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

8

KING PHILIP’S NEWEST WIFE had had her firstborn. It was a girl.

The downcast midwife brought it from the lying-in room. He took in his hands, with ritual signs of approval, the little red crumpled thing, brought naked to prove it free from blemish. Attalos, who had been haunting the house since the birth-waters broke, craned over, his face red and crumpled too; he must have hoped against hope till he saw the sex for himself. His pale blue eyes followed it with hatred as it was carried back; he would as soon have thrown it in the lake like an unwanted bitch pup, Philip thought. Often it made him feel foolish that he seemed to sire five girls for every boy; but this time he had heard the news with deep relief.

Eurydike was all he liked in a girl, sensual without looseness, eager to please without fuss, never making scenes. Gladly, any day, he would have put her in Olympias’ place. He had half-thought, even, of having the witch put out of the way for good; it would solve all problems, she had blood-guilt enough on her hands to make it a rough justice, and there were people to be hired as skilled in such matters as she. But however well it was managed, the boy would know. Nothing would hide it from him; he would pluck the truth from air. And then?

And now? Well, this girl-child gave breathing-space. Attalos had told him a dozen times that their family ran to boys. Now let him keep quiet awhile. Philip put off decision, as he had been doing these ten months.

His plans for the war in Asia went forward smoothly. Weapons were made and stored, levies came in, horses were broke for cavalry; gold and silver flowed out like water, to contractors, to paymasters, to agents and client rulers. The troops drilled and maneuvered, ready and disciplined, swapping legends about the fabled wealth of Asia and the vast ransoms of captive satraps. But a gloss had gone, a resonance, a crackle and spark, a smile on the face of danger.

There were also rubs more palpable. A savage brawl, which would beget half a dozen blood-feuds, had broken out in a Pella wineshop, between cavalry of Attalos’ tribal levy, and those of a corps lately renamed Nikanor’s Horse, though no one who valued his life would call it this in hearing of its men. Philip sent for the chief offenders; they glared at each other and were evasive, till the youngest, heir of an ancient house that had helped a dozen kings in or out and well remembered it, lifted his shaven chin and said defiantly, “Well, sir, they were slandering your son.”

Philip told them to look after their own households, and leave his to him. Attalos’ men, who had hoped to hear him say, “I have no son yet,” went grieved away. Soon after, he sent out yet another spy, to learn what was going on in Illyria.

To Epiros he sent none; he knew where he was, there. He had had a letter he perfectly understood; the protest of a man of honor, carried just as far as honor required. One could almost see the drawn line. He replied with equal nicety. The Queen had left him from self-will and sullen temper, having suffered no legal injuries. (He was on good ground here; not every Epirote royal house had been monogamous.) She had turned his son against him; the young man’s present exile was her fault alone. The letter contained no mortal insults. It would be understood in its turn. But what was happening in Illyria?

Some few of the young men had ridden home from Epiros, bringing a letter.

Alexander to Philip King of the Macedonians, greeting. I send back to you and to their fathers these men, my friends. They are guilty of no wrong. In kindness they escorted the Queen and me into Epiros; this done, we required no more of them. When the Queen, my mother, is restored to her rights and dignity, we will return. Till then I shall do as I think good, asking no man’s leave.

Greet for me the soldiers I led at Cheironeia, and those who served under me in Thrace. And do not forget the man who was saved by my shield, when the Argives mutinied before Perinthos. You know his name. Farewell.

In his private reading-cell, Philip crumpled the letter and threw it down; then, bending stiffly with his lame leg, picked it up, flattened out the creases, and locked it away.

One after another, the spies from the west brought in uneasy news, never facts one could grip on. The names of the small close band were always there. Ptolemy: ah, if I could have bride-bedded his mother it would have been a different tale. Niarchos: a good sea-officer, due for promotion if he’d had sense. Harpalos: I never trusted that limping fox, but the boy would have him. Erigyios…Laomedon…Hephaistion, well, as soon part a man from his shadow. Philip brooded a moment, in the sad resenting envy of the man who believes himself always to have sought the perfect love, not owning that he has grudged the price.

The names never varied; the news always did. They were at Kossos’ fort; at the castle of Kleitos, who was as near a High King as Illyria would stomach; they were on the Lynkestid border. They were on the coast, said to be asking after ships for Korkyra, for Italy, for Sicily, even for Egypt. They had been sighted in the ranges beside Epiros. They were rumored to be buying arms, to be hiring spearmen, to be training an army in some forest lair. Whenever Philip needed to dispose his troops for the war in Asia, one of these alarms would come in, and he must spare a regiment for the border. Without doubt, the boy was in touch with friends in Macedon. On paper, the King’s war-plans remained unaltered; but his generals could feel him hanging fire, awaiting the next report.

In a castle perched on a craggy headland by a wooded Illyrian bay, Alexander stared up at the night-shrouded, smoke-black rafters. He had spent the day hunting, like the day before. His bed was of rushes, full of fleas, in the guest-corner of the hall; here, among dogs crunching the bones from old suppers, the bachelors of the household slept. His head ached. A draft of clean air blew from the doorway; the moonlit sky looked bright there. He got up and threw his blanket round him. It was soiled and torn; his good one had been stolen some months before, about the time of his birthday. In a nomad camp near the border, he had turned nineteen.

He steered past sleeping bodies, stumbling on one, which grunted curses. Outside on the bare crag ran a narrow rampart. The cliff plunged straight to the sea; far down, moon-gleaming foam crawled round the boulders. He knew the footsteps behind and did not turn. Hephaistion leaned on the wall beside him.

“What is it? Couldn’t you sleep?”

“I woke,” Alexander said.

“Have you got the gripes again?”

“It stinks in there.”

“Why do you drink that dog-piss? I’d sooner go to bed sober.”

Alexander gave him a look like a silent growl. His arm propped on the wall was scored by the claws of a dying leopard. All day he had been in movement; now he was still, looking down the giddy drop to the sea.

At last he said, “We can’t keep it up much longer.”

Hephaistion frowned at the night. He was glad, however, to be told; it was being asked he had most dreaded. “No,” he said. “I doubt we can.”

Alexander picked some stone chips from the wall-top, and pitched them down at the shimmering sea. No ripple showed, no sound returned from the depth, even when they struck rock. Hephaistion did nothing. He offered his presence, as his omens had directed him.

“Even a fox,” said Alexander presently, “runs through all its tricks in time. And the second time round, the nets are waiting.”

“You’ve often had luck from the gods.”

“Time’s running out,” Alexander said. “It’s a feel one gets in war. You remember Polydoros with his dozen men, trying to hold that fort in the Chersonesos. All those helmets propped on the walls; moved, too, now and again. I was fooled into sending for reinforcements, two days, remember? Then a catapult knocked off a helmet and showed the stake. It was bound to happen; his time ran out. Mine will run out when some Illyrian chief crosses the border on his own account, for cattle, or a feud, and Philip hears I wasn’t leading. I’ll never fool him after that, he knows me too well.”

“You could still lead a raid, it’s not too late to change your mind. If you pushed a little way in, and withdrew from strength…With all he has to do, it’s not likely he’d come in person.”

“How can I know that? No, I had a warning…a kind of warning…at Dodona.”

Hephaistion stored away this news in silence. It was the most Alexander had ever told him of it.

“Alexander. Your father wants you back. I know it. You should believe me. I’ve known it all along,”

“Good. Then he can do right by my mother.”

“No, not only for the war in Asia. You don’t want to hear this, but he loves you. You may not like the way it takes him. The gods have many faces, Euripides says.”

Alexander laid his hands on the broken stone, and turned on his friend his entire attention. “Euripides wrote for actors. Masks, you can say; yes, masks; some pretty, some not. But one face. Only one.”

A meteor flared down with a yellow-green glowing head and fading red trail, and plunged into the distant sea. Hephaistion put happiness briskly by, like a cup drunk down in haste. “It’s an omen for you. You must decide tonight. You know; you came out to do it.”

“I woke up, and the place stank like a midden.” A tuft of pale wallflower had rooted itself among the stones; he fingered it unseeingly. Like a great weight thrown suddenly on his shoulder, Hephaistion felt an awareness of being leaned upon, of being needed for more than love. It brought no joy; it was like glimpsing the first mark of a deadly sickness. Rust; he can bear anything but rust. “Tonight,” he said quietly. “Nothing to wait for, you know it all.”

Without movement, Alexander seemed to gather himself together, to grow more compact. “Yes. First, I’m spending time, not using it. This I’ve never felt before. Second, there are two or three men, and I think King Kleitos is one of them, who once they’re sure they can’t use me against my father, will want to send him my head. And, third…he’s mortal, no man knows his hour. If he died, and I away over the border…”

“That, too,” said Hephaistion calmly. “Well, then, as you say. You want to go home, he wants you back. You’ve exchanged mortal insults, no one will speak first. So you must find a proper go-between. Who is it going to be?”

Firmly now, as if it had been some time settled, Alexander said, “Demaratos of Corinth. He likes us both, he’ll enjoy the importance, he’ll do it well. Whom shall we send him?”

It was Harpalos, with his sad graceful limp, his dark vivid face, his quick smile and flattering grave attentiveness, who rode south. They convoyed him to the Epirote border, for fear of robbers; but he carried no letter with him. It was the essence of his mission, that no record of it should exist. He took only his mule, a change of clothing, and his golden charm.

Philip learned with pleasure that his old guest-friend Demaratos had business in the north, and would like to visit him. He was at pains to choose the supper, and hire a good sword-dancer to enliven it. Food and dancer were cleared away; they settled down to their wine. Corinth being the listening-post for all southern Greece, Philip asked at once for news. He had heard of some rub between Thebes and Sparta; what did Demaratos think?

Demaratos, a privileged guest and proud of it, fed with the expected cue, shook his distinguished iron-grey head. “Ah, King! That I should hear you ask if the Greeks are living in harmony! With your own house in the midst of war.”

Philip’s dark eye, not yet much engorged with wine, slewed sharply round. His trained diplomatist’s ear had picked up a certain note, a shade of preparation. He gave no sign of this. “That boy. He flares up at a spark, like pitch. A silly speech from a man in liquor, only worth a laugh next day if he’d kept the sense he was born with. But he runs off in a blaze to his mother; and you know her.”

Demaratos made sounds of fellow feeling. A thousand pities, he said, that with the mother of such a jealous temper, the young man should feel his future threatened by her disgrace. He quoted faultlessly (having had them ready) some apt elegiacs of Simonides.

“Cutting off his own nose,” said Philip, “to spite his face. A boy with his gifts, the waste of it. We’d get along well enough, but for that witch. He should know better. Well, by now he’ll have paid for it. He’ll have had a bellyful of Illyrian hill-forts. But if he thinks I’ll…”

It was not till next morning that the talking began in earnest.

Demaratos was in Epiros, the King’s most honored guest. He would be escorting back to Pella the King’s sister and her pardoned son. Being rich already, he must chiefly be paid in kudos. King Alexandros toasted him in an heirloom gold cup, and begged him to accept it as a small memento. Olympias put out for him all her social graces; if her enemies called her vixenish, let him judge for himself. Alexander, wearing the one good chiton he had left, was most attentive; till one evening when a tired stiff old man came plodding down to Dodona on a weary mule. It was Phoinix. He had met hard weather on the pass, and almost fell from the saddle into his foster son’s lifted arms.

Alexander demanded a hot bath, sweet oils, and a skilled bath-man; no one in Dodona, it turned out, had ever heard of such a calling. He went in to rub Phoinix down himself.

The royal bath was an antique affair of painted clay, much mended and prone to leak; there was no couch, he had had to send for one. He worked on the knotted-up thigh muscles, following their path as Aristotle had shown him, kneading and tapping as, at home, he had taught his slave to do. In Illyria, he had been doctor to all the others. Even when, knowledge or memory failing, he had relied upon omens seen in dreams, they had preferred him to the local witch-wife.

“Ugh, aah, that’s better, that’s where it always catches me. Have you studied with Cheiron, like Achilles?”

“No teacher like necessity. Now turn over.”

“Those scars on your arm are new.”

“My leopard. I had to give the skin to my host.”

“Did the blankets reach you safely?”

“Did you send blankets too? They’re all thieves in Illyria. I got the books; they can’t read, and by luck they weren’t short of tinder. The books were the best. They stole Oxhead, once.”

“What did you do?”

“Went after the man and killed him. He’d not gone far, Oxhead wouldn’t let him mount.” He kneaded Phoinix’ hamstring.

“You had us all on edge half a year and more. Here and there like a fox.” Alexander laughed shortly, not pausing in his work. “But time went by, and you’re not one for putting off. Your father set it down to your natural feeling. As I told him he should.” Phoinix screwed round his head to look.

Alexander straightened up, wiping off his oily hands on a towel. “Yes,” he said slowly. “A natural feeling, yes, you may call it that.”

Phoinix withdrew his steps from the deep water, as he had learned when to do. “And did you see battle, Achilles, in the west?”

“Once, a tribal war. One has to support one’s host. We won.” He pushed back his steam-moistened hair. His nose and mouth looked pinched. He threw the towel hard into a corner.

Phoinix thought, He has learned to boast of what he suffered under Leonidas; it taught him endurance; I have heard him at Pella and smiled. But these months he will never boast of; and the man who smiles should take care.

As if he had spoken aloud, Alexander said, in sudden anger, “Why did my father demand I should ask his pardon?”

