The fine inner ends of the boy’s light-brown eyebrows drew together, almost meeting, outlining the heavy bone-shelf over his deep-set eyes. “Wouldn’t even the Spartans fight?”
“To serve under Athenians? They won’t lead, they’ve had their bellyful; and they’ll never follow.” He smiled to himself. “And they’re not the audience for a speechmaker beating his breast in tears, or scolding like a market-woman shortchanged of an obol.”
“When Aristodemos came back here about that man Iatrokles’ ransom, he told me he thought the Athenians would vote for peace.”
It was long since such remarks had had power to startle Philip. “Well, to encourage them, I had Iatrokles home before him, ransom free. Let them send me envoys by all means. If they think they can bring Phokis into their treaty, or Thrace either, they are fools; but so much the better, they can be voting on it while I act. Never discourage your enemies from wasting time…Iatrokles will be an envoy; so will Aristodemos. That should do us no harm.”
“He recited some Homer at supper, when he was here. Achilles and Hektor, before they fight. But he’s too old.”
“That comes to us all. Oh, and Philokrates will be there, of course.” He did not waste time in saying that this was his chief Athenian agent; the boy would be sure to know. “He will be treated like all the others; it would do him no good at home to be singled out. There are ten, in all.”
“Ten?” said the boy staring. “What for? Will they all make speeches?”
“Oh, they need them all to watch each other. Yes, they will all speak, not one will consent to be passed over. Let us hope they agree beforehand to divide their themes. At least there will be one showpiece. Demosthenes is coming.”
The boy seemed to prick his ears, like a dog called for a walk. Philip looked at his kindling face. Was every enemy of his a hero to his son?
Alexander was thinking about the eloquence of Homer’s warriors. He pictured Demosthenes tall and dark, like Hektor, with a voice of bronze and flaming eyes.
“Is he brave? Like the men at Marathon?”
Philip, to whom this question came as from another world, paused to bring round his mind to it, and smiled sourly in his black beard.
“See him and guess. But do not ask him to his face.”
A slow flush spread up from the boy’s fair-skinned neck into his hair. His lips met hard. He said nothing.
In anger he looked just like his mother. It always got under Philip’s skin. “Can’t you tell,” he said impatiently, “when a man is joking? You’re as touchy as a girl.”
How dare he, thought the boy, speak of girls to me? His hands clenched on the sling, so that the gold bit into them.
Now, Philip thought, all the good work was undone. He cursed in his heart his wife, his son, himself. Forcing ease into his voice, he said, “Well, we shall both see for ourselves, I know him no more than you.” This was less than honest; through his agents’ reports, he felt he had lived with the man for years. Feeling wronged, he indulged a little malice. Let the boy keep himself to himself, then, and his expectations too.
A few days later, he sent for him again. For both, the time had been full; for the man with business, for the boy with the perennial search for new tests on which to stretch himself, rock-clefts to leap, half-broke horses to ride, records to beat at throwing and running. He had been taught a new piece, too, on his new kithara.
“They should be here by nightfall,” Philip said. “They will rest in the morning; after luncheon I shall hear them. There is a public dinner at night; so time should limit their eloquence. Of course, you will wear court dress.”
His mother kept his best clothes. He found her in her room, writing a letter to her brother in Epiros, complaining of her husband. She wrote well, having much business she did not trust to a scribe. When he came she closed the diptych, and took him in her arms.
“I have to dress,” he told her, “for the Athenian envoys. I’ll wear the blue.”
“I know just what suits you, darling.”
“No, but it must be right for Athenians. I’ll wear the blue.”
“T-tt! My lord must be obeyed. The blue, then, the lapis brooch…”
“No, only women wear jewels in Athens, except for rings.”
“But my darling, it is proper you outdress them. They are nothing, these envoys.”
“No, Mother. They think jewels barbarous. I shan’t wear them.”
She had begun lately to hear this new voice sometimes. It pleased her. She had never yet conceived of its being used against her.
“You shall be all man, then, my lord.” Seated as she was, she could lean on him and look up. She stroked his windblown hair. “Come in good time; you are as wild as a mountain lion, I must see to this myself.”
When evening came, he said to Phoinix, “I want to stay up, please, to see the Athenians come.”
Phoinix looked out with distaste at the lowering dusk. “What do you expect to see?” he grumbled. “A parcel of men with their hats pulled down to their cloaks. With this ground-mist tonight, you’ll not know master from servant.”
“Never mind. I want to see.”
The night came on raw and dank. The rushes dripped by the lake, the frogs trilled ceaselessly like a noise in the head. A windless mist hung round the sedge, winding with the lagoon till it met the breeze off the sea. In the streets of Pella, muddy runnels carried ten days’ filth and garbage down to the rain-pocked water. Alexander stood at the window of Phoinix’ room, where he had gone to rouse him out. He himself was dressed already in his riding-boots and hooded cloak. Phoinix sat at his book with lamp and brazier, as if they had the night before them. “Look! There are the outriders’ torches coming round the bend.”
“Good, now you can keep your eye on them. I shall go out in the weather when it is time, and not a moment sooner.”
“It’s hardly raining. What will you do when we go to war?”
“I am saving myself for that, Achilles. Don’t forget Phoinix had his bed made up by the fire.”
“I’ll set light to that book of yours, if you don’t hurry. You’ve not even got your boots on.” He hung in the window; small with darkness and furred with mist, the torches seemed to creep like glowworms on a stone. “Phoinix…?”
“Yes, yes. There’s time enough.”
“Does he mean to treat for peace? Or just to keep them quiet till he’s ready, like the Olynthians?”
Phoinix laid down his book on his knee. “Achilles, dear child.” He dropped artfully into the magic rhythm. “Be just to royal Peleus, your honored father.” Not long ago, he had dreamed he stood on a stage, robed to play Leader of the Chorus in a tragedy, of which only one page had yet been written. The rest was already on the wax, but not fair-copied, and he had begged the poet to change the ending; but when he tried to recall it, he remembered only his tears. “It was the Olynthians who first broke faith. They treated with the Athenians, and took in his enemies, both against their oath. Everyone knows a treaty is made void by oath-breaking.”
“The cavalry generals gave up their own men in the field.” The boy’s voice rose a tone. “He paid them to do it. Paid them.”
“It must have saved a good many lives.”
“They are slaves! I would rather die.”
“If all men would rather, there would be no slaves.”
“I shall never use traitors, never, when I’m King. If they come to me I shall kill them. I don’t care whom they offer to sell me, if he’s my greatest enemy, I shall still send him their heads. I hate them like the gates of death. This man Philokrates, he’s a traitor.”
“He may do good in spite of it. Your father means well by the Athenians.”
“If they do as he tells them.”
“Come, one might suppose he meant to set up a tyranny. When the Spartans conquered them in my father’s day, then indeed they had one. You know your history well enough, when you’ve a mind. As far back as Agamemnon the High King, the Hellenes have had a war-leader; either a city or a man. How was the host called out to Troy? How were the barbarians turned in Xerxes’ war? Only now in our day they snap and bicker like pi-dogs, and no one leads.”