The Novels of Alexander the Great

by Mary Renault

  He grasped the boy’s wrist as he was turning. He drew back the length of his arm, but did not struggle. He simply stared. His eyes in their deep sockets seemed to grow first pale, then dark as the pupils opened. In slow Greek, with fastidious correctness, he said quietly, “Take your hand off me. Or you are going to die. I am telling you.”

  Demosthenes let go. A frightening, vicious boy; clearly some great lord’s minion. No doubt his threats were empty…but this was Macedon. The boy though released still paused, brooding intently on his face. A cold creeping moved in his bowels. He thought of ambushes, poison, knives in dark bedrooms; his stomach turned, his skin chilled. The boy stood motionless, gazing from under his mane of tousled hair. Then he turned, vaulted the low wall, and was gone.

  From the window, Aischines’ voice boomed in its lowest register, and soared, for effect, to a pure falsetto. Suspicion, only suspicion! Nothing one could pin to an indictment. The soreness climbed from Demosthenes’ throat to his nose; he gave a violent sneeze. Somehow he must get a hot tisane, even if some ignorant fool would make it. How often, in his speeches, he had said of Macedon that it was a land from which it had never yet been possible even to buy a decent slave.

  Olympias sat in her gilded chair carved with palmettes and roses. Noon sun streamed from the window, warming the high room, lacing the floor with shadows of budding branches. A small table of cypress wood was at her elbow; on a stool by her knees sat her son. His teeth were clenched, but low gasps of agony now and then escaped him. She was combing his hair.

  “The very last knot, my darling.”

  “Can’t you cut it off?”

  “And have you ragged? Do you want to look like a slave? If I did not watch you, you would be lousy. There; all done. A kiss for being good, and you may eat your dates. Don’t touch my dress while your hands are sticky. Doris, the irons.”

  “They are too hot still, madam; hissing-hot.”

  “Mother, you must stop curling it. None of the other boys have it done.”

  “What is that to you? You lead, you do not follow. Don’t you want to look beautiful for me?”

  “Here, madam. I don’t think they will scorch now.”

  “They had better not! Now don’t fidget. I do it better than the barbers. No one will guess it’s not natural.”

  “But they see me every day! All but the…”

  “Keep still, you will get a burn. What did you say?”

  “Nothing. I was thinking about the envoys. I think after all I’ll wear my jewels. You were right, one shouldn’t dress down to the Athenians.”

  “No, indeed. We will look out something presently, and proper clothes.”

  “Besides, Father will wear jewels.”

  “Oh, yes. Well, you wear them better.”

  “I met Aristodemos just now. He said I’d grown so much he’d hardly have known me.”

  “A charming man. We must ask him here, by ourselves.”

  “He had to go, but he presented another man who used to be an actor. I liked him; he’s called Aischines, he made me laugh.”

  “We might ask him too. Is he a gentleman?”

  “It doesn’t matter with actors. He told me about the theater, how they tour; how they get their own back on a man who’s bad to work with.”

  “You must be careful with these people. I hope you said nothing indiscreet.”

  “Oh, no. I asked about the war party and the peace party in Athens. He was in the war party, I think; but we’re not like he thought. We got on well.”

  “Don’t give any of these men the chance to boast of being singled out.”

  “He’ll not do that.”

  “What do you mean? Was he familiar?”

  “No, of course not. We only talked.”

  She tilted his head back, to curl the locks above his brow. As her hand passed his mouth he kissed it. There was a scratch upon the door.

  “Madam, the King sends to say he has had the envoys summoned. He would like the Prince to enter with him.”

  “Say he will be there.” She stroked out the hair lock by lock, and looked him over. His nails were trimmed, he was freshly bathed, his gold-studded sandals stood ready. She found him a chiton of saffron wool, with a border she had worked herself in four or five colors; a red chlamys for his shoulder and a big gold pin. When the chiton was on, she clasped round his waist a belt of golden filigree. She was leisurely; if he were early, it would be with Philip he would wait.

  “Isn’t it finished?” he asked. “Father will be waiting.”

  “He has only just summoned the envoys.”

