It looked blasphemous to Satyrus. And very beautiful.
‘Leon? You brought an army to visit me?’ Ptolemy was running to fat, and his high forehead and straight nose made him so ugly he was almost handsome. He rose from a heavy chair of lemonwood and ivory to clasp the Numidian’s hand.
It was not the tone of a king about to murder one of his richest subjects. Satyrus felt the blood retreat from his face, and his pulse slowed.
‘We all thought it wisest to come together,’ Diodorus said.
‘Meaning that you feared my reaction to this young scapegrace’s attack on the Athenian ambassador. And well you might. Boy, what in Hades or Earth or the Heavens above moved you to attack the Athenian ambassador?’
Satyrus looked at Leon and received a nod of approbation. So he told the truth. ‘He has tried to murder me before – and my sister. I want to kill him. Despite this, Lord Ptolemy, I took no action against him. His man attacked me, and I dealt with him.’ He bowed his head. ‘I am conscious of the religious obligations of a man towards a herald or an ambassador.’
Ptolemy smiled. His wide eyes appeared guileless when he smiled, giving him that look of pleased surprise that had earned him the nickname Farm Boy. Those who knew him well knew that the look was utterly deceptive.
‘In other words, you are the outraged innocent and he is a viper at my breast?’ the king asked.
Leon stepped in front of his nephew. ‘Yes, lord. That is exactly so.’
Ptolemy fingered his chin and sat back down in his chair. ‘Seats and wine for my guests. I’m not some fucking Persian, to keep them all standing for awe of me. Boy, you’ve put me in a spot and no mistake. I need Cassander. I need Athens. Stratokles is the price I pay for it, and he brought me news. I need him!’ He glared at Leon. ‘You and this Athenian have a history. Don’t deny it – Gabines is a competent spymaster and I know things.’
Leon remained closest to the king when stools were brought. ‘Is it nothing to you, Lord Ptolemy, that I have finished my summer cruise, and that I, too, have news?’
‘Credit me with a little sense, Leon. I invited you here. No one has been arrested.’ Ptolemy pointed at a side table with a wine cooler on it and closed his fist. At the signal, a squad of slaves appeared and began to pour wine.
Leon took a phiale from the side table and poured a libation. ‘To Hermes, god of merchants and wayfarers and thieves,’ he said. It was a curious gesture – the host usually poured the libation. Satyrus thought that his uncle was telling the king something. He just didn’t know what it was.
‘Since you are all three of them,’ the king said with a smile.
Leon shrugged. ‘Heraklea is buzzing with rumours of war,’ he said. ‘Antigonus is planning a campaign against Cassander and he’s put his son in charge of an expedition – somewhere. No one knows where the golden boy is going. He had already marched when I left the coast.’ He looked around. ‘And his fleet is at sea, and we don’t know where it is going. Rumour is he’s going to lay siege to Rhodos.’
Ptolemy nodded. ‘Exactly what Stratokles says.’ He cocked his head to one side. ‘Cassander has asked me to send him an army.’
‘Don’t do it, lord,’ Diodorus said.
Ptolemy glanced at the red-haired man. ‘Wily Odysseus, why not?’
‘Call me what you will, lord. Cassander has the whole of Macedon to recruit. If we send him our best, he’ll buy them as well – with farms at home, if nothing else – and we’ll never have them back. We’re far from the source of manpower, and he’s close. Let him raise his own levies. And perhaps send us some!’ He looked around. ‘We’re recruiting infantry from the Aegean and Asia and soon we’ll be reduced to Aegyptians.’
Ptolemy nodded. ‘I may send him some ships,’ he said. ‘But I regret to say that I have summoned you to forbid your expedition into the Euxine, Leon.’
Leon nodded slowly. ‘I had your promise, lord.’ He glanced at Satyrus.
Satyrus held himself still. No one had told him anything directly, but he had felt the expedition must be close – Philokles had dropped hints.
He wasn’t sure whether he was angry or relieved.
Ptolemy put his chin in his hand and nodded. ‘Circumstances change. Eumeles and his kingdom are allies of Cassander. I can’t afford to have you making trouble there just now. I need to know that Antigonus and his army are going to Europe and not coming here. Then I’ll let you go – with my blessing, which will have a very tangible effect. You and your nephew ruling the northern grain trade would be of the utmost value to us – to Aegypt and to our allies in Rhodos. But not this year.’
Leon gave a faint shrug. ‘Very well, lord.’
