The Golden Mean Part 15

I take him through the alpha-beta-gamma, which he recites fluently now. "What letter does it start with?"

"Horse," he says. So we talk about the ways to draw a horse, the parts a person would need: body, muzzle, legs, mane, tail.

"I would draw an oval for the body, rather than a circle." I look over his shoulder. "Like an egg. Where is your nurse today?"

"Take a bath."

Philes has been friendlier since the invitation to supper. He could hardly be otherwise, but I feel myself changing toward him too, softening. I have a little plan for him, a little idea I want to test. Not today or tomorrow but soon, I antic.i.p.ate.

I tell Arrhidaeus to fetch his lyre and he frowns harder in concentration over his drawing, pretending not to have heard. His body is cleaner and stronger; his language is improving and so is his dexterity-hence the drawing, which I've long encouraged him toward-but he seems, distressingly, to hate music. Who hates music? He's clumsy, of course, and can't fit his thick fingers to the simplest positions on the instrument from one week to the next, which is forgivable, but my persistence seems to infect his reaction to all music, and he flinches away if I strum the lyre myself or even if he should hear someone singing in pa.s.sing. Hates what he cannot master: there's a lesson there, I suppose, though I wish a sweet melody would make him smile and relax and that could be the end of it.

"Is it necessary?" Philes asked at a previous session, with Arrhidaeus cowering in a corner in snotty tears, the instrument flung down and cracked on the stone floor. "He can't even clap a steady beat, and he sings like a cow calving."

"So do I," I said, but I liked something the nurse had said. "Come for a walk with me, both of you."

Their preparations were painfully slow, as always, but when we were finally outside I asked the nurse to clap his hands in rhythm with his steps. I did the same. Arrhidaeus ignored us. He'd become a canny animal, knowing when a lesson was coming, and this was how he resisted. I took his hand and beat it against my own in time with our steps. He allowed this.

"Begin there," I told the nurse. "We'll come back to the instrument later, as you suggest." I'd found by then that treating the nurse as a peer, pretending my ideas came from him, warmed him until he became b.u.t.tery and would do whatever I asked. Soon he had Arrhidaeus clapping well, something we practised on horseback also, but our music lessons had stalled there. Nevertheless.

"That is enough drawing, Arrhidaeus," I tell him today. "We play music now."

"No."

I try to take the tablet from his hands but he fights me. He stands up and shoves me, and I lose my balance and fall on my a.s.s, at which point of course Philes returns. He stands in the doorway, his hair still oily-damp from the baths, surveying our wretched little scene.

"Help me up, please, Arrhidaeus," I say. "I think that was an accident, wasn't it?"

He gives me his hand, pleased, and yanks on my arm about as forcefully as he pushed me down. Warrior stock, I remind myself, and it was I myself who suggested he be trained at the gymnasium.

"What happened?" Philes is all womanish concern, advancing into the room. "You're not hurt?" He hovers close, plays at straightening my clothes and brus.h.i.+ng me off, while I shrug away, fluttering my hands like a man beset by bugs.

Arrhidaeus picks up the lyre as studiously as he bent over his tablet a few moments ago, ignoring our clown show, and strums a pa.s.sable chord, stopping us both.

"Again," I say.

He refits his fingers and manages the same chord again. He's remembered something.

"Shall we sing?" I say.

And we make a ridiculous joyous noise, the three of us, clapping our hands, snapping our fingers, the prince strumming his one wavering chord, Philes and I singing like cows (he's no better than me), the boat, the boat, the boat and the silver sea the boat, the boat, the boat and the silver sea, until a palace guard sticks his head in the door to see who's in so much pain and smiles despite himself when he sees the morose nurse, the idiot prince, and the great philosopher conducting themselves like people who are simply happy.

ONE MORNING AT THE BATHS I find Callisthenes scrubbing himself vigorously with pumice. I find Callisthenes scrubbing himself vigorously with pumice.

"You haven't heard?" he says. "Alexander rode out this morning. A revolt at Maedi. A courier came in the night."

The young man seems invigorated, by either his scrubbing or the potent news.

"He is a child," I say.

"Well, he's not, though." My nephew turns the stone over in his hand thoughtfully. He's right, of course: Alexander is sixteen. "I hear Olympias isn't too pleased," he says.

"Respect."

"The queen would have preferred him to leave the Maedians to the generals. You should have seen him ride out, in full armour, on Ox-Head. He looked like a king already."

