God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great (36 page)

That night, I played knucklebones with Nearchus and Black Cleitus, drank too much, lost at Polis to Alexander. He was withdrawn, even by his own standards.

I offered to go and check on Pausanias, and Alexander shook his head and held out his wine cup to have it refilled. ‘Pausanias is with my mother, now,’ he said. He said it in much the same voice as a man might have said that another man had died.

The next day, the festivities began. The scale was unprecedented for Macedon, and had I never been to Athens, I think I would have been thrilled. As it was, I could only wince – our most lavish celebration, when placed next to, say, the Panatheneum, was like tinsel placed next to real gold. Philip’s crass lack of taste was like a physical blow, and the Theban envoys didn’t bother to hide their sneers.

But the Herald of Athens – not a man I knew – announced that all treaties had been ratified, and that any Macedonian criminal to be found in Athens would be handed over – a remarkable concession for Athens to make, and not even something for which we’d asked. It made me suspicious, and what made me more suspicious was that Phokion turned his head away while it was read aloud.

There was a feast that night. Philip let it be known that I was welcome – I put on my best, and my best
was
as good as the best the Athenians had – and lay on a kline with a Thessalian nobleman who was fascinated with everything from Athens.

Philip got very drunk and said a great many things that made all of us wince. He referred to the cities of Greece with the term we use for sex slaves, and he made slighting references to Athens and Sparta and the Great King of Persia. In fact, he sounded like a petty and insecure tyrant, and he scared me.

What hurt me most was that many of the older Macedonians ate this sort of crap up, as if Philip’s insults actually made Macedon greater or Athens lesser. And it was in looking around that hall that I realised how many of the older, wiser and better nobles were gone. Parmenio was gone, with Amyntas, in Asia. I hated Attalus, but he was the king’s friend, and he was gone. Antipater was present – but not in any place of favour, and none of his own inner circle was there, except me – if I even counted. The king had stripped himself of his closest and best men.

The men he had near him were inferior in every respect, and this crass racism was only the surface of it.

And Alexander watched them the way a hawk watches rabbits. He remained aloof – but it seemed that he might pounce at any moment.

We all drank too much. And Philip ended the evening when he stood up, his chiton open to the crotch, showing his parts, so to speak, and stood by his kline.

‘I am the King of Macedon!’ he said. ‘And this time next year, I’ll be the lord of Asia, and if I want to be a god, I’ll make myself one!’

He tottered away, narrowly missed falling, and two royal companions escorted him to bed.

Alexander may have said something, but his sneer was so palpable that no one needed to hear him. Thebans and Athenians and Thessalians – and Macedonians – noted it.

There were whispers that Philip needed to go. I heard them.

I walked Alexander back to his quarters that night. He was in a large semi-private house, something of a treasury for his family, and it rankled that he was not housed at the palace. It rankled doubly that we had Olympias. She seemed to be awake all the time, and when she wasn’t with Pausanias she seemed inclined to flirt with the pages and Hephaestion.

She was waiting for us, and demanded the story of the evening. Alexander told her, in the pained tones that sons keep for their mothers, and finally forced her to go to bed by refusing to talk any more. He was rude. She was not. She smiled.

‘Tomorrow, you will love me as you have never loved me before,’ she said.

Alexander turned his back on her. Crossed his arms.

She laughed. Then she stopped in front of me, and all the power of those eyes was on me. ‘When you had Diomedes at your feet,’ she said, ‘did his screams please you?’

I looked at the floor.

‘Now, now, my little man,’ she said. This from a woman whose eyes were at my chest. ‘No lies to the queen. Were you disgusted by his weakness? Elated at your own success? Did you force yourself to hurt him in memory of what he did to your poor friend?’ She smiled with real understanding. ‘Or was it delightful to inflict terror and pain on him?’

I stood with my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.

‘Well, we both know, don’t we?’ she said. ‘Don’t you forget, or grow superior, eh, Ptolemy?’ She laughed at me. ‘Why do you lie to yourself ?’ And walked away, floating on air.

When she was gone, Alexander turned to a slave. ‘Wine,’ he said, snapping his fingers.