“Well, come, he’s a bargaining man. Every bargain starts with asking too much. In the end he didn’t press it.” Phoinix swung down his stocky wrinkled legs from the couch. By it was a little deep window, with a marten’s nest in an upper corner; on the sill, speckled with droppings, lay an ivory comb with chipped teeth, in which clung some reddish hairs from King Alexandros’ beard. Combing himself, his face shielded, Phoinix looked his nurseling over.

He has conceived that he could fail. Yes, even he. He has seen there are rivers over which, once the spate has risen, there is no way back. Some dark night in that land of robbers, he has seen himself, who knows what? A strategos of mercenaries, hired out to some satrap at war with the Great King, or to some third-rate Sicilian tyrant; maybe a wandering comet, such as Alkibiades once was, a nine days’ wonder every few years, then burnt out in darkness. For a moment he has seen it. He likes to show his war-scars; this scar he will cover like a slave-brand, he hides it even from me.

“Come! The bargain’s struck; wipe old scores away and start with the tablet clean. Remember what Agamemnon said to Achilles, when they were reconciled:

“But what could I do? All things come to pass from God. Blindness of heart is old-born of Zeus, Ate the deadly, Who fools us all.

Your father has felt it. I have seen it in his face.”

Alexander said, “I can lend you a cleaner comb than that.” He put it back under the bird’s nest, and brushed his fingers. “Well, we know what Achilles said:

“This has been all to the good for Hector, and for the Trojans; The Greeks, though, I think will long remember our falling out. Even so, we will put it all by, finished and done with, though it hurts us, beating down the inward passion because we must.”

He picked up the fresh chiton creased from Phoinix’ saddlebag, dropped it neatly over his head like a well-trained page, and handed him his sword belt.

“Ah, child, you’ve always been a good boy to me.” Phoinix fiddled with the buckle, head down. He had meant these words to open an exhortation; but, the rest failing him, he left them to stand as they were.

Nikanor’s Horse was again Alexander’s squadron.

The haggling had lasted some time; many couriers between Demaratos and the King had crossed the rough tracks into Epiros. It was the center of the bargain, achieved with much maneuvering, that neither party should claim an outright victory. When father met son at length, both felt that enough had been said already; they excused themselves from going over it again in words. Each eyed the other with curiosity, resentment, suspicion, regret, and a half-hope which each hid too well.

Under Demaratos’ complacent eyes, they exchanged a symbolic kiss of reconcilement. Alexander led up his mother; Philip kissed her too, noting to himself the lines of pride and rancor etched deeper in, and recalling with wonder, for a moment, his youthful passion. Then they all went off to take up their lives as they found them now.

Most men about the court had been able, so far, to avoid taking sides. Only small groups of partisans, Attalids, agents of Olympias, friends and comrades of Alexander, had bickered and intrigued. But the exiles’ living presence was like verjuice stirred into milk. Separation began.

The young knew that he was young and had excelled his elders; that when old envious men had tried to put him down, he had stood up to it and won. He was all their own smoldering rebellions, expressed in flame; their hero-victim. Because it was his, they made even Olympias’ cause their own. To see one’s mother shamed, and one’s father, an old man past forty, make a public show of himself with a girl of fifteen; why should one swallow that? When they saw him, therefore, they greeted him with defiant fervor. He never failed to acknowledge it.

His face was thinner. It had been weathered for years, but the closed drawn look was new. Their salutations changed it; his warm confiding smile made them feel rewarded.

Hephaistion, Ptolemy, Harpalos and the rest, the companions of his exile, were treated with awed respect, their stories becoming legend. They did not fail their friend. All the tales were of success; the leopard, the lightning marches to the border, a glorious victory in the tribal war. Their pride was invested in him, besides their love; they would have changed, if they could, his very memories. His thanks, though unspoken, were enough; they felt themselves beloved. Soon they seemed acknowledged leaders, to the young men and to themselves as well; they began to show it, sometimes with discretion, sometimes not.

His party gathered; made up of men who liked him, or had fought beside him; who, perhaps, wounded and half-frozen in Thrace had been given his own place by the fire and a drink from his own wine cup; or whose courage had been damping out when he came along and kindled it; or who had told him tales in the guardroom when he was a child: supported by men who looked back to the lawless years, and wanted a strong heir; by men, also, who hated his enemies. The Attalids were daily growing in power and pride. Parmenion, some time widowed, had lately married Attalos’ daughter, and the King had stood as groomsman.

The first time Alexander met Pausanias out of others’ hearing, he thanked him for his house’s hospitality. The bearded lips moved stiffly, as if they would have returned his smile had they not lost the knack. “It was nothing, Alexander. We were honored…I would do more than that.” For a moment their eyes met, Pausanias’ exploring, Alexander’s questioning; but he had never been an easy man to understand.

Eurydike had a fine new house on the slope, a short walk from the Palace. A pine wood had been felled to clear the site, and a statue of Dionysos, which had stood in the grove, returned to Queen Olympias, who had set it up. It had not been a shrine of ancient sanctity, only a fancy of hers, to which rumor attached some scandal.

Hephaistion, who had arrived too late to know much about such things, knew like anyone else that a son’s legitimacy hangs on his mother’s honor. Of course he must defend her, he had no choice; but why with such passion, such bitterness to his father, such blindness to his own good? True friends share everything, except the past before they met.

That she had her faction, everyone knew too well; her rooms were like the meeting-house of some exiled opposition in the southern states. Hephaistion felt his teeth on edge, whenever Alexander went there. Did even he know all she was up to? Whatever it was, if trouble broke the King would believe he knew.

Hephaistion too was young; he had shared the shock when time-servers, once assiduous, now kept their distance. Alexander’s very victories were their warning. In Macedon with its history, he was marked dangerous as brightly as the panther. He had always despised servility; but rooted in him was the need to be beloved. Now he was learning which men had known and used it. Watching the lesson, with grim quiet irony, was the King.

“You should try to mend matters,” Hephaistion would say. “He must want to, or why recall you? It’s always for the younger to come forward first, no disgrace in that.”

“I don’t like the way he looks at me.”

“He may think the same, you’re both on edge. But how can you doubt you’re his heir? Who else is there? Arridaios?”

The idiot had been in Pella lately, for one of the great festivals. His mother’s kin always brought him, spruced and combed, to pay his respects to his father, who had acknowledged him with pride when, a fine healthy-looking infant, he had been brought out of the birth-room. Now at seventeen he was taller than Alexander, and favored Philip’s looks except when his mouth fell open. He was no longer taken to the theater, where he would laugh loudly at the tragic climaxes, nor to solemn rites, in case one of his fits should take him, when he would flap on the ground like a landed fish, wetting and dirtying himself. It was the fits had done some violence to his mind, the doctors said; he had been a likely child before them. He enjoyed the sideshows of the feast, led about by an old family slave like a little boy with his pedagogue. This year his black beard had grown; but he would not be parted from his doll.

“What a rival!” Hephaistion said. “Why can’t you be easy?”

After giving this good advice, he would go out, run into some man of the Attalid faction, or even one of Olympias’ many enemies; would resent what they said, and hit them in the teeth. All Alexander’s friends were doing their share of this; Hephaistion, being quick-tempered, did rather more. True friends share everything, especially their quarrels. Later he might reproach himself; but all of them knew they would get no reproach from Alexander for these proofs of love. It was not that he set them on to make trouble; only that there grew up around him that kind of defiant loyalty from which sparks are struck, as if from flint.

He hunted untiringly, best pleased when the quarry was dangerous, or gave him a long hard chase. He read little, but to the purpose; his restlessness needed action, he was only content when readying his men for the coming war. He seemed everywhere, demanding from the engineers catapults which could be taken apart and carted, not left behind to rot after every siege; in the horse-lines, looking at feet, inspecting the stable floors and discussing fodder. He talked much with traveling men, traders and envoys, actors, paid-up mercenaries, who knew Greek Asia and even the lands beyond. All they told him, he checked stage by stage against Xenophon’s Inland March.

Hephaistion, whom he shared his studies with, saw all his hopes staked on the war. He was scarred by the months of impotence as if by a fetter; he needed the medicine of command, victory to confound his enemies and heal his pride. He still took for granted he would be sent ahead, alone or with Parmenion, to make good an Asian bridgehead for the main force. Hephaistion, concealing his own uneasiness, asked if he had talked of it with the King. “No. Let him come to me.”

The King, though busy himself, was watchful. He saw tactical changes which should have had his sanction and waited to be asked, in vain. He saw the young man’s altered face, and his friends as thick as thieves. It had never been easy to read his mind, but once he would have come with all this as soldier to soldier; he could not have kept it in. As a man, Philip was hurt and angry; as a ruler, he was distrustful.

He had just had good news; he had brought off an alliance of priceless strategic value. In his heart, he was longing to boast of it to his son. But, if the boy was too stiff-necked to consult his father and King, he could not expect to be consulted. Let him learn for himself, or from his mother’s spies.

It was from Olympias, therefore, that he heard of Arridaios’ coming marriage.

The satrapy of Karia, on the southern curve of the Asian coast, was ruled under the Great King by its native dynasts. The great Mausolos, before he was laid in his grandiose Mausoleum, had built himself a little empire, seawards to Rhodes, Kos and Chios, south down the coast to Lykia. The succession, though in dispute, had passed firmly to Pixodoros, his younger brother. He paid tribute and did formal homage; the Great King took care to ask no more. After Syracuse sank back to anarchy, and before the rise of Macedon, Karia had been the greatest power on the Middle Sea. Philip had long been watching her, sending secret envoys, playing her on a silken line. Now he was hauling in. He had betrothed Arridaios to Pixodoros’ daughter.

Olympias learned of it one morning at the theater, during a tragedy put on to honor the Karian envoys.

Alexander, when she sent for him, was not found at once. He had gone backstage with Hephaistion, to congratulate Thettalos. The play had been The Madness of Herakles. Hephaistion wondered, after, how he could have missed the omen.

Thettalos was now about forty, at the height of his powers and fame. So versatile that he could give a performance in any mask from Antigone to Nestor, he still triumphed in hero roles. This one had been demanding. His mask only just off, he was careless of his face, which for a moment revealed concern at what he saw; after absence, changes show. He had heard things, too, and took trouble to make it clear that his own loyalty was unshaken.

From the theater, Hephaistion went off to spend an hour with his parents, who had come into town for the feast. When he returned, it was to the center of a hurricane.

Alexander’s room was milling with his friends, all talking at once, indignant, guessing, plotting. Seeing Hephaistion at the door, Alexander broke through the crowd to him, grasped him by the arm and shouted the news in his ear. Dazed by his rage, Hephaistion made sounds of sympathy; certainly he should have heard of it from the King, certainly he had been slighted. The truth came piecemeal through the din: he believed this to prove Arridaios had been adopted as heir of Macedon. Olympias was sure of it.

I must get him alone, Hephaistion thought; but he dared not try. Alexander was flushed as if with fever; the young men, recalling his victories, cursing the King’s ingratitude, offering wild advice, had felt his need of them and did not mean to leave him. He wanted from Hephaistion what he wanted from all the rest, only more urgently. It would be madness to cross him now.

Illyria, Hephaistion thought. It’s like a sickness he can’t shake off. Later I’ll talk to him. “Who’d be a woman?” he said. “Does she know she’s promised to a wittol?”

“What do you think?” said Alexander, his nostrils flaring. “Or her father either.” His brows drew together in thought; he began to pace about. Hephaistion recognized the prelude to coming action.

Ignoring the danger signs, falling into step beside him, Hephaistion said, “Alexander, this can’t be true unless the King’s gone mad. Why, he was elected King himself because the Macedonians wouldn’t accept a child. How could he suppose they’d accept a halfwit?”

“I know what he’s doing.” A dry heat seemed to radiate from him. “Arridaios is a stopgap till Eurydike has a boy. This is Attalos’ work.”

“But…but think! This boy’s not even born. Then he has to grow up. Say eighteen years. And the King’s a soldier.”

“She’s pregnant again, didn’t you know?” If one touched his hair, Hephaistion thought, one would hear it crackle.

“He can’t think he’s immortal. He’s going to war. What does he think would happen if he died in the next five years? Who is there but you?”

“Unless he has me killed.” He threw it off like a commonplace.

“What? How can you believe it? His own son.”

“They say I’m not. Well, then, I must look out for myself.”

“Whoever says so? Do you mean that sottish wedding speech? I think all the man really meant by a true-born heir, was Macedonian blood both sides.”

“Oh, no. That’s not what they’re saying now.”

“Listen. Come out awhile. We’ll go hunting. Then we’ll talk later.”

Looking quickly round to be sure no one else could hear, Alexander said in a desperate undertone, “Be quiet, be quiet.” Hephaistion went back to the others; Alexander paced, like a caged wolf, to and fro.

Suddenly he faced round to them, and said, “I shall deal with this.”

Hephaistion, who had never before heard this voice of decision with less than perfect trust, felt an instant presage of disaster.

“We’ll see who wins,” Alexander said, “at this marriage-broking.” Prompt as a chorus, the others begged to hear. “I shall send to Karia, and tell Pixodoros what kind of bargain he’s made.”

There was applause. Hephaistion thought, Everyone’s gone insane. Over the noise, Niarchos the naval officer called out, “You can’t do that, Alexander. You might lose us the war in Asia.”

