The Macedonian

by Nicholas Guild

  It was really quite simple. All that was required was to get up from the table and leave—if anyone noticed, they probably imagined he needed to empty his bladder. He dodged around servants carrying pitchers that still dripped from the cellar and shouldered his way through the crowd, which, for some unfathomable reason, clogged the antechamber like leaves in a rain gutter. As he stood on the steps leading up to the house, in the little circle of light that escaped through the door, the first breath of fresh air, simply by virtue of the fact that it was not rank with the odors of wine and humanity, felt as cold as snow. The darkness seemed to beckon him.

  “Going home already, Philip? Or do the brothels beckon?”

  Philip, prince of Macedon, was not the sort who betrayed surprise, yet with the sound of this voice that appeared to come from nowhere, he froze, his mind racing as he tried to recall …

  “Arrhidaios? Is that you? Is it really you?”

  Something moved among the shadows on the wall of the building opposite—he could not be sure if he saw it or merely sensed it. Then the shadow became the hem of a cloak. Then a man.

  It was his half brother, smiling up at him a bit ruefully.

  Philip laughed and ran down the stairs to throw his arms around him, kissing him on the face. Soon they were both laughing.

  “How did you know where to find me?” he asked, with a mixture of astonishment and pleasure.

  “I didn’t.” Arrhidaios grabbed the beard on Philip’s chin in both hands and pulled it playfully. “I didn’t even know you were in Athens, but sooner or later everyone comes to the house of Aristodemos. So it was fated…”

  Another figure emerged from the shadows, a tall, thin youth of perhaps twenty. His hard, rather petulant mouth suggested a certain amused contempt, as though he regarded himself as having risen above the attachments of kinship. He glanced vacantly about for a second or two and then his eyes settled upon Philip, to whom he seemed to take an instant dislike. One could almost have imagined he was jealous.

  “Yes.” Arrhidaios stepped back. He looked embarrassed. “Philip, this is Demosthenes, whose words linger on the tongue like honey when he speaks in the assembly.”

  “Then I look forward to hearing him one day,” Philip said, offering his hand.

  Neither Arrhidaios’s compliment nor Philip’s hand seemed very welcome. The latter was taken in a limp grasp and then dropped almost at once, as one might after having been surprised to discover himself holding the fingers of a corpse. The former was simply ignored.

  “Pleased.”

  That was all he said, but the one word betrayed everything. For just an instant it appeared to be lodged in his throat, only to come out at last with a kind of puff, giving the impression he meant to propel it some distance. It was apparent that the gods had cursed the great orator with a stammer.

  Philip tried to keep his eyes blank and his smile as uncomprehending as any fool’s, but a man possessed of a flaw is always quick to detect when it is noticed. The lines around Demosthenes’ mouth seemed to harden.

  “Are you going inside?” Philip turned to his half brother and tried to make himself forget that they were not alone. “I was just leaving, but…”

  “No, no, no. I am sure Demosthenes will excuse us—he wishes to meet the great Pammenes, and my presence might be something of an embarrassment.”

  Arrhidaios laughed nervously, in the manner of one who wishes to be contradicted, but Demosthenes merely frowned and glanced away.

  “You must p-please yourself,” he said. Without waiting for a reply, he began climbing the stairs up to Aristodemos’s front door and was soon lost among the milling crowd in the great man’s antechamber.

  “Well—it appears we are at liberty to do as we like.” Arrhidaios smiled and threw an arm across Philip’s shoulders. “Shall we follow your original plan and search out a brothel?”

  “My original plan involved nothing of the sort. My original plan was to return to my own bed, which alas is empty.”

  “But plans can always be changed.”

  “Yes, I suppose they can.”

  * * *

  While it was not precisely a brothel where they ended up, the overall effect was much the same. Arrhidaios knew of a wineshop just at the foot of the Hill of Colonos, which was much frequented by the more elegant young men of the city. There were rooms upstairs for private entertainments, where the wine was served mixed with only three parts of water. The food was excellent, better than that served at Aristodemos’s table. There was companionship available, and all inclinations were catered to.

