Funeral Games

PART IV
GRINDING
15
313 BC

‘I have no intention of fighting One-Eye if I can help it,’ Cassander said. He was dressed in a magnificent purple chlamys over a chiton that would have looked rich on a king. ‘Fighting One-Eye is foolish. He eliminated Eumenes, and now he’s on top – but he’s vulnerable. I want One-Eye to fight Ptolemy while I take Ptolemy’s soldiers away from him.’

Cassander was visiting Athens, in state. He came with an extensive entourage that taxed the best efforts of Demetrios of Phaleron and all his political allies to support him. As Menander joked, it was as if the man ate gold.

They were gathered in Demetrios’s house – a palace in all but name. Cassander was surrounded by Macedonians, but there were other Greeks in his train, and important allies, like Eumeles of Pantecapaeum.

Demetrios of Phaleron had brought his own allies – the men he trusted to run Athens, and then men whose gold helped keep Cassander fed.

Stratokles lay full length on a kline and fingered his beard – more salt than pepper in it now – and exchanged a glance with the only men in the room that he trusted, the scarred mercenary who called himself Iphicrates, and his own lieutenant, the big Italian called Lucius.

‘How will you persuade Antigonus to attack Ptolemy?’ Philip son of Amyntas asked. He was just the sort of fool who asked such questions – indeed, Stratokles counted on him to ask such questions. He was not the only officer in the room to wonder – every Macedonian officer wondered the same. And Stratokles wondered if Cassander, the murdering regent, the ally of Athens, the rapist of Greece, was finally losing his touch.

‘Never you mind,’ Cassander said. His chuckle was syrupy, almost flirtatious. ‘Antigonus and I go back,’ he said, with a wicked smile. ‘He’s old. And his son is a fool. I can control them.’ Coming from the man who had assassinated Olympias, Alexander’s mother, and her principal rivals, the statement didn’t seem to hold the hubris it might have held from a lesser – or greater – man. Cassander was no fool on the battlefield – but in the world of politics and assassination, he was the master.

‘I think that you underestimate Ptolemy,’ Demetrios said.

‘Perhaps,’ Cassander smiled. ‘But I doubt it. A man with a reputation for plain-dealing, called “Farm Boy” by his troops, is hardly a candidate for survival in this world.’

Stratokles couldn’t help himself. ‘He’s done pretty well so far,’ he said.

Cassander turned and looked at him. Always an unsettling experience. Most men flinched from the physical reality of Stratokles’ face, but not Cassander.

‘With my ally’s permission, you seem perfect to go to Aegypt on my behalf, my duplicitous darling. As Athens’s ambassador, craving freedom from tyranny.’ Cassander smiled, because the Greek city-states and their prating about freedom made him laugh. ‘But anyone with a brain at Ptolemy’s court will see that you are from me. Tell him I’m desperate. Get him to fill his ships with his Macedonian regulars and send them to me. I’ll strip him of real soldiers and then Antigonus can have him and Aegypt too.’

Stratokles rubbed his beard. His eyes went to Menander’s, and the playwright nodded slightly.

‘A simple enough piece of deception. I can do it,’ Stratokles said. ‘But I’m not sure…’ he added, prepared to make an honest summation of his hesitancy, largely based on how many enemies he had made in the Athenian factions. ‘I’m not known here as “Stratokles the Informer” out of the love of my fellow citizens.’

Athens, the things I do for you.

‘Do it?’ Cassander laughed. ‘My dear viper, you can do it and make the Farm Boy like the taste of the poison, I have no doubt.’ He looked at Demetrios. ‘Can you spare me your snake?’

‘But if Antigonus has the revenues of Aegypt, he’ll be invincible!’ said Diognes, Demetrios’s lover – the handsomest man in Greece.

Demetrios of Phaleron had hard grey eyes – the eyes of Athena, men said. He ignored the beautiful young man on his couch and his eyes flicked from Cassander to Stratokles. ‘I can spare him. But I doubt your wisdom in this, Cassander.’

Better you than me, Demetrios, Stratokles said to himself. He, too, thought it a fool’s errand. But as usual, Cassander was the one driving the chariot, and Athens was only along for the ride.

‘Diognes, my dear, beautiful and rather empty-headed boy, this is why you are an ornament at parties and I’m the regent of Macedon. If Antigonus takes Aegypt, he’ll use more of his precious Macedonians to garrison it. That’s all that matters – don’t you see? Soldiers – real soldiers. They come from Macedon. Our only export, but just now, the most valuable export in the world. No one but a Macedonian can hold a sarissa and fight. No infantry in the world can beat us.’ He smiled at them, uncaring that he’d just offended every Greek in the room. ‘We’ll take Ptolemy’s veterans as our tax. And next year, we’ll use them to break Antigonus One-Eye. Or perhaps Lysimachos. It hardly matters – once I have the phalanxes, I can go where I want.’ The regent raised his heavily lidded eyes from the pretty Athenian and they dropped on Stratokles as if his glance had real weight. ‘You, my viper, are the tool I need to move this particular rock.’

