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

7

AT THE FOOT OF the painted stairway, the bodyguard leaned on his spear. It was Keteus, a stocky iron-bearded veteran rising sixty. It had not been thought seemly for youths to guard the Queen, since the King had ceased to visit her.

The young man in the black cloak paused in the shadowed passage with its floor-mosaic of black and white. He had never been so late to his mother’s room.

At his footfall, the guard threw up his shield and pointed his spear, bidding him declare himself. He showed his face, and went up the stairs. When he scratched on the door there was no answer. He drew his dagger, and rapped sharply with the hilt.

A sleepy bustle sounded within, followed by a breathing silence.

“It is Alexander,” he said. “Open the door.”

A blinking rumpled woman, a robe dragged round her, put out her head; behind her the voices rustled like mice. They must have thought, before, that it was the King.

“Madam is sleeping. It is late, Alexander, long past midnight.”

His mother’s voice from beyond said, “Let him in.”

She stood by the bed, tying the girdle of her night-robe, made of wool the color of curded cream edged with dark fur. He could just see her by the flickering night-light; a maid, clumsy from sleep, was trying to kindle with it the wicks of the standing lamp-cluster. The hearth was swept clean, it was summer now.

The first wick of the three burned up. She said, “That is enough.”

Her red hair mixed on her shoulders with the dark sleekness of the fur. The slanting lamplight etched the frown-creases between her brows, the lines that framed the corners of her mouth. When she faced the light full, one saw only the fine structure, the clear skin and the firm closed lips. She was thirty-four years old.

The one lamp left the room’s edges dark. He said, “Is Kleopatra here?”

“At this hour? She is in her room. Do you want her?”

“No.”

She said to the women, “Go back to bed.”

When the door closed, she threw the embroidered coverlet over the tumbled bed, and motioned him to sit by her; but he did not move.

“What is it?” she said softly. “We have said goodbye. You should be sleeping, if you march at dawn. What is it? You look strange. Have you had a dream?”

“I have been waiting. This is not a little war, it is the beginning of everything. I thought you would send for me. You must know what brings me here.”

She stroked back the hair across her brow, her hand masking her eyes. “Do you want me to make a divination for you?”

“I need no divination, Mother. Only the truth.” She had let fall her hand too quickly, his eyes had seized on hers. “What am I?” he said. “Tell me who I am.”

She stared. He saw she had expected some other question.

“Never mind,” he said, “whatever you have been doing. I know nothing about it. Tell me what I ask.”

She saw that in the few hours since they had last met, he had grown haggard. She had nearly said to him, “Is that all?”

It was long past, overlaid with living; the dark shudder, the fiery consuming dream, the shock of waking, the words of the old wise-woman brought by night to this room in secret from her cave. How had it been? She no longer knew. She had brought forth the child of the dragon, and he asked, “Who am I?” It is I who need to ask that of him.

He was pacing, quick and light as a caged wolf, about the room. Coming to a sudden stop before her, he said, “I am Philip’s son. Isn’t it so?”

Only yesterday she had seen them together going to the drill-field; Philip had spoken grinning, Alexander thrown back his head and laughed. She grew quiet, and with a long look under her eyelids said, “Do not pretend you can believe that.”

“Well, then? I have come to hear.”

“These things cannot be scrambled at, on a whim at midnight. It is a solemn matter. There are powers one must propitiate…”

His searching, shadowed eyes seemed to pass clean through her, going too deep. “What sign,” he said softly, “did my daimon give you?”

She took both his hands, pulled him near and whispered. When she had done, she drew back to look. He was wholly within, scarcely aware of her, wrestling it out. His eyes did not tell the outcome. “And that is everything?”

“What more? Even now are you not satisfied?”

He looked into the dark beyond the lamp. “All things are known to the gods. The thing is how to question them.” He lifted her to her feet, and for a few moments held her at arms’ length, the corners of his brows pulled together. At last her eyes fell before his.

His fingers tightened; then he embraced her, quickly and closely, and let her go. When he had left, the dark crept up all around her. She kindled the other two lamps, and slept at last with all three burning.

Alexander paused at the door of Hephaistion’s room, opened it quietly and went in. He was fast asleep, one arm thrown out, in a square of moonlight. Alexander stretched out a hand, and then withdrew it. He had meant, if his mind had been satisfied, to wake him and tell him everything. But all was still dark and doubtful, she too was mortal, one must await the certain word. Why break his good sleep with that? It would be a long ride tomorrow. The moon shone straight down on his closed eyes. Softly Alexander drew the curtain half across, lest the powers of night should harm him.

In Thessaly they picked up the allied cavalry; they came streaming down over the hills, without formation, yelling and tossing their lances, showing off their horsemanship. It was a land where men rode as soon as they could walk. Alexander raised his brows; but Philip said they would do what they were told in battle, and do it well. This show was a tradition.

The army bore southwest, towards Delphi and Amphissa. Some levies from the Sacred League joined them along the way; their generals were made welcome, and swiftly briefed. Used to the confederate forces of small rival states, the edging for precedence, the long wrangles with whichever general had been given chief command, they were drawn amazed into a moving army of thirty thousand foot and two thousand horse, each man of which knew where he had to be, and went there.

There were no forces from Athens. The Athenians had a seat on the League Council; but when it commissioned Philip, no Athenian had been present to dissent. Demosthenes had persuaded them to boycott it. A vote against Amphissa would have antagonized Thebes. He had seen no further.

The army reached Thermopylai, the hot gates between the mountains and the sea. Alexander, who had not passed this way since he was twelve, went with Hephaistion to bathe in the warm springs for which the pass was named. On the grave-mound of Leonidas, with its marble lion, he laid a garland. “I don’t think,” he remarked after, “that he was really much of a general. If he’d made sure the Phokian troops understood their orders, the Persians could never have turned the pass. These southern states never work together. But one must honor a man as brave as that.”

The Thebans still had the fort above. Philip, playing their own game, sent up an envoy, politely asking them to leave so that he could relieve them. They looked down at the long snake of men filling the shore road and thickening into distance; stolidly they picked up their gear, and left for Thebes.

Now the army was on the great southeast road; they saw on their right the stark mountains of Hellas’ spine, barer and bleaker, more despoiled by man’s axes and man’s herds, then the wooded heights of Macedon. In the valleys between these tall deserts, flesh between bones, lay the earth and water that fed mankind.

“Now I see it again,” said Alexander to Hephaistion as they rode, “I can understand just why the southerners are as they are. They’re land-starved; each man covets his neighbor’s, and knows the neighbor covets his. And each state has its fringe of mountains. Have you seen two dogs by the fence where one of them lives, running up and down barking?”

“But,” said Hephaistion, “when dogs come to a gap, they don’t rush through and fight, they just look surprised and walk off. Sometimes dogs have more sense than men.”

The road towards Amphissa turned due south; an advance party under Parmenion had gone ahead, to take the strongpoint of Kytinion and secure this road, as earnest of Philip’s purpose to pursue the holy war. But the main force marched on by the highway, still going southeast, towards Thebes and Athens.

“Look,” said Alexander, pointing ahead, “there’s Elateia. Look, the masons and engineers are there already. It shouldn’t take long to raise the walls, they say all the stone’s still there.”

Elateia had been a fort of the god-robbing Phokians, pulled down at the end of the previous holy war. It commanded the road. It was two days’ fast march from Thebes, and three from Athens.

A thousand slaves, under skilled masons, soon put back the well-squared ashlar. The army occupied the fort and the heights around it. Philip set his headquarters up, and sent an envoy to Thebes.

For years, his message said, the Athenians had made war on him, first covertly, then openly; he could no longer hold his hand. To Thebes they had been hostile even longer; yet now they were trying to draw Thebes, too, into war against him. He must ask the Thebans therefore to declare themselves. Would they stand by their alliance, and give his army passage south?

The royal tent had been put up within the walls; the shepherds who had made hovels in the ruins had fled when the army came. Philip had had a supper couch carted along, to rest his game leg after the day’s work. Alexander sat on a chair beside him. The squires had set out wine, and withdrawn.

“This should settle it,” said Philip, “once for all. Time comes when one must put down the stake and throw. I think it’s long odds against war. If the Thebans are sane, they’ll declare for us; the Athenians will wake up and see where their demagogues have brought them; Phokion’s party will come in; and we can cross to Asia without a drop of blood shed in Greece.”

Alexander turned his wine cup in his hands, and bent to smell the local vintage. They made better wine in Thrace, but Thrace had been given it by Dionysos. “Well, yes…but look what happened while you were laid up and I was raising the army. We gave out we were arming against the Illyrians; and everyone believed it, the Illyrians most of all. Now, what about the Athenians? They’ve been told for years by Demosthenes to expect us; here we are. And what becomes of him, if Phokion’s party gets the vote?”

“He can do nothing, if Thebes has declared for us.”

“They’ve ten thousand trained mercenaries in Athens.”

“Ah, yes. But it’s the Thebans who will decide. You know their constitution. A moderate oligarchy they call it, but the franchise test is low; it takes in any man who can afford a hoplite panoply. There you have it. In Thebes, it’s the electorate that will fight in any war it votes for.”

He began to talk about his hostage years there, almost with nostalgia. Time had misted the hardships; it had the taste of vanished youth. He had been smuggled once by friends into action under Epaminondas. He had known Pelopidas. Alexander as he listened thought of the Sacred Band, which Pelopidas had gathered into one corps, rather than founded; for their heroic vows were ancient, going back to Herakles and Iolaos, at whose altar they were sworn. Men of the Band, having each in his charge a twofold honor, did not retreat; they advanced, or stood, or died. There was much Alexander would have liked to know of them, and tell Hephaistion, had there been anyone else to ask.

“I wonder,” he remarked instead, “what is going on now in Athens.”

Athens had had the news at sunset, on the day Elateia was occupied. The City Councilors were at their civic meal in the Council Hall, with some old Olympic victors, retired generals and other worthies honored with this privilege. The Agora was clamorous; the courier from Thebes came only on the heels of rumor. All night the streets were like market-time, with kindred running to kindred, merchants to the Piraeus; strangers talking passionately to strangers, women running with half-veiled faces to the women’s rooms of houses where they had friends. At daybreak the City Trumpeter called Assembly; in the Agora the hurdles of the stock pens and the market stalls were set alight to beacon the outer suburbs. The men poured across to Pnyx Hill with its stone rostrum. They were told the news; that Philip was expected to march south at once, and that Thebes would make no resistance. Old men recalled a black day of their childhood, the beginning of shame, starvation, tyranny, when the first stragglers had come in from Goat River on the Hellespont, where the fleet had been annihilated; the Great War lost and the death-throes still to come. The crisp cool air of an autumn morning struck to the bone like a winter frost. The presiding Councilor called aloud, “Does anyone wish to speak?”

A long silence followed. All eyes turned one way. Nobody had the folly to come between the people and their choice. When they saw him mount the bema, no one cheered; the chill was too deep for that; there was only a deep murmur, like the sound of prayer.

All night the lamp had burned in Demosthenes’ study; men walking the streets, too troubled to go to bed, had been comforted by its light. In the dark before the dawn, the draft of his speech was ready. The city of Theseus, Solon, Perikles, at her crux of fate had turned to him. She had found him ready.

Firstly, he said, they could dismiss their fear that Philip was sure of Thebes. If he were, he would not be sitting in Elateia; he would be here now before their walls, he who had always aimed at their destruction. He was making a show of force, to hearten his bought friends in Thebes and daunt the patriots. Now at last they must resolve to forget the ancient feud, and send envoys to offer generous terms of alliance, before Philip’s men had done their evil work there. He himself, if summoned, would not refuse the call. Meantime, let the men of fighting age put on their arms, and march up the Theban road as far as Eleusis, in token of readiness to take the field.

As he ended, the sun rose, and they saw across the dip the Acropolis bathed in splendor; the mellow old marble, the white new shrines, the color and the gold. A great cheer ran over the hill. Those who had been too far to hear all joined in it, sure that salvation had been proclaimed.

Demosthenes went back home, and drafted a diplomatic note to Thebes, heaping scorn on Philip. “…acting as might be looked for in one of his race and nature; insolently using his present fortune, forgetful of his unforeseen rise to power from small mean origins…” Thoughtfully he chewed his pen; the stylos moved on over the wax.

Outside his window, young men still new to war, on the way to report to their tribal officers, were shouting to each other; the jokes of the young, whose meaning he no longer knew. A woman was crying somewhere. Surely, it was in the house. It must be his daughter. If she had anyone to weep over, it was the first he knew of it. Angrily he closed his door; the noise was ill-omened, and disturbed his thoughts.

When the Assembly met at Thebes, no man who could stand on his feet was absent. The Macedonians, being formal allies, had first hearing.

