God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great (27 page)

People were looking at us. Graccus raised his wine cup in my direction.

‘You are with Prince Alexander?’ she asked.

‘Do you always ask things to which you already know the answer?’ I asked.

‘It’s a good idea for a woman,’ she said. ‘Since men seldom listen to us, and often lie.’

She didn’t sound like a whore. At all. Or a stuck-up Athenian philosopher. Her eyes were beautiful – blue, deep as the sea.

‘I listened to you. And I assert that I kill for my prince of my own will.’ I lay back.

‘Well – I was married at twelve, and it wasn’t bad at all.’ She rolled on an elbow. ‘In fact, my husband and I had a physical attraction I’ve never felt for anyone else.’ She got a tiny furrow between her eyebrows. ‘Why am I telling you this?’

‘How on earth did you go from wife to . . . hetaera?’ I asked.

She shrugged. ‘Things happen,’ she said. ‘Not things I wish to discuss,’ she added, closing the subject. ‘You are easy to talk to – like a farm boy, not an aristocrat.’

‘Perhaps being a foreign barbarian has its advantages,’ I said. I saw a little under half of her face, and if she had a scar, I was the King of Aegypt. She had sharp cheekbones, a lush mouth and a nose – well, smaller and prettier than mine. But not by much.

‘You’re staring at my nose,’ she said.

‘I love your nose,’ I said.

‘It’s huge,’ she said.

‘Superb,’ I said.

‘Large,’ she said, but without coquettishness.

‘You wear the veil to hide it?’ I asked.

‘You are suggesting that I need to wear a veil to hide it?’ she said, and I couldn’t guess whether she was really being sharp with me, or whether I was being mocked.

‘Tell me about Prince Alexander,’ she said, after a pause.

‘He’s better-looking than me, and not very interested in girls.’ I was
drunk.

‘I hear he’s not very interested in anyone.’ She had a wicked twinkle in her eye. ‘The party girls and boys say . . . that he doesn’t.’

I shrugged. Even drunk, there are things you don’t say about your prince. ‘Not something I will discuss,’ I said, since she’d been free enough in shutting me down.

She nodded. ‘Fair enough. You are married?’

I shook my head, and there it was – without pause, I burst into tears. Drink, and Nike.

She didn’t throw her arms around me, but she didn’t flinch, either. ‘Bad question. I’m sorry.’

It passed like a sudden rain shower. And drunkenness passed into sobriety. I wiped my face. ‘Thanks,’ I said, or something equally deep and moving.

She shrugged. ‘You love your wife. I’m not surprised. You seem . . . complete. More complete than most men your age.’

I shook my head. ‘I had a mistress. She died – a month ago.’ I sat on the edge of the kline. Wondering why I was babbling to this woman. ‘I should have married her, and I didn’t.’

The hetaera sat up with me. She was quite tall. ‘I don’t really know what to say. Men usually confide in me about their wife’s failings. Not . . . not real things.’

That made me smile. Somehow. ‘Well,’ I said. ‘You have a way with you.’

‘I’m a happy person,’ she said. ‘I try to spread it around. Not all the ground is receptive, but some is.’

A slave brought me my chlamys, and I pinned it. Graccus came up, kissed the hetaera on the cheek (she unveiled for him) and put an arm around me.

‘You have been a charming guest. I had you for Diodorus’s sake, but I’d have you again for your own. Diodorus or Kineas can tell you when I have another evening. I hope that you enjoyed yourself.’

The woman bowed slightly to me while she pinned her veil, so that I had a flash of her face, and then she went to the next kline, and sat with one of the kithara-playing men, who put his arm around her. They laughed together, and though I looked at her I couldn’t make her turn her head.

‘I had a wonderful time,’ I admitted.

‘I think she likes you,’ Graccus said, following my eyes. ‘But I admit, with Thaïs, it’s often hard to tell. She’s not like any other hetaera I’ve ever known.’

‘No,’ I said. I’d only known one, and she’d been . . . complicated. I looked at Thaïs again, and she had her head back, veiled, laughing.

I embraced my host, gathered Myndas from the kitchen, drunker than me, and started the long walk home.

That was the first of a long series of symposia, and while I don’t recall every one of them, I loved them as a whole. I found that I loved to talk – I loved to mix the wine, when invited. I went to the agora and purchased spices, and carried them in a small box of tortoiseshell. I still have it. I sent wine to friends – I was a rich man, even by Athenian standards.

