Fire From Heaven (28 page)

On the drillfield of the Pella plain, a sea-flat left bare in old men’s living memory, the phalanxes wheeled and countermarched with their long sarissas, graded so that the points of three ranks, in open order, should strike the enemy front in a single line. The cavalry did their combat exercises, gripping with the thighs, the knees, and by the mane, to help them keep their seats through the shock of impact.

At Mieza, Alexander and Hephaistion were packing their kit to start at dawn next day, and searching each other’s hair.

‘None this time,’ said Hephaistion laying down the comb. ‘It’s in winter, with people huddling together, that one picks them up.’

Alexander, sitting at his knees, shoved off a dog of his that was trying to lick his face, a?nd changed places. ‘Fleas one can drown,’ he said as he worked, ‘but lice are like Illyrians creeping about in the woods. We’ll have plenty on campaign, one can at least start clean. I don’t think you’veÉ no, waitÉ. Well, that’s all.’ He got up to reach a stoppered flask from a shelf. ‘We’ll use this again, it’s far the best. I must tell Aristotle.’

‘It stinks.’

‘No, I put in some aromatics. Smell.’ During this last year, he had been taken up with the healing art. Among much theory, little of which he thought could issue well in action, this was a useful thing, which warrior princes had not disdained on the field of Troy; the painters showed Achilles binding Patroklos’ wounds. His keenness had somewhat disconcerted Aristotle, whose own interest now was academic; but the science had been his paternal heritage, and he found after all a pleasure in teaching it. Alexander now kept a notebook of salves and draughts, with hints on the treatment of fevers, wounds and broken limbs.

‘It does smell better,’ Hephaistion conceded. ‘And it seems to keep them off.’

‘My mother had a charm against them. But she always ended in picking them out by hand.’

The dog sat grieving by the baggage, whose smell it recognized. Alexander had been in action not many months before, commanding his own company as the King had promised. All of today the house had sounded with shrill susurrations, like crickets’ chirping; the scrape of whetstones on javelins, daggers and swords, as the young men made ready.

Hephaistion thought of the coming war without fear, erasing from his mind, or smothering in its depths, even the fear that Alexander would be killed. Only so was life possible at his side. Hephaistion would avoid dying if he could, because he was needed. One must study how to make the enemy die instead, and beyond that trust in the gods.

‘One thing I’m scared of,’ said Alexander, working his sword about in its sheath till the blade glided like silk through the well-waxed leather. ‘That the south will come in before I’m ready.’ He reached for the brush of chewed stick with which he cleaned the goldwork.

‘Give me that, I’ll do it along with mine.’ Hephaistion bent over the elaborate finial of the sheath, and the latticed strap-work. Alexander always rid himself of his javelins quickly, the sword was already his weapon, face to face, hand to hand. Hephaistion muttered a luck-charm over it as he worked.

‘Before we march into Greece, I hope to be a general.’ Hephaistion looked up from rubbing the hilt of polished sharkskin. ‘Don’t set your heart on it; time’s looking short.’

‘They’d follow me already, in the field, if it came to a push in action. That I know. They’d not think it proper to appoint me yet,Ê though. AÊ year,Ê twoÊ yearsÉ ButÊ they’d follow me, now.’

Hephaistion gave it thought; he never told Alexander what he wished to hear, if it could cause him trouble later. ‘Yes, they would. I saw that last time. Once they thought you were just a luck-bringer. But now they can tell you know what you’re about.’

‘They’ve known me a long time.’ Alexander took down his helmet from the wall-peg, and shook out its white horsehair crest.

‘To hear some of them talk, one would think they’d reared you.’ Hephaistion dug too hard with the brush, broke it, and had to chew a new end.

‘Some of them have.’ Alexander, having combed the crest, went over to the wall-mirror. ‘I think it will do. It’s good metal, it fits, and the men can see me.’ Pella had no lack of first-class armourers. They came north from Corinth, knowing where good custom was. ‘When I’m a general, I can have one to show up.’

Hephaistion, looking over his shoulder at his mirrored face, said, ‘I’ll bet on that. You’re like a gamecock for finery.’

Alexander hung back the helmet. ‘You’re angry, why?’

‘Get made a general, then you’ll have a tent of your own. We’ll never be out of a crowd from tomorrow till we get back.’

‘OhÉYes, I know. But that’s war.’

