Fire From Heaven 24 страница

Some few of the young men had ridden home from Epiros, bringing a letter.

Alexander to Philip King of the Macedonians, greeting. I send back to you and to their fathers these men, my friends. They are guilty of no wrong. In kindness they escorted the Queen and me into Epiros; this done, we required no more of them. When the Queen, my mother, is restored to her rights and dignity, we will return. Till then I shall do as I think good, asking no man's leave.

Greet for me the soldiers I led at Chaironeia, and those who served under me in Thrace. And do not forget the man who was saved by my shield, when the Argives mutinied before Perinthos. You know his name. Farewell.

In his private reading-cell, Philip crumpled the letter and threw it down; then, bending stiffly with his lame leg, picked it up, flattened out the creases, and locked it away.

One after another, the spies from the west brought in uneasy news, never facts one could grip on. The names of the small close band were always there. Ptolemy: ah, if I could have bride-bedded his mother it would have been a different tale. Nearchos: a good sea-officer, due for promotion if he'd had sense. Harpalos: I never trusted that limping fox, but the boy would have him. Erigyios... Laomedon... Hephaistion, well, as soon part a man from his shadow. Philip brooded a moment, in the sad resenting envy of the man who believes himself always to have sought the perfect love, not owning that he has grudged the price.

The names never varied; the news always did. They were at Kossos’ fort; at the castle of Kleitos, who was as near a High King as Illyria would stomach; they were on the Lynkestid border. They were on the coast, said to be asking after ships for Korkyra, for Italy, for Sicily, even for Egypt. They had been sighted in the ranges beside Epiros. They were rumoured to be buying arms, to be hiring spearmen, to be training an army in some forest lair. Whenever Philip needed to dispose his troops for the war in Asia, one of these alarms would come in, and he must spare a regiment for the border. Without doubt, the boy was in touch with friends in Macedon. On paper, the King's war plans remained unaltered; but his generals could feel him hanging fire, awaiting the next report.

In a castle perched on a craggy headland by a wooded Illyrian bay, Alexander stared up at the night-shrouded, smoke-black rafters. He had spent the day hunting, like the day before. His bed was of rushes, full of fleas, in the guest-corner of the hall; here, among dogs crunching the bones from old suppers, the bachelors of the household slept. His head ached. A draught of clean air blew from the doorway; the moonlit sky looked bright there. He got up and threw his blanket round him. It was soiled and torn; his good one had been stolen some months before, about the time of his birthday. In a nomad camp near the border, he had turned nineteen.

He steered past sleeping bodies, stumbling on one, which grunted curses. Outside on the bare crag ran a narrow rampart. The cliff plunged straight to the sea; far down, moon-gleaming foam crawled round the boulders. He knew the footsteps behind and did not turn. Hephaistion leaned on the wall beside him.

'What is it? Couldn't you sleep? '

'I woke, ' Alexander said.

'Have you got the gripes again? '

'It stinks in there. '

'Why do you drink that dog-piss? I'd sooner go to bed sober. '

Alexander gave him a look like a silent growl. His arm propped on the wall was scored by the claws of a dying leopard. All day he had been in movement; now he was still, looking down the giddy drop to the sea.

At last he said, 'We can't keep it up much longer. '

Hephaistion frowned at the night. He was glad, however, to be told; it was being asked he had most dreaded. 'No, ' he said. 'I doubt we can. '

Alexander picked some stone chips from the wall-top, and pitched them down at the shimmering sea. No ripple showed, no sound returned from the depth, even when they struck rock. Hephaistion did nothing. He offered his presence, as his omens had directed him.

'Even a fox, ' said Alexander presently, 'runs through all its tricks in time. And the second time round, the nets are waiting. '

'You've often had luck from the gods. '

‘Time's running out, ' Alexander said. 'It's a feel one gets in war. You remember Polydoros with his dozen men, trying to hold that fort in the Chersonese. All those helmets propped on the walls; moved, too, now and again. I was fooled into sending for reinforcements, two days, remember? Then a catapult knocked off a helmet and showed the stake. It was bound to happen; his time ran out. Mine will run out when some Illyrian chief crosses the border on his own account, for cattle, or a feud, and Philip hears I wasn't leading. I'll never fool him after that, he knows me too well. '

'You could still lead a raid, it's not too late to change your mind. If you pushed a little way in, and withdrew from strength. ... With all he has to do, it's not likely he'll come in person. '

'How can I know that? No, I had a warning... a kind of warning... at Dodona. '

Hephaistion stored away this news in silence. It was the most Alexander had ever told him of it.

