The Novels of Alexander the Great: Fire From Heaven, the Persian Boy, and Funeral Games

5

“I KNOW NOW WHO it will be. Father’s had a letter, he sent for me this morning. I hope this man will be bearable. If not, we must make a plan.”

“You can count on me,” said Hephaistion, “even if you want to drown him. You’ve put up with more than enough. Is he a real philosopher?”

They were sitting in the trough between two of the Palace gables; a private spot, since only Alexander had climbed there till he showed Hephaistion the route.

“Oh, yes, from the Academy. He was taught by Plato. You’ll come to the lessons? Father says you can.”

“I’d only hold you back.”

“Sophists teach by disputation, he wants my friends. We can think later who else to have. It won’t just be logic-chopping, he’ll have to teach things I can use, Father told him that. He wrote back that a man’s education should be suited to his station and his duties. That doesn’t tell us much.”

“At least this one can’t beat you. He’s an Athenian?”

“No, a Stagirite. He’s the son of Nikomachos, who was my grandfather Amyntas’ doctor. My father’s too I suppose, when he was a child. You know how Amyntas lived, like a wolf in hunting-country, throwing out his enemies or trying to get back himself. Nikomachos must have been loyal. I don’t know how good a doctor he was. Amyntas died in bed; that’s very rare in our family.”

“So this son—what’s he called—?”

“Aristotle.”

“He knows the country, that’s something. Is he very old?”

“About forty. Not old for a philosopher. They live forever. Isokrates, who wants Father to lead the Greeks, is ninety-odd, and he applied for the job! Plato lived to over eighty. Father says Aristotle had hoped to be head of the School, but Plato had chosen a nephew of his. That’s why Aristotle left Athens.”

“So then he asked to come here?”

“No, he left when we were nine. I know the year, because of the Chalkidian war. And he couldn’t go home to Stagira, Father had just burned it and enslaved the people. What is it pulling my hair?”

“It’s a stick from the tree we came up.” Hephaistion, who was not very neat-handed, unwound with anxious care the walnut twig from its shining tangle, which smelled of some expensive wash used on it by Olympias, and of summer grass. This done, he slid his arm down to Alexander’s waist. He had done it the first time almost by accident; though not rebuffed, he had waited two days before daring to try again. Now he watched his chance whenever they were alone; it had become a thing he thought about. He could not tell what Alexander thought, if he thought at all. He accepted it contentedly, and talked, with ever more ease and freedom, about other things.

“The Stagirites,” he said, “were confederates of Olynthos; he made examples of those who wouldn’t treat with him. Did your father tell you about the war?”

“What?…Oh yes. Yes, he did.”

“Listen, this is important. Aristotle went off to Assos, as Hermeias’ guest-friend; they’d met at the Academy. He’s tyrannos there. You know where Assos is; it’s opposite Mytilene, it controls the straits. So, as soon as I thought, I saw why Father chose this man. This is only between us two.”

He looked deeply into Hephaistion’s eyes, as always before a confidence. As always, Hephaistion felt as if his midriff were melting. As always, it was some moments before he could follow what he was being told.

“…who were in other cities and escaped the siege, have been begging Father to have Stagira restored and the citizens enfranchised. That’s what this Aristotle wants. What Father wants, is an alliance with Hermeias. It’s a piece of horse-trading. Leonidas came for politics, too. Old Phoinix is the only one who came for me.”

Hephaistion tightened his arm. His feelings were confused; he wanted to grasp till Alexander’s very bones were somehow engulfed within himself, but knew this to be wicked and mad; he would kill anyone who harmed a hair of his head.

“They don’t know I’ve seen this. I just say Yes, Father. I’ve not even told my mother. I want to make my own mind up when I’ve seen the man, and do what I think good without anyone knowing why. This is only between us two. My mother is entirely against philosophy.”

Hephaistion was thinking how fragile his rib cage seemed, how terrible were the warring desires to cherish and to crush it. He continued silent.

“She says it makes men reason away the gods. She ought to know I would never deny the gods, whatever anyone told me. I know the gods exist, as surely as I know that you do…I can’t breathe.”

Hephaistion, who could have said the same, let go quickly. Presently he managed to reply, “Perhaps the Queen will dismiss him.”

“Oh, no, I don’t want that. That would only make trouble. I’ve been thinking, too, he may be the kind of man who’ll answer questions. Ever since I knew a philosopher was coming, I’ve been writing them down, things nobody here can tell me. Thirty-five already, I counted yesterday.”

He had not withdrawn, but, backed to the sloping gable-roof, sat propped lightly against Hephaistion, trustful and warm. This, thought Hephaistion, was the true perfection of happiness; it ought to be; it must be. He said restlessly, “I should like to kill Leonidas, do you know that?”

“Oh, I thought that once. But now, I think he was sent by Herakles. A man doing one good against his will, that shows the hand of a god. He wanted to keep me down, but he taught me to put up with hardship. I never need a fur cloak, I never eat after I’m full, or lie in bed in the morning. It would have come harder, to start learning now, as I’d have had to do, without him. You can’t ask your men to put up with things you can’t bear yourself. And they’ll all want to see if I’m softer than my father.”

His ribs and their muscle layer had knit together; his side felt like armor. “I wear better clothes, that’s all. I like to do that.”

“You’ll never wear this chiton again, I’m telling you. Look what you did in the tree, I can get my whole hand inside it…Alexander. You won’t ever go to war without me?”

Alexander sat up staring; Hephaistion was jolted into taking his hand away. “Without you? What do you mean, how could you even think of it? You’re my dearest friend.”

Hephaistion had known for many ages that if a god should offer him one gift in all his lifetime, he would choose this. Joy hit him like a lightning bolt. “Do you mean it?” he said. “Do you really mean it?”

“Mean it?” said Alexander, in a voice of astonished outrage. “Did you doubt I meant it? Do you think I tell everyone the things I’ve told to you? Mean it—what a thing to say!”

Only a month ago, Hephaistion thought, I should have been too scared to answer. “Don’t fight me. One always doubts great good fortune.”

Alexander’s eyes relented. Raising his right hand, he said, “I swear by Herakles.” He leaned and gave Hephaistion a practiced kiss; that of a child who is affectionate by nature, and fond of grown-up attention. Hephaistion had hardly time to feel the shock of delight before the light touch had gone. By the time he had nerved himself to return the kiss, Alexander’s attention had been withdrawn. He seemed to be gazing at heaven.

“Look,” he said pointing. “You see that Victory statue, on the top gable of all? I know how to get up there.”

From the terrace, the Victory looked as small as a child’s clay doll. When the dizzy climb had brought them to its base, it turned out to be five feet tall. Its hand held a gilded laurel wreath, extended over the void.

Hephaistion, who had questioned nothing all the way because he had not dared think, clasped in his left arm, at Alexander’s bidding, the bronze waist of the goddess. “Now hold my wrist,” Alexander said.

Thus counterpoised, he leaned out, off balance, into empty space, and broke two leaves from the wreath. One came easily; the second he had to worry at. Hephaistion felt clammy sweat in his palms; the dread that it would make his grip slide off turned his belly to ice, and crept in his hair. Through this terror he was aware of the wrist he held. It had looked delicate, against his own big frame; it was hard, sinewy, the fist clenched on itself in a remote and solitary act of will. After a short eternity, Alexander was ready to be pulled back. He climbed down with the leaves in his teeth; when they were back on the roof, he gave one to Hephaistion, saying, “Now do you know we shall go to war together?”

The leaf sat in Hephaistion’s hand, about the size of a real one. Like a real one it was trembling; quickly he shut his fingers on it. He felt now the full horror of the climb, the tiny mosaic of great flagstones far below, his loneliness at the climax. He had gone up in a fierce resolve to face, if it killed him, whatever ordeal Alexander should set to test him. Only now, with the gilt-bronze edges biting his palm, he saw that the test had not been for him. He was the witness. He had been taken up there to hold in his hand the life of Alexander, who had been asked if he meant what he had said. It was his pledge of friendship.

As they climbed down through the tall walnut tree, Hephaistion called to mind the tale of Semele, beloved of Zeus. He had come in a human shape, but that was not enough for her; she had demanded the embrace of his divine epiphany. It had been too much, she had burned to ashes. He would need to prepare himself for the touch of fire.

It was some weeks before the philosopher arrived; but his presence came before him.

Hephaistion had underrated him. He not only knew the country, but the court, and his knowledge was up-to-date; he had family guest-ties at Pella, and many traveled friends. The King, well aware of this, had written offering to provide, if it seemed of use, a precinct where the Prince and his friends could study undisturbed.

The philosopher read, approvingly, between the lines. The boy was to be taken from his mother’s claws; in return, the father too would let well alone. It was more than he had dared hope; he wrote back promptly, suggesting the Prince and his fellow students be lodged at some distance from the court’s distractions, and adding, as an afterthought, a recommendation of pure upland air. There were no sizable hills within miles of Pella.

On the footslopes of Mount Bermion, west of the Pella plain, was a good house which had gone downhill in the wars. Philip bought it, and put it in order. It was more than twenty miles out; it would do very well. He added a wing and a gymnasium; and, since the philosopher had asked for somewhere to walk about, had a garden cleared; nothing formal, a pretty editing of nature, what the Persians called a “paradise.” It was said that the legendary pleasance of King Midas had been thereabouts. Everything flourished there.

These orders given, he sent for his son; his wife would hear of them from her spies within the hour, and somehow twist their meaning to the boy.

In the talk which followed, much more was exchanged than was said in words, This was the self-evident training of a royal heir. Alexander saw his father took it as a matter of course. Had all the rebuffs, ambiguous double-edged words, been more than sparring in the endless war with his mother? Had all the words really been said? Once he had believed she would never lie to him; but he had known for some time that this was vanity.

“In the next few days,” said Philip, “I’d like to know which friends of your own you want to spend your time with. Think it over.”

“Thank you, Father.” He remembered the hours of tortuous stifling talk in the women’s rooms, the reading of gossip and rumor, the counterintrigues, the broodings and guessings over a word or look; cries, tears, declarations before the gods of outrage; smells of incense and magic herbs and burning meat; the whispered confidences that kept him awake at night, so that next day he was slower in the race or missed his aim.

“Those you go about with now,” his father was saying, “if their fathers agree, will all be quite acceptable. Ptolemy, I suppose?”

“Yes, Ptolemy of course. And Hephaistion. I asked you about him before.”

“I remember. Hephaistion by all means.” He was at pains to sound easy; he had no wish to disturb a state of things which had taken a load off his mind. The erotic patterns of Thebes were engraved on it; a youth and a man, to whom the youth looked for example. Things being as it began to seem they were, there was no one he wished to see in this place of power. Even Ptolemy, brotherly and a man for women, had been throwing too long a shadow. What with the boy’s startling beauty, and his taste for grown-up friends, he had been an anxiety for some time. It was of a piece with his oddness, suddenly to throw himself into the arms of a boy his own age almost to a day. They had been inseparable now for weeks; Alexander, it was true, was giving nothing away, but the other could be read like an open book. However, here there was no doubt at all who looked for example to whom. An affair, then, not to be interfered with.

There was trouble enough outside the kingdom. The Illyrians had had to be thrown back last year on the west border; it had cost him, as well as much grief, trouble and scandal, a sword-slash on the knee from which he was still limping.

In Thessaly, all was well; he had put down a dozen local tyrannies, made peace in a score of blood-feuds, and everyone, except a tyrant or two, was grateful. But he had failed with Athens. Even after the Pythian Games when, because he was presiding, they had refused to send competitors, he had still not given them up. His agents all said that the people could be reasoned with, if the orators would let them be. Their first concern was that the public dole should not be cut; no policy was ever passed if it threatened that, not even for home defense. Philokrates had been indicted for treason, and got away just ahead of a death sentence, to enjoy a generous pension; Philip rested his best hopes now on men never for sale, who yet favored the alliance because they thought it best. They had seen for themselves that, his first aim being the conquest of Asian Greece, the last thing he wanted was a costly war with Athens in which, win or lose, he must stand as Hellas’ enemy, for no better reward than to secure his back.