‘I’m sorry, Leon, I need better than that. Your oath, and your nephew’s, that you will obey me in this.’ Ptolemy’s voice hardened for the first time, and suddenly he wasn’t a genial old duffer. He was absolute ruler of Aegypt, even if he didn’t call himself pharaoh yet. Yet.
Diodorus – one of Ptolemy’s most valued men – nodded, the closest to a sign of submission that an Athenian aristocrat ever made to anyone. He glanced at the guards. ‘Lord, you know us,’ he said.
Ptolemy nodded.
‘You know that we – Coenus, me, Leon, Philokles and a few others – follow the Pythagorean code.’ He spoke forcefully, if quietly. Satyrus leaned forward, because all his life he had heard from his tutor about Pythagoreans, and it had never occurred to him that his tutor and his mentors were all initiates.
Ptolemy gave a half-smile. ‘I know it.’
‘We do not lightly take oaths, lord. In fact, we avoid them, as binding man too close to the gods. But if you require our oath, we will keep it. For ever. Is that what you want?’ Satyrus had never heard Diodorus sound so passionate.
‘Yes,’ Ptolemy said. ‘Get on with it.’
Leon took a deep breath. ‘Very well, lord. I swear by Hermes, and by Poseidon, Lord of Horses, by Zeus, father of the gods, and all the gods, to obey you in this. My hand will not fall on Eumeles this year – though he betrayed my friendship and murdered Satyrus’s mother, though his hands are stained in innocent blood to the wrists, though the Furies rip at me every night until he is put in the earth-’
‘Enough!’ the king cried, rising from his seat. ‘Enough. I know that you have reason to hate him. I have reason to demand your oath. And you, boy?’
Satyrus stepped forward. ‘I have sworn to the gods to kill every man and woman who ordered the death of my mother,’ he said. ‘The laws of the gods protect Stratokles, and now you, my king, order me to preserve Eumeles. Can you order me to break my oath to the gods?’
Ptolemy nodded. ‘I carry the burden of every oath I ask my subjects to carry,’ he said. ‘Obey!’
Satyrus took a deep breath. ‘By Zeus the Saviour and Athena, grey-eyed goddess of wisdom, I swear to wait one year in my vengeance against Heron, who calls himself Eumeles,’ he said. ‘By Herakles my patron, I swear not to take the life of Stratokles for one year.’
Ptolemy raised an eyebrow at Leon. ‘One year? Is the boy attempting to bargain with his lord?’
Satyrus made himself meet Ptolemy’s heavy gaze. ‘Lord, yesterday I didn’t even know that there was to be such an expedition. I can wait a year. If the year passes, perhaps I can wait another year.’ Satyrus felt the grey-eyed goddess at his shoulder, guiding his words. ‘Perhaps we can renew the oath like a truce.’
‘Philokles, you have nurtured a rhetorician!’ the king said.
‘Satyrus has grown to manhood at this court,’ Philokles said. He sipped his wine. ‘And the essence of the teaching of Pythagoras has apparently slipped into his blood.’ The Spartan gave Satyrus a smile that made Satyrus feel as light as air.
‘There’s more,’ Leon said. ‘You wouldn’t have summoned us merely to prevent the expedition.’
‘You mistake me, Leon,’ Ptolemy said. He held out his cup for more wine. ‘Or perhaps you don’t. Yes, there is more. I am going to exile young Satyrus for a few months.
To placate the Athenian.’
‘Good gods!’ Leon said. He shot to his feet, and his anger rolled off him in waves. ‘You get my oath and then exile my boy!’
Ptolemy gave a grim smile. ‘Got it in one. Send him to sea, Leon. Later, I will of course allow my erring young prince to return.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m sorry, Satyrus. But I need the Athenians right now, and I need Cassander sweet – and bearing the brunt of One-Eye’s attack.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s a hard thing, ruling. I suspect that Stratokles the Viper intends to kill your charges.’ Ptolemy shrugged, and grinned. ‘If I exile you, and you take your sister – well, he can hardly complain, and he’s unlikely to find a way to kill you, either. Everyone’s equally unhappy.’ Ptolemy looked around. ‘I don’t intend to let him kill these children, but neither, frankly, will I imperil an alliance that I need – that Aegypt needs – to preserve two teenagers, however wonderful.’
