pricking out, helpfully condensed into easily remembered hexameters, though the
old-fashioned diction bothered him a lot. He’d go into a study and then
re-emerge to say
that he’d thought of a way to change such and such a line so that it wasn’t
old-fashioned any more but still scanned, maybe even included some additional
snippet of information that the old fool had left out; when I tried to explain
that, actually, he was missing the point, he’d cast his mind adrift once again
and let me babble to myself without further interruption.
‘Maybe I should find him a trade,’ I suggested to Theano one evening. ‘Learning
a trade broadens the mind, as well as giving you something to fall back on.’
She made a little dry laughing noise. ‘Like you learned a trade, you mean?’
I frowned. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘so that didn’t work out the way it was planned.
But in the event it achieved the desired result. If I hadn’t learned my trade
with Diogenes, I’d be earning my living voting in Assembly and eating nothing
but dried fish and barley-husks. It was my trade that got me here, doesn’t
matter how it got me here.’
She thought about that for a moment as she threaded a needle. ‘You remember that
game you tried to teach me, the one with the bone counters and the chequered
board?’
‘Draughts,’ I said.
‘That’s the one.’ She narrowed her eyes and licked the end of the thread. ‘All I
remember is that instead of going up and down the board, the little counters
move sort of sideways, across the corners of their squares—’
‘Diagonally,’ I said.
‘Whatever. Well, it seems to me you’ve lived your life like those counters move
— making progress, but never straight ahead the way you planned to go, always —
what was that word again?’
‘Diagonally.’
‘Which means,’ she went on, ‘that you’ve come a hell of a long way, but not the
way you’d ever intended to come. Am I right?’
I thought for a moment and nodded. ‘You could say that,’ I replied. ‘Though
maybe you’re bending the facts a bit to make them fit the comparison. So what do
you think?’ I went on. ‘Should we find someone to apprentice him to?’
‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘It’d be a big step. And a lot depends on who you had
in mind.’
I took a deep breath. ‘It crossed my mind,’ I said, ‘that we could send him back
to Athens , where he could learn pretty well anything. He could go with
Tyrsenius’ friend, you know, the dried-fish man—’
She looked at me as if I’d just suggested that our son would go down well as a
pot-roast, with leeks and maybe just a touch of marjoram.
‘No,’ she said.
‘But think of the advantages he could have in Athens that he’d never have here,’
I said. ‘He could live on the farm with Euthyphron or Eugenes, and go to the
City to learn law or banking or medicine — we haven’t got a half-competent
doctor here, he’d make a good living—’
‘He’ll make a good living off thirty acres,’ she replied severely. ‘What else
could he possibly ever need?’
I rubbed the back of my neck, where the muscles were always stiff. ‘There’s so
much he’s missing here,’ I said. ‘Dammit, he’ll grow up just like the other kids
here, not even properly Greek. I mean, apart from the language we speak and a
taste for olive curd, what difference is there between us and the Scythians in
the back country? That’s an awful lot to lose, you know, everything that being
Greek stands for—’
‘Oh, yes?’ she said. ‘Such as what?’
‘Such as...’
Obviously I knew the answer; all the things I’d tried to teach him that he
didn’t want to know. But for some reason, I realised, Theano didn’t value them
either. I was rather shocked.
‘You want him to be like you,’ she went on, in that calm voice that meant she
was getting ready to be seriously angry. ‘You want him to learn all that clever,
white-is-black, I’m-right-and-you’re-wrong trouble-making stuff. What the hell
is wrong with living quietly and making an honest living? Why does he have to be
Greek, and not just a human being?’
For a moment I couldn’t really understand what she was trying to say.
‘Everything we know,’ I replied. ‘All the science and poetry and philosophy—’
‘But it’s all bullshit,’ Theano interrupted. ‘Euxenus, you made a living by
pretending you had a magic snake that told you the future. You know it’s all
bullshit, else you could never have done that. What the hell’s so important
about bullshit that you want our son to go to Athens to learn it?’
I shook my head, trying to keep my temper. ‘I thought you understood,’ I said.
‘After ten years of living with me, I thought you’d be able to understand by
now.’
A moment later, I saw that I’d said something really bad. For one thing, she
didn’t even answer, just looked at me...
‘Come on,’ I said, ‘that’s what all this has been about. A fresh start, a whole
new city , a chance to build the perfect city with Greek ideas
and all the advantages we’ve got, but away from the stony soil and the dry,
barren mountains—’
She was breathing out through her nose by this point, a sure sign of impending
volcanic activity. ‘Oh, really,’ she said. ‘That’s what it’s all about, then.
It’s — what do you call it? — scientific research.’
‘In a way.’
