by Mary Renault
For a year or more, the child had run in and out of the wrestling-ground, when anyone dependable would take him off the women’s hands. Bare bodies or clothed, it was all one, except for being able to see men’s war-scars. Yet his father’s nakedness, seldom seen, always disgusted him. Now, since one eye had been blinded at the siege of Methone, he had become frightful. At first he had kept it covered with a bandage, from which blood-tinged tears had stained a track down into his beard. Then these had dried, and the bandage had come off. The lid, which the arrow had pierced on its way in, was puckered and streaked with red; the lashes were gummed with yellow matter. They were black, like his good eye and his beard, and the mats of hair on his shins and forearms and chest; a track of black hair led down his belly to the bush, like a second beard, between his loins. His arms and neck and legs were seamed with thick scars, white, red or purple. He belched, filling the air with the smell of stale wine, and showing the gap in his teeth. The child, glued to his peephole, knew suddenly what his father looked like. It was the ogre, one-eyed Polyphemos, who had picked up Odysseus’ sailors and crunched them raw.
His mother had risen on one elbow, with the clothes pulled up to her chin. “No, Philip. Not tonight. It is not the time.”
The King took a stride towards the bed. “Not the time?” he said loudly. He was still panting from the stairs on a full stomach. “You said that half a month ago. Do you think I can’t count, you Molossian bitch?”
The child felt his mother’s hand, which had been curved around his body, clench into a fist. When she spoke again it was in her fighting voice. “Count, you wineskin? You’re not fit to know summer from winter. Go to your minion. Any day of the month is the same to him.”
The child’s knowledge of such things was still imperfect; yet he had a feeling of what was meant. He disliked his father’s new young man, who put on airs; he loathed the secrets he sensed between them. His mother’s body had tightened and hardened all over. He held his breath.
“You cat-a-mountain!” said the King. The child saw him rush upon them, like Polyphemos on his prey. He seemed to bristle all over; even the rod that hung in his black bushy crotch had risen by itself and was thrusting forward, a sight of mysterious horror. He pulled back the bedclothes.
The child lay in his mother’s arm, his fingers dug into her side. His father started back, cursing and pointing. But it was not at them; the blind eye was still turned that way. The child perceived why his mother had not been surprised to feel his new snake beside her. Glaukos had been there already. He must have been asleep.
“How dare you?” panted Philip hoarsely. He had had a sickening shock. “How dare you, when I forbade it, bring your filthy vermin in my bed? Sorceress, barbarian witch…”
His voice stopped. Drawn by the hatred in his wife’s two eyes, his one eye had moved that way, and he had seen the child. The two faces confronted one another: the man’s empurpled, with the wine, and with anger heightened now by shame; the child’s as brilliant as a jewel set in gold, the blue-grey eyes fixed and wide, the skin transparent, the delicate flesh, taut with uncomprehended agony, molded close to the fine bones.
Muttering something, Philip reached by instinct for his robe to cover his nakedness; but there was no more need. He had been wronged, insulted, exposed, betrayed. If his sword had been at hand, he might well have killed her.
Disturbed by all this, the child’s living girdle writhed, and lifted its head. Till now, Philip had not seen it.
“What’s that?” His pointing finger shook. “What’s that upon the boy? That thing of yours? Are you teaching him now? Are you making him into a back-country, snake-dancing, howling mystagogue? I tell you, I’ll not endure it; take heed of what I say, before you suffer; for by Zeus I mean it, as you will feel. My son is a Greek, not one of your barbarous cattle-lifting hillmen…”
“Barbarous!” Her voice rose ringing, then sank to a deadly undertone, like Glaukos’ when angered. “My father, you peasant, sprang from Achilles, and my mother from the royal house of Troy. My forebears were ruling men, when yours were hired farm-hands in Argos. Have you looked in a mirror? One can see the Thracian in you. If my son is Greek, it is from me. In Epiros, our blood runs true.”
Philip gritted his teeth. It squared his chin and broadened his cheekbones, which were wide already. Even under these mortal insults, he remembered the child was there. “I scorn to answer you. If you are Greek, then show a Greek woman’s manners. Let us see some modesty.” He felt the lack of clothes. Two pairs of grey eyes, smokily rimmed, stared from the bed. “Greek schooling, reason, civility, I mean the boy to have them as I have had. Make up your mind to that.”
“Oh, Thebes!” She threw out the word like a ritual curse. “Is it Thebes again, now? I know enough of Thebes. In Thebes they made you a Greek, in Thebes you learned civility! In Thebes! Have you heard an Athenian speak of Thebes? The byword of Greece for boorishness. Don’t make such a fool of yourself.”
“Athens, that talking-shop. Their great days are done there. They should keep quiet about Thebes for shame.”
“It is you should do that. What were you in Thebes?”
“A hostage, a pledge of policy. Did I make my brother’s treaty? Do you throw that in my face? I was sixteen. I found more courtesy there than you ever showed me. And they taught me war. What was Macedon, when Perdikkas died? He had fallen to the Illyrians with four thousand men. The valleys lay fallow; our people were afraid to come down out of the hill-forts. All they had were the sheep whose skins they wore, and those they could hardly keep. Soon the Illyrians would have taken everything; Bardelys was making ready. Now you know what we are and where our frontiers stand. Through Thebes, and the men who made me a soldier there, I came to you a king. Your kindred were glad enough of it.”
The child, pressed to her side, felt her breath drawn in and in. Blindly he waited for the unknown storm to break from the lowering sky. His fingers clenched on the blanket. He knew himself forgotten now, and alone.
The storm broke. “A soldier, was it, they made you there? And what else? What else?” He could feel her ribs convulsed with rage. “You went south at sixteen, and by then already the country all around was full of your by-blows, don’t you think I know who they are? That whore Arsinoe, Lagos’ wife, old enough to be your mother…Then the great Pelopidas taught you all the learning Thebes is famous for. Battle and boys!”
