Alexander at the Worlds End Tom Holt

by Alexander at the World's End (lit)

  mention all the difficult tactical planning. I just advised on the technical

  aspects. If you storm a city who gets the praise, you or the man who built the

  battering-ram?’

  ‘Both of us,’ Alexander replied firmly. ‘I led, and you helped. Glory,’ he

  added, reciting carefully, ‘is the only commodity that seems to increase the

  more you spread it around.’

  I’d heard a similar version of that saying; it started Glory and dogshit are the

  two commodities.. . ‘Think,’ I urged him. ‘By the time your father gets back,

  those bees will have woken up, and they aren’t going to be pleased about how

  they’ve been treated. Besides, unless you give them a chance to settle down in

  their new home, there’s a good chance they’ll just up sticks and move on, and

  there’s no knowing where they’ll go after that.’

  Alexander thought about it. ‘That makes sense, I suppose,’ he conceded. ‘Perhaps

  you’d better give the hive to me. I’ll find a place for it and then take my

  father to see it once he gets back.’

  My excuse for going along with the proposal — well, there were three of them.

  First, young Alexander seemed like a serious, thoughtful young fellow, not

  inclined to mischief. Second, it reduced the risk of my being blamed for a swarm

  of bees being turned loose in a packed dining-hall. Third, by this point what I

  really wanted to do was put space between me and the soon-to-revive bees. ‘Up to

  you,’ I said. ‘He’s your father, and they’re now your bees. But if it all goes

  horribly wrong, I’ve never set eyes on you before. Understood?’

  ‘You mean you’d want me to lie to my father?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He was profoundly unimpressed by the idea, but eventually we agreed that he’d

  limit the assignation of blame to ‘one of the Athenians’, whose name he didn’t

  quite catch. To make it true, I had to mumble my name two or three times under

  my breath so he’d be able to say with a clean conscience that he hadn’t been

  able to make my name out when I told it to him.

  I left Alexander and walked away. As soon as I was out of sight, Alexander took

  his trophy and scuttled off into the town, where lived an old man and his wife

  who’d once been Philip’s chief steward and housekeeper respectively. In this

  capacity they’d somehow earned the young prince’s extreme displeasure.

  Now here’s the difference between Alexander as a young boy and countless tens of

  thousands of other bright, imaginative lads of his age. Any boy worth the name

  could have scrambled up onto the old couple’s roof and dropped the hive down the

  smokehole. It took the future hero of the Granicus to bar all the doors and

  windows from the outside first (silently and unassisted), so the poor fools were

  trapped in there, facing an angry phalanx of bee-stings with nowhere to run.

  Didn’t quite work out that way, however. The hive got stuck, about a forearm’s

  length down the hole, and wouldn’t go any further; nor could it be fished back

  out again. For all I know it’s still there; assuming that whoever’s got that

  cottage now doesn’t mind a roomful of smoke every time he tries lighting a fire.

  So when Philip got home, there was no magnificent trophy of the bee-hunt to

  delight his warrior heart.What he did get, however, was a glowing account of the

  merits of one of the Athenian ambassadors, with special reference to his skill

  both as a teacher and as a miliary engineer.

  I didn’t know about that, of course. The first I heard was when two officers of

  the household (translate: two hulking great Macedonians in armour) turned up at

  the door of my quarters telling me that I had to go with them at once, and not

  answering my pleas for further information.

  I knew it had to be something to do with Alexander, since I hadn’t done anything

  else on my own since I’d been there. The picture of Philip smashing Queen

  Olympias in the face stuck in my mind as firmly as that damned beehive in the

  chimney, and by the time I reached Philip’s audience chamber I was fine-honing

  my phi­losopher’s deathbed speech — a tradition started by the illustrious

  Socrates (‘Don’t forget. Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius,’ whatever that’s

  supposed to mean; hence the customary obscurity of these utterances).

  When I got there, I found Philip (filling the room as usual), the Queen,

  Alexander, an old man with a shiny bald head, and Aristotle. Of course, as soon

  as I saw Aristotle I more or less gave up hope — the most I could expect is that

  my deathbed words would make it back to Athens , probably in heavily garbled

  form, unless they turned out to be good enough for him to plagiarise.

  ‘Thank you for joining us,’ Philip said politely. ‘Now, to come straight to the

  point—’

  ‘Do you keep a snake in a bottle?’ Queen Olympias interrupted.

  For a brief moment I shut my eyes, since I didn’t particularly want to see a

  repeat performance of the Queen of Macedon trying to learn how to fly; but there

  was no chunky, solid sound of bone against bone, and I opened them again.

  Olympias was glaring at me.

  ‘Do you keep a snake in a bottle?’ she repeated.

  Olympias wasn’t quite the formidable presence that her husband was;

  nevertheless, she could have stapled a seven-ply shield to an oak door just by

  scowling at it. This was, I judged, no time for finely honed Athenian

  evasiveness. ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Oh.’ She didn’t look happy. ‘I’d heard you did.’

