Fire From Heaven (3 page)

‘Can you see my Tyche?’ he was asking.

‘He’ll not be far. He’s a house-snake. They don’t wander. He’ll come for his milk, you’ll see. It’s not every boy can tame a house-snake. That’s the blood of Herakles in you, I daresay.’

‘What was his snake called?’

‘When he was a new-born babe, two snakes crept into his cradle-’

‘Two?’ His fine brows drew together, frowning.

‘Ah, but these were bad ones. Zeus’ wife Hera sent them, to choke him dead. But he grabbed them by their necks, one in each hand-’ Agis paused, silently cursing himself. Either it would give the child nightmares, or, maybe likelier, he would go off and try to throttle a viper. ‘No, this only happened, you see, to Herakles because he was the son of a god. He passed as King Amphitryon’s son, but Zeus had begot him on Amphitryon’s Queen. So Hera was jealous.’

The child listened alertly. ‘And he had to work. Why did he work so hard?’

‘Eurystheus, the next King, was envious of him, because he was the better man, a hero, and half divine. Eurystheus was only a mortal, you understand, and Herakles had been meant to have the kingdom. But Hera caused Eurystheus to be born first. That’s why Herakles had to do his Labours.’

The child nodded, like one to whom all has been made clear. ‘He had to do them, to show he was the best.’

Agis missed these words. He had heard at last, along the passage, the captain of the night guard, going his rounds.

‘No one’s been by, sir,’ he explained. ‘I can’t think what the nurse can have been about. The child was blue with cold, running about the Palace mother naked. He says he’s looking for his snake.’

‘Lazy bitch of a woman. I’ll shake up some slave-girl to go in and rouse her. It’s too late to disturb the Queen.’

He strode rattling off. Agis hoisted the child across his shoulder, patting his buttocks. ‘Bed for you, Herakles, and not before time.’

The child wriggled down, to clasp both arms round his neck. Agis had sheltered his wounds and not betrayed them. Nothing was too good for such a friend. He shared his secret, since it was all he had to give.

‘If my Tyche comes back, tell him where I’ve gone. He knows my name.’

Ê

Ptolemy, known as the son of Lagos, cantered his new chestnut towards the lake of Pella; there was good riding land along the shore. The horse was a gift from Lagos, who had grown fonder of him with the years, though his childhood had been less happy. He was eighteen, a dark big-boned youth whose strong profile would grow craggy in later life. He had speared his boar, and could sit at table with the men; had killed his man i?n a border skirmish, and changed his boy’s waist-cord for a red leather swordbelt with a horn-handled dagger in its slot. It was agreed he brought Lagos credit. In the end they had done pretty well by one another; and the King had done well by both.

Between the pinewoods and the lake, he saw Alexander waving to him, and-rode that way. He was fond of the boy, who seemed to belong nowhere: too bright for the seven-year-olds, though not yet seven; too small for the older boys. He came running through the marshland, hard-caked with summer around its scrubby reeds; his huge dog rooted after voles, coming back to push its dirty nose in his ear, which it could do with both fore-paws on the ground.

‘Hup!’ said the youth, and hoisting him in front on the cloth saddle-square. They trotted along in search of a stretch to gallop. ‘Is that dog of yours still growing?’

‘Yes. He’s not big enough for his paws.’

‘You were right; he’s Molossian both sides sure enough. He’s growing his mane.’

‘It was just about here, where we are now, the man was going to drown him.’

‘When you don’t know the sire, they don’t always pay for rearing.’

‘ He said he was rubbish; he had a stone tied round him.’

‘Someone got bitten in the end, or so I heard. I shouldn’t like a bite from that dog.’

‘He was too little to bite. I did it. Look, we can go.’

The dog, glad to stretch its great legs, raced by them along the broad lagoon which linked Pella with the sea. As they galloped full-out along its verge, mallards and gulls, dangle-foot herons and cranes, came beating and honking from the sedges, startled by their thunder. The boy in his clear voice sang loudly the paean of the Companion Cavalry, a fierce crescendo tuned to the rhythm of the charge. His face was flushed, his hair fluttered from the peak upon his brow, his grey eyes looked blue, he shone.

Ptolemy slowed to breathe the horse, and extolled its virtues. Alexander replied in terms as expert as a groom’s. Ptolemy, who sometimes felt responsible, said, ‘Does your father know you spend so much time with the soldiers?’

‘Oh, yes. He said Silanos could teach me throwing at the mark, and Menestas could take me hunting. I only go with my friends.’

