“No, he would not,” he said slowly. “Many would side against him, knowing there is one still closer in blood…”
“And you are he?”
“And I am he.”
“And you are in Thebes, Philip.” Pammenes lifted his wine cup, seeming to test the weight of it in his fingers. “And Thebes might decide it is to her advantage to support your claim to be king of Macedon. All this the regent knows, and thus your brother’s life is safe. One can only speculate what there is about you that the Lord Ptolemy fears so much that it is stronger even than his ambition.”
“Possibly nothing more than that I know my brother’s blood is on his hands.”
“Yet you are alive.” After setting the wine cup down again, without tasting it, Pammenes smiled once more, this time with a bit less condescension. “How is that, Prince?”
Philip discovered that he was blushing hotly—less from shame than from some cause he could not have named, even to himself.
“The Lord Ptolemy is my mother’s husband,” he said finally. He had found that if he took a long, slow breath he could pronounce the words with a reasonable appearance of calm. “I am informed she keeps the bed tolerably warm for him, but perhaps she is not so utterly blinded by love that she would fail to notice the murder of yet another son. Perhaps the regent, when he falls asleep at night, prefers to hope that the next morning he will wake up in this world instead of another.”
For a moment Pammenes regarded him in silence, and when he spoke at last there was no longer any trace of a smile on his lips.
“I understand now, Prince, why Pelopidas was so taken with you,” he said. “For it is clear you have the makings of a great man. Never in my life have I seen one so young with so cold a mind.”
* * *
In the morning Philip was given breakfast and told to go out and explore the city. “You are not a prisoner in Thebes,” Pammenes told him. “How can you be a prisoner when we have no interest in menacing your safety and all your enemies are in Pella? You are my guest. You are free to come and go as you like and no one will keep watch over your movements.”
And it was true. This time there was no Zolfi to dog his steps, and not even the watch soldiers at the gates paid any attention to him. Indeed, they did not even seem to know who he was—for the first time in his life, Philip discovered the pleasure of moving through crowd-filled streets as a stranger, anonymous and unrecognized.
The marketplace was disappointingly small. Still, upon inspection it turned out to have much to offer a young man who still carried Bardylis’s Athenian drachmas in a pouch tied to his belt. He had not lived a life that much accustomed him to handling money, but he felt himself to be luxuriously rich.
Naturally, the first thing he purchased was a sword. It was a foot soldier’s weapon, with the blade less than a cubit in length. It was flexible and well balanced—when he held it by its leather-wrapped hilt it felt right in his hand.
Philip had spent his boyhood following Glaukon about the marketplace at Pella, so he knew how to haggle. When the trader finally had his one silver coin he rubbed it carefully between his fingers as if worried that his customer might at last have somehow contrived to cheat him.
There were manuscripts for sale, but it was cheaper to listen to the professional reciters who gathered their audiences outside the wineshops and for a few coppers would entertain with scenes from Aeschylos, taking all the parts, or Hesiod’s genealogies of the gods or passages from Homer. Standing in the sunshine as he listened to the death of Hektor, Philip thought of his friend Aristotle, who was in Athens now, studying philosophy—Aristotle seemed to know Homer complete, even the catalog of ships’ names that put everyone else to sleep. The recollection made him feel homesick.
He remembered Arsinoe and the taste of her mouth, and he imagined it just possible, as he looked down at the cobblestones of a Theban street, that he would die of longing for Pella.
“Beg me not!” The reciter’s voice rose until it almost cracked as he spoke the words of Achilleos. “You cur, to beg in my old father’s name. I would have the gods bless me with such wrath that I might hack the flesh from your bones and eat it!”
In his mind’s eye, Philip saw his brother die again on Praxis’s sword, and all softness died in his breast.
Perhaps, Philip thought, when he killed the Lord Ptolemy he would drag his body nine times around the city walls, until there was hardly enough left of him to burn.
But that must wait. Alexandros’s ghost must wait for his revenge. For now, Macedon belonged to the regent.
“It is only poetry, Philip. You look as if you were about to kill Hektor yourself.”
He turned his head, at first not recognizing the voice. It belonged to a reedy youth who was just tall enough to make him adjust his gaze up about four fingers—Philoxenos, his cousin and the Lord Ptolemy’s only son.
Philoxenos was almost precisely a year older than Philip and, while he might have outgrown the awkwardness of childhood, he had never acquired the charms of manner and person that were so marked in his father. He also lacked the regent’s capacity for deception, for when he smiled, as he did now, he betrayed everything he felt.
The two young men had detested each other all their lives.
“I came looking for you,” he said. “Thebes must seem strange after Pella—I thought you might take comfort in a familiar face.”
It might even have been true.
Eventually, however, after he became quite convinced that Philip wasn’t going to answer him, Philoxenos allowed his smile to flicker out.
“My father wrote and said—”
“And you write him,” Philip broke in. “The regent, it seems, has his spies everywhere.”
“He said you were making wild and treasonous accusations.”
“Oh, hardly that, cousin. I merely suggested that he was behind the king’s murder.”
A look of wild fear came into Philoxenos’s face and he actually appeared to shrink back, as if he had seen a snake in his path. At last, and with a visible effort, he brought himself to smile again.