  “I expect they were all ready.”

  “You will find the afternoon quite long enough, with their tedious speeches.”

  “Well, one must learn how things are done…I’ve seen Demosthenes.”

  “That great Demosthenes! Well, what did you think of him?”

  “I don’t like him.” She looked up from the golden girdle, raising her brows. He turned towards her, with an effort she noticed. “Father told me, but I didn’t listen. He was right, though.”

  “Put on your cloak. Or do you want it done for you like a baby?”

  Silently he threw it round his shoulder; silently, with untender fingers, she drove the pin through the stuff, which gave too quickly. He made no movement. She said sharply, “Did I prick you?”

  “No.” He knelt to lace his sandals. The cloth fell away from his neck, and she saw blood.

  She held a towel to the scratch, kissing his curled head, making peace before he went to meet her enemy. As he went towards the Perseus Room, the smart of the pin was soon forgotten. For the other, it was like a pain he had been born with. He could not remember a time when it had not been.

  The envoys stood facing the empty throne, with the great mural behind it of Perseus freeing Andromeda. At their backs were ten ornate hard chairs; it had been made clear, even to the most ardent democrats, that they would sit when, and not before, the King invited them. The leader, Philokrates, looked demurely about him, straight-faced, at pains not to seem at ease. As soon as the order and matter of the speeches had been determined, he had made a brief digest and sent it secretly to the King. Philip was known to speak extempore with force and wit, but would be grateful for the chance to do himself full justice. His gratitude to Philokrates had already been very solid.

  Down at the far left (they stood in order of speaking) Demosthenes swallowed painfully, and mopped his nose with the corner of his cloak. Lifting his eyes, he met the painted eyes of a splendid youth, poised wing-footed on blue air. In his right hand he held a sword; in his left, by its hair, the ghastly head of Medusa, aiming its lethal gaze at the sea-dragon in the waves below. Manacled to a leafy rock by her outspread arms, her body shimmering through her thin robe, her fair hair lifted by the breeze which upbore the hero, Andromeda gazed at her savior with soft wild eyes.

  It was a masterpiece; as good as the Zeuxis on the Acropolis, and bigger. Demosthenes felt as bitter as if it had been looted in war. The beautiful tanned youth, superbly naked (some Athenian athlete of the great days must have posed for the first cartoon), looked down with hauteur on the heirs of his city’s greatness. Once again, as in old years at the palaestra, Demosthenes felt the pause of dread before he stripped his thin limbs; the admired boys strolling by, elaborately careless of their public; for himself, the giggle and the hateful nickname.

  You are dead, Perseus; beautiful, brave, and dead. So you need not look at me. You died of malaria in Sicily, you drowned in Syracuse harbor, or parched in the waterless retreat. At Goat River the Spartans bound you and cut your throat. The hangman of the Thirty burned you with his irons and choked you. Andromeda must do without you. Let her take help where she can, for the waves are parting to show the dragon’s head.

  With her feet on a cloud, bright-helmed Athene hovered to inspire the hero. Grey-eyed Lady of Victories! Take and use me; I am yours, for what I am. If I have only words to serve you with, your power can turn them to sword
and Gorgon. Let me only guard your citadel till it brings forth heroes again.

  Athene returned him a level stare. As was proper, her eyes were grey. He seemed to feel again the dawn chill, and his fasting belly griped with fear.

  There was a stir at the inner door. The King came in, with his two generals, Antipatros and Parmenion; a formidable trio of hardbitten warriors, each of whom by himself would have filled the eye. Along with them, almost lost beside them, walked at the King’s elbow a curly-haired, overdressed boy with downcast eyes. They disposed themselves in their chairs of honor; Philip greeted the envoys graciously, and bade them sit.

  Philokrates made his speech, full of openings which would be useful to the King, masked by spurious firmness. Demosthenes’ suspicions grew. They had all been given the precis; but could these weak links be merely slipshod? If only he could keep his mind on it; if only his eye did not keep straying to the King.

