Fire From Heaven (27 page)

The plum-blossom had fallen, and lay beaten with spring rain; the time of violets was done, and the vines were budding.

The philosopher had found some of his students a little scatterbrained after the Dionysia, a thing not unknown even in Athens; but the Prince was studious and quiet, doing well at ethics and logic. He remained sometimes unaccountable; when found sacrificing a black goat to Dionysos, he evaded questions; it was to be feared philosophy had not yet rid him of superstition; yet this reticence showed, perhaps, a proper self-questioning.

Alexander and Hephaistion stood leaning on one of the small rustic bridges which spanned the stream of the Nymphs.

‘Now,’ Alexander said, ‘I think I’ve made my peace with the god. That’s why I’ve been able to tell you everything.’

‘Isn’t it better?’

‘Yes, but I had to master it first in my own mind. It was the anger of Dionysos pursuing me, till I made my peace with him. When I think about it logically, I see it would be unjust to be shocked at what my mother did, only because she’s a woman, when my father has killed men by thousands. You and I have killed men who never injured us except for the chance of war. Women can’t issue challenges to their enemies, as we can; they can only be avenged like women. Rather than blame them, we ought to be thankful to the gods for making us men.’

‘Yes,’ said Hephaistion. ‘Yes, we should.”

‘So then I saw it was the anger of Dionysos, because I profaned his mystery. I’ve been under his protection, you know, ever since I was a child; but lately I’ve sacrificed more to Herakles than to him. When I presumed, he showed his anger. He didn’t kill me, like Pentheus in the play, because I was under his protection; but he punished me. It would have been worse, but for you. You were like Pylades, who stayed with Orestes even when the Furies came for him.’

‘Of course I stayed with you.’

‘I’ll tell you something else. This girl, I’d thought, perhaps, at the DionysiaÉ. But some god protected me.’

‘He could protect you because you’d a hold over yourself.’

‘Yes. All this happened because my father couldn’t be continent, even for decency in his own house. He’s always been the same. It’s known everywhere. People who should be respecting him, because he can beat them in battle, mock him behind his back. I couldn’t bear my life, to know they talked like that of me. To know one’s not master of oneself.’

‘People will never talk like that about you.’

‘I’ll never love anyone I’m ashamed of, that I know.’ He pointed to the clear brown water. ‘Look at all those fish.’ They leaned together over the wooden rail, their heads touching; the shoal shot like a flight of arrows into the shadow of the bank. Presently straightening up Alexander said, ‘Kyros the Great was never enslaved by women.”

‘No,’ said Hephaistion. ‘Not by the most beautiful woman of mortal birth in Asia. It’s in the book.’

Alexander had letters from both his parents. Neither had been much disturbed by his unwonted quiet after the Dionysia, though each, at parting, had been aware of a certain scrutiny, as if from a ?window in a doorless wall. But the Dionysia left many young lads changed; there would be more cause for concern if it passed them by.

His father wrote that the Athenians were pouring colonists into the Greek coastal lands of Thrace, such as the Chersonesos; but, faced with a cut in the public dole, had refused to maintain the supporting fleet, which kept going perforce on piracy and inshore raids, like the rievers of Homer’s day. Macedonian ships and steadings had been looted; they had even seized a Macedonian envoy sent to ransom prisoners, tortured him, and extracted nine talents’ ransom for his life.

Olympias, for once almost at one with Philip, had a similar tale to tell. A Euboian dealer, Anaxinos, who imported southern goods for her, had been seized in Athens on the orders of Demosthenes, because the house of his host had been visited by Aischines. He was tortured till he confessed to being a spy of Philip, on which he was put to death.

‘I wonder how long,’ Philotas said, ‘before it comes to war.’

‘We are at war,’ said Alexander. ‘It’s only a matter of where we shall fight the battle. It would be impious to lay Athens waste; like sacking a temple. But sooner or later, we shall have to deal with the Athenians.’

‘Will you?’ asked crippled Harpalos, who saw in the fighters round him a friendly but alien race. ‘The louder they bark, the more you can see their rotten teeth.’

‘Not so rotten that we can do with them in our backsides when we cross to Asia.’