“Who would believe such a thing?” he asked in a tone that suggested the question contained its own answer. “I think your wits have been turned by grief, Philip.”
And in that moment Philip knew that the son knew nothing of the father’s villainy. If Ptolemy should ever be brought to trial before the assembly, Philoxenos would be condemned with him, for that was the law. But he was entirely innocent. He did not even suspect.
Why should he? Philoxenos was one of those who would always believe the common report, and the regent would never reveal himself to this booby.
The realization tasted almost like shame. Philip suddenly discovered in himself the strong desire to make amends.
“Doubtless you are right,” he said, offering his own smile—he was pleased to observe that Philoxenos seemed relieved. “And, yes, it is agreeable to see a familiar face.” He put his hand across his cousin’s shoulder. “Come, let us buy a wineskin and find a bit of shade, and we will drink together to the pleasures of exile.”
15
As regent to a boy king who by now was almost afraid to look at him, the Lord Ptolemy enjoyed all the authority of a sovereign. He was chief priest and officiated over the daily rites of sacrifice that guaranteed the nation’s safety. He was commander of the army in time of war. In treason trials before the assembly he alone had the power to accuse, and in all lesser matters he was the sole judge of law. His enemies, however, had committed no offenses that could fall within even the most elastic definition of treason, Macedon was at peace, and religious ritual bored him. He had stolen Amyntas’s wife and murdered his son. He had all but stolen his crown. He had satisfied the ambition of thirty years, only to discover that the achievement was hollow and that revenge over the dead smells of their corruption. Had it not been for Philip, he might simply have lost interest.
Philip was all that he had left to fear, and fear alone could remind hi
m of the sweetness of life. But Philip was far away.
Philip at the ear of Pelopidas. The thought of it clawed at Ptolemy’s entrails like a fox digging its burrow. Yet nothing that Philip could say in Thebes could be half so dangerous as what he had already said in Pella—the regent had only to catch Perdikkas’s eye for an instant, and have him glance away as if sick with shame, to know that the king, in his heart, knew that Philip had spoken the truth. It had been the wisest thing to send him to Thebes. Six more months in Macedon, and Ptolemy would certainly have felt compelled to have him killed. Philip was simply too dangerous to be left at home.
Still, it was odd how much Ptolemy felt his absence. When the boy had turned on his heel and begun his journey into exile, Ptolemy had experienced it almost as a defeat. It was humiliating to feel such fear of a mere boy, and somehow worse to experience that fear as an almost sensual pleasure.
Thus it was perhaps not entirely by chance that one evening, about a week after Philip’s departure, Ptolemy returned from a day of hunting and, as he left the royal stables, found himself tarrying to listen to the hoofbeats of a great black stallion as it tried to kick down the gate to its stall.
“That would be Prince Philip’s horse, My Lord,” the chief groom told him. “He’s as restless as a demon. He feels the want of exercise since the prince went on his travels again.”
“Then why don’t you send one of the stableboys out with him?”
The chief groom laughed. He was a tall, gangling man and there was a notch-like scar on his left cheekbone he had carried since he was fourteen, when King Amyntas’s warhorse had tried to scatter his brains.
“No one is fool enough to trust his life to that one, Lord.” He shook his head and laughed again. “He will let no one near him. With the prince he was as gentle as a kitten—I have seen him eat slices of apple from Lord Philip’s hand. Yet he knows but one master. It would be another man’s death to try riding him.”
“What is the beast’s name?”
“Alastor, My Lord.”
The late-afternoon sun filtered in through the stable doors, and the air was heavy with the scent of fresh hay and horse sweat. The Lord Ptolemy had had a good day hunting, and his arms were stained with the stag’s blood. He felt tired, but it was the like the weariness of his youth, suggesting reserves of strength.
Alastor. It was like Philip to name his stallion after an avenging demon. It was like an open dare.
“We will take him with us in the morning,” Ptolemy answered, a little surprised to hear himself speak. “It is a waste of a good mount to leave him here—I will ride him tomorrow when my own horse tires.”
“My Lord, I—”
“I will ride him, Geron. You will see that he is made ready.”
“Yes, My Lord.”
As he bowed, the chief groom’s face was dark with trouble, as if he were being compelled to commit an impiety.
* * *
In the cold light of the first hour after dawn, watching as the great stallion was brought out into the courtyard by mounted grooms—they had him double roped and were walking him out between a pair of geldings to keep him calm—the Lord Ptolemy knew a moment of doubt. “This horse is a man-killer,” he whispered to himself. But like the shadow of a flying bird that passes swiftly over the ground, the thought flickered through his soul and then, in an instant, was gone. Only its memory lingered, and with it the brassy taste of fear.
No, he would not wait, since fear was a burden that fattened upon itself.
“Geron, as soon as we are beyond the city gates, where he cannot scour me off against a wall, you will take my horse and I will ride the Lord Philip’s.”
The chief groom said nothing, but he frowned in disapproval.
