Alexander at the Worlds End Tom Holt

by Alexander at the World's End (lit)

  over. Then the lion led the sheep across the Hellespont into Asia — only they

  weren’t sheep any more, they were bees, and the lion — he’d stopped being a lion

  but it was still him — was marching up and down the rows inspecting wings and

  stings, like they were soldiers on parade, then packing them up into hives and

  loading them on a man’s back until he could hardly stagger. After that they both

  flew away east; and I knew they went a very long way, but I was there waiting

  for them at the other end. When they got there, the number of hives was

  enormous; and I was standing in the gateway of a city, desperately trying to get

  the gate shut to stop them getting in; but it was one of those dreams, you know,

  the sort where the gate won’t budge even though there’s nothing obstructing it,

  and every time you look up the people who’re after you are closer and closer.

  Anyway, they lined up all the hives in front of my gate and pulled off the

  doors; and all these hundreds of thousands of dead bees came tumbling out. There

  weren’t any live ones left at all. Then the lion was dead too, and I was

  standing in Assembly back home, and I could smell the lion’s dead body, all the

  way from Asia . I looked round for somebody to ask what was going on, but

  everybody was running on the spot and wouldn’t talk to me. I tried to make them

  listen but they pushed me over and started kicking me as I lay there. And that’s

  when you’ — the sailor — ‘woke me up. Well?’ he concluded, looking at me. ‘Have

  you the faintest idea what that means?’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘You want to lay off eating that strong cheese last thing at

  night. It’s indigestion, that’s all.’

  Neither of them thought that was funny, but at least I wasn’t asked to interpret

  any more dreams. When we made landfall the next day without shipwreck, pirates,

  mutiny or manifestations of divine anger, I’ll swear the superstitious man was

  disappointed.There’s no pleasing some people.

  It’s a long but not too arduous journey from the mouth of the river Axius to

  Pella , where Philip’s palace was. He’d sent a troop of cavalry to escort us,

  with spare horses for us to ride; Macedonians don’t walk anywhere if they can

  help it. At this point in my life I’d had mercifully little to do with horses;

  my father owned one because he was obliged to do so, by law, being in theory a

  member of the Athenian Cavalry by virtue of his wealth and political status. Its

  name was Chestnut, and it ate a king’s ransom in barley and lived in a stable in

  Pallene, and if I was naughty as a boy, he threatened to feed me to it. I

  regarded this as a pretty terrifying threat. A man sitting on a horse is a long

  way off the ground, and I couldn’t see the point in taking that sort of risk.

  Now you, Phryzeutzis, and all your bone-idle countrymen are perfectly at home

  aboard the horrible things, which I regard as proof that in spite of appearances

  to the contrary, at heart you’re all still ignorant savages.

  Nevertheless; we were supposed to be diplomats, and refusing to go anywhere near

  the dreadful creatures would probably have caused grave offence, so we rode from

  the coast up to Pella . I did a wonderful impersonation of a sack of oats slung

  over the back of a donkey.

  Macedonia is divided into two parts, highlands and lowlands. The mountains form

  a double horseshoe, hemming in the rich, pleasant farmlands above the Gulf of

  Thermai . Pella was in the plains, and it wasn’t in the least what I’d been

  expecting. We Athenians reckoned we knew about the Macedonians; they were

  brutal, drunken hooli­gans who lived in mountain passes and dressed in

  goatskins. That was true enough of the highlanders; but Philip’s family were

  lowlanders, and although they dutifully maintained old national customs like

  blood-feuds and succession by right of assassination, they’d been doing their

  best to improve themselves for several generations. Philip’s grandfather, for

  instance, had hired the great and perpetually unpopular Athenian dramatist

  Euripides to be his court poet, and he did it only partly to annoy the hell out

  of the highland tribal chiefs (who had to sit still and listen when they’d far

  rather have been out in the fresh air killing something; having read the

  collected works of Euripides, I can’t blame them. So would I).

  Be that as it may; we’d been expecting some kind of long-house built out of

  tree-trunks, and what we found was a fantasy in white and painted marble,

  although the mosaic-pattern cobbles were a bit on the garish side for my taste.

  Actually, I had a head start on my fellow ambassadors. I happen to like dogs,

  even big, enthusiastic ones, and they like me. As we made our way through King

  Philip’s courtyard, there were dogs everywhere, the pride and joy of the

  highland barons. When they saw an Athenian who didn’t immediately cringe away

  and try to climb the nearest wall when something the size of a horse, with a

  lolling pink tongue and teeth like shipwright’s nails, planted two enormous

  forepaws on his shoulders, they were intrigued. I was, as far as they were

  concerned, in; and I hadn’t said a word yet.

  It wasn’t long before I found out where they’d got their ideas from about what

  Athenians are like; but I’ll come to that in a minute.

  Gods forgive me for saying this, but I found I quite liked the Macedonians.