They recalled Philip’s good offices to Thebes; his help in the Phokian war, his support for her hegemony over Boeotia; rehearsed her ancient injuries from the Athenians, their efforts to weaken her, their alliance with the impious Phokians, paying their troops with Apollo’s gold. (With this too, no doubt, they had gilded the Theban shields they had set up, in blasphemous affront to Thebes and to the god.) Philip did not ask that Thebes should take up arms against Athens; Thebans might do so if they chose, and share the fruits of victory; but he would still count them as friends, if they gave him only right of passage.

The Assembly turned it over. They had been angered by Philip’s surprise of Elateia; if he was an ally, he was a highhanded one, it was late to consult them now. For the rest, it was true enough. The great issues of power remained unspoken. Once Athens had fallen, what would they be worth to him? And yet, he had power in Thessaly and had done no harm there. They had fought the long-Phokian war; Thebes was full of dead men’s sons with a family on their shoulders, the widowed mother and the younger ones. Was it not enough?

Antipatros ceased, and sat down. A not unfriendly murmur, almost applause, was heard. The marshal called the Athenian envoys. Demosthenes climbed the rostrum, in a hush of expectation, mostly hostile. Not Macedon, but Athens, had been the threat here for generations. There was no house without a blood-debt from the endless border wars.

He could strike one answering nerve: the common hate for Sparta. He recalled how after the Great War, when Sparta had imposed on Athens the Thirty Tyrants (traitors like those who wanted peace with Philip now), Thebes had given harbor to the Liberators. Beside Philip, the Thirty were mere schoolboy bullies; let the past be forgotten, only that noble act remembered. With skilled timing, he brought out the Athenian offers. Theban rights over Boeotia should be undisputed; if the Boeotians should rebel, Athens would even send troops to push them down. Plataia too, that old bone of contention. He did not remind his hearers that Plataia, in return for Athens’ protection against Thebes, had joined in the stand at Marathon, and been granted Athenian citizenship forever. It was no time for hairsplitting; Plataia should be conceded. Also, if there was war with Philip, Thebes should command all land forces, while Athens would meet two-thirds of the expense.

The burst of applause was missing. Thebans in doubt were looking at other Thebans they knew and trusted, not at him. They were slipping his grip.

Striding forward, lifting his arm, he invoked the heroic dead, Epaminondas and Pelopidas; the glorious fields of Leuktra and Mantinea; the record of the Sacred Band. His ringing voice dropped to a note of silken irony. If these things were no longer of account to them, he had only one request to make on behalf of Athens: right of passage, to oppose the tyrant alone.

He had caught them now. That nip of the old rivalry had done it.

They were shamed, he could hear it in the deep muted sound. Here and there two voices called together for the voting to begin; the men of the Sacred Band were considering their honor. The pebbles rattled into the urns; tally-clerks under close scrutiny flicked their abacuses; a long tedious business, after the efficient slot-boxes at home. The Thebans had voted to tear up the treaty with Macedon, and ally with Athens.

He walked back to his lodging, hardly feeling his feet touch ground. Like Zeus with his scales, he had held and tilted the destiny of Greece. If ordeal lay ahead, what new life came forth without birth-pangs? They would say of him now, forever, that the hour had found the man.

They brought Philip the news next day, as he ate his noon meal with Alexander. The King sent his squires out, before even opening the dispatch; like most men of the time, he had not mastered the knack of reading with the eye alone, he needed to hear himself. Alexander, taut with suspense, wondered why his father could not have trained himself, as he had done, to read in silence; it was only a matter of practice; though his lips still moved with the words, Hephaistion had assured him that no sound at all came out.

Philip read levelly, without anger; the lines of his face only deepened into seams. He laid down the scroll by his dish, and said, “Well, if they will have it, they will have it.”

“I’m sorry, Father; I suppose it had to be.” Could he not see that however the Thebans had voted, Athens would still have hated him? That there was no way he could have entered her gates, but as a victor? How had he nursed so long this insubstantial dream? Better leave him in peace, and think about realities. It would be the second war-plan, now.

Athens and Thebes made ready at fever-heat to meet Philip’s southward march. Instead he went west, into the mountain ribs and gorges that fringed the Parnassos massif. He had been commissioned to drive the Amphissians from the sacred plain; this he would do. As for Thebes, let it be said he had only tested a doubtful ally’s loyalty, and knew the answer.

The young men of Athens, roused for war, prepared to go north to Thebes. The omens were taken; the fires smoldered, the diviners misliked the entrails. Demosthenes, finding the dead hand of superstition raised against him, declared these portents were meant to reveal the traitors in their midst, paid by Philip to stop the war. When Phokion, back from a mission too late to change events, urged that the city should get an oracle from Delphi, Demosthenes laughed, and said that all the world knew Philip had bought the Pythia.

The Thebans received the Athenians as the Lynkestids had welcomed Alexander, with careful courtesy. The Theban general disposed his joint force to guard the southern passes, and to block Philip from Amphissa. All over the wild stony uplands of Parnassos, and in the gorges of Phokis, the armies scouted and maneuvered. Trees turned brown, then bare; on the tops the first snows fell. Philip took his time. He was busy rebuilding the forts of the impious Phokians, who gratefully leased them to his men, in exchange for a cut in their fines to the plundered god.

He would not be tempted into a major battle. There was a skirmish in a river gorge, another in an upland pass, both broken off when he saw his troops being drawn into awkward country. Athens hailed them as victories, and thanksgiving feasts were held.

One winter night, Philip’s tent was pitched out of the wind against a cliff-face, above a river in snow-spate churning its stony gorge. On the slopes between, a pine wood had been felled for cook-fires. Dusk was falling; eddies of pure mountain air pierced through the heavy mingled smells of wood-smoke, porridge, bean broth, horses, crudely cured tent hides, and many thousand unwashed men. On leather camp-chairs, Philip and Alexander sat warming their wet boots at the glowing crumble of their fire. The steamy reek of his father’s feet blended for Alexander with the other homely and familiar scents of war. He himself was no more than fairly dirty; when streams were hard to come at, he would rub himself down with snow. His attention to these things had created a legend, of which he was still unaware, that he was endowed with a natural fragrance. Most of the men had not bathed for months. Their wives would scrub them, when they returned to the marriage bed.

“Well,” said Philip, “didn’t I tell you Demosthenes’ patience would wear out before mine? I heard just now. He’s sent them.”

“What? How many?”

“The whole ten thousand.”

“Is the man mad?”

“No, he’s a party politician. The voters didn’t like to see paid troops drawing pay and rations in Attica, while citizens went to war. They’ve been on my mind; trained men, and too mobile where they were, too mobile by far. At the clinch, ten thousand extra men is a good many. Now we can deal with them first; they’re being sent direct to Amphissa.”

“So we wait till they’re there. Then what?”

Philip’s yellow teeth grinned in the firelight. “You know how I slipped away at Byzantion? We’ll try that again. We’ll have bad news, very bad news from Thrace. Revolt, Amphipolis threatened, every man needed to hold the frontier. I shall reply, in good clear writing, that we are marching north with all our forces. My courier will be captured, or maybe sell the letter. The enemy’s scouts will see us starting northward. At Kytinion we’ll go to ground, lie low, and wait.”

“Then over the Grabian Pass, and attack at dawn?”

“A stolen march, as your friend Xenophon says.”

They stole it, before spring thaw had drowned the river-crossings. The mercenaries of Athens did their duty, as long as there was hope in it; after that, being professionals, they either got away to the coast, or asked for terms. Most of these last ended by enlisting with Philip, had their wounds dressed, and sat down to a good hot meal.

The Amphissians surrendered without condition. Their government was exiled as the Sacred League had decreed. The holy plain was stripped of their impious husbandry, and left fallow for the god.

In the first warmth of spring, at the theater of Delphi, the steep pale eagle-cliffs of the Phaidriades behind them, the great temple of Apollo before, and the vast gulf beyond, King Philip was crowned by the League with a golden laurel crown. He and his son were eulogized in long speeches and choric odes; a sculptor sketched them, for statues to adorn the temple.

Afterwards, Alexander walked with his friends on the jostling terrace. It hummed and stank with the throng from all over Greece, and as far as Sicily, Italy and Egypt. Rich votaries marched with their offerings displayed on the heads of slaves, goats bleated, doves moaned in wicker cages; faces eager, devout, relieved, drawn with anxiety, came and went. It was one of the days for the oracle.

Under the noise, Hephaistion said in Alexander’s ear, “Why don’t you, while you’re here?”

“Not now.”

“It would set your mind at rest.”

“No, the time’s not right. One should take the seer by surprise, I think, in a place like this.”

A sumptuous performance was put on in the theater; the protagonist was Thettalos, renowned for his heroic roles. He was a handsome ardent young man, whose Thessaliari blood was mixed with some Celtic strain; his training in Athens had contained his fire in good technique, and his natural rashness in good manners. He had often played in Pella, and was a favorite with Alexander, for whom he conjured some special vision of the hero’s soul. Now in Sophokles’ Ajax, doubling Ajax and Teukros, he made it unthinkable the one should outlive his honor, the other fail in loyalty to the dead. Alexander went round afterwards with Hephaistion to the skene-room. Thettalos had pulled off the mask of Teukros, and was toweling the sweat from his strongly carved face and short curly chestnut hair. At the sound of Alexander’s voice he emerged and glowed at him with large hazel eyes, saying, “I am glad if you were pleased. I was playing it all to you.”

They talked awhile about his recent travels. At the end he said, “I get about a good deal. If ever you have any business, never mind what, and need someone you can trust, you know it would be a privilege.”

He was understood. Actors, the servants of Dionysos, were protected persons; often used as envoys, as secret agents even oftener. Alexander said, “Thank you, Thettalos. There is no one I would sooner ask.”

When they were walking away towards the Stadium, Hephaistion said, “You know that man’s still in love with you?”

“Well, one can at least be civil. He’s sensible, he doesn’t misunderstand. Someday I might need to trust him, one never knows.”

With good spring weather, Philip moved down to the Gulf of Corinth, and took Naupaktos, which commanded its outer strait. In summer, he moved about in the country behind Parnassos, strengthening strongpoints, keeping alliances warm, making roads, feeding up his cavalry mounts. Now and again he would make feints to the east, where Athenians and Thebans tensely manned the passes. Then he would march away, leaving them flat and stale, and would hold maneuvers or games, to make sure his own men were neither.

Even now, he sent once more envoys to Thebes and Athens, offering to discuss terms for a peace. Demosthenes proclaimed that Philip, twice repulsed by their arms, must be growing desperate; these offers proved it. One good push would finish him in the south.

In late summer, when the barley between the trees in the olive orchards of Attica and Boeotia was yellowing in the ear, he went back to his base at Elateia, but left his strongpoints manned. The forward outposts of Thebes and Athens were at a pass about ten miles south. Till his offers were thrown back, he had done no more than tease them. Now he displayed his strength; they were outflanked, and could be cut off when he chose. Next day his scouts found them gone; he took and manned the pass.

The men of the cavalry looked happy, polished their gear and made much of their horses. Now, the coming battle would be in the plains.

The barley whitened, the olives ripened. By the calendar of Macedon, it was the month of the Lion. King Philip gave a birthday feast in the fort for Alexander. He was eighteen.

Elateia had been made snug; woven hangings on the wall of the royal quarters, tiles on the floor. While the guests were singing, Philip said to his son, “You’ve not named your gift yet. What would you like?”

Alexander smiled. “You know that, Father.”

“You’ve earned it, it’s yours. It won’t be long now. I shall take the right wing, that goes back time out of mind. You will command the cavalry.”

Slowly Alexander set down on the table his golden cup. His eyes, shimmering and wide with wine and visions, met Philip’s lopsided black glint. “If you ever regret it, Father, I shan’t be there to know.”

The appointment was cheered, and toasted. Once more the birth-omens were remembered: the Olympic racing win, the Illyrian victory.

“And the third,” said Ptolemy. “It’s the one I remember best, I was at the age for marvels. It was the day the great Temple of Artemis was burned at Ephesos. A fire in Asia.”

Someone said, “I never heard how it came to happen, without a war. Was it a thunderbolt, or did some priest upset a lamp?”

“No, a man did it on purpose. I heard his name once. Heiro—Hero—a longer name than that. Niarchos, can you remember?”

No one could. Niarchos said, “Did they find out why he did it?”

“Oh, yes. He told them all willingly, before they killed him. He did it so that his name should be remembered forever.”

Dawn glimmered over the low hills of Boeotia, heather and scrub burned brown with summer, scattered with grey boulders and gravelly stones. Dark and rusty like the heath, weathered like the stones, spiny like the thorn trees, the men poured over the hills towards the plain. They trickled down the slopes and silted in the river valley; the silt thickened, but steadily flowed on.