The war for the Greek cities of Asia was no longer a vision; its essential strategy had begun. Each year saw the causeway of conquered lands pushed nearer to the Hellespont. The strong-points of the narrow seas, Perinthos and Byzantion, were the last great obstacles. If they could be taken, Philip would need only to secure his rear.

This fact being plain, the Athenian orators were touring Greece again in search of allies whom Philip had not yet persuaded, scared or bought. The fleet off Thrace was sent a little money; an island base was garrisoned in Thasos, close at hand, In the garden of Mieza, the young men debated together how soon they would get another taste of fighting, or, under the eye of the philosopher, discussed the nature and attributes of the soul.

Hephaistion, who had never imported anything in his life before, had gone through the complex business of ordering from Athens a copy of The Myrmidons, which he gave to Alexander. Under a flower-bowed lilac beside the pool of the Nymphs, they discussed the nature and attributes of love.

It was the time when the wild beasts mated in the woods. Aristotle was preparing a thesis on their coupling and the generation of their young. His pupils, instead of hunting, hid in the coverts and made notes. Harpalos and a friend of his amused themselves by inventing far-fetched procedures, carefully doctored with enough science to secure belief. The philosopher, who thought himself too useful to mankind to risk a chill crouching for hours on wet ground, thanked them warmly and wrote all of it down.

One beautiful day, Hephaistion told Alexander he had found a vixen’s earth, and thought she was mating. An old tree near by had been uprooted in the storms, leaving a deep hollow; one could watch from there. In the late sunlight, they went into the forest, not crossing the paths of their friends. Neither remarked on this, or offered the other any reason.

The dead roots of the fallen tree sheltered the hollow; its bottom was soft with last year’s deep-drifted leaves. After some time the vixen, heavy with young, came slipping through the shadows with a partridge-chick in her mouth. Hephaistion half-raised his head; Alexander, who had closed his eyes, heard the rustle of her passage but did not open them. She took fright at their breathing, and ran like a red streak into her lair.

Soon after, Aristotle expressed the wish to dissect a pregnant fox-bitch; but they spared the guardian of their mystery. She grew used to them, after a while, would bring out her cubs without fear, feed the?m and let them play.

Hephaistion liked the cubs, because they made Alexander smile. After love he would grow silent, drifting into some private darkness; if recalled he was not impatient, but too gentle, as if with something to hide.

Both agreed that all this had been ordained by their destinies before their birth. Hephaistion still felt an incredulous sense of miracle; his days and nights were lived in a glittering cloud. It was only at these times that a shadow pierced it; he would point to the fox-cubs playing, the deep brooding eyes would move and lighten, and all was well again. The pools and streams were fringed with forget-me-not and iris; in sunny copses the famous dog-roses of Mieza, blessed by the Nymphs, opened their great bland faces and spread their scent.

The young men read the signs with which their youth made them familiar, and paid up their bets. The philosopher, less expert and not so good a loser, while they all walked or sat in the rose-starred gardens looked doubtfully at the two handsome boys unfailingly side by side. He risked no questions; there was no place in his thesis for the answers.

The olives were powdered with fine pale-green flowers, whose faint sweet waxy scent blew everywhere. The apple-trees let fall their false fruit; small and green the true apples began to set. The vixen led her cubs into the forest; it was time they learned the craft by which they would live.

Hephaistion, too, became a patient and skilful hunter. Till his prey first came to his lure, he had not doubted that the passionate affection bestowed on him so freely held the germ of passion itself. He found matters less simple.

Once more he told himself that when the gods are bountiful, man must not cry for more. He thought how, like the heir of great wealth who is happy at first only to know his fortune, he had gazed at the face before him; the wind-tossed hair springing loosely from its peak, the forehead already traced with faint creases by the eyes’ intensity; the eyes in their beautiful hollows, the firm yet feeling mouth, the aspiring arch of the golden eyebrows. It had seemed he could sit for ever, content simply with this. So it had seemed at first.

‘Oxhead wants exercise, let’s go riding.’

‘Has he thrown the groom again?’

‘No, that was just to teach him. I’d warned him, too.’ The horse had consented, by degrees, to be mounted for the routine of the stables. But once his headstall was on with its buckles and plaques of silver, his collar worked with filigree, and his fringed saddle-cloth, then he knew himself the seat of godhead, and avenged impiety. The groom was still laid up.

