The early years of anguished struggle to cure his stammer, project his thin voice and temper its shrillness, made him need his own reassurance. Again and again, in audible undertones, script in hand, he must have rehearsed this passage on the journey, on board ship or at inns. This mountebank peddler of others’ words; of course he could have mastered it.
The anecdote reached its well-turned close. Everyone looked impressed, the King, the generals, the other envoys; all but the boy, who, growing restless at last after the hours of stillness, had begun to scratch his head.
Demosthenes confronted not only the loss of his most telling passage; that was the least of it. It should have led his theme to the central matter. Now, at this last moment, he would have to recast his speech.
He had never been good extempore, even with the audience on his side. The King’s eye had swiveled his way again, expectantly.
Frantically he gathered in mind the fragments of his speech, trying edge against edge for joins, bridging, transposing. But having taken no interest in Aischines’ speech, he had no idea how much of it was left, how soon his own turn would come. The suspense scattered his thoughts. He could only remember the times when he had put down Aischines’ upstart pretensions, reminding him, and people of influence along with him, that he came of broken-down gentlefolk, that as a boy he had ground ink for his father’s school and copied civil service lists; that on the stage he had never played leading roles. Who could have reckoned on his bringing to the noble theater of politics the sleights of his sordid trade?
And he could never be accused of it. To own the truth would make any orator the laughingstock of Athens. One would never live it down.
Aischines’ voice had the swell of peroration. Demosthenes felt cold sweat on his brow. He clung to his opening paragraph; its momentum might lead him on. Perseus hovered scornfully. The King sat stroking his beard. Antipatros was muttering something to Parmenion. The boy was raking his fingers through his hair.
Deftly, into his final paragraph, Aischines slipped the key passage of Demosthenes’ prepared finale. He bowed, was thanked. “Demosthenes,” said the herald, “son of Demosthenes, of Paiania.”
He rose and began, advancing as to a precipice; all sense of style had deserted him, he was glad to remember the mere words. Almost at the last, his normal quick sense revived; he saw how to bridge the gap. At this moment, a movement drew his eye. For the first time, the boy had lifted his head.
The crimped curls, already loosening before he had begun work on them, had changed to a tousled mane springing strongly from a peak. His grey eyes were wide open. He was very slightly smiling.
“To take a broad view of the question…a broad view…to take a…”
His voice strangled in his throat. His mouth closed and opened; nothing came out but breath.
Everyone sat up and stared. Aischines, rising, patted him solicitously on the back. The boy’s eyes were leveled in perfect comprehension, missing nothing, awaiting more. His face was filled with a clear, cold brightness.
“To take a broad view…I…I…”
King Philip, astounded and bewildered, had grasped the one fact that he could afford to be magnanimous. “My dear sir, take your time. Don’t be disturbed; it will come back to you in a moment.”
The boy had tilted his head a little to the left; Demosthenes recalled the pose. Again the grey eyes opened, measuring his fear.
“Try to think of it little by little,” said Philip good-humoredly, “back from the beginning. No need to be put off by a moment’s dry-up, like the actors in the theater. I assure you, we can wait.”
What cat-and-mouse game was this? It was impossible the boy should not have told his father. He remembered the schoolroom Greek: “You are going to die. I am telling you.”
There was a buzz from the envoys’ chairs; his speech contained matter of importance, not yet covered. The main headings, if he could find only those…In dull panic, he followed the King’s advice, stumbling again through the preamble. The boy’s lips moved gently, smilingly, silently. Demosthenes’ head felt empty, like a dried gourd. He said, “I am sorry,” and sat down.
“In that case, gentlemen…” said Philip. He signed to the herald. “When you have rested