He had sent therefore this spring another embassy, offering to revise the peace treaty, if reasonable amendments were put up. An Athenian envoy had been sent back, an old friend of Demosthenes, a certain Hegesippos known to his fellow citizens as Tufty, from his effeminate topknot of long curls tied in a ribbon. At Pella it became clear why he had been chosen; to unacceptable terms he added, on his own account, uncompromising rudeness. No risk had been taken of Philip winning him over; he was the man who had arranged Athens’ alliance with the Phokians, his mere presence was an affront. He came and went; and Philip, who had not yet enforced the Phokians’ yearly fine to the plundered temple, gave them notice to start paying up.

Now there was a war of succession boiling up in Epiros, where the King had lately died. He had been scarcely more than one chieftain among many; soon there would be chaos, unless a hegemon could be set up. Philip meant to do so, for the good of Macedon. For once he had his wife’s blessing on his work, since he had chosen her brother Alexandros. He would see where his interest lay and be a curb on her intrigues; he was eager for support and should be a useful ally, Philip thought. It was a pity that, the affair being so urgent, he could not stay to welcome the philosopher. Before he limped out to his war-horse, he sent for his son and told him this. He said no more; he had been using his eyes, and had been many years a diplomat.

“He will be here,” said Olympias ten days later, “about noon tomorrow. So remember to be at home.”

Alexander was standing by the little loom on which his sister was learning fancy border-work. She had newly mastered the egg-and-dart pattern and was anxious to be admired for it; they were friends just now and he was generous with applause. But now he looked round, like a horse when it pricks its ear.

“I shall receive him,” said Olympias, “in the Perseus Room.”

“I shall receive him, Mother.”

“Of course you must be there, I said so.”

Alexander walked away from the loom. Kleopatra, forgotten, stood with the shuttle in her hand, and looked from face to face with a familiar dread.

Her brother patted his sword belt of polished chestnut leather. “No, Mother, it’s for me to do it, now that Father’s away. I shall make his apologies, and present Leonidas and Phoinix. Then I shall bring Aristotle up here, and present him to you.”

Olympias stood up from her chair. He had grown faster lately; she was not so much the taller as she had thought. “Are you saying to me, Alexander,” she said in a swelling voice, “that you do not want me there?”

There was a short, unbelievable silence.

“It’s for little boys, to be presented by their mothers. It’s no way to come to a sophist, when one is grown up. I’m nearly fourteen, now. I shall start with this man in the way I mean to go on.”

Her chin rose, her back stiffened. “Did your father tell you this?”

The moment found him unprepared, but he knew it for what it was. “No,” he said. “I didn’t need Father to tell me I’m a man. It was I who told him.”

There was a flush on her cheekbones; her red hair seemed to rise by itself from its central peak. Her grey eyes had widened. He gazed transfixed, thinking no other eyes in the world could look so dangerous. No one had yet told him otherwise.

“So, you are a man! And I, your mother, who bore you, nursed you, suckled you, who fought for your rights when the King would have thrown you off like a stray dog to set up his bastard—” She had fixed him with the stare of a woman who drives home a spell. He did not question her; that she willed his hurt was truth sufficient. Word followed word like a flight of burning arrows. “I who have lived for you each day of my life since you were conceived, oh, long before you saw the light of the sun; who have gone through fire and darkness for you and into the houses of the dead—! Now you plot with him to beat me down like a peasant wife. Now I can believe that you are his son!”

He stood silent. Kleopatra dropped her shuttle and cried urgently, “Father’s a wicked man. I don’t love him, I love Mother best.” Neither of them looked at her. She started to cry, but no one heard.

“The time will come when you look back upon this day.” Indeed, he thought, it would not soon be forgotten. “Well? Have you no answer?”

“I am sorry, Mother.” His voice had been breaking for some time; it betrayed him, cracking upward. “I have done my tests of manhood. Now I must live like a man.”

For the first time, she laughed at him as he had heard her laugh at his father. “Your tests of manhood! You silly child. Come and tell me that when you have lain with a woman.”

A shocked pause fell between them. Kleopatra, unheeded, ran outside. Olympias flung herself back into her chair, and burst into a storm of tears.

He went up presently, as so often before, and stroked her hair. She wept on his breast, murmuring of the cruelties she suffered, crying that she would no longer wish to see the light of day if he turned against her. He said that he loved her, that she knew it well enough. Much time passed in such words. In the end, he hardly knew how, it was decided he should receive the sophist himself, with Leonidas and Phoinix; and a little after, he went away. He felt neither defeated nor victorious, merely drained.

At the stair-foot Hephaistion was waiting. He happened to be there, as he happened to have a ball handy if Alexander wanted a game, or water if he was thirsty; not by calculation, but in a constant awareness by which no smallest trifle was missed. Now, when he came down the stairs with a shut mouth and blue lines under his eyes, Hephaistion received some mute signal he understood, and fell into step beside him. They went up along the path which wandered into the wood; in an open glade was an old fallen oak-bole with orange fungus and a lace of ivy. Hephaistion sat down with his back to it. Alexander, in a silence unbroken since setting out, came and settled into his arm. After a while he sighed; no other word was spoken for some time.

“They claim to love you,” he said at length. “And they eat you raw.”

Words made Hephaistion anxious; it had been simpler and safer to do without. “It’s that children belong to them, but men have to go away. That’s what my mother says. She says she wants me to be a man, and yet she doesn’t.”

“Mine does. Whatever she likes to say.” He edged himself closer; like an animal, Hephaistion thought, which is reassured by handling. It was nothing more for him. No matter, whatever he needed he must have. The place was solitary, but he spoke softly as it the birds were spies. “She needs a man to stand up for her. You know why.”

“Yes.”

“She’s always known I shall do that. But I saw today, she thinks when my time comes I shall let her reign for me. We didn’t speak of it. But she knows that I told her no.”

Hephaistion’s back prickled with danger, but his heart was full of pride. He had never hoped to be called in alliance against this mighty rival. He expressed his allegiance, but without risking words.

“She cried. I made her cry.”

He was still looking quite pale. Words must be found. “She cried too when you were born. But it had to be. So has this.”

There was a long pause; then, “You know that other thing I told you?”

Hephaistion assented. They had not spoken of it since.

“She promised to tell me everything one day. Sometimes she says one thing, sometimes another…I dreamed I caught a sacred snake and I was trying to make it speak to me, but it kept escaping and turning away.”

Hephaistion said, “Perhaps it wanted you to follow it.”

“No, it had a secret, but it wouldn’t speak…She hates my father. I think I’m the only one she ever truly loved. She wants me all hers, none of me his. Sometimes I’ve wondered…is that all?”

In the sun-steeped wood, Hephaistion felt a fine tremor running through him. Anything he needed, he must have. “The gods will reveal it. They revealed it to all the heroes. But your mother…in any case…she would be mortal.”

“Yes, that’s true.” He paused, turning it over. “Once when I was by myself on Mount Olympos, I had a sign. I vowed to keep it forever between me and the god.” He made a little movement, asking to be released, and stretched his whole frame in a long shuddering sigh. “Sometimes I forget all this for months on end. Sometimes I think of it day and night. Sometimes I think, unless I find out the truth of it, I shall go mad.”

“That’s stupid. You’ve got me now. Do you think I’d let you go mad?”

“I can talk to you. As long as you’re there…”

“I promise you before God, I’ll be there as long as I’m alive.”

They looked up together into the tall clouds, whose scarcely visible drift was like stillness in the sky of the long summer day.

Aristotle, son of Nikomachos the physician of the line of the Asklepiads, gazed round him as the ship rowed into harbor, trying to recall the scenes of boyhood. It was a long time; everything looked strange. He had had a quick smooth voyage from Mytilene, sole passenger in a fast war-galley sent to fetch him. It was no surprise, therefore, to see a mounted escort waiting on the wharf.

He hoped to find its leader helpful. He was well informed already, but no knowledge was ever trivial; truth was the sum of all its parts.

A gull swooped over the ship. With the reflex of many years’ self-training, he noted its species, the angle of its flight, its wing-spread, its droppings, the food it dived for. The lines of the vessel’s bow-wave had changed with its lessening speed; a mathematical ratio formed in his mind, he stored it where he would find it again when he had time. He never needed to carry tablets and stylos with him.

Through the cluster of small craft, he could not see the escort clearly. The King would have sent someone responsible. He prepared his questions; those of a man formed by his era, when philosophy and politics were totally engaged, when no man of intellect could conceive for his thought a higher value than that of being physician to Hellas’ sickness. Barbarians, by definition, were hopeless cases; as well try to make a hunchback straight. Hellas must be healed to guide the world.

Two generations had seen each decent form of government decay into its own perversion: aristocracy into oligarchy, democracy to demagogy, kingship to tyranny. With mathematical progression, according to the number who shared the evil the deadweight against reform increased. To change a tyranny had lately been proved impossible. To change an oligarchy called for power and ruthlessness, destructive to the soul. To change a demagogy, one must become a demagogue and destroy one’s mind as well. But to reform a monarchy, one need only mold one man. The chance to be a king-shaper, the prize every philosopher prayed for, had fallen to him.

Plato had risked death for it in Syracuse, once with the tyrant father, again with the trivial son. He had thrown away half his last harvest-time, sooner than refuse the challenge he himself had first defined. It was the aristocrat and soldier in him; or maybe the dreamer. Far better have collected reliable data first, and saved the journey…Yet even this crisp thought evoked that formidable brooding presence; the old unease, the sense of something eluding the tools of measurement, defeating category and system, came hauntingly back with the summer scents of the Academy garden.

Well, in Syracuse he had failed. Maybe for want of good stuff to work on; but his failure had resounded through all Greece. And before the end, his mind must have been failing too, to bequeath the School to Speusippos, that barren metaphysician. At all events, Speusippos had been eager to give up even that, and come to Pella. The King cooperative, the boy intelligent and strong-willed, without known vices, the heir to yearly increasing power; no wonder that Speusippos had been tempted, after the squalors and miseries of Syracuse. But Speusippos had been turned down. Demosthenes and his faction had achieved this if nothing else, that no one from Athens had stood a moment’s chance.

Good friends in Mytilene had praised his courage in braving the backward and violent northland; he had brushed it aside with his astringent smile. His roots were here; in the air of these mountains he had known childhood happiness, tasting their beauty while his elders’ minds were clenched in the cares of war. As for violence, he was no novice, having lived under the shadow of Persian power. If there he had succeeded in making of a man with so dark a past a friend and a philosopher, he need hardly fear failure with an unformed boy.

As the galley threaded the shipping, backing oars to let through a troop-trireme, he thought with affection of the hillside palace at Assos, looking out to the wooded mountains of Lesbos, and the strait he had crossed so often; the terrace with its burning cresset on summer nights; debate or thoughtful silence, or a book read together. Hermeias read well, his high voice was musical and expressive, never shrill. Its epicene pitch did not reflect his mind; as a boy he had been gelded, to prolong the beauty his master prized; he had been through the depths, before he made himself ruler, but like a smothered sapling he had grown through to the light. He had been persuaded to visit the Academy, and from there he had never fallen back.

He had adopted a niece, being condemned to childlessness. For their friendship’s sake, Aristotle had married her; the fact that she adored him had come as a surprise. He was glad to have shown gratitude, for she was lately dead; a thin dark studious girl, who had held his hand, gazed at him dimly with nearsighted eyes already beginning to wander, and begged that her ashes and his might share one urn. He had vowed it to her, and added of his own accord that he would never take another wife. He had brought the urn with him, in case he should die in Macedon.

There would of course be women. He took some pride, not improper, he thought, to a philosopher, in his own healthy normality. Plato, in his opinion, had committed too much to love.

The galley was docking, turning in with the suddenness of such maneuvers in crowded harbors. Ropes were flung and hitched, the gangplank clattered. The escort stood dismounted, five or six men. He turned to his two servants to make sure of all his baggage. Some stir among the seamen made him look up. At the top of the gangplank stood a boy gazing about. His hands were poised on the man’s sword belt round his waist, his bright heavy hair was ruffled in the offshore breeze. He looked as alert as a young hunting-dog. As their eyes met he jumped down, not waiting for the sailor who ran to help, landing so lightly that it did not check his pace.

“Are you Aristotle the philosopher? May you live happy. I am Alexander son of Philip. Be welcome to Macedon.”

They exchanged the formal courtesies, taking stock of one another.

Alexander had planned his expedition at short notice, adjusting his strategy to events.