Least said, then, soonest mended. Ptolemy had heard before that the King preferred even rough company for the boy, to leaving him all day with his mother. He flicked the horse to a canter, till a stone lodged in its frog and he had to dismount and see to it. The voice of the boy above him said, ‘Ptolemy. Is it true you’re really my brother?’

‘What?’ His start freed the horse; it began to trot away. The boy, who had at once got hold of the reins, pulled it firmly up again. But the young man, disconcerted, walked at its head without mounting. Perceiving something amiss, the boy said soberly, ‘They were saying it in the Guard Room.’

They paced on in silence. The boy, sensing consternation more than anger, waited gravely.

Ptolemy said at length, ‘They may; but they don’t say it to me. Nor must you. I’d have to kill a man if he said it.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, one must, that’s all.’

There was no answer. Ptolemy saw with dismay that the boy was bitterly wounded. It was something he had not thought of.

‘Come,’ he said awkwardly, ‘a big growing boy like you, if you don’t know whyÉOf course I’d gladly be your brother, that’s nothing to do with it, that’s not it. But my mother’s married to Father. It would mean I was a bastard. You know what that is.’

‘Yes,’ said Alexander, who knew it was a deadly insult.

Sensing confusion if not ignorance, Ptolemy did a brother’s duty. His blunt questions got blunt answers; the boy had used his ears among his guardroom friends. It seemed, though, that he thought the birth of offspring called for some further magic. The young man, having dealt sensibly with the matter, was surprised by the long intent silence at the end.

‘What is it? It’s the way we are all born, nothing wrong with it, the gods made us so. But women must only do it with their husbands, or the ?child’s a bastard. That’s why the man wanted to drown your dog: for fear he’d not run true to strain.’

‘Yes,’ said the boy, and returned to his thoughts.

Ptolemy felt distressed. In his childhood, when Philip had been only a younger son and a hostage too, he had been made to suffer; later he had ceased to be ashamed. If his mother had been unmarried he could have been acknowledged, and would not have been sorry. It was a matter of the decencies; he felt he had treated the boy meanly, not to have made this clear.

Alexander was looking straight ahead. His dirty childish hands kept a managing grip on the reins, minding their own business, making no demand on his thought. Their capacity, so far beyond their growth, approached the freakish; it gave an uneasy feeling. Through his face’s puppy roundness, a gem-clear profile already began to show. Ptolemy thought, ‘The image of his mother, nothing of Philip at all.’

A thought struck him like a thunderflash. Ever since he had been eating with the men, he had been hearing tales about Queen Olympias. Strange, turbulent, uncanny, wild as a Thracian maenad, able if she was crossed to put the Eye on you: fittingly , the King had met her in a cave by torchlight, at the Mysteries of Samothrace; had been mad for her at first sight, even before he knew what house she came of; and had brought her, with a useful treaty of alliance, in triumph home. In Epiros, it was said, until quite lately women had ruled without men. Sometimes the drums and cymbals sounded all night in her pine-grove, and strange piping came from her room. It was said she coupled with serpents; old women’s tales, but what happened in the grove? Did the boy, so long her shadow, know more than he should? Had it only now come home to him?

As if he had turned a stone from a cave-mouth of the Underworld, letting loose a swarm of bat-squeaking shades, there passed through Ptolemy’s mind a score of bloody tales going back for centuries, of struggles for the throne of Macedon: tribes fighting for High Kingship, kindred killing kindred to be High King; wars, massacres, poisoning; treacherous spears in the hunting-field, knives in the back, in the dark, in the bed of love. He was not without ambition; but the thought of plunging in that stream made his marrow cold. Dangerous guesswork, and what proof could there ever be? Here was the boy in trouble. Forget the rest.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Can you keep a secret?’

Alexander lifted his hand and pronounced with care an oath enforced by deadly curses. ‘It’s the strongest,’ he finished. ‘Silanos taught it me.’

‘That’s too strong. I absolve you of it. You must be careful of oaths like that. Now the truth is, your father did get me on my mother; but he was no more than a boy, fifteen. It was before he went to Thebes.’

‘Oh, Thebes.’ His voice echoed another.

‘He was old for his age that way, well known for it. Well, never mind that, a man can’t wait till he’s wedded, nor have I done if you want the truth. But my mother was married to Father already, so it dishonours them to talk of it. It’s one of the things a man must have blood for. Never mind if you see why or not; that’s how it is.’

‘I won’t talk.’ His eyes, already deeper-set than other children’s, were fixed upon the distance.