‘One has to get used to it. Like the fleas.’

Alexander came swiftly over, st?ruck with remorse at having forgotten. ‘In our souls,’ he said, ‘we’ll be more than ever united, winning eternal fame. Son of Menoitios, great one, you who delight my heart.’ He smiled deeply into Hephaistion’s eyes, which faithfully smiled back. ‘Love is the true food of the soul. But the soul eats to live, like the body; it musn’t live to eat.’

‘No,’ said Hephaistion. What he lived for was his own business, part of which was that Alexander should not be burdened with it.

‘The soul must live to do.’

Hephaistion put aside the sword, took up the dagger with its dolphin hilts and agate pommel, and agreed that this was so.

Ê

Pella rang and rattled with sounds of war. The breeze brought Oxhead the noise and smell of war-chargers; he flared his nostrils and whinnied.

King Philip was on the parade-ground. He had had scaling-ladders rigged up against tall scaffolding, and was making the men climb up in proper order, without crowding, jostling, pinking each other with their weapons, or undue delay. He sent his son a message that he would see him after manoeuvres. The Queen would see him at once.

When she embraced him, she found he was the taller. He stood five feet seven; before his bones set, he might make another inch or so, not more. But he could break a cornel spear-shaft between his hands, walk thirty miles in a day over rough country without food (for a test, he had done it once without drink either). By gradual unnoticed stages, he had ceased to grieve that he was not tall. The tall men of the phalanx, who could wield a twenty-foot sarissa, liked him very well as he was.

His mother, though there was only an inch between them, laid her head on his shoulder, making herself soft and tender like a roosting dove. ‘You are a man, really a man now.’ She told him all his father’s wickedness; there was nothing new. He stroked her hair and echoed her indignation, his mind upon the war. She asked him what kind of youth was this Hephaistion; was he ambitious, what did he ask for, had he exacted any promises? Yes. That they should be together in battle. Ah! Was that to be trusted? He laughed, patted her cheek, and saw the real question in her eyes, which sought, like wrestlers, for a moment’s failure of nerve which would let her ask it. He faced her out, and she did not ask. It made him fond of her and forgiving; he leaned to her hair to smell its scent.

Philip was in the painted study at a littered desk. He had come straight from the drill-field, the room smelled acridly of his horse’s sweat and his own. At the kiss of greeting, he noticed that his son, after a ride of less than forty miles, had already bathed to wash off the dust. But the real shock was to perceive on his jaw a fine golden stubble. With astonishment and dismay, Philip perceived that the boy was not, after all, behindhand with his beard. He had been shaving.

A Macedonian, a king’s son, what could have possessed him to make him ape the effete ways of the south? Smooth as a girl. For whom was he doing this? Philip was well-informed about Mieza; Parmenion had arranged this secretly with Philotas, who made regular reports. It was one thing to take up with Amyntor’s son, a harmless and comely youth whom Philip, indeed, could himself have fancied; it was another to go about looking like someone’s minion. He cast his mind back to the troop of young men he had seen arriving; it now occurred to him that there had been older chins there, beardless too. It must be a fashion among them. A vague feeling of subversion stirred under his skin; but he pushed it out of the way. In spite of the boy’s oddities, he was trusted by the men; and, since business stood where it did, this was no time to cross him.

Philip waved his son to the seat beside him. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘as you see, we’re well forward here.’ He described his preparations; Alexander listened, elbows on knees, hands clasped before him; one could see his mind running a step ahead. ‘Perinthos will be tough to crack, but we shall have Byzantion on our hands as well; openly or not th?ey’ll support Perinthos. So will the Great King. I doubt he’s in a state to make war, from what I hear; but he’ll send supplies. He has a treaty for that with Athens.’

For a moment, their faces shared a single thought. It was as if they spoke of some great lady, the strict mentor of their childhood, now found to be plying the streets in a seaport town. Alexander glanced at the beautiful old bronze by Polykleitos, of Hermes inventing the lyre. He had known it all his life; the too-slender youth with his fine bones and runner’s muscles had always seemed, under the divine calm imposed by the sculptor, to conceal a deep inward sadness, as if he knew it would come to this.

‘Well, then, Father; when do we march?’

‘Parmenion and I, seven days from now. Not you, my son. You will be at Pella.’