The slave, terrified, spilled wine. Alexander looked at the poor boy and he fled.

I picked up the pitcher. A little liquid still sloshed in the base, and I poured a kraterful and handed it to the prince, who poured a libation.

‘To Zeus, god of kings,’ he said.

I had never heard him invoke Zeus so directly.

I must have opened my mouth, because Alexander held up a hand. ‘Ask me nothing. I do not wish to speak, or play a game. I do not even wish to be alive, just now. Please leave me.’

Startled, I took the empty wine cup from him and went to withdraw.

‘Stop,’ Alexander said. ‘I owe you my thanks, Ptolemy. Your attack on Diomedes was brilliant.’

I bowed. ‘It almost went badly. I didn’t plan for everything . . .’

Alexander managed a grim smile. ‘Stop, you sound too much like the cook who always apologises for flaws in the dinner you’d never have found yourself. You humiliated Attalus and put him in the wrong – at just the moment. It all went as Mother said it would,’ he said. And shrugged. ‘She is . . . the very best intriguer I have ever known.’

It hadn’t occurred to me that my brilliant and lucky attack on Diomedes had been part of a larger plan. ‘The queen planned to have Attalus sent away?’ I asked.

Alexander shook his head. ‘You have my thanks,’ he said. ‘Now go away, before I say something I will regret.’

The next day, I had the whole corps of former pages on alert, and Hephaestion said that Alexander hadn’t slept all night. It wasn’t my duty day, but we were all to march in the parade – the ambassadors and all the nobles, led by Philip in a gleaming white chiton and gold sandals. It sounded like bad theatre to me, but we polished our best armour. Those of us who had been to Athens looked like gods. The rest merely looked like Macedonians.

Olympias appeared in white and gold, her dark hair piled in golden combs and strings of pearls on her head like a temple to Nike, who adorned her head at the pinnacle of her hair – and yet she carried it, weight and drama, as if born to it. Philip, despite his steady distaste for her scheming, came over to compliment her. He looked a little silly in his white and gold – but only until you caught his eye, and then he was Philip of Macedon.

But if anyone there looked like a god come to earth, it was she, not he.

He bent down to speak to her, where she stood surrounded by her women. She laughed at him, and he kissed her – just a peck on the cheek. And she laughed again, caught his head and pulled him down – not in an embrace, as I expected, but to whisper in his ear.

He nodded.

I was standing at the head of the former pages. Technically, we were all royal companions, but everyone sill called us ‘pages’.

‘Ptolemy,’ he said.

I bowed.

‘I wish to take Pausanias back into my personal guard,’ he said, and held out his hand.

Pausanias was standing close behind me. I hadn’t realised that he was there.

Philip smiled at him. In that smile, I read that he – a great king – was being magnanimous, and stating – as he could, because he was king – that whatever had happened, he would take Pausanias as a bodyguard. I’ll remind you that he was a forgiving man, when he was sober, and he assumed that the honour would wipe away the stains, and Pausanias – older and wiser – would rise to the occasion.

I could see Pausanias. He paled. And his eyes slipped away to Olympias. And he gave the king an unsteady bow and crossed the long twenty or so paces to where the king’s own companions stood.

How he must have feared to cross that gap. We were his friends – they were his tormentors. Or that’s how I saw it, because he walked with his head high, but with the gait of a nervous colt.

At the head of the procession, the formal statues on their ceremonial platforms were carried by the strongest slaves – eight slaves to a god. All carved of Parian marble with hair and eyes of pure gold. Aphrodite, decently clothed, and Hera, goddess of wives and mothers; Artemis, effeminate Dionysus, Ares and Apollo and Hephaestos and the rest, and Zeus at their head, a foot taller than the other gods. And next to him, a statue of Philip.

There was a gasp, even from the royal companions.

Philip rode it out and stood like a rooster, inviting compliment.

I admired his brazenness.

The Athenians didn’t. Even Phokion, who seemed to love Philip, turned away.

But the sun was rising, and the parade was ready, and we started towards the new theatre.

And then we stopped. It is the way with parades – they start and stop, and get slower and slower.