Along the smoothest inclines the cavalry came ambling, careful of unshod hooves. The horses made only a muffled thudding as they picked their way among the heather, their bare backs gripped by the men’s bare thighs. It was the harness of the men that clicked and rattled.

The sky lightened, though the sun still stood behind the great eastward bulk of Parnassos. The valley, scoured out by primeval floods and filled in with their topsoil, began to flatten and widen. Along it burbled through stones the Kephissos River in its summer bed. East of it, low on the terraced slopes, its pink-washed houses still mauve with shadow, stood the village of Cheironeia.

The flood of men slowed its onward course, paused, and spread sideways across the plain. Ahead of it was stretched a dam. Its thick line bristled, and glinted in the first slanting sunbeams; a dam of men.

Between lay a clear space of innocent fields, fed by the river. Mown barley-stubble round the olive trees was pretty with poppies and vetch. There was a noise of crowing cocks, a bleating and lowing of farm-stock, sharp cries of boys and women driving the herds away uphill. The flood and the dam both waited.

In the broad throat of the pass, the northern army made camp along the river. The cavalry went downstream, to water their horses without fouling it for the rest. The men untied their cups from their belts and unpacked their food for the noon meal; flat griddle-cakes, an apple or an onion, a crumble of dirty grey salt from the heel of the bag.

The officers looked about for unsound spear-shafts or javelin thongs, and took the feel of morale. They found a healthy tension, like a drawn bow’s; the men had caught the sense of something momentous. They were thirty-odd thousand foot, two thousand horse; the host ahead was as many; this would be the greatest battle of all their lives till now. They were aware too of the men they knew, the captain who was the squire at home, the village neighbor, the fellow tribesmen and kin, who would report their honor or their shame.

Towards afternoon the long baggage train labored down with the tents and bedding. They could sleep well, all but the outposts; the King held all the flanking passes, their position could not be turned. The army ahead could only sit and wait his pleasure.

Alexander rode up to the ox-cart with the royal tents, and said, “Put mine there.” A young oak gave shade by the river; under the bank was a clear gravelly pool. Good, thought his servants, it would save carrying water. He liked his bath, not only after a battle but, if he could manage it, even before. Some grumbler had said he would be vain even of his corpse.

The King sat in his tent, giving audience to Boeotians, eager to tell him all they knew of the enemy’s plans. The Thebans had oppressed them; the Athenians, their sworn allies, had just sold them publicly to the Thebans; they had nothing much to lose by a leap in the dark. He received them with charm, listened to all their involved and ancient grievances, promised redress, and made notes in his own hand of all they had to tell. Before dusk, he rode up the hill to look for himself, with Alexander, Parmenion, and the next in command, a Macedonian lord called Attalos. The Royal Bodyguard under Pausanias rode behind.

Below them spread the plain which some old poet had called “the dancing-floor of war,” so often had armies met there. The confederate troops spread across from the river to the southern foothills, a front of about three miles. The smoke of their evening fires was rising, with here and there a spurt of flame. Not yet in line of battle, they were clumped, like birds of different species, each city and state apart. Their left wing, which would face the Macedonian right, was based firmly on rising ground. Philip narrowed his good eye at it.

“The Athenians. Well, I must have them out of there. Old Phokion, their only general who’s good for anything, has been given the navy; he was too canny to please Demosthenes. Our luck; they’ve sent Chares, who fights by the book…Hm, yes; I must put on a good-looking assault before I start falling back. They’ll swallow it, from the old general who writes off his losses.” He leaned over with a grin to clap Alexander’s shoulder. “It wouldn’t do for the Little King.”

Alexander’s brow creased, then cleared. He returned the grin, and went back to considering the long bar of men below, as an engineer who must divert a river considers obstructing rock. Tall lank-cheeked Attalos, with his forked yellow beard and pale blue eyes, had edged his horse up nearer, but now moved quietly back.

“So, then,” said Alexander, “in the center we’ve the odds and ends; Corinthians, Achaians, and so on. And on the right…”

“The high command. For you, my son, the Thebans. You see, I’ve not stinted your dish.”

The river gleamed in the light of the paling sky, between tapering poplars and shady planes. Beside it, in orderly patterns, the Theban watch-fires budded into flame. Alexander gazed in deep concentration; for a moment he pictured in this distant firelight the human faces; then they dwindled into the spread of the great design. And all the gates were opened, and the warriors came pouring out, Foot and horse, and the din of onset resounded.

“Wake up, lad,” said Philip. “We’ve seen all we need; I want my supper.”

Parmenion always ate with them; so tonight did Attalos, newly come in from Phokis. Alexander saw with discomfort that Pausanias was on guard. Those two together in one room always put his teeth on edge. He greeted Pausanias with special warmth.

It was Attalos, friend and kin of the dead rival, who had planned the obscene revenge. It was a mystery to Alexander why Pausanias, a man with no lack of courage, should have come to the King demanding vengeance, rather than take it with his own hand. Could it be that he had wanted a sign of Philip’s loyalty? Long ago, before the change, he had had a kind of archaic beauty, which could have housed such an arrogant Homeric love. But Attalos was chief of a powerful clan, a good friend of the King, and useful; the dead boy’s loss had been bitter, too. Pausanias had been talked out of it, and his honor patched up with rank. Six years had gone by, he had been laughing oftener, talking more, becoming an easier presence, till Attalos was made a general. Now once more he never met one’s eyes, and ten words were a long speech for him. Father shouldn’t have done it. It looks like a reward. People say already…

His father was talking of the coming battle. He brushed clear his mind; but an aftertaste lingered, as of tainted food.

Alexander had his bath in the gravelly pool, and lay on his bed, going over in his mind the battle-plan, point by point. There was nothing he had forgotten. He got up, dressed, and walked along quietly between the watch-fires, till he reached the tent Hephaistion shared with two or three other men. Before he had touched the flap, Hephaistion had risen soundlessly, thrown on his cloak and come out. They stood for a while talking, then went back to their beds. Alexander slept well till the morning watch.

The din of onset resounded.

Over the barley stubble and round the olive trees, crashing through vineyards half-picked when the laborers fled, knocking down the props and treading the grapes into bloody wine, the press of men swayed and mixed and seethed, their mass swelling and bursting like bubbles, rising and settling like yeast. The noise was deafening. Men yelled to one another, or to the enemy, or to themselves; or screamed in some piercing agony beyond what they had known that flesh could feel. Shields clashed, horses squealed, each corps of the confederate army shouted its own battle-paean at full stretch of its lungs. Officers roared orders, trumpets blew. Over everything hung a great cloud of rusty, choking dust.

On the left, where the Athenians held the foothills which formed the confederates’ anchor, the Macedonians shoved their long sarissas doggedly from below, the points of three graded ranks forming one row of weapons, bristling like a porcupine. The Athenians took them on their shields when they could; the bravest pressed between them, stabbing with the short spear or hacking with the sword, sometimes overwhelmed, sometimes denting the line. Along the far flank Philip sat his strong cobby war-horse, his couriers by him, waiting; for what, his men all knew. They heaved and strained in the line, as if their failure to break it was killing them with shame. Though huge noise was everywhere, among them it was somewhat less; they had been told to listen for the word.

In the center, the long front leaned to and fro. The confederate troops, strangers to their neighbors, sometimes rivals, shared the common knowledge that where the line broke disgrace and death would enter. Wounded men fought on till with luck the shields closed before them; or fell, and were trampled on by men who could not drop their guard or pause. The hot press churned in the hot dust, sweating, grunting, cursing, hacking, thrusting, panting, moaning. Where rock broke the ground, the melee heaved round it like sea-foam, and splashed it with crimson spray.

At its north end, where the river guarded its flank, there stretched as evenly as a string of beads the unflawed shield-line of the Sacred Band of Thebes. Now in action the couples were forged into a single bar, each man’s shield overlapping the left-hand man. The elder of each pair, the erastes, kept the right, the spear side; the younger, the eromenos, the side of the shield. The right was the side of honor, for a corps or for a man; though the youth might grow up the stronger, he would never ask his friend to cede it. All this was governed by ancient laws. Newly sworn lovers were here, intent upon their proving; and couples who had been in the corps ten years, solid bearded fathers of families, love rendered down to comradeship; the Band was too famous to be renounced at a dream’s passing. Its lifelong vows were battle-vows. Even through the dust, it glittered. Its bronze hatlike Boeotian helmets and its round shields edged with cable-work had been burnished to shine like gold. Its weapons were six-foot spears with iron blades, and short stabbing swords, still sheathed, the spear-hedge being unbroken.

Parmenion, whose phalanx faced them, had all he could do to hold them. Now and then they gave a great heave forward, and could have gone further yet, but for fear of breaking contact with the Achaians next to them in the line. They were polished and smooth like some old well-made weapon a man knows the feel of in the dark. Hurry up, Philip; these fellows have been to school. I hope you know what you’ve given your boy to bite on. I hope he has the teeth for it.

Behind the laboring phalanx, just out of bowshot, the cavalry waited.

They were massed in a thick column like a catapult bolt, with a tapering head, whose point was a single horseman.

The horses fidgeted at the noise, at the drifts of blood-smell on the wind, and the tension in their riders’ bodies; they blew from the tickle of the dust. The men talked to neighbors or called to friends, rebuked or fondled the horses, straining to see through the ten-foot dust-cloud how the battle went. They were to charge a line of hoplites, the horseman’s nightmare. Cavalry against cavalry, the other man could fall off as easily as you, pushed with the spear, or overreaching himself; he could be outmaneuvered, slashed with the saber. But to run at firm up-pointed spears went against a horse’s nature. They fingered the hard-cured bull-hide pectorals on their chargers’ breasts. The Companions found their own equipment; but they were glad they had listened to the Boy.

The foremost rider flicked off a fly from his horse’s eyelid, feeling with his thighs its strength, its knowledge of the coming fury, its implicit trust, its complicit horse-sense. Yes, yes; we’ll be going when I say go. Remember who we are.

Hephaistion in the next short rank felt at his sword belt; should it be one hole tighter? No, nothing makes him so angry as a man fixing his turnout in the line. I must catch him up before he gets there. His color’s high. It often is before an action. If it was fever he’d never say. Two days with it before the fort fell, and not a word; I could have carried extra water. A fine night I had of it.

A courier rode through the dusty trampled stubble, and hailed Alexander in the King’s name. The message was word of mouth: “They are taking the bait. Be ready.”

Up on the hill, above the pink-washed village of Cheironeia, in the tenth row back of the Athenian force, Demosthenes stood with his tribal regiment. The young men held the front; next behind were the strongest of the middle-aged. The whole depth of the line shifted and strained, as a man’s whole body does when his right arm alone makes some great effort. The day grew hot. It seemed they had been standing and swaying and staring down for hours; suspense ached in him like a tooth. Ahead men were falling, getting spears in their guts and chests; the shock of the blows seemed to travel all through the thick ranks, back to where he stood. How many fallen already; how many ranks still left between that and him? I should not be here, I am wronging the city by risking myself in war. The milling press made a long shove forward. It was the second in a short time; without doubt now, the enemy was giving ground. There were still nine ranks between him and the long sarissas; and their line was wavering. It is not unknown to you, men of Athens, that I carried shield and spear on the field of Cheironeia, counting as nought my life and my own concerns, though some might have called them weighty, and indeed you might have reproached me with hazarding your welfare in risking mine…A choking cry of pain came from the front rank, which had been the second. Men of Athens…

The roar of battle changed. An exultant shout ran like fire through the packed mass. It began to move, no longer in labored heaves but like a gathering landslide. The enemy was retreating! The glories of Marathon, of Salamis, of Plataia, flashed before his eyes. Men in front were yelling, “On to Macedon!” He started running with the rest, calling in his high sharp voice, “Catch Philip! Take him alive!” He should be led in chains through the Agora; after that they would make him talk, name every traitor. There would be a new statue on the Acropolis, next to Harmodios and Aristogeiton: DEMOSTHENES THE LIBERATOR. He shouted to those ahead who could run faster, “On to Macedon! Take him alive!” In his haste to be there and see it, he almost stumbled over the bodies of the young men who had fallen in the front line.

Theagenes the Theban, commander-in-chief of the confederate army, urged his horse behind the battle-lines towards the center. The long front fermented with shouted rumor, too garbled to be of use. Here at last came one of his own scouts. The Macedonians were indeed, he reported, in retreat.

How? asked Theagenes. In disorder? In fair order, but getting away pretty fast. They had already fallen right back from the heights, with the Athenians after them. After them? What! Had they left their station, then, without orders? Well, orders or not, they were already in the plain; it was the King himself they were chasing.

Theagenes, cursing, beat his fist on his thigh. Philip! The fools, the misbegotten, fribbling, vainglorious Athenian fools. What had become of the line up there? There must be a gap as long as a hippodrome. He sent off the scout with orders that it must at all costs be filled, and the left flank covered. No sign anywhere else of the enemy falling back; they were laying on harder than ever.