“You might let me finish,” Alexander shouted back. “I shall offer for the girl myself.”

Almost in silence, they took it in. Then Ptolemy said, “Do it, Alexander. I’ll stand by you, here’s my hand on it.”

Hephaistion stared, appalled. He had counted upon Ptolemy, the big brother, the steady one. He had lately fetched his Thais back from Corinth, where she had spent his time of exile. But now it was clear he was as angry as Alexander. He was, after all, though unacknowledged, the eldest of Philip’s sons. Personable and capable, ambitious and turned thirty, he thought he could have managed in Karia very well. It was one thing to uphold a loved and legitimate brother; something else to stand aside for slobbering Arridaios. “What do you say, everyone? Do we all stand by Alexander?”

There were sounds of confused assent. Alexander’s certainties were always catching. They exclaimed that this marriage would secure his place, that it would force the King to take care with him. Even the fainthearted, seeing him count heads, joined in; this was no Illyrian exile, there was nothing they need do, all the risks would be taken, they thought, by him.

This is treason, Hephaistion thought. Arrogant with desperation, he took Alexander by the shoulders, with the firmness of one who claims his rights. At once Alexander turned aside with him.

“Sleep on it. Think tomorrow.”

“Never put off.”

“Listen. What if your father and Pixodoros are swapping stinking fish? What if she’s a slut or a hag? Just fit for Arridaios? You’d be a laughingstock.”

With an effort he could see, Alexander turned on him dilated glittering eyes, and said with controlled forbearance, “What is it? This will make no difference to us, you know that.”

“Of course I know that!” said Hephaistion angrily. “You’re not talking to Arridaios, what sort of fool do you…” No, no; one of us must keep his head. Suddenly, for no reason that was clear to him, Hephaistion thought, He’s proving he can take a woman from his father. She’s for Arridaios, that keeps it decent, he need not know. And who dares tell him? No one, not even I.

Alexander, his head tilted defiantly, had started to assess the strength of the Karian navy. Through all this, Hephaistion sensed appeal. He wanted not advice, but the proofs of love. Anything he needed, he must have.

“You know I’m with you, whatever comes of it. Whatever you do.”

Alexander pressed his arm, gave him a quick secret smile, and turned back to the rest.

“Whom will you send to Karia?” asked Harpalos. “I’ll go, if you want.”

Alexander strode over and clasped his hands. “No; no Macedonian; my father could make you pay. It was noble to offer, Harpalos, I’ll never forget it.” He kissed Harpalos’ cheek; he was getting very emotional. Two or three others crowded up, offering to go. This is like the theater, Hephaistion thought.

It was then that he guessed whom Alexander would send.

Thettalos came after dark, and was let in through Olympias’ private postern. She had wished to be present at the conference, but Alexander saw him alone. He went away with a gold ring on, and his head held high. Olympias, too, thanked him with the charm she could still sometimes command, and gave him a talent of silver. He replied with grace; he had had practice in making speeches when his mind was on other things.

Some seven days later, Alexander met Arridaios in the Palace courtyard. He came oftener now; the doctors advised he should mix more in company, to stir his wits. He trotted eagerly forward to meet Alexander, the old servant, now half a head shorter, bustling anxiously behind. Alexander, who bore him no more malice than an enemy’s horse or dog, returned his greeting. “How’s Phryne?” he asked. The doll was missing. “Have they taken her away?”

Arridaios grinned. There was a wet trickle in his soft black beard. “Old Phryne’s in the box. I don’t need her. They’re bringing me a real girl, from Karia.” He added, like a dull child echoing adults, an obscene boast.

Alexander looked at him with pity. “Take care of Phryne. She’s a good friend. You might want her after all.”

“Not when I’ve a wife.” He nodded down at Alexander, and added with friendly confidence, “When you’re dead I shall be King.” His keeper tugged quickly at his belt; he went on towards the stoa, singing to himself a tuneless song.

Philotas was growing concerned. He had seen looks exchanged whose meaning he would have given much to know. Again he had been left outside a secret. Half a month he had scented it, but they were all holding their tongues. Who they were, at least, he knew; they were too pleased with themselves, or too scared, to hide it.

It was an uneasy time for Philotas. Though he had lived for years on the fringe of Alexander’s set, he had always failed to reach the inmost ring. He had a good war record; impressive looks, but for rather prominent blue eyes; he was good company at supper, and in the van of fashion; his reports to the King had always been discreet, and he was certain were undetected. Why then was he not trusted? His instincts blamed Hephaistion for it.

Parmenion was badgering him for news. If he missed this, whatever it was, it would set him back, both with his father and the King. It might even have been better to have shared the exile, he could have been useful there, and now he would have been told everything. But it had been too sudden, the choice at the wedding brawl; though brave in the field, he was comfort-loving off it, and in doubtful issues he liked hot chestnuts pulled out of the fire by others.

He wanted no one reporting to Alexander, or to Hephaistion which was the same, that he had been asking dangerous questions. It therefore took him some time, picking up trifles here and there, and seeking the missing pieces where he would least be noticed, before he learned the truth.

It had been agreed that Thettalos was too conspicuous to report, himself, upon his mission. He sent a confidential messenger from Corinth, announcing his success.

Pixodoros had known something, though not enough, about Arridaios; Philip was too old a hand to think a lasting treaty could be won by downright fraud. When, therefore, the satrap learned that at no more cost he could exchange the ass for the racehorse, he was enchanted. In the audience room at Halikarnassos, with its columns of serpentine, Persian wall-tiles and Greek chairs, the daughter was modestly paraded; no one had been at the trouble of telling Arridaios that she was eight years old. Thettalos expressed a proxy’s rapture. The marriage, of course, would have to be by proxy too; but once performed, the bridegroom’s kin would have to accept it. It only remained to choose someone of proper standing, and send him off.

For the better part of a day, in Alexander’s presence and out of it, nothing else was talked of among his friends. When others were about, they endeavored to speak darkly. But that day gave Philotas the last link in his chain.

There was nothing King Philip did better than to act when he was ready, and keep quiet meantime. He wanted no clamor and no rallying-cries; enough harm had been done already. Seldom in his life had he been so angry; this time he was angry cold sober.

The day passed without event. Night came; Alexander went to his room. When he was certainly alone, which meant when Hephaistion left, a guard was put on it. The window was twenty feet up, but there was a guard under that as well.

He knew nothing of it till morning. The men had been chosen with care; they answered no questions. He waited, fasting, till noon.

There was a dagger under his pillow. In the royal house of Macedon, this was as natural as wearing clothes. He slung it on inside his chiton. If food had been brought him, he would have left it; poison was not a fighting death. He waited for the footsteps.

When at last they came, he heard the guard presenting arms. It was not, then, the executioner. He felt no relief; he knew the tread.

Philip came in, with Philotas following.

“I need a witness,” said the King. “This man will do.”

Out of his sight, behind his shoulder, Philotas gave Alexander a look of shocked concern, mixed with dazed bewilderment. His hand sketched a little gesture, offering in the unknown trouble his helpless loyalty.

Alexander half-perceived it; but the King’s presence filled the room. His big mouth was set in his broad face; his thick brows, which had always an outward tilt, flared up from his frown like a hawk’s spread wings. Force came from him like heat. Alexander planted his feet and waited; he felt the dagger with the nerves under his skin.

“I knew,” said his father, “that you were as headstrong as a wild pig, and as vain as a Corinth whore. Treacherous I knew you could be, as long as you listened to your mother. But one thing I didn’t reckon on, that you were a fool.”

At “treacherous” Alexander had caught his breath; he began to speak.

“Be quiet!” said the King. “How dare you open your mouth? How dared you meddle in my business with your insolence and your ignorant childish spite, you blundering, brainsick fool?”

“It was to hear this,” said Alexander into the pause, “that you brought Philotas?” A jar had gone through him, like a wound one does not yet feel.

“No,” said the King menacingly. “You can wait for that. You have lost me Karia. Can’t you see it, you fool? Before God, since you think so much of yourself, you might have thought better this time. Do you want to be a Persian hanger-on? Do you want to pick up a horde of barbarian marriage-kin, who’ll hang about you when war begins, selling the enemy our plans and bargaining for your head? Well, if so your luck’s out, for I’ll see you to Hades first, you’d be less hindrance there. And after this, do you think Pixodoros will accept Arridaios? Not unless he’s a greater fool than you, and small chance of that. I thought I could spare Arridaios better. Well, I was a fool, I deserve to beget fools.” He drew a heavy breath. “I have no luck with my sons.”

Alexander stood quiet. Even the dagger on his ribs hardly moved against them. Presently he said, “If I am your son, then you have wronged my mother.” He spoke without much expression; he was taken up with inward things.

Philip’s lower lip thrust out. “Don’t tempt me,” he said. “I brought her back for your sake. She’s your mother; I’m trying to remember it. Don’t tempt me before a witness.”

In the background, Philotas shifted his tall bulk, and gave a quiet, sympathetic cough.

“And now,” said Philip, “attend to me; I am coming to business. First: I am sending an envoy to Karia. He can carry a formal letter from me, refusing my consent to your betrothal, and one from you withdrawing. Or, if you won’t write, he can carry one from me telling Pixodoros he is welcome to you, but he’ll be getting no son of mine. If that’s your choice, tell me now. No? Very well. Then, second: I don’t ask you to control your mother, you couldn’t do it. I don’t ask you to bring her intrigues to me, I’ve never asked it, I don’t ask now. But while you are here in Macedon as my heir, which is while I choose and no longer, you will keep your hands out of her plots. If you meddle in them again, you can go back where you have been, and stay there. To help keep you out of mischief, the young fools you’ve embroiled so far can go looking for trouble outside the kingdom. Today they are settling their affairs. When they are gone, you may leave this room.”

Alexander heard in silence. He had long prepared his mind for torture, lest he should somehow be taken alive in war. But it was his body he had thought of.

“Well?” said the King. “Don’t you want to know who they are?”

He answered, “You may suppose so.”

“Ptolemy: I have no luck with my sons. Harpalos: a sleek greedy fox, I could have bought him if he were worth it. Niarchos: his Cretan kin may have joy of him. Erigyios and Laomedon…” The names came slowly. He was watching the face before him whiten. It was time the boy learned once for all who was the master. Let him wait.

Gladly as Philotas would have removed Hephaistion, he had not named him; neither justice nor kindness, but an ineradicable fear, had held his hand. The King for his part had never thought Hephaistion dangerous in himself. Though it was certain that, at the pinch, there was nothing he would not do for Alexander, he was worth taking a risk on. This was the one pardon which would disoblige Olympias. It had another use, besides.

“Concerning Hephaistion son of Amyntor,” he said, taking his time, “I have considered that matter by itself.” He paused again, while something within him, between contempt and deep secret envy, thought, The man does not live I could feel that for, or the woman either. “You will not pretend, I take it, that he was not told your plans, or that he refused assent to them.”

In the distant voice of great pain, Alexander said, “He disagreed, but I overbore him.”

“So? Well, be that as it may, I take into account that placed as he is, he could not escape blame either by keeping your counsel or revealing it.” His voice was dry, putting Hephaistion where he belonged. “Therefore, at present I have exempted him from exile. If he gives you more good advice, you will do well to take it, both for your own sake and for his. For I am saying this before a witness, in case you should dispute it later: if you are found again in treasonable conspiracy, I shall consider him a party to it, both by knowledge and consent. I shall accuse him before the Assembly of the Macedonians, and ask them for his death.”

Alexander answered, “I have heard you. You need not have brought a witness.”

“Very well. Tomorrow, if your friends have taken themselves off, I will dismiss the guard. Today you can give thought to your life. It is more than time.”

He turned. The guard outside presented arms. Philotas, leaving after him, had meant to look back at Alexander with discreet support and a meaning indignation. But at the last, he went out with averted face.

Days passed; Alexander, now he was about again, found his following well sifted. It can cost too much to be in fashion, even for the young. The chaff was all winnowed out now. The solid grain remained. He took note of these faithful ones; they were never forgotten.

A few days later, he was sent for to the small audience room. The message only said that the King required his presence.

Philip was in his chair of state, with an officer of justice, some clerks, and a number of litigants waiting audience. Without speaking, he motioned his son to a seat below the dais, and went on dictating a letter.

Alexander stood a moment, then sat down. Philip said to the guard at the door, “They can bring him in.”

A four-man guard brought in Thettalos. His hands and his legs were fettered. He walked forward with the heavy shuffling gait imposed by the leg-irons. His wrists had raw bloody sores, from the rubbing of the bracelets.

He was unshaven and unkempt, but he kept his head well up. His bow to the King was not more, nor less, respectful than if he had been a guest. He made another to Alexander; his eyes held no reproach.

“So you are here,” said the King grimly. “If you were an honest man, you would have come to give account of your embassy. And if you were a wise one, you would have run further than to Corinth.”

Thettalos inclined his head. “So it seems, King. But I like to fulfill my contracts.”

“It is a pity, then, that your sponsors will be disappointed. You will give your last show in Pella. And you will give it alone.”

Alexander stood up. Everyone looked at him; they could see now why he was there.

“Yes,” said the King. “Let Thettalos see you. He owes his death to you.”

Alexander said in a high taut voice, “He is an artist of Dionysos, his person is sacred.”

“He should have kept to his art.” Philip nodded to the officer of justice, who began to write something.

“He’s a Thessalian,” Alexander said.