  Partly, I’m sure, it was relief at finding they weren’t grunting savages who

  wore the neck-bones of their enemies as hair decorations. To a certain extent,

  besides that, I was ashamed of the attitude of my fellow diplomats, who acted

  from the start as if they expected to be stuck on spits like thrushes and

  roasted whole for dinner — Demosthenes was the worst offender, as you’d expect,

  given that his whole life was devoted to convincing the City that Philip was

  evil incarnate and the Macedonians were his attendant demons, but all of them

  except me were appallingly rude from start to finish. I could also try to

  rationalise by saying that the rather free-and-easy informality of Philip’s

  court appealed to me in my Yapping Dog persona.

  Excuses, excuses. I couldn’t help liking them. They were just like those

  enormous dogs of theirs; all it took was a little friendliness and a little

  fortitude, just enough to show that you weren’t afraid of them, and they went

  from growling mastiffs to big soft puppies in no time at all. The difference

  was, they were prepared to like us if we liked them, particularly if we showed

  even the slightest inclination to treat them as ‘proper’ Greeks — which they

  weren’t, let’s face it, but I’m not so sure that’s necessarily a bad thing. That

  was almost the first thing I picked up on, that grudging awe of us just because

  we were Athenians. They regarded us, I think, the way we regard the gods; we

  acknowledge that they’re probably wiser than us, undoubtedly a hell of a lot

  stronger, and we most certainly don’t like them. We disapprove of them, and we

  console ourselves for being inferior in every other respect with the satisfying

  knowledge that morally, we’re far superior to the whole lot of them. I could

  feel that same
moral superiority, as of straightforward, simple folk confronted

  with sophisticated decadence, being held up against me like a shield. I felt

  they had a point, at that. So I went along with it.

  Excuse me for a moment, but that reminds me of Diogenes... We were walking

  through the Potters’ Quarter one day when I was still quite young, and he

  pointed out a rather dashing young man in the latest fashions, hair curled and

  scented, beard neatly trimmed right back.

  ‘What do you reckon?’ he said, loudly enough that people could hear.

  ‘I think he looks very smart,’ I said.

  Diogenes shook his head. ‘Affectation,’ he replied.

  A little later, we passed the Academy, and Diogenes stopped and pointed out a

  fairly well-known foreign philosopher who happened to be visiting the City from

  one of the islands. He was an impressive spectacle; very plainly dressed in

  coarse homespun wool, with bare feet and a long grey beard, clean but uncombed

  and untrimmed.

  ‘What do you reckon?’ he said.

  ‘Affectation?’

  ‘You’re learning.’

  I nodded, and we walked on a bit further until we came to a well. I stopped,

  dipped the bucket, drew it up and pointed at it. ‘What do you reckon?’ I said.

  He looked down and caught sight of his reflection. ‘Point taken,’ he said, and

  we walked on.

  So yes, the Macedonians’ pose of primitive manly virtues was just as much an

  affectation as our culture and sophistication; but so what?

  Show me a man with no affectations whatsoever, and I’ll show you a dead body.

  I don’t remember much about the room where we first met Philip, except that it

  seemed to be full of Philip, with not much space for anything else.

  Actually, he was a short man, neither slight nor stocky; you’ll see a hundred

  men like him if you walk from the City to the hill when the farmers are out

  pruning or bashing up the clods with mattocks. But Philip was like a beautiful

  woman, his face was his fortune; and if you cast your mind back to that

  conversation we had about good luck and bad luck, King Philip’s face is an

  excellent illustration of my point. It was his appearance that made him

  undoubtedly the most skilful negotiator and manipulator of men’s hearts and

  minds that I’ve ever met in my life.

  King Philip was incredibly ugly. Actually, you could see quite clearly that once

  he’d been quite strikingly good-looking; but he’d lost his right eye in some

  baffle, and the scarring was quite revolting. The eye itself was still partly

  visible, just the white bit of it, turned upwards as if he was trying to look at

  something perched on his left shoulder, and the seams of the scar that ran down

  from the forehead, across the eyesocket and down the cheek almost to the corner

  of his mouth looked like a child’s first attempts at moulding in clay, where

  he’s pressed two edges together and tried unsuccessfully to smooth them over

  into a join.

  Now, you can imagine the effect of that on an Athenian (beauty equals good,

  remember, and ugliness equals evil); ruggedly hand­some in left profile,

  hideously ugly in right. Now, as if that bizarre dichotomy wasn’t bad enough,

  there was the fact that you couldn’t help staring, no matter how hard you tried.

  It wasn’t something you could ignore or get used to; you had to stare. And it

  was obvious — he made it obvious — that he knew you were staring, and that it

  wounded him deeply, the horror and the pity, all the pathos of a handsome man

  suddenly reduced to a monster. He never said anything; he just met your eyes and

  looked at you with his one good eye.

