“And would not cavalry serve even better?” Philip asked. They were at dinner in Pammenes’ house, and he had drunk enough of his host’s wine to have found his courage again.
Epaminondas frowned, and Pammenes, who had been silent during most of the discussion, suddenly burst into laughter.
“Philip, my young friend, you must wait until Pelopidas returns from the north before you will hear anything of cavalry,” he said finally. “For Epaminondas can hardly bring himself to admit that a horse makes even a decent pack animal.”
“That is not the case.” Epaminondas picked up his wine cup and then put it back down without bringing it to his lips. It was obvious that he was struggling hard not to appear offended, and just as obvious that he was. “Pelopidas has demonstrated time and again the role that cavalry can play in determining the outcome of battle. I, who fought beside him against the Spartans, would be the last to belittle his accomplishment.”
“I beg your pardon, my old comrade,” said Pammenes, placing a hand upon his friend’s arm. “It was never my intention to suggest—”
“I know it was not.”
The two men, who between them shared supreme authority both within Thebes itself and over the great league of states it dominated, joined hands across the table in a gesture of reconciliation that demonstrated more eloquently than any words their perfect confidence in one another. The moment was brief, but it stirred Philip of Macedon, who was its only witness, to the depths of his being, for it showed what was possible when ambition was replaced by generosity of spirit.
In Pella, they would have been at one another’s throats.
“Yet I think,” Epaminondas went on as if nothing had happened, “that even Pelopidas, were he among us, would concede pride of place to infantry. Cavalry can swell the tide of victory, but it labors under too many disadvantages ever to be more than an auxiliary force.”
He picked up his wine cup again and this time drank. It was still in his hand when a shadow of suppressed anger returned to his hand.
“But it is evident you doubt me, Prince.”
Philip was momentarily saved the ordeal of a reply by a renewal of Pammenes’ intemperate laughter.
“My friend Epaminondas assumes that because he has triumphed over some of the best armies in the world no one has the right to question his judgment as a soldier.”
“Such an assumption would strike me or anyone else as entirely justified.” Philip addressed his remark to Pammenes, but out of the corner of his eye he noted the ghost of a smile on Epaminondas’s lips. “And I am neither so callow nor so stupid as to dispute strategy with one of the world’s greatest commanders. I am merely surprised, since the traditions of my own country favor cavalry to the neglect of infantry. I wish only to learn…”
Then it was Epaminondas’s turn to laugh.
“Clearly our young hostage’s services to Macedon are destined to be as much diplomatic as military.” He reached across the table and cuffed Philip good-naturedly on the side of the head. “I have been on this earth long enough, my boy, to know when I am being flattered, but you too are wise to tread lightly around the vanity of those whom the world calls great.”
With his own hand the hero of Leuctra freshened the wine in Philip’s cup. When he spoke again it was in the confidential manner of an old friend.
“I may be brewing up a disaster for Thebes ten or twenty years hence, and yet I think I do no more than explain what a few more months among us would reveal to you in any case. So I will enlighten you as to the proper relationship between infantry and cavalry…”
* * *
The summer heat was fierce over the Boeotian plains, making the air dance. One felt the sun’s scorching weight pressing down on one’s back, and merely to glance up into its light was like being struck with a hammer. Soldiers rose early to finish their drill while it was still morning, and by the middle of the afternoon everyone in Thebes was hiding under whatever shade they could find. The city seemed half-asleep.
Philip liked to spend the time in a wineshop called the Yellow Fig, just inside the main gate. He liked it because the wine was not watered beyond decency and because the woman who owned it, a widow not far past her twentieth year, seemed to enjoy flirting with him, and because it was much frequented by mercenaries.
Greece was full of men who had no profession except that of arms and who would fight for anyone who paid them. They had no country, no prejudices, and no loyalty except to their own commanders. Because their lives took them everywhere—some of them had fought for the king of Persia, even against their own cities—they bore no ill will toward foreigners.
Philip was something of a favorite among them. He was an aristocrat, but he did not hold himself aloof. Indeed, he seemed to admire these rough infantrymen with the dust of a thousand roads on their sandals, as if the warrior’s virtues were the only ones that mattered. And, besides, he liked to listen to their stories. A soldier always enjoys having an audience for his stories.
“Now Jason—there was a man to work for,” remarked Theseus, a heavy-limbed Aetolian with a face like leather, who had “followed the spear,” as the saying was, since he was fifteen. He was expanding on his favorite themes: the merits and failings of the various commanders under whom he had had the pleasure of serving. “He always paid us on time. And in silver. The Pheraeans could starve, but his soldiers never missed a payday. Tyrants make the best employers. When I heard Jason had been assassinated, I made sacrifice of wine for the repose of his ghost. By the gods, I loved the man!”
“I was there. You were drunk on that awful Thasian that tastes like piss, and you knocked over a jar on your way outside to throw up. We all agreed, it was a touching gesture.”
Everyone laughed at this, even Gobryas, who told it, who was Theseus’s closest friend—even Theseus himself.
“Theseus is narrow-minded,” Gobryas went on to explain. “He recognizes no other virtue in a general beyond possession of a full treasury.”