'Alexander. Your father wants you back. I know it. You should believe me. I've known it all along. '

'Good. Then he can do right by my mother. '

'No, not only for the war in Asia. You don't want to hear this, but he loves you. You may not like the way it takes him. The gods have many faces, Euripides says. '

Alexander laid his hands on the broken stone, and turned on his friend his entire attention. 'Euripides wrote for actors. Masks, you can say; yes, masks. Some pretty, some not. But one face. Only one. '

A meteor flared down with a yellow-green glowing head and fading red trail, and plunged into the distant sea. Hephaistion put happiness briskly by, like a cup drunk down in haste. 'It's an omen for you. You must decide tonight. You know; you came out to do it. '

'I woke up, and the place stank like a midden. ' A tuft of pale wallflower had rooted itself among the stones; he fingered it unseeingly. Like a great weight thrown suddenly on his shoulder, Hephaistion felt an awareness of being leaned upon, of being needed for more than love. It brought no joy; it was like glimpsing the first mark of a deadly sickness. Rust; he can bear anything but rust.

'Tonight, ' he said quietly. 'Nothing to wait for, you know it all. '

Without movement, Alexander seemed to gather himself together, to grow more compact. 'Yes. First, I'm spending time, not using it. This I've never felt before. Second, there are two or three men, and I think King Kleitos is one of them, who once they're sure they can't use me against my father, will want to send him my head. And, third... he's mortal, no man knows his hour. If he died, and I away over the border... '

'That, too, ' said Hephaistion calmly. 'Well, then, as you say. You want to go home, he wants you back. You've exchanged mortal insults, no one will speak first. So you must find a proper go-between. Who is it going to be? '

Firmly now, as if it had been some time settled, Alexander said, 'Demaratos of Corinth. He likes us both, he'll enjoy the importance, he'll do it well. Whom shall we send him? '

It was Harpalos, with his sad graceful limp, his dark vivid face, his quick smile and flattering grave attentiveness, who rode south. They convoyed him to the Epirote border, for fear of robbers; but he carried no letter with him. It was the essence of his mission, that no record of it should exist. He took only his mule, a change of clothing, and his golden charm.

Philip learned with pleasure that his old guest-friend Demaratos had business in the north, and would like to visit him. He was at pains to choose the supper, and hire a good sword-dancer to enliven it. Food and dancer were cleared away; they settled down to their wine. Corinth being the listening-post for all southern Greece, Philip asked at once for news. He had heard of some rub between Thebes and Sparta; what did Demaratos think?

Demaratos, a privileged guest and proud of it, fed with the expected cue, shook his distinguished iron-grey head. 'Ah, King! That I should hear you ask if the Greeks are living in harmony! With your own house in the midst of war. '

Philip's dark eye, not yet much engorged with wine, slewed sharply round. His trained diplomatist's ear had picked up a certain note, a shade of preparation. He gave no sign of this. 'That boy. He flares up at a spark, like pitch. A silly speech from a man in liquor, only worth a laugh next day if he'd kept the sense he was born with. But he runs off in a blaze to his mother; and you know her. '

Demaratos made sounds of fellow-feeling. A thousand pities, he said, that with the mother of such a jealous temper, the young man should feel his future threatened by her disgrace. He quoted faultlessly (having had them ready) some apt elegiacs of Simonides.

'Cutting off his own nose, ' said Philip, 'to spite his face. A boy with his gifts, the waste of it. We'd get along well enough, but for that witch. He should know better. Well, by now he'll have paid for it. He'll have had a bellyful of Illyrian hill-forts. But if he thinks I'll... '

It was not till next morning that the talking began in earnest.