‘like cutting open dead bodies to see where the bones go. And what’s going to
happen when your scientific research is over, Euxenus, and you report back to
whoever the hell it is you report back to, some bunch of idle old men sitting
under a tree in Athens ? What’re you going to do next, for your next experi—
dammit, what is that word?’
‘Experiment,’ I told her.
‘Thank you, yes, experiment. Are you going to see if you can make a pair of
wings to fly with, or pull the moon down into a bucket? Or are you going to find
another stupid peasant girl to cut up, to study how she works?’
I confess, I didn’t see the logical connection there, and I still don’t. ‘Come
on,’ I said soothingly, ‘you’re laying it on a bit thick, aren’t you? What makes
you think I’ve even considered going back to Athens ? Ever? There’s nothing for
me there.’
She glared at me as if she was trying to set light to my beard by sheer
eye-power. ‘Then why in the gods’ names do you keep on and on about the horrible
place?’ she said. ‘To me, to Eupolis, to everybody who can be bothered to
listen. In Athens we did it like this, of course if we were in Athens all we’d
have to do is ask so-and-so—’
I shook my head. ‘ Athens is where I grew up,’ I said. ‘That’s where I learned
to do things. So when I say that’s how we did such-and-such, I’m saying this is
the way I know how to do it. That’s all.’
‘Like hell,’ she snapped. ‘You know what, Euxenus? You aren’t really here at
all. All that’s here is like — like a diplomatic embassy you’ve sent out to
/>
gather information and carry out an experimence—’
‘Experiment.’
‘Oh, shut up. The real Euxenus is still back in your damned Academy with all
those old men, and you’re an. . .‘ She closed her eyes, dragging the right words
out of her memory with a violent effort. ‘An accredited observer,’ she said
triumphantly, ‘like the students your friend Aristotle used to send to other
cities to write reports on their laws and their government stuff. And you know
what the joke is, Euxenus? You play the philosopher and the scientist like this,
but it’s all lies anyhow. You were never a philosopher, you were a fraud. You
never hung out with all those clever old men,’ she went on. ‘You lurked round
the market square selling your snake in a bottle. With no snake,’ she added
vindictively. ‘Well, the hell with you. You can do what you like, but Eupolis
isn’t going to Athens and he isn’t learning any trade.’ And with that she
stomped off into the back room and slammed the door.
I’ve heard great orators. I knew Demosthenes personally. But none of them could
get one tenth of the condensed nuances of meaning into two hours of
speech-making that Theano could cram into the slamming of a door. It’s a wonder
the hinges lasted as long as they did.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
T here are days when the world changes. Between sunrise and sunset, something
happens, and nothing is ever the same again. I always had a suspicion that if
such a day happened during my lifetime, it’d be on the day after I’d been out
all night at a really obnoxious party, which’d have left me so hung over and
drained that I stayed in bed all day and so slept through the great event that
changed the world, and would have to rely on other people’s accounts of what
happened for ever after.
Well, for once I beat my own low expectation of myself. On the seventh day of
the month Metageitnion* during my tenth year in Olbia, in the slack period
following the harvest and the mad panic of getting the year’s corn threshed and
stored, I was down at our newly finished jetty helping to stow thirty-seven jars
of my surplus grain on board a ship bound for Athens. It was the Start of the
trading season; the sea was relatively calm and predictable, nothing much to do
on the farm for five or six weeks, prompting the industrious man to better
himself by seeking opportunities away from home, either in person or through the
proxy of his merchandise. Thirty-seven jars was substantially more disposable
surplus than I’d had before, so I was feeling bright and cheerful. I almost
wished I was going with them, to see Athens again, maybe even look up my
brothers, find out what they’d been up to, inspect the crop of nephews and
nieces, walk the familiar fields and pontificate on how much better everything
was in Olbia...
* August-September
But going home would involve being on a ship, and I’ve never felt comfortable on
the wretched things (and me an Athenian; for shame!), so I suppressed the
impulse and went home.
It was early morning, about the time when people were leaving the city to walk
to the fields. Always a cheerful time of day; you’ll see parties of neighbours
going in the same direction, chattering away with early morning enthusiasm about
the prospects (which are always good on the walk out to the fields, and dismal
on the way back) until they’re joined by some other neighbours, who join in the
conversation until they run into a group from another part of the city heading
in the same direction. At this point the scope of the discussion widens to
include anything anybody happens to have on his mind, from the comedies at last
year’s Lenaea to the price of nails to the political situation in Thrace —
doesn’t matter that none of them know the first thing about what they’re
discussing; Athenians have never allowed mere facts to stand in the way of a
good opinion.