They rode through red new-leaved beechwoods to the grassy uplands, at an easy pace set by Hephaistion, who knew Alexander would not let Oxhead stand in a sweat. At a coppice edge they dismounted, and stood looking out to the Chalkidian mountains beyond the plain and the sea.

‘I found a book at Pella,’ Alexander said, ‘last time we were there. It’s one by Plato, that Aristotle never showed us. I think he must have been envious.’

‘What book?’ Hephaistion smiling tested the hitch of his horse’s bridle.

‘I learned some, listen. Love makes one ashamed of disgrace, and hungry for what is glorious; without which neither a people nor a man can do anything great or fine. If a lover were to be found doing something unworthy of himself, or basely failing to resent dishonour, he would rather be exposed before family or friends or anyone, than before the one he loves. And somewhere it says, Suppose a state or an army could be made up only of lovers and beloved. How could any company hope for greater things than these, despising infamy and rivalling each other in honour? Even a few of them, fighting side by side, might well conquer the world.’

‘That’s beautiful.’

‘He was a soldier when he was young, like Sokrates. I expect Aristotle was envious. The Athenians never founded a lovers’ regiment, they left it to the Thebans. No one’s yet beaten the Sacred Band, did you know that?’

‘Let’s go in t?he wood.’

‘That’s not the end, Sokrates ends it. He says the best, the greatest love can only be made by the soul.’

‘Well,’ said Hephaistion quickly, ‘but everyone knows he was the ugliest man in Athens.’

‘The beautiful Alkibiades threw himself at his head. But he said that to make love with the soul was the greatest victory, like the triple crown at the games.’

Hephaistion stared out in pain to the mountains of Chalkidike. ‘It would be the greatest victory,’ he said slowly, ‘to the one who minded most.’

Knowing that in the service of a ruthless god he had baited his trap with knowledge gained in love, he turned to Alexander. He stood staring out at the clouds, in solitude, conferring with his daimon.

Guilt-troubled, Hephaistion reached out and grasped his arm. ‘If you mean that, if it’s what you really wantÉ’

He raised his brows, smiled, and tossed back his hair. ‘I’ll tell you something.’

‘Yes?’

‘If you can catch me.’

He was always the quickest off the mark. While his voice still hung in the air he was gone. Hephaistion threaded light birches and shadowy larches to a rocky scarp. At its foot Alexander lay motionless with closed eyes. Distraught and breathless Hephaistion clambered down, knelt by him, felt him for injuries. Nothing whatever was wrong. He eyed Hephaistion smiling. ‘Hush! You’ll scare the foxes.’

‘I could kill you,’ said Hephaistion with rapture.

The sunlight, sifting through the larch-boughs, had moved westward a little, striking glints like topaz from the wall of their rocky lair. Alexander lay watching the weaving tassels with his arm behind his head.

‘What are you thinking of?’ Hephaistion asked him.

‘Of death.’

‘It does leave people sad sometimes. It’s the vital spirits that have gone out of one. I’d not have it undone; would you?’

‘No; true friends should be everything to one another.’

‘It is what you really want?’

‘You should know that.’

‘I can’t bear you to be sad.’

‘It soon goes by. It’s the envy of some god perhaps.’ He reached up to Hephaistion’s head, bent anxiously above him, and settled it on his shoulder. ‘One or two of them were shamed by unworthy choices. Don’t name them, they might be angry; still, we know. Even the gods can be envious.’

Hephaistion, his mind freed from the clouds of longing, saw in a divining moment the succession of King Philip’s young men: their coarse good looks, their raw sexuality like a smell of sweat, their jealousies, their intrigues, their insolence. Out of all the world, he had been chosen to be everything which those were not; between his hands had been laid, in trust, Alexander’s pride. As long as he should live, nothing greater could ever happen to him than this; to have more, one would need to be made immortal. Tears burst from his eyes, and trickled down on the throat of Alexander, who, believing he too felt the after sadness, smilingly stroked his hair.

Ê

In the next year’s spring, Demosthenes sailed north to Perinthos and Byzantion, the fortified cities on the narrow seas. Philip had negotiated a peace treaty with each: if let alone, they would not impede his march. Demosthenes persuaded both cities to denounce the treaties. The Athenian forces based on Thasos were conducting an undeclared war with Macedon.