The leader of the Corinthians received the order. How better guard the flank, than get up on the good rising ground where the Athenians had been? The Achaians, left feeling naked, spread out towards the Corinthians. Theagenes stretched out his own troops in turn. Let these Athenian speechmakers see what real soldiers look like. In their place of honor on the right wing, the Sacred Band changed order; briefly, as they moved, they showed in twos.

Theagenes surveyed the long threshing chain of men, now loose at one end, and weaker over all. Before him, the enemy rear was obscured by a tree-tall thicket of sarissas; ranks not engaged held them high, for the safety of those in front. With them and the dust-cloud, one could see nothing. A thought hit him, like a jolt in the midriff. No word of young Alexander. Where is he? On garrison duty in Phokis? Toiling unnoticed in the line? Yes, when iron floats. Then where is he?

There was a lull in the fight before him; almost a stillness, after the noise before; the heavy pause of earthquake weather. Then the deep bristling phalanx swung sideways, ponderously but smoothly, like an enormous door.

It stood open. The Thebans did not go out of it; they waited for what was coming in. The Sacred Band, turning face to face before they locked the shield-line and settled their spears, showed up in twos, once and for all.

In the stubble-field among the trampled poppies, Alexander lifted his sword-arm, and yelled the note of the paean.

Strong and sustained, the voice trained by Epikrates rang down the great square of horsemen. They took up the paean; it lost in its passage the sound of words, dinning like the fierce outcry from a cloud of swooping hawks. It goaded the horses more than spurs. Before ever they came in sight, the Thebans had felt their thunder through the ground.

Watching his men like a shepherd on a mountain trail, Philip waited for news.

The Macedonians were plodding back, sullenly, carefully, fighting for every few yards of ground. Philip rode about, directing their retreat just where it should go. Who could believe it, he thought. When Iphikrates was alive, or Chabrias…But their orators appoint their generals now. So soon, so soon. A generation…He shielded his eyes to scan the line. The charge had begun, he knew no more.

Well, he’s alive; if he fell, the news would fly quicker than a bird. Curse this leg, I’d like to take a walk among the men, they’re used to it. A spearman all my life. I never thought I’d breed a cavalry general. Ah well, the hammer still needs the anvil. When he can bring off a planned fighting withdrawal like this…He understood his briefing. Everything pat. But only half there, he had that look of his mother.

Thought changed to tangled images like a knot of snakes. He saw the proud head lying in blood; the mourning, the tomb at Aigai, the choice of a new heir; idiot Arridaios’ jerking face, I was drunk when I got him; Ptolemy, too late now to acknowledge him, I was a boy, what could I do?…What’s four-and-forty, I’ve good seed in me yet. A sturdy square dark-haired boy ran up to him, calling, “Father!”…

Shouts sounded, nearing, directing a rider to the King.

“He’s through, sir. He’s broken the line. The Thebans are standing, but they’re cut off beside the river, the right wing’s rolled up. I didn’t speak with him, he said ride straight to you when I saw it, you were waiting for the word. But I saw him there in the van, I saw his white crest.”

“The gods be thanked. A bringer of such news deserves something. See me after.” He summoned the trumpeter. For a moment, like a good farmer at harvest-time, he viewed the field which through his careful husbandry stood for the reaping just as it ought. His cavalry reserve had appeared upon the heights, before the Corinthians could command them. His withdrawing infantry had spread into the shape of a sickle blade. Enclosed in its curve were the jubilant Athenians.

He gave the order to attack.

The knot of young men was still resisting. They had found a stone sheep-pen, nearly breast high, but the sarissas came thrusting over. In the filth on the ground a lad of eighteen was kneeling, clutching at his eye which was falling down his cheek.

“We should get away,” said the older man in the middle, urgently. “We shall be cut off. Look, you can see, look round.”

“We’re staying here,” said the young man who had assumed command. “You go if you want, we’ll never notice the difference.”

“Why throw away our lives? Our lives belong to the City. We should go back and dedicate our lives to restoring Athens.”

“Barbarians! Barbarians!” yelled the young man to the troops outside. They replied with some uncouth battle-cry. When he had time to spare, he said to the older man, “Restore Athens? Let us rather perish with her. Philip will blot her from the earth. Demosthenes has always said so.”

“Nothing is certain, terms can be made…Look, they have almost closed us round, are you mad, wasting all our lives?”

“Not even slavery, but annihilation. That’s what Demosthenes said. I was there, I heard him.”

A sarissa, poking forward out of the thick of the attackers, caught him under the chin and went tearing up through his mouth into his brain-base.

“This is madness, madness,” said the middle-aged man. “I’ll have no more part in it.” Dropping shield and spear, he scrambled over the far wall. Only one man, inactive with a broken arm, was looking when he shed his helmet too.

The rest fought on, till a Macedonian officer came up, calling that if they surrendered the King would spare their lives. At this they laid down their arms. While they were being marched off, between the dying and dead strewed everywhere, to join the herd of captives, one of them said to the rest, “Who was the little fellow who ran away, the one poor Eubios was quoting Demosthenes to?”

The man with the broken arm, who had been a good while silent, answered, “That was Demosthenes.”

The prisoners were under guard, the wounded were being carted off on shields, beginning with the victors. This would take many hours, many would be there at nightfall. The defeated lay at the mercy, for good or ill, of those who found them; many, unfound, would be with the dead tomorrow. Among the dead too there was precedence. The conquered would lie till their cities sued for them; their bodies, asked and granted, were formal acknowledgment that the victors possessed the field.

Philip with his staff rode down the long wreck-strewed shore of battle from south to north. The moans of the dying sounded in fitful gusts, like wind in the high woods of Macedon. Father and son said little; sometimes a landmark of the fight would prompt a question. Philip was trying to make real to himself the event with all its meaning. Alexander had been with Herakles; it took time to come down from that possession. He did his best to attend to his father, who had embraced him when they met, and said everything that was proper.

At length they reached the river. Here by its shore, there was no straggle among the dead of men caught flying. They lay compactly, facing all ways outward, except where the river for a time had guarded their backs. Philip looked at the cable-trimmed shields. He said to Alexander, “You went in here?”

“Yes. Between them and the Achaians. The Achaians stood well; but these died harder.”

“Pausanias,” called Philip. “Have them counted.”

Alexander said, “You will find there is no need.”

The count took time. Many were buried under Macedonians they had killed, and had to be disentangled. There were three hundred. All the Band was there.

“I called on them to yield,” Alexander said. “They called back that they didn’t know the word; they supposed it was Macedonian.”

Philip nodded, and sank back into his thoughts. One of the bodyguard who had done the counting, a man fond of his own wit, turned one of the bodies over on another and made an obscene joke.

“Let them alone,” said Philip loudly. The uncertain titters died. “Perish the man who says they did or bore anything base.”

He wheeled round his horse, followed by Alexander. Unseen by either, Pausanias turned and spat on the nearest body.

“Well,” Philip said, “the day’s work done. I think we have earned a drink.”

It was a fine night. The flaps of the royal tent were opened; tables and benches overflowed outside. All the chief officers were there, old guest-friends, tribal chiefs, and various allied envoys who had been following the campaign.

The wine was tempered at first, because people were dry; when thirst was slaked, it went round neat. Everyone who felt happy, or thought it useful, started a new round of toasts, and pledged the King.

To the rhythm of old Macedonian drinking-songs, the guests began clapping, slapping their thighs, or banging the tables. Their heads were crowned with wreaths from the broken vineyards. After the third chorus, Philip rose to his feet, and proclaimed a komos.

An unsteady line was formed. Anyone in reach of a torch snatched it up and waved it. Those who were giddy grasped the next man’s shoulder. Swaying and limping, Philip lurched along at the head of the line, arm in arm with Parmenion. His face glistened red in the shaking torchlight, the lid of his dead eye drooped, he bawled out the song like battle orders. The truth of the wine had lit for him the vastness of his deed; the long plans ended, the vista of power ahead, the downfall of his enemy. Freed from careful southern graces as from a hampering cloak, one in soul with his highland forebears and nomad ancestors, he was a chieftain of Macedon, feasting his clansmen after the greatest of all border raids.

The lilt of the song inspired him. “Hark!” he roared. “Listen to this:

“Demosthenes decrees!

Demosthenes decrees!

Demosthenes of Paiania,

Son of Demosthenes.

Euoi Bakchos! Euoi Bakchos!

Demosthenes decrees!”

It spread down the line like fire in tinder. It was easy to learn, and even easier to sing. Stamping and shouting, the komos wavered out through the moonlit night over the olive fields by the river. A little way downstream, where they would not foul the water for the victors, were the prisoners’ pens. Roused by the noise from exhausted sleep or lonely brooding, the drawn grimy men got to their feet and stared silently, or looked at one another. The torches shone on still rows of eyes.

Near the tail of the komos, among the young, Hephaistion slipped from his neighbors’ convivial arms, and walked along through the olives’ shadows, looking out and waiting. He kept along by the komos till he saw Alexander leave it; he too looked about, knowing Hephaistion would be there.

They stood together under an old tree with a gnarled intricate stem, thick as a horse’s body. Hephaistion touched it. “Someone told me they live a thousand years.”

“This one,” Alexander said, “will have something to remember.” He felt at his brow, dragged off the vine-wreath and stamped it under his heel. He was cold sober. Hephaistion had been drunk when the komos started, but that had soon cleared his head.

They walked on together. The lights and noise still meandered before the prisoners’ pens. Alexander walked steadily down river. They picked their way over broken spears and sarissas and javelins, round dead horses and dead men. At length Alexander stopped by the riverbank, where Hephaistion had known he would.

No one had stripped the bodies yet. The bright shields, the victors’ trophies, glimmered softly under the moon. The smell of blood was stronger here; bleeding men had fought on longer. The river chuckled gently among the stones.

One body lay by itself, face down, feet towards the river; a young man, with dark crisply curling hair. His dead hand still grasped his helmet, which stood by him upside down, with water in it. It was unspilled, because he had been crawling when death overtook him. A blood-spoor, along which he had been returning, led from him to the heap of dead. Alexander picked up the helmet, carrying the water carefully, and followed the trail to its end. This man too was young; he had bled a wide pool, the great vein of his thigh being severed. His open mouth showed the dry tongue. Alexander bent, with the water ready, and touched him, then laid the helmet aside,

“The other had stiffened, but this one is hardly cold. He had a long wait.”

“He would know why,” Hephaistion said.

A little way on, two bodies lay across each other, both facing upward to where the enemy had been. The elder was a strong-looking man with a fair clipped beard; the younger, on whom he had fallen back in death, was bareheaded. On one side he was bare-skulled; a downward slash of a cavalry saber had flayed off the face to show a bony grin. From the other side, one could see that beauty had been there.

Alexander knelt, and as one might straighten a garment, replaced the flap of flesh. It adhered, sticky with blood. He looked round at Hephaistion and said, “I did this. I remember it. He was trying to spear Oxhead through the neck. I did it.”

“He shouldn’t have lost his helmet. I suppose the chin-strap was weak.”

“I don’t remember the other.”

He had been speared through the body, and the spear wrenched back in the urgency of battle, leaving a great torn hole. His face was set in a grimace of agony; he had died wide awake.

“I remember him,” said Hephaistion. “He came at you after you struck the first one down. You had your hands full already. So I took him on.”

There was a silence. Small frogs chirruped in the river shallows. A night bird sang liquidly. Behind them sounded the blurred chant of the komos.

“It’s war,” said Hephaistion. “They know they’d have done the same to us.”

“Oh yes. Yes, it is with the gods.”

He knelt down by the two bodies, and tried to compose the limbs; but they were set hard as wood; the eyes, when he had closed the lids, opened again to stare. Finally he dragged the man’s corpse over, till it lay by the youth’s with one stiff arm across it. Taking off his shoulder-cloak he spread it so that both faces were covered.

“Alexander. I think you should go back to the komos. The King will be missing you.”

“Kleitos can sing much louder.” He looked round at the still shapes, the dried blood blackened by moonlight, the palely shining bronze. “It is better here among friends.”

“It’s only right you should be seen. It’s a victory komos. You were first through the line. He waited for that.”

“Everyone knows what I did. There’s only one honor I want tonight, to have it said I wasn’t there.” He pointed at the wobbling torchlight.

“Come, then,” said Hephaistion. They went down to the water and washed the blood from their hands. Hephaistion loosened his shoulder-cloak and wrapped it around both of them. They walked on by the river into the hanging shadow of the willows fed by the stream.

Philip finished the evening sober. As he danced before the captives, a certain Demades, an Athenian eupatrid, had said to him with quiet dignity, “When fortune has cast you for Agamemnon, King, aren’t you ashamed to play Thersites?”