  I contemplated trying to explain, but decided not to. For all I knew, conjuring

  the spirits of the dead into small non-returnable wine jars was grounds for

  crucifixion in those parts; or perhaps it was fraudulently pretending to conjure

  ghosts into jars that was the capital offence. I had no idea; and it’s a good

  general rule of thumb that if you haven’t got the faintest idea what’s going on,

  the truth’s as good as anything else. At that, the bald-headed type looked up at

  me (up to that point he’d been studying the straps of his sandals).

  ‘Don’t you claim to speak to the immortal part of the soul of Socrates, which

  you keep sealed in a jar?’ he said, in a loud, high, clear voice. ‘I gather

  that’s how you earn your living.’

  Gods in Heaven, I thought, are there any of these damned Macedonians who aren’t

  expert interrogators? Who was going to cross-examine me next, I wondered? The

  cook’s dog?

  ‘That’s true,’ I said.

  ‘Thought so,’ crowed Olympias, bashing the arm of her chair with her balled

  fist. ‘I told you he keeps a snake in a bottle.’

  I suppose I should have seen that one creeping up on me. Olympias’ people

  believe that snakes are the spirits of the dead; they’re immortal and they go

  from body to body, shedding the old one when it’s worn out just as a regular

  snake sheds its skin. I reckoned it’d be best if I kept my face shut, and that’s

  what I did.

  ‘I see,’ Philip said, after a moment. ‘Well, that seems to cover it. Right?’ he

  added, looking back over his shoulder at Olympias. She nodded. The old man

  grinned. Aristotle looked as if he’d woken up out of a nightmare abou
t being

  marooned on an island inhabited by cannibals to find it was all horribly true.

  ‘That’s all right, then,’ Philip said. ‘In that case, I’d like to offer you a

  job as my son’s tutor.’

  I felt — well, imagine how you’d feel after you’d been wandering in the desert

  for two days, slowly dying of thirst, and then someone sneaked up behind you,

  knocked you down and started drowning you in a shallow pool of fresh spring

  water. My fears about being tortured to death flocked out of my mind like an

  audience leaving the theatre, only to find themselves sharing a narrow gateway

  with a whole lot of new fears about offending Philip by refusing his offer,

  which were all trying to crowd in.

  ‘I’m honoured,’ I stalled. ‘This is truly a great distinction—’

  ‘He means no,’ Olympias grunted, chewing on a stray curl of hair that had crept

  out from behind her ear. ‘Offer him money. If he won’t take the job, see if

  he’ll sell the snake.’

  ‘Olympias,’ Philip purred (and it wasn’t a domestic cat kind of purr).

  ‘Euxenus,’ he went on, ‘please don’t be afraid to speak your mind. As I’m sure

  you know, my son already has two highly qualified tutors; my cousin Leonidas,’

  (the bald man nodded very slightly), ‘and your celebrated compatriot Aristotle,

  both of whom enjoy my fullest confidence. The Queen, however,’ he went on, his

  voice hardening a little, ‘feels that another perspective, perhaps one that

  encompasses more of the spiritual, mystic side—’

  ‘Tell him we want the snake,’ Olympias rumbled, in that remarkably deep voice of

  hers. ‘I don’t care a damn about the Athenian, but I want that snake for my

  son.’

  You know, it was almost worth all the terror and embarrassment just to watch

  Aristotle squirm. He was hating this, I could see. I formed a hasty assessment

  of my position. I could refuse altogether, and risk having to be persuaded to

  change my mind — Philip had a staff of full-time persuaders; he recruited them

  from among his cavalry farmers, on the grounds of physical strength and

  familiarity with the use and properties of red-hot metal — or I could sell them

  the empty jar and risk assassination on the grounds of having swindled the royal

  house of Macedon. Or I could take the job. The last choice had the fringe

  benefit of a number of chances to dump on the celebrated Aristotle, not to

  mention the prospect of a chance of getting a closer look at that damned map,

  which had become something of an obsession with me...

  The map that invariably lay across Philip’s knees whenever we’d had meetings

  with him looked to be (and was, as I was able to confirm later on) very old,

  with a long and remarkable history; turns out it was one of the maps made by

  Aristagoras of Miletus, who governed the city in the old days when it was part

  of the Persian empire. He sent out maps, among the first ever seen in Greece,

  with his requests for aid from the mainland in the great rebellion against

  Persian rule; they impressed the hell out of everyone except the Spartans, who

  actually took the trouble to read them and work out how far away Miletus was.

  Other cities, including Athens, sent token contingents or other forms of aid and

  comfort to the rebellion; after it had been utterly crushed, the Persian King,

  Darius, sent a punitive expedition to deal with the mainland states who’d taken

  part, and destroyed two great ‘cities, Chalcis and Eretria. The Athenians

  managed to defeat the expedition at the celebrated battle of Marathon, and it

  was the need to avenge this defeat that led King Xerxes to invade Greece with

  his vast, unwieldy army of a million men, after which it became an established

  principle in the Greek mind that Greece would never be safe until the Persian

  Empire was overthrown. So, as you can see, Phryzeutzis, Aristagoras’ pretty

  sheets of engraved bronze had a lot to answer for, one way or another; and here

  one of them was, in the possession of the King of Macedon, another mighty

  conqueror. The fact that he used it more as a dinner-tray cum writing-desk than

  as a whetstone for his aspirations was neither here nor there.