As soon as the Lord Ptolemy had dismounted, the grooms jumped down from their geldings and began to peg their leads to the ground, keeping the ropes short so that the stallion could not pull his head back. At last Geron came forward with the bit—it was a training bit, used only with the unruliest animals, a cruel piece of worked iron that would cut to shreds the mouth of any horse that fought against it—and slipped it over Alastor’s head. Then he walked back to where the regent was waiting.
“He is a brute and will use every weakness against you, My Lord. Do not be shy with him, but teach him quickly that you mean to be the master.”
“That is always good advice.”
The Lord Ptolemy managed a tight little smile that only hinted how much he might have taken offense, but the chief groom read its meaning in full and bowed.
“My father put me on my first horse before I could walk, Geron. I commanded the king’s right wing in battle when I was not yet seventeen. This is but another stallion with too much fire in its blood—I will manage.”
“I meant no offense, My Lord.”
“And I have taken none.” He allowed the smile to die away. “When I have my legs over him your men may resume their mounts, but let them keep their ropes tight. I think it best to let him grow accustomed to my weight, and to let the bit teach him to behave himself.”
“It shall be as you command, My Lord.”
He understood well enough what the knave was thinking: Philip had ridden his Alastor for the first time with nothing but a rope halter—it was said he could command the stallion with just a whispered word and the pressure of his knees—but Ptolemy was not a reckless boy to hazard his life needlessly. If he could break the horse to his will, that was victory enough.
At first with the bit in his mouth the stallion was restless and skittish, even striking out at the two geldings with his hooves. Gradually, however, he began to settle down, and at last the regent made his approach.
The Lord Ptolemy had indeed lived his whole life around horses, and he knew the astonishing range of emotions they were capable of expressing. Thus he understood that the low whinny that seemed to come from deep within the stallion’s chest registered less fear than something very like a smoldering outrage.
Could a horse resent an insult? It would seem so—Philip’s Alastor seemed to take it as an offense that any other man should presume to curb his will. The Lord Ptolemy found he was almost glad.
“I know not what Philip used to break your will,” he murmured as his hand came down lightly on the stallion’s neck, “but I fancy that this time simple force will answer well enough. I am no boy to suffer your little whims.”
Alastor rolled his great black eyes and pulled his head away, but had grown strangely quiet.
The Lord Ptolemy grabbed two great handfuls of mane and threw himself over the stallion’s back. When he was well mounted he picked up the reins and gave them a sharp upward pull. Instantly the stallion bellowed with pain.
“Do we understand each other now?”
With a nod to the grooms mounted on either side of him, Ptolemy dug his heels into Alastor’s shining black flanks and the stallion jolted forward.
Alastor was not easily curbed. He fought the bit and the rider, rearing up so that his front hooves clawed at the air, but in the end, when his mouth was streaming with blood and the slightest tug on the reins dug into raw flesh, he seemed to give up.
Within half an hour Ptolemy decided to let the grooms slip their ropes that he might ride alone. After a few minutes he urged the stallion into a canter and then into a slow gallop, and for the first time he sensed the beast’s enormous power.
At last, when he felt some confidence in his control, he let the stallion have his head and they tore over the empty ground together so fast that the world became a blur before his eyes.
Yet, in the end, Alastor answered to the bit and slowed to a docile trot.
The Lord Ptolemy turned back toward his hunting party.
“Take him back to the stables,” he said, sliding down to the ground and handing the reins to Geron. Alastor was lathered with sweat and the muscles in his great flanks quivered under the skin. “Let him ponder today’s lesson—I will ride him again before he has had a chance to forget it
, but at present his mouth is too tender for the day’s hunting.”
He climbed back on his own horse and rode away to amuse himself.
* * *
When he returned from hunting, the Lord Ptolemy always liked to take a cup of wine and a little fruit and then nap for half an hour. He always woke up in a cheerful mood, but he had discovered over the years that the crude fellowship of other men had a tendency to blunt his gaiety. Thus he preferred to pass the hours before the nightly revels of the King’s companions either alone or in the company of women. Eurydike, when it suited her, could be a very agreeable companion, and she was too proud to prevail upon his good humor to ask for favors. Thus the early evening had become a time he usually spent with his wife.
On this particular evening, after his encounter with the black stallion that had belonged to her son, he was strangely reluctant to be in her presence. He could not have explained why, not even to himself, but he was not particularly pleased when, after a longer-than-usual sleep, he opened his eyes and beheld her, smiling one of her unreadable smiles that always seemed to mirror back some doubt he had smothered into unconsciousness in his own breast.
He knew, the instant he saw her face, that she had heard something. Well, that was to be expected. There were no secrets from the regent’s wife.
“What hour is it?” he asked, making a show of wiping the sleep from his eyes—he wondered why he troubled himself with these petty deceptions and felt suddenly ashamed.
“It is just twilight.”
The Lady Eurydike handed him a cup of wine and, although he did not really want it, he took a swallow before setting it down on the floor beside his bed.
She rose from where she had been sitting beside him and lit a lamp. The light from it threw a yellow aura about her arm, like the mantle of a goddess.
“You must have been tired,” she went on, not looking at him. “Was the sport good today?”
There was an edge in her voice that made him wary. He waited a long time before answering.
“Only fair.”
The Macedonian Page 17