Philip was not too drunk to feel, through this harshness, a rebuke from Greek to Greek. He stopped the komos, had Demades bathed and freshly clothed, gave him supper in his tent, and, the next day, sent him back to Athens as an envoy. Even in drink, Philip’s eye had been good; the man was one of Phokion’s party, who had worked for peace but obeyed the call to war. By him, the King’s terms were conveyed to Athens. They were proclaimed to an Assembly stunned silent with incredulous relief.

Athens was to acknowledge the hegemony of Macedon; so far the condition was Sparta’s of sixty years before. But the Spartans had cut the throats of all their captives at Goat River, three thousand men; they had pulled down the Long Walls to the sound of flutes, and set up a tyranny. Philip would release his prisoners without ransom; he would not march into Attica; he left their form of government to their own choice.

They accepted; and were granted in due form the bones of their dead. They had been burned on a common pyre, since they could not last out the days of peacemaking. The pyre was broad; one party of troops stoked it all day with timber, another fed it with corpses; it smoked up from sunrise to sunset, and both details finished worn out. There were more than a thousand men to burn. The ashes and calcined bones were boxed in oaken chests, awaiting a state cortege.

Thebes, stripped and helpless, had surrendered without condition. Athens had been an open enemy; but Thebes, a faithless ally. Philip garrisoned her citadel, killed or dispossessed her leading anti-Macedonians, and freed the Boeotians from her rule. There being no parleys, her dead were quickly gathered. The Band were given the heroes’ right of a common tomb, and remained together; above them the Lion of Cheironeia sat down to its long watch.

When his envoys returned from Athens, Philip let the Athenian prisoners know they were free to go, and went off to his midday meal. He was eating in his tent when a senior officer asked leave to enter. He was in charge of dispatching the convoy. “Yes?” said Philip. “What’s wrong?”

“Sir, they’re asking for their baggage.”

Philip put down his soup-soaked bannock. “Asking for what?”

“Their stuff from their camp, bedding-rolls and so on.”

Macedonian mouths and eyes fell open. Philip gave a bark of laughter. He grasped his chair-arms, and jutted his black beard. “Do they think,” he roared, “that we beat them at a game of knucklebones? Tell them to get out.”

As the grumbling exodus was heard, Alexander said, “Why not have marched on? We need not have damaged the city; they’d have left it when you came in sight.”

Philip shook his head. “One can’t be sure. And the Acropolis has never fallen, so long as it was manned.”

“Never?” said Alexander. A dreaming aspiration shone in his eyes.

“And when it did fall, it was to Xerxes. No, no.”

“No. That’s true.” Neither had spoken of the komos, or of Alexander’s leaving it; each had welcomed the other’s forbearance. “But I wonder you didn’t at least make them hand over Demosthenes.”

Philip swept his bread around his soup bowl. “Instead of the man, there would be his hero-statue. The man will be truer to life…Well, you can see Athens for yourself very shortly. I am sending you as my envoy, to return their dead.”

Alexander looked round slowly; he had supposed for a moment he was the object of some obscure joke. He had never thought it possible that, having spared Athens both invasion and occupation, his father would not himself ride in as a magnanimous victor, to receive her thanks. Was it shame for the komos? Policy? Could it be even hope?

“To send you,” said Philip, “is a civility. For me to go would be thought hubristic. They have the status of allies now. A more fitting time may come.”

Yes, it was still the dream. He wanted the gates opened from within. When he had won the war in Asia and freed the cities, it was in Athens, not as conqueror but honored guest, that he would hold the feast of victory. And he had never even seen it.

“Very well, Father, I’ll go.” A moment later, he remembered to express thanks.

He rode between the towers of the Dipylon Gate, and into the Kerameikos. On either side were the tombs of the great and noble; old painted grave-steles faded with weather, new ones whose withered grave-wreaths were tasseled with the mourners’ hair. Marble knights rode heroically nude, ladies at tiring-tables remembered beauty; a soldier gazed out at the sea that kept his bones. They were quiet people. Among them, the noisy crowds of the living milled to stare.

A pavilion had been built, to house the ossuaries till the tomb was ready; they were lifted in from the train of biers. As he rode on between obsequious faces, a shrill keening swelled up behind him; the women had surged upon the catafalque, to wail the fallen. Oxhead started under him; from behind a grave, someone had hurled a clod. Horse and rider had known worse, and neither deigned to look round. If you were at the fight, my friend, this does not become you; still less if you were not. But if you are a woman, I understand it.

Ahead towered the steep northwest cliffs of the Acropolis. He ran his eye over them, wondering about the other sides. Someone was inviting him to a civic function; he bowed acceptance. By the road, a marble hoplite in antique armor leaned on his spear; Hermes, guide of the dead, bent to offer a child his hand; a wife and husband bade farewell; two friends clasped hands on an altar, a cup beside them. Everywhere Love faced Necessity in silence. No rhetoric here. Whoever had come after, these people had built this city.

He was led through the Agora to hear speeches in the Council Hall. Sometimes far back in the crowd he heard a shouted curse; but the war party, its prophecies made void, mostly kept away. Demosthenes might have vanished into air. Old Macedonian guest-friends and supporters were thrust forward; he did his best with these awkward meetings. Here came Aischines, carrying it off well, but defensive under it. Philip had showed more mercy than even the peace party had dared predict; they were smeared with the odium of men who have been too right. The bereaved, the ruined, watched them Argus-eyed for a gleam of triumph and were sure to find it. Philip’s hirelings came too, some cautious, some fawning; these found Philip’s son civil, but opaque.

He ate at the house of Demades, with a few guests of honor; the occasion was not one for feasting. But it was very Attic: well-worn spare elegance, couches and tables whose ornament was perfect shaping and silky wood; wine cups of old silver thin with polishing; quiet expert service, talk in which no one interrupted or raised his voice. In Macedon, Alexander’s mere lack of greed put his table manners above the common run; but here he took care to observe the others first.

Next day on the Acropolis he made dedications to the City’s gods, in earnest of the peace. Here were the fabled glories, towering Athene of the Vanguard whose spear-tip guided ships—where were you, Lady, did your father forbid you the battle, as he did at Troy? This time were you obedient? Here in her temple stood Pheidias’ ivory Maiden in her robe of folded gold; here were the trophies and dedications of a hundred years. (Three generations; only three!)

He had been reared in the Palace of Archelaos; fine building was nothing new to him; he talked of history, and was shown Athene’s olive, which sprouted green overnight when the Persians had burned it. They had carried off, too, the old statues of the Liberators, Harmodios and Aristogeiton, to adorn Persepolis. “If we can get them back,” he said, “we will let you have them. Those were brave men and faithful friends.” No one answered; Macedonian boastfulness was a byword. From the parapet he looked for the place where the Persians had climbed up, and found it without help; it had seemed impolite to ask.

The peace party had got a motion passed that, to recognize Philip’s clemency, his statue and his son’s should be set up in the Parthenon. As he sat for the sculptor’s sketch, he thought of his father’s image standing there, and wondered how soon the man would follow it.

Was there anything else, they asked, any sight he would like to visit before he left? “Yes; the Academy. Aristotle my tutor studied there. He lives now in Stagira; my father rebuilt the town and brought the people back. But I should like to see where Plato taught.”

Along the road there, all the great soldiers of Athens’ past were buried. He saw the battle-trophies and his questions delayed the ride. Here, too, men who had died together in famous actions lay in fraternal tombs. A new site was being cleared; he did not ask for whom.

The road petered out into a grove of ancient olives, whose long grass and field-flowers were dried with autumn. Near the altar of Eros was another, inscribed EROS AVENGED. He asked the story. An immigrant, they said, had loved a beautiful Athenian youth, and vowed there was nothing he would not do for him. He had said, “Then go jump off the Rock.” When he found he had been obeyed, he made the same leap himself. “He did right,” said Alexander. “What does it matter where a man comes from? It’s what he is in himself.” They changed the subject, exchanging looks; it was natural the son of the Macedonian upstart should have such thoughts.

Speusippos, who had inherited the school from Plato, had died the year before. In the cool, plain white house that had been Plato’s, the new head, Xenokrates, received him, a tall big-boned man whose gravity, it was said, cleared a path before him even through the Agora at market-time. Alexander, entertained with the courtesy of eminent teacher to promising student, felt the man to be solid and took to him on sight. They talked a little about Aristotle’s methods. “A man must follow his truth,” Xenokrates said, “wherever it leads him. It will lead Aristotle, I think, away from Plato, who was a man for making How serve Why. Me it keeps at Plato’s feet.”

“Have you a likeness of him?”

Xenokrates led him out past a dolphin fountain to Plato’s myrtle-shaded tomb; the statue stood near it. He sat scroll in hand, his classic oval head stooped forward from heavy shoulders. To the end of his days he had kept the athlete’s short-cut hair of his youth. His beard was cleanly trimmed; his brow was furrowed across and down; from under its weight looked the haunted unwavering eyes of a survivor who has fled from nothing. “Yet still he believed in good. I have some books of his.”

“As to the good,” said Xenokrates, “he himself was his own evidence. Without that, a man will find no other. I knew him well. I am glad you read him. But his books, he always said, contained the teaching of his master, Sokrates; there would never be a book of Plato, for what he had to teach could only be learned as fire is kindled, by the touch of the flame itself.”

Alexander gazed eagerly at the brooding face, as if at a fort on some impregnable rock. But the crag was gone, overthrown by the floods of time, never to be assailed again. “He had a secret doctrine?”

“An open secret. You, who are a soldier, can only teach your wisdom to men whose bodies have been prepared for hardship, and their minds to resist fear; isn’t that so? Then the spark can kindle the spark. So with him.”

With regret and surmise, Xenokrates gazed at the youth who looked, with surmise and regret, at the marble face. He rode back past the dead heroes to the City.

He was about to change for supper when a man was announced and left alone with him; a well-dressed, well-spoken person, who claimed to have met him at the Council Hall. Everyone, he learned, had praised the modesty and restraint he had shown, so proper to his mission. Many regretted he should have denied himself, from respect for public mourning, the pleasures of a city so well able to provide them. It would be disgraceful were he not offered the chance to taste them in harmless privacy. “Now I have a boy…” He described the graces of a Ganymede.

Alexander heard him out without interruption. “What do you mean,” he then said, “that you have a boy? Is he your son?”

“Sir! Ah, you will have your joke.”

“Your own friend, perhaps?”

“Nothing of the kind, I assure you, entirely at your disposal. Only see him for yourself. I paid two hundred staters for him.”

Alexander stood up. “I don’t know,” he said, “what I have done to deserve you, or your merchandise either. Get out of my sight.”

He did so, returning with consternation to the peace party, which. had wished the young man to take away grateful memories. A curse on false reports! Too late now to offer a woman.

He rode north next day.

Soon after, the dead of Cheir Oneia were brought to their common tomb in the Street of Heroes. The people debated who should speak their funeral praises. Aischines was proposed, and Demades. But the one had been too right, the other too successful; to the sore hearts in Assembly, they looked sleek and smug. All eyes returned to the ravaged face of Demosthenes. Perfect defeat, enormous shame had burned out, for the time, all spite from him; the new lines on his tight-drawn skin were of a pain greater than hate. Here was one they could all trust not to rejoice when they were mourning. They chose him to speak the epitaph.

All the Greek states but Sparta sent envoys to the Council at Corinth. They acknowledged Philip supreme war-leader of Hellas against the Persians, for defense. At this first meeting he asked no more. All the rest would follow.

He marched to the frontier of sullen Sparta, then changed his mind. Let the old dog keep its kennel. It would not come out; but if cornered, it would die hard. He had no wish to be the Xerxes of a new Thermopylai.

Corinth, city of Aphrodite, proved readier to please than Athens.

The King and Prince were splendidly entertained. Alexander found time to climb the long path to Acrocorinth, and survey the great walls which, from below, looked narrow as ribbons round the mount’s towering brow. With Hephaistion he gazed, the day being clear, south to Athens and northward to Olympos; appraised the walls; saw where one could build better ones and scale those that were there; and was reminded to admire the monuments. At the very top was the small graceful white temple of Aphrodite. Some of the goddess’s famous girls, the guide advised them, would certainly at this time have come up from the city precinct to serve her there. He paused expectantly, but in vain.

Demaratos, a Corinthian aristocrat of the ancient Dorian stock, was an old guest-friend of Philip, and played host to him during the Council. At his great house on the footslopes of Acrocorinth, he gave one night a small intimate party, promising the King a guest who would interest him.

It was Dionysios the Younger, son of Dionysios the Greater, late of Syracuse. Since Timoleon had expelled him from his tyranny, he had earned his bread here by running a school for boys. He was a shortsighted, gangling, mouse-colored man of about Philip’s age; his new calling, and lack of means, had ended his once notorious dissipations, but he had an old drunkard’s broken-veined nose. A combed, scholarly beard masked his weak chin. Philip, who had surpassed the achievements of even his formidable father the elder tyrant, treated him with charming tact, and when the wine had been round was rewarded by his confidences.

