Fire From Heaven 6 страница

Beyond this instant and its needs, the man saw no call to look. His love, being sexless, seemed to him proved selfless. Certainly he would have given all he had, shed his own blood. Much less was wanted now, only comfort and a healing word.

'A filthy fellow. Small loss if you had killed him. No man of honour could let it pass-----A godless fellow who mocks a dedication-----There, my Achilles, don't weep that the warrior came out in you. He'll mend, it's more than he deserves; and keep quiet if he knows what's good for him. No one shall hear a word from me. '

The boy choked into Phoinix' shoulder. 'He made me my bow. '

'Throw it out, I'll get you a better. '

There was a pause. 'It wasn't said to me. He didn't know I was there. '

'And who wants such a friend? '

'He wasn't ready. '

'Nor were you, to hear him. '

Gently, with a careful courtesy, the boy disengaged himself, and lay down again with his face hidden. Presently he sat up, wiping his hand across his eyes and nose. Phoinix wrung out a towel from the ewer and cleaned his face. He sat staring, saying 'Thank you' now and then.

Phoinix got out his best silver cup from his pillow-box, and the last of his breakfast wine. The boy drank, with a little coaxing; it seemed to run straight through to his skin, flushing his drawn face, his throat and breast. Presently he said, 'He insulted my kin. But he wasn't ready. ' He shook out his hair, pulled down his creased chiton, re-tied a loosened sandal string. 'Thank you for having me in your house. Now I am going to ride. '

'Now that's foolish. You've had no breakfast yet. '

'I have had enough, thank you. Good-bye. '

'Wait, then, I'll change and go with you. '

'No, thank you. I want to go alone. '

'No, no; let's be quiet awhile, read, or go walking -'

'Let me go. '

Phoinix's hand withdrew like a scared child's.

Later, going to see, he found the boy's riding boots gone, his pony, his practice javelins. Phoinix hurried about for word of him. He had been seen above the town, riding towards Mount Olympos.

It still wanted some hours to noon. Phoinix, waiting his return, heard people agree that the Queen had done this outlandish thing as an offering. Epirotes were mystai with their mothers' milk, but it would do her no good with Macedonians. The King had put the best face he could on it for the guests, and been civil to Neoptolemos the tragedian. And where was young Alexander?

Oh, gone riding, answered Phoinix, hiding his mounting fear. What had possessed him, to let the boy walk off like a grown man? He should not have let him for a moment out of his sight. No use to follow; in the huge Olympian massif, two armies could be hidden from one another. There were fathomless crags, whose feet were inaccessible; there were boar, wolves, leopards; even lions lived there still.

The sun westered; the steep eastern faces, under which Dion stood, grew darker; cloud swirled round the hidden summits. Phoinix rode about, quartering the cleared land above the town. At the foot of a sacred oak he stretched up his arms to the ever-sunlit peak, King Zeus' throne bathed in its clear aether.

Weeping he prayed and vowed his offerings. When night came, he would be able to hide the truth no longer.

The great shadow of Olympos crept beyond the shoreline, and quenched the sea's evening glow. Dusk filled the oak-grove; further in, the woods were already black. Between the dusk and the night, something moved. He flung himself on his horse, his stiff joints stabbing him, and rode towards it.

The boy came down through the trees, walking at the pony's head. The beast, bone-weary, head down, plodded beside him, pecking a little with one foot. They moved steadily down the glade; when the boy saw Phoinix, he raised his hand in greeting, but did not speak.

His javelins were tied across his saddle-cloth; he did not yet own a holster. The pony like a conspirator leaned its cheek to his. His clothes were torn, his knees grazed and caked with dirt, his arms and legs scribbled with scratches; he seemed, since morning, visibly to have lost weight. His chiton was darkened all down the front with blood. He came calmly forward between the trees, his eyes hollow and dilated; walking lightly, floatingly; inhumanly tranquil and serene.

