The Macedonian

by Nicholas Guild

Menelaos had probably learned by now that, dangerous as the Illyrians were as enemies, they were even more dangerous as friends. He was reported to be under pressure from his allies and wanted to reach an accord to keep Bardylis out. Very well. Menelaos was a treacherous fool, but Lynkos was part of Macedon and Philip was loath to see her overrun. The problem was that he had no means of preventing it.

  All the more reason to keep the ambassador waiting.

  In the meantime he sent dispatch riders to all the garrison commanders along the northwestern frontier, ordering them to send spies into Lynkos to discover if men were being conscripted out of the villages. It was harvest time, and in two months the mountain passes would begin to fill up with snow—if Menelaos was putting the country on a war footing it meant that he expected to be at war with the Illyrians before the end of summer.

  And in the meantime he received Aristotle’s letter. It seemed he might be at war himself in a short time and, in any case, Arrhidaios was not coming home.

  He showed the letter to Glaukon, whose reaction was not what he expected.

  “Which did you feel first,” the old man asked, “grief or anger?”

  “Grief—then fear. I dread a war with Athens.”

  “But your heart did not harden against Arrhidaios?”

  “No.”

  “And you would have welcomed him back?”

  “Yes. He is my brother and my friend.”

  “That only proves you have not yet learned to see life through the eyes of a king, for whom those nearest to him in blood are to be trusted least. I only hope your faith in family affection is not your undoing.”

  This made Philip laugh. It was not a pleasant sound.

  “I am unlikely to make the same mistake again,” he said. “There is no one left.”

  Glaukon shook his head, as if he found the jest to be in questionable taste.

  “You should marry again, Lord. You should breed up sons in whom you can invest your love.”

  “Because it is my duty as a king?”

  “It is not the king’s suffering I pity, Lord Philip, but yours.”

  “If Arrhidaios brings an Athenian army against me, and if I live, I will be the means of his death.”

  “I know this. I know.”

  After he had spoken with Glaukon, Philip burned Aristotle’s letter. He did not mention it to any of his lieutenants. He never spoke Arrhidaios’s name. He merely told them that they must watch for any signs that the Athenians were strengthening their forces in Pydna and Methone.

  On the fifteenth day after his arrival, the ambassador from King Menelaos was shown into Philip’s study.

  His name was Klitos. Philip remembered him from his one visit to Lynkos, and he seemed an odd choice if Menelaos had sent his envoy to beg for aid, for he was a large, loud, overbearing sort of man, in his middle years and openly rather contemptuous of anyone he might consider as being in any sense his inferior, be it in rank or wealth or even experience of life. Perhaps, it occurred to Philip, his uncle imagined he could be bullied into an alliance.

  “I have been in Pella for some time already,” Klitos began, hardly even troubling with the customary pleasantries. “I am not accustomed to be kept waiting.”

  “It is the usual fate of petitioners.”

  Philip smiled pleasantly—he might have been discussing some third person about whom they were both naturally indifferent.

  “I am even a little surprised that my uncle would have sent a person such as yourself,” he went on, after giving the insult a moment to penetrate. “But perhaps he felt that, after all, it is the message that is important and not the messenger.”

  It was a sort of test. If Klitos was not accustomed to waiting, he was also not accustomed to the necessity of controlling his temper, and Philip was more than a little curious to see just how much rudeness the man was prepared to suffer. It would serve as an indication of how afraid he was of returning home having failed in his mission, which in turn might say something about the real situation in Lynkos.

  Klitos’s face darkened as the muscles in his jaws worked, but he said nothing. He even tried to act as if he hadn’t heard. Clearly, Menelaos was in serious trouble.

  “It was a great disappointment to my brother Perdikkas when the Lord Menelaos chose to form an alliance with the Illyrians.” Philip walked over to his desk and sat down, without inviting Klitos to take the chair opposite. “It was an insult to the loyalty he owes to the royal house of Macedon and, worse than that, it was a mistake.”