Instinct had made him watchful. His mother was taking it too well. He had known her agree with his father on this or that, only to cover her next move. Going to her room in her absence, he had seen a state gown laid out. A new battle would be bloodier than the last, and still indecisive. He had bethought him of the admirable Xenophon, who, when cornered in Persia, had decided to steal a march.

It must be done correctly, not turned into an escapade. He had gone to Antipatros, his father’s Regent in Macedon, and asked him to come too. He was a King’s man of unshaken loyalty; he read the lie of the land with satisfaction, which he was not fool enough to show. He was here now on the quay; the reception was an official one; and here was the philosopher.

He was a lean smallish man, not ill-proportioned, who yet gave at first sight the effect of being all head. His whole person was commanded by his wide bulging brow, a vessel stretched by its contents. Small piercing eyes were busy recording, without prejudgment or error, just what they saw. The mouth was closed in a line precise as a definition. He had a short neat beard; his thinning hair looked as if its roots had been forced apart by the growth of the massive brain.

A second glance revealed him to be dressed with some care and with the elegance of Ionia, wearing one or two good rings. Athenians thought him rather foppish; in Macedon, he looked tasteful and free from harsh austerity. Alexander offered him a hand to mount the gangplank, and tried the effect of a smile. When the man returned it, it could be seen that smiling was what he would do best; he would not often be caught with his head back laughing. But he did look like a man who would answer questions.

Beauty, thought the philosopher; the gift of God. And it moved with mind; in that house there was someone living. This enterprise was no such forlorn hope as poor Plato’s trips to Syracuse. He must take care that Speusippos had the news.

Presentations went forward, the Prince performing them with address. A groom led up a mount for the philosopher, offering a leg up, Persian style. This seen to, the boy turned round; a taller boy moved forward, his hand on the headstall of a magnificent black charger with a white blaze. All through the formalities, Aristotle had been aware of the creature fretting; he was surprised therefore to see the youth release it. It trotted straight to the Prince, and muzzled the hair behind his ear. He stroked it, murmuring something. With neatness and dignity, the horse sank its crupper on its haunches, waited while he mounted, and at his finger-touch straightened up. There was a moment in which the boys and the beast seemed like initiates, who have exchanged in secret a word of power.

The philosopher swept aside this fantasy. Nature had no mysteries, only facts not yet correctly observed and analyzed. Proceed from this sound first principle, and one would never miss one’s way.

The spring of Mieza was sacred to the Nymphs. Its waters had been led into an old stone fountain-house, where they tinkled hollowly; but the ferny pool below had been carved by the falling stream itself, swirling between the rocks. Its brown surface caught the sun; it was a pleasant place to bathe in

Runnels and conduits threaded about the gardens, glittering streamlets sprang out in jets, or tumbled in little falls. Bay and myrtle and rowan grew there; in rough grass beyond the tended orchard, old gnarled apple trees and crabs still bloomed in spring. Fine green turf had been laid where the scrub had been cleared away; from the pink-washed house, paths and rough steps meandered, circling some rock with its small wiry mountain flowers, or crossing a wooden bridge, or widening round a stone seat with a view. In summer, the woods beyond were a tangle of huge wild roses, the gift of the Nymphs to Midas; the night dews were full of their briery scent.

The boys would ride out at cocklight, to go hunting before the day’s school began. They would set up their nets in the coverts, and get their buck or their hare. Under the trees the smells were dank and mossy; on the open slopes, spicy with crushed herbs. At sunup there would be smells of wood-smoke and roasting meat, horse-sweat on leather, dog-smells as the hounds came coaxing up for scraps. But if the quarry was rare or strange, they would go fasting home and save it for dissection. Aristotle had learned this skill from his father; it was the Asklepiad heritage. Even insects, they found, he did not disdain. Most of what they brought in he knew already; but now and then he would say sharply, “What’s this, what’s this?” then get out his notes with their fine pen-drawings, and be in good humor for the day.

Alexander and Hephaistion were the youngest boys. The philosopher had made it clear that he wanted no children under his feet, however great their fathers. Many youths and older boys who had been friends of the Prince’s childhood were now grown men. None of those chosen refused the invitation to join the School. It established them as Companions of the Prince, a privilege which might lead anywhere.

Antipatros, after waiting some time in vain, put forward to the King the claims of his son Kassandros. Alexander, to whom Philip had given this news before he left, had not taken it well. “I don’t like him, Father. And he doesn’t like me, so why does he want to come?”

“Why do you suppose? Philotas is going.”

“Philotas is one of my friends.”

“Yes, I said your friends should go, and as you know I have not refused one of them. But I did not promise to let in no one else. How can I admit Parmenion’s son, and reject Antipatros’? If you’re on bad terms, now’s the time to mend it. It will be of use to me. And it is an art that kings must learn.”

Kassandros was a youth with bright-red hair, and a bluish-white skin patched with dark freckles; thickly built, and fond of exacting servility from anyone he could frighten. He thought Alexander an insufferable young show-off, spoiling for a good setdown, but protected by his rank and the ring of toadies it brought him.

Kassandros had not wanted to go to Mieza. Not long before, he had been beaten up by Philotas, to whom he had said something ill-advised, unaware that Philotas’ chief concern just then was to get accepted in Alexander’s set. No exploit of Philotas’ was likely to lose in the telling. Kassandros found himself cut by Ptolemy and Harpalos; Hephaistion looked at him like a leashed dog at a cat; Alexander ignored him, but was charming in his presence to anyone he was known to dislike. Had they ever been friends it could have been righted; Alexander was fond of reconciliations, and, to refuse one, had to be very angry indeed. As it was, casual dislike had become hostility. Kassandros would see them all rot, before he came fawning to that vain little whelp, who, in the proper course of nature, ought to be learning a wholesome respect for him.

He had pleaded in vain to his father that he could not learn philosophy; that it was known to turn men’s brains; that he wanted only to be a soldier. He dared not confess that he was disliked by Alexander and his friends; he would have had a belting for letting it happen. Antipatros valued his own career and was ambitious for his son’s. As it was, he fixed Kassandros with a fierce blue eye, whose bristling brows had once been as red as his, and said, “Behave yourself there. And be careful with Alexander.”

Kassandros said dismissively, “He’s only a little boy.”

“Don’t make yourself out a bigger fool than you were born. Four or five years between you, it’s nothing once you’re men. Now pay heed to what I tell you. That boy has his father’s wits about him; and if he doesn’t turn out as bad to cross as his mother, then I’m an Ethiop. Don’t cross him. The sophist is paid to do it. You I’m sending to improve yourself, not to make enemies. If you stir up brawls there, I’ll tan your hide.”

So Kassandros went to Mieza, where he was homesick, bored, lonely and resentful. Alexander was civil to him, because his father had said it was the art of kings, and because he had more serious things to think about.

The philosopher had turned out not only willing, but eager to answer questions. Unlike Timanthes, he would do this first, and only afterwards explain the value of system. The exposition, however, when it came was always rigorous. He was a man who hated loose ends and cloudy edges.

Mieza faced east; the tall rooms with their faded frescoes were sun-drenched all morning, and cool from noontime on. They worked indoors when they needed to write or draw or study specimens; when they discoursed or were lectured to, they walked the gardens. They talked of ethics and politics, the nature of pleasure and of justice; of the soul, virtue, friendship and love. They considered the causes of things. Everything must be traced to its cause; and there could be no science without demonstration.

Soon a whole room was full of specimens: pressed flowers and plants, seedlings in pots; birds’ eggs with their embryos preserved in clear honey; decoctions of medicinal herbs. Aristotle’s trained slave worked there all day. At night they observed the heavens; the stars were stuff more divine than any other thing man’s eye could reach, a fifth element not to be found on earth. They noted winds and mists and the aspect of the clouds, and learned to prognosticate storms. They reflected light from polished bronze, and measured the angles of refraction.

For Hephaistion, it was a new life. Alexander was his own in the sight of everyone. His place was recognized even by the philosopher.

The school discussed friendship often. It is, they learned, one of the things man can least afford to lack; necessary to the good life, and beautiful in itself. Between friends is no need of justice, for neither wrong nor inequality can exist. He described the degrees of friendship, up from the self-seeking to the pure, when good is willed to the friend for the friend’s own sake. Friendship is perfect when virtuous men love the good in one another; for virtue gives more delight than beauty, and is untouched by time.

He went on to value friendship far above the shifting sands of Eros. One or two of the young men argued this. Hephaistion, who was not very quick at shaping his thoughts into words, usually found that someone else got in before him. He preferred this to making a fool of himself. Kassandros, for one thing, would count it as a score against Alexander.

Hephaistion was quickly growing possessive. Everything led him that way: his nature, the integrity of his love and his own sense of it; the tenet of the philosopher that for each man there was only one perfect friend; the certainty of his unspoiled instincts that Alexander’s loyalty matched his own; and their acknowledged status. Aristotle was a man to proceed from facts. He had seen at once the attachment already fixed for good or ill; one of real affection, not of incontinence or flattery. It should not be opposed, but molded in its innocence. (Had some wise man only done as much for the father…!) When therefore he spoke of friendship, he let his eyes fall kindly on the two handsome boys unfailingly side by side. In the stolen intimacies of Pella, Hephaistion had only had eyes for Alexander; now he saw refracted, as clearly as in the optics class, the fact that they made a very good-looking pair.

There was nothing to do with Alexander of which he was not proud; this included his rank, for he could not be imagined without it. Had he lost it, Hephaistion would have followed him to exile, prison or death; this knowledge gave self-respect to his pride. He was never jealous over Alexander, since he never doubted him; but he was jealous of his own standing, and liked to have it recognized.

Kassandros at least was well aware of it. Hephaistion, who had eyes for him in the back of his head, knew that though Kassandros wanted neither of them, he hated in both their closeness, their trust, their beauty. He hated Alexander because with Antipatros’ soldiers he came before Antipatros’ son; because he had won his belt at twelve, because Oxhead sat down for him. Hephaistion he hated for not being after Alexander in hope of gain. All this Hephaistion knew, and mirrored back his deadly knowledge to Kassandros, whose self-esteem craved assurance that he hated Alexander for his faults alone.

Most hateful of all was his going to Aristotle for private lessons in statecraft. Indeed, Hephaistion offered Kassandros’ envy to cheer Alexander up, when he complained that he found the lessons boring.

“I thought they’d be the best. He knows Ionia and Athens and Chalkidike, and even Persia a little. I want to know what men are like there, their customs, how they behave. What he wants, is to fit me out with answers beforehand to everything. What would I do if this happened, or that? I’d see when it happened, I said; happenings are made by men, one would need to know them. He thought I was being obstinate.”

“The King might let you drop it?”

“No, I’ve a right to it. Besides, disagreeing makes one think. I know what’s wrong. He thinks it’s an inexact science, but still a kind of science. Put a ram to a ewe and you get a lamb each time, even if not identical; heat snow and it melts. That’s science. Your demonstrations should be repeatable. Well, say in war, now; even if one could repeat all other conditions, which is impossible, one could still not repeat surprise. Nor the weather. Nor the mood the men are in. Armies and cities, they’re all made up of men. Being a king…being a king is like music.”

He paused, and frowned. Hephaistion said, “Has he been asking you again to play?”

“‘With mere listening, half the ethical effect is lost.’”

“When he’s not as wise as a god, he’s as silly as some old hen-wife.”

“I told him I’d learned the ethical effect by an experiment, but it was not repeatable. I suppose he took the hint.”

The matter was indeed never raised again. Ptolemy, who did not deal in hints, had taken the philosopher aside and explained the facts.

The young man had borne without rancor the rise of Hephaistion’s star. Had the new friend been adult, a clash would have been certain; but Ptolemy’s fraternal role remained untrespassed on. Though still unmarried, he was several times a father, with a sense of duty to his scattered offspring; into this feeling, his friendship for Alexander began to merge. The world of passionate adolescent friendship was unknown country to him; he had been entranced by girls since puberty. He had lost nothing to Hephaistion; except that he no longer came first of all. This being not the least of human losses, he was inclined not to take Hephaistion more seriously than he had to. No doubt they would soon grow out of it. But meantime, Alexander should get the boy to be less quarrelsome. One could see the two of them never fell out, one soul in two bodies as the sophist put it; but Hephaistion on his own could be pugnaciously assertive.