Phoinix dismounted by him, grasping, scolding, questioning. The boy ran his hand over the pony's nose and said, 'He was going lame. '

'I have been running about here, half out of my mind. What have you done to yourself? Where are you bleeding? Where have you been? '

'I'm not bleeding. ' He held out his hands, which he had rinsed in some mountain stream; there was blood around the nails. His eyes dwelt on Phoinix's, revealing only the impenetrable. 'I made an altar and a shrine, and sacrificed to Zeus. ' He lifted his head; his white brow under the springing peak of hair looked transparent, almost luminous. His eyes widened and glowed in their deep sockets. 'I sacrificed to the god. And he spoke to me. He spoke to me. '

King Archelaos' study was more splendid than the Perseus Room, having been nearer his heart. Here he had received the poets and philosophers whom his open-handed hospitality and rich guest-gifts had tempted up to Pella. On the sphinx-headed arms of the chair from Egypt had rested the hands of Agathon and of Euripides.

The Muses, to whom the room was dedicated, sang round Apollo in a vast mural which filled the inner wall. Apollo, as he played his lyre, gazed out inscrutably at the polished shelving with its precious books and scrolls. Tooled bindings, cases gilded and jewelled; finials of ivory, agate and sardonyx; tassels of silk and bullion; from reign to reign, even during the succession wars, these treasures had been dusted and tended by well-trained slaves. It was a generation since anyone else had read in them. They were too valuable; the real books were in the library.

There was an exquisite Athenian bronze of Hermes inventing the Lyre, bought from some bankrupt in the last years of the city's greatness; two standing lamps, in the form of columns twined with laurel-boughs, stood by the huge writing-table inlaid with lapis and chalcedony, and supported on lions' feet. All this was little changed since Archelaos' day. But through the door at the far end, the painted walls of the reading-cell had vanished behind racks and shelves, stuffed with the documents of administration; its couch and table given place to a laden desk, where the Chief Secretary was working through the day's letter-bag.

It was a sharp bright March day with a north-east wind. The fretted shutters had been closed to keep the papers from blowing about; a cold dazzling sun came splintering through, mixed with icy draughts. The Chief Secretary had a heated brick hidden in his cloak to warm his hands on; his clerk blew enviously on his fingers, but silently lest the King should hear. King Philip sat at ease. He had just come back from campaign in Thrace; after winter there, he thought his Palace a Sybaris of comfort.

As his power reached steadily towards the immemorial corn-route of the Hellespont, the gullet of all Greece; as he encircled colonies, wrested from Athens the allegiance of tribal lands, laid siege to her allies' cities, the southerners counted it among their bitterest wrongs that he had broken the old decent rule of abandoning war in winter-time, when even bears holed up.

He sat at the great table, his brown scarred hand, chapped with cold and calloused from reins and spear-shaft, grasping a silver stylos he kept to pick his teeth with. On a cross-legged stool, a clerk with a tablet on his knees waited to take a letter to a client lord in Thessaly.

There he could see his way; it was business of the south had brought him home. At last his foot was in the door. In Delphi, the impious Phokians were turning like mad dogs on one another, worn out with war and guilt. They had had a good run for the money they had melted down, coining the temple treasures for soldiers' pay; now far-shooting Apollo was after them. He knew how to wait; on the day they had dug below the Tripod itself for gold, he had sent the earthquake. Then panic, frantic mutual accusations, exilings, torturings. The losing leader now held with his outcast force the strongpoints of Thermopylai, a desperate man who could soon be treated with. Already he had turned back a garrison relief from Athens, though they were the Phokians' allies; he feared being handed over to the ruling faction. Soon he would be ripe and ready. King Leonidas under his grave-mound, thought Philip, must be tossing in his sleep.

Go tell the Spartans, traveller passing by.... Go tell them all Greece will obey me within ten years, because city cannot keep faith with city, nor man with man. They have forgotten even what you could show them, how to stand and die. Envy and greed have conquered them for me. They will follow me, and be reborn from it; under me they shall win back their pride. They will look to me to lead them; and their sons will look to my son.

The peroration reminded him he had sent for the boy some time ago. No doubt he would come when found; at ten years, one did not expect them to be sitting still. Philip returned his thoughts to his letter. Before he was through it, he heard his son's voice outside, greeting the bodyguard. How many score - or hundred – men did the boy know by name? This one had only been in the Guard five days.