  Significantly, Klitos left both assertions unchallenged. He merely looked uncomfortable, as if the delinquencies of which Philip spoke were all his own, and he was at last being called to account to them.

  “I assume that my uncle has entrusted you with some message for me.”

  To hear these words was obviously a relief, for the king of Lynkos’s ambassador instantly straightened his shoulders, as if an immense weight had been lifted from them. Now, at last, he could trust himself to speak.

  “The Lord Menelaos remembers with pleasure how the Lord Philip, wounded and in flight, came to the Kingdom of Lynkos as to a place of safety,” Klitos began, reciting a piece he had obviously been at some trouble to commit to memory. “He was beset with enemies then, and the ruler of the Lynkestians gave refuge to his sister’s child. Now, once again, when Macedon is torn and harried like a fawn set upon by savage dogs, Lord Menelaos would extend to you his protection not as one king offers alliance to another but as an uncle takes a father’s place for his orphaned nephew…”

  There was more, all in the same vein. Philip listened with perfect composure, not even allowing himself to smile. It was impossible to know if Menelaos actually believed this awful nonsense, or if he thought Philip might, or if he was merely trying to salvage his dignity.

  The thrust of it was, of course, that Menelaos was prepared to renounce his treaty with the Illyrians and to enter into an offensive alliance with Philip. They would attack Bardylis and drive him out of Upper Macedon. The plan would gain Philip nothing, since even if they succeeded, Menelaos would still be an independent ruler, now virtually a coequal with the king in Pella, and Macedon would be left defenseless in the south and east. But all of this Philip was expected to overlook in the name of family sentiment.

  At last Klitos finished speaking. He lifted his head a little, as if he expected an immediate and positive answer.

  “It is a serious matter,” Philip said, looking grave—he wished to appear as if he were fighting back the temptation to embrace the man in gratitude. “In matters of war and peace I must consult with my council. You would oblige me with your patience.”

  Klitos made a courteous bow, which Philip returned, and the interview was brought to a conclusion.

  The next day Philip left Pella on a tour of the western garrisons. He wrote the Lynkestian ambassador a letter, to be delivered after he had already left the city, stating he would have an answer for Menelaos when he returned, which would not be for nearly a month.

  “In another month there will not be enough of the fine weather left to organize a campaign,” Lachios observed. The morning sky was still a pearly gray as an honor guard of fifty men rode out through the western gate. He and Korous, who were both a little taller than their king, exchanged a glance across Philip’s back.

  “Precisely.” Philip smiled to himself. “It saves me the embarrassment of a blank refusal.”

  All three of them had read the reports indicating preparations for war in Lynkos.

  “You will leave Menelaos to his fate, then?”

  Philip nodded. At first it was the only answer he made.

  “I have no choice,” he said at last. “Except, perhaps, to go down with him.”

  “Which is not something he would do for you,” Korous announced, with an almost ferocious satisfaction.

  “Nor should he.” With a frown and a shake of his head, Philip seemed to be dismissing a doubt, or perhaps only a temptation. “A nation is not the pr
operty of its king, to be squandered at his pleasure. Should men be required to fight and die at the whim of personal squabbles and loyalties? Would any sensible man give his allegiance to a king who asked this of him? The king who consults his private feelings over the good of his people is not fit to live, let alone to rule.”

  “Yet this is what most kings do,” Lachios answered. “This is what they have always done. It is even what is expected of them.”

  Philip laughed and goaded his horse into a trot, forcing the other two to catch up with him.

  “Perhaps that is why the world is such a quarrelsome place,” he said.

  * * *

  And in the apartments he occupied in his grandfather’s palace it was very much a private quarrel that occupied the attention of Pleuratos, who in his own mind had already succeeded as king of the Illyrians. He hated Old Bardylis, whom he never thought of except as “Old Bardylis,” as if his great age conferred the only title he was fit to bear—as if thus Pleuratos could dismiss the ties of blood between them. He hated him for standing in the way, for counseling patience, for demanding attention to his will, for denying him the name as well as the absolute and unchallengeable sway of the king. He hated his grandfather for not having the decency at last simply to die.