  “I had a boy last time I was here,” Arrhidaios said as his hand slid over the naked back of the girl who was crouched beside him, pretending to busy herself with the wine as she dragged her nipples back and forth across his chest. “Just for variety—women can grow stale on a man if he doesn’t allow himself a change now and then.”

  “I have never noticed that,” Philip answered.

  The girl who had been washing Philip’s legs was as tawny as a lion and when she spoke, which was not often, it was with an Ionic accent, so she had probably been born in one of the Greek cities along the coast of Asia. Her eyes were as large and as brown as a doe’s. Philip liked her eyes best. When she would glance up and smile at him, it made his throat tighten.

  Arrhidaios frowned.

  “Well, then, of course, you have never been an exile. When one lives among foreigners…”

  “I live among foreigners.” Philip gently placed the sole of his foot against the girl’s belly, meaning to push her away, but the touch of her flesh against his toes was such an appealing sensation that he decided against it.

  “Yes, but if you go home, it will not be to have your throat cut.”

  “I don’t think I can be sure of that—not as long as the Lord Ptolemy is alive.”

  “Yes, but for me it would be a certainty.” Since fleeing Macedon Arrhidaios had gained weight and already there was a pad of fat beneath his jaw. As he spoke he tucked his chin in against his chest, and his neck seemed to bulge. “You might perish in some palace intrigue, but I would face public execution and my corpse would be crucified over Alexandros’s burial mound. By the way, Philip, I had no hand in our brother’s murder.”

  “If I thought you had, you would have been dead hours ago,” Philip said, smiling amiably. “Praxis’s accomplice is still in Pella—married to my mother.”

  Philip’s doe-eyed girl looked up, as if her attention had been attracted by the sudden silence. When she saw the expressions on the two men’s faces, she dropped her gaze.

  Then, from one instant to the next, Arrhidaios seemed to lose interest in the discussion.

  “I like Athens,” he said as he ran his hand admiringly over his girl’s back—indeed, he seemed almost to be talking about her. “I have always venerated Athens, but I never conceived what a pleasure it is to live in the most civilized city in the world. There is no pleasure, either of mind or body, that is not available here, and I am under no constraints. I have leisure and, through the favor of my friends, I have money. Indeed, I seem to have all the leisure in the world.”

  “And what, I wonder, will your friends want of you when at last your leisure comes to an end?”

  Arrhidaios raised his eyes and looked at Philip as if he thought him the greatest fool in the world.

  “It is possible that one day my friends will succeed in making me king of Macedon,” he said, speaking with an evenness that betrayed rather than concealed his anger.

  “Our brother Perdikkas is king.” The smile on Philip’s lips suggested that he had lost the capacity to be shocked by any treachery. “And, should he die without issue, I am to succeed him. Do your friends’ plans include both our murders?”

  Arrhidaios, in his turn, did not seem offended by the suggestion. He merely shrugged.

  “My friends have no idea of murdering anyone. They assume, I would imagine, that Ptolemy will do the work for them.”

  20

&n
bsp; If he lived, Perdikkas, king of the Macedonians, would reach official manhood during the summer of the second year of his reign. No one seemed to take much notice of this approaching fact—least of all the regent, who continued to govern as if he were king in his own right—and Perdikkas felt little inclination to remind him. He was quite sure his stepfather was prepared to have him murdered rather than relinquish power. He never stopped being afraid. His memories of his brother’s death were painfully vivid, and some nights he would wake up from a dream, just able to keep himself from screaming as he tried to remember whether it was Alexandros’s blood or his own he had seen on the assassin’s sword.

  Tonight was the worst. He sat on the edge of his bed, trembling all over while cold tears ran down into his beard, looking out into the darkness as if waiting for some enemy to step away from the shadows.

