I still wear the ring. I earned it a thousand times, and I never betrayed his trust. Until I killed him.
Pater was still alive when I arrived – on the mend, it appeared. So we dined by the hearth, all the old servants happy to have me home – Pater was an excellent master, had freed all the good slaves already and paid them wages, and men competed to go to our estates. It always baffled me that men had other ways of dealing with their slaves and serfs than Pater’s – he was hard but fair, quick to reward. Who thinks that there’s another way? I think it is like raising children. Good estate management takes a few more minutes than bad estate management, just as a little time and a few words are the difference between a good child and a bad one.
We had a good dinner, and I showed off my ring, and Pater beamed at me with approval. I saw him to bed, kissed him and gave him Alexander’s respects, and he frowned.
‘Your prince is mad,’ he said. ‘Steer a careful course, my son. He is no Philip.’
I didn’t lash out – I only said, ‘My prince is worth ten of Philip.’
Pater shook his head. ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘But Philip is already looking to be rid of him.’
That was like icy water down my back. ‘What?’
Pater shrugged, coughed and drank off a huge dollop of poppy juice. ‘I’ve said too much,’ he whispered. ‘But people tell me things – and I have some of Attalus’s slaves – they’ve run from him. He’s a dangerous man – more like a felon than a general.’ He nodded.
‘Where are these slaves?’ I asked.
Pater smiled. ‘Safe. Ask Heron.’ Heron was his steward. ‘You are an excellent son. Get a wife and make some more! That’s my only advice, lad. You have the rest in your hand. Oh – and don’t forget to breed Narcissa in the spring.’ Narcissa was a big mare – beautiful and wilful and not very interested in boys, but the largest, heaviest, fastest mare we’d ever had.
I held his hand, found myself choked with tears, reminded myself that he was going to be there for a few more nights at least, and let the nurse have him.
He was dead in the morning. He stayed alive for a few days on poppy and willpower to speak to me one last time.
I’m going to cry now.
The gods know I cried then. I wept for a couple of hours, and then I got up and went riding. I rode over our home farms – three farms that had been in the family for ever, since we were smaller men, I suspect – it was winter, and the leaves were off the trees and it was pissing rain, and I didn’t care.
I rode up the hill – we had a big hill in the middle of our property, with an ancient ruined stone tower from the old people at the top. I looked out over all of it – my land as far as my eyes could see, or close enough.
Then I rode back down and buried my pater. He was never a king, or a general. He spurned the court, and mostly he was interested in breeding horses and dogs and cattle and pigs. But he was an excellent father and husband and lord to his people.
Heron understood that there had to be changes. So I spent two weeks – right through the winter festival of lights – sitting in my pater’s chair. I dispensed some justice, walked some boundaries and talked to Heron about the future of the estates. The problem was that most men like me had some brothers or sisters – even bastards – to hold the home fort, so to speak. I was a close friend of the prince, and in twenty years I had every expectation of being a general, or a King’s Councillor, or something better. Satrap? Really, when I was seventeen, I saw no limit to my ambition.
Pretty accurate, as it turned out.
So I wasn’t going to run my estates myself.
Menander and all the ‘New Comedy’ is filled with bad stewards and rapacious managers stealing from lord and peasant alike. Those stereotypes exist for a reason. Heron didn’t want my unlimited trust. He wanted a system of checks and balances to keep him honest. He was a fair man, and he knew that if I rode away and ignored him – well, he’d be under strain.
So for two weeks we hammered out a new administration of my estates, with what was, in effect, a regency council. Heron ran the council, and I got his oldest son, Laodekes, a vacancy as a page. In effect, I ennobled Heron, and his son became my hostage.
That’s Macedon, friend.
At some point in my time at home, I met Nike. She was a house servant – by no means a slave, but rather the daughter of one of Heron’s closest friends, brought in to learn the management of a house before she had her own. She was fifteen, with Aphrodite’s figure and a nose that aimed at the outright conquest of her face. She was pretty sharp – she knew exactly the border between humour and disrespect to her lord, and she walked it carefully, teasing me a little, trying to get me to smile.
I was not doing very well, those weeks after Pater died.
But I liked her for trying, and all of a sudden, in less than a week, I was following her around the house while she did her work. She was the only person I really wanted to see. I’d never been in love before, so the whole thing rather took me by surprise.
I don’t remember how long into the week it was, but I remember standing on the terrace behind the kitchen. She had on a good chiton – good linen – with a zone of braided silk. She always looked like a lady – but the lines were not as clear, then, and her people were not peasants.
She had an apron on, and a scarf in her hair, and a heavy bronze knife in her fist. And what I remember is the moment she turned on me, knife in hand. ‘Shouldn’t you be working?’ she asked. ‘Your father worked all day on these estates.’
I didn’t know what to say, and so, in the best tradition of seventeen-year-old boys, I stammered a great deal.
She laughed – I remember watching her laugh, and there and then, I understood. I wanted her. Up to that moment, somehow I had thought I wanted us to be friends. Or just sought her good opinion.
‘I’ll go and work,’ I muttered – or something like it.
‘Good.’ She nodded. Then, almost sly, out of the corner of her mouth, with the slightest glance out of the corner of her eye – ‘I like to ride – when the work is done.’
A woman who liked to ride? Clearly the gods had made her for me.
We rode out every evening until I left for Pella. I was no blushing virgin, and she burned hot enough that I assume she was not, either. But we had more than lust. The son of Lagus was not going to marry a servant girl, but I went to her father, paid her bride price and when I left for Pella, she and a slave-maid rode with me. And Nike she surely was.
Somehow, I also found time to read Isocrates end to end. It was, after all, a royal command. I read it, and I caught fire. We could do this thing. It was the Thracian campaign writ large – the biggest challenge of men and logistics since the dawn of the world. I read and reread the philosopher’s words, and began to dream of a new world, where we younger men conquered Persia. I could see it.
The first night back in Pella, Alexander came to my rooms unannounced. This required explanation, too. In the last year, as we were promoted – first by experience, and then by decree – to the ranks of manhood and made royal companions rather than just pages, some of us received apartments in the palace. Other men stayed in the pages’ barracks, and others still bought houses in Pella or rented rooms – remember, some of our number were as poor as peasants.
I had two rooms in the palace. I kept them – they were close to the king and very useful when I was on duty, or when we were awake all night.
But after Pater died and I had Nike, I bought a house in town. I bought a big house – in fact, I bought the house that Aristotle vacated. I moved Nike in as my mistress – in effect, as my wife – and I enlarged the stables to hold twenty horses and invited Cleitus, Philip and my two other best friends among the pages – Nearchus and young Cleomenes – to come and live with me. None of them had any money, and all of them were, in effect, my men. Oh, that’s not fair – Cleitus had his own relationship with Alexander, and Philip the Red was never really mine, but we were all close, we shared loyalties, tastes and friends.