Ptolemy fiddled with the horse’s cheekstrap, thinking unhappily, Well, what could I say? Someone else would have told him. The boy still in him rescued the defeated man. He halted the horse.

‘Now, if we were sworn blood-brothers, we could tell everyone that.’ He added, cunningly, ‘But you know what we have to do?’

‘Of course I know!’ He gathered the reins in his left hand, and held out the right, clenched fist turned upward, a blue vein showing at the wrist. ‘Come on; here, do it now.’

Ptolemy drew from his red belt the new sharp dagger, seeing the boy focused by pride and resolution to a single gleam. ‘Now wait, Alexander. It’s a solemn thing we’re doing. Your enemies will be mine and mine yours, until we die. We will never take up arms against each othe?r, even if our own kin are at war. If I die in a strange land you will give me my rites, and so I will do for you. It means all that.’

‘I promise. You can do it here.’

‘We don’t need so much blood.’ He avoided the offered vein, lightly nicking the white skin. The boy looked down smiling. Having pricked his own wrist, Ptolemy pressed the cuts together. ‘It’s done,’ he said. And well done, he thought; some good daimon prompted me. Now they can’t come to me saying, ‘He is only the Queen’s bastard and you’re the king’s, so claim your rights.’

‘Come on, brother,’ said the boy. ‘Get up, he’s got his wind now. We can really go.’

Ê

The royal stables were built in a broad square of stuccoed brick, with stone pilasters. They were half empty; the King was holding manoeuvres, as he did whenever a new thought about tactics came to him.

Alexander, on his way to watch, had stopped to see a mare which had just foaled. As he had hoped, no one was about to say she was dangerous at such a time. He slipped in with her, coaxed her, and stroked the foal while her warm nostrils stirred his hair. Presently she nudged him, to say that was enough, and he let them be.

In the trodden yard, with its smells of horse-piss and straw, leather and wax and liniment, three strange horses had just come in. They were being rubbed-down by foreign grooms in trousers. Their head-stalls, which a stable slave was cleaning, were oddly bedizened; glittering with gold plates, topped with red plumes, and with winged bulls worked on the bit-pieces. They were fine tall horses, powerfully built, not over-ridden; a spare string was being led through.

The household officer on duty remarked to the horse-master that the barbarians would have a good wait ahead of them, before the King came back.

‘Brison’s phalanx,’ said the boy, ‘are all ways still with their sarissas. It takes a long time to learn.’ He was able, so far, to lift up one end of these giant spears. ‘Where are those horses from?’

‘All the way from Persia. Envoys from the Great King, to fetch back Artabazos and Menapis.’

These satraps, after an ill-judged revolt, had fled to Macedon for refuge. King Philip had found them useful; the boy had found them interesting. ‘But they’re guest-friends,’ he said. ‘Father won’t let the Great King have them back to kill them. Tell the men not to wait.’

‘No, it’s a pardon, I understand. They can go home free. In any case, envoys are entertained whatever message they carry. It’s the proper thing.’

‘Father won’t be back before noon. I think later, because of the Foot Companions. They can’t do close-and-open order yet. Shall I fetch Menapis and Artabazos?’

‘No, no, the envoys must have an audience first. Let these barbarians see we know how to do things. Attos, stable all those horses by themselves, it’s always the foreigners bring sickness in.’

The boy had a good look at the horses and their harness, then stood in thought. Presently he washed his feet at the conduit, looked at his chiton, went in and put on a clean one. He had listened often when people questioned the satraps about the splendours of Persepolis: the throne room with its gold vine and tree, the stairway up which a cavalcade could ride, the curious rites of homage. Persians, it was clear, were ceremonious. As far as he was able without help, and at the cost of some pain, he combed his hair.

In the Perseus Room, one of Zeuxis’ show-pieces where guests of rank were received, a chamberlain was watching two blue-tattooed Thracian slaves set small tables with cakes and wine. The envoys had been seated in chairs of honour. On the wall above them, Perseus was rescuing Andromeda from the sea-dragon. He was one of the ancestors, and was said to have founded Persia too. It seemed that his breed had changed. He was naked, except for his winged sandals; the envoys wore the full Median dress which the exiles during their stay had laid aside. Every inch of these men but their hands and faces was covered up with clothes; every inch of the clothes with embroidery. The?ir round black hats were stitched with spangles; even their beards, trimmed into little round curls like snail-shells, seemed embroidered too. Their fringed tunics had sleeves; their legs were cased in trousers, notorious sign of a barbarian.