But what came back to us was an order from the king. He asked Alexander to come and enter the theatre with him.

Something terrible happened on Alexander’s face, then. His father had shown him no love at all for more than a year – had all but cut him from the succession. But here – all of a sudden – he was invited to walk with his father in the most important ceremonial of the most important two weeks of the year.

He had a difficult time getting his face under control, and twice he looked at his mother.

Then he walked forward, and he walked with the same nervous gait that Pausanias had used.

I thanked the gods for my own mother and father, that I had not been born to the Royal House of Macedon. And I didn’t know the half of it.

As we marched into the theatre, the royal companions entered after the statues and turned to the right, forming their ranks on the sand while the priests put the statues into their niches for the duration of the games. I was bored, and my left shoulder hurt, and I wondered if I would be any good. I had entered the pankration, and I was aware that a win would help restore me to Philip’s good graces. And the pain in my shoulder was a worry.

We were behind the king, and my squadron was to form to the left as we entered the theatre, while the king went to the centre and then Olympias and her ladies would enter with Cleopatra (the king’s wife, not that other one) and her ladies. Together, because it amused Philip to make them cooperate.

As we started to enter, Philip seemed to hesitate, as if someone had called his name. My front rank appeared to fall apart. I noticed that Black Cleitus, my left file leader, was hesitating. Well, we were cavalrymen being forced to march like hoplites, but I hated to make a bad show. I turned farther and heard the noise, turned back to where Cleitus was looking, and saw Perdiccas spring out of the second rank.

Pausanias went past us, his hand all covered in blood.

Perdiccas didn’t follow Pausanias immediately. He looked out on to the sands, turned, and
then
raced after Pausanias, followed by two more of my men – Leonatus and Andromenes, both highlanders. They were all three close friends, a tight group made tighter by shared blood and highland custom. I roared at them to halt, but they were stubborn bastards.

And only then did I realise that there was more wrong than the loss of cohesion in my ranks.

I had thought, I guess, that Pausanias had broken down and done himself an injury and his relatives were running to see to him.

If I thought anything at all.

But somewhere in that horrible moment I realised that Alexander was kneeling in the sand by Philip, who was lying in a growing pool of red, red blood, with a Keltoi sword sticking out of his gut, the ivory chariot team racing towards the heavens.

And only then did I realise what Pausanias had done.

‘Seal the exits!’ Antipater roared at my elbow.

Antipater – who I hadn’t seen to speak to in months – was suddenly at the head of the parade.

It was the right order. I turned and shouted it at my companions, and they snapped to.

But I could see that Philip was dead. Not dying. He was already gone.

And I remember thinking that I did not have the luxury to think. I know that makes little sense – but it all came together for me. Olympias, Pausanias and Alexander. And I knew – in a heartbeat – that it would mean my life to show a wrinkle of suspicion.

So I shouted for my men to close the exits, and Antipater got the royal companions into the northern half of the theatre.

The crowd was terrified.

Phokion was angry. It showed in his posture – the old warrior was stiff, hips set, ready to fight.

I did my duty, kept them in place and watched as Antipater cleared the theatre a bench at a time. Olympias and her ladies were already gone. They had never entered the theatre, and neither had Cleopatra.

Every foreign contingent was sent to their lodgings with a pair of guards – mostly royal companions – with orders to make sure that not so much as a slave got away until Antipater ordered them released.

I wrapped myself in my role and saw to it that the companions did their work. Slaves came and took the king’s corpse. No one pretended he was still alive.

That meant that Alexander was king.

We cleared the last of the seats, and for a moment, it was just me and Cleitus, way up at the top, watching the Theban embassy moved forcefully down the ramps.

‘Alexander is king!’ Cleitus said.

I nodded.

‘Pausanias killed the king,’ he said.

I nodded.

Cleitus caught my eye. ‘We know better, don’t we?’ he said bitterly.

I remember that moment well. Because I shrugged. ‘Philip was going to ruin us,’ I said. It was in every man’s heart – Philip had turned to hubris and self-indulgence. And in Macedon, when the king slips, you find a new king.