There was just then some excuse for this. Mieza, sanctuary of the Nymphs, was a shelter too from the court with its turmoil of news, events, intrigues. They lived with ideas, and with one another. Their minds were ripening, a growth they were daily urged to hasten; less was said about the fact that their bodies were ripening too. At Pella, Hephaistion had lived in a cloud of vague, inchoate longings. They had become desires, and no longer vague.

True friends share everything; but Hephaistion’s life was filling with concealments. It was Alexander’s nature to love the proofs of love, even when he was sure of it; in this spirit he welcomed and returned his friend’s caresses. Hephaistion had never dared do anything which could tell him more.

When one so quick-minded was so slow to understand, he must lack the will. When he delighted in giving, what he did not offer he might not possess. If then the knowledge was forced home to him, one would have made him fail. His heart might forgive it; his soul would never forget.

And yet, thought Hephaistion, sometimes one could swear…But it was no time to trouble him, he had trouble enough.

Every day they had formal logic. The King had forbidden, and the philosopher did not want, the quibbling logomachy of eristics, that science which Sokrates had defined as making the worse cause look the better. But the mind must be trained to detect a fallacy, a begged question, false analogy or undistributed middle; all science hung on knowing when two propositions excluded one another. Alexander had picked up logic quickly. Hephaistion kept his misgivings to himself. He alone knew the secret of impossible alternatives, avoided by half-believing two things at once. At night, for they shared a room, he would look across to his bed and see him open-eyed in the moonlight, confronted by the syllogism of his own being.

For Alexander, their sanctuary was not inviolate. Half a dozen times a month would come his mother’s courier, with a gift of sweet figs, a riding-hat or a pair of worked sandals (the last pair too small, for his growth was quickening); and a thick letter, thread-bound and sealed.

Hephaistion knew what the letters contained. He read them. Alexander said that true friends share everything. He did not try to hide that he needed to share his trouble. Sitting on the edge of his bed, or in one of the garden arbors, with an arm around him to read over his shoulder, Hephaistion would be scared by his own anger, and shut his teeth on his tongue.

The letters were full of secrets, detraction and intrigue. If Alexander wanted news of his father’s wars, he had to question the courier. Antipatros had been left again as Regent, while Philip campaigned in the Chersonesos; Olympias thought she herself should have been governing, with the general as garrison commander. He could do nothing right for her; he was Philip’s creature; he was plotting against her, and against Alexander’s succession. She always ordered the courier to await his answer; and he would do no more work that day. If he seemed lukewarm against Antipatros, a letter full of reproaches would come back; had he supported her accusations, he knew her not above showing Antipatros his letter, to score in their next quarrel. In time came the inevitable day when news reached her that the King had a new girl.

This letter was terrible. Hephaistion was amazed, even dismayed, that Alexander should let him read it. Halfway through he drew back; but Alexander reached for him and said, “Go on.” He was like someone with a recurring illness, who feels the familiar grip of the pain. At the end he said, “I must go to her.”

He had grown chilly to the touch. Hephaistion said, “But what can you do?”

“Only be there. I’ll come back tomorrow, or the day after.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“No, you’d be angry, we might quarrel. It’s enough without that.”

The philosopher, when told that the Queen was sick and her son must visit her, was nearly as angry as Hephaistion, but did not say so. The boy did not look like a truant going off to a party; nor did he come back looking as if he had had one. That night he woke Hephaistion by shouting “No!” in his sleep. Hephaistion went over and got in with him; Alexander grasped his throat with savage strength, then opened his eyes, embraced him with a sigh of relief that was like a groan, and fell asleep again. Hephaistion lay awake beside him, and just before daybreak returned to his own cold bed. In the morning, Alexander remembered nothing of it.

Aristotle too, in his way, attempted consolation, making next day a special effort to draw back his charge into the pure air of philosophy. Grouped round a stone bench with a view of clouds and distances, they discussed the nature of the outstanding man. Is self-regard a flaw in him? Certainly yes, in respect of common greeds and pleasures. But then, what self should be regarded? Not the body nor its passions, but the intellectual soul, whose office it is to rule the rest like a king. To love that self, to be covetous of honor for it, to indulge its appetite for virtue and noble deeds; to prefer an hour of glory closed by death, to a slothful life; to reach for the lion’s share of moral dignity: there lies the fulfilling self-regard. The old saws are wrong, said the philosopher, which tell man to be forever humble before his own mortality. Rather he should strain his being to put on immortality, never to fall below the highest thing he knows.

On a grey boulder before a laurel bush, his eyes upon the skyline, Alexander sat with his hands clasping his knees. Hephaistion watched him, to see if his soul was being calmed. But he seemed more like one of those young eagles which, they had read, were trained by their parents to stare into the noonday sun. If they blinked, the books said, they were thrown out of the nest.

Afterwards Hephaistion took him away to read Homer, having more faith in this remedy.

They now had a new book for it. Phoinix’ gift had been copied some generations back, by an untalented scribe from a corrupt text. Asked about one unclear passage, Aristotle had compressed his lips over the whole, had sent to Athens for a good recension, and gone over it himself for errors. Not only did it contain some lines the old book had dropped out, but it now scanned everywhere and made sense. Here and there it had also been edited for moral tone; a footnote explained that when Achilles called “Lively!” for the wine, he wanted it soon, not strong. The pupil was keen and grateful; but to the teacher, this time, the causes of things were not revealed. He had been concerned to make an archaic poem edifying; Alexander, that a sacred scripture should be infallible.

The philosopher felt less easy when, at one of the feasts, they rode into town and went to the theater. To his regret, it was Aischylos’ Myrmidons, which showed Achilles and his Patroklos as more (or in his own view less) than perfect friends. In the midst of his critical concerns, when the news of Patroklos’ death had reached Achilles, he became aware that Alexander was sitting trance-bound, tears streaming from his wide-open eyes, and that Hephaistion was holding his hand. A reproving stare made Hephaistion let go, red to the ears; Alexander was unreachable. At the end they vanished; he ran them down backstage, with the actor who had played Achilles. He was unable to stop the Prince from actually embracing this person, and giving him a costly arm-ring he had on, which the Queen was sure to inquire for. It was most unsuitable. All next day’s work was devoted to mathematics, as a healthy antidote.

No one had informed him that his school, when not required to discuss law, rhetoric, science or the good life, was busy debating whether those two did anything, or not. Hephaistion knew it well, having lately thrashed someone for asking him outright, because there was a bet on it. Was it possible for Alexander not to know? If he did, why did he never speak of it? Was it loyalty to their friendship, lest anyone should think it incomplete? Did he, even, think they were lovers already, as he understood it himself? Sometimes in the night Hephaistion wondered if he was a fool and coward, not to try his luck. But the oracle of instinct signed against it. They were being daily told that all things were open to reason; he knew better. Whatever it was that he was waiting for—a birth, a healing, the intervention of a god—he would have to wait, if he waited forever. Only with what he had, he was rich beyond his dreams; if, reaching for more, he lost it, he would as soon be dead.

In the month of the Lion, when the first of the grapes were harvested, they had their birthdays and turned fifteen. In the week of the first frosts the courier brought a letter, not from the Queen but from the King. He greeted his son; expected he would like a change from sitting down with the philosophers; and invited him to visit his headquarters. It was none too soon, since he was forward in such matters, for him to see the face of war.

Their road led by the shore, skirting the mountains when marsh or river-mouth drove it inland. The armies of Xerxes had first leveled it, moving westward; the armies of Philip had repaired it, moving east.

Ptolemy came, because Alexander thought it due to him; Philotas, because his father was with the King; Kassandros because if the son of Parmenion came, Antipatros’ could not be left behind; and Hephaistion as a matter of course.

The escort was commanded by Kleitos, Hellanike’s younger brother. The King had detailed him for it, because Alexander had known him so long. This was indeed one of the first beings he could remember, as a dark thickset young man who would walk into the nursery and talk to Lanike across him, or come roaring across the floor playing bears. He was now Black Kleitos, a bearded captain of the Companion Cavalry; highly reliable, and with an archaic forthrightness. Macedon had many such survivals from a Homeric past, when the High King had to take, if his chieftains chose to give it, a wholesome piece of their minds. Now, escorting the King’s son, he was hardly aware of harking back to the rough teasing of the nursery; Alexander scarcely knew what it was he half-remembered; but there was an edge to their sparring, and though he laughed, he took care to give as good as he got.

They forded streams which, it was said, had been drunk dry by the Persian hordes; crossed the Strymon by King Philip’s bridge, and climbed Pangaios’ shoulder to the terraced city of Amphipolis. There at the Nine Ways, Xerxes had buried nine boys and nine girls alive, to please his gods. Now between mountain and river stood a great fortress shining with new squared ashlar; gold-smelters’ furnaces smoked within its walls; it was a strongpoint Philip did not mean to lose, the first of his conquests beyond the river which had once been Macedon’s furthest boundary. Above them towered Pangaios, dark with forests and scarred with the workings of the mines, its white marble outcrops gleaming in the sun; the rich womb of the royal armies. Wherever they went, Kleitos pointed out to them the spoor of the King’s wars; weed-covered siege works, ramps where his towers and his catapults had been reared against city walls still laid in ruins. There was always a fort of his along the way, to take them in for the night.

“What’s to become of us, boys,” said Alexander laughing, “if he leaves us nothing to do?”

When the coastal plain was firm, the boys would wheel off at a gallop, and charge back with streaming hair, splashing along the seashore, shouting to each other above the crying of the gulls. Once, when they were singing, some passing peasants took them for a wedding party, bringing the bridegroom to the house of the bride.

Oxhead was in high spirits. Hephaistion had a fine new horse, red with a blond mane and tail. They were always giving each other things, on impulse, or at the feasts, but they had been boys’ small keepsakes; this was the first costly and conspicuous gift he had had from Alexander. The gods had only made one Oxhead; but Hephaistion’s mount must excel all others. It handled well. Kassandros admired it pointedly. After all, then, Hephaistion was making a good thing out of his sycophancy. Hephaistion felt the meaning, and would have given much for the chance of vengeance; but nothing had been said in words. Before Kleitos and the escort, it was unthinkable to make a scene.

The road ran inland to skirt a brackish swamp. Perched on a spur of hill to command the passage, towering proudly above the plain, was the citadel rock of Philippi. Philip had taken it, and sealed it with his name, in a famous year.

“My first campaign,” Kleitos said. “I was there when the courier brought the news. Your father, Philotas, had pushed back the Illyrians and run them halfway to the western sea; the King’s horse had won at Olympia; and you, Alexander, had come into the world—with a great yell as we were told. We were issued a double wine-ration. Why he didn’t make it a treble one, I don’t know.”

“I do. He knew how much you could hold.” Alexander trotted ahead, and murmured to Hephaistion, “Since I was three I’ve been hearing that story.”

Philotas said, “All this used to be Thracian tribal land.”

“Yes, Alexander,” said Kassandros. “You’ll need watch your blue-painted friend, young Lambaros. The Agrianoi”—he waved his hand northwards—“must be hoping to make something of this war.”

“Oh?” Alexander raised his brows. “They’ve kept their pledges. Not like King Kersobleptes, who made war as soon as we’d given his hostage back.” It was known that Philip had had enough of this chief’s false promises and brigand raids; the aim of the war was to make his lands a province of Macedon.

“These barbarians are all alike,” Kassandros said.

“I heard from Lambaros last year. He got a merchant to write for him. He wants me to visit their city as his guest.”

“I don’t doubt it. Your head would look well on a pole at the village gate.”

“As you just now said, Kassandros, he’s my friend. Will you remember that?”

“And shut your mouth,” said Hephaistion audibly.

They were to sleep at Philippi. The tall acropolis flamed like a cresset in the red light of the westering sun. Alexander gazed long in silence.

The King, when at last they reached him, was camped before the fort of Doriskos, on the near side of the Hebros valley. Beyond the river was the Thracian city of Kypsela. Before investing that, he must take the fort.

It had been built by Xerxes, to guard his rear after he had crossed the Hellespont. On the flat sea-meadow below it, he had rough-reckoned the number of his host, too vast for counting, by marching troop after troop into a square drawn around the first ten thousand men. The fort was solid; he had had no lack of slaves. But it had grown ramshackle in its century and a half of Thracians; cracks were filled in with rubble, the battlements patched with thorn like a goat pen in the mountains. It had withstood Thracian tribal wars; till now, no more had been asked of it.