The tall doors opened. He looked small between them, shining and compact, his feet bare on the cold floor of figured marble, his arms folded inside his cloak, not to warm them, but in the well-drilled posture of modest Spartan boyhood, taught him by Leonidas. In this room served by pale bookish men, father and son had the gloss of wild animals among tame: the swarthy soldier, tanned almost black, his arms striped with pink cockled war-scars, the forehead crossed with the light band left by the helmet-rim, his blind eye with its milky fleck staring out under the half-drooped lid; the boy at the door, his brown silky skin flawed only with the grazes and scratches of a boy's adventures, his heavy tousled hair making Archelaos' gildings look dusty. His homespun clothes, softened and bleached by many washings and beatings on the river-stones, long since subdued to their wearer, now carried his style as if he had chosen them himself in a wilful arrogance. His grey eyes, which the cold slanting sun had lightened, kept to themselves some thought he had brought with him.

'Come in, Alexander. ' He was already doing so; Philip had spoken only to be heard, resenting this withdrawal.

Alexander came forward, noting that like a servant he had been given leave to enter. The glow of the wind outside ebbed from his face, the skin seemed to change its texture, becoming more opaque. He had been thinking at the door that Pausanias, the new bodyguard, had the sort of looks his father liked. If anything came of it, for a time there might be no new girl. There was a certain look one came to know, when they met one's eyes, or did not; it had not happened yet.

He came up to the desk and waited, his hands disposed in his cloak. One part of the Spartan deportment, however, Leonidas had never managed to impose; he should have been looking down till his elders spoke to him.

Philip, meeting the steady eyes, felt a stab of familiar pain. Even hate might have been better. He had seen such a look inthe eyes of men prepared to die before they would yield the gate or the pass; not a challenge, an inward thing. How have I deserved it? It is that witch, who comes with her poison whenever my back is turned, to steal my son.

Alexander had been meaning to ask his father about the Thracian battle-order; accounts had differed, but he would know. ... Not now, however.

Philip sent out the clerk, and motioned the boy to the empty stool. As he sat straight-backed on the scarlet sheepskin, Philip felt him already poised to go.

It pleased Philip's enemies, hate being blinder than love, to think his men in the Greek cities had all alike been bought. But though none lost by serving him, there were many who would have taken nothing from him, had they not first been won by charm. 'Here, ' he said, picking up from the desk a glittering tangle of soft leather. 'What do you make of this? '

The boy turned it over; at once his long square-ended fingers began to work, slipping thongs under or over, pulling, straightening. As order came out of chaos his face grew intent, full of grave pleasure. 'It's a sling and a shot-bag. It should go on a belt, through here. Where do they do this work? '

The bag was stitched with gold plaques cut out in the bold, stylized, flowing forms of stags. Philip said, 'It was found on a Thracian chief, but it comes from far north, from the plains of grass. It's Scythian. '

Alexander pored over this trophy from the edge of the Kimmerian wilderness, thinking of the endless steppes beyond the Ister, the fabled burial-grounds of the kings with their rings of dead riders staked around them, horses and men withering in the dry cold air. His longing to know more was too much for him; in the end he asked all his stored-up questions. They talked for some time.

'Well, try the sling; I brought it for you. See what you can bring down. But don't go off too far. The Athenian envoys are on the way. '

The sling lay in the boy's lap, remembered only by his hands. 'About the peace? '

'Yes. They landed at Halos and asked for safe conduct through the lines, without waiting for the herald. They are in a hurry, it seems. '

'The roads are bad. '

'Yes, they'll need to thaw out before I hear them. When I do, you may come and listen. This will be serious business; it is time you saw how things are done. '

‘I’ll stay near Pella. I'd like to come. '

'At last, we may see action out of talk. They have been buzzing like a kicked bee-skep ever since I took Olynthos. Half last year they were touting the southern cities, trying to work up a league against us. Nothing came of it but dusty feet. '

" Were they all afraid? '

'Not all; but all mistrusted each other. Some trusted men who trusted me. I shall redeem their trust. "

The fine inner ends of the boy's gilt-brown eyebrows drew together, almost meeting, outlining the heavy bone-shelf over his deep-set eyes. 'Wouldn't even the Spartans fight? '

'To serve under Athenians? They won't lead, they've had their bellyful; and they'll never follow. ' He smiled to himself. 'And they're not the audience for a speechmaker beating his breast in tears, or scolding like a market-woman short-changed of an obol. '