“He is a citizen of Athens these twenty years. After the peace was signed he has acted as my enemy. He has no rights, and he knows it.”

Thettalos looked, with an almost imperceptible shake of the head, at Alexander; but his eyes were fixed on the King.

“If he has his deserts,” Philip said, “he will hang tomorrow. If he wants clemency, he must ask me for it. And so must you.”

Alexander stood rigid, holding an indrawn breath. Everyone’s eyes were on him. He took a step towards the throne.

With a clank, Thettalos advanced one weighted foot. It brought him into the pose of heroic fortitude beloved of audiences. Every eye was drawn his way.

“Let me answer for it all. One should not exceed one’s instructions. I was officious in Karia. Rather than your son, I will ask Sophokles to be my pleader.” He brought both hands forward in a classic movement which also, to the best advantage, displayed his sores. There was a faint shocked murmur. He had been oftener crowned than any Olympic victor, and Greeks who had scarcely seen a theater knew his name. In his resonant voice which could have reached an audience of twenty thousand, now pitched perfectly to the room, he delivered his supplication.

The lines were fairly appropriate; not that it mattered. It was an exhibition piece. Its real meaning was, “Oh, yes, I know who you are. And you know who I am. Isn’t it time to end the comedy?”

Philip narrowed a hard black eye. The message was understood. He was quite startled to see his son, blazing with controlled emotion, come out and stand by the actor’s side.

“Certainly, sir, I will ask clemency for Thettalos. It would be far more shameful not to. He has risked his life for me; I shall not grudge him a little of my pride. Please pardon him; all the fault was mine. And you, Thettalos, please forgive me.”

Thettalos with his fettered hands made a gesture more exquisite than words. Applause, though unheard, hung in the air.

Philip nodded at Thettalos, like a man who has fulfilled his purpose. “Very well. I hope this has taught you not to hide behind the god when you are making mischief. This time you are pardoned; don’t presume on it. Take him away, and strike off his chains. I will hear the other business presently.” He went out. He needed time to recover his temper, lest he make mistakes. Between them, they had nearly managed to make a fool of him. Yet they had had no time to concert it. A couple of tragedians, cueing one another to steal his scene.

Thettalos sat that evening at the lodging of his old friend Nikeratos, who had followed him up to Pella in case he needed ransoming, and was rubbing salve on his sores.

“My dear, I bled for the boy. One forgets how little he travels. I tried to signal him, but he swallowed every word. He saw the rope round my neck.”

“So did I. Will you never learn sense?”

“Come come, what do you think Philip is, some Illyrian pirate? You should have seen him being Greek at Delphi. He knew already he’d gone too far, before I told him so. A disgusting journey. Let us go home by sea.”

“You know the Corinthians are fining you half a talent? Aristodemos got your roles. No one will pay you for acting King Philip off his own stage.”

“Oh, not I alone. I never reckoned on the boy being such a natural. What a sense of theater! Wait till he finds himself; I tell you, we shall see something. But it was a monstrous thing to do to him. I bled for him, truly bled.”

Hephaistion was whispering in the midnight room, “Yes, I know. I know. But you must get some sleep now. I’ll stay with you. Try to sleep.”

In a colorless white-hot voice Alexander repeated, “He put his foot on my neck.”

“He’s getting no praise for it. It’s a scandal, his chaining Thettalos; everyone says so. They all say you came off best.”

“He put his foot on my neck, to show me he could do it. Before Thettalos; before them all.”

“They’ll forget. So must you. All fathers are unfair sooner or later. I remember once—”

“He’s not my father.”

Hephaistion’s comforting hands froze in a moment’s stillness. “Oh, not in the eyes of the gods; they choose whom—”

“Never use that word again.”

“The god will reveal it. You must wait the god’s sign, you know that…Wait till the war begins. Wait till you win your next battle. He’ll be bragging of you then.”

Alexander was lying flat on his back, staring upward. Suddenly he grasped Hephaistion in an embrace so fierce that it knocked the breath out of him, and said, “Without you I should go mad.”

“I too without you,” said Hephaistion with loving ardor. Change the meaning, he thought, and you avert the omen.

Alexander said nothing. His strong fingers gripped into Hephaistion’s ribs and shoulder; the bruises would be there a week. Hephaistion thought, I am in the King’s gift too, a favor he can take away. Presently, having no more words, he offered instead the sadness of Eros, for this at least brought sleep.

The young slave-girl glided out from the shadow of the column; a black Nubian girl in a scarlet dress. She had been given as a child to Kleopatra in her childhood, to grow up with her, as a puppy might have been given. Her dark eyes with their smoky whites, like the agate eyes of statues, looked left and right before she spoke.

“Alexander, my lady says, please see her in the Queen’s garden. By the old fountain. She wants to speak with you.”

He looked at her with a sharp alertness, then seemed to draw into himself. “I can’t come now. I am busy.”

“Please see my lady now. Please come. She is crying.” He saw that on her own dark polished face drops were lying like rain on bronze.

“Tell her yes, I’ll come.”

It was early spring. The old tangled roses were beaded with hard red buds; in the slant evening light they glowed like rubies. An almond tree growing between ancient tilted flagstones looked weightless in its cloud of pink. The shadowed water gushed out from the columned fountain-house into a basin of worn porphyry with ferns growing in its cracks. Seated on its edge, Kleopatra looked up at his footstep. She had dried her tears. “Oh, I am glad Melissa found you.”

He rested a knee on the coping and made a quick movement with his hand. “Wait. Before you say anything, wait.”

She looked at him blankly. He said, “There was something I asked you once to warn me of. Is it anything like that?”

“Warn you?” She had been full of other things. “Oh, but not—”

“Wait. I am not to interfere with any of her business. In any plot. That was the condition.”

“Plot? No, no, please don’t go away.”

“I am telling you, I release you from the promise. I don’t wish to know.”

“No, truly. Please stay. Alexander, when you were in Molossia…with King Alexandros…What is he like?”

“Our uncle? But he was here a few years ago, you must remember him. A big man, red-bearded, young for his age—”

“Yes, I know; but what kind of man?”

“Oh, ambitious, brave in war I’d say, but I’d doubt his judgment. He governs well, though, watches things for himself.”

“What did his wife die of? Was he kind to her?”

“How should I know? She died in childbed.” He paused and stared, then in a changed voice said, “Why do you ask?”

“I have to marry him.”

He stood back. The water from the hidden spring murmured in its columned cave. His first words were, “When did you hear this? I should have been told. The King tells me nothing, Nothing.”

She looked at him silently, then said, “He sent for me just now,” and turned away.

He crossed over and drew her against his shoulder. He had scarcely embraced her since their childhood, and now it was in Melissa’s arms that she had wept. “I am sorry. You need not be frightened. He’s not a bad man, he has no name for being cruel. The people like him. And you’ll not be too far away.”

She thought, You took for granted you’d choose the best; when you chose, you had only to lift your finger. When they find you a wife, you can go to her if you choose, or stay away with your lover. But I must be grateful that this old man, my mother’s brother, has no name for being cruel. All she said was, “The gods are unjust to women.”

“Yes, I have often thought so. But the gods are just; so it must be the fault of men.” Their eyes met questioningly, but their thoughts had no point of meeting. “Philip wants to be sure of Epiros, before he crosses to Asia. What does Mother think of it?”

She grasped a fold of his chiton, the gesture of a suppliant. “Alexander. This is what I wanted to ask you. Will you tell her for me?”

“Tell her? But of course she must have heard before you.”

“No, Father says not. He said I could tell her.”

“What is it?” He grasped her wrist. “You are keeping something back.”

“No. Only that—I could tell he knows she will be angry.”

“So I should think. What an insult! Why go out of his way to slight her, when the thing in itself…I should have thought…”

Suddenly he released her. His face altered. He began to walk about the pavement, his feet, with a cat’s instinct, avoiding the broken edges. She had known he would uncover the secret dread; better he than their mother, she had thought; but now she could scarcely bear the waiting. He turned. She saw a greyness under his skin; his eyes appalled her. He remembered her presence, said abruptly, “I’ll go to her,” and began to walk away.

“Alexander!” At her cry he paused impatiently. “What does it mean? Tell me what it means?”

“Can’t you see for yourself? Philip made Alexandros King of Molossia and hegemon of Epiros. Why isn’t that enough? They’re brothers-in-law; isn’t that enough? Why not? Why make him a son-in-law besides? Can’t you see? Not besides—instead.”

She said slowly, “What?” and then, “Ah, no, God forbid it!”

“What else? What does he mean to do, that would make an enemy of Alexandros unless he’s sweetened with a new marriage tie? What else, but throw him back his sister? For Eurydike to be Queen.”

Suddenly she began to wail, tearing her hair and dress, clawing and beating her bared breast. He pulled back her hands, straightened her clothes and gripped her hard by the arms. “Quiet! Don’t tell the world our business. We must think.”

She looked up with terror-stretched eyes. “What will she do? She will kill me.” The words passed without shock, between the children of Olympias; but he took her in his arms and patted her, as he might have soothed a hurt dog. “No, don’t be foolish, you know she won’t harm her own. If she killed anyone…” He broke off with a violent movement, which in the moment of making it he changed to a clumsy caress. “Be brave. Sacrifice to the gods. The gods will do something.”

“I thought,” she said sobbing, “if he’s not a bad man…I can take Melissa…at least I would get away. But with her there in the house, and after this…! I wish I were dead, I wish I were dead.”

Her disheveled hair fell against his mouth, he could taste it damp and salt. Looking past her, he saw behind a laurel bush a glimpse of scarlet, and freed an arm to beckon. The girl Melissa came out flinching. But, he thought, she could have overheard nothing she would not soon have been told. He said to Kleopatra, “Yes, I’ll see Mother. I’ll go now.”

He put his sister into the dark outstretched hands with their pink palms. Looking back on his way to the furnace he was bound for, he saw the slave-girl seated on the rim of the porphyry fountain, bending over the head of the princess crouched by her lap.

News of the betrothal spread quickly. Hephaistion considered what Alexander would think of it, and guessed right. He did not appear at supper; he was said to be with the Queen. Hephaistion, waiting in his room, had fallen asleep on the bed before the sound of the latch aroused him.

Alexander came in. His eyes looked hollow, but full of a feverish exaltation. He walked over, put out his hand and touched Hephaistion, as a man might touch a sacred object for luck or a good omen, while deeply concerned with something else. Hephaistion looked, and was silent.

“She has told me,” said Alexander.

Hephaistion did not ask, “What is it now?” He knew.

“She has told me at last.” He looked deeply at, and through Hephaistion, including him in his solitude. “She made the conjuration, and asked the god’s leave to tell me. He had always signed against it. That I never knew before.”

Hephaistion sitting on the edge of the bed, unmoving, watched Alexander with all his being. He had perceived that his being was all he had to give. Men must not be spoken to on their way up from the shades, or they might sink back again forever. This was well known.

With the verge of consciousness, Alexander was aware of the quiet body, the face made beautiful by its intentness, the still dark-grey eyes, their whites lit by the lamp. He gave a deep sigh, and rubbed his hand across his brow.

“I was present,” he said, “at the conjuration. For a long time the god did not speak, either yes or no. Then he spoke, in the form of the fire and in the—”

Suddenly he seemed aware of Hephaistion as a presence separate from his own. He sat down by him, and laid a hand on his knee. “He gave me leave to hear, if I vowed not to disclose it. It is the same with all the Mysteries. Anything of mine I would share with you, but this belongs to the god.”

No, to the witch, thought Hephaistion; that condition was made for me. But he took Alexander’s hand in both of his, and pressed it reassuringly. It felt dry and warm; it rested between his in trust, but sought no consolation.

“You must obey the god, then,” said Hephaistion; and thought, not for the first time, nor for the last, Who knows? Aristotle himself never denied that such things have been; he would not be so impious. If it was ever possible, it must be so still. But it is a great burden for the mortal part to carry. He clasped more tightly the hand he held. “Only tell me this, whether you are satisfied.”

“Yes.” He nodded at the shadows beyond the lamp. “Yes, I am satisfied.”

Suddenly his face was drained and drawn; his cheeks seemed to sink in as one looked, and his hand grew chilly. He began to shiver. Hephaistion had seen the same thing after battle, when men’s wounds got cold. This needs the same remedy, he thought. “Have you any wine in here?”

Alexander shook his head. He withdrew his hand to hide its tremor, and began to walk about.

Hephaistion said, “We both need a drink. I do. I left supper early. Come and drink with Polemon. His wife’s had a boy at last. He was looking for you in Hall. He’s always been loyal.”

This was true. That night, being happy, he grieved to see the Prince look so worn down by his troubles, and kept his cup well filled. He did grow gay, even noisy; it was a party of friends; most had fought in the charge at Cheironeia. In the end, Hephaistion just got him up to bed on his feet, and he slept on till mid-morning. About noon, Hephaistion went to see how he was getting on. He was reading at his table, with a pitcher of cold water by him.

“What book is it?” asked Hephaistion, leaning over his shoulder; he had been reading so quietly one could hardly make out the words.

He put the book quickly aside. “Herodotos. Customs of the Persians. One should understand the kind of man one is going to fight.”

The ends of the scroll, curling up together, had met at the place where he had read. A little while after, when he was out of the room, Hephaistion rolled it open.

…the transgressor’s services shall always be set against his misdeeds; only if the second are found the greater, shall the wronged party go on to punishment.