  Hateful he had expected Philip to be; but not unnerving. His speech of welcome, though perfectly courteous, had not wasted a word, its brevity subtly hinting that smoke-screens of verbiage would not serve. Whenever a speaker turned to the other envoys for support, Philip would scan the line of faces. His blind eye, which was as mobile as the good one, seemed to Demosthenes the more baleful of the two.

  The day wore on; the steep sun-patches under the windows stretched along the floor. Speaker after speaker urged Athens’ claims to Olynthos, to Amphipolis, to her old spheres of influence in Thrace and Chersonesos; referred to the Euboian war, to this naval brush or that; dragged up old dealings with Macedon in the long complex wars of her succession; talked of the Hellespont corn route, of the aims of Persia and the intrigues of her coastal satraps. Every so often, Demosthenes would see the bright black eye and its spatchcock yokefellow move his way and linger.

  He was being awaited, he the famous tyrannophobe, as the protagonist is awaited through the opening chorus. How often, in the law courts and at Assembly, this knowledge had quickened his blood and wits! Now, it came to him that never before had he so addressed himself to a single man.

  He knew every string of his instrument, could measure the lightest turn of each key; he could transpose righteousness into hatred; play on self-interest till it seemed even to itself a self-denying duty; he knew where thrown mud would stick on a clean man, and whitewash on a dirty one; even for a lawyer-politician of his day, when standards of skill were high, he was a first-class professional. And he had known himself to be more; on great days he had tasted the pure ecstasy of the artist, when he had kindled them all with his own dream of Athenian greatness. He was reaching the peak of his powers; he would be better yet; but now it was borne in on him that the medium of his art was the crowd alone. When it left for home, it would still be praising his oration; but it would break up into so many thousand men, not one of whom really liked him. There was no one at whose side he had locked shields in battle. And when he wanted love, it cost two drachmas.

  They were down to the eighth speaker, Ktesiphon. Soon he himself would be speaking; not to the manifold ear he knew, but to this one black probing eye.

  His nose was blocked again; he had to blow it on his cloak, the floor looked too pretentiously ornate. What if it ran while he was speaking? To keep his mind off the King, he looked at red big-boned Antipatros, and Parmenion with his broad shoulders, brown bush of beard, and bowed horseman’s knees. This was unwise. They had not Philip’s obligations to the speaker, and were frankly appraising the envoys together. The fierce blue eye of Antipatros brought back, the moment it met his, the eye of the phylarch under whom he had done his compulsory army training, as a spindly youth of eighteen.

  All this while, the gaudy princeling sat unmoving in his low chair, his eyes bent towards his knees. Any Athenian lad would have been looking about him, impertinent perhaps (alas, manners were declining everywhere) but at least alert. A Spartan training. Sparta, symbol of past tyranny and present oligarchy. It was just what one would expect in Philip’s son.

  Ktesiphon had done. He bowed; Philip spoke a few words of thanks. He had managed to make each speaker feel noticed and remembered. The herald announced Aischines.

  He rose to his full height (he had been too tall to do well in women’s roles, one cause of his leaving the stage). Would he betray himself? Not a word or tone must be missed. The King must be watched too.

  Aischines went into his preamble. Once more, Demosthenes was forced to see how training told. He himself relied much on gesture; he indeed had brought it into public speaking, calling the old sculpted stance a relic of aristocracy; but when warmed up, he tended to do it from the elbow. Aischines’ right hand rested easily just outside his cloak; he wore a manly dignity, not trying to old-soldier the three great generals before him, but hinting the respect of one who knows the face of war. It was a good speech, following the scheme arranged. He would give nothing away, whatever he had been up to. Giving up in disgust, Demosthenes blew his nose again, and turned to a mental run-through of his own oration.

  “And your elder kinsmen will bear out what I say. For after your father Amyntas, and your uncle Alexandros, had both fallen, while your brother Perdikkas and you were children…”

  His mind hung suspended in the pause between shock and thought. The words were right. But Aischines, not he, had spoken them.