Coenus stood up. ‘Listen to me, Ptolemy. You call yourself lord of Aegypt – I remember you as a page, and as a battalion officer. Is that what you learned about loyalty and command? What is this, Hephaestion’s style? You know what they say about you in the army? That Antigonus will take us any time he wants, because he’s a real Macedonian. Understands duty and honour and loyalty to his own.’ The big man shrugged. ‘Half the men in the city saw what happened today at Cimon’s. You know yourself that the boy is guiltless. When you exile him, it’s another sign you won’t protect your own.’
‘Watch yourself, old man,’ Ptolemy said.
Diodorus stretched his legs in front of him. ‘I remember a campfire in Bactria,’ he said dreamily. ‘You owe us, O King. And we’re your friends.’
Ptolemy nodded. ‘Yes!’ he said. ‘Yes, I do think that you men are my friends. And so I believe that I can ask this of you – I call you in private and I ask for this exile, so that I can preserve appearances. And so you can preserve the boy’s life – I’m not a fool, Leon. I told you that I know that this Stratokles will try for the boy – and the girl, too. Because Cassander’s stupid ally needs them dead.’
Leon raised his face, and the scowl dropped from his dark features. ‘Oh – are you asking, lord?’
Ptolemy’s face underwent a remarkable set of changes – anger, puzzlement, amusement, laughter. ‘I’ve been playing at royalty too long,’ he said. ‘Yes, I’m asking. If you decline, I’ll find another answer.’
‘Ah!’ Leon said. ‘That’s another thing entirely. If you ask,’ he glanced at Satyrus, ‘as a favour, then we will of course do it for you.’
Ptolemy nodded. ‘As for the army,’ he said to Coenus, ‘I know that they are discontented. What can I do? Send them to fight in Nubia? Pay them better?’
‘Make them feel noble,’ Coenus said. ‘They want to be heroes, not bodyguards.’
Ptolemy sighed. ‘Do they even remember how fucking miserable life in Macedon was?’ he asked. ‘Or the campaigns in Bactria? Zeus Soter, that was Hades risen to fill the middle world. Tartarus incarnate.’
Leon rose to his feet. ‘Lord, it occurs to me that I can send a cargo to Rhodos as early as tomorrow. They are our allies, and they are virtually under siege – every mina of grain will count. It will do us no harm to see if Demetrios has laid siege to Rhodos – or Tyre. Or gone elsewhere – and what armament he has. I must go and make my preparations.’ He glanced at Coenus. ‘Is Xeno ready to ship out?’
Coenus smiled. ‘Now there’s at least one man happy in all this!’
Ptolemy rose and clasped hands all around. ‘I’m glad you all came to put me in my place,’ he growled. He turned to Coenus. ‘How bad are the Macedonians, Coenus?’
Coenus drained his wine and handed the cup to a slave. ‘Do I look like an informer, Ptolemy? Eh?’ Satyrus thought that the gentleman-trooper had to be one of just a handful of men who called Lord Ptolemy by name all the time. Then the Megaran’s face changed, softened, and he shook his head. ‘No, but listen. They don’t hate you – some still love you. But the word in the ranks is that any contest with Antigonus is a foregone conclusion. I’ve heard men in the Foot Companions say that the phalangites won’t fight – they’ll just stand ten yards apart and watch.’ Coenus shook his head again. ‘Of the officers – there’s rot there, but you know it as well as I.’
Ptolemy drained a cup of wine. ‘Gabines?’
The steward hurried forward from behind the throne. ‘It is much as he says, lord.’ Gabines looked apologetic. ‘I could bring you wit nesses.’
‘I have all the witnesses I need standing in front of me. Leon, listen to me – you and a dozen like you are the pillars that support this city. Understand me – and tell your friends, the Nabataeans and the Jews and all the other merchants. We cannot afford to fight. I know my army has rot all the way to the officer cadre. I know it! And that means that I have to rely on guile to keep Cassander and Antigonus off me.’
Philokles raised an eyebrow. He raised a hand to speak, opened his mouth and fell silent – his lips moving like a fish. It was rare for Philokles to behave so, but such was his power at court that the king waited, and on the second attempt, Philokles managed to speak.
‘It seems to me that it is time to try an alternate source of manpower,’ Philokles said.
Ptolemy nodded. ‘What do you suggest? Spartans?’
Philokles frowned. ‘Aegyptians. A citizen levy, like the hoplites of any Greek city.’
Ptolemy scratched under his chin, eyes on his guards, some of whom couldn’t stop themselves from mutters as the idea was broached. ‘They make awful soldiers,’ he said.