The Persians hold that no one ever yet killed his own father or mother. They are sure that if every such case were fully searched, it would be found out that the child was either a changeling, or born of adultery; for it is inconceivable, they say, that the true father should die by the hands of his child.

Hephaistion let the scroll spring back over the writing. For some time he stood looking out of the window, with his temple pressed against its frame, till Alexander, returning, smiled at the print of the carved laurel leaves stamped into his flesh.

The troops drilled for the war. Hephaistion, long eager for it to begin, now almost craved for it. Philip’s threats had angered more than frightened him; like any hostage, he was worth more alive than dead, and the Great King’s soldiers would kill him much more readily; yet here it was as if they were all being driven down the funnel of a narrowing gorge, a torrent rushing below them; war beckoned like open country, freedom, escape.

After half a month, an envoy came from Pixodoros of Karia. His daughter, he disclosed, had most unhappily fallen into a wasting sickness. It was no small part of his grief that, besides her expected loss, he must renounce the distinguished honor of a union with the royal house of Macedon. A spy, who arrived by the same ship, reported that Pixodoros had sent the new Great King, Darius, pledges of firm allegiance, and betrothed the girl to one of his most loyal satraps.

Next morning, sitting at the desk of Archelaos, with Alexander standing straight-backed before it, Philip gave this news without any comment, and looked up, waiting.

“Yes,” said Alexander evenly. “It has turned out badly. But remember, sir, Pixodoros was content with me. It was not my choice to withdraw.”

Philip frowned; yet he had felt something like relief. The boy had been too quiet just lately. This impudence was more like him, except for its restraint. One had always learned from his anger. “Are you trying to excuse yourself, even now?”

“No, sir. I just say what we both know is true.”

He had still not raised his voice. Philip, his first fury spent and the bad news long expected, did not shout back. In Macedon, insult was a killing matter, but plain speaking the subject’s right. He had taken it from simple men, even from women. Once, when after a long day in the judgment seat he had told some old crone he had no time left to hear her case, she had called out, “Then leave off being King!” and he had stayed to hear it. Now too he listened; it was his business; he was the King. It should have been more; but he put his grief behind him, almost before he knew it for what it was.

“I forbade the match for good reasons which you know.” He had kept the best to himself; Arridaios would have been his tool, Alexander could have been dangerous. Karia was powerful. “Blame your mother,” he said. “She led you into this folly.”

“Can she be blamed?” Alexander still spoke with calm; there was a kind of searching in his eyes. “You have acknowledged children by other women. And Eurydike is in her eighth month now. Isn’t that so?”

“That is so.” The grey eyes were fastened on his face. Appeal in them might have softened him. He had been at trouble enough to train this man for kingship; if he himself fell in the coming war, what other heir could there be? Again he studied the face before him, so unconceding, and so unlike his own. Attalos, a Macedonian of a stock already old when the royal line was still in Argos, had told him country tales about the bacchic revels, customs brought in from Thrace, which the women kept secret. In the orgy, they themselves did not remember what they had done; what came of it they blamed on the god, in a human form or a snake’s; but somewhere a mortal man was laughing. That is a foreign face, thought Philip: then remembered it, flushed and brilliant, coming down from the black horse into his arms. Divided in himself and angry at it, he thought, He is here to be reprimanded; how dare he try to corner me? Let him take what he is given and be thankful, when I choose to give. What more does he deserve?

“Well, then,” he said, “if I have given you competitors for the kingdom, so much the better for you. Show your quality, earn your inheritance yourself.”

Alexander gazed at him with a piercing, an almost painful concentration. “Yes,” he said. “Then that is what I must do.”

“Very well,” Philip reached for his papers, dismissively.

“Sir. Whom are you sending to Asia, in command of the advance force?”

Philip looked up. “Parmenion and Attalos,” he said curtly. “If I don’t send you where I cannot keep an eye on you, you have yourself to thank. And your mother. That is all. You have leave to go.”

In their fort on the Lynx Hills the three Lynkestids, the sons of Airopos, stood on their brown stone ramparts. It was an open place, safe from eavesdroppers. They had left their guest downstairs, having heard what he had to say, but given no answer yet. Around them stretched a great sky of white towering clouds, fringed with mountains. It was late spring; on the bare peaks above the forests, only the deepest gullies showed veins of snow.

“Say what you like, both of you,” said the eldest, Alexandros, “but I don’t trust it. What if this comes from the old fox himself, to test us? Or to trap us, have you thought of that?”

“Why should he?” asked the second brother, Heromenes. “And why now?”

“Where are your wits? He is taking his army into Asia, and you ask why now.”

“Well,” said the youngest, Arrabaios, “that’s enough for him surely, without stirring up the west? No, if it had been that, it would have come two years ago, when he was planning to march south.”

“As he says”—Heromenes jerked his head towards the stairway—“now’s the time. Once Philip’s set out, he will have his hostage for us.” He looked at Alexandros, whose feudal duty it was to lead their tribal levies in the King’s war.

He stared back resentfully; already before this, he had been thinking that once his back was turned, the others would ride out on some mad foray that would cost him his head. “I tell you I don’t trust it. We don’t know this man.”

“Still,” argued Heromenes, “we do know those who’ve vouched for him.”

“Maybe. But those he claims to speak for—they’ve put their name to nothing.”

“The Athenian has,” said Arrabaios. “If you two have forgotten how to read your Greek, you can take my word for it.”

“His name!” said Alexandros, snorting like a horse. “What was it worth to the Thebans? He puts me in mind of my wife’s little dog, who starts the big ones fighting, and does nothing himself but yap.”

Heromenes, who had extravagant tastes as such things went on the border, said, “He’s sent a sweetener.”

“Birdlime. We must send it back. You should learn to judge a horse, then you’d not owe the copers. Don’t you value our heads at more than a bag of Persian darics? The real price, the worth of the risk, that’s not his to give.”

“That we could take for ourselves,” said Heromenes resentfully, “with Philip out of the way. What ails you, man; are you head of the clan, or our big sister? We’re offered our fathers’ kingdom back, and all you can do is cluck like some wet-nurse when the child starts walking.”

“She keeps it from breaking its head. Who says we could do it? An Athenian who ran like a goat at the smell of blood. Darius; a usurper barely settled on his throne, who has enough on his hands without a war. Do you think they care for us? And more, do you think they know whom we’d have to deal with, in Philip’s room? Of course not; they think he’s a spoiled little prince given credit for other men’s victories. The Athenian’s forever saying it in speeches. But we know. We’ve seen the lad at work. Sixteen he was then, with a head on him like thirty; and that’s three years gone. It’s not a month since I was at Pella; and I tell you, disgrace or not, put him in the field and the men will follow him anywhere. That you can take from me. Can we fight the royal army? You know the answer. So, is he in the business, as this man says, or not? That’s the only question. These Athenians, they’d sell their mothers to the stews if the price was right. Everything hangs on the lad, and we’ve no proof.”

Heromenes tweaked a bit of broom from its roots between the stones, and switched it moodily. Alexandros frowned at the eastern hills.

“Two things I don’t like,” he went on. “First, he has bosom friends in exile, some no further than Epiros. We could have met in the mountains and no one the wiser; we’d all know then where we were. Why send this go-between, a man I’ve never seen about him, why trust the man with his head? And the other thing I mislike is that he promises too much. You’ve met him. Think.”

“We should think first,” said Arrabaios, “whether he’s one who could do it. Not all men could. I think he could. And he’s at a pass when he might.”

“And if he’s a bastard as they say,” urged Heromenes, “then it’s a dangerous business, but not blood-cursed. I think he could and would.”

“I still say it doesn’t smell of him,” said Alexandros. Absently he scratched a louse out of his head, and rubbed it between thumb and finger. “Now, if it were his dam…”

“Dam or whelp, you can be sure they’re in it together,” Heromenes said.

“We don’t know that. What we do know is, the new wife’s with child again. And they say Philip’s giving his daughter as a sop to the Epirote King, so that he’ll stomach the witch being packed off. So, think which of them can’t afford to wait. Alexander can. Philip’s seed tends to girls, as everyone knows. Even if Eurydike throws a boy, let the King say what he likes while he lives, but if he dies, the Macedonians won’t accept an heir under fighting age; he should know that. But Olympias, now, that’s another matter. She can’t wait. Scratch into this deep enough, and I’ll stake my best horse you’ll find her hand in it.”

“If I thought it came from her,” said Arrabaios, “then I’d think twice.”

“This lad’s only nineteen,” said Heromenes. “If Philip dies now, with no other son besides the lackwit, then you”—he stabbed his finger at Alexandros—“are next in line. Couldn’t you see that’s what the fellow down there was trying to tell you?”

“O Herakles!” said Alexandros, snorting again. “Who are you to talk of lackwits? Nineteen, and you saw him at sixteen. Since then, he has led the left at Cheironeia. Go to Assembly, will you, and tell them he’s a child too young for war, they must vote for a grown man. Do you think I would live to get there and count my votes? You had better stop dreaming, and look at the man you have to deal with.”

“I am looking,” said Arrabaios. “That’s why I said he has it in him to do this business. Bastard or not.”

“You say he can afford to wait.” Heromenes’ blue eyes in his wine-reddened face stared with contempt at Alexandros, whose place he envied. “Some men can’t wait for power.”

“I only say, ask yourself who gains most. Olympias gains everything, because this match will lose her everything, if the King outlives it. Demosthenes gains the blood of the man he hates worse than death, if he hates anything worse; the Athenians gain a civil war in Macedon, if we play our part, with the kingship in doubt, or passed to a boy they make light of, the more so since he’s in disfavor. Darius, whose gold you want to keep even if it hangs you, gains even more, since Philip’s arming for war against him now. Out of them all, not one would care a dog’s turd, once the thing’s done, if we’re all three crucified in a row. Yet you put your bet on Alexander. No wonder you can’t win at a cockfight.”

They mulled it over a little longer. In the end, they agreed to refuse the go-between and return the gold. But Heromenes had debts, and a younger son’s portion; he agreed unwillingly; and it was he who set the guest on his way to the eastern pass.

The scent of raw warm blood mixed with the cool scents of a dewy morning, of pine-resin and wild thyme and some little upland lily. Tall dogs as heavy as men gnawed contentedly at deer bones; now and then strong teeth would split one with a crack, to reach the marrow. The dead stag’s sad empty face lolled on the grass. Over an aromatic fire, two of the hunters were grilling steaks for breakfast; the rest had gone looking for a stream. Two servants rubbed down the horses.

On a rock-ledge cropping out from small-flowered turf, Hephaistion sprawled beside Alexander in the early sun, seen on the skyline by the rest, but far out of hearing. So, in Homer, Achilles and Patroklos had drawn apart from their dear comrades to share their thoughts. But it had been Patroklos’ ghost who recalled it, when they shared their grief; so Alexander thought the lines bad luck, and never quoted them. He had been talking of other things.

“It was like a dark labyrinth,” he said, “with a monster waiting. Now it is daylight.”

“You should have talked before.” Hephaistion drew his reddened hand over a patch of wet moss, to wash off the blood.

“It would only have burdened you. As it was, you knew, and it did.”

“Yes. So why not have talked it out?”

“It would have been cowardice, then. A man must deal with his own daimon. When I look back on my life, I remember it always there, waiting at every crossroads, where I knew that I would meet it. From the time when I was a child. Even the wish, never acted, the wish alone, was a terrible thing to carry. Sometimes I would dream of the Eumenides, as they are in Aischylos; they would touch my neck with their long cold black claws, saying, ‘One day you will be ours forever.’ For it drew me on, by the very horror of it; some men say that standing on a cliff, they feel that the void is drawing them. It seemed my destiny.”

“I have known this a long time. I am your destiny too; did you forget?”

“Oh, we have spoken of it often, without words, and that was better. Things are fixed by words, as fire fixes clay. So I went on; sometimes I thought I could be free of it, then I would doubt again. All that is over, now it’s been revealed to me what my true birth is. Once I knew he was no kin to me, I began to think what should be done. And from that moment, my thought was clear. Why do it? To what end? Why now? From what necessity?”

“I tried to say all this.”

“I know; but my ear was closed. It was more than the man himself oppressing me. It was the gods’ ‘You may not’ stifling my soul’s ‘I must.’ And the thought of his blood in me, like a sickness. Now I’m free of it, I hate him less. Well, the god delivered me. If I meant to do it, no time could be worse than now, at this ebb-tide of my fortune, with the tide ready to turn. He won’t leave me Regent here, when he goes to Asia; I’m in disgrace, and besides I doubt he’d dare. He’s bound to take me to the war. Once I’m in the field, I hope I can show him something, and the Macedonians too. They were glad enough of me at Cheironeia. If he lives, he’ll change to me when I’ve won some battles for him. And if he falls, I’m the man who will be there, with the army round me. That above all.”

His eye was caught by a small blue flower in a rock-crevice. Delicately he raised its head, named it, and added the use of its decoction for coughs.

“Of course,” he said, “I shall kill Attalos as soon as I can do it. It will be best in Asia.”

Hephaistion nodded; he himself, at nineteen, had long lost count of men he had already killed. “Yes, he’s your mortal enemy; you’ll have to get rid of him. The girl’s nothing then, the King will find another as soon as he’s on campaign.”