  “…betrayed by false friends; and Pausanias was coming back from exile to contest the throne…”

  The voice ran on, unforced, persuasive, expertly timed. Wild thoughts of coincidence rose and died, as word followed word, confirming infamy. “You yourself were only a small child. She put you on his knee, saying…”

  The early years of anguished struggle to cure his stammer, project his thin voice and temper its shrillness, made him need his own reassurance. Again and again, in audible undertones, script in hand, he must have rehearsed this passage on the journey, on board ship or at inns. This mountebank peddler of others’ words; of course he could have mastered it.

  The anecdote reached its well-turned close. Everyone looked impressed, the King, the generals, the other envoys; all but the boy, who, growing restless at last after the hours of stillness, had begun to scratch his head.

  Demosthenes confronted not only the loss of his most telling passage; that was the least of it. It should have led his theme to the central matter. Now, at this last moment, he would have to recast his speech.

  He had never been good extempore, even with the audience on his side. The King’s eye had swiveled his way again, expectantly.

  Frantically he gathered in mind the fragments of his speech, trying edge against edge for joins, bridging, transposing. But having taken no interest in Aischines’ speech, he had no idea how much of it was left, how soon his own turn would come. The suspense scattered his thoughts. He could only remember the times when he had put down Aischines’ upstart pretensions, reminding him, and people of influence along with him, that he came of broken-down gentlefolk, that as a boy he had ground ink for his father’s school and copied civil service lists; that on the stage he had never played leading roles. Who could have reckoned on his bringing to the noble theater of politics the sleights of his sordid trade?

  And he could never be accused of it. To own the truth would make any orator the laughingstock of Athens. One would never live it down.

  Aischines’ voice had the swell of peroration. Demosthenes felt cold sweat on his brow. He clung to his opening paragraph; its momentum might lead him on. Perseus hovered scornfully. The King sat stroking his beard. Antipatros was muttering something to Parmenion. The boy was raking his fingers through his hair.

  Deftly, into his final paragraph, Aischines slipped the key passage of Demosthenes’ prepared finale. He bowed, was thanked. “Demosthenes,” said the herald, “son of Demosthenes, of Paiania.”

  He rose and began, advancing as to a precipice; all sense of style had deserted him, he was glad to remember the mere words. Almost at the last, his normal quick sense revived; he saw how to br
idge the gap. At this moment, a movement drew his eye. For the first time, the boy had lifted his head.

  The crimped curls, already loosening before he had begun work on them, had changed to a tousled mane springing strongly from a peak. His grey eyes were wide open. He was very slightly smiling.

  “To take a broad view of the question…a broad view…to take a…”

  His voice strangled in his throat. His mouth closed and opened; nothing came out but breath.

  Everyone sat up and stared. Aischines, rising, patted him solicitously on the back. The boy’s eyes were leveled in perfect comprehension, missing nothing, awaiting more. His face was filled with a clear, cold brightness.

  “To take a broad view…I…I…”

  King Philip, astounded and bewildered, had grasped the one fact that he could afford to be magnanimous. “My dear sir, take your time. Don’t be disturbed; it will come back to you in a moment.”

  The boy had tilted his head a little to the left; Demosthenes recalled the pose. Again the grey eyes opened, measuring his fear.

  “Try to think of it little by little,” said Philip good-humoredly, “back from the beginning. No need to be put off by a moment’s dry-up, like the actors in the theater. I assure you, we can wait.”

  What cat-and-mouse game was this? It was impossible the boy should not have told his father. He remembered the schoolroom Greek: “You are going to die. I am telling you.”

  There was a buzz from the envoys’ chairs; his speech contained matter of importance, not yet covered. The main headings, if he could find only those…In dull panic, he followed the King’s advice, stumbling again through the preamble. The boy’s lips moved gently, smilingly, silently. Demosthenes’ head felt empty, like a dried gourd. He said, “I am sorry,” and sat down.

  “In that case, gentlemen…” said Philip. He signed to the herald. “When you have rested and refreshed yourselves, I will let you have my answer.”

  Outside, Antipatros and Parmenion were telling each other how they thought the envoys would shape in cavalry. Philip, as he turned towards his study where he had his written speech (he had kept a few spaces for matters arising), became aware of his son looking up at him. He signed with his head; the boy followed him into the garden, where, in reflective silence, they relieved themselves among the trees.