cold distant gaze.

'Do not daydream, Alexander. What are you thinking of? '

'Nothing. ' He bent again over his writing-stick. He had been wondering if there was any way of getting Timanthes killed. He supposed not; it would be unfair to ask his friends, who might be punished, and would feel it a disgrace to kill such an ancient man. It would make trouble, too, for his mother.

He went missing next day.

After huntsmen had been out after him with dogs, he was brought back at evening by a woodcutter on his lean old donkey; bruised black, covered with bloody grazes from a tumble down some rocks, and with a swollen foot which would not bear him. He had been trying, said the man, to get along on hands and knees; at night the forest was full of wolves, no place for the young lord alone.

He opened his mouth long enough to thank this man; to demand that he be fed, because he was hungry, and given a younger ass, which he had promised him on the way. These things attended to he became mute. The doctor could scarcely get from him more than yes or no, and a wince when the foot was moved. The compress and splint were put on; his mother came to his bedside. He turned his face away.

She put aside her anger, which belonged elsewhere; brought him a supper of all the treats Leonidas had banned; propped him against her breast while she fed him with sweet mulled wine. When he had told her all the trouble, as far as himself he understood it, she kissed him, tucked him in, and went off in a towering rage to quarrel with Leonidas.

The tempest shook the Palace, like a clash of gods above the Trojan plain. But many weapons which had served her against Philip were here denied her. Leonidas was very correct, very Athenian. He offered to leave, and tell the boy's father why. When she emerged from his study (she had been too angry to wait and have him sent for) everyone hid who saw her coming; but the truth was, she was in tears.

Old Lysimachos, who had lain in wait for her since, starting out, she had swept by him unseeing, greeted her as she returned, and said with no more fuss than if she had been a farmer's wife in his native Akarnania, 'How is the boy? '

No one paid attention to Lysimachos. He was always about, a Palace guest-friend since early in Philip's reign. He had backed his accession when support was urgent; had proved good company at supper, and been rewarded with the hand of an heiress in royal wardship. On the estate it brought him, he farmed and hunted. But the gods had denied him children; not only by her, but by all women he had ever lain with. This reproach being ready to any man's hand who chose to throw it, he thought hubris would ill become him, and was an unpretentious man. His one distinction was to have the run of the royal library; Philip had added to Archelaos' fine collection, and was careful whom he let loose inside. From the depths of his reading-cell, Lysimachos’ voice could be heard murmuring by the hour over the scrolls, tasting words and cadences; but nothing had come of it, no treatise, history or tragedy. His mind, it seemed, was as infertile as his loins.

Olympias, at the sight of his square blunt face, his grey-blond hair and beard and faded blue eyes, felt a homely comfort, and asked him into her private guest-room. Once bidden to sit, he sat while she paced about, and offered harmless murmurs whenever she paused for breath, till she had run herself to a stop. Then he said, 'My dear Madam, now the boy has outgrown his nurse's care, don't you think he may need a pedagogue? '

She wheeled round so sharply that her jewels clattered. 'Never! I will not have it, the King knows that. What do they want to make of him, a clerk, a merchant, a steward? He feels what he is. All day these low-bred pedants are working to break his spirit. He has scarcely an hour, from his rising to his lying down, when his soul has space to breathe. Now is he to live like some captive thief, marched about in charge of a slave? Let no one speak of it in my hearing. And if the King sent you word to do it, tell him, Lysimachos, that before my son shall suffer that I will have blood for it, yes, by the Threefold Hekate, I will have blood! '

He waited till he thought that she would hear him, then said, 'I should be sorry too to see it. Rather than that, I myself would be his pedagogue. In fact, Madam, that is what I came to ask for. '

She sat down in her tall chair. He waited patiently, knowing she had paused, not to ask herself why a gentleman should offer for a servant's work, but whether he would do.

Presently he said, 'It has often seemed to me that Achilles has come again in him. If so, he needs a Phoinix.... You, godlike Achilles, were the son I chose for my own, That some day you would keep the hard times from me. '

'Did he do so? When Phoinix spoke those words, he had been rooted up in his age from Phthia, and brought to Troy. And what he was asking, Achilles did not grant. '

'If he had, it would have saved him sorrow. Maybe his soul has remembered. As we know, the ashes of Achilles and Patroklos were mingled in one urn. Not even a god could sift the one from the other. Achilles has come back with his fierceness and his pride, and with Patroklos' feeling. Each of them suffered for what he was; this boy will suffer for both. '

'There is more, ' she said, 'as men will find. '

'I do not question it. Just now, this is enough. Let me try with him; if he cannot do with me, I will let him be. "

She got up again, and took a turn about the room.

'Yes, try, ' she said. 'If you can stand between him and those fools, I shall be your debtor. '

Alexander was feverish at night, and slept most of next day. Lysimachos, looking in next morning, found him sitting up in the window, his good foot dangling outside, and shouting down in his high clear voice; two Companion Cavalry officers had come in from Thrace on the King's business, and he wanted news of the war. This they gave; but refused to take him riding, when they learned they were to catch him as he jumped down from the upper floor. Laughing and waving they clattered off. As the boy turned away with a sigh, Lysimachos reached up and carried him back to bed.

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