Demaratos was in Epiros, the King's most honoured guest. He would be escorting back to Pella the King's sister and her pardoned son. Being rich already, he must chiefly be paid in kudos. King Alexandros toasted him in an heirloom gold cup, and begged him to accept it as a small memento. Olympias put out for him all her social graces; if her enemies called her vixenish, let him judge for himself. Alexander, wearing the one good chiton he had left, was most attentive; till one evening when a tired stiff old man came plodding down to Dodona on a weary mule. It was Phoinix. He had met hard weather on the pass, and almost fell from the saddle into his foster-son's lifted arms.

Alexander demanded a hot bath, sweet oils, and a skilled bath-man; no one in Dodona, it turned out, had ever heard of such a calling. He went in to rub Phoinix down himself.

The royal bath was an antique affair of painted clay, much mended and prone to leak; there was no couch, he had had to send for one. He worked on the knotted-up thigh muscles, following their path as Aristotle had shown him, kneading and tapping as, at home, he had taught his slave to do. In Illyria, he had been doctor to all the others. Even when, knowledge or memory failing, he had relied upon omens seen in dreams, they had preferred him to the local witch-wife.

'Ugh, aah, that's better, that's where it always catches me. Have you studied with Cheiron, like Achilles? '

'No teacher like necessity. Now turn over. '

'Those scars on your arm are new. '

'My leopard. I had to give the skin to my host. '

'Did the blankets reach you safely? '

'Did you send blankets too? They're all thieves in Illyria. I got the books; they can't read, and by luck they weren't short of tinder. The books were the best. They stole Oxhead, once. '

'What did you do? '

'Went after the man and killed him. He'd not gone far, Oxhead wouldn't let him mount. ' He kneaded Phoinix' hamstring.

'You had us all on edge half a year and more. Here and there like a fox. ' Alexander laughed shortly, not pausing in his work. 'But time went by, and you're not one for putting off. Your father set it down to your natural feeling. As I told him he should. ' Phoinix screwed round his head to look.

Alexander straightened up, wiping-off his oily hands on a towel. 'Yes, ' he said slowly. 'A natural feeling, yes, you may call it that. '

Phoinix withdrew his steps from the deep water, as he had learned when to do. 'And did you see battle, Achilles, in the west? '

'Once, a tribal war. One has to support one's host. We won. ' He pushed back his steam-moistened hair. His nose and mouth looked pinched. He threw the towel hard into a corner.

Phoinix thought, He has learned to boast of what he suffered under Leonidas; it taught him endurance; I have heard him at Pella and smiled. But these months he will never boast of; and the man who smiles should take care.

As if he had spoken aloud, Alexander said, in sudden anger, 'Why did my father demand I should ask his pardon? '

'Well, come, he's a bargaining man. Every bargain starts with asking too much. In the end he didn't press it. ' Phoinix swung down his stocky wrinkled legs from the couch. By it was a little deep window, with a marten's nest in an upper corner; on the sill, speckled with droppings, lay an ivory comb with chipped teeth, in which clung some reddish hairs from King Alexandros' beard. Combing himself, his face shielded, Phoinix looked his nurseling over.

He has conceived that he could fail. Yes, even he. He has seen there are rivers over which, once the spate has risen, there is no way back. Some dark night in that land of robbers, he has seen himself, who knows what? A strategos of mercenaries, hired out to some satrap at war with the Great King, or to some third-rate Sicilian tyrant; maybe a wandering comet, such as Alkibiades once was, a nine days' wonder every few years, then burnt out in darkness. For a moment he has seen it. He likes to show his war-scars; this scar he will cover like a slave-brand, he hides it even from me.

'Come! The bargain's struck; wipe old scores away and start with the tablet clean. Remember what Agamemnon said to Achilles, when they were reconciled:

But what could I do? All things come to pass from God.

Blindness of heart is old-born of Zeus, Ate the deadly,

Who fools us all.

Your father has felt it. I have seen it in his face. '

Alexander said, 'I can lend you a cleaner comb than that. ' He put it back under the bird's-nest, and brushed his fingers. 'Well, we know what Achilles said:

This has been all to the good for Hector, and for the Trojans;

The Greeks, though, I think will long remember our falling out.

Even so, we will put it all by, finished and done with,

Though it hurts us, beating down the inward passion because we must. '

He picked up the fresh chiton creased from Phoinix' saddlebag, dropped it neatly over his head like a well-trained page, and handed him his sword-belt.