  At last he got up and, feeling his way, located the basin and pitcher of water he kept on a table next to his wardrobe chest. He had to be very quiet. The only door led to his mother’s room, and tonight the Lord Ptolemy was asleep in her bed. He washed his face with the furtive silence of a man stealing the offerings from a temple altar.

  Yet he felt better afterward. He could sit down on his bed again and reconsider the problem that he had gradually become aware was the key to his survival: how he was to kill the regent.

  It was not as straightforward a matter as it seemed. The Lord Ptolemy was asleep in the next room, yet Perdikkas knew he could not simply walk in there with a hunting pike and run him through. After all, his mother would be in the same bed, and he could not slaughter the man under his mother’s very eyes. The idea itself—the screams and curses, the blood spattered over her naked body—was horrible.

  Provided the deed was done out of her sight, Perdikkas told himself, and after she had had a chance to consider the matter, his mother would realize that he had done the right thing, the manly thing, and she would forgive him. Surely she would see that there had been no choice. Surely she could not love this man more than her own child. She would cry and then, after a time, she would see the necessity of it and he would be her son again. Blood, after all, was a stronger tie than desire.

  In the darkness of many sleepless nights, Perdikkas had worked it all out for himself. His mother would forgive him. He accepted this as both inevitable and right, and still within his secret heart he doubted. Perhaps, he thought, it was that doubt that stayed his hand.

  Yet it was not only his mother he feared. Ptolemy was a tested warrior, the survivor of many battles, and Perdikkas knew himself to be clumsy with weapons. It would not be easy to kill the man openly and it was upon doing it thus that Perdikkas’s honor as king depended. No one would blame him if one day he simply drew his sword and spilled the regent’s guts out onto the ground. A king may kill anyone he thinks a threat to him, provided he does it as a right, as a thing he is prepared to own before the world. There could be no suggestion of stealth.

  Yet to attempt Ptolemy’s life that way—as a public act, in front of witnesses—was to take an appalling risk. Perdikkas was not a coward, but neither was he a fool.

  It was all a question of opportunity, and the opportunity had not yet presented itself.

  Could Ptolemy have any idea of what was in his mind? Night after night, the two men sat beside each other at the banqueting table, sometimes exchanging a look or a word, as casually as if they could see into each other’s hearts. Perdikkas found he could not stand these affairs unless he had two or three cups of unmixed wine in his room first. It was like feasting with a scorpion.

  Because if the regent ever guessed, Perdikkas knew that his life would not be worth a day’s purchase, that his only safety lay in Ptolemy’s contempt for him, in the conviction of his harmlessness.

  There were days together when Perdikkas forced himself to push all thoughts of violence from his mind—he would be that which the regent imagined him to be, the pliant, trusting fool, no threat to anyone, and then perhaps …

  But it was no good. The danger was the same, whether he chose to see it or not. If Ptolemy suspected him, merely suspected him, he was as good as laid out upon his funeral pyre.

  Once—only once—he hinted at his fears to his mother. They made her smile.

  “You are not in any danger from the Lord Ptolemy,” she told him. “You are his protection.”

  “From what? From what does the regent need protection?”

  “From your brother, you blind fool. He knows that if anything happens to you, Philip will come back.”

  “Yes, I can understand that.” Perdikkas had nodded, suspecting even then that he understood nothing. “If I die, the Thebans…”

  But he was cut off by Eurydike’s wild laughter.

  “You are an idiot!” she shouted, with sudden ferocity. “Do you imagine that the Lord Ptolemy is merely afraid that Philip will return at the head of a foreign army? Let your brother come home alone, with only a kitchen knife rolled up in his sleeping blanket, and it would be just the same. It is Philip alone who turns his bowels to ice—he lives in terror of ever setting eyes upon him again.”

  It was almost as bad to have his life on sufferance from his little brother as to live in constant fear of losing it. Sometimes it was worse.

  He had to kill Ptolemy. Then he would be free of them both.