With the permission of Eumenes, I used his andron and gave my own symposium. I invited Aristotle – he was far away, in Mytilene, and didn’t come, but it amused me to invite him. I invited Alexander and Hephaestion, Cleitus and Nearchus, Kineas and Diodorus, Graccus and Niceas, Demetrios and Lykeles and half a dozen other young men I’d come to know.

I agonised over the arrangements – no help from Eumenes or Kineas, who, for aristocrats, were surprisingly uninterested. Eumenes decried the expense, and Kineas just laughed.

‘A flash of good wine, a bowl to mix it, some bread and some friends,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing to it.’

I glowered at him. ‘I want it to go as well as Graccus’s parties,’ I said.

Kineas shrugged. ‘That’s all Graccus has – wine, bread. A good sunset and the right men.’

‘Flute girls, actors, music, a hetaera, perfect fish . . .’ I said.

Kineas laughed. ‘Frippery,’ he said. ‘The guests make the evening.’

‘Thanks, Socrates,’ I said. ‘Go away and leave me to my barbarian worries.’

Diodorus was more help. ‘Get that girl,’ he said. ‘The hetaera. Everyone says she gives the best symposia in Athens. I’ve never been invited. Offer her money.’

‘She went to Graccus’s house for nothing,’ I said primly.

‘Are you Graccus?’ Diodorus said. ‘She’s a hetaera. Offer her money.’

In fact, I had no need to approach her, because a week later, after a state dinner where we discussed – in surprising detail – the logistics of the crusade against Persia with Phokion and a dozen of the leading men of Athens, Alexander took me to her house.
Alexander
took me to her house. He walked through the front door as if he owned the place.

‘Never known a woman like her,’ he said. ‘Brilliant. Earthy.’ He shrugged. He was lightly drunk.

Hephaestion wasn’t jealous, so it wasn’t sex. Or wasn’t just sex.

At any rate, I don’t know what I expected – a brothel? An andron writ large? But Thaïs’s house was a house – the house of a prosperous woman – and she sat at a large loom, weaving. She rose and bowed to Alexander, and he took her hands, kissed them and went straight to a kline with Hephaestion.

There were other men there – and other women.

She had no veil on, and she was beautiful. All eyes and cheekbones. And breasts. And legs.

‘The Macedonian,’ she said to me, quietly. ‘I wondered if I had offended you.’

I must have looked surprised. ‘How so?’

‘I invited you to come,’ she said. ‘You didn’t.’

I shook my head. ‘I never received any such invitation,’ I said. ‘I would most certainly have come.’

She nodded. ‘Eumenes probably destroyed it.’ She bit her lip. ‘He’s very . . . old-fashioned.’

I found myself smiling. ‘I’m giving a symposium,’ I said without preamble.

She looked up at me – she was back at her loom. ‘Splendid!’ she said, with a little too much emphasis.

‘I want your advice. Your help.’ I blurted this. She smiled and looked elsewhere.

‘Advice?’ she said.

‘I want it to be perfect,’ I said.

She smiled. ‘It’s all in the guest list,’ she said.

‘That’s what Eumenes says,’ I shot back.

‘He’s right,’ she said. She was looking around the room. There were eight couches, all full. ‘I am working right now,’ she said. ‘If you were to come back tomorrow afternoon, we might actually talk.’

Alexander raised a wine cup. ‘You are not your sparkling self tonight, Thaïs. Too busy weaving?’

She rose to her feet. ‘I was thinking about Persia,’ she said.

Alexander looked puzzled – as if a pig had just said a line of Homer. Women did not, as a rule, think about Persia. It was odd—he could see her as a woman—even as an intelligent woman. But as someone who could understand politics? Never! Which, of course, makes her later role all the more delicious.

‘What about Persia?’ he asked.

‘I was wondering how old I will be before you destroy it utterly,’ she said.

All talk in the room ceased.

Alexander looked at her with wonder. ‘Are you a sibyl? An oracle?’

She shook her head. ‘No. I am a woman who wants revenge. I cannot get that revenge myself. But I long to see it.’

‘Revenge?’ he asked. Odd – he was so good at leading men. His questions showed how little he saw in her.

‘A woman may crave revenge as well as a man,’ she said. ‘Look at Medea.’

‘For what does a pretty girl like you crave revenge?’ he asked.

‘Ask me another evening,’ she said. ‘Tonight, I think I will dance.’

There was suddenly something angry and dangerous about her. I couldn’t watch. So I took my leave. Alexander didn’t even see me go.

Antipater was waiting outside on the portico, and we walked towards our homes together.