'When Aristodemos came back here about that man Iatrokles' ransom, he told me he thought the Athenians would vote for peace. '

It was long since such remarks had had power to startle Philip. 'Well, to encourage them, I had Iatrokles home before him, ransom free. Let them send me envoys by all means. If they think they can bring Phokis into their treaty, or Thrace either, they are fools; but so much the better, they can be voting on it while I act. Never discourage your enemies from wasting time. ... Iatrokles will be an envoy; so will Aristodemos. That should do us no harm. '

'He recited some Homer at supper, when he was here. Achilles and Hektor, before they fight. But he's too old. '

'That comes to us all. Oh, and Philokrates will be there, of course. ' He did not waste time in saying that this was his chief Athenian agent; the boy would be sure to know. 'He will be treated like all the others; it would do him no good at home to be singled out. There are ten, in all. '

'Ten? ' said the boy staring. 'What for? Will they all make speeches? '

'Oh, they need them all to watch each other. Yes, they will all speak, not one will consent to be passed over. Let us hope they agree beforehand to divide their themes. At least there will be one show-piece. Demosthenes is coming. '

The boy seemed to prick his ears, like a dog called for a walk. Philip looked at his kindling face. Was every enemy of his a hero to his son?

Alexander was thinking about the eloquence of Homer's warriors. He pictured Demosthenes tall and dark, like Hektor, with a voice of bronze and flaming eyes.

'Is he brave? Like the men at Marathon? '

Philip, to whom this question came as from another world, paused to bring round his mind to it, and smiled sourly in his black beard.

'See him and guess. But do not ask him to his face. '

A slow flush spread up from the boy's fair-skinned neck into his hair. His lips met hard. He said nothing.

In anger he looked just like his mother. It always got under Philip's skin. 'Can't you tell, ' he said impatiently, 'when a man is joking? You're as touchy as a girl. '

How dare he, thought the boy, speak of girls to me? His hands clenched on the sling, so that the gold bit into them.

Now, Philip thought, all the good work was undone. He cursed in his heart his wife, his son, himself. Forcing ease into his voice, he said, 'Well, we shall both see for ourselves, I know him no more than you. ' This was less than honest; through his agents' reports, he felt he had lived with the man for years. Feeling wronged, he indulged a little malice. Let the boy keep himself to himself, then, and his expectations too.

A few days later, he sent for him again. For both, the time had been full; for the man with business, for the boy with the perennial search for new tests on which to stretch himself, rock-clefts to leap, half-broken horses to ride, records to beat at throwing and running. He had been taught a new piece, too, on his new kithara.

'They should be here by nightfall, ' Philip said. They will rest in the morning; after luncheon I shall hear them. There is a public dinner at night; so time should limit their eloquence. Of course, you will wear court dress. '

His mother kept his best clothes. He found her in her room, writing a letter to her brother in Epiros, complaining of her husband. She wrote well, having much business she could not trust to a scribe. When he came she closed the diptych, and took him in her arms.

'I have to dress, ' he told her, 'for the Athenian envoys. I'll wear the blue. '

'I know just what suits you, darling. '

'No, but it must be right for Athenians. I'll wear the blue. '

'T-tt! My lord must be obeyed. The blue, then, the lapis brooch... '

'No, only women wear jewels in Athens, except for rings. '

'But my darling, it is proper you out-dress them. They are nothing, these envoys. '

'No, Mother. They think jewels barbarous. I shan't wear them. '

She had begun lately to hear this new voice sometimes. It pleased her. She had never yet conceived of its being used against her.