‘They once conquered the world, or so I understand,’ Philokles said. ‘Besides, I rather intended to suggest the citizens of this city – Greeks and Hellenes. And Nabataeans and Jews and native Aegyptians and the whole polyglot crew. You have been generous in granting citizenship – now is the time to see if these people are citizens in fact or only in name.’
‘By the gods, Philokles, listening to you is like having an ephor of my very own. Who will command this mongrel mob?’ Ptolemy asked.
Silence fell over the room. Ptolemy’s eyes met Satyrus’s, and the young man couldn’t look away. It was odd, to have the eye of the ruler and want to be out from under it. Why is he looking at me?
‘The Macedonian army has a nice tradition,’ Ptolemy said. ‘The author of a “great idea” is considered to have volunteered to lead. Why don’t you raise this city levy, Spartan? I know you are the hoplomachos of all spear-fighters in the city. You can train them to be Spartans!’
Philokles got red in the face. ‘You mock me,’ he said.
‘Careful there, Spartan. You Pythagoreans are supposed to avoid anger.’ Ptolemy grinned. ‘But I do not mock you. It’s a fine idea – and I can afford it. Money we have. Find me a taxeis of locals and I’ll arm them. If nothing else, it offers me-’ He hesitated, and then smiled. ‘Options.’ Lord Ptolemy didn’t describe what his options might be.
Philokles nodded and pursed his lips. Satyrus knew him so well that he could feel the oncoming rebuke. The skin over the Spartan’s nostrils grew white, and the philosopher’s grip on the staff he usually carried grew white-knuckled. And then his face softened, and he gave a faint smile.
‘Very well,’ Philokles said. ‘I accept.’
‘Good. Gentlemen, for all that you are the very foundation of my rule in Aegypt, it is late, and I have had too much wine.’ Ptolemy rose.
Leon and Satyrus bowed gracefully. Diodorus, Philokles and Coenus nodded and clasped Ptolemy’s hands like the old friends they were, whatever his power.
‘My chair is always filled for any of you. Even the boy. Listen, boy – I saw you fight Theron today. I liked what I saw. Go away for a while and I’ll have you back in style. Here’s my hand on it.’ Satyrus took the king’s hand. Then Ptolemy smiled around at all of them like a conspirator and vanished into a screen of soldiers, and they withdrew.
‘It seems to me that for all your complaints, you got exactly what you wanted,’ Philokle
s said quietly to Leon.
‘You’re the dangerous one,’ Leon said. ‘A taxeis of locals? Suddenly you’re going to have political power. And enemies. Welcome to my world.’
‘I expect I will,’ Philokles said. ‘Should that deter me from an action that will help to balance the disaffection of the Macedonians and will render all of us safer? Stratokles is here, Leon. In this city. We need to gather our friends.’
Outside in the darkness, they all gulped lungfuls of smoky Alexandrian air. Satyrus was old enough to realize that they had all been as scared as he.
‘Where will we go?’ Satyrus asked. ‘Rhodos, really?’
‘We?’ Leon asked. ‘You will take the cargo as my navarch. You’ll have excellent officers who you will listen to as if they were your uncles. You can sell a cargo and buy one, I hope?’
Satyrus’s heart swelled to fill his chest. ‘I’ll be navarch myself ?’ he asked.
Diodorus slapped him on the shoulder. ‘You keep telling us you’re a man,’ he said.
A slave approached from the shadow of the megaron, guiding a woman with a shawl over her head. ‘Lord Satyrus,’ she called quietly.
Before his uncles could restrain him, Satyrus responded, ‘Here!’
The young woman took his hand. ‘Your sister intends to stay the night,’ she said in a whisper, ‘and requests that you visit her for a moment before you go.’
Leon shook his head. ‘I’m afraid that I cannot allow my niece to spend the night in the palace,’ he said. ‘She has urgent duties to which she must attend.’
The young woman’s face was white as tawed leather under the shawl. ‘Oh – oh dear!’ she said. ‘Then you must come with me, lords.’
She led the way to the women’s quarters.
‘Where are my torch-bearers?’ Leon asked the palace slave.
‘I don’t know, lord. I’ll find them and meet you on the portico of the women’s wing.’ The slave turned and ran.
The women’s palace was well lit, and sounds of laughter and music carried out into the night. A kithara was being played – two kitharas. And Melitta was singing with Kallista. Satyrus grinned.
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