  A flicker of light from under the door made Perdikkas aware that someone was awake in the next room as well. It was not an unusual enough event to cause him any alarm. Perhaps the regent’s bladder was weakening with age. It would be pleasant to think that he too was troubled by dreams, but Perdikkas doubted it. Whatever his mother said, he found it difficult to believe that the Lord Ptolemy was frightened of anything.

  The light went out. Perdikkas lay down again, experiencing the dead calm of despair. He did not fall asleep again until just before dawn.

  * * *

  It was not the regent who had lit a lamp in the middle of the night, but his wife. The Lord Ptolemy slept on, lying on his side with his face to the wall. He never noticed when Eurydike slipped noiselessly out of bed.

  She hardly seemed to sleep at all anymore. Sleep required some peace of mind, or at least a certain indifference to fate. Yet, as the circumstances of her life became less and less tolerable, she found herself correspondingly less able to ignore them. Her son anxious and moody, contemplating the gods knew what rashness. Her daughter still trying to conceive a child by the man who had divorced her and now used her as he might one of the kitchen servants. And Ptolemy, who drank more wine now than was good for him and was even more frightened than Perdikkas. They all seemed drawn helplessly into some vortex from which there was now no possibility of escape.

  She held up the lamp to look at her husband, but all she could see was the back of his head. His hair still a glossy black, although threads of gray were beginning to show up in his beard.

  Merely to look at him gave her a trembling sensation in her breast, as if she were fifteen and in the grip of her first passion. No, it was worse than that. The love she bore this man simply consumed her, as if the gods had chosen him as the instrument of her destruction. Ptolemy was faithless and evil. He would sacrifice anyone on the altar of his ambition. She did not believe, as many did, that he had had any part in the murder of her son—she would not allow herself to believe it, for then existence would be unendurable—but she could not conceal from herself that no scruple would have prevented him. There was no sin of which he was not capable. All this she saw quite clearly, and it made no difference. It was her curse to love him without illusion. And to love him with such blind need that sometimes she felt as if she must break apart, simply shatter like a pot that falls against the stone floor. There were times when she felt she must be going mad.

  He stirred in his sleep, muttering something in an urgent, unintelligible voice, and, instinctively, she held up her hand to mask the lamplight. But it was not the light which disturbed him. The Lord Ptolemy suffered from frightful dreams so that sometim
es he would wake up covered with sweat, his eyes gleaming with terror. He blamed it on the wine, but it was not the wine. He would never tell her what it was that he dreamed.

  He did not need to. She could guess.

  Eurydike carried the light out into the antechamber and then sought her daughter’s room. She knew Mena would not be asleep.

  She was not, although there was no light coming from beneath her door.

  “Is that you, Mother?”

  “Yes, child.” Eurydike raised the lamp that it might illuminate her face, and she smiled. “Have I awakened you?” she asked, quite unnecessarily.

  Mena did not trouble to answer. She pushed herself toward the far side of her narrow little bed to make room for her mother to sit down.

  The room was very small, so small that the yellow glow of the lamp filled it up to the corners of the ceiling. There was only the bed and a chest and a three-legged stool on which no one ever sat down. Mena dropped her eyes, as if the light troubled her.

  “Is he asleep?” she asked.

  “Yes. If he awakens, he will reach for the wine jug. He will never even notice that I am not there.”

  Mena seemed relieved to hear it, although why she should be afraid of her former husband discovering them together was a mystery. Mena had eccentric notions about the propriety of things—as if propriety could be of any concern in this household.

  It was strange, but Eurydike had only grown close to her daughter after supplanting her as the Lord Ptolemy’s wife. She had never had much patience with children and Mena had been married young, which had had the effect of removing her from sight almost as completely as if she had been sealed up in her funeral urn. Then Ptolemy had set her aside and married her mother.

  Eurydike put the lamp on the floor, which had the effect of returning Mena to the shadows. She seemed to prefer it thus.

  “I think I am with child,” Mena said, in a thrilled murmur. “There was a full moon night before last when he came to my room. I take it as a sign that I will shake off my barrenness.”