“I had no experience, when I inherited from my father, none at all. My father was a very suspicious man. You will have heard the stories; they are mostly true. All the gods could have witnessed, I never had a thought of doing him any wrong; but to the day of his death, I was searched to the skin before I was admitted to his presence. I never saw state papers, never attended a war conference. Now if he had left me, as you did your son, to govern at home while he was on campaign, history might have a different tale to tell.”

Philip nodded gravely, and said he could well believe it.

“I would have been content if he had only left me to enjoy a young man’s pleasures in peace. He was a hard man; very able, but hard.”

“Well, many causes go to these reversals.”

“Yes. When my father took power, the people had had a bellyful of democracy; and when it passed to me, they’d had a bellyful of despotism.”

Philip had perceived he was not always as foolish as he seemed. “But was Plato no help to you? They say you had two visits from the philosopher.”

There was a working in the ineffectual face. “Don’t you think I learned some philosophy from Plato, when you see me bear so great a change of fortune?”

The watery eyes had taken on almost dignity. Philip looked at the well-darned splendor of his one good gown, laid a kindly hand on his, and beckoned up the wine-pourer.

On a gilded bed, whose headpiece was carved with swans, Ptolemy lay with Thais the Athenian, his newest girl.

She had come young to Corinth, and had her own house already. There were wall-paintings of twining lovers; the bed-table held two exquisitely shallow cups, a wine jar, and a round flask of scented oil. A triple lamp, upheld by gilt nymphs, glowed on their pleasures; she was nineteen, and had no need of mystery. Her black hair was feather-soft, her eyes were dark blue; her rose-red mouth was unpainted, though she had tinted like pink shells her nails and nipples and nostrils. Her creamy skin had been polished and plucked as smooth as alabaster. Ptolemy was enchanted with her. Languidly, for the hour was late, he stroked her over, hardly caring whether reminiscence renewed desire.

“We must live together. This is no life for you. I shan’t marry for many years. Don’t fear that I won’t take care of you.”

“But, darling man, I have all my friends here. Our concerts, play-readings…I should be quite lost in Macedon.” Everyone said he was Philip’s son. One must never sound too eager.

“Ah, but soon it will be Asia. You shall sit by a blue-tiled fountain, with roses round you; I shall come back from battle and fill your lap with gold.” She laughed, and nibbled his ear.

He was a man, she thought, whom one could really put up with every night. When one considered some of the others…“Let me think a little longer. Come to supper tomorrow; no, it’s today. I’ll tell Philetas I’m sick.”

“Little finch. What shall I bring you?”

“Only yourself.” She had seldom known this to fail. “Macedonians are really men.”

“Ah, well, you would move a statue.”

“I’m glad you’ve begun to take your beards off. One can see the handsome faces now.” She ran her finger along his chin.

“Alexander set the fashion. He says a beard gives the enemy a handhold.”

“Oh, is that why?…That beautiful boy. They are all in love with him.”

“All the girls but you?”

She laughed. “Don’t be jealous. I meant all the soldiers. He’s one of us, you know, at heart.”

“No. No, there you’re wrong. He’s as chaste as Artemis; or nearly.”

“Yes, that one can see; it’s not what I meant.” Her feathery brows moved in meditation. She liked her bedfellow, and for the first time bestowed on him her real thoughts. “He is like the great, the famous ones; like Lais or Rhodope or Theodotis they tell tales of in those old days. They don’t live for love, you know; but they live upon it. I can tell you, I have seen, they are the very blood of his body, all those men who he knows would run after him through fire. If ever the day comes when they will follow him no longer, it will be the same with him as with some great hetaira when the lovers leave her door and she puts away her mirror. He will begin to die.”

A sigh replied to her. Softly she fished up the coverlet and drew it over both of them. He was fast asleep, and it would soon be morning. Let him stay. She might as well start getting used to him.

From Corinth, Philip went homeward to prepare for the war in Asia. When he was ready, he would seek the Council’s sanction to begin.

Most of the troops had gone on ahead under Attalos, and dispersed to their homes on leave; Attalos also. He owned an old grey ancestral fort on the footslopes of Mount Pydna; Philip received a message from him, begging the King to honor his rough house by breaking the journey there. The King, who had found him both keen and capable, sent an acceptance back.

As they turned off the high road into the hills, and the sea-horizon widened, Alexander grew taciturn and withdrawn. Presently he rode off from Hephaistion’s side, overtook Ptolemy, and beckoned him away from the cavalcade among the heath and scrub of the hillside. Ptolemy followed, puzzled; his mind had been on his own concerns. Would she keep her word? She had made him wait for her answer to the very last.

“What can Father be thinking of,” said Alexander, “not to send Pausanias on to Pella? How can he bring him here?”

“Pausanias?” said Ptolemy vaguely. His face changed. “Well, it’s his right to guard the King’s person.”

“It’s his right to be spared this, if he has a right to anything. Don’t you know, it was at Attalos’ house it happened?”

“He has a house at Pella.”

“It was here. I’ve known that since I was twelve. I was in the stables at home, in one of the stalls, they didn’t see me; Attalos’ grooms were telling ours. Mother told me too, years later, I didn’t tell her it was stale fish. It happened here.”

“It’s a good while back, now. Six years.”

“Do you think one could forget in sixty?”

“He’s at least on duty, he needn’t feel himself a guest.”

“He should have been released from duty. Father should have helped him out.”

“Yes,” said Ptolemy slowly. “Yes, a pity…You know, I’d not recalled the matter till you spoke of it, and I’ve had less business to think of than the King.”

Oxhead, feeling some shock through his rider, snorted and shook his glittering head. “That I’d not thought of! Even in our family, there’s a limit on what one can remind one’s father of. Parmenion should do it, they were young men together. But maybe he’s forgotten, too.”

“It’s only for this one night…I’ve been thinking, if all goes well she may have sold her house by now. You must see her. Wait till you hear her sing.”

Alexander rejoined Hephaistion. They rode on in silence till the rock-hewn walls of the fort, a grim relic of the lawless years, came in sight round a bluff. A group of horsemen appeared from the gate, to meet them.

Alexander said, “If Pausanias is sullen, don’t fall out with him.”

“No. I know.”

“Even kings have no right to wrong men and then forget it.”

“I don’t fancy,” said Hephaistion, who had been giving it thought, “that he does forget. You need to bear in mind how many blood-feuds the King has settled, in his reign. Think of Thessaly; the Lynkestids. My father says, when Perdikkas died there wasn’t a house or tribe in Macedon without one at least. You know Leonnatos and I should be at feud, his great-grandfather killed mine, I must have told you that. The King often asks our fathers to supper the same night, to prove all’s well; they don’t mind it now.”

“But that was old family business, not their own.”

“It’s the King’s way, Pausanias must know it. That removes the affront.”

And when they reached the fort, he did indeed go about his duties as usual. It was his office to keep the door while the King was feasting, not to sit down with the host. His meal would be served him later.

The King’s train was hospitably looked after; he himself with his son and a few chief friends were led to the inner rooms. The fort was ruder, and little later, than the castle at Aigai, which was as old as Macedon itself. The Attalids were an ancient clan. Within, the rooms had been well decked out with Persian hangings and inlaid chairs. In supreme compliment to the honored guests, the ladies came in, to be presented and offer sweets.

Alexander, whose eye had been drawn off by a Persian archer on the tapestry, heard his father say, “I never knew, Attalos, that you’d another daughter.”

“Nor had I, King, till lately. The gods, who took away my brother, gave her to us. This is Eurydike, poor Bion’s child.”

“Poor indeed,” said Philip, “to watch over such a child and die before her wedding.”

Attalos said easily, “We don’t yet think of that; we’re too pleased with our new daughter to let her go.”

At the first sound of his father’s voice, Alexander had turned like a house-dog at a stealthy footfall. The girl stood before Philip, with a polished silver sweet-bowl in her right hand. He had taken her left in his, as a kinsman might have done, and now released it, perhaps because he had seen her blush. She had a family look of Attalos, but with his defects all turned to graces: for gaunt cheeks, delicate hollows under fine bones; for straw hair, gold; he was lanky, she was willowy. Philip spoke some praise of her dead father; she made a little reverence, met his eyes and dropped hers; then went on with her silver bowl to Alexander. Her sweet bland smile fixed for a moment; she had looked before he was ready.

Next day, their departure was delayed till noon, Attalos having revealed that it was a feast-day for some local river-nymphs, and the women would be singing. They came with their garlands; the girl’s voice was light, childish, but true. The clear water of the nymphs’ spring was tasted and praised.

When they set out, the heat of the day was well advanced. A few miles on, Pausanias left the column. Another officer, seeing him go down towards a stream, called after him to wait a mile or two more for better water; here it got staled by cattle. He pretended not to hear, filled his cupped hands and drained them thirstily. He had neither eaten nor drunk, all the while he was at the house of Attalos.

Alexander stood with Olympias under Zeuxis’ painting of the sack of Troy. Above her, Queen Hekabe rent her garments; behind his head spread like a crimson nimbus the blood of Priam and Astyanax. Winter firelight leaped in the painted flames, and drew hollows in the living faces.

Olympias’ eyes were ringed with black, and her face was lined like a woman’s ten years older. Alexander’s mouth looked dry and set; he too had been sleepless, but showed it less.

“Mother. Why send for me again? All’s said and you know it. What was true yesterday is true today. I shall have to go.”

“Expediency Expediency. He has made a Greek of you. If he kills us for defying him, good, let him kill us. Let us die with our pride.”

“You know he’d not kill us. We should be where our enemies want, that’s all. If I go to this wedding, if I give it countenance, everyone can see I rate it with all the rest, the Thracians and Illyrian girls and the other nobodies. Father knows that; can’t you see that’s why he asked me? He did it to save our faces.”

“What? When you drink to my disgrace?”

“Would I do so? Accept, since it’s true, that he won’t forgo this girl. Very well: she’s a Macedonian, the family’s as old as ours; of course they stand out for marriage. That’s why they threw her in his way, I knew it the first moment. Attalos has won this action. If we play into his hands, he’ll win the war.”

“They will only think you are taking your father’s part against me, to keep his favor.”

“They know me better.” This thought had tormented him half the night.

“Feasting with his whore’s kindred.”

“A virgin of fifteen. She’s only the bait, like the kid in a wolf-trap. Oh, she’ll do her part, she’s one of them; but in a year or two he’ll have seen a younger one. It’s Attalos who will use the time. Keep your mind on him.”

“That we should come to this!” Though she spoke with bitter reproach, he took it as assent, having had enough.

In his room he found Hephaistion waiting. Here, too, most things had been said. For some time they sat side by side on the bed in silence. At length Hephaistion said, “You will know your friends.”

“I know them now.”

“The King’s own friends should advise him. Can’t Parmenion do it?”

“He tried, Philotas tells me…I know what Parmenion thinks. What I can’t tell Mother is that I understand it.”

Hephaistion, after a long wait, said, “Yes?”

“Since Father was sixteen, he’s been in love with one who’ll never have him. He’s sent her flowers, she’s thrown them out on the midden; he’s sung at her window, she’s emptied the chamber-pot on his head; he’s offered for her hand, she’s flaunted with his rivals. At last he couldn’t stand more, and struck her; but he couldn’t bear to see her lie at his feet, so he picked her up again. Then, though he’d mastered her, he was ashamed to go to her door; he sent me instead. Well, I went; and when all’s done she’s an old painted whore. And I pity him. I never thought I’d see the day, but it’s true, I pity him. He deserves better. This girl here, I wish she were a dancer or a flute-player, or a boy for that matter; then we’d be out of trouble. But since she’s what he wants…”

“And that’s why you’re going?”

“Oh, I can find better reasons. But that’s why.”

The wedding feast was held at Attalos’ town house just outside Pella. He had just refurbished it, and not by halves; the columns were twined with gilded garlands, and statues of inlaid bronze had been shipped in from Samos. Nothing had been left out which could show that this marriage of the King’s was unlike all others, except the first. As Alexander entered with his friends, and they looked about them, all their eyes exchanged one thought. This was the mansion for a King’s father-in-law, not the uncle of a concubine.

The bride sat throned among the splendors of her dowry and the groom’s gifts; Macedon kept up older customs than the south. Gold and silver cups, rolls of fine weaving, trinkets and necklaces spread out on linen coverlets, inlaid tables on which stood caskets of spices and phials of scent, filled the bridal dais. Robed in saffron and crowned with white roses, she sat looking down at her folded hands. The guests called ritual blessings on her; her aunt beside her spoke thanks on her behalf.