"I should have been told."

Again, my nephew seems perplexed and thoughtful and amused and sweetly reasonable all at once. "Why? He can't get permission from his own mother and he's going to ask it of a philosopher?"

I feel a hot sweet splash of guilt in my chest and wonder if guilt, too, is a humour, and, if so, where is its gland.

"We got up before the c.o.c.ks to see them ride out."

"Did you wish you had been one of them?"

"You should have seen them," my nephew repeats, frowning, avoiding the question, answering it, and chiding the questioner all in the same breath. He, too, is young.

Alexander's troops retake Maedi and, for good measure, establish a colony named Alexandropolis. A bit of arrogance with Philip still alive, but there were already a Philippi and a Philippopolis in Thrace, and the man was probably more than happy to indulge his son's first successful command. I attend the formal greeting of the victors at court a few weeks after my conversation with Callisthenes, where Alexander is subdued and leaves almost immediately after the ritual offerings. I can't get close enough to see if he's picked something up on his travels, some bit of sickness, or if he's just tired from all the excitement.

When I return home, I find Pythias has ordered a lamb sacrificed in the boy's honour.

"You do love him," I say.

Pythias, by now, is fat with child, and her la.s.situde has given way to dogged industry as she prepares for its arrival. She strokes her belly placidly while we speak. Athea no longer speaks to me, won't look me in the eye. If she had anything to do with it, I don't want to know.

"They say he is not Philip's child at all," she tells me.

"Women's gossip."

"Men's, too."

"All right, then. Who does slander make the father?"

Pythias wrinkles her brow earnestly. "Zeus, or else Dionysus. Olympias herself says so."

I laugh. "Spoken like a true Macedonian."

Late that night comes a tapping at my gate. Tycho gets me from my study, where I'm just finis.h.i.+ng up. The rest of the household is already in bed. A messenger in palace livery informs me I am required by Antipater.

"Now?"

"A medical matter."

The palace has doctors, the army has medics. The messenger has a horse for me, for speed and discretion, so I won't raise the household saddling Tar. Antipater himself, then, or the prince, and it's something shameful. I scour my memory for what my father taught me about diseases of the c.o.c.k, and annoy the messenger by making him wait while I run back to my study for one of my father's old books.

"Finally," Antipater says. "Though I think the danger has pa.s.sed. He looked worse an hour ago, when I sent for you."

I ask if there's blood in the urine or a burning sensation.

"What?" Antipater says. "I'm not worried about his p.i.s.s, I'm worried about his arm. Alexander slashed him with a meat knife. Thought he was back in Maedi."

He leads me to a room where Hephaestion is sitting with a cloth held tight to his arm.

"Bind a bleeder," he says, seeing me, grinning weakly. He starts to cry.

"All right, child. Let me look."

Antipater, that good soldier, has already washed him; there's not much more I can do. The bleeding's down to a trickle. It's a long, vicious slash, deep enough. I advise him to keep it bound and prescribe poppy seed for the pain.

"Stop crying," Antipater tells him.

"I don't need poppy seed," Hephaestion says. "Will he be all right?"

"Where is he?" I put bandages and scissors back in my father's old bag. "I'd better see him, too."

We walk Hephaestion back to his room, next door to the prince's. Antipater rests his hand briefly on the pretty boy's head.

"Go, sleep. And for f.u.c.k's sake, stop crying. The prince will be fine."

"Thank you, sir," Hephaestion says.

"What happened?" I ask once Antipater has dismissed the sentry.

"Soldier's heart, we call it." He shakes his head. "They think they're back in battle. I wondered if it was coming. He's been odd, since they got back. Flinching at sounds, anything metallic. Dead-eyed, drinking too much."

"I'm surprised you let him go alone."

Antipater gives me a look. "Alexander didn't ask me. I wanted to give him h.e.l.l, but Philip's letters couldn't have been prouder. What can I do? I'm not his father."

"So you've seen this before."

"Usually on long campaigns, when we're losing. It shouldn't have happened this time. Maedi was an easy victory. His first real battle, sure, but he's Philip's son. He's trained for this."

"Do you think something happened there, something unusual? Something he hasn't told you?"

"I can hear everything you're saying, you know," Alexander says through the door.