'You shall be all man, then, my lord. ' Seated as she was, she could lean on him and look up. She stroked his windblown hair. 'Come in good time; you are as wild as a mountain lion, I must see to this myself. '

When evening came, he said to Phoinix, 'I want to stay up, please, to see the Athenians come. '

Phoinix looked out with distaste at the lowering dusk. 'What do you expect to see? ' he grumbled. 'A parcel of men with their hats pulled down to their cloaks. With this ground-mist tonight, you'll not know master from servant. '

'Never mind. I want to see. '

The night came on raw and dank. The rushes dripped by the lake, the frogs trilled ceaselessly like a noise in the head. A windless mist hung round the sedge, winding with the lagoon till it met the breeze off the sea. In the streets of Pella, muddy runnels carried ten days' filth and garbage down to the rain-pocked water. Alexander stood at the window of Phoinix's room, where he had gone to rouse him out. He himself was dressed already in his riding-boots and hooded cloak. Phoinix sat at his book with lamp and brazier, as if they had the night before them. 'Look! There are the outriders' torches coming round the bend. '

'Good, now you can keep your eye on them. I shall go out in the weather when it is time, and not a moment sooner. '

'It's hardly raining. What will you do when we go to war? '

'I am saving myself for that, Achilles. Don't forget Phoinix had his bed made up by the fire. '

'I'll set light to that book of yours, if you don't hurry. You've not even got your boots on. ' He hung in the window; small with darkness and furred with mist, the torches seemed to creep like glow-worms on a stone. 'Phoinix...? '

'Yes, yes. There's time enough. '

'Does he mean to treat for peace? Or just to keep them quiet till he's ready, like the Olynthians? '

Phoinix laid down his book on his knee. 'Achilles, dear child. ' He dropped artfully into the magic rhythm. 'Be just to royal Peleus, your honoured father. ' Not long ago, he had dreamed he stood on a stage, robed to play Leader of the Chorus in a tragedy, of which only one page had yet been written. The rest was already on the wax, but not fair-copied, and he had begged the poet to change the ending; but when he tried to recall it, he remembered only his tears. 'It was the Olynthians who first broke faith. They treated with the Athenians, and took in his enemies, both against their oath. Everyone knows a treaty is made void by oathbreaking. '

'The cavalry generals gave up their own men in the field. ' The boy's voice rose a tone. 'He paid them to do it. Paid them. '

'It must have saved a good many lives. '

'They are slaves! I would rather die. '

'If all men would rather, there would be no slaves. '

'I shall never use traitors, never, when I'm King. If they come to me I shall kill them. I don't care whom they offer to sell me, if he's my greatest enemy, I shall still send him their heads. I hate them like the gates of death. This man Philokrates, he's a traitor. '

'He may do good in spite of it. Your father means well by the Athenians. '

'If they do as he tells them. '

'Come, one might suppose he meant to set up a tyranny. When the Spartans conquered them in my father's day, then indeed they had one. You know your history well enough, when you've a mind. As far back as Agamemnon the High King, the Hellenes have had a war-leader; either a city or a man. How was the host called out to Troy? How were the barbarians turned in Xerxes' war? Only now in our day they snap and bicker like pi-dogs, and no one leads. '

'You don't make them sound worth leading. They can't have changed so soon. '

'Two generations running, there has been a great killing of their best. In my opinion, the Athenians and the Spartans have both drawn Apollo's curse, since they hired out troops to the Phokians. They knew well enough what gold was used to pay them. Wherever that gold has gone, it has brought death and ruin, and we have not seen the end of it. Now your father, he took the god's part, and look how he has prospered; it is the talk of Greece. Who is more fit for the leader's sceptre? And one day, it will come to you. '

'I had rather –' the boy began slowly. 'Oh, look, they're past the Sacred Grove, almost in town. Hurry, get ready. '

As they mounted in the muddy stable-yard, Phoinix said, 'Keep your hood well down. When they see you at the audience, you don't want them to know you were out in the street, staring at them like a peasant. What you expect from this outing is more than I can guess. '

They backed their horses into a little grassy patch before a hero-shrine. Overhanging chestnut buds, half unfurled, looked like worked bronze against the pale watery clouds which filtered the moonlight. The outriders' torches, burned almost to the sockets, danced to the mules' pacing in the quiet air. They showed the leading envoy escorted by Antipatros; Alexander would have known the general's big bones and square beard, even if he had been muffled like the others; but having just come from Thrace, he thought it a warm night. The other must be Philokrates. The body shapeless in its wraps, the eyes peering between cloak and hat, looked the soul of evil. Riding after, he recognized the grace of Aristodemos. So much for those. His eye raked through the train of riders, mostly craning under their limp hat-brims to see where their horses' feet were going in the muck. Not far from the tail, a tall well-built man was sitting up like a soldier. He was short-bearded, seemed neither old nor young; the torchlight showed up a bold bony profile. When he had passed, the boy looked after, fitting the face upon his dreams. He had seen great Hektor, who would not be old before Achilles was ready.