'Ah, child, you've always been a good boy to me. ' Phoinix fiddled with the buckle, head down. He had meant these words to open an exhortation; but, the rest failing him, he left them to stand as they were.

Nikanor's Horse was again Alexander's squadron.

The haggling had lasted some time; many couriers between Demaratos and the King had crossed the rough tracks into Epiros. It was the centre of the bargain, achieved with much manoeuvring, that neither party should claim an outright victory. When father met son at length, both felt that enough had been said already; they excused themselves from going over it again in words. Each eyed the other with curiosity, resentment, suspicion, regret, and a half-hope which each hid too well.

Under Demaratos' complacent eyes, they exchanged a symbolic kiss of reconcilement. Alexander led up his mother; Philip kissed her too, noting to himself the lines of pride and rancour etched deeper in, and recalling with wonder, for a moment, his youthful passion. Then they all went off to take up their lives as they found them now.

Most men about the court had been able, so far, to avoid taking sides. Only small groups of partisans, Attalids, agents of Olympias, friends and comrades of Alexander, had bickered and intrigued. But the exiles' living presence was like verjuice stirred into milk. Separation began.

The young knew that he was young and had excelled his elders; that when old envious men had tried to put him down, he had stood up to it and won. He was all their own smouldering rebellions, expressed in flame; their hero-victim. Because it was his, they made even Olympias' cause their own. To see one's mother shamed, and one's father, an old man past forty, make a public show of himself with a girl of fifteen; why should one swallow that? When they saw him, therefore, they greeted him with defiant fervour. He never failed to acknowledge it.

His face was thinner. It had been weathered for years, but the closed drawn look was new. Their salutations changed it; his warm confiding smile made them feel rewarded.

Hephaistion, Ptolemy, Harpalos and the rest, the companions of his exile, were treated with awed respect, their stories becoming legend. They did not fail their friend. All the tales were of success; the leopard, the lightning marches to the border, a glorious victory in the tribal war. Their pride was invested in him, besides their love; they would have changed, if they could, his very memories. His thanks, though unspoken, were enough; they felt themselves beloved. Soon they seemed acknowledged leaders, to the young men and to themselves as well; they began to show it, sometimes with discretion, sometimes not.

His party gathered; made up of men who liked him, or had fought beside him; who, perhaps, wounded and half-frozen in Thrace had been given his own place by the fire and a drink from his own wine-cup; or whose courage had been damping-out when he came along and kindled it; or who had told him tales in the guard-room when he was a child: supported by men who looked back to the lawless years, and wanted a strong heir; by men, also, who hated his enemies. The Attalids were daily growing in power and pride. Parmenion, some time widowed, had lately married Attalos' daughter, and the King had stood as groom's man.

The first time Alexander met Pausanias out of others' hearing, he thanked him for his house's hospitality. The bearded lips moved stiffly, as if they would have returned his smile had they not lost the knack. 'It was nothing, Alexander. We were honoured…I would do more than that. ' For a moment their eyes met, Pausanias' exploring, Alexander's questioning; but he had never been an easy man to understand.

Eurydike had a fine new house on the slope, a short walk from the Palace. A pine-wood had been felled to clear the site, and a statue of Dionysos, which had stood in the grove, returned to Queen Olympias, who had set it up. It had not been a shrine of ancient sanctity, only a fancy of hers, to which rumour attached some scandal.

Hephaistion, who had arrived too late to know much about such things, knew like anyone else that a son's legitimacy hangs on his mother's honour. Of course he must defend her, he had no choice; but why with such passion, such bitterness to his father, such blindness to his own good? True friends share everything, except the past before they met.

That she had her faction, everyone knew too well; her rooms were like the meeting-house of some exiled opposition in the southern states. Hephaistion felt his teeth on edge, whenever Alexander went there. Did even he know all she was up to? Whatever it was, if trouble broke the King would believe he knew.

Hephaistion too was young; he had shared the shock when time-servers, once assiduous, now kept their distance. Alexander's very victories were their warning. In Macedon with its history, he was marked dangerous as brightly as the panther. He had always despised servility; but rooted in him was the need to be beloved. Now he was learning which men had known and used it. Watching the lesson, with grim quiet irony, was the King.