“Be silent!” roared Philip, loud enough for a battlefield. “Have you no decency before the child? What does he see in this room? What does he hear? I tell you, my son shall be brought up civilized, if I have to…”
His voice was drowned by her laughter. She drew back her hand from the child, to thrust her body forward. With her arms and open palms propping her weight, her red hair falling forward over her naked breasts and the child’s open mouth and eyes, she laughed till the high room echoed. “Your son?” she cried. “Your son!”
King Philip breathed as if he had just run the long-race. He strode forward and raised his hand.
Starting out of a perfect stillness, in one flash of movement the child threw off the curtain of his mother’s hair, and stood upright on the bed. His grey eyes, dilated, looked almost black; his mouth had whitened. He struck at the lifted arm of his father, who from mere astonishment withdrew it. “Go away!” screamed the child, glittering and fierce as a forest wildcat. “Go away! She hates you! Go away! She will marry me!”
For three long breaths, Philip stood rooted, mouth and eyes gaping, like a man clubbed on the head. Then diving forward, he seized the child by both shoulders, swung him through the air, let go with one hand while he wrenched the great door open, and tossed him outside. Taken unawares, rigid with shock and fury, he did nothing to help himself. His sliding body reached the head of the stairs and began to tumble down them.
With a great clattering din, young Agis let fall his spear, dragged his arm out of his shield-straps, and taking the stairs in threes and fours leaped forward to catch the child
. At the third stair down he reached him, and picked him up. His head seemed not to have been struck, and his eyes were open. Up above, King Philip had paused with the door in his hand. He did not slam it till he had seen that all was well; but of this the child knew nothing.
Caught up along with him, startled and bruised, the snake whipped free of him as he began to fall, poured itself down the stairs, and was gone into the dark.
Agis, after his first start, had seen what it was. The child was enough to think about. He carried him downstairs, and sitting at their foot took him on his knees, looking him over by the light of the torch in its wall-sconce. He felt stiff as a board, and his eyes were turned up to show the whites.
In the name of all gods below, thought the young man, what shall I do? If I leave my post, the Captain will have my blood. If his son dies on my hands, the King will. One night last year, before the new favorite’s reign began, Philip had looked his way, and he had pretended to be dense. Now he had seen too much; his fortunes, he thought, would sell dear at a sack of beans. The child was looking blue about the lips. In the far corner was Agis’ thick wool night-cloak, ready for the cold small hours. He picked it up, wadded a fold between the child and his own hard corselet, and wrapped him round. “Come,” he said anxiously. “Come, look, all’s well.”
He seemed not to be breathing. What to do? Slap him, like a woman in a laughing-fit? It might kill him instead. His eyes were moving, and focusing. He drew in a crowing breath, and gave a violent scream.
Deeply relieved, Agis loosed the cloak round the struggling limbs. He clucked and muttered as if to a frightened horse, not holding him in too hard but letting him feel firm hands. In the room above, his parents were calling down curses on one another. After time Agis did not reckon—he had most of the night before him—these sounds died down, and the child began to weep, but not for long. Having come thus far to himself, soon he fell quiet. He lay biting his lower lip, swallowing, and gazing up at Agis, who tried suddenly to remember how old he was.
“That’s my young captain,” he said gently, moved by the almost manlike struggle on the childish face. He dried it with the cloak, and kissed it, trying as he did so to picture what this golden boy would look like when he was old enough for love. “Come, sweetheart, you and I will stand guard together. We’ll look after one another, eh?”
He enfolded the child and stroked him. After a time, the quiet, the warmth, the unconscious sensuality of the young man’s caresses, a vague awareness of being more admired than pitied, began to heal the enormous wound which had seemed his whole and only self. It began to close, sealing in all within it.
Presently he put out his head from the cloak and looked about. “Where is my Tyche?”
What did the strange child mean, calling upon his fortune? Seeing Agis’ face look blank, he added, “My snake, my daimon. Where did he go?”
“Ah, your lucky snake.” Agis thought the Queen’s pets entirely loathsome. “He’s hiding awhile, he’ll soon be back.” He wrapped more cloak round the child; he had begun to shiver. “Don’t take it to heart, your father didn’t mean it. It was only the wine in him. Many a clip on the head I’ve had from mine.”
“When I’m big…” He paused to count on his fingers, up to ten. “When I’m big, I’ll kill him.”
Agis sucked in his breath through his lower teeth. “Ss-ss! Don’t say such a thing. It’s god-cursed to kill a father, it sets the Furies after a man.” He began to describe them, but broke off as the child’s eyes widened; he had had more than enough. “All these knocks we get when we’re young, that’s how we learn to bear our wounds, when we go to war. Look. Move over. Look what I got, the first time I fought the Illyrians.”
He pulled back the kilt of scarlet wool from his thigh, and showed the long ridged scar, with a pit where the spearhead had plowed through almost to the bone. The boy gazed with respect, and felt it with his finger.
“Well,” said Agis, covering it again, “that hurt, you can guess. And what kept me from yelling out, and being shamed before the Companions? My father’s clips on the ear. The fellow who gave me that never lived to boast of it. My first man, he was. When I showed my father his head, he gave me my sword belt, offered up my boy’s girdle-cord, and feasted all our kindred.” He looked along the passage. Would no one ever come by, and take the child to his bed?
“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 newborn 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, and 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 Labors.”
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.”
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 in a border skirmish, and changed his boy’s waist-cord for a red leather sword belt 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 pine woods 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 forepaws on the ground.
“Hup!” said the youth, and hoisted 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, wher
e 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 high 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 fair 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 guardroom.”
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.”