Demosthenes son of Demosthenes, of Paionia, woke at first light in the royal guest-house, pushed up his head a little from the clothes, and looked around him. The room was grandiose, with a green marble floor; the pilasters at door and window had gilded capitals; the stool for his clothes was inlaid with ivory; the chamber-pot was Italian ware with garlands in relief. The rain was over, but the gusty air felt freezing. He had three blankets and could have done with as many more. Need for the pot had waked him; but it was at the far side of the room. The floor was rugless. He lingered in discomfort, hunched in his folded arms. Swallowing, he felt a soreness in his throat. His fears, first formed during the ride, were realized; on this day of all days, he was starting a cold in the head.

He thought with longing of his snug house in Athens, where Kyknos, his Persian slave, would have fetched more blankets, brought up the pot and brewed the hot posset of herbs and honey which soothed and toned his throat. Now he lay like the great Euripides who had met his end here, sick among barbaric splendours. Was he to be one more sacrifice to this harsh land, breeder of pirates and tyrants; the crag of that black eagle which hung ravening over Hellas, ready to swoop on any city which flagged, stumbled or bled? Yet with the pinions darkening the sky above them, they would straggle after petty gains or feuds and scorn the shepherd's warning. Today he would meet the great predator face to face; and his nose was thickening.

On the ship, on the road, he had been over and over his speech. It would come last; for to settle contested precedence on the way, they had agreed it should go by age. Eagerly, while others thrust forward evidence of seniority, he had proclaimed himself the youngest, hardly believing they could be so blind to what they were giving away. Not till the final list had been drawn up, had he seen his handicap.

From the distant pot, his eye moved to the other bed. His room-mate, Aischines, slept soundly on his back; his height had pushed his feet nearly through the bedclothes, his broad chest gave resonance to his snores. When he woke, he would run briskly to the window, do the showy voice-exercises he kept up from his theatre days, and, if one mentioned the cold, say it had been worse in some army bivouac or other. He would speak ninth, Demosthenes tenth. No good, he felt, seemed ever to reach him unalloyed. He had the final word, an asset beyond price in the lawcourts, and no price could buy it. But some of the best arguments had been claimed by earlier speakers; and then he must follow this man's portentous presence, his deep voice and artful sense of timing, his actor's memory which could keep him going a run of the water-clock without a note, and – most enviable gift of the unjust gods – his power to speak extempore at need.

A mere nobody, pinchpenny reared, his schoolmaster father beating enough letters into him to give him a pittance from clerking; his mother a priestess of some immigrant back-street cult, which ought to be put down by law; who was he to swagger in the Assembly, amongst men taught in the schools of rhetoric? No doubt he kept going on bribes; but nowadays one heard forever about his forbears, eupatrids of course – that worn-out tale! – ruined in the Great War, his military record in Euboia, and his tedious mention in dispatches.

A kite screamed in the raw air, a piercing gust blew round the bed. Demosthenes clutched the blankets round his meagre frame, recalling bitterly how last night, when he had complained of the marble floor, Aischines had said off-handedly, 'I should have thought you'd mind it the least, with your northern blood. ' It was years since anyone had brought up his grandfather's metic marriage to his Scythian grandmother; only his father's wealth had scraped him citizenship, but he had thought it all forgotten long ago. Staring down his cold nose at the sleeping form, putting off for a moment longer the urgent walk to the pot, he murmured viciously, 'You were an usher, I was a student; you were an acolyte, I was an initiate; you copied the minutes, I moved the motion; you were third actor, I sat in front. ' He had never in fact seen Aischines play; but his wishes added, 'You were booed off, I hissed. '

The marble was green ice underfoot, his urine steamed in the air. His bed would be cold already; he could only dress now, keep moving and stir his blood. If Kyknos were only here! But the Council had bidden them hurry; the others had stupidly offered to dispense with attendants; it would have been worth a thousand words to any hostile orator, if he alone had brought one.

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