“I told Mother that, but…Well, she must think as she chooses, I mean to act in my own time. She’s a wronged woman, it’s natural she should want revenge; though of course that’s what has set the King on getting her out of the kingdom before he leaves, and it’s done me harm enough…She’ll intrigue to the last, she can’t help it, it’s become her life. There’s some business now, she keeps hinting she wants to drag me into; but I forbade her even to tell me.” Arrested by this new tone, Hephaistion stole a sidelong glance. “I have to think and plan, I can’t be thrown out from day to day by these fits and starts. She must understand it.”

“It eases her mind, I suppose,” said Hephaistion, whose own was eased. (So she made her conjuration, and the wrong spirit answered; I should like to know her thoughts.) “Well, the wedding can’t but be a day of honor for her; her daughter and her brother. Whatever the King may feel, or mean to do, he’ll have to give her her dignities then, for the bridegroom’s sake. So he must give you yours.”

“Oh, yes. But it’s to be his own day mainly. Memory and history both surpassed. Aigai’s teeming already with craftsmen; and the invitations have gone out so far afield, I only wonder he hasn’t sent to the Hyperboreans. Never mind, it’s something to be lived through, before we cross to Asia. Then it will seem like that.” He pointed to the plain below, and the flocks tiny with distance.

“Yes, it will be nothing then. You’ve already founded a city; but there you’ll find yourself a kingdom. I know as if a god had told me.”

Alexander smiled at him; sat up, and with hands clasped round knees looked towards the next range of mountains. Wherever he was, he could never keep his eyes long from the skyline. “Do you remember, in Herodotos, where the Ionians sent Aristagoras to the Spartans, begging them to come and free the Greek cities of Asia? They cried off, when they heard Susa was three months’ march from the sea. Farm-dogs, not hunting-dogs…That’s enough, now. Down.” A year-old deerhound, which had just tracked him there by scent after getting loose from the huntsman, ceased its caresses and lay obediently, pressing its nose against him. He had had it in Illyria as a pup, and had spent his spare hours in training it; its name was Peritas.

“Aristagoras,” he said, “brought them a map on bronze, of the whole world with the Encircling Ocean, and showed them the Persian empire. Truly the task is not hard; for the barbarians are people unfit for war, while you are the best and bravest fighting men on earth. (Perhaps it was true in those days.) This is how they fight: they use bows and arrows and a short spear, they take the field in trousers, and cover their heads with turbans (not if they can afford a helmet); that shows how easy they are to conquer. I tell you, too, that the people of those regions have more wealth than all the rest, of the world together. (Now that is true.) Gold, silver and bronze; embroidered garments; asses, mules and slaves; you can own it all, if you choose. He goes over the nations with his map, till he gets to Kissia by the River Choaspes. And on its banks the city of Susa, where the Great King holds court, and where the treasuries are, in which his wealth is stored. Once you are lords of this city, you may challenge Zeus himself to surpass your riches. He reminded the Spartans how they were always at war around their borders, over bits of poor land, fighting men who owned nothing worth a battle. Do you need to do that, he said to them, when you might be lords of Asia? They kept him waiting three days, then said it was too far from the sea.”

A horn blew from the cook-fire, to say breakfast was ready. Alexander gazed at the mountains. However hungry he was, he never hurried to food.

“Only Susa. They didn’t let him even begin to talk about Persepolis.”

Anywhere along Armorers’ Street at Piraeus, the port of Athens, it was hard to make oneself heard above a shout. The shops were open in front, to let out the heat of the forges and show the work. These were not the cheap off-the-peg factories with their hordes of slaves; here the best craftsmen made to measure, from clay molds of the naked client. Half a morning might go to a fitting, and to choosing from pattern books the inlaid design. Only a few of the shops made armor meant for war; the most fashionable catered for knights who wanted to be noticed in the Panathenaic procession. They would bring all their friends along, if they could stand the noise; comings and goings were little noticed. In the rooms above the shops, the din was hardly muted; but men could just hear each other speak, if they kept close together; and it was well known that armorers grew hard of hearing, which lessened the fear of eavesdroppers.

In one of these rooms, a conference was going on. It was a meeting of agents. None of the principals could have been seen with any of the others, even had it been possible for all of them to attend. Three men of the four were leaning over an olive-wood table on their folded arms. The feet of their wine cups rattled to the pounding of the hammers that shook the floor; the wine shivered, sometimes a drop leaped out.

The three who were talking had reached the last stages of a long wrangle about money. One was from Chios; his olive pallor and blue-black beard derived from the long Persian occupation. One was an Illyrian, from close to the Lynkestid border. The third, the host, was an Athenian; he wore his hair tied over his brow in a topknot, and his face was discreetly painted.

The fourth man sat back in his chair, his hands on the pinewood arms, waiting for them to have done; his face seeming to say that to tolerate such things was part of his commission. His fair hair and beard had a tinge of red; he was from north Euboia, which had long had commerce with Macedon.

On the table was a wax diptych tablet, and a stylos, the sharp end to write, the flat end to erase what had been written, in the presence of all four parties, before they left the room. The Athenian tapped it impatiently on the table, then on his teeth.

The Chian said, “It is not as if these gifts were to be the end of Darius’ friendship. As I say, Heromenes can always count on a place at court.”

“He is seeking,” said the Illyrian, “to rise in Macedon, not to prepare for exile. I thought that was understood.”

“Certainly. A generous earnest has been agreed on.” The Chian looked at the Athenian, who nodded, drooping his lids. “The bulk sum to follow a revolt in Lynkestis as arranged. I am not satisfied that his brother, the chief, has agreed to this. I must stand out for payment by result.”

“Reasonable,” said the Athenian, taking the stylos from his mouth. He had a slight lisp. “Now do let us take all that as settled, and come back to the man who matters most. My principal wants an undertaking that he will act on the day agreed—no other.”

This brought the Euboian leaning across the table, like the rest. “You said that before, and I answered that there’s no sense in it. He is always about Philip’s person. He has entry to the bedchamber. He might have far better chances, both to do it and to get away. This is asking too much of him.”

“My instructions are,” said the Athenian, tapping the stylos on the table, “that it shall be that day, or we will not offer him asylum.”

The Euboian thumped the already rattling table, making the Athenian shut his eyes protestingly. “Why, tell me? Why?”

“Yes, why?” said the Illyrian. “Heromenes doesn’t ask for it. The news could reach him any time.”

The man from Chios raised his dark brows. “Any day will do for my master. If Philip does not cross to Asia, it is enough. Why this insistence on the day?”

The Athenian lifted the stylos by both ends, rested his chin on it, and smiled confidingly.

“First, because on that day every possible claimant to the throne, and every faction, will be there at Aigai for the rites. Not one can escape suspicion; they will accuse each other, and very likely fight for the succession; this will be of use to us. Secondly…I think my principal deserves some small indulgence. It will crown his life-work, as anyone aware of his life can see. He finds it fitting that the tyrant of Hellas be brought down, not some dark night as he stumbles drunk to bed, but at the climax of his hubris; in this I agree, let me say.” He turned to the Euboian. “And, your man’s wrongs being what they are, I should suppose it would please him too.”

“Yes,” said the Euboian slowly. “No doubt. But it may not be possible.”

“It will be possible. The order of the ceremonies has just come into our hands.” He detailed them, till he reached a certain event, when he looked up meaningly.

“Your ears are good,” said the Euboian, raising his brows.

“This time you may rely on them.”

“I daresay. But our man would be lucky to come off well out of that. As I say, he could get better chances.”

“None so distinguished. Fame sweetens vengeance…Well, well, since we are speaking of fame, I will let you into a little secret. My principal wants to be first with the news in Athens, even before the news arrives. Between ourselves, he plans to have had a vision. Later, when Macedon has sunk back to its tribal barbarism—” He caught the Euboian’s angry eye, and said hastily, “That is, has passed to a King who is prepared to stay at home—then he can proclaim to a grateful Greece his share in the liberation. Meantime, when one remembers his long battle against tyranny, can one grudge him this small reward?”

“What risk is he taking?” shouted the Illyrian suddenly. Though the hammers below were noisy, it startled the others into angry gestures, which he ignored. “Here’s a man risking death to avenge his honor. And only Demosthenes must choose the time, so that he can prophesy in the Agora.”

The three diplomats exchanged looks of scandal and disgust. Who but a backwoodsman of Lynkestis would have sent this rude clansman to such a conference? There was no knowing what he might say next, so they broke up the meeting. All that mattered had been determined.

Each left the building separately, with a little time between. The last left were the Chian and the Euboian. The Chian said, “Can you be sure your man will do his part?”

“Oh yes,” said the Euboian. “We know how to manage that.”

“You were there? You yourself heard it?”

The spring night blew chilly in the hills of Macedon. The torches smoked with the window-draft, the embers of the sacred hearth faded and flickered on their old blackened stone drum. It was late. As the shadows deepened above, the stone walls seemed to lean inward, craning to hear.

The guests had departed, all but one; the slaves had been sent to bed. The host and his son had drawn three couches close round one wine table; the others, shoved aside in haste, gave the room a disordered look.

“Do you tell me,” said Pausanias again, “that you were there?” His head and shoulders were thrust forward; he had to grasp the edge of the couch to keep his balance. His eyes were bloodshot with wine; but what he had just heard had sobered him. His host’s son met his gaze; a youngish man with expressive blue eyes, and a mean mouth under his short black beard.

“The wine tripped my tongue,” he answered. “I’ll say no more.”

“I ask pardon for him,” said his father, Deinias. “What possessed you, Heirax? I tried to catch your eye.”

Pausanias turned like a speared boar. “You knew of it too?”

“I was not present,” said the host, “but people talk. I am sorry it should be here in my house that it reached your ears. Even between themselves in secret, you would think both the King and Attalos would be ashamed to boast of such a thing; much more in company. But you know, none better, what they’re like when they’ve had a skinful.”

Pausanias’ nails dug at the wood, so that the blood receded. “He took his oath before me, eight years ago, never to let it be spoken of in his presence. It was that persuaded me to forgo vengeance. He knew it, I told him so.”

“Then he was not forsworn,” said Heirax with a sour smile. “He didn’t let it be said, he said it. He thanked Attalos for the good service. When Attalos would have answered, he clapped a hand across his mouth, and they both laughed at that. Now I understand it.”

“He swore to me by the stream of Acheron,” said Pausanias, almost whispering, “that he had no foreknowledge of it.”

Deinias shook his head. “Heirax, I take back my rebuke. When so many know, it is better Pausanias hears of it first from friends.”

“He said to me”—Pausanias’ voice was thickening—“‘In a few years, when you are seen to be held in honor, they will doubt the tale; then they will forget it.’”

“So much for oaths,” said Deinias, “when men feel themselves secure.”

“Attalos is secure,” said Heirax easily. “Safe with his troops in Asia.”

Pausanias stared past them into the dulling red core upon the hearth. Speaking, it seemed, to that, he said, “Does he think it is too late?”

“If you like,” said Kleopatra to her brother, “you may see my dress.”

He followed to her room, where it hung on a T-shaped stand, fine saffron-dyed linen embroidered with jeweled flowers. She was to blame for nothing; soon they would seldom meet again; he gave her waist a pat. In spite of all, the coming pomps began to charm her; shoots of pleasure broke through, like green on a burnt hillside; she began to feel she would be a queen. “Look, Alexander.” She lifted from its cushion the bridal wreath, wheat-ears and olive sprays worked from fine gold, and walked towards the mirror.

“No! Don’t try it on. That’s very unlucky. But you will look beautiful.” She had shed most of her puppy-fat, and showed promise of some distinction.

“I hope we shall soon go up to Aigai. I want to see the decorations; when the crowds arrive, one can’t go about. Have you heard, Alexander, about the great procession to the theater, to dedicate the Games? They’re to be offered to all the twelve Olympians, and the images are to be carried—”

“Not twelve,” said Alexander drily. “Thirteen. Twelve Olympians, and divine Philip. But he’s modest, his image is going last…Listen; what’s that noise?”

They ran to the window. A party had dismounted from its mules, and was grouping formally, to approach the Palace. The men were crowned with bay, and the leader carried a branch of it.

Sliding down from the sill, Alexander said eagerly, “I must go. Those are the heralds from Delphi, with the oracle about the war.” He kissed her briskly, and turned to the doorway. In it, just entering, was his mother.

Kleopatra saw her glance pass by, and the old bitterness stirred once more. Alexander, who received the glance, knew it of old. It called him to a secret.

“I can’t stay now, Mother. The heralds are here from Delphi.” Seeing her mouth open, he added quickly, “I’ve a right to be there. We don’t want that forgotten.”

“Yes, you had better go.” She held out her hands to him, and, as he kissed her, began to whisper. He drew back saying, “Not now, I shall be late,” and loosened her hands. She said after him, “But we must talk today.”

He went without sign of hearing it. She felt Kleopatra’s watching eyes, and answered them with some small business of the wedding; there had been many such moments, over many years. Kleopatra thought of them, but held her peace. Long before Alexander could be a king, she thought, if he ever was one, she would be a queen.

In the Perseus Room, the chief diviners, the priests of Apollo and of Zeus, Antipatros, and everyone whom rank or office entitled to be there, had assembled to hear the oracle delivered. The heralds from Delphi stood before the dais. Alexander, who had run the first part of the way, made a slow entrance and stood at the right of the throne, arriving just before the King. Nowadays he had to manage such things for himself.