Dusk was falling as they came near. From within the walls rose the smell of cook-fires and the distant bleat of goats. Just out of arrow-shot was the camp of the Macedonians, a workmanlike shantytown of hide tents, lean-tos roughly thatched with reeds from the Hebros River, and propped upturned carts. Drawn geometric and black against the sunset sky stood a sixty-foot wooden siege tower; its guards, shielded by thick ox-hide housing against missiles from the ramparts, were cooking supper within its base. In the cavalry lines, the horses whinnied at their pickets. The platforms had been set up for the catapults; the great engines seemed to crouch like dragons about to spring, their timber necks extended, their massive bolt-firing bows outspread from their sides like wings. The outlying scrub stank of ordure; the nearer air smelled of wood-smoke, grilling fish, and the unwashed bodies of many men and women. The camp-followers were busy with supper; here and there one of their incidental children chirped or wailed. Someone was playing a lyre in need of tuning.

A little hamlet of huts, its people fled to the fort or mountains, had been cleaned out for the officers. The headman’s place, two stone rooms and a lean-to, housed the King. They saw his lamp at some distance.

Alexander moved into the lead, lest Kleitos take it on himself to deliver him like a child. His eyes and nose and ears took in the presence of war, the difference from barracks or home camp. When they reached the house, Philip’s square shape darkened the doorway. Father and son embraced, and viewed each other in the light of the watch-fire. “You’re taller,” said the King.

Alexander nodded. “My mother,” he said for the escort’s ears, “sends you greeting and hopes you are in good health.” There was a loaded pause; he went on quickly, “I’ve brought you a sack of apples from Mieza. They’re good this year.”

Philip’s face warmed; Mieza apples were famous. He clapped his son on the shoulder, greeted his companions, directed Philotas to his father’s lodging, and said, “Well, come in, come in and eat.”

Joined presently by Parmenion, they ate at a trestle, waited on by the royal squires, youths in their mid-teens whose fathers’ rank entitled them to learn manners and warfare by acting as body-servants to the King. The sweet golden apples were brought in a silver dish. Two lamps stood on bronze standards. The King’s weapons and armor leaned in a corner. An ancient smell of humanity sweated out from the walls.

“Only a day later,” said Philip, “and we might have lodged you inside.” He gestured with his apple-core at the fort.

Alexander leaned forward across the table. The long ride had sunburned him; the clear color glowed in his cheeks, his hair and eyes caught the lamplight brilliantly; he was like kindling caught with the spark.

“When do we attack?”

Philip grinned across at Parmenion. “What can one do with such a boy?”

They were to go in just before dawn.

After supper, the officers came in for briefing. They were to approach the fort in darkness; then flame-arrows were to be shot at the brushwood in the walls, the catapults and siege tower would open covering fire to clear the ramparts while scaling-ladders were set up. Meantime the ram, slung in its mighty cradle, would be swung against the gates, the siege tower would thrust out its drawbridge; the assault would begin.

It was an old story to the officers, only small details imposed by the site were new. “Good,” Philip said. “Time for a little sleep, then.”

The squires had brought in a second bed to the room behind. Alexander’s eyes had followed it for a moment. Just before bedtime, when he had honed his weapons, he went out to find Hephaistion, to tell him he had arranged they should be posted together for the assault, and to explain that he himself had to share his father’s lodging. For some reason he had not thought to expect it.

When he got back, his father had just stripped, and was handing a squire his chiton. Alexander checked a moment in the doorway, then entered, saying something to seem at ease. He could not, indeed, account for the deep distaste and shame the sight of his father gave him. As far as he could remember, he had never seen him naked before.

By sunup the fort had fallen. A pure, clear golden light came lifting from behind the hills that hid the Hellespont. A fresh breeze blew from the sea. Over the fort hung the acrid smells of smoke and smolder, the stink of blood and entrails and grimy sweat.

The ladders, solid structures of undressed pine which would take two men abreast, still leaned against the fire-stained walls, with here and there a broken rung where the rush had overloaded one. Before the burst splintered gates hung the ram in its hide-roofed cradle; the gangway from the siege tower lolled on the ramparts like a great tongue.

Inside, the Thracian men who survived were being fettered for their march to the slave market at Amphipolis; the clink sounded musical, at a little distance. An example, Philip thought, might encourage the Kypselans to surrender when their turn came. All round the huts and hovels that clung like swallows’ mud nests to the inside of the walls, the soldiers were on the hunt for women.

The King stood, with Parmenion and a couple of runners by whom he was sending orders, up on the ramparts; solid, workmanlike, relaxed, like an able farmer who has plowed a big field and got it sown before the rain. Once or twice, when a shriek rose shrilling to hurt the ears, Alexander looked towards him; but he went on talking to Parmenion, undisturbed. The men had fought well, and deserved what meager spoils the place could offer. Doriskos should have surrendered; then no one would have been hurt.

Alexander and Hephaistion were by themselves in the gatehouse, talking about the battle. It was a small stone room, containing besides themselves a dead Thracian, a slab carved with the name and styles of Xerxes, King of Kings; some rough wooden stools; half a loaf of black bread; and, by itself, a man’s forefinger with a black broken nail. Hephaistion had kicked it aside; it was a trifle to what they had seen already.

He had won his sword belt. One man he had killed for certain, dead on the spot; Alexander thought it might well be three.

Alexander had taken no trophies, nor counted his men. As soon as they were on the walls, the officer who led their party had been hurled down. Alexander, giving no one else time to think, had shouted that they must take the gatehouse, whence missiles were being showered on the ram below. The appointed second-in-command, an untried man, had wavered, and in that moment had lost his men to Alexander’s certainty; they were already running after him, clambering, scrambling, stabbing and thrusting along Xerxes’ old ragged masonry, with its wild blue-stained defenders and clefts of crackling fire. The entry to the gatehouse was narrow; there had been a minute, after Alexander had hurled himself inside, when the following press had jammed in it, and he had been fighting alone.

He stood now with the blood and dust of combat on him, looking down on the other face of war. But, Hephaistion thought, he was not really seeing it. He talked quite clearly, remembered every detail where for Hephaistion things were already flowing together like a dream. For him it was fading; Alexander was living in it still. Its aura hung about him; he was in a mode of being he did not want to leave, as men linger on in a place where they saw a vision.

He had a sword-cut across his forearm. Hephaistion had stopped the bleeding with a strip of his kilt. He looked out at the pale clean sea, saying, “Let’s go down and bathe, to wash off the muck.”

“Yes,” said Alexander. “I ought to see Peithon first. He put out his shield to cover me when two of them were at me, and that man with the forked beard caught him under it. But for you he’d have been killed outright.” He took off his helmet (they were both armed, at short notice, from the common stock of the Pella armory) and ran his hand through his damp hair.

“You ought to have waited, before you dashed in alone, to see if we’d come up with you. You know you run faster than anyone else. I could have killed you for it, when we were milling in the doorway.”

“They were going to drop that rock there, look at the size of it. I knew you weren’t far off.”

Hephaistion was feeling the reaction, not only to his fears for Alexander, but to all he had seen and done. “Rock or no rock, you’d have gone in. It was written all over you. It’s only luck you’re alive.”

“It was the help of Herakles,” said Alexander calmly. “And hitting them quickly, before they could hit me.”

He had found this easier than he had foreseen. The best he had hoped from his constant weapon-practice had been some lessening of disadvantage, against seasoned men. Hephaistion, reading his thought, said, “These Thracians are peasants. They fight two or three times a year, in a cattle-raid or a brawl. Most of them are stupid, none of them are trained. Real soldiers, like your father’s men, would have cut you down before you were well inside.”

“Wait till they do it,” said Alexander sharply, “and tell me about it then.”

“You went in without me. You didn’t even look.”

Suddenly transformed, Alexander gave him a loving smile. “What’s the matter with you? Patroklos reproached Achilles for not fighting.”

“He was listened to,” said Hephaistion in a different voice.

From below in the fort, the wail of a woman keening rhythmically over some dead man broke off in a shriek of terror.

“He should call the men in,” Alexander said. “It’s enough. I know there was nothing else worth taking, but—”

They looked along the wall; but Philip had gone off on some other business.

“Alexander. Listen. It’s no use to be angry. When you’re a general, you’ll not be able to expose yourself like that. The King’s a brave man, but he doesn’t do it. If you’d been killed, it would have been like a battle won for Kersobleptes. And later, when you’re King…”

Alexander turned round, and riveted on him that gaze of peculiar intensity with which he told a secret. Dropping his voice, a needless caution in so much noise, he said, “I can never not do it. I know it, I’ve felt it, it’s the truth of the god. It’s then that I—”

A sound of panting breath, catching in shrill sobs, broke in on them. A young Thracian woman rushed in from the ramparts and, without looking right or left, dashed towards the wide parapet above the gate. It was some thirty feet from the ground. As she got her knee on the sill, Alexander jumped after and grasped her arm. She screamed, and clawed at him with her free hand, till Hephaistion caught it back. She stared into Alexander’s face with the fixity of a cornered animal, writhed suddenly free, crouched down and clutched his knees.

“Get up, we won’t harm you.” Alexander’s Thracian had been improved by his talks with Lambaros. “Don’t fear, get up. Let go.”

The woman gripped harder, pouring out a stream of half-smothered words as she pressed her face with its running eyes and nose against his bare leg.

“Get up,” he said again. “We won’t…” He had never learned the essential word. Hephaistion supplied a gesture of universal meaning, followed by a strongly negative sign.

The woman let go and sat back on her heels, rocking and wailing. She had red matted hair, and a dress of some coarse raw wool, torn at the shoulder. The front was splashed with blood; there were damp patches of leaked milk over the heavy breasts. She wrenched at her hair, and began to wail again. Suddenly she started, leaped to her feet, and flattened herself against the wall behind them. Footsteps approached; a thick breathless voice called, “I saw you, you bitch. Come here. I saw you.” Kassandros entered. His face was crimson, his freckled brow beaded with sweat. He charged blindly in, and stopped dead.

The girl, shouting out curses, entreaties, and the incomprehensible tale of her wrongs, ran up behind Alexander and grabbed his waist, holding him like a shield. Her hot breath was in his ear; her wet softness seemed to seep even through his corselet; he was half stifled with the rank female smell of dirty flesh and hair, blood, milk and sex. Pushing her arms away, he gazed at Kassandros with mystified repugnance.

“She’s mine,” panted Kassandros, with an urgency hardly capable of words. “You don’t want her. She’s mine.”

Alexander said, “No. She’s a suppliant, I’ve pledged her.”

“She’s mine.” He spoke as if the word must produce effect, staring across at the woman. Alexander looked him over, pausing at the linen kilt below his corselet. In a withdrawn distaste he said, “No.”

“I caught her once,” Kassandros insisted. “But she got away.” His face was plowed down one side with scratches.

“So you lost her. I found her. Go away yourself.”

Kassandros had not quite forgotten his father’s warnings. He kept his voice down. “You can’t interfere here. You’re a boy. You know nothing about it.”

“Don’t dare call him a boy!” said Hephaistion furiously. “He fought better than you did. Ask the men.”

Kassandros, who had blundered and hacked his way through the complex obstacles of battle, confused, harassed, and intermittently scared, recalled with hatred the enraptured presence cleaving the chaos, as lucid as a point of flame. The woman, supposing all this to be concerned with her, began to pour out another flood of Thracian. Above it Kassandros shouted, “He was looked after! Whatever fool thing he did, they were bound to follow him! He’s the King’s son. Or so they say.”

Stupid with anger, and looking at Hephaistion, he was an instant too late for Alexander, whose standing leap at his throat took him off balance and hurled him to the rugged floor. He threshed and flailed; Alexander, intent on choking him, took kicks and blows with indifference. Hephaistion hovered, not daring to help without leave. Something rushed past him from behind. It was the woman, whom they had all forgotten. She had snatched up a three-legged stool; missing Alexander by an inch, she brought it down in a side-sweep on Kassandros’ head. Alexander rolled out of the way; with a frenzied rage she began to beat Kassandros over the body, slamming him back whenever he tried to rise; taking both hands to it, as if she were threshing corn.

Hephaistion, who was becoming overwrought, burst out laughing. Alexander, regaining his feet, stood looking down, stone-cold. It was Hephaistion who said, “We must stop her. She’ll finish him off.”

Without moving, Alexander answered, “Someone killed her child. That’s its blood on her.”