“There is no other virtue.” For emphasis, Theseus hit the table with the flat of his hand, hard enough to make the wine cups jump.
“What about indecisiveness?”
Gobryas smiled as Theseus nodded reluctant agreement. Unlike his friend he was thin and bony, with eyes that seemed lost in the immense depth of their sockets.
“Yes,” Theseus conceded with the air of one having been reminded of the obvious, “there is much to be said in favor of indecisiveness. A commander who knows his own mind will most often win or lose pretty quickly, and either way a fellow is out of work. I like a protracted war with plenty of truces so you have a chance to spend your wages. By Aphrodite’s backside, what if I were killed in battle with my pay pouch still full of drachmas—wouldn’t that be a bloody waste!”
“Athenian politicians make the best generals. They’d rather talk than fight any day, and they usually don’t know what they’re doing.”
“Except a man has to be a fool to work for the Athenians. Two times out of three that belching club they call their assembly will cut off funds for the war, and then you can whistle for your money. Democracy! Phugh!”
There was a general murmur of assent from around the tiny room, which was almost as hot as it was out on the street and certainly a good deal closer. Philip, who was still tolerably sober, studied the faces of the men around him with the cold and ruthless calm with which his friend Aristotle used to cut open frogs to measure the length of their entrails. He felt he was learning a valuable lesson about the necessity of considering a subordinate’s motives. Perhaps if Alexandros had learned it, he might still be alive. Or perhaps not, since a mercenary’s motives had at least the merit of simplicity.
“What is the Athenian army like?” he asked when the issue appeared settled and everyone seemed in danger of falling into a comfortable stupor.
“Like?” Gobryas stared at him fiercely, as if the question constituted some manner of insult. “It isn’t like anything. Most particularly it is not li
ke an army.”
“What it is like,” interjected Theseus, “is an elderly maiden’s defense of her virginity—half-hearted and unnecessary.”
This jest had such merit that Theseus himself laughed at it, longer than anyone else. When he was finished he had to wipe the tears from his eyes.
“Then how has Athens survived, since she seems to be constantly at war with someone? Why have not the other states long since overwhelmed her?”
The two old soldiers regarded each other for a moment and then, in the same instant, turned their gaze on Philip, who was beginning to wonder if he had not touched on some sore point between them.
“Athens hardly needs an army,” Theseus announced at last in a tone that bordered on indignation. “She has her ships and one of the best ports in the world, so she cannot be starved out. Her wealth is derived from trade, so she will not suffer greatly for having her countryside ravaged. And her walls are not easily breached so long as the citizens have the heart to defend them. The Athenians can afford to be poor soldiers.”
“Have you ever served under Athenian commanders?”
“Philip, why do you ask so many questions?” Gobryas’s deep-set eyes, which before had registered indignation, now narrowed with suspicion. “You live in the house of Pammenes, and we see you constantly in company with Epaminondas—did they send you to spy on us?”
Philip found he was not able to suppress a smile.
“They accuse me of spying for the Macedonians.”
“Which, of course, being a Macedonian yourself, you do.”
“Of course.” Philip shrugged his shoulders as if to acknowledge, what could be more obvious?
“Then why do you spend so much time with common louts like us?”
Gobryas, to his credit, was no longer suspicious, merely curious.
“Because I would learn the military arts,” Philip answered. “And because, while wars may be fought in the minds of commanders, battles are fought on the bare ground. There is much that happens there of which men like Pammenes and Epaminondas, for all their genius, know nothing. Or perhaps have merely forgotten. Forgive me if I offend against your natural humility, but I suspect that ‘common louts’ have full as much to teach of war as the greatest general—even if he be a Theban.”
Theseus leaned across the table to take him by the ears.
“Philip, I love you, for you are a clever lad,” he said and then administered a rough kiss to the top of Philip’s head before releasing him. “It is much to be regretted that you were born a prince, since you have the makings of a fine mercenary.”
And then he looked about him, as if he had just that instant noticed where he was.
“Madzos, you whore! Where are you hiding our wine?”
The mistress of the house, who was pretty and still quite young, came out from the back room, carrying a large urn that still glistened with drops of water from the well bottom where it had been left all that day to cool. Great patches of her tunic were also wet so that it clung to her breasts and belly in a manner that could not help but make a man’s mouth go dry. She smiled at Philip and, as she set the jar down in the center of the table, her hip just happened to brush against his shoulder.
They all watched spellbound as she retreated back into her sanctum.
“What a pair of breasts!” Gobryas murmured with something like awe. “Her little nipples are as hard and sharp as spear points. A man would have to be careful he did not impale himself.”
“I would volunteer to risk it.”
Theseus sighed heavily and then turned his attention back to Philip.
“She likes you,” he said with the air of having discovered something. “What I would not give to be in your place—if I had been lucky enough to take her fancy I would give up soldiering. I would settle down here in Thebes and divide my prowess between the wine jug and that pretty brown backside.”
“The two are not perfectly compatible,” Gobryas pointed out. “It is no easy business keeping your dagger stiff with a skin full of drink. Better leave her to Philip.”