There was a pause of whispering expectation. This was a royal embassy. Not for the swarming petitioners about marriages and land purchases and sea journeys and offspring, who could be dealt with by drawing lots, but for this single question, the grey-haired Pythia had gone into the smoky cave below the temple, mounted the tripod beside the Navel Stone swathed in its magic nets, chewed her bitter laurel, breathed the vapor from the rock-cleft, and uttered her god-crazed mutterings before the shrewd-eyed priest who would interpret them in verse. Old fateful legends drifted like mist from mind to mind. Those of more stolid temper awaited some stock response, advice to sacrifice to the proper gods, or to dedicate a shrine.

The King limped in, was saluted, and sat down, his stiff leg pushed forward. Now he could exercise less, he had begun to put on weight; there was new solid flesh on his square frame, and Alexander, standing behind, saw that his neck had thickened.

There were the ritual exchanges. The chief herald unrolled his scroll.

“Pythian Apollo, to Philip son of Amyntas, King of the Macedonians, answers thus: Wreathed is the bull for the altar, the end fulfilled. And the slayer too is ready.”

The company pronounced the well-omened phrases prescribed for such occasions. Philip nodded to Antipatros, who nodded back with relief. Parmenion and Attalos were having trouble on the coast of Asia, but now the main force would set out with good augury. There was a satisfied hum. A favorable answer had been expected; the god had much to thank King Philip for. But it was only to greatly honored ones, the courtiers murmured, that Two-Tongued Apollo spoke with so clear a voice.

“I have put myself in his way,” Pausanias said. “But I have had no sign from him. Courteous, yes; but then he always was. From a child he knew the story. I used to see it in his eyes. But he gives no sign. Why not, if all this is true?”

Deinias shrugged and smiled. He had feared this moment. Had Pausanias been prepared to throw his life away, he could have done it eight years before. A man in love with vengeance wanted to outlive his enemy, and taste the sweet on his tongue. This Deinias had known, and it was prepared for.

“Surely that does not surprise you? Such things have a way of being seen, and remembered later. You may rest assured that you will be watched over like a friend; subject of course to a good appearance. Look. I have brought you something which will set your mind at rest.” He opened his hand.

Pausanias, peering, said, “One ring is much like another.”

“Look well at this one. Tonight, at supper, you will be able to look again.”

“Yes,” Pausanias said. “With that I would be satisfied.”

“Why,” Hephaistion exclaimed, “you’re wearing your lion ring. Where was it? We looked everywhere.”

“Simon found it in my clothes chest. I must have run my hand through the clothes, and dragged it off.”

“I looked there myself.”

“I suppose it lodged in a fold.”

“You don’t think he stole it, and then took fright?”

“Simon? He’d have more sense, everyone knows it’s mine. It’s a lucky day, it seems.”

He meant that Eurydike had just been delivered of her child; it was another girl.

“May God fulfill the good omen,” Hephaistion said.

They went down to supper. Alexander paused to greet Pausanias by the entry. From so grim-faced a man, it was always a small triumph to win a smile.

It was the dark before dawn. The old theater at Aigai glowed with cressets and flambeaux. Small torches flitted like fireflies, as stewards guided guests to their places on the cushioned benches. The light breeze from the mountain forests picked up the smells of burning pine-resin and packed humanity.

Down in the round orchestra were set in a circle the twelve altars of the Olympians. Fires glowed on them, sweetened with incense, lighting up the robes of their heirophants, and the strong bodies of the sacrificers with their shining cleavers. From the fields beyond came the lowing and bleating of the victims, restless at the stir and torchlight, wreathed already in their garlands. Above the rest rose the bellow of King Zeus’ white bull with his gilded horns.

On the stage, its ornate setting still dim with dusk, the King’s throne was set, flanked with state chairs for the royal kin: his new son-in-law, his son, and the high chiefs of Macedon.

In the upper tiers were the athletes, the charioteers, the singers and musicians who would compete in the Games when the coming rite had hallowed them. With these, and the multitude of the King’s invited guests, the small theater was packed full. The soldiers and peasants, the tribesmen ridden in from the hills to see the show, trampled and stirred on the dusky hillside around the scooped shell of the theater, or thronged the processional way. Voices rose and fell and shifted, like waves on a shingle beach. The pine trees, standing black in the eastward glimmer, creaked under their load of boys.

The old rough road to the theater had been leveled and widened for the great procession. Laid by the mountain dews, the dust smelled sweet in the sharp daybreak air. Soldiers detailed to clear the route came with torches; the jostling was good-humored, shover and shoved being often fellow tribesmen. The torches were extinguished in the lift of a cloudless clear summer dawn.

As pink touched the peaks beyond the Aigai ledge, the splendors of the parade way glimmered into view; the tall scarlet masts with their gilt finials of lion or eagle, the long streaming banners; the festoons of flowers and ribboned ivy; the triumphal arch carved and painted with the Exploits of Herakles, and topped with a Victory holding out her gilded bays. On either side of her stood two live golden-haired boys robed as Muses, with trumpets in their hands.

In the castle forecourt on the ancient stone acropolis, Philip stood in a purple cloak clasped with gold, crowned with a golden laurel-wreath. His head was turned into the light early breeze. Birdsong, the tweeting and twangling of instruments tuning up, voices of spectators and of marshals giving orders, came to him backed by the bass roar of the Aigai falls. His gaze traversed the plain that stretched east to Pella and the dawn-mirroring sea. His pasture lay lush and green before him; his rivals’ horns were broken. His wide nostrils snuffed the rich friendly air.

Behind him, in a scarlet tunic and jeweled sword belt, Alexander stood beside the bridegroom. His bright hair, freshly washed and combed, was crowned with a garland of summer flowers. Half the states of Greece had sent the King wrought-gold wreaths as gifts of honor; but none had been passed to him.

Round the forecourt were ranged the men of the Royal Bodyguard, ready to form the escort. Pausanias, their commander, was pacing about before the lines. Those in his path would dress ranks anxiously, or fidget with their equipment; then stand easier, aware that he had not looked at them.

On the north rampart, among her women, was the bride, just risen from her marriage bed. She had had no pleasure in it; but she had been ready for worse. He had been decent, not very drunk, much aware of her youth and maidenhood, and not really old. She no longer feared him. Craning over the rough stone parapet, she saw the long snake of the procession forming along the walls. Beside her, her mother stared down into the courtyard; her lips were moving, a faint murmur of breath came out. Kleopatra did not try to hear the words. She felt the sorcery, like heat from a covered fire. But it was time to set out for the theater, their litters were ready. Soon she would be on her wedding journey; such things would no longer matter. Even if Olympias came to Epiros, Alexandros would know how to deal with it. It was something after all, to have a husband.

The Muses’ trumpets blew. Under the Victory arch, to shouts of wonder, the Twelve Gods passed in progress to their altars. Each float was drawn by matched horses, caparisoned in red and gold. The wooden images were carved god-size, seven feet tall, and had been tinted by the Athenian master who colored for Apelles.

King Zeus enthroned, with staff and eagle, had been copied in little from the giant Zeus at Olympia, his throne gilded, his robe stiff with gems and bullion. Apollo was robed as a musician, with a gold lyre. Poseidon rode in a sea-horse chariot. Demeter sat crowned with gold corn, between mystai holding torches. Queen Hera had her peacocks; wits remarked that King Zeus’ consort came rather far down the line. Virgin Artemis, bow at shoulder, held a kneeling stag by the horns. Dionysos rode nude on a spotted panther. Athene had her shield and helmet, but not her Attic owl. Hephaistos wielded his hammer; Ares, his foot on a prone foe, glared under his crested helmet; Hermes laced a winged sandal. Clad in a narrow drift of veil, a little Eros beside her, Aphrodite sat in a flowered chair. It was observed, in undertones, that she had a look of Eurydike; she was still in the lying-in room; she would not appear today.

The last float of the twelve received its fanfare. The thirteenth float came on.

King Philip’s image had an eagle-headed throne with couchant leopards for arms. His feet rested on a winged bull with a Persian tiara and the face of a man. The artist had trimmed down his figure, left out his scars, and put back his age ten years. Allowing for this, he was very lifelike; one almost expected movement from the black painted eyes.

There were cheers; but like a cold current in warm seas, there could be felt a flaw of silence. One old countryman murmured to another, “He ought to have been made smaller.” They looked askance at the line of jolting gods ahead, and made ancient averting signs.

The chiefs of Macedon followed, Alexandros of Lynkestis and the rest. It was seen that even those from the back hills wore good loom-woven wool with border-work, and a gold brooch. Old folk recalled days of sheepskin cloaks, when bronze pins were riches; their tongues clucked between doubt and wonder.

To the beat of deep-toned pipes playing a Dorian march, came the van of the Royal Guard, Pausanias leading. The men swaggered in their parade armor, smiling at friends in the crowd; a feast-day did not demand the sternness of maneuvers. But Pausanias looked straight on, at the tall doorway of the theater.

There was a blare of archaic horns, and cries of “May the King live!”

Philip paced on a white horse, in his purple cloak and gold crown. Half a length behind, at either side, rode his son-in-law and his son.

The peasants made good-luck phallic signs at the bridegroom, and wished him offspring. But by the arch, a troop of young men, who had been waiting with filled lungs, yelled all together, “Alexander!”

He turned his head smiling, and looked at them with love. Long after, when they were generals and satraps, they would boast of it to silence envy.

The rear of the bodyguard came after; then, finishing the procession, the victims for the sacrifice, one for each god, led by the bull with a garland around his dewlaps, and gold foil on his horns.

The sun floated up from its nets of light; everything glittered; the sea, the dewy grass, crystal cobwebs on yellow broom; the jewels, the gilding, the cool gleam of the burnished bronze.

The gods had entered the theater. Through the tall gateway of the parodos, the cars drove round the orchestra one by one; the guests applauded; the resplendent images were lifted off, and put on bases near their altars. The thirteenth deity, who claimed no shrine but owned the precinct, was set down in the middle.

Outside in the road, the King made a sign. Pausanias barked an order. The van of the Royal Guard wheeled smartly left and right, and fell back on the rear guard, behind the King.

The theater was some hundred yards away. The chiefs, looking back, saw the Guard retire. The King, it seemed, had entrusted himself to them for this last lap of his progress. Pleased by the compliment, they opened their ranks for him.

Noticed only by his own men, who thought it none of their business, Pausanias strode on towards the parodos.

Philip saw the chiefs waiting. He walked his horse up to them, from the standing ranks of the Guard, and leaned down smiling. “Go on in, my friends. I shall come after.”

They began moving; but one elderly laird stood planted by his bridle, and said with Macedonian forthrightness, “No guard, King? In all this crowd?”

Philip leaned down and clapped his shoulder. He had been hoping someone would say it. “My people are guard enough. Let all these foreigners see it. Thanks for your kindness, Areus; but go on in.”

As the chiefs went forward, he slowed his horse, falling back between the bridegroom and Alexander. From the crowd each side came a buzz of friendly voices. Ahead was the theater, packed with friends. His broad mouth smiled; he had looked forward to this moment of public proof. An elected King, whom these southerners had dared call tyrant; let them see for themselves if he needed the tyrant’s square of spearmen. Let them tell Demosthenes, he thought.

He reined up and beckoned. Two servants came up to the younger men, and stood ready to hold their horses. “You now, my sons.”

Alexander, who had been watching the chiefs go in, looked sharply round. “Are we not to go with you?”

“No,” Philip said crisply. “Weren’t you told? I go in alone.”

The bridegroom looked away, to hide his embarrassment. Were they going to bicker over precedence now, before everyone? The last of the chiefs was going through out of sight. He could not walk over by himself.

Sitting upright on Oxhead’s scarlet saddlecloth, Alexander looked along the stretch of empty road, empty in sunlight; wide, trampled, wheel-rutted, hoof-marked; ringing with emptiness. At its end, in the triangle of deep shadow thrown by the parodos, was a gleam of armor, a line of red cloak. If Pausanias was there, he must have his orders?

Oxhead pricked up his ears. His eye, bright as onyx, looked sideways; Alexander touched his neck with a finger; he stood like bronze. The bridegroom fidgeted. Why would the youth not move? There were times when one could understand the rumors. It was something about the eyes. There had been a day at Dodona; a bitter wind, a fall of snow lying, he wore a sheepskin cloak…

“Get down then,” said Philip impatiently. “Your brother-in-law is waiting.”

Alexander glanced again at the dark gateway. He pressed with his knee, bringing Oxhead nearer, and looked with deep concentration into Philip’s face.

“It is too far,” he said quietly. “It’s better if I go with you.”

Philip raised his brows under his gold garland. It was clear enough now what the lad was after. Well, he had not earned it yet; let him not push for it. “That is my business. I will be judge of what is best.”

The deep-shadowed eyes reached for his. He felt invaded. From any subject, it was an affront to stare at the King.

“It is too far,” said the high clear voice, inexpressive, steady. “Let me go in with you, and I will pledge my life for yours…I swear it to you by Herakles.”

Faint, curious murmurs began to be heard among the bystanders, aware of something unplanned. Philip, though growing angry, was careful of his face. Keeping down his voice, he said sharply, “That is enough. We are not going to the theater to act in tragedy. When I need you I will tell you so. Obey my orders.”

Alexander’s eyes ceased their quest. His presence left them; they were as empty as clear grey glass. “Very well, sir,” he said. He dismounted; Alexandros followed with relief.