Kassandros had begun to roar with pain. “If he dies,” said Hephaistion, “she’ll be stoned. The King couldn’t refuse. You pledged her.”

“Stop!” said Alexander in Thracian. Between them they got the stool away. She burst into wild weeping, while Kassandros rolled about on the cobbled floor.

“He’s alive,” said Alexander, turning away. “Let’s find someone reliable, and get her out of the fort.”

A little later, rumors reached King Philip that his son had thrashed Antipatros’ son in a fight over a woman. He said offhandedly, “Boys will be men, it seems.” The note of pride was too clear for anyone to risk taking it further.

Hephaistion, walking back with Alexander, said grinning, “He can hardly complain to Antipatros that you stood by and let a woman beat him.”

“He can complain where he likes,” said Alexander. “If he likes.” They had turned into the gate. A sound of groaning came from a house within the wall. Here on makeshift bedding the wounded lay; the doctor and his two servants were going to and fro. Hephaistion said, “Let him see properly to your arm.” It had started to bleed again, after the brawl in the gatehouse.

“There’s Peithon,” Alexander said, peering into the gloom with its buzzing flies. “I must thank him first.”

He picked his way between mats and blankets, by the light from holes in the roof. Peithon, a youngish man who in battle had looked stern and Homeric, lay with his bandage seeping, limp with loss of blood. His pale face was pinched, his eyes shifted anxiously. Alexander knelt by him and clasped his hand; presently, as his exploits were recalled to him, his color livened a little, he bragged, and essayed a joke.

When Alexander got up, his eyes had grown used to the shadows. He saw they were all looking at him, jealous, despondent, hopeful; feeling their pain, and wanting their contribution recognized. In the end, before he left, he had spoken to every one of them.

It was the hardest winter old men remembered. Wolves came down to the villages and took the watchdogs. Cattle and herd-boys died of cold on the low slopes of the winter grazing. The limbs of fir trees cracked under their weight of snow; the mountains were blanketed so thick that only great cliffs and clefts in them still showed dark. Alexander did not refuse the fur cloak his mother sent him. Taking a fox among the stark black tangle of the rose-thorns near Mieza, they found that its pelt was white. Aristotle was very pleased with it. The house was pungent and smoky with its braziers; nights were so bitter that the young men doubled up together, only for warmth. Alexander was anxious to keep well hardened (the King was still in Thrace, where winter blew down straight from the Scythian steppes). He thought he should get through the cold spell without such coddling; but gave way to Hephaistion’s view that people might suppose they had quarreled.

Ships were lost at sea, or land-bound. Even from as near as Pella, the roads were sometimes snowed up. When the mule train got through, it was like a feast-day.

“Roast duck for supper,” said Philotas.

Alexander smelled the air and nodded. “Something’s wrong with Aristotle.”

“Has he gone to bed?”

“No, it’s bad news. I saw him in the specimen room.” Alexander went there often; he was now apt to set up his own experiments. “My mother sent me some mitts; I don’t need two pairs, and no one sends him presents. He was there with a letter. He looked dreadful; like a tragic mask.”

“I daresay some other sophist has contradicted him.”

Alexander held his peace, and went off to tell Hephaistion.

“I asked him what the trouble was, if I could help. He said no, he’d tell us about it when he was more composed; and that womanishness would be unworthy of a noble friend. So I went off, to let him weep.”

At Mieza, the winter sun went down quickly behind the mountain, while the eastward heights of Chalkidike still caught its light. Around the house, the dusk was whitened by the snow. It was not yet time to eat; in the big living-room with its peeling frescoes of blue and rose, the young men hung round the fire-basket on the hearth, talking about horses, women or themselves. Alexander and Hephaistion, sharing the wolfskin cloak sent by Olympias, sat near the window because the lamps were not yet lit. They were reading Xenophon’s The Upbringing of Kyros, which, next to Homer, was just then Alexander’s favorite book.

“And she could not hide her tears,” read Hephaistion, “falling all down her robe to her feet. Then the eldest man of us said, ‘Don’t be afraid, Lady; we know your husband was noble, but we are choosing you out for one who is not below him in beauty, or mind, or power. We believe that if any man is admirable, it is Kyros; and to him you will belong.’ When the lady heard this, she rent her peplos from top to bottom, crying aloud, while her servants wept with her; and we then had a sight of her face, her neck and arms. And let me tell you, Kyros, it seemed to me and all of us that there was never so beautiful a woman of mortal birth in Asia. But you must be sure to see her for yourself.’

“‘No, by God,’ said Kyros. ‘Especially if she is as lovely as you say.’

“They keep asking me,” said Hephaistion, looking up, “why Kassandros doesn’t come back.”

“I told Aristotle he fell in love with war and forsook philosophy. I don’t know what he told his father. He couldn’t have come back with us; she broke two of his ribs.” He pulled another roll out of the cloak. “This part I like. Bear in mind that the same toils do not bear equally on the general and the common soldier, though their bodies are of the same kind; but the honor of the general’s rank, and his knowing that nothing he does will go unnoticed, make his hardships lighter to endure. How true that is. One can’t bear it in mind enough.”

“Can the real Kyros have been quite so much like Xenophon?”

“The Persian exiles used to say he was a great warrior and a noble king.”

Hephaistion peered into a roll. “He trained his companions not to spit or blow their noses in public, not to turn round and stare…”

“Well, the Persians were rough hill-people in his day. They must have seemed to the Medes like, say, Kleitos would to an Athenian…I like it that when his cooks served him something good, he sent pieces round to his friends.”

“I wish it were suppertime. I’m clemmed.”

Alexander edged more of the cloak around him, remembering that at night he was always drawing close because of the cold. “I hope Aristotle will come down. It must be icy upstairs. He ought to have some food.”

A slave came in with a hand-lamp and tinder-stick, and kindled the tall standing lamps, then reached his flame to the hanging lamp-cluster. The raw young Thracian he was training closed up the shutters, and gingerly pulled the thick wool curtains across.

“A ruler,” read Alexander, “should not only be truly a better man than those he rules. He should cast a kind of spell on them…”

There were footsteps on the stairs, which paused till the slaves had gone. Into the evening snugness, Aristotle came down like a walking corpse. His eyes were sunken; the closed mouth seemed to show beneath it the rigid grin of the skull.

Alexander threw off the cloak, scattering the scrolls, and crossed the room to him. “Come to the fire. Bring a chair, someone. Come and get warm. Please tell us the trouble. Who is dead?”

“My guest-friend, Hermeias of Atarneus.” Given a question of fact to answer, he could bring out the words. Alexander shouted in the doorway for some wine to be mulled. They all crowded round the man, grown suddenly old, who sat staring into the fire. For a moment he stretched his hands to warm them; then, as if even this stirred some thought of horror, drew them back into his lap.

“It was Mentor the Rhodian, King Ochos’ general,” he began, and paused again. Alexander said to the others, “That’s Memnon’s brother, who reconquered Egypt.”

“He has served his master well.” The voice too had thinned and aged. “Barbarians are born so; they did not make their own base condition. But a Hellene who sinks to serve them…Herakleitos says, The best corrupted is the worst. He has betrayed nature itself. So he sinks even below his masters.”

His face looked yellow; those nearest saw his tremor. To give him time, Alexander said, “We never liked Memnon, did we, Ptolemy?”

“Hermeias brought justice and a better life to the lands he ruled. King Ochos coveted his lands, and hated his example. Some enemy, I suspect Mentor himself, carried to the King tales he gladly believed. Then Mentor, pretending a friend’s concern, warned Hermeias of danger, and invited him to come and take counsel on it. He went, believing; in his own walled city he could have held out a long time, and was in reach of help from…a powerful ally, with whom he had agreements.”

Hephaistion looked at Alexander; but he was fixed in entire attention.

“As a guest-friend he came to Mentor; who sent him, in fetters, to the Great King.”

The young men made sounds of outrage, but briefly, being eager to learn what next.

“Mentor took his seal and fixed it to forged orders, which opened all the strongpoints of Atarneus to Mentor’s men. King Ochos now owns them, and all the Greeks within them. As for Hermeias…”

A brand fell out of the hearth; Harpalos picked up the fire-iron and shoved it back. Aristotle wetted his lips with his tongue. His folded hands did not move, but their knuckles whitened.

“From the first his death had been determined; but that was not enough for them. King Ochos wished first to know what secret treaties he might have made with other rulers. So he sent for the men whose skill it is to do such things, and told them to make him speak. It is said they worked on him a day and a night.”

He went on to tell them what had been done; forcing his voice, when he could, into the tone of his lectures on anatomy. The young men listened wordless; their breath hissed as they sucked it in through their shut teeth.

“My pupil Kallimachos, whom you know, sent me the news from Athens. He says that when Demosthenes announced to the Assembly that Hermeias had been taken, he numbered it among the gifts of fortune, saying, ‘The Great King will now hear of King Philip’s plots, not as a complaint from us, but from the lips of the man who worked them.’ He knows, none better, how such things are done in Persia. But he rejoiced too soon. Hermeias told them nothing. At the end, when after all they could do he was still alive, they hung him on a cross. He said to those in hearing, ‘Tell my friends I have done nothing weak, nor unworthy of philosophy.’”

There was a deep-voiced murmuring. Alexander stood rooted and still. Presently, when no one else spoke, he said, “I am sorry. Indeed I am truly sorry.” He came forward, put his arm around Aristotle’s shoulders and kissed his cheek. He stared on into the fire.

A servant brought the warmed wine; he sipped it, shook his head, and put it aside. Suddenly he sat up, and turned towards them. In the upward glow of the fire, the lines of his face looked as if carved in clay, ready for casting in the bronze.

“Some of you will command in war. Some of you will have the ruling of lands you conquer. Always remember this: as the body is worth nothing without the mind to rule it, as its function is to labor that the mind may live, such is the barbarian in the natural order God ordained. Such peoples may be bettered, as horses are, by being tamed and put to use; like plants or animals, they can serve purposes beyond what their own natures can conceive. That is their value. They are the stuff of slaves. Nothing exists without its function; that is theirs. Remember it.”

He stood up from the chair, giving as he turned a haunted look at the fire-basket, whose bands were reddening. Alexander said, “If I ever take the men who did this to your friend, the Persians or the Greek, I swear I will avenge him.”

Without looking back, Aristotle walked to the dark staircase and went up it out of their sight.

The steward came in, to announce that supper was ready.

Talking loudly of the news, the young men made for the dining-room; there was not much formality at Mieza. Alexander and Hephaistion lingered, exchanging looks. “So,” said Hephaistion, “he did arrange the treaty.”

“My father and he caused this between them. What must he feel?”

“At least he knows his friend died faithful to philosophy.”

“Let’s hope he believes it. A man dies faithful to his pride.”

“I expect,” said Hephaistion, “the Great King would have killed Hermeias in any case, to get his cities.”

“Or he did it because he doubted him. Why was he tortured? They guessed there was something he knew.” The firelight burnished his hair and the clear whites of his eyes. He said, “If ever I get my hands on Mentor, I shall have him crucified.”

With a complex inward shudder, Hephaistion pictured the beautiful vivid face watching unmoved. “You’d better go in to supper. They can’t start without you.”

The cook, who knew how young men eat in cold weather, had allowed a whole duck to each. First helpings, with the breast, were being carved and handed; a warm aromatic smell enriched the air.

Alexander picked up the plate they had put before him, and swung down his feet from the dining-couch he was sharing with Hephaistion. “Everyone eat, don’t wait. I’m only going to see Aristotle.” To Hephaistion he said, “He must eat before night. He’ll fall sick if he lies fasting in the cold, in all that grief. Just tell them to get me something, anything will do.”

The plates were being wiped with bread when he came back. “He took a little. I thought he would once he got the smell of it. I daresay he’ll have more, now…There’s too much here, you’ve been giving me yours.” Presently he added, “Poor man, he was half out of his mind. I could tell, when he made us that speech about the nature of barbarians. Imagine calling a great man like Kyros the stuff of slaves, only because he was born a Persian.”

The pale sun rose earlier and gained strength; steep mountain faces let slip their snow-loads, roaring, to flatten great pines like grass. Torrents foamed down their gorges, grinding boulders with thunderous sound. Shepherds waded thigh-deep through wet snow to rescue the early lambs. Alexander put his fur cloak away, in case he should come to depend on it. The young men who had been doubling up went back to sleep alone; so he put away Hephaistion too, though not without some regret. Secretly Hephaistion exchanged their pillows, to take with him the scent of Alexander’s hair.