'You should try to mend matters, ' Hephaistion would say. 'He must want to, or why recall you? It's always for the younger to come forward first, no disgrace in that. '

'I don't like the way he looks at me. '

'He may think the same, you're both on edge. But how can you doubt you're his heir? Who else is there? Arridaios? '

The idiot had been in Pella lately, for one of the great festivals. His mother's kin always brought him, spruced and combed, to pay his respects to his father, who had acknowledged him with pride when, a fine healthy-looking infant, he had been brought out of the birth-room. Now at seventeen, he was taller than Alexander, and favoured Philip's looks except when his mouth fell open. He was no longer taken to the theatre, where he would laugh loudly at the tragic climaxes, nor to solemn rites, in case one of his fits should take him, when he would flap on the ground like a landed fish, wetting and dirtying himself. It was the fits had done some violence to his mind, the doctors said; he had been a likely child before them. He enjoyed the side-shows of the feast, led about by an old family slave like a little boy with his pedagogue. This year his black beard had grown; but he would not be parted from his doll.

'What a rival! ' Hephaistion said. 'Why can't you be easy? '

After giving this good advice, he would go out, run into some man of the Attalid faction, or even one of Olympias’ many enemies; would resent what they said, and hit them in the teeth. All Alexander's friends were doing their share of this; Hephaistion, being quick-tempered, did rather more. True friends share everything, especially their quarrels. Later he might reproach himself; but all of them knew they would get no reproach from Alexander for these proofs of love. It was not that he set them on to make trouble; only that there grew up around him that kind of defiant loyalty from which sparks are struck, as if from flint.

He hunted untiringly, best pleased when the quarry was dangerous, or gave him a long hard chase. He read little, but to the purpose; his restlessness needed action, he was only content when readying his men for the coming war. He seemed everywhere, demanding from the engineers catapults which could be taken apart and carted, not left behind to rot after every siege; in the horse lines, looking at feet, inspecting the stable floors and discussing fodder. He talked much with travelling men, traders and envoys, actors, paid-up mercenaries, who knew Greek Asia and even the lands beyond. All they told him, he checked stage by stage against Xenophon's Inland March.

Hephaistion, whom he shared his studies with, saw all his hopes staked on the war. He was scarred by the months of impotence as if by a fetter; he needed the medicine of command, victory to confound his enemies and heal his pride. He still took for granted he would be sent ahead, alone or with Parmenion, to make good an Asian bridgehead for the main force. Hephaistion, concealing his own uneasiness, asked if he had talked of it with the King. 'No. Let him come to me. '

The King, though busy himself, was watchful. He saw tactical changes which should have had his sanction, and waited to be asked, in vain. He saw the young man's altered face, and his friends as thick as thieves. It had never been easy to read his mind, but once he would have come with all this as soldier to soldier; he could not have kept it in. As a man, Philip was hurt and angry; as a ruler, he was distrustful.

He had just had good news; he had brought off an alliance of priceless strategic value. In his heart, he was longing to boast of it to his son. But, if the boy was too stiff-necked to consult his father and King, he could not expect to be consulted. Let him learn for himself, or from his mother's spies.

It was from Olympias, therefore, that he heard of Arridaios' coming marriage.

The satrapy of Karia, on the southern curve of the Asian coast, was ruled under the Great King by its native dynasts. The great Mausolos, before he was laid in his grandiose Mausoleum, had built himself a little empire, seawards to Rhodes, Kos and Chios, south down the coast to Lykia. The succession, though in dispute, had passed firmly to Pixodoros, his younger brother. He paid tribute and did formal homage; the Great King took care to ask no more. After Syracuse sank back to anarchy, and before the rise of Macedon, Karia had been the greatest power on the Middle Sea. Philip had long been watching her, sending secret envoys, playing her on a silken line. Now he was hauling in. He had betrothed Arridaios to Pixodoros' daughter.

Olympias learned of it one morning at the theatre, during a tragedy put on to honour the Karian envoys.

Alexander, when she sent for him, was not found at once. He had gone back-stage with Hephaistion, to congratulate Thettalos. The play had been The Madness of Herakles, Hephaistion wondered, after, how he could have missed the omen.

