Alexander ate sparingly like the ascetic he was, but he relished the bread, and when the sweets came in – nuts in honey – he ate himself to sticky excess. And he drank, too. It was all local wines – Macedon has no need to import wine, really, and our heavy reds are as good as any in the world. Off in the next room, someone was keeping the wine watered three or four to one, but Nearchus was bright red and the prince was loud.
He put his feet on the floor suddenly, and barked his laugh. ‘I want to see her!’ he said.
We all fell silent.
Alexander had a wine bowl. ‘To the mistress of this house, whosoever she might be. I haven’t eaten like this in my life.’
I said something about being at his service.
‘Then let’s see her!’ Alexander said.
I rose to my feet.
‘In my court we have many factions,’ Alexander said, his eyes a little wild. ‘Attalus believes all men are pigs. Parmenio wants us to make war for ever so he can keep his place – Antipater craves peace so he can keep his. Hephaestion would make love to the world.’ He grinned. ‘But you, my friend, are the only advocate of women. You like women. And now you’ve brought one home, and you are ashamed to show her to me?’ He beamed around. ‘Do you gentlemen know that he put a girl in my bed? Eh?’ he asked.
‘I’ll fetch her, by your leave, my prince.’ I headed for the door.
‘Don’t you find . . . Ptolemy, I’m asking you. Don’t you find that she makes you weaker? After you put that lady in my bed – I thought of nothing else for ten days. I could accomplish nothing. I was worth nothing. Are you a better man than I?’
Knock me over with a feather – he’d never shown a sign of being besotted. Of course, we’d ridden to rescue his father – for nothing, as it turned out.
I shrugged and went to the kitchen.
Nike wasn’t there. There was a cook, a big African I’d never seen before, with a gold earring and a faintly military air. Clearly a freeman – the earring was worth ten days’ wages. ‘Lady Nike?’
‘Changing clothes,’ he said, with one hand on a bronze pan and the other on some eggs. ‘Don’t bother me right now, lord.’
By the time I went back into the hallway, she was there, wearing a fine blue wool chiton in the old Ionian manner, pinned with some very plain bronze pins which I determined on the spot to replace with gold. I snatched a kiss, with spectacular success. Isn’t there something almost miraculous to kissing someone who wants to kiss you? Then she pulled free.
‘Don’t muss my hair,’ she said, and ignoring my attempts to stop her and give her advice, she walked into the andron.
Alexander was drinking again. Nearchus looked . . . frightened. Cleomenes was laughing and Philip was laughing with him. But they all straightened up when Nike came in. She was that kind of girl.
She made a low curtsy to Alexander – just the sort of curtsy she’d have made at one of the shrines.
He looked her over with an air that made me angry – as if she were unfit for human consumption.
‘The food is excellent,’ he said.
‘Thank you, lord,’ she answered.
‘You are a freewoman, I think,’ he said.
She nodded.
‘You can cook and weave, then? How about . . .’ He drawled the question – he meant to offend. ‘How about reading?’
‘I’ve read Isocrates,’ she said.
I’ve seen Alexander surprised a half-dozen times, I think. Maybe more. Not often, though. But when Nike said ‘Isocrates’ his eyes opened wider and his brows shot up. Even his mane of hair seemed to move.
‘Really?’ he asked. ‘And what did you gather from his works?’
She didn’t meet his eye. ‘That he’d like a place at your father’s court,’ she said. ‘And that it is time Macedon stopped playing with Greece and took Persia, instead.’ She had a matter-of-fact delivery that was like Aristotle’s – it was difficult to contradict her, as I learned early in our relationship, and love never stopped her from being ‘right’.
Alexander clapped his hands together, much in the way he might have done for a talking dog, I fear. You have to remember that Aristotle had no time for women at all, and Philip liked them only at the end of his cock, and even then he found them interchangeable with men. Alexander’s mother was too feminine, too much the avatar of Dionysian excess. He didn’t have any charming, witty, argumentative women in his life.
More’s the pity. Aristotle told him that pleasure came with cost, and distracted great men from great deeds, and he took that bait and swallowed it. Domestic happiness puzzled him utterly.
He interrogated her for as long as it took the brazier to burn down, and never asked her to sit. He asked her about her father, about her education, about her views of women as priestesses, as mothers – asked her whether she planned to be a mother.
At first I found it offensive, and then I found the explanation. She was suddenly the ambassador of the tribe of women to the court of Alexander. He’d never really had one to talk to before. And he always kept ambassadors standing because he forgot to ask them to sit – because questioning them about their alien lands excited him so much.
When I understood that, I drank a little to catch up, caught her eye and winked, and she stood calmly and answered him as best she could – some sharp answers, some witty answers, and some plain answers.
When she said that, yes, she wanted to have children, he smiled at her.
‘Ptolemy’s sons? Or will you wed some lesser man?’ he asked.
‘I’m not sure that I can answer that,’ she said. ‘Nor would I, even if I knew.’ She met his eye, and for a moment the Prince of Macedon was eye to eye with a tiger. Neither shrank.
‘Fascinating,’ he said. ‘I drink to you, my lady.’
And then he was finished with her. I took her by the hand and led her out, and she walked into our bedroom and threw up in a basin, and then tidied herself and went to the kitchen to see what had happened to the barley rolls. That was Nike.
I walked him home, with Nearchus and Cleomenes and Philip as guards – because people did want to kill him, and the streets of Pella after dark were an unbeatable opportunity.
He seemed sober. But just short of the palace, he turned to me. ‘I’m not sure that wasn’t the best dinner I’ve ever had,’ he said. ‘And I’m not sure what to think of that.’
‘You are welcome any time,’ I said.
‘Good. I’ll come the second day of every week. I may invite one or two others. See to it that the duty officer knows the way.’ He paused. ‘I’m sorry, please ask the lady Nike if I might come every Tuesday.’
I grinned. ‘I will,’ I said.
Those dinners saved his life. And more. But that’s another story.
FIVE
In spring, we marched.
In fact, it was still late winter, and there was snow everywhere, and our farm-boy recruits got to march through it in Iphactrian sandals that made the snow pack in under the soles of the feet – I was wearing them myself.
Camping an army in snow is dreadful. First, because everything is wet. Snow is water held close to the ground, ready to turn back to water the moment you are comfortable. In higher areas, it stays snow for a while and you are merely cold, but in spring – water, waiting to happen.
Second, because everything wet is cold. Even wood has to be warmed and dried before it will ignite.
There’s no casual forage for animals. The grass – old, tough and useless – is under the snow. Animals use energy getting at it.