King Philip came back from Thrace, where he had deposed King Kersobleptes, left garrisons in his strongpoints, and planted the Hebros valley with Macedonian colonists. Those who applied for lands in these uncouth wilds were mostly men unwanted, or wanted too much, elsewhere; the wits of the army said he should have called his new city, not Philippopolis, but Knavestown. However, the foundation would serve its purpose. Pleased with his winter’s work, he returned to Aigai to celebrate the Dionysia.

Mieza was abandoned to its slaves. The young men and their teacher packed up their things, and rode along the track which skirted the ridge to Aigai. Here and there they had to descend to the plain, to ford swollen streams. A long while before they sighted Aigai, on the forest trail they felt the earth below them shudder from the pounding of the falls.

The old rugged castle was full of lights and bright stuffs and beeswax polish. The theater was being readied for the plays. The half-moon shelf Aigai stood on was like a great stage itself, looked down on by wild hills whose audience one could only guess at, when in the windy spring nights they cried to each other over the sounds of water, in defiance, terror, loneliness or love.

The King and Queen were installed already. Reading as he crossed the threshold those signs in which the years had made him expert, Alexander judged that, publicly at least, they were on speaking terms. But they were unlikely to be found together. This had been his first long absence; which should be greeted first?

It ought to be the King. Custom decreed it; to omit it would be an open slight. Unprovoked too; in Thrace, Philip had gone to trouble to keep things decent before him. No girl about the place; never a glance too many at the handsomest of the body-squires, who thought himself a cut above the rest. His father had commended him handsomely after the battle, and promised him his own company when next he went into action. It would be boorish to insult him. Indeed, Alexander found that he wished to see him; he would have much to tell.

The King’s business room was in the ancient tower which had been the first core of the castle, filling its upper floor. A ponderous wooden ladder, mended through the centuries, still had beside it the heavy ring to which earlier kings, whose bedchamber it had been, had chained a watchdog of the great Molossian breed that could rear up taller than a man. King Archelaos had hung a smoke-hood over the hearth; but he had made few changes at Aigai, the Palace at Pella had been his love. Philip’s clerks had the anteroom below the ladder. Alexander had one of them announce him, before he went up.

His father got up from his writing-table, to thump him on the shoulders. Their greetings had never been so easy. Alexander’s questions burst from him. How had Kypsela fallen? He had been sent back to school while the army still sat before it. “Did you go in from the river side, or breach that blind bit next the rocks?”

Philip had been saving him a reprimand for visiting, without leave, the wild eyrie of young Lambaros on his journey home, but this was now forgotten. “I tried a sap on the river side, but the soil was sandy. So I built a siege tower for them to think about, while I sapped the northeast wall.”

“Where did you put the tower?”

“On that rise where—” Philip looked for his tablet, found it filled with notes, and made gestures in the air to sketch the site.

“Here.” Alexander ran to the log-basket by the hearth, and came back with both hands full of kindling. “Look, this is the river.” He laid down a stick of pine. “Here’s the north watchtower.” He stood a log on its end. Philip reached for another, and made a wall next the tower. They began eagerly to push bits of wood about.

“No, that’s too far out, the gate was here.”

“Look, but Father, your siege tower…Oh, there, I see. And the sap was here?”

“Now the ladders, give me those sticks. Now here was Kleitos’ company. Parmenion—”

“Wait, we left out the catapults.” Alexander dived into the basket for fir-cones. Philip set them up.

“So Kleitos was partly covered, while I—”

Silence fell like a sword-stroke. Alexander, whose back was to the door, needed only to read his father’s face. It had been easier to leap into the gatehouse at Doriskos than now it was to turn; so he turned at once.

His mother was dressed in a robe of purple bordered with white and gold. Her hair was bound with a gold fillet, and draped with a veil of byssos silk from Kos, through which its red showed like fire through wood-smoke. She did not glance at Philip. Her burning eyes sought not the enemy, but the traitor.

“When you have done your game, Alexander, I shall be in my room. Do not hurry. I have waited half a year; what are a few hours more?”

She turned rigidly and was gone. Alexander stood unmoving. Philip read into this what he wished to see. He raised his brows with a smile, and turned again to the battle-plan.

“Excuse me, Father. I had better go along.”

Philip was a diplomat; but the rancor of years, the present exasperation, robbed him of his instinct for the moment when generosity would pay. “You can stay, I suppose, till I have finished speaking.”

Alexander’s face changed to that of a soldier awaiting orders. “Yes, Father?”

With a folly he would never have shown in parley with his enemies, Philip pointed to a chair and said, “Sit down.” Challenge had been offered, beyond recall.

“I am sorry. I must see Mother now. Goodbye, Father.” He turned towards the door.

“Come back,” barked Philip. Alexander looked round from where he was. “Do you mean to leave all this filth on my table? You put it there; clear it up.”

Alexander walked back to the table. Crisply, precisely, he put the wood in a pile, strode with it to the log-basket, and flung it in. He had knocked a letter off the table. Ignoring it, he gave one deadly look at Philip and left the room.

The women’s quarters had been the same since the first days of the castle. From here they had been summoned, in Amyntas’ day, to greet the Persian envoys. He went up the narrow stairs to the little anteroom. A girl he had not seen before was coming out, looking over her shoulder. She had fine feathery dark hair, green eyes, a clear pale skin, and a deep bosom over which her thin red dress was tightly bound; her lower lip was caught in a little, in a natural line. At the sound of his step she started. Her long lashes swept up; her face, as frank-looking as a child’s, showed admiration, realization, fright. He said, “Is my mother there?” and knew there had been no need to ask the question, he had done it from choice. “Yes, my lord,” she said, dipping nervously. He wondered why she looked scared, though a mirror might have told him; felt sorry for her and smiled. Her face changed as if a pale sun had touched it. “Shall I tell her, Alexander, that you are here?” “No, she expects me, you need not stay.” She paused a moment, looking at him earnestly, as if not satisfied that she had done enough for him. She was a little older than he, perhaps a year. Then she went on down the stairs.

He paused a moment outside the door, staring after. She had looked fragile and smooth to touch, like a swallow’s egg; her mouth had been unpainted, pink and delicate. She had been a sweet taste after a bitter one. From outside the window came drifting the sound of a men’s chorus, practicing for the Dionysia.

“You have remembered, then, to come,” said his mother as soon as they were alone. “How soon you have learned to make your life without me!”

She stood by the window in the thick stone wall; a slanting light touched the curve of her cheek and shone in her thin veil. She had dressed for him, painted; intricately done her hair. He saw it; as she saw that he had grown again, that the bones of his face had hardened, his voice lost the last flaws of boyhood. He had come back a man, and faithless like a man. He knew that he had longed for her; that true friends share everything, except the past before they met. If only she would weep, even that, and let him comfort her; but she would not humble herself before a man. If only he would run to her side and cling to her; but his manhood was hard-won, no mortal should make him a child again. So, blinded by their sense of their own uniqueness, they fought out their lovers’ quarrel, while the roar of the Aigai falls pounded in their ears like blood.

“How shall I be anything, without learning war? Where else can I learn it? He is my general; why affront him without a cause?”

“Oh, you have no cause now. Once you had mine.”

“What? What has he done?” He had been gone so long, Aigai itself had looked changed, like the promise of some new life. “What is it, tell me.”

“Never mind, why should you be troubled? Go and enjoy yourself with your friends. Hephaistion will be waiting.”

She must have been questioning someone, he had always been careful. “I can see them any time. All I wanted was to do the proper thing. For your sake too, you know that. One would think you hated me.”

“I only counted on your love. Now I know better.”

“Tell me what he’s done.”

“Never mind. It is nothing, except to me.”

“Mother.”

She saw the crease drawn across his forehead, deeper now; two little new lines came down between his brows. She could no longer look down at him; his eyes, drawn at the inner corners, met hers level. She came forward and laid her cheek to his. “Never be so cruel to me again.”

Once through this rising river, and she would forgive him everything, all would be rendered back. But no. He would not give her this. Before she could see his tears, he broke from her and ran down the narrow stair.

At the turn, his eyes blurred, he collided with someone head-on. It was the dark-haired girl. “Oh,” she cried, fluttering and soft like a pigeon, “I am sorry, I am sorry, my lord.”

He took her slender arms in his hands. “My fault. I hope I did not hurt you?”

“No, no indeed.” They paused a moment, before she swept down her thick lashes and went on up the stairs. He touched his eyes, in case there had been anything to notice; but they were scarcely wet.

Hephaistion, who had been looking for him everywhere, found him an hour later in a little old room which looked towards the falls. Their sound was deafening here when the water was in spate; the very floor seemed to shudder with the grinding of the rocks below. The room was lined with chests and shelves of old musty records and title deeds, treaties, and long family trees going back to heroes and gods. There were a few books too, left there by Archelaos or by the accidents of time.

Alexander sat curled in the small deep window-hole, like an animal in a cave. A handful of scrolls was strewed around him.

“What are you doing here?” Hephaistion asked.

“Reading.”

“I’m not blind. What’s the matter?” Hephaistion came up nearer, to see his face. It had the fierce secretiveness of a wounded dog which will bite the hand that strokes it. “Someone said you went up here. I’ve never seen this room before.”

“It’s the archives room.”

“What are you reading?”

“Xenophon on hunting. He says the tusk of the boar is so hot that it singes dogs’ fur.”

“I never knew that.”

“It’s not true. I put a hair on one to see.” He picked up the scroll.

“It will soon be dark in here.”

“Then I’ll come down.”

“Don’t you want me to stay?”

“I just want to read.”

Hephaistion had come to tell him that their sleeping-quarters had been set out in the archaic manner, the Prince in a small inner room, the Companions in a dormitory outside it, devoted to that purpose immemorially. Now, without asking, Hephaistion could see that the Queen would take notice if this arrangement were changed. The groan of the waterfall, the lengthening shadows, spoke of grief.

Aigai was in its yearly bustle for the Dionysia, enhanced by the presence of the King, so often absent at war. The women ran from house to house, the men met to practice their phallic dances. Mule trains of wine came in from the vineyards and up from the castle storerooms. The Queen’s rooms were a buzzing secret hive. Alexander was barred from them, not in disgrace but because he was a man. Kleopatra was inside, though she was not yet a woman. She must know nearly all the secrets now. But she was too young yet to go with them up the mountain.

On the day before the feast, he woke early and saw dawn glimmer in the window. The first birds were chirping; the water sounded more distantly here. He could hear a woodman’s ax, and cattle lowing for the milkers. He rose and dressed, thought of waking Hephaistion, then looked at the little postern stair which would let him out alone. It was built within the wall, so that the Prince could have women brought in discreetly. It could have told some tales, he thought as he stepped quietly down and, at the bottom, turned the key in its massive lock.

There was no garden at Aigai, only an old orchard enclosed in the outer wall. On the black bare trees, one or two buds were splitting at the thrust of unfolding flowers. Dew was heavy in the long grass; it hung in the spiders’ webs like crystal beads. The peaks, still snowbound, were flushed with pink. The cold air was quickened with spring and violets.

He traced them by their scent to the bank where they grew deep in rank grass. When he was a child, he had gathered them for his mother. He would pick some now, and bring them while the women were doing her hair. It was as well he had come alone; even with Hephaistion, he could not very well have done it.

His hands were full of the cold wet flowers, when he saw something gliding through the orchard. It was a girl, with a thick brown wrap over a pale filmy gown. He knew her at once, and went towards her. She was like the plum buds, the light enfolded in the dark. When he came out from the trees, she gave a great start, and went as white as her linen. What a shy girl she was. “What is it? I shan’t eat you. I only came to say good day.” “Good morning, my lord.” “What’s your name?” “Gorgo, my lord.”

She still looked quite blanched with fright; she must be extremely modest. What should one say to girls? He knew only what his friends, and the soldiers, claimed that they had said. “Come, smile for me, Gorgo, and you shall have some flowers.” She gave him with dropped lashes a little smile, fragile, mysterious, like a hamadryad slipping out briefly from her tree. He almost found himself dividing the flowers in two, to keep some for his mother; what a fool he would have looked. “Here,” he said, and, as she took them, bent and kissed her cheek. She leaned it a moment to his lips, then drew back, not looking at him, softly shaking her head. Opening her thick cloak she tucked the violets between her breasts, and slipped away through the trees.