In due time the women bore her off to the house prepared for her. The procession in the wedding car had been left out, as inappropriate. Alexander, viewing the kindred, felt sure that they had hankered for it. He had thought his anger was spent, till he saw their faces watching him.

The meat from the marriage sacrifice, richly dressed, was eaten, and the kickshaws after. Though the chimney had a hood, the hot room grew smoky. He noticed he was being left alone a good deal with his own friends. He was glad to have Hephaistion next him; but it should have been a kinsman of the bride’s. Even the younger Attalids were clustered about the King.

Alexander murmured to Hephaistion, “Hurry up, Dionysos, we need you badly.”

In fact, however, when the wine came in he drank lightly, as usual, being as moderate in this as in eating. Macedon was a land of good springs with safe pure water. One need never come to table thirsty, as men did in the hot lands of Asia with their deadly streams.

But, with no hosts in hearing, he and Hephaistion allowed themselves the kind of joke guests save for the journey home. The young men of his following, jealous that he had been slighted, read their smiles, and followed their lead with less discretion. The banquet hall became tinged with a scent of faction.

Alexander, growing uneasy at it, murmured to Hephaistion, “We had better make ourselves pleasant,” and turned towards the company. When the bridegroom left the feast, they could slip away. He looked at his father; and saw he was already drunk.

His face was glazed and shining, he was bawling out old army songs with Attalos and Parmenion. Grease from the roast was streaked in his beard. He flung back to the company the immemorial jokes of defloration and prowess, showered on the bridegroom as ritually as the earlier raisins and grain. He had won his girl, he was among old friends, good fellowship prevailed, wine made his glad heart gladder. Alexander, scrupulously bathed, almost empty, and nearly sober, though not so sober as if he had eaten more, looked on in a silence which began to be felt around him.

Hephaistion, controlling his own anger, talked to neighbors to draw off notice. No decent master, he thought, would have inflicted this ordeal on a slave. He was angry, too, with himself. How had he not foreseen all this, why had he said nothing to keep Alexander away? He had held his peace, because he had a kindness for Philip, because it had seemed politic, and—he faced it now—in order to spite Olympias. Alexander had made this sacrifice, in one of those flashes of reckless magnanimity for which Hephaistion loved him. He should have been protected; some friend should have stepped in. He had been betrayed.

Through the rising noise he was saying something. “…she’s one of the clan, but she’s had no choice, she’s barely out of the nursery…”

Hephaistion looked round startled. With all he had on his mind, this was one thing he had never thought of, that Alexander could be angry for the girl.

“It’s mostly like this at weddings, you know that; it’s custom.”

“She was scared when first she met him. She kept a good face, but I could see.”

“Well, he’ll not be rough with her. It’s not like him. He’s used to women.”

“Imagine it,” murmured Alexander into his wine cup. He emptied it quickly and held it out. The boy came with the snow-cooled rhyton; soon after, attentive to his duties, he returned to fill it again.

“Save this one for the toasts,” said Hephaistion watchfully.

Parmenion rose on the King’s behalf to praise the bride, properly the office of the groom’s nearest kinsman. Alexander’s ironic smile was noticed by his friends, and returned too openly.

Parmenion had spoken at many weddings, some of them the King’s. He was correct, simple, careful and brief. Attalos, a huge ornate gold goblet in his hand, swung down from his supper couch to make the speech of bestowal. It was clear at once that he was as drunk as Philip, and not carrying it so well.

His praise of the King was rambling and wordy, clumsiness defeating fulsomeness; the climaxes were maudlin and badly timed; the applause, which was rapturous, was a tribute to the King. It grew less carefree as the speech warmed up. Parmenion had wished luck to a man and woman. Attalos was wishing it, in all but the naked words, to a King and Queen.

His supporters cheered, and knocked cups on tables. Alexander’s friends talked in undervoices meant to be heard. The uncommitted, taken by surprise, dismayed, were revealed by silence.

Philip, not too drunk to know what it meant, fixed his bloodshot black eye on Attalos, wrestling with his own fuddled slowness, thinking how to stop the man. This was Macedon; he had quieted plenty of after-dinner brawls; but he had never had to deal before with a new father-in-law, self-styled or not. The others had known their places and been grateful. His eye slewed round to his son.

“Don’t notice it,” Hephaistion was whispering. “The man’s soused, they all know it, they’ll all have forgotten by morning.” Early on in the speech he had made his way from his own supper couch to stand by Alexander’s, who, his eyes fixed on Attalos, felt hard and taut to the touch, like a catapult wound up.

Philip, looking that way, saw under the flushed brow and the gold hair smoothed for the feast, the wide staring grey eyes pass from Attalos’ face to his. Olympias’ rage; no, but that boiled quickly, this was held in. Nonsense, I’m drunk, he’s drunk, we’re all drunk, and why not? Why can’t the boy take it easy like anyone else at a feast? Let him swallow it, and behave.

Attalos was running on about the good old native blood of Macedon. He had conned his speech well; but lured on by smiling Dionysos, he knew he could now do better. In the person of this fair maiden, the dear homeland took back her King to her breast, with the blessing of the ancestral gods. “Let us pray to them,” he cried in sudden inspiration, “for a lawful, true-born heir.”

There was an outbreak of muddled noise; applause, protest, dismay, clumsy efforts to smother danger in jollity. The voices changed, and checked. Attalos, instead of drinking the toast, had clapped his other hand to his head; blood showed between his fingers. Something bright, a silver drinking-cup, was clattering along the mosaic floor. Alexander leaned forward on his supper couch, propped upon one hand. He had thrown without getting up.

Uproar began, echoing in the high hall. His voice, which had carried through the din of Cheironeia, called out, “You blackguard, are you calling me a bastard?” The young men, his friends, yelled out indignant applause. Attalos, perceiving what had hit him, made a choking sound, and hurled his heavy goblet at Alexander, who measured its course and did not trouble to move; it fell short halfway. Friends and kinsmen shouted; it began to sound like a battlefield. Philip, furious and knowing now where to vent his anger, roared over the clamor, “How dare you, boy? How dare you? Behave yourself or go home.”

Alexander hardly raised his voice. Like his cup, it struck where it was aimed.

“You filthy old goat. Will you never have any shame? All Hellas can wind your stink; what will you do in Asia? No wonder the Athenians laugh.”

For a moment, the only answer was a sound of breathing like a laboring horse’s. The red of the King’s face deepened to purple. His hand fumbled about the couch. He alone here, in the ceremonial dress of the bridegroom, had a sword.

“Son of a whore!” He swung off the couch, upsetting his taper-legged supper table. There was a crash of cups and dessert plates. He grasped his sword-hilt.

“Alexander, Alexander,” muttered Hephaistion desperately. “Come away, quick, come.” As if he had not existed, Alexander slid neatly down on the far side of the couch, grasped the wood in both hands, and waited with a cold eager smile.

Panting and limping, drawn sword in hand, Philip stumbled through the mess upon the floor towards his enemy. His foot slipped on a fruit-paring; he came down hard on the lame leg, skidded, and crashed headlong among sweets and sherds.

Hephaistion took a step forward; for a moment, it had been instinct to help him up.

Alexander came round the supper couch. Hands on belt, head tilted, he looked down at the red stertorous cursing man sprawling in spilled wine and reaching about for his sword. “Look, men. Look who is getting ready to cross from Europe into Asia. And he falls flat crossing from couch to couch.”

Philip pushed himself up with both hands onto his good knee. He had cut his palm on a broken plate. Attalos and his kinsmen ran, stumbling over each other, to his aid. During the scramble, Alexander signed to his friends. They all followed him out, silently and promptly, as if in some night action at war.

From his post at the doorway, which through all this he had made no move to leave, Pausanias gazed after Alexander. So might a traveler in a thirsty desert look after the man who gave him a cool delicious drink. No one noticed. Alexander, gathering up supporters, had never given him a thought. From the beginning, he had never been an easy man to talk to.

Oxhead neighed in the courtyard; he had heard his master’s war-voice. The young men tossed their festal wreaths upon the midden furred with frost, mounted without waiting for service, and galloped off on the rutted track with its thin-iced puddles towards Pella. In the Palace courtyard, in the glow of the night-flares, Alexander looked them over, reading all their faces.

“I am taking my mother to her brother’s house in Epiros. Who will come with me?”

“I for one,” said Ptolemy. “And that for their true-born heirs.”

Harpalos, Niarchos and the others crowded up; from love, from loyalty, from ingrained faith in Alexander’s fortune, from fear that the King and Attalos had marked them down; or from shame at being seen by others to hold back.

“No, not you, Philotas; you stay.”

“I’ll come,” said Philotas quickly, looking around. “My father will forgive me, and if not what of it?”

“No, he’s a better one than I have, you shan’t offend him for me. Listen, the rest of you.” His voice took the habit-formed note of brisk command. “We must get away now, before I’m locked up and my mother poisoned. Travel light, bring spare horses; all your weapons, what money you can lay your hands on; one day’s food; any good servants fit to bear arms, I’ll mount and arm them. All of you meet me here when the horn sounds for the next guard-change.”

They dispersed, all but Hephaistion, who looked at him as someone in a sea without horizon looks at the steersman.

“He’ll be sorry for this,” Alexander said. “He counted on Alexandros of Epiros. He put him on the throne, he’s been to a deal of trouble for that alliance. Now he can go whistle for it, till Mother has her rights.”

“And you?” said Hephaistion blankly. “Where are we going?”

“To Illyria. I can do more there. I understand the Illyrians. You remember Kossos? Father’s nothing to him, he rebelled once and he would again. It’s me he knows.”

“You mean…?” said Hephaistion, wishing there were need to ask.

“They’re good fighters. They might do better, if they had a general.”

Done is done, thought Hephaistion; and what did I do to save him? “Very well, if you think that best.”

“The others need not come on beyond Epiros, unless they choose. Today’s work today. We’ll see how the Supreme Commander of all the Greeks likes to start for Asia with Epiros doubtful and Illyria arming for war.”

“I’ll pack for you. I know what to put in.”

“It’s lucky Mother can ride, we’ve no time for litters.”

He found her with her lamp still burning, sitting in her high chair staring before her. She looked at him with reproach, knowing only that he came from the house of Attalos. The room smelled of bruised herbs and burned blood.

“You were right,” he said, “and more than right. Get your jewels together; I have come to take you home.”

His campaign bag, when he found it in his room, held as Hephaistion had promised all he would need. At the top sat the leather scroll-case of the Iliad.

The high road to the west led by way of Aigai. To avoid it, Alexander led them through the passes he had learned when he was training his men in hill warfare. The oaks and chestnuts on the foothills were black and bare; the tracks above the gorges were wet and slippery with fallen leaves.

In this back country, people seldom saw a stranger. They said they were pilgrims, going to Dodona to consult the oracle. No one who had glimpsed him on maneuver knew him now, in an old traveling hat and sheepskin cloak, unshaven, looking older. Coming down to Kastoria Lake with its willows and marshes and beaver dams, they spruced themselves up, knowing they would be recognized; but their story was the same and was not questioned. That the Queen was at odds with the King was ancient history; if she wanted advice from Zeus and Mother Dione, it was her own affair. They had outstripped rumor. Whether pursuit was following; whether they were being left to stray like unwanted dogs; whether Philip was sitting back in his old way to let time work for him, they could not tell.

Olympias had made no such journey since girlhood. But she had spent that in Epiros, where all journeys were overland because of the pirates from Korkyra with whom its coastline swarmed. The first day out, she was white with fatigue and shivering in the evening chill; they camped in a shepherd’s bothy left empty when the flocks went down to the winter grazing-lands, not daring to trust a village so near home; but next day she woke fresh, and soon kept up with them like a man, eyes and cheeks glowing. Till they sighted a village she would ride astride.

Hephaistion rode behind among the others, watching the slight, cloaked figures, their heads together, conferring, planning, confiding. His enemy possessed the field. Ptolemy patronized him, meaning no harm, scarcely aware of it, bearing well the prestige of sacrifice. He had left Thais at Pella, after only a few months’ bliss. Hephaistion, on the other hand, had done the only thing that was in him; like Oxhead, he was seen as a limb of Alexander. No one noticed him. It seemed to him they would journey on forever, just like this.

They struck southeast, towards the great watershed ranges between Macedon and Epiros, struggling through swollen streams; making for the hard short way, between the heights of Grammos and Pindos. Before they had climbed to the ridge where the red earth of Macedon peters out, it had begun to snow. The tracks were treacherous, the horses labored; they debated whether to turn back to Kastoria, rather than be benighted in the open. A rider threaded down to them between the beeches, and bade them honor the house of his absent master, who, though detained by duty, had sent word that they be entertained.

“This is Orestid country,” said Alexander. “Who is your master, then?”

“Don’t be foolish, my dear,” Olympias murmured. She turned to the messenger. “We shall gladly be Pausanias’ guests. We know he is our friend.”