  And so Pleuratos had decided to destroy him even while he lived. Little by little, he would take away the power that meant so much to the old man, that was almost the last pleasure he was capable of enjoying, almost his last tie to life. If Pleuratos could not rule through the sheer authority of his unquestioned word, then he would rule by stealth. Yet in the end he would rule, and that would be his revenge.

  And the instrument he had chosen was one Xuthos, a commander of indifferent abilities whom Bardylis had sent to head a garrison near the approaches to the Pisoderi Pass, where he would be safely out of the way. Xuthos was a man of prominent family and he felt the humiliation keenly. Pleuratos had led him to believe that great things awaited him in the next reign.

  “You will create an incident,” Pleuratos wrote to him. “You will pick some small and unimportant village just inside our borders with Lynkos, and you will send fifteen or twenty of your most trusted men to raid it. Burn the houses and put the inhabitants to the sword, even the children and the women—perhaps especially the women. Allow your soldiers to amuse themselves, as I wish this deed, for which the Lynkestians will be blamed, to inflame men’s hearts. When this is done, wait patiently for your reward and know that I will not fail you.”

  * * *

  But, once again, Pleuratos’s timing was faulty.

  “He has delayed too long,” Philip said when he heard of the raid—it never crossed his mind that Menelaos could be guilty of such a piece of folly; that it was a provocation was obvious. “The weather will hold off perhaps long enough for Pleuratos to establish a force this side of the pass, but even the Illyrians cannot conquer a country that is up to their horses’ withers in snow. Menelaos will be able to hold out at least until the spring thaw.”

  But the invasion of Lynkos, which now was inevitable, gave added significance to another piece of news that arrived almost in the same dispatch bag. Aias, king of the Eordoi, was said to be dying.

  Philip waited until dark before he commanded that Deucalion be brought to him. When the young man appeared in his tent, he handed him the report and waited in silence while he read it.

  “I have not seen my father in nearly five years,” Deucalion said as if slightly awed by the discovery.

  “You must see him now.” Philip sat behind the little table he used as a desk when in the field, playing nervously with a writing stylus, remembering the night Amyntas had died. “You must be there when … He may wish to speak to you. And then you will be king in his place.”

  This contingency had apparently not occurred to the lad, and his face darkened.

  “Tomorrow you will take horse with an honor guard of twenty men,” Philip continued as if he had seen nothing. “They will take you as far as the border, where you will be met by whatever escort your father’s ministers think to send. I dispatched a rider this afternoon, and part of the message he carries is that the king of Macedon recognizes Deucalion, son of Aias, as the rightful heir to his father’s throne—he and no other. I think they will take the hint and your claim will not be challenged. But wait until you have received the oaths of loyalty before you write to me. Then you can make whatever arrangements you think best for your brother’s journey.”

  “You will let Ctesios return with me?”

  Philip shook his head, as if he did not understand the intent of Deucalion’s astonished question. “Not with you—after you. The first hours of a new reign are always dangerous, but my possession of your brother will afford you some protection. After all, if some rival kills you, I will still have the rightful heir. It is time enough for Ctesios to come home when you are firmly in control.

  “Yet that is not what you and I must discuss tonight. Macedon will soon be at war with the Illyrians—indeed, we are already at war, for the Illyrians are this moment preparing to invade Lynkos. I would know which side the Eordoi will take.”

  For a moment Deucalion looked as if he had been struck in the face.

  “If you will release my brother, then you must know that I am loyal to you,” he said, almost fiercely. “We both are. You have been like a father to us.”

  Philip remained impenetrably grave. “When you are a king you will learn that there are greater claims on you than friendship. The Eordoi sometimes forget that they are Macedonians.”