‘He’s besotted with her,’ Antipater said.

That’s not what I’d seen.

‘He enjoys her company, and the privacy,’ I said.

‘He’s been making some dangerous statements,’ Antipater said. ‘I know that you’ve been enjoying Athens, but I need you to spend more time with him. And keep him from getting into trouble.’

I stopped walking and looked at him. ‘Trouble?’ I asked.

‘He keeps talking about what he’ll do when he’s king,’ Antipater said.

I shrugged.

‘Philip does not like to be reminded that there may be a time when he is
not
king,’ he said.

‘Alexander’s the heir,’ I said. ‘He doesn’t even have a rival.’

Antipater thumped his stick on the pavement. ‘That may change,’ he said. ‘Listen, boy. Your pater and I were guest friends. You’ve been a good soldier for me, a good subordinate. Can I trust you?’

I didn’t want this, any more than I had wanted the moment in which I had earned Attalus’s enmity. Didn’t want to take sides.

‘I am a loyal man,’ I said. ‘To the king and to Alexander.’

Antipater nodded. ‘Philip has put up statues at Delphi,’ he said, ‘as if he was a god.’

I shrugged. The things men do, when they achieve power. Look at me!

‘He’s said things . . . that lead me to wonder.’ Antipater looked away. ‘Never mind. Let’s get Athens on board for the war with Persia and hurry home, and all will be well.’

To be honest, I was so excited to have an afternoon tryst with a famous hetaera that I simply gripped his hand, went home and went to bed.

Next day, Isocrates met with Antipater and together they wrote out the basic tenets of the Pan Hellenic Alliance. Philip and his heirs to be hegemons of the Hellenic League and Strategos Autokrator, or supreme commander of allied forces. In the afternoon, Alexander went to the Academy and asked Xenocrates, the heir of Plato, Aristotle’s rival, to write him a treatise on good kingship.

I winced. I was there.

Xenocrates was bowing and scraping. All of Athens was there to see the two of them together, and all of Athens heard the Crown Prince of Macedon say, ‘I need a primer to keep me from the sort of acts of tyranny with which my father burdens his people.’

And there was Alcimachus, watching it all.

I had missed weeks of this, off enjoying my own life and my own friends. The Athenians were good hosts, and they gave Alexander something he’d never had before – an audience of his own, a willing, responsive, intelligent audience. He couldn’t help but respond. He couldn’t help but respond as the kind of prince he sensed they wanted him to be – a liberal, educated promise of a better tomorrow. A hero.

I slipped away before cockshut time and arrived at Thaïs’s door. The slave there took my chlamys and sandals, washed my feet and led me to her. She was reading.

‘How was Xenocrates?’ she asked.

‘Better ask, “How was Alexander?”’ I said.

‘He does like an audience,’ she said. ‘And he’s never learned to control his mouth.’

‘He’s the very essence of self-control,’ I said. ‘Just not right now, apparently.’

She nodded. ‘Your symposium,’ she prompted.

‘I have my guest list. I want advice on wines, slaves, entertainment. And I’d like you to come.’ I didn’t even trip over that last.

She shook her head. ‘I couldn’t. Not in Eumenes’ home. He disapproves of me, and by having me there you would offend him. You are far too well bred for that.’

I felt crushed. She was absolutely correct. And I hadn’t seen it at all.

She had a stylus and a wax tablet, and she wrote quickly. ‘I’m quite sure that your evening will be splendid anyway – but here are the six wines currently most fashionable. Don’t bother trying to buy them – you can’t. But my steward will send a jar of each. I’m writing the names so that you know what you’re serving. The “Dark Horse” is really a Plataean wine from Boeotia, common as dirt, but I like it and it’s become rather a fashion.’ She grinned around her stylus. ‘Please don’t tell – I’m making a fortune reselling it. There’s a pair of women – they do not do sex – who play kithara superbly. Many houses won’t have them because they have political leanings. Women are supposed to be above – or below – such stuff. They’re sisters. You will need Eumenes’ permission, but if he gives it – well, singing for Alexander will make them. And I’d like to see them made. Do you mind my using you like this?’ She smiled at me.

‘No,’ I said.

‘Good. Because as I’m doing you a favour, I’m remorseless in collecting in return. My steward will ask for money for the wine – I assume you can pay?’ She smiled. ‘Friends need to be honest about money,’ she said.

‘I am probably the richest man you know,’ I said.

‘Excellent, then. All the better. I prefer men to be young, attractive, valiant and rich.’ She smiled again. She was smiling a great deal.