Fire From Heaven (32 page)

‘Alexander! Where’s our boy? Have those whores’ sons killed him?’ Then, running the other way in a deep bass counterpoint, The King, they killed the King! The King is dead!’ and higher, as if in answer, ‘Alexander!’

He stood, a point of stillness in all the clamour, looking beyond it into the blue dazzling sky.

There were other voices, down by his knees. ‘Sir, sir, how are you?’ they were saying. ‘Sir?’ He blinked a moment, as if awaking from sleep; then knelt down with the others and touched the body, saying, ‘Father? Father?’

He could feel at once that the King was breathing.

There was blood in his hair. His sword was half-out; he must have felt for it as he was struck, perhaps with a pommel by someone whose nerve had failed him to use the edge. His eyes were closed, and he came limply with their lifting hands. Alexander, remembering a lesson of Aristotle’s, pulled back the lid of his good eye. It closed again with a twitch.

‘A shield,’ Alexander said. ‘Roll him gently. I’ll take his head.’

The Argives had been marched off; the Macedonians crowded round, asking if the King was alive or dead. ‘He is stunned,’ said Alexander. ‘He will be better presently. He has no other wound. Moschion! The herald is to give that out. Sippas! Order the catapults to fire a volley. Look at the enemy gaping on the wall; I want the fun knocked out of them. Leonnatus, I’ll be with my father till he’s himself again. Bring anything to me.’

They laid the King on his bed. Alexander drew a blood-stained hand from holding his head, to settle it on the pillow. Philip groaned, and opened his eyes.

The senior officers, who had felt entitled to crowd in, assured him all was well, all the men in hand. Alexander standing by the bed-head said to one of the squires, ‘Bring me water, and a sponge.’

‘It was your son, King,’ said someone, ‘your son saved you.’ Philip turned his head and said weakly, ‘So? Good boy.’

‘Father, did you see which of them struck you?’

‘No,’ said Philip, his voice strengthening. ‘He took me from behind.’

‘Well, I hope I killed him. I killed one there.’ His grey eyes dwelt deeply on his father’s face.

Philip blinked dimly, and sighed. ‘Good boy. I remember nothing; nothing till I woke up here.’

The squire came up with the water-bowl and held it out. Alexander took the sponge, and washed his hand clean of blood, going over it carefully, two or three times. He turned away; the squire paused with the bowl, at a loss, then went round to sponge the King’s hair and brow. He had supposed that this was what the Prince had meant it for.

By evening, though sick and giddy if he moved, Philip could give orders. The Argives were marched off on exchange to Kypsela. Alexander was cheered wherever he was seen; men touched him for luck, or for his virtue to rub off on them, or merely for the sake of touching him. The besieged, encouraged by these disorders, came out on the wall at dusk and attacked a siege tower. Alexander led out a party and beat them off. The doctor announced that the King was mending. One of the squires sat up with him. It was midnight before Alexander got to bed. Though he ate with his father, he had his own lodging. He was a general now.

There was a scratch on the door, in a familiar rhythm. He folded back the blanket, and moved over. Hephaistion had known, when this tryst was made, that wh?at Alexander wanted was to talk. He could always tell.

They milled over the fight, talking softly into the pillow. Presently they fell quiet; in the pause they could hear the sounds of the camp, and, from the distant ramparts of Perinthos, the night watch passing the bell along from man to man, the proof of wakefulness. ‘What is it?’ Hephaistion whispered.

In the dim glimmer of the window, he saw the shine of Alexander’s eyes coming close to his. ‘He says he remembers nothing. He’d already come to himself when we picked him up.’

Hephaistion, who had once been hit by a stone from a Thracian wall said, ‘He’ll have forgotten.’

‘No. He was shamming dead.’

‘Was he? Well, who can blame him? One can’t even sit up, everything spins round. He hoped they’d be scared at what they’d done, and go away.’

‘I opened his eye, and I know he saw me. But he gave me no sign, though he knew it was over then.’

‘Very likely he just went off again.’

‘I watched him, he was awake. But he won’t say he remembers.’

‘Well, he’s the King.’ Hephaistion had a secret kindness for Philip, who had always treated him with courtesy, even with tact; with whom, too, he shared an enemy. ‘People might misunderstand, you know how tales get twisted.’