In the massive old fort which stuck out on a spur from the woods behind it, they were given hot baths, good food and wine, warm beds. Pausanias it seemed kept a wife here, though all other court officers brought their wives to Pella. She was a tall strapping mountain girl, born to simplicity but burdened with half-knowledge. Her husband, in some distant place before they met, had once been wronged, in a way never made clear to her; his day was yet to come; these were his friends against his enemies, and must be made welcome. But against whom would Olympias be a friend? Why was the Prince here, when he was a general of the Companions? She lapped them in comfort; but alone at bedtime, in the great room Pausanias visited for two or three weeks a year, she heard an owl hoot and a wolf howl, and round her lamp the shadows thickened. Her father had been killed in the north by Bardelys, her grandfather in the west by Perdikkas. When the guests had gone next day, in charge of a good guide as Pausanias had directed, she went down into the rock-cut cellars, counting over the arrowheads and the stores.

They climbed through a chestnut forest, where even the local bread was of chestnut flour; then up through firs to the head of the pass. The sun gleamed on the fallen snow, and filled the huge horizons; here was the frontier set by earth-shaping gods. Olympias looked back eastward; her lips moved in ancient words she had learned of a witch from Egypt; she whispered them to a stone of the proper shape she had brought along, and cast the stone behind her.

In Epiros the snows were melting; they had to wait three days in a peasant village to cross a flooded river, their horses stabled in a cave. But at last they reached the Molossian lands.

The rolling plateau was famous for hard winters; but their snowwaters made rich pasture. Huge long-horned cattle grazed, the choicest sheep wore leather jackets, to shield their fine wool from thorns; their guard-dogs were as big as they. The towering oaks prized by shipwrights and builders, the sacred wealth of the land, stood bare, weathering themselves for coming centuries. Villages were well built, with crowds of healthy children.

Olympias had dressed her hair, and put on a gold chain. “Achilles’ forebears came from here. His son Neoptolemos lived here with Andromache, when he came from Troy. It is through me that their blood comes down to you. We were the first of all the Hellenes. They all took the name from us.”

Alexander nodded; he had been hearing this all his life. This was a rich land; it had had no High King till lately; and the King, for all he was Olympias’ brother, owed it all to Philip. He rode in thought.

While their courier rode on to announce them, the young men shaved and combed by a rocky pool. It was icy, but Alexander bathed. They all unpacked their best clothes and put them on.

Soon, showing dark and glittering against the half-melted snow, they descried a train of horsemen. King Alexandros was giving them a kinsman’s welcome.

He was a tall auburn man, not much over thirty; his strong beard hid the family mouth, but one could see the family nose; his eyes were deep-set, restless, alert. He kissed his sister in greeting and said proper things. He had long been prepared for this unwelcome moment, and brought as good a grace to it as he could. To her marriage he owed his kingdom; but since then, he could not think of much she had left undone to pull him down. From her raging letter, he could not make out if Philip had yet divorced her; in any case he must take her in, and maintain her injured innocence, to keep the family honor out of the dirt. By herself she was trouble enough. He had hoped against certainty that she would not bring along that firebrand son, reputed to have killed his man at twelve and never sat down a day in quiet since.

With distrust, quickly concealed by civil gestures, the King glanced at the troop of young men with firm-boned Macedonian faces, barbered like southern Greeks. They looked tough, watchful, close-knit; what trouble did they mean to brew here? The kingdom was settled, the tribal lords called him hegemon, followed him to war and paid their taxes; the Illyrians kept their own side the border; he had dislodged, only this year, two pirate holds, the local peasants had thanked him with hymns. Who would follow him to war against the might of Macedon, who would bless him after? No one. Philip, if he marched, would march right up to Dodona and make a new High King. Moreover, Alexandros had always liked the man. As he rode between his sister and his nephew and felt the crackling air, he hoped his wife at home would be fit to receive the guests; he had left her in tears, she was pregnant, too.

Coming down to Dodona, a twisting pass strung them out, the King ahead. Alexander, riding close to Olympias, murmured, “Don’t tell him what I mean to do. About yourself, what you like. About me, know nothing.”

Startled and angry, she said, “What has he done that you doubt him?”

“Nothing. I have to think, I need time.”

Dodona sat in a high valley, under a long snow-swept range. A fierce wind crusted them with fine hail like meal. The walled town clasped the hillside; below, the sacred precinct was guarded only by a low fence, and its gods. In the midst of it, dwarfing altars and shrines like toys, a vast oak lifted its bare black labyrinth above the snow. The wind carried up to them a deep booming resonance, rising and falling with the blasts.

The town gates swung open. As they formed up for their entry, Alexander said, “Uncle, I should like to visit the oracle before I go. Will you ask when the next auspicious day is?”

“By all means, yes.” He spoke with new warmth, adding the proper well-omened formula, “God and good luck.” The auspicious day could not come too soon. He had been a boy when Olympias married; she had always bullied him, he had had no time to outgrow it. Now she must learn he was master of his house. This war-weathered, war-scarred youth, with his mad brooding eyes and his troop of well-groomed outlaws, would not help. Let him go his own way to Hades, and leave sensible men in peace.

The townsmen greeted their King with unforced loyalty. He had led them well against their many enemies, and was less greedy than the warring chiefs had been. A crowd gathered; for the first time since leaving Pella, Oxhead heard the familiar cheers, the shouts of “Alexandros!” His head went up, he fell into his proud parade gait. Alexander sat straight-backed, looking ahead; Hephaistion glancing sidelong saw him pale as if half his blood had been drained away. He kept his countenance, and answered his kinsman calmly; but when they reached the royal house, he was still white about the mouth. The Queen forgot her own sickness, and called to her servants to hurry the mulled wine; only yesterday, a drover had been found frozen on the pass above.

The snow had ceased, but still lay on the ground, frosted over, and brittle to the foot. A pale hard sun glittered on the drifts and the tufted shrubs; a thin icy wind came searching down from the mountains. In the white landscape, like an old cloth, was a cleared space of winter-browned grass and black dank oak-mast. The sanctuary slaves had shoveled the snow away against the oaken palings; it lay in soiled heaps, speckled with leaves and acorn-husks.

A young man in a sheepskin cloak walked up to the doorless gateway of massive, time-blackened beams.

From the lintel, dangling on ropes of hide, hung a deep bronze bowl. He picked up a staff propped by the post, and struck smartly. Long shudders of sound, like rings in water, throbbed on and on; a deep answering hum came from somewhere beyond. The great tree brooded, its crotches and knots and old birds’ nests full of snow. Ancient rude altars, the dedications of centuries, stood in the open round it.

It was the oldest oracle in Greece. Its power came from Egyptian Ammon, the father of all oracles, older than time. Dodona had spoken before Apollo came to Delphi.

The wind, which had been quietly keening in the high branches, swept down in a violent gust. A wild clangor broke out ahead; on a marble column stood a bronze boy holding a scourge, with lashes of bronze chain which, whirled by the wind, struck a bronze cauldron with their weighted ends. It was an acoustic vessel like those sometimes used in the theaters. The din was thunderous. All round the sacred tree, standing on tripods, were hollow bronzes; the sound dwindled along them, like thunder rumbling away after a great clap. Before it had died, another gust lifted the scourge. From a little stone house beyond the tree, peering grey heads poked out.

Alexander’s mouth smiled as it did when he charged in battle. He strode on towards the thrumming precinct. A third gust blew; a third time the cycle of noise revolved and faded. The former murmurous quiet returned.

From the thatched stone hut, muttering together, mothy fur cloaks clutched round them, came three old women. They were the Doves, the servants of the oracle. As they shuffled forward over the wet black oak-mast, it could be seen that their ankles were wrapped in woolen rags, but their feet were bare, cracked, and ingrained with grime. They drew power from the touch of earth and must never lose it; it was the law of the sanctuary.

One was a strong old woman, big-boned, who looked to have done a man’s farm-work most of her life. The second was short, round and severe, with a pointed nose and outthrust lower lip. The third was a tiny bent crone, dry and brown as an old acorn-husk. She was reputed to have been born in the year Perikles died.

Shrugged in their furs, they looked about, their eyes returning, it seemed, in surprise to this single pilgrim. The tall one whispered to the round one. The old one trotted forward on shriveled bird-feet, and fingered him like a curious child. Her eyes had a blue-white film, she was almost blind.

The round one said, in a sharp voice edged with wariness, “How do you wish to question Zeus and Dione? Do you want the name of the god you should offer to, to win your wish?”

Alexander said, “I shall tell my question to the god alone. Give me the things to write with.”

The tall one bent towards him with awkward kindness; she moved like a farm animal, and smelled like one. “Yes, yes, only the god will see. But the lots are in two jars; one for the gods to be propitiated; the other for Yes or No. Which shall we set out?”

“Yes or No.”

The old one still clutched a fold of his cloak in her tiny fist, with the assurance of a child whose beauty makes it welcome. Suddenly she piped up, from down near his waist, “Take care with your wish. Take care.”

He bent down over her, and asked softly, “Why, Mother?”

“Why? Because the god will grant it.”

He put his hand on her head, a little shell of bone in a woolen clout, and, caressing it, looked over her at the black depths of the oak. The other two looked at one another. Neither spoke.

He said, “I am ready.”

They went off into a low-roofed sanctuary house beside their dwelling, the old one trotting behind squeaking muddled orders, like any great-grandmother who has got into a kitchen to annoy the women at work. They could all be heard bustling and grumbling, as at some inn caught unready by a guest who cannot be turned away.

The huge ancient branches stretched above him, splintering the pale sun. The central trunk was folded and ribbed with age; into its fissures small votives had been thrust by worshippers, in times so remote that the bark had almost engulfed them. A part was crumbled with rot, and wormholed. Summer would reveal what bare winter hid, that some of the main limbs were dead. Its first root had thrust from the acorn while Homer was still alive; it was near its time.

From around its massive center, where the boughs forked, came a sleepy cooing and moaning; in hollows, and little cotes nailed here and there, the sacred doves were huddled, couple by couple, fluffed up and pressed together against the cold. As he came near, one gave from its hidden darkness a loud “Roo-co-coo!”

The women came out, the tall one with a low wooden table, the round one with an ancient jar, painted black on red. They set jar on table under the tree. The old one put into his hands a strip of soft lead, and a bronze stylos.

He laid the strip on an old stone altar, and wrote firmly; the deep letters shone silvery in the dull lead, GOD AND GOOD LUCK. ALEXANDER ASKS ZEUS OF THE SANCTUARY, AND DIONE, WILL THE THING I HAVE IN MY MIND COME TO PASS? Having folded the strip in three, so that the words were hidden, he dropped it in the jar. He had learned what to do, before he came.

The tall woman stood by the table, and lifted her arms. There was a priestess painted on the jar, standing just so. The invocation was in the jargon of some foreign tongue, corrupted long since by time and ignorance; the vowels were drawn out, to mimic a dove. Presently one replied; there was a low murmuring, all round the heart of the tree.

Alexander stood watching, his mind upon his wish. The tall priestess put her hand in the jar, and was beginning to grope about, when the old one came up and twitched her cloak, scolding as shrilly as a monkey. “It was promised me,” she chattered. “Promised me.” The other stood back, her eyes startled, stealing a glance at him; the round one clucked, but did nothing. The old woman pushed back her robe from her stick-thin arm, like a housewife pot-scouring, and thrust it inside. There was a rattling of the small oak tablets on which the lots were carved.

Through these delays, Alexander stood waiting, his eyes fixed on the jar. The black-painted priestess stood in her stiff archaic posture, showing her lifted palms. At her feet, twined round the leg of her painted table, was a painted snake.

It was drawn with skill and vigor, its head thrust upward. The table-leg was short, like a low bed’s, it would climb up easily. It was a house-snake, which knew a secret. While the old woman muttered and scratched about, he frowned at it, trying to trace back, into the darkness from which it had crept forth, a sense of some ancient anger, some enormous wound, some mortal insult unavenged. Images formed. He faced again, a giant enemy. The steam of his breath dispersed in the cold air; through a long pause no new breath followed, then a sound escaped him, bitten off into silence. His fingers and teeth had clenched themselves. His memories opened and bled.

The old woman straightened up. In her grimy claw she held the folded lead, and two wooden lots. The others hurried to her; the law was to bring out one lot, that lying nearest to the lead; they hissed at her, like nurses at a child who does an unseemly thing in ignorance. She lifted her head—her backbone was past straightening—and in a younger, commanding voice said, “Stand back! I know what I have to do.” For a moment it could be seen that she had once been beautiful.

Leaving the lead on the table, she came towards him, both hands held out, a lot in each. Opening the right, she said, “For the wish in your mind.” She opened the left, saying, “And for the wish in your heart.”

Each of the little black wood-blocks was carved with “Yes.”