“Yes, but he is a prince and will find better ways to spend his life than in the arms of a tavern wench.”
“What better ways? There is no better way.”
Everyone laughed at this except Philip, whose cheeks burned as if he still felt the pressure of Madzos’s flesh against his own.
And then he remembered the softness of another’s caress, and his own words, whispered into the darkness—I want only to be like this forever. I will never leave you.
17
“So—your mother informs me that you could not wait for her to find you a husband. How far along are you, girl?”
Arsinoe blushed crimson as much with smothered rage as with shame. It infuriated her to see the Lady Eurydike’s tight little smile as she sat there, her hands folded in her lap, waiting for an answer. For this reason, as much as any other, she would not meet her gaze but kept her eyes on the floor.
This was not what she had expected when she had gone to her mother, not knowing what else to do, not knowing what to expect. Tears, perhaps. Or curses shouted after her as she was hounded out of her home. Certainly not the stern, set face, the frozen silence in which the very sound of her daughter’s voice seemed to wither and die. And, in the end, the voice that carried no hint of pity, or even regret. “You must speak to the Lady Eurydike—since Amyntas was your grandsire’s cousin, and since you claim her son for the father. She must dispose of the matter as she sees fit.”
Since you claim her son for the father. How those words had stung her heart!
But at least the interview was being conducted in the privacy of the mother of kings’ reception room—at least she had been spared the smiles and mocking jests of the whole court. At least, for now.
“A little more than two months, My Lady.”
“You can be so precise? You surprise me.”
“I have missed my time twice now, My Lady. And the Lord Philip has been gone eight days beyond the moon’s second turning. I saw him last the night before he left.”
“His departure was conveniently timed, since it prevents him from disputing the intimacy—my son is very young, Arsinoe. And you have had no lover since?”
“No, My Lady.”
“But there have been others before him.”
It was not even a question. Arsinoe risked a glance and saw at once that she had no secrets left. The Lady Eurydike knew everything. Her own mother might have suspected, but the Lady Eurydike knew. The expression of those eyes did not admit of a doubt.
“One other, My Lady, but he is not the father.”
“How long ago, my child?”
The mother of kings’ smile broadened just a shade, and with a little start of surprise Arsinoe realized that she had been tricked. Yes, of course—what hope had a mere girl against the cunning of age?
Still, there was no point in lying now.
“Six, seven months ago. And only once. I am no harlot, My Lady.”
She looked at this woman with the purest hatred. Everyone knew that the Lady Eurydike had, for years before his death, wronged the old king’s bed. Many said she and the Lord Ptolemy had murdered him—what were Arsinoe’s little transgressions compared to these?
And yet it was the Lady Eurydike who sat in judgment, as if she spoke with the voice of Hera.
“Of course not, my child. If you say you are not a harlot, then you are not. I may be forgiven, however, if I do not perfectly trust that the weight in your belly is my son’s work.
“Yet you are a kinswoman…”
Arsinoe waited through the silence that followed, unable to conquer the feeling that it hardly mattered what became of her. It was all gone now—she had thought she might be Philip’s wife, but she had lost that gamble. Philip’s wife …
The Lady Eurydike’s eyes flashed with malicious triumph. Why did this business please her so much? Whose happiness did she believe herself to be destroying?
Yes. How she mus
t hate her son.
“Yet you are a kinswoman, and I cannot let you ruin yourself utterly.” Her lover’s mother straightened her back, like a cat stretching itself in the sunlight. “We must arrange a marriage for you, lest your child come into the daylight a bastard. You shall have a husband, although not one such as you would wish. Not one so pleasing to your vanity as my son might have been.”
* * *
As king, Perdikkas was expected to host his cousin’s wedding, but fortunately all that was required of him was his presence on the day. That was enough. There was nothing of pleasure in these family duties, and before he heard she was to marry the Lord Lukios, he had hardly even noticed Arsinoe’s existence.
Lukios, for all that he was an ox and a fool, was a great friend of the Lord Ptolemy’s—all the more so now that the regent had found him a bride less than half his age. The man’s gratitude was almost as embarrassing to witness as his lust, and it was appalling enough to witness the way he pawed the girl during the wedding banquet, running his hands over her bare shoulders as if, now that the actual ceremony was concluded, he could hardly restrain himself mounting her on the spot. She bore it with a calm that was almost like insensibility. It was almost possible to pity her.
“Look at him,” the Lord Ptolemy murmured, leaning toward Perdikkas, who was sitting beside him, as he refilled his wine cup. “The more drunk he becomes, the more amorous—and he is very amorous. Their wedding night would make an amusing spectacle. I will be sorry to miss it.”
As each day of his reign succeeded the last, Perdikkas grew more and more afraid of his stepfather. And never more than when the Lord Ptolemy seemed most intimate and confidential. It was like watching a serpent writhe to display its pretty skin.
“You may not miss it,” Perdikkas said, his voice as flat as he could make it. “Behold—My Lord Lukios seems determined to consummate the marriage under our very eyes.”
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