  Absolutely invincible negotiating technique, and he exploited it to the full; in

  fact, it was his negotiating technique, happily dropped into his lap by

  indulgent Fortune. Without it, I don’t suppose he’d have been half the diplomat

  he was, and diplomacy was easily as important a factor as force in his

  incredible success. It helped, of course, that he had a soft, quite musical

  voice that made his northern accent a pleasant thing to listen to rather than a

  jarring, scraping pain.

  So Philip filled the room; there was no time or space to look at anything else,

  because everything tightened down into that one mutilated eye. There were other

  Macedonians there, of course, big noble-looking men with hairy black arms and a

  vague impression of beautiful but fierce women, but every time we met Philip it

  was like we were alone with him, not even conscious of each other. For a

  negotiating team, this was a distinct disadvantage.

  He trashed us, needless to say. No bluster, no raised voice — when he wanted to

  shout us down, he simply spoke a little more quietly, so that we had to shut up

  in order to hear what he was saying. He never mumbled, though. I swear you could

  have heard Philip of Macedon whispering on the other side of the straits of

  Euboea . That’s not to say he didn’t make threats. He was all threat, he

  radiated danger as the sun radiates light, and everyone who stood where he shone

  knew he was in danger of his life. It was a very immediate, physical danger —you

  knew for certain that if you happened to say precisely the wrong thing, he’d

  jump up out of his chair, draw his sword (he was always armed, usually with a

  broad, blue Thracian steel sabre) and crack your skull open before you could

  even move; and he’d do it and get away with it because he was Philip, from whom

  nobody and nothing in the world was safe.

  Apart from that he was a pleasant enough man, and I rather liked him.

  All the time we were there, there was no respite. When we weren’t negotiating (I

  use the term for convenience only; we negotiated in the same way as a roast

  quail negotiates with the man who’s eating it) we were being entertained, either

  with intimidating quantities of food —meat, meat and more meat, as much of it in

  one meal as the average Athenian sees in a year — and lethal doses of strong,

  neat wine, or with very high-class recitals of music and poetry performed by

  expensive imported artists, which Philip obviously enjoyed almost as much as the

  heavy banqueting. He was, I should point out at this stage, a fero­cious

  drinker; one of those dangerous drunks who doesn’t show it on the surface one

  bit. The only difference I could see, in fact, was that when he was drunk he was

  more inclined to extremes of both cruelty and humanity, though there was no way

  of knowing which you’d get.

  For instance; one evening, when the boozing had reached the stage where our

  hosts were too fuddled to notice and be offended by the fact that we’d stopped

  trying to match them flagon for flagon quite some time ago, a man and a woman

  came storming into the dining hall, with a sleepy-looking guard chasing after

  them. Before they could be caught and slung out, Philip raised his hand to

  signify that he was prepared to listen to what they had to say, whereupon the

  man launched into an incredibly complicated story about a disputed parcel of

  land about the size of a large hat that adjoined his and the woman’s properties,

  a hole deliberately drilled in a lead water-pipe to steal water from a private

 
supply, an errant goat that turned up a week later with the woman’s brand

  mysteriously in place of the original mark, and I don’t know what else. About

  four minutes into this, the woman joined in, although from what little I could

  follow she was talking about unlawful lopping of the low branches of a tree

  growing just her side of the boundary, a vine trampled and broken by a stray

  donkey, some extremely arcane stuff about the man’s son’s friend’s dog killing

  somebody else’s neighbour’s daughter’s tame polecat — I’ll be honest with you, I

  gave up on that one at quite an early stage.

  I was surprised at how long Philip just sat there and took all this. I kept

  expecting him to blow his top with impatience and order the guards to throw both

  of them down the nearest well — but at that time, you see, I didn’t know how

  seriously Philip took his duties as supreme arbiter, or how strong was the

  tradition that the King of Macedon’s subjects had a right to an audience, at any

  time of day or night, when circumstances justified it. Eventually, though, he’d

  had enough. He started to speak in that low, calm voice I’ve been telling you

  about, but by now the two litigants were so engrossed in their tales of the

  other’s iniquities that they went on yammering and ignored him completely. I

  braced myself for the sight of blood on the floor; instead, I heard Philip

  banging on the table with his cup.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘That’ll do. Now then, I won’t pretend I followed what you

  two were saying. I don’t suppose it’d have made any difference if I had. The

  plain fact is, you’re both rotten neighbours and I’m damned glad I don’t have to

  live next door to either one of you. Ready? Good. My judgement is that you will

  both be fined one drachma, and you will both go away and not come bothering me

  again. Understood?’

  The woman shook her head. ‘That’s not good enough,’ she said. ‘I want justice.’

  ‘Tough,’ Philip snapped. ‘I haven’t got any. You’ll have to make do with Law,

  instead.’

  But the woman wasn’t having any of that. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘I’m lodging an

  appeal.’

  Philip frowned. ‘Don’t talk soft,’ he said, ‘I’m the King, the foun­tain of all

  justice. Who else is there for you to appeal to?’