‘To me he could have said it.’ Alexander’s eyes, glittering in the near-darkness, fastened upon his. ‘He won’t own that he was lying there, knowing he owed his life to me. He didn’t want to admit it, he doesn’t want to remember.’

Who knows? thought Hephaistion. Or ever will? But he knows, and nothing will ever shift it. His bare shoulder, crossed by Hephaistion’s arm, had a faint sheen like darkened bronze. ‘Supposing he has his pride? You ought to know what that is.’

‘Yes, I do. But in his place I’d still have spoken.’

‘What need?’ He slid his hand up the bronze shoulder into the tousled hair; Alexander pushed against it, like a powerful animal consenting to be stroked. Hephaistion remembered his childishness in the beginning; sometimes it seemed like yesterday, sometimes half a lifetime. ‘Everyone knows. He does; so do you. Nothing can take it away.’

He felt Alexander draw a long deep breath. ‘No; nothing. You’re right, you always understand. He gave me life, or he claims so. Whether or not, now I’ve given it him.’

‘Yes, now you’re quits.’

Alexander gazed into the black peak of the rafters. ‘No one can equal the gifts of the gods, one can only try to know them. But it’s good to be clear of debt to men.’

Tomorrow he would sacrifice to Herakles. Meantime, he felt a deep wish at once to make someone happy. Luckily he had not far to seek.

Ê

‘I warned him,’ said Alexander, ‘not to put off dealing with the Triballoi.’ He sat with Antipatros at the great desk of Archelaos’ study, over a dispatch full of bad news.

‘Is his wound thought dangerous?’ Antipatros asked.

‘He couldn’t sign this; just his seal, and Parmenion’s witness. I doubt he even finished dictating it. The last part reads more like Parmenion.’

‘He has good-healing flesh, your father. It’s in the family.’

‘What were his diviners doing? Nothing’s gone right with him since I left. Perhaps we should consult Delphi or Dodona, in case some god needs appeasing.’

‘It would spread through Greece like wildfire that his luck was out. He’d not thank us for that.’

‘That’s true, no, better not. But look at Byzantion. He did everything right; got there fast, while their best forces were at Perinthos; chose a cloudy night; got up to the very walls. But of a sudden the clouds part, out comes the moon; and all the town dogs start barking. Barking at the crossroadsÉ they light the torchesÉ’

‘Crossroads?’ said Antipatros into the pause.

‘Or,’ said Alexander briskly, ‘maybe he misread the weather, it’s changeable on Propontis. But once he’d decided to lift both sieges, why not have rested his men, and let me take on the Scythians?’

‘They were there on his flank, and had just denounced their treaty; but for them he might have hung on at Byzantion. Your father’s always kno?wn when to write off his losses. But his troops had their tails down; they needed a solid victory, and loot; both of which he got.’

Alexander nodded. He could get along well with Antipatros, a Macedonian of ancient stock, bone-loyal to the King beside whom he had fought in youth, but to the King before the man. It was Parmenion who loved the man before the King. ‘He did indeed. So there he was, lumbered-up with a thousand head of cattle, a slave-train, wagons of loot, on the north border where they can smell plunder further than buzzards. Tails up or not, his men were tiredÉ. If only he’d let me go on north from Alexandropolis; he’d have had no raid from the Triballoi then.’ The name was established now; the colonists had settled. ‘The Agrianoi would have come in with me, they’d already agreedÉ. Well, done’s done. It’s lucky his doctor wasn’t killed.’

‘I should like to wish him well when the courier leaves.’

‘Of course. Let’s not trouble him with business.’ (If orders came back would they be Philip’s or Parmenion’s?) ‘We shall have to shift for ourselves awhile.’ He smiled at Antipatros, whom he liked none the worse for being charmable, and amusingly unaware of it. ‘War we can deal with well enough. But the business of the south - that’s another thing. It means a great deal to him; he sees it differently; he knows more about it. I should be sorry to act without him there.’

‘Well, they seem to be working for him there better than we could.’

‘At Delphi? I was there when I was twelve, for the Games, and never since. Now, once again, to be sure I understand it: this new offering-house the Athenians put up; they put in their dedications before it had been consecrated?’

‘Yes, a technical impiety. That was the formal charge.’

‘But the real quarrel was the inscription: SHIELDS TAKEN FROM PERSIANS AND THEBANS FIGHTING AGAINST GREECEÉ Why did the Thebans Medize, instead of allying with the Athenians?’

‘Because they hated them.’