We go in. The room is neat, bed made, books tidy. The remains of a meal are on the table, with two chairs pulled up: a late supper for two. Poor, sweet, loyal Hephaestion. The cutlery is gone.

"Is he all right?" Alexander is pale but seems composed.

"Are you?"

He makes a noise, tick of the tongue, annoyance. "I'm tired. I suppose I'm allowed to be tired. I got confused for a minute. It was just a scratch, wasn't it? He knows I wouldn't hurt him for real. What's the book?"

I've put my father's book down on the table with my bag, next to his supper. I show him.

"That's what you thought this was about?" Antipater says.

"Drag me out in the middle of the night, what do I know?"

"That's disgusting." Alexander scrolls on. "That too."

"Any b.u.mps on the head while you were away?"

"No." He lets me examine him briefly. A few bruises and scratches, and pressure on one knee makes him wince. "This doesn't have to go in dispatches, does it?" he asks Antipater.

"That Hephaestion took a wound in battle?"

They look at each other a moment. Alexander nods slightly, Thank you Thank you.

Back in the hall, I say, "Does it?"

Antipater beckons me away from the door. "Every account I got, from every soldier I asked, said he was brilliant. Everything textbook. Said he threw his spear like he was at games, just beautiful. Effortless. He could have hung back and let his men do it, but he led. He went first on every charge. That's what his father needs to know, and that's what I told him. This other, we'll put it down to first-time nerves. Find your own way out?"

"Soldier's heart," I say. "Did you ever have it?"

Antipater stalks off down the hall. "Never," he calls back, without turning around.

Hephaestion is still awake, as I'd hoped. "He didn't tell you? Maybe he didn't want to say anything in front of Antipater. He killed a boy who was trying to surrender. He'd thrown his weapons away and got down on his knees, crying for his mother. He can't stop thinking about it. Do you have any of that poppy seed after all?"

I look through my bag. "Not too much, though. It'll make you sleepy."

"Not for me, for Alexander. He gets headaches."

I show him how to grind it down, what dosage, and screw a sample portion in a twist of cloth. "He feels guilty for killing the boy, then."

"No, he enjoyed it. He said it was his favourite kill of the battle."

"He ranks them?"

"Oh, we all do that." Hephaestion moves his arm gingerly. "I think he went back after, though, and did something to the body."

"Do you know what?"

"No. He made me stay behind."

I believe him.

"But that's when it started. Whatever he did to the boy, after he was already dead."

THREE YEARS AFTER IT BEGAN, Philip's Thracian campaign is over. Callisthenes and I go into the city with thousands of others to greet the returning army and watch Alexander walk to his father, holding out a bowlful of wine, which Philip accepts as the traditional libation of a king returning to his city. They embrace and the people cheer. They turn and continue the walk to the palace together, Philip's arm around Alexander's shoulders. I've heard no gossip about Alexander since my late-night visit to the palace-nothing, that is, beyond the usual do-they-or-don't-they speculations about him and Hephaestion-nor have I been summoned for a lesson. The former I attribute to Antipater's white-knuckle discretion, the latter to my student's. I've seen him naked now, the soft white places; soft, or rotten. We both need time to forget.

We stay a long time to watch the procession that follows them. The news of Philip's long withdrawal from Thrace, after the disappointments of Perinthus and Byzantium, precedes him.

A campaign in Scythia netted some twenty thousand captives, women and children, as well as another twenty thousand breeding mares, flocks, and herds. Philip's army battled the Triballians on the way home, enc.u.mbered by all this living baggage, and were forced to leave a good deal of it behind. It was a vicious battle. Philip took a spear to the thigh and lay for a time pinned beneath his own dead horse. He was briefly taken for dead, and he limps distinctly now. A representative sampling of Thracian women and children and geese and ducks and pregnant horses and Triballian prisoners are paraded past. Along the way, too, Philip has picked up a sixth wife, a Getic princess named Meda, and here she is in a blue dress and sandals, walking in the middle of this great mess of prisoners and soldiers and horses, a blonde for his collection. I remember my long-ago description to Pythias of Thracian women, but she has no tattoos that I can see. Pythias will have to sew with her soon enough, no doubt, and will be able to inform me definitively.

But the invitation never comes. Pythias points this out to me one evening as we're getting ready for bed. "I haven't been asked up to the palace in ages," she says. "By Olympias or anyone. Also I sent a note to Antipater's wife asking her to visit and she never replied. Have I done something wrong?"