On the seventh day of Metageitnion in the tenth year since the founding of the
city of whatever it was we’d resolved to call it that week, I fell in with a
mixed bunch of neighbours on my way to work. It was a fairly typical mixture for
our city. There were two Macedonians, Ptolemocrates and Amyntas, whose land
backed on to mine; a Corinthian called Pericleidas, a nodding acquaintance from
over the other side of the valley: a Milesian by the name of Thrasyllus, who
played the flute quite well; and five Illyrians, whose names I still didn’t know
after ten years. One of them could speak excellent Greek and he told me his name
was Illus; like his friends, he went to work with his quiver on his belt and his
bow in its case over his left shoulder. When I commented on this, he explained
that it was mostly force of habit, understandable in a forty-year ex-mercenary
who’d first gone to the wars at the age of fourteen. Two of the Illyrians and
Amyntas and Pericleidas had their sons with them, so add another five to the
group, ages ranging from six to nine. We were all carrying our mattocks, and
Ptolemocrates and an Illyrian called Bassus or something such had spades as
well. It was early, an hour after dawn, and the day promised to be hot and
sunny. Most of us were wearing our broad-brimmed hats, apart from Amyntas and
his two boys, who were wearing felt caps copied from the local design.
We’d almost reached the point where Thrasyllus and Bassus the Illyrian were
going to turn off when we noticed that one of the boys had stopped in his tracks
and was staring at the horizon, as if watching something absolutely fascinating.
It so happened that his father, an Illyrian, had been boasting about the boy’s
remarkable eyesight earlier on, and Ptolemocrates, who’d been sceptical about
the man’s claims in this regard, decided to conduct an experiment and asked him
to describe what he could see.
‘Horsemen,’ the boy replied.
Ptolemocrates frowned. ‘Where?’ he said. ‘I can’t see anything.’
‘Over there.’ The boy nodded. ‘Look, there was the sun flashing on something.’
‘He’s right,’ I put in. ‘I saw something flash just now.’
Ptolemocrates was impressed. ‘Well I’m damned,’ he said, ‘I do believe he’s
right. I think I can just make something out myself; but I wouldn’t have known
they were horsemen.
We’d stopped by now to look for ourselves. ‘I can see a couple of dots,’ said
Illus. ‘And I guess they’re going too fast to be on foot, and if they’re
carrying something metal, they can’t be cattle or deer. So the boy must be
right. But he figured it out, he can’t actually see more than a couple of tiny
specks.’
‘Yes I can,’ the boy replied, ‘they’re all wearing yellow, so I guess they’re
Scythians.’
(The local people did wear rather a lot of yellow, for reasons I never could
grasp. Something to do with some plant or flower which grew all over the shop up
here and made an excellent dye for wool.)
‘Are you sure?’ I said.
‘Sure I’m sure,’ the boy answered.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘How many of them do you think there are?’
Th
e boy nodded his head and muttered under his breath as he counted. ‘Fourteen,’
he said.
That threw me. ‘Are you sure?’ I repeated, knowing as I said it that I was doing
a fairly good impersonation of a cross between an idiot and a tree. The boy
didn’t waste any more words on me, just nodded.
‘Out hunting, I suppose,’ someone remarked.
Illus shook his head. ‘Not this time of year,’ he replied. ‘Nothing to hunt.
Could be rounding up strays, but why so many?’
Having disposed of alternatives two and three from the mental checklist we’d all
prepared, we were left with alternative one, something that none of us liked
the thought of very much.
‘War party,’ Amnytas said at last. ‘Raiding cattle from their friends up the
valley, maybe?’
‘Don’t think so,’ said the boy. ‘They’re heading in this direction, actually.’
‘You sure?’
‘Course I’m sure,’ the boy complained. ‘Why does everyone keep asking me that?’
‘Be quiet,’ ordered the boy’s father. ‘See if you can tell more about where
they’re headed.’
The boy scrambled up into a low ash tree to get a better look. ‘Right this way,
it looks like,’ he called down.
‘You sure? I mean, they’re not headed towards the city, are they?’
‘No,’ the boy replied. ‘Don’t think so.’
Oh, I thought. I’d wondered if it might be an embassy from the village with its
escort, but that scuppered that particular theory. We were using up the nice
comforting speculations like a starving family eating the seed-corn. ‘I don’t
suppose you can see if they’re armed,’ I asked.
‘Not from this distance,’ the boy answered. ‘Most of them have got stuff that
flashes in the sun occasionally, but they’d have to be a whole lot closer before
I could say what it is.’
We stood in silence for a while, waiting for the boy to come up with some more
details. It was pretty obvious what we were all thinking.
‘Maybe we shouldn’t be standing out in the open like this,’ said Pericleidas the
Corinthian nervously. ‘Well,’ he added, ‘if it is a war party, and it’s headed
this way—’
He was only saying what we were all thinking; problem was, we were in open, flat
Alexander at the Worlds End Tom Holt Page 33