Stratokles thought that it was a bad sign that the Macedonians were starting to believe their own propaganda. It was less than ten years since the hoplites of Athens had broken a Macedonian phalanx. He caught the eye of his friend Iphicrates, whose face was mottled red and white with anger. It was his turn to shake his head, even though any outburst would have been supported by every Athenian present. Even Menander, a notoriously unmilitary man, was offended.

The insult from the regent – viper, a term no man could bear – was almost a compliment from Cassander. Athens, the crap I take for you, Stratokles thought. When the time comes, I’ll bury these arrogant barbarians in their own guts.

Eumeles – everyone called him Heron, the so-called king of the Bosporus, pushed forward past the Macedonians. ‘Ptolemy still harbours my enemies,’ he said.

Cassander glanced at Stratokles with a grimace that was hidden from the Euxine’s tyrant. He made a motion with his hand, as if to say ‘What can I do?’

The regent of Macedon rolled over to look at Eumeles. ‘And no grain will reach my enemies? Your word on it?’

Eumeles bowed. ‘My word on it.’ He glanced at Stratokles. ‘But I’d like the – ahem – unfinished business wrapped up.’

Cassander nodded. ‘That’s right. Stratokles – the two children. Olympias wanted them dead – Heron here wants them dead – and you missed them. Eh? Don’t miss them again. Understand?’

Stratokles shrugged. ‘Heron over there – he wanted them dead. And Olympias made it her business. But it’s no part of an embassy to murder brats.’ He looked to Demetrios of Phaleron for guidance. Demetrios had been a follower of Phocion’s – as had the children’s father, Kineas. Although Stratokles had no real love for Demetrios, he was an Athenian.

Demetrios’s hard grey eyes narrowed. He took a breath to speak, and then shook his head and took a drink of wine.

Cassander pursed his lips. It was always dangerous to confront Cassander on any subject, and Demetrios, the most powerful man in the room save Cassander, had refused.

We must be pretty desperate, Stratokles thought. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I’ll try and put the children down before I leave. But not until then. If my hand is seen, I’ll be expelled or worse.’

‘Then don’t be caught,’ Cassander said. Then he relented. ‘I see your point. Hire someone to do it and make sure my hands can’t be seen.’ He smiled. ‘How about your doctor? He’s been useful before.’

Cassander’s golden good looks and his eyes, heavily lidded like an opium-eater’s, were all deceptive. He’s a good deal uglier than me, Stratokles thought. I think it’s time we changed horses, he thought to himself.

Later, in a private room, he made the same point to Menander.

‘I agree,’ the poet admitted. ‘But Demetrios says we need him right now. Things are bad. Succeed in this Aegyptian thing, and perhaps we’ll get a breathing space.’

Stratokles took a deep breath and rubbed his nose. ‘I hate him enough to consider tyrannicide.’ At his friend’s startled look, he said, ‘Not our tyrant, Menander – I mean Cassander.’

But he packed his bags for Alexandria, nonetheless.

He took the time to send a letter to the doctor in Athens, offering the man a place in his embassy and providing, in addition, a list of members of the assembly of that city and their various transgressions, and he brought Lucius to run his bodyguard. He had many enemies, and the judicious use of force would be required.

He changed the emphasis of his reporting system, so that reports from Alexandria took priority. He listened to a great many reports from spies before he sailed away in his own trireme for Alexandria, the newest city in the world.

Stratokles’ informants were capable men and women. He paid informers from the Euxine to the Pillars of Herakles to provide him information. So when the new city rolled up at the edge of the horizon, he knew where Leon lived, and who lived with him; he knew the names of Leon’s ships and the names of his factors. This was routine information, because Leon and Stratokles had brushed up against each other in the pursuit of their own interests – sometimes in conflict, sometimes in alliance – for ten years.

And he knew that Ptolemy had an Aegyptian mistress and he knew that Amastris, the daughter of Dionysius of Heraklea, was due to return to Alexandria any day – the richest heiress in the Hellenic world, from a city vital to Athens’s interests. He knew that the court was looking to hire a doctor for the palace.

He even knew that Sophokles the Athenian, standing at his side, had been bribed by Cassander to watch him. The thought made Stratokles smile at the smooth-faced man at his side.

‘You always worry me when you are so palpably amused,’ the doctor said. He reached down and rubbed the scar on his knee.

Stratokles smiled and slapped him on the back. ‘Plenty of work for you in Alexandria, my friend,’ he said.

‘My pleasure,’ Sophokles said.