He stood looking after her, seeing again the cold crisp stems of the violets going down into the warm silky crease. Tomorrow was the Dionysia. And holy Earth made fresh young grass grow under them, dewy clover and crocuses and hyacinths, a thick soft bed between them and the hard ground.

He said nothing of it to Hephaistion.

When he went to greet his mother, he saw that something had happened. She was raging like a banked-down fire; but from her looks he was not the offender. She was asking herself whether or not to tell him of it. He kissed, but did not question her. Yesterday had been enough.

All day his friends were telling each other about the girls they meant to have next day, if they could catch them on the mountain. He threw back the old jokes, but kept his own counsel. The women would be setting out from the sanctuary, long before the dawn.

“What shall we do tomorrow?” Hephaistion asked him. “I mean, after the sacrifice?”

“I don’t know. It’s unlucky to make plans for the Dionysia.”

Hephaistion gave him a secret, startled glance. No, it was not possible; he had been moody since he got here, and cause enough. Till he got over it, one must let him be.

Supper was early; everyone would be up next day before cocklight; and on the eve of Dionysos no one, even in Macedon, sat late over the wine. The spring twilight fell early, when the sun sank under the western ridges; there were corners in the castle where lamps were kindled half through afternoon. The meal in Hall had a transit air; Philip made use of its sobriety to seat Aristotle by him, a compliment less convenient on other nights, for the man was a poor drinker. After supper, most people went straight to bed.

Alexander was never fond of sleeping early. He decided to look up Phoinix, who often read late; he was lodged in the western tower.

The place was a warren; but he knew the short-cuts from childhood. Beyond an anteroom, where spare furniture for guests was kept, was the well of a little stair which took one straight there. The lobby was unlit, but a wall-cresset from beyond shone through. He was almost inside, when he heard a sound, and saw a movement.

Silent and motionless, he stood in shadow. In the patch of light, the girl Gorgo faced towards him, wriggling and squirming in the arms of a man who stood behind her, one dark square hairy hand squeezing her groin and the other her breast. Breathless soft giggles stirred her throat. The dress slid off her shoulder under the working hand; a couple of dead violets fell out on the flagstones. The man’s face, muzzling for her ear, appeared from behind her head. It was his father’s.

Stealthily as in war, his footfalls covered by her squeaking, he drew back, and went through the nearest door into the cold, water-loud night.

Upstairs, in the lodging of the Prince’s Guard, Hephaistion lay awake, waiting for Alexander to come to bed so that he could go in and say good night. Other nights here, they had all gone up together; but tonight, no one had seen him since supper. To go searching about for him might make people laugh; Hephaistion lay in the darkness, staring at the line of light under the thick old door of the inner room, watching for the shadows of feet to cross it. No shadow stirred. He drifted into sleep, but dreamed he was watching still.

In the dark small hours, Alexander went up by the postern to change his clothes. The lamp, nearly burned out, flickered dimly. Stripping in the bitter cold, his fingers almost too numb to fasten things, he got into the dressed leather tunic, boots and leggings he used for hunting. He would get warm when he began to climb.

He leaned from the window. Already here and there, wavering among trees, twinkling like stars in the down-drafts from the snows, the first torches shone.

It was long since he had followed them to the grove. Never, at any time of his life, had he followed them to the rites upon the mountain. He could have given no reason now, except that it was the only thing. He was returning, though it was unlawful. There was nowhere else to go.

He had always been a quick, light-footed hunter, impatient of others’ noise. Few men were astir so early; they were easily heard, laughing and talking with time in hand to find in the footslopes the willing tipsy stragglers who would be their prey. He slipped past unseen; soon he had left them all below him, going up through the beech woods along the immemorial track. Long ago, the day after an earlier Dionysia, he had traced this path in secret, all the way to the trodden dancing-place, by footprints, threads caught on thorns, fallen sprays of vine and ivy, torn fur and blood.

She should never know; even in after years, he would never tell her. Forever possessed in secrecy, this would belong only to him. He would be with her invisibly, as the gods visit mortals. He would know of her what no man had known.

The mountainside grew steep, the path doubled to and fro; he threaded its windings quietly, lit by the sinking moon and the first glimmer of dawn. Down in Aigai, the cocks were crowing; the sound, thinned by distance, was magical and menacing, a ghostly challenge. On the zigzag path above him, the line of torches twined like a fiery snake.

Dawn rose up out of Asia and touched the snow-peaks. Far ahead in the forest he heard the death-squeal of some young animal, then the bacchic cry.

A steep bluff was split by a timbered gorge; its waters spread from their narrow cleft in a chuckling bed. The path turned left; but he remembered the terrain, and paused to think. This gorge went right up till it flanked the dancing-place. It would be a hard climb through virgin woods to the other edge, but it would make a perfect hide, out of reach yet near; the cleft was narrow there. He could hardly reach it before the sacrifice; but he would see her dance.

He forded the fast ice-cold water, clinging to the rocks. The pine woods above were thick, untouched by man, dead timber lying where time had felled it; his feet sank in the black sheddings of a thousand years. At last he glimpsed the torches flitting, small as glow-worms; then, as he drew nearer, the bright clear flame from the altar fire. The singing too was like flames, shrilling and sinking and rising in some new place as one voice kindled another.

The first shafts of sunlight shone ahead, at the open edge of the gorge. Here grew a fringe of small sun-fed greenery, myrtle and arbutus and broom. On hands and knees, stealthily as if stalking leopard, he crept behind their screen.

On the far side it was clear and open. There was the dancing-place, the secret meadow screened from below, exposed only to the peaks and the gods. Between its rowan trees it was scattered with small yellow flowers. Its altar smoked from the flesh of the victim and blazed with resin; they had thrown the butts of their torches on it. Below him the gorge plunged a hundred feet, but across it was only a javelin-cast. He could see their dew-dabbled, bloodstained robes and their pine-topped wands. Even from so far, their faces looked emptied for the god.

His mother stood by the altar, the ivy-twined thyrsos in her hand. Her voice led the hymn; her unbound hair flowed over her robe and fawnskin and her white shoulders, from under her ivy crown. He had seen her, then. He had done what men must not do, only the gods.

She held one of the round wine flasks proper to the festival. Her face was not wild or blank, like some of the others’, but bright, clear and smiling. Hyrmina from Epiros, who knew most of her secrets, ran up to her in the dance; she held the flask to her mouth and spoke in her ear.

They were dancing round the altar, running out and back from it, then in on it with loud cries. After a while, his mother threw away her thyrsos, and sang out a magic word in Old Thracian, as they called the unknown tongue which was the language of the rites. They all threw their wands away, left the altar, and joined hands in a ring. His mother beckoned to a girl along the line, to come out in the middle. The girl came slowly, urged on by the others’ hands. He stared. Surely, he knew her.

Suddenly, she ducked under their joined arms, and started running towards the gorge, taken no doubt by the maenad frenzy. As she came nearer, he saw it was certainly the girl Gorgo. The divine frenzy, like terror, had made her eyes start and stretched her mouth. The dance stopped, while some of the women ran after her. Such things, no doubt, were common at the rites.

She ran furiously, keeping well ahead, till her foot tripped on something. She was up again in a moment, but they caught her. In her bacchic madness, she began to scream. The women ran her back towards the others; on her feet at first, till her knees gave way and they pulled her along the ground. His mother waited, smiling. The girl lay at her feet, neither weeping nor praying; only shrieking on and on, a thin shrill note like a hare in a fox’s jaws.

It was past noon. Hephaistion walked about the footslopes, calling as it seemed to him he had been doing for many hours, though it was not so long; earlier he had been ashamed to search, not knowing what he might find. Only since the sun was high had misery changed to fear.

“Alexander!” he called. A cliff-slab at the head of the glade flung “…ander!” back and forth. A stream ran out from a gorge, spreading through scattered rocks. On one of them Alexander sat, looking straight before him.

Hephaistion ran to him. He did not rise, scarcely looked round. It’s true, thought Hephaistion, it’s done. A woman, he is changed already. Now it will never be.

Alexander looked at him strainingly, with sunken eyes, as if feeling it urgent to remember who he was.

“Alexander. What is it? What happened, tell me. Did you fall, have you hurt your head? Alexander!”

“What are you doing,” said Alexander in a flat clear voice, “running about on the mountain? Are you looking for a girl?”

“No. I was looking for you.”

“Try the gorge up there, you’ll find one. But she’s dead.”

Hephaistion, sitting down on the rock beside him, almost said, “Did you kill her?” for nothing seemed impossible to this face. But he dared not speak.

Alexander rubbed the back of a dirt-crusted hand across his brow, and blinked. “I didn’t do it. No.” He gave the dry rictus of a smile. “She was a pretty girl, my father thought so, my mother too. It was the frenzy of the god. They had a wildcat’s kittens, and a fawn, and something else one couldn’t tell. Wait if you like, she’ll come down with the stream.”

Speaking quietly, watching him, Hephaistion said, “I’m sorry you saw that.”

“I shall go back and read my book. Xenophon says, if you lay the tusk of a boar on them, you can see it shrivel. It’s the heat of their flesh. Xenophon says it scorches violets.”

“Alexander. Drink some of this. You’ve been up since yesterday. I brought you some wine along…Alexander, look, I brought some wine. Are you sure you’re not hurt?”

“Oh no, I didn’t let them catch me, I saw the play.”

“Look. Look here. Look at me. Now drink this, do as I tell you. Drink it.” After the first swallow, he took the flask from Hephaistion’s hand, and emptied it thirstily.

“That’s better.” Instinct told Hephaistion to be common and plain. “I’ve some food too. You shouldn’t follow the maenads, everyone knows it’s unlucky. No wonder you feel bad. You’ve a great thorn in your leg here, hold still while I get it out.” He grumbled on, like a nurse sponging a child’s bruises. Alexander sat docile under his hands.

“I’ve seen worse,” said Alexander suddenly, “on a battlefield.”

“Yes. We have to get used to blood.”

“That man on the wall at Doriskos, his entrails fell out and he tried to put them back.”

“Did he? I must have looked away.”

“One must be able to look at anything. I was twelve when I took my man. I cut off the head myself. They’d have done it for me, but I made them give me the ax.”

“Yes, I know.”

“She came down from Olympos to the plain of Troy, walking softly, that’s what the book says, walking softly with little steps like a quivering dove. Then she put on the helm of death.”

“Of course you can look at anything, everyone knows you can. You’ve been up all night…Alexander, are you listening? Can you hear what I say?”

“Be quiet. They’re singing.”

He sat with hands on knees, his eyes upturned towards the mountain. Hephaistion could see white below the iris. He must be found, wherever he was. He ought not to be alone.

Quietly, insistently, without touching him, Hephaistion said, “You’re with me now. I promised you I’d be here. Listen, Alexander. Think of Achilles, how his mother dipped him in the Styx. Think how black and terrible, like dying, like being turned to stone. But then he was invulnerable. Look, it’s finished, it’s over now. Now you’re with me.”

He put out his hand. Alexander’s came out and touched it, deathly cold; then closed on it crushingly, so that he caught his breath with mingled relief and pain. “You’re with me,” Hephaistion said. “I love you. You mean more to me than anything. I’d die for you any time. I love you.”

For some time they sat like this, with their clasped hands resting on Alexander’s knee. After a while the vise of his grip relaxed a little; his face lost its masklike stiffness, and looked only rather ill. He gazed vaguely at their joined hands.

“That wine was good. I’m not so very tired. One should learn to do without sleep, it’s useful in war.”

“Next time, we’ll stay up together.”

“One should learn to do without anything one can. But I should find it very hard to do without you.”

“I’ll be there.” The warm spring sun, slanting now towards afternoon, slid into the glade. A thrush was singing. Hephaistion’s omens spoke to him, telling him there had been a change: a death, a birth, the intervention of a god. What had been born was bloodstained from a hard passage, still frail, not to be handled. But it lived, it would grow.

They must be getting back to Aigai, but there was no hurry yet, they were well enough as they were; let him have some quiet. Alexander rested from his thoughts in a waking sleep. Hephaistion watched him, with the steadfast eyes and tender patience of the leopard crouched by the pool, its hunger comforted by the sound of light distant footfalls, straying down the forest track.