  “Yet you have made me remember that we are one people.” The heir to Aias’s throne took a step forward, his eyes wet with unspent tears. “At your bare word I would … Say what oath you require of me and I will take it.”

  “I need no oath.” At last Philip allowed himself to smile. “I simply needed to know your heart.”

  “What would you have of me?” Deucalion asked, looking almost relieved.

  “Nothing.” Philip rose from behind his table and came to put his arm across the younger man’s shoulder. “We will speak more another time. For now, go back to your tent. Avoid the company of others—your father is dying, and this may well be your last chance to be alone with your grief.”

  * * *

  Deucalion had proved himself a good soldier and he was popular with Philip’s men. Therefore, the next morning, when the king embraced him and wished him a safe journey, the army of Macedon sent him on his way with a cheer.

  “Our young friend wears a grim face,” Lachios observed, watching the honor guard as it rode off toward the western horizon.

  “This surprises you?” Philip raised a hand and waved, although Deucalion was probably too far away to see. “He will soon bury his father and become king over the Eordoi. He is not much to be envied.”

  Lachios uttered a short syllable of laughter. “It is not what awaits him that oppresses his soul but what he leaves behind. Philip, do you not know that boy would rather command a wing of your cavalry than be king of Persia?”

  “Good. Then perhaps he will keep his nobles from allying themselves with the Illyrians when Bardylis overruns Lynkos.”

  “Is that all you ask of him?”

  “If I asked more, I might end by getting his throat cut. When the king is hardly more than a boy, his nobles think they need obey only when it suits them. And it might not suit them to throw in their lot with us rather than the Illyrians, particularly since just now we must seem to them the weaker side. Yet they might be persuaded to sit and wait until the outcome has grown more obvious. Never fear, though—Deucalion will bring the Eordoi over to us when the moment is right.”

  Philip turned his gaze to Lachios and showed him a tight smile, a smile that somehow managed to suggest the perfect confidence of one who cannot afford to be wrong.

  “I have letters to attend to,” he said, perhaps just a trifle too carelessly. “Should anyone need me, I will be in my tent.”

  Yet when he had closed
the tent flap behind him, a sign to the guard that he did not wish to be disturbed, his writing box remained closed. Philip sat on the edge of his bed, struggling to control the impulse to weep.

  In the years since his wife’s death he had submerged himself in work, hardly allowing himself the luxury of a private impulse. Glaukon said that he had not yet learned to see life through the eyes of a king, yet he had tried. He had cultivated an icy dispassion, willing the man to disappear inside the ruler, hoping somehow that it would be easier to be king of Macedon than simply Philip, who felt himself adrift in the world.

  Yet the departure of Deucalion affected him strangely. Suddenly it was as if he were still kneeling beside Phila’s bed, whispering lies to her about the stillborn child she had thought it worth her life to bring into the world. He could almost feel her cold fingers closed around his hand. Wife and son had been laid together on the same funeral pyre, their bodies consigned to the purifying flame.

  Deucalion remembered her too. From that day to this, they had never spoken her name, yet they both remembered. It was a bond between them.

  And now the bond was broken and Philip knew that he was utterly alone.

  Better to get used to it, he thought. What king is not alone?

  It was almost midday when he was distracted by voices outside his tent. “Well, he will want to be disturbed for this!” he heard Korous shouting.

  Philip stepped out into the sunlight, which was surprisingly harsh.

  “What is it?”

  “A rider…” Korous made a wild gesture with his arm as if it indicate someone right beside him. There was no one near. “From the south, Philip. The Athenians have landed in force at Methone.”

  39

  There had been a rainstorm on the gulf the night before, and the decks of the Athenian triremes were still streaming with water. Arrhidaios had been dreadfully seasick the whole voyage, and the dense, moisture-laden air did not make him feel any better. He stood on the prow of the commander’s vessel, watching the shoreline swing up and down like a bit of cloth fluttering in the wind, his mind clouded with a dull, hopeless resentment.