Pausanias in the tall gateway saluted as they came. Alexander returned it in passing, while he spoke to Alexandros. They ascended the short ramp to the stage, acknowledged the acclamations, and took their seats.

Outside, Philip touched his rein. With a stately gait, his well-trained charger went forward, undisturbed by noise. The people knew what the King was doing, admired it, and took care he heard. His anger passed; he had something better to think of. If the boy had chosen some more fitting time…

He rode on, acknowledging the cheers. He would sooner have walked, but his limp robbed it of dignity. Already, through the twenty-foot-high parodos, he could glimpse the orchestra with its ring of gods. The music had struck up for him.

From the stone gateway a soldier stepped forward, to help him down and take his horse. It was Pausanias. In honor of the day, he must have posted himself to this page’s service. How long ago…It was a signal of reconcilement. At last he was ready to forget. A charming gesture. In the old days, he had had a gift for such acts of grace.

Philip slid stiffly down, smiled, and began to speak. Pausanias’ left hand took his arm in a tightening grip. Their looks met. Pausanias brought out his right hand from his cloak, so swiftly that Philip never saw the dagger, except in Pausanias’ eyes.

The guard up the road saw the King fall, and Pausanias stoop over him. His lame foot must have stumbled, the men thought, and Pausanias been clumsy. Suddenly Pausanias straightened up, and began to run.

He had been eight years in the Guard, and for five of them commanded it. A farmer among the crowd was the first to call out, “He’s killed the King!” As if given leave to credit their senses, with confused shouts the soldiers rushed towards the theater.

An officer reached the body, stared at it, pointed wildly, and yelled, “After him!” A stream of men poured round the corner, behind the backstage buildings. The King’s well-trained charger stood stolidly by the parodos. No one had thought fast enough to dare the outrage of mounting it.

A piece of land behind the theater, sacred to Dionysos its guardian god, had been farmed by the priests with vines. The thick black old stocks were dappled with young shoots and bright green leaves. On the earth glinted Pausanias’ helmet, flung away as he ran; his red cloak draped a vine-prop. He raced over the rough clods towards the old stone wall and its open gateway. Beyond it, a mounted man with a spare horse was waiting.

Pausanias was in hard training, and not yet thirty. But in the hunt were youths not yet twenty, who had learned mountain warfare with Alexander; they had trained still harder. Three or four drew out in front. The gap began to narrow.

It was narrowing too slowly, however. The gate was not far ahead. The man with the horses had turned their heads, ready, towards the open road.

Suddenly, as if an invisible spear had struck him, Pausanias hurtled forward. An arched knotted root had caught his toe. He fell flat; then rose on hands and knees, tugging free his booted foot. But the young men were on him.

He twisted over, looking from one to another, searching. No luck. But he had faced this chance from the first. He had cleansed his honor. He dragged at his sword; someone set a foot on his arm, another trod on his corselet. He had had no time to feel the pride of it, he thought as all the iron hacked down. No time.

The man with the horses, after one glance, had unhitched the spare one, lashed his own mount, and raced away. But the stunned pause was over. Hooves drummed on the road beyond the vines. The riders spurred after him through the gates, knowing the value of the prize.

In the vineyard, the press had caught up with the leading hunters. An officer looked down at the body bleeding, like some ancient sacrifice, into the roots of the vine-stock. “You’ve finished him. You young fools! Now he can’t be questioned.”

“I never thought of it,” said Leonnatos, the drunkenness of the blood-chase leaving him. “I was afraid he’d still get away.”

“I only thought,” said Perdikkas, “of what he’d done.” He wiped his sword on the dead man’s kilt.

As they walked away, Aratos said to the others, “Well, it’s best. You know the story. If he’d talked, it could only disgrace the King.”

“What King?” said Leonnatos. “The King is dead.”

Hephaistion’s seat was halfway up the theater, near the center steps.

The friends who had waited to cheer Alexander had run round, and scrambled in by an upper gate. These were peasants’ seats as a rule; but Companions of the Prince were small fry in today’s assembly. He had missed the grand entrance of the gods. His father was seated lower down; his mother would be among the women, in the far-end block. The two Queens were already there, in the front row. He could see Kleopatra looking about at the sights, like the other girls; Olympias, it seemed, thought that beneath her. She was staring out fixedly, straight before her, towards the parodos on the other side.

It was out of Hephaistion’s sight-line; but he was well placed for the stage with its three thrones. It was magnificent; the back and wings had columns with carved capitals, supporting embroidered curtains. The music came from behind them, crowded out from the orchestra by so many gods.

He waited for Alexander, to give him another cheer; if they started it well, everyone would take it up. He would be better for that.

Here he came now, with the Epirote King. The cheer spread well through the theater. Never mind the names being the same; he would know from the sound.

He knew, and smiled. Yes, it had done him good. This was a small theater; Hephaistion had seen, when he came in, that he was not himself. In one of his dreams, a bad one, and glad to wake. What can one expect today? I’ll see him after, if I can get near him before the Games. Everything will be simpler, when we cross to Asia.

Down in the orchestra, King Philip’s effigy sat in its gilded throne, on a base swagged with laurel. The throne waiting on the stage was just the same. Cheers sounded from the road; the hidden music grew louder.

It reached a climactic flourish. There was a hiatus, the sense of a dropped cue. Suddenly, from the women’s block where the tiers curved to face the parodos, came a shrill scream.

Alexander’s head went round. His face, from which the strangeness had been passing before, altered. He jumped from his throne and went swiftly downstage where he could see out past the wings. He was running down the ramps and through the orchestra, between priests, altars and gods, before the shouting began outside. His garland fell from his flying hair.

While the audience stirred and chattered, Hephaistion leaped down the steps to the halfway gallery, and began to race along it. The friends followed promptly; they had been trained not to waste time. Around the gallery, the young men with their speed and purpose were a spectacle in themselves, suspending panic till they had passed by. They reached the end steps that led down towards the parodos. These were choked already, with bewildered foreign guests from the lower tiers. Hephaistion shoved through with the ruthlessness of battle, elbowing, shouldering, butting. A fat man fell, tripping others; the stairs were jammed; the tiers were a confusion of people scrambling up or down. In the still center of chaos, forsaken by their heirophants, the wooden gods in their circle turned all their eyes on the wooden King.

Unmoving as they, straight-backed on her carved chair of honor, ignoring her daughter clutching her arm and crying out to her, Queen Olympias sat staring out towards the parodos.

Hephaistion felt a red rage for anyone in his way. Not caring how he did it, his companions all left behind, he fought his way through to his goal.

Philip lay on his back, the hilt of the dagger standing out between his ribs. It was Celtic work, with an elaborate plaited pattern of inlaid silver. His white chiton was almost unstained; the blade sealed the wound. Alexander was bent above him, feeling for his heart. The King’s blind eye was half-closed, the other turned up at the living eyes above him. His face was set in a stare of shock, and an astonished bitterness.

Alexander touched the lid of the open eye. It gave limply with his fingers. “Father,” he said. “Father, Father.”

He put his hand to the clammy brow. The gold crown slipped off, and fell with a brittle clink on the pavement. For a moment his face fixed, as if carved in marble.

The body stirred. The mouth parted, as if to speak. Alexander started forward; he raised the head between his hands, and leaned towards it. But only air came from the corpse, loosened by some spasm of lung or belly; a belch, with a little froth of blood.

Alexander drew back. Suddenly his face and his body changed. He said, as sharply as a battle order, “The King is dead.” He got to his feet and looked about him.

Someone called out, “They caught him, Alexander, they cut him down.” The broad entry of the parodos was seen to be full of chiefs, unarmed for the feast, confusedly trying to form a protective wall.

“Alexander, we are here.” It was Alexandros of Lynkestis, pushing himself into prominence. He had found himself a panoply already. It fitted; it was his own. Alexander’s head seemed to point, in silence, as sharply as a hunting-dog’s. “Let us escort you to the citadel, Alexander; who can tell where the traitors are?”

Yes, who? thought Hephaistion; that man knows something. What was his armor ready for? Alexander was looking about the crowd; for the other brothers, Hephaistion thought. He was used to reading Alexander’s thoughts in the back of his head.

“What is this?”

The press parted. Antipatros, having forced his way through a turmoil of scared guests, had reached Macedonians who at once made way for him. He had long been appointed sole Regent of Macedon, with effect from the royal army’s leaving. Tall, garlanded, robed with restrained splendor, clad in authority, he looked about him. “Where is the King?”

Alexander answered, “Here.”

He held Antipatros’ eyes a moment, then stepped back to show the body.

Antipatros bent, and rose. “He is dead,” he said unbelievingly. “Dead.” He passed his hand over his brow. It touched his festal wreath; with a gesture of dazed convention, he dropped it on the ground. “Who—”

“Pausanias killed him.”

“Pausanias? After so long?” He stopped abruptly, discomposed by what he had said.

“Was he taken alive?” said Alexandros of Lynkestis, just too quickly.

Alexander delayed the answer, to watch his face. Then, “I want the gates of the city closed, and the walls manned. No one to leave till I give the order.” He scanned the crowd. “Alketas, your division. Post them now.”

The egg is hatched, thought Antipatros, and I was right. “Alexander, you must be in danger here. Will you come up to the castle?”

“In good time. What are those men about?”

Outside, the second-in-command of the Royal Guard was trying to get them in hand, with the help of what junior officers he could find. But the soldiers had lost their heads entirely, and were listening to some of their number who cried out that they would all be accused of conspiracy in the murder. They turned with curses on the young men who had killed Pausanias; it would look as if they had needed to stop his mouth. The officers were trying vainly to shout them down.

Alexander stepped from the sharp blue shadow of the parodos into the cool brilliant early light. The sun had scarcely climbed since he had walked into the theater. He vaulted up on the low wall by the gateway. The noise changed, and died down.

“Alexander!” said Antipatros sharply. “Take care! Don’t expose yourself.”

“Guard—by the right—form phalanx!”

The scuffling mass grew quiet, like a scared horse calmed by its rider.

“I honor your grief. But don’t grieve like women. You did your duty; I know what your orders were. I myself heard them. Meleagros, an escort for the King’s body. Bring him to the castle. The small audience room.” Seeing the man look about for some makeshift litter, he said, “There is a bier behind the stage, with the things for tragedy.”

He stooped over the body, pulled out a fold from the cloak crumpled under it, and covered the face with its bitter eye. The men of the escort closed round their charge, hiding it from sight.

Stepping out before the silent ranks of the Guard, he said, “Fall out, the men who struck down the murderer.”

Between pride and dread, they stood forth uncertainly.

“We owe you a debt. Don’t fear it will be forgotten. Perdikkas.” His face smoothed with relief, the young man came forward. “I left Oxhead in the road outside. Will you see him safe for me? Take a guard of four.”

“Yes, Alexander.” He went off in a blaze of gratitude.

There was a felt silence; Antipatros was looking oddly under his brows.

“Alexander. The Queen your mother is in the theater. Had she not better have a guard?”

Alexander walked past him, and looked in through the parodos. He stood there in perfect stillness. There was a stir about the entry; the soldiers had found the tragic bier, ornately painted and draped with purple. They set it down by Philip’s body and heaved him onto it. The cloak fell from the face; the officer pulled down the eyelids and pressed them till they closed.

Alexander, motionless, stared on into the theater. The crowd had gone, thinking it no place to loiter in. The gods remained. In some surge of tumult, Aphrodite had been toppled from her base, and lay awkward and stiff beside it. Flung clear in her fall, young Eros leaned on her fallen throne. King Philip’s image sat stockily in its place, its painted eyes fixed on the empty tiers.

Alexander turned away. His color had changed, but his voice was even. “Yes; I see she is still there.”

“She must be in distress,” said Antipatros. He spoke without expression.

Alexander gazed at him thoughtfully. Presently, as if something had just chanced to catch his eye, he looked aside.

“You are right, Antipatros. She should be in the safest hands. So I shall be grateful if you, yourself, will escort her up to the citadel. Take what men you think sufficient.”

Antipatros’ mouth opened. Alexander waited, his head tilted slightly, his eyes unwavering. Antipatros said, “If you wish, Alexander,” and went upon his errand.

There was a moment’s lull. From his place in the crowd, Hephaistion came out a little, signaling no message, only offering his presence, as his omens prompted him. No message was returned; yet between one step and the next, he saw God thanked for him. His own destiny, too, was opening out before him, in unmeasured vistas of sun and smoke. He would not look back wherever it should take him; his heart accepted it with all its freight, the bright and the dark.

The officer of the bearer party gave an order. King Philip on his gilded bier jogged round the corner. From the sacred vineyard, borne on a hurdle and covered with his torn cloak, his blood dripping through the plaited withies, some troopers brought Pausanias. He too would have to be shown before the people. Alexander said, “Prepare a cross.”

The noises had died to a restless hum, mingled with the roar of the Aigai falls. Lifting above it his strong unearthly cry, a golden eagle swooped over. In its talons was a lashing snake, snatched from the rocks. Each head lunged for the other, seeking in vain the mortal stroke. Alexander, his ear caught by the sound, gazed up intently, to see the outcome of the fight. But, still in combat, the two antagonists spired up into the cloudless sky, above the peaks of the mountains; became a speck in the dazzle, and were lost to sight.

“All is done here,” he said, and gave orders to march up to the citadel.

As they reached the ramparts which overlooked the Pella plain, the new summer sun stretched out its glittering pathway across the eastern sea.