Thettalos was now about forty, at the height of his powers and fame. So versatile that he could give a performance in any mask from Antigone to Nestor, he still triumphed in hero roles. This one had been demanding. His mask only just off, he was careless of his face, which for a moment revealed concern at what he saw; after absence, changes show. He had heard things, too, and took trouble to make it clear that his own loyalty was unshaken.

From the theatre, Hephaistion went off to spend an hour with his parents, who had come into town for the feast. When he returned, it was to the centre of a hurricane.

Alexander's room was milling with his friends, all talking at once, indignant, guessing, plotting. Seeing Hephaistion at the door, Alexander broke through the crowd to him, grasped him by the arm and shouted the news in his ear. Dazed by his rage, Hephaistion made sounds of sympathy; certainly he should have heard of it from the King, certainly he had been slighted. The truth came piecemeal through the din: he believed this to prove Arridaios had been adopted as heir of Macedon. Olympias was sure of it.

I must get him alone, Hephaistion thought; but he dared not try. Alexander was flushed as if with fever; the young men, recalling his victories, cursing the King's ingratitude, offering wild advice, had felt his need of them and did not mean to leave him. He wanted from Hephaistion what he wanted from all the rest, only more urgently. It would be madness to cross him now.

Illyria, Hephaistion thought. It's like a sickness he can't shake off. Later I'll talk to him. 'Who'd be a woman? he said. 'Does she know she's promised to a wittol? '

'What do you think? ' said Alexander, his nostrils flaring. 'Or her father either. ' His brows drew together in thought; he began to pace about. Hephaistion recognized the prelude to coming action.

Ignoring the danger signs, falling into step beside him, Hephaistion said, 'Alexander, this can't be true unless the King's gone mad. Why, he was elected King himself because the Macedonians wouldn't accept a child. How could he suppose they'd accept a halfwit? '

'I know what he's doing. ' A dry heat seemed to radiate from him. 'Arridaios is a stopgap till Eurydike has a boy. This is Attalos' work. '

'But... but think! This boy's not even born. Then he has to grow up. Say eighteen years. And the King's a soldier. '

'She's pregnant again, didn't you know? ' If one touched his hair, Hephaistion thought, one would hear it crackle.

'He can't think he's immortal. He's going to war. What does he think would happen if he died in the next five years? Who is there but you? '

' Unless he has me killed. ' He threw it off like a commonplace.

'What? How can you believe it? His own son. '

'They say I'm not. Well, then, I must look out for myself. '

'Whoever says so? Do you mean that sottish wedding speech? I think all the man really meant by a true-born heir, was Macedonian blood both sides. '

'Oh, no. That's not what they're saying now. '

'Listen. Come out awhile. We'll go hunting. Then we'll talk later. '

Looking quickly round to be sure no one else could hear, Alexander said in a desperate undertone, 'Be quiet, be quiet. ' Hephaistion went back to the others; Alexander paced, like a caged wolf, to and fro.

Suddenly he faced round to them, and said, 'I shall deal with this. '

Hephaistion, who had never before heard this voice of decision with less than perfect trust, felt an instant presage of disaster.

'We'll see who wins, ' Alexander said, 'at this marriage-broking. ' Prompt as a chorus, the others begged to hear. 'I shall send to Karia, and tell Pixodoros what kind of bargain he's made. '

There was applause. Hephaistion thought, Everyone's gone insane. Over the noise, Nearchos the naval officer called out, 'You can't do that, Alexander. You might lose us the war in Asia. '

'You might let me finish, ' Alexander shouted back. 'I shall offer for the girl myself. '

Almost in silence, they took it in. Then Ptolemy said, 'Do it, Alexander. I'll stand by you, here's my hand on it. '

Hephaistion stared, appalled. He had counted upon Ptolemy, the big brother, the steady one. He had lately fetched his Thais back from Corinth, where she had spent his time of exile. But now it was clear he was as angry as Alexander. He was, after all, though unacknowledged, the eldest of Philip's sons. Personable and capable, ambitious and turned thirty, he thought he could have managed in Karia very well. It was one thing to uphold a loved and legitimate brother; something else to stand aside for slobbering Arridaios. 'What do you say, everyone? Do we all stand by Alexander? '

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