Alexander sat bolt upright staring; he seemed to stiffen all over. ‘At Pella? What do you mean?’

Philip grinned. ‘You look for all the world like that horse of yours, shying at his shadow. Don’t be so quick off the mark. You won’t be sitting idle.’

From his scarred and knotted hand he drew a massive ring of antique goldwork. Its signet of sardonyx was carved with a Zeus enthroned, eagle on fist; it was the royal seal of Macedon.

‘You will look after this.’ He flipped it up and caught it. ‘Do you think you can?’

The fierceness left Alexander’s face; for a moment it looked almost stupid. In the King’s absence, the Seal was held by his Regent.

‘You’ve had a good grounding in war,’ his father said. ‘When you’re old enough to be up-graded without a fuss, you can have a cavalry brigade. Let’s say two years. Meantime, you must learn administration. It’s worse than useless to push out frontiers, if the realm’s in chaos behind you. Remember, I had to deal with that before I could move anywhere, even against the Illyrians who were inside our borders. Don’t think it can’t come back again. Moreover, you’ll have to protect my lines of communication. This is serious work I’m giving you.’

Watching the eyes before him, he saw a look in them he had not met since the day of the horse-fair, at the end of the ride. ‘Yes, Father. I know it. Thank you; I’ll see that you don’t repent of it.’

‘Antipatros will stay too; if you’ve sense you’ll consult him. But that’s your own choice; the Seal’s the Seal.’

Each day till the army marched, Philip held councils: with the officers of the home garrisons, the tax-collectors, the officers of justice, the men whom the tribal chiefs, enrolled with the Companions, had left to rule their tribes; the chiefs and princes who for reasons historic, traditional or legal remained at home. Amyntas was one, the son of Perdikkas, Philip’s elder brother. When his father fell he had been a child. Philip had been elected Regent; before Amyntas came of age, the Macedonians had decided they liked Philip’s work and wanted to keep him on. With the royal kin, the throne was elective by ancient right. He had dealt graciously with Amyntas, giving him the status of a royal nephew, and one of his own half-legal daughters for a wife. He had been conditioned to his lot from infancy; he came now to the councils, a thick-set, dark-bearded young man of five and twenty, whom any stranger might have picked out of a crowd as Philip’s son. Alexander, sitting on his father’s right at the conference, would steal a look sometimes, wondering if such inertia could be real.

When the army marched, Alexander escorted his father to the coast road, embraced him, and turned for Pella. Oxhead, as the cavalry went off without him, blew restively down his nose. Philip was pleased he had told the boy he would be in charge of the communication lines. A happy thought; it had delighted him; and in fact the route was very well secured.

The first act of Alexander’s regency was a private one; he bought a thin slip of gold, which he wound round the hoop of the royal signet to make it fit his finger. He knew that symbols are magical, in perfection and in defect.

Antipatros proved most helpful. He was a man for acting on ?facts, not wishes. He knew his son had fallen foul of Alexander, disbelieved Kassandros’ version of it, and had been keeping him well out of the Prince’s way; for here, if Antipatros had ever seen one, was a boy needing only a clumsy push at a crucial moment to discover in himself a very dangerous man. He must be served and served well, or else destroyed. In Antipatros’ youth, before Philip secured the kingdom, a man might find himself any day standing siege in his own home against a vengeful neighbour prince, a horde of Illyrian raiders, or a brigand band. His choice had long since been made.

Philip had sacrificed his useful Chief Secretary, to take care of the young Regent. Alexander thanked him politely for the digests he had prepared, then asked for the original correspondence; he wished, he explained, to get the feel of the men who wrote. When he met anything unfamiliar, he asked questions. After everything was clear in his mind, he consulted with Antipatros.

They had no differences, till one day when a certain soldier was accused of rape, but swore to the woman’s willingness. Antipatros was inclined to accept his well-argued case; but since a blood-feud threatened, he felt obliged to consult the Regent. With some diffidence he laid the unsavoury tale before the fresh-faced youth in Archelaos’ study, who answered without a pause that Sotion, as all his phalanx knew, when sober could talk his way out of a wolf-trap, but in drink he’d not know a farrow sow from his sister, and either would do as well.

A few days after the King marched east, the whole garrison force around Pella was called out on manoeuvre. Alexander had had some thoughts about the use of light cavalry against flanking infantry. Besides, he said, they must not be allowed to gather moss.