  ‘I shall be honoured to accept,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, good,’ Philip replied, with a very slight trace of a yawn. ‘Have a word

  with Leonidas here later on today; he’ll make the arrange­ments and sort you

  out, tell you how everything’s set up. It’s, um, a pleasure to welcome you to

  our household.’ He sighed, and gave Olympias a mildly poisonous look. ‘You and

  your potted snake,’ he added.

  At this point, I suppose I ought to say a few words...

  Don’t sigh like that, Phryzeutzis; quite probably this is the bit you actually

  want to hear. After all, most people who learn that I knew Alexander when I was

  younger can’t wait for me to tell them: what was he like, what was he really

  like?

  And, over the years, I’ve learned a little speech which I can recite mindlessly,

  the way the herald recites the formal part of the law without knowing or caring

  much what he’s saying. Probably you’ve heard it yourself, I can’t remember.

  Anyway, I recite the speech and they go away again, feeling that they’ve somehow

  folded the fabric of history back on itself, so that their present has in some

  way touched the past. It makes them happy, and stops them bothering me.

  You, I feel, deserve something better. Now, let’s analyse the question; when you

  ask me, ‘What was he really like?’, what you’re asking (whether you realise it

  or not) is, ‘What did you think about him?’ — because that’s the only way that

  question can ever be answered when one mortal man talks to another. What did I

  think of him? That way, Alexander is filtered through me, like whey strained

  through fine cloth.

  You want a straight answer, Phryzeutzis? I’ll give you one. I know, I’ve been

  putting this off since I started telling you this story, because it’s quite

  difficult for me to say this. But without this rather essential piece of

  information, you won’t be able to make an awful lot of sense of what I have to

  say about the man later, or indeed what I say about myself. So; here goes.

  I have no opinion about Alexander one way or the other; and that’s a deliberate

  decision on my part, one that’s cost me a lot of peace over the years. Let me

  give you an analogy — it’s what we Athenians do best, they say, the subtle art

  of talking about something else instead of what we’ve been asked about.

  Suppose you lived in the valley on the river-bank, and one year the rains were

  so heavy that the whole plain flooded, washing out your house and crops and

  leaving you destitute. Now suppose you lived near the desert, and one year it

  didn’t rain at all, parching your land, killing your stock and driving you out

  to make your living begging in the streets of some city. In one case, you curse

  the rain because it keeps falling; in the other, you curse it for not falling at

  all.

  But cursing the rain is pointless, Phryzeutzis; it can’t hear you, it’s a force

  of nature, something beyond benevolence or malice. Blame someone if you must —

  the king, for not
building a dam or an embankment; your father, for settling on

  the edge of the desert; your neighbour, for blocking the drains or bleeding off

  water from the spring that feeds your well. Blame human beings, whose actions

  and decisions you can at least understand; blame the rain and you just look

  ridiculous.

  Alexander was a force of nature; he was a force of history. Think about him

  dispassionately for a moment. Think of the hole you’d make in history if you cut

  him out of it, like a carpenter fret-sawing a pattern out of a brass sheet to

  inlay into a piece of wood; see if anybody or anything else would fit in that

  hole, so as not to destroy the integrity of history. I think you’ll be

  surprised.

  First, Alexander would’ve been nobody if he hadn’t been Philip’s son. Philip

  took the old Macedon and changed it out of all recognition, made it the greatest

  power in Greece . By the same token, Philip couldn’t have done this if the great

  cities of Greece — Athens, Sparta, Thebes, Corinth — hadn’t bled themselves weak

  and silly with their own incessant wars, hadn’t grown weak and lazy and fat, and

  most of all tired, so that they couldn’t be bothered any more. The same goes for

  Persia; if the Persian empire hadn’t been on its last legs anyway, if the

  Persian king had been anything like as good a soldier as his predecessors— Look

  at it another way. All round this Alexander-shaped hole we’ve sawed out of

  history are these factors that made him possible, and the more you look at them,

  the more important they become, the smaller Alexander gets. It’s quite possible

  that if Alexander had died when he was a week old, Macedonians or Greeks or both

  would still have overthrown the Great King and taken his empire. It may have

  taken them longer; then again, they may have made a more thorough job.

  Now we’ve reduced Alexander, let’s grind him flat. As a man, Alexander had his

  faults. Lots of them. He had no depth or breadth of feeling or understanding —

  insofar as he had a sense of humour I’ll swear he learned it by rote, as he

  learned many skills that he reckoned a great man ought to have. He had no sense

  of pleasure beyond the gratifications of succeeding in his task; he was hardly

  interested in sex, in beauty of any kind, in anything that wasn’t needed for the