‘Even then? Well, this inscription enraged the Thebans. So when the Sacred League of Delphi met, being I suppose ashamed to come forward themselves, they got some client state to accuse the Athenians of impiety.’

‘The Amphissians. They live below Delphi, up river.’

‘And if this indictment had succeeded, the League would have had to make war on Athens. The Athenians had sent three delegates; two went down with fever, and the third of them was Aischines.’

‘You may remember the man; he was one of the peace-envoys, seven years ago.’

‘Oh, I know Aischines, he’s an old friend of mine. Did you know he was an actor once? He must have been good at gagging; because when the Council was about to pass the motion, he suddenly recalled that the Amphissians had been raising crops on some river land which had once been forfeited to Apollo. So he went rushing in, somehow got a hearing, and counter-accused the Amphissians. Is that right? Then, after his great oration, the Delphians forgot Athens, and rushed down pell-mell to wreck the Amphissians’ farms. The Amphissians fought; and some of the Councillors had their sacred persons knocked about. This was last autumn after the harvest.’

It was now winter. The study was as draughty and cold as ever. The King’s son, thought Antipatros, seemed to notice it even less than the King.

‘Now the League is meeting at Thermopylai to pass judgement on the Amphissians. It’s clear my father won’t be fit to go. I am sure what he would like would be for you to represent him. Will you?’

‘By all means, yes,’ said Antipatros, relieved. The boy knew his own limits, eager as he was to stretch them. ‘I shall try to influence whom I can, and, where I can, postpone decisions for the King.’

‘Let’s hope they’ve found him a warm house; Thrace in winter is no place for healing wounds. Before long, we shall have to consult him about this. What do you expect will happen?’

‘In Athens, nothing. Even if the League condemns Amphissa, Demosthenes will keep the Athenians out. The counter-charge was a personal triumph for Aischines, whom he ?hates like poison, and indicted on a capital charge of treason after their embassy here, as I daresay you know.’

‘No one better. Part of the charge was that he was too friendly with me.’

‘These demagogues! Why, you were only ten years old. Well, the charge failed, and now Aischines comes back from Delphi a public hero. Demosthenes must be chewing wormwood. Also, a larger issue, the Amphissians support the Thebans, whom he won’t wish to antagonize.’

‘ But the Athenians hate the Thebans.’

‘He would like them to hate us more. A war-pact with Thebes is what any man of sense would work for, in his place. With the Thebans he may succeed; the Great King has sent him a fortune to buy support against us. It’s the Athenians will give him trouble; that feud’s too old.’

Alexander sat in thought. Presently he said, ‘It’s four generations now since they threw back the Persians; and we Medized, as the Thebans did. If the Great King crossed now from Asia, they’d be intriguing and impeaching one another, while we turned him back in Thrace.’

‘Men change in less time than that. We have come up in one generation, thanks to your father.’

‘And he’s still only forty-three. Well, I shall go out and take some exercise, in case he should leave me anything to do.’

On his way to change, he met his mother, who asked the news. He went with her to her room, and told her as much as he thought good. The room was warm, soft and full of colour; bright firelight danced on the pictured flames of Troy. His eyes turned to the hearth; he stared unnoticed at the loose stone he had explored in childhood. She found him withdrawn, and accused him of weak compliance with Antipatros, who would stop at nothing to do her harm. This happened often, and he passed it off with the usual answers.

Leaving, he met Kleopatra on the stairs. Now at fourteen she was more like Philip than ever, square-faced, with strong curly hair; but her eyes were not his, they were sad as an unloved dog’s. His half-wives had borne him prettier girls; she was plain at the age when, for him, it mattered most; and for her mother she wore the mask of the enemy. Alexander said, ‘Come with me, I want to speak to you.’

In the nursery they had been struggling rivals. Now he was above the battle. She longed for, yet feared, his notice, feeling unequal to anything it could mean. It was unheard-of for him to confer with her. ‘Come in the garden,’ he said, and, when she shivered and crossed her arms, gave her his cloak. They stood in a leafless rose-plot by the Queen’s postern, close against the wall. Old snow lay in the hollows and between the clods. He had spoken to her quietly, he had not wished to frighten her, she saw that in herself she was unimportant; but she was afraid.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘You know what happened to Father at Byzantion?’ She nodded. ‘It was the dogs betrayed him. The dogs, and the sickle moon.”