Fire From Heaven (26 page)

He stood looking after her, seeing again the cold crisp stems of the violets going down into the warm silky crease. Tomorrow was the Dionysia. And holy Earth made fresh young grass grow under them, dewy clover and crocuses and hyacinths, a thick soft bed between them and the hard ground.

He said nothing of it to Hephaistion.

When he went to greet his mother, he saw that something had happened. She was raging like a banked-down fire; but from her looks he was not the offender. She was asking herself whether or not to tell him of it. He kissed, but did not question her. Yesterday had been enough.

All day his friends were telling each other about the girls they meant to have next day, if they could catch them on the mountain. He threw back the old jokes, but kept his own counsel. The women would be setting out from the sanctuary, long before the dawn.

‘What shall we do tomorrow?’ Hephaistion asked him. ‘I mean, after the sacrifice?’

‘I don’t know. It’s unlucky to make plans for the Dionysia.’

Hephaistion gave him a secret, startled glance. No, it was not possible; he had been moody since he got here, and cause enough. Till he got over it, one must let him be.

Supper was early; everyone would be up next day before cock-light; and on the eve of Dionysos no one, even in Macedon, sat l?ate over the wine. The spring twilight fell early, when the sun sank under the western ridges; there were corners in the castle where lamps were kindled half through afternoon. The meal in Hall had a transit air; Philip made use of its sobriety to seat Aristotle by him, a compliment less convenient on other nights, for the man was a poor drinker. After supper, most people went straight to bed.

Alexander was never fond of sleeping early. He decided to look up Phoinix, who often read late; he was lodged in the western tower.

The place was a warren; but he knew the short cuts from childhood. Beyond an anteroom, where spare furniture for guests was kept, was the well of a little stair which took one straight there. The lobby was unlit, but a wall-cresset from beyond shone through. He was almost inside, when he heard a sound, and saw a movement.

Silent and motionless, he stood in shadow. In the patch of light, the girl Gorgo faced towards him, wriggling and squirming in the arms of a man who stood behind her, one dark square hairy hand squeezing her groin and the other her breast. Breathless soft giggles stirred her throat. The dress slid off her shoulder under the working hand; a couple of dead violets fell out on the flagstones. The man’s face, muzzling for her ear, appeared from behind her head. It was his father’s.

Stealthily as in war, his footfalls covered by her squeaking, he drew back, and went through the nearest door into the cold, water-loud night.

Upstairs, in the lodging of the Prince’s Guard, Hephaistion lay awake, waiting for Alexander to come to bed so that he could go in and say good night. Other nights here, they had all gone up together; but tonight, no one had seen him since supper. To go searching about for him might make people laugh; Hephaistion lay in the darkness, staring at the line of light under the thick old door of the inner room, watching for the shadows of feet to cross it. No shadow stirred. He drifted into sleep, but dreamed he was watching still.

In the dark small hours, Alexander went up by the postern to change his clothes. The lamp, nearly burned out, flickered dimly. Stripping in the bitter cold, his fingers almost too numb to fasten things, he got into the dressed leather tunic, boots and leggings he used for hunting. He would get warm when he began to climb.

He leaned from the window. Already here and there, wavering among trees, twinkling like stars in the down-draughts from the snows, the first torches shone.

It was long since he had followed them to the grove. Never, at any time of his life, had he followed them to the rites upon the mountain. He could have given no reason now, except that it was the only thing. He was returning, though it was unlawful. There was nowhere else to go.

He had always been a quick, light-footed hunter, impatient of others’ noise. Few men were astir so early; they were easily heard, laughing and talking with time in hand to find in the foot-slopes the willing tipsy stragglers who would be their prey. He slipped past unseen; soon he had left them all below him, going up through the beech-woods along the immemorial track. Long ago, the day after an earlier Dionysia, he had traced this path in secret, all the way to the trodden dancing-place, by footprints, threads caught on thorns, fallen sprays of vine and ivy, torn fur and blood.

She should never know; even in after years, he would never tell her. For ever possessed in secrecy, this would belong only to him. He would be with her invisibly, as the gods visit mortals. He would know of her what no man had known.

The mountain-side grew steep, the path doubled to and fro; he threaded its windings quietly, lit by the sinking moon and the first glimmer of dawn. Down in Aigai, the cocks were crowing; the sound, thinned by distance, was magical and menacing, a ghostly challenge. On the zig-zag path above him, the line of torches twined like a fiery snake.

Dawn rose up out of Asia and touched the snow-peaks. Far ahead in the forest he heard the death squeal of some y?oung animal, then the bacchic cry.

A steep bluff was split by a timbered gorge; its waters spread from their narrow cleft in a chuckling bed. The path turned left; but he remembered the terrain, and paused to think. This gorge went right up till it flanked the dancing-place. It would be a hard climb through virgin woods to the other edge, but it would make a perfect hide, out of reach yet near; the cleft was narrow there. He could hardly reach it before the sacrifice; but he would see her dance.

He forded the fast ice-cold water, clinging to the rocks. The pine-woods above were thick, untouched by man, dead timber lying where time had felled it; his feet sank in the black sheddings of a thousand years. At last he glimpsed the torches flitting, small as glow-worms; then, as he drew nearer, the bright clear flame from the altar fire. The singing too was like flames, shrilling and sinking and rising in some new place as one voice kindled another.

The first shafts of sunlight shone ahead, at the open edge of the gorge. Here grew a fringe of small sun-fed greenery, myrtle and arbutus and broom. On hands and knees, stealthily as if stalking leopard, he crept behind their screen.

On the far side it was clear and open. There was the dancing-place, the secret meadow screened from below, exposed only to the peaks and the gods. Between its rowan-trees it was scattered with small yellow flowers. Its altar smoked from the flesh of the victim and blazed with resin; they had thrown the butts of their torches on it. Below him the gorge plunged a hundred feet, but across it was only a javelin-cast. He could see their dew-dabbled, bloodstained robes and their pine-topped thyrses. Even from so far, their faces looked emptied for the god.

His mother stood by the altar, the ivy-twined wand in her hand. Her voice led the hymn; her unbound hair flowed over her robe and fawnskin and her white shoulders, from under her ivy crown. He had seen her, then. He had done what men must not do, only the gods.

She held one of the round wine-flasks proper to the festival. Her face was not wild or blank, like some of the others’, but bright, clear and smiling. Hyrmina from Epiros, who knew most of her secrets, ran up to her in the dance; she held the flask to her mouth and spoke in her ear.

They were dancing round the altar, running out and back from it, then in on it with loud cries. After a while, his mother threw away her thyrsos, and sang out a magic word in old Thracian, as they called the unknown tongue which was the language of the rites. They all threw their wands away, left the altar and joined hands in a ring. His mother beckoned to a girl along the line, to come out in the middle. The girl came slowly, urged on by the others’ hands. He stared. Surely, he knew her.

Suddenly, she ducked under their joined arms, and started running towards the gorge, taken no doubt by the maenad frenzy. As she came nearer, he saw it was certainly the girl Gorgo. The divine frenzy, like terror, had made her eyes start and stretched her mouth. The dance stopped, while some of the women ran after her. Such things, no doubt, were common at the rites.

She ran furiously, keeping well ahead, till her foot tripped on something. She was up again in a moment, but they caught her. In her bacchic madness, she began to scream. The women ran her back towards the others; on her feet at first, till her knees gave way and they pulled her along the ground. His mother waited, smiling. The girl lay at her feet, neither weeping nor praying, only shrieking on and on, a thin shrill note like a hare in a fox’s jaws.

Ê

It was past noon. Hephaistion walked about the footslopes, calling as it seemed to him he had been doing for many hours, though it was not so long; earlier he had been ashamed to search, not knowing what he might find. Only since the sun was high had misery changed to fear.

‘Alexander!’ he called. A cliff-slab at the head of the glade flung ‘Éander!’ back and forth. A stream ran out from a gorge, spreading through scattered roc?ks. On one of them Alexander sat, looking straight before him.

Hephaistion ran to him. He did not rise, scarcely looked round. It’s true, thought Hephaistion, it’s done. A woman, he is changed already. Now it will never be.

Alexander looked at him strainingly, with sunken eyes, as if feeling it urgent to remember who he was.

‘Alexander. What is it? What happened, tell me. Did you fall, have you hurt your head? Alexander!’

‘What are you doing,’ said Alexander in a flat clear voice, ‘running about on the mountain? Are you looking for a girl?’

‘No. I was looking for you.’

‘Try the gorge up there, you’ll find one. But she’s dead.’

Hephaistion, sitting down on the rock beside him, almost said, ‘Did you kill her?’ for nothing seemed impossible to this face. But he dared not speak.

Alexander rubbed the back of a dirt-crusted hand across his brow, and blinked. ‘I didn’t do it. No.’ He gave the dry rictus of a smile. ‘She was a pretty girl, my father thought so, my mother too. It was the frenzy of the god. They had a wild-cat’s kittens, and a fawn, and something else one couldn’t tell. Wait if you like, she’ll come down with the stream.’

Speaking quietly, watching him, Hephaistion said, ‘I’m sorry you saw that.’

‘I shall go back and read my book. Xenophon says, if you lay the tusk of a boar on them, you can see it shrivel. It’s the heat of their flesh. Xenophon says it scorches violets.’

‘Alexander. Drink some of this. You’ve been up since yesterday. I brought you some wine alongÉ . Alexander, look, I brought some wine. Are you sure you’re not hurt?’

‘Oh no, I didn’t let them catch me, I saw the play.’

‘Look. Look here. Look at me. Now drink this, do as I tell you. Drink it.’ After the first swallow, he took the flask from Hephaistion’s hand, and emptied it thirstily.

‘That’s better.’ Instinct told Hephaistion to be common and plain. ‘I’ve some food too. You shouldn’t follow the maenads, everyone knows it’s unlucky. No wonder you feel bad. You’ve a great thorn in your leg here, hold still while I get it out.’ He grumbled on, like a nurse sponging a child’s bruises. Alexander sat docile under his hands.

‘I’ve seen worse,’ said Alexander suddenly, ‘on a battlefield.’

‘Yes. We have to get used to blood.’

‘That man on the wall at Doriskos, his entrails fell out and he tried to put them back.’

‘Did he? I must have looked away.’

‘One must be able to look at anything. I was twelve when I took my man. I cut off the head myself. They’d have done it for me, but I made them give me the axe.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘She came down from Olympos to the plain of Troy, walking softly, that’s what the book says, walking softly with little steps like a quivering dove. Then she put on the helm of death.’

‘Of course you can look at anything, everyone knows you can. You’ve been up all nightÉ Alexander, are you listening? Can you hear what I say?’

‘Be quiet. They’re singing.’

He sat with hands on knees, his eyes upturned towards the mountain. Hephaistion could see white below the iris. He must be found, wherever he was. He ought not to be alone.

Quietly, insistently, without touching him, Hephaistion said, ‘You’re with me now. I promised you I’d be here. Listen, Alexander. Think of Achilles, how his mother dipped him in the Styx. Think how black and terrible, like dying, like being turned to stone. But then he was invulnerable. Look, it’s finished, it’s over now. Now you’re with me.’

He put out his hand. Alexander’s came out and touched it, deathly cold; then closed on it crushingly, so that he caught his breath with mingled relief and pain. ‘You’re with me,’ Hephaistion said. ‘I love you. You mean more to me than anything. I’d die for you any time. I love you.’

For some time they sat like this, with their clasped hands resting on Alexander’s knee. After a while the vice of his grip relaxed a little; his face lost its mask-like stiffness, and looked only rather ill. He gazed vaguely at their joined hands.

‘That wine was good. I’m not so very tired. ?One should learn to do without sleep, it’s useful in war.’

‘Next time, we’ll stay up together.’

‘One should learn to do without anything one can. But I should find it very hard to do without you.’

‘I’ll be there.’ The warm spring sun, slanting now towards afternoon, slid into the glade. A thrush was singing. Hephaistion’s omen’s spoke to him, telling him there had been a change: a death, a birth, the intervention of a god. What had been born was bloodstained from a hard passage, still frail, not to be handled. But it lived, it would grow.

They must be getting back to Aigai, but there was no hurry yet, they were well enough as they were; let him have some quiet. Alexander rested from his thoughts in a waking sleep. Hephaistion watched him, with the steadfast eyes and tender patience of the leopard crouched by the pool, its hunger comforted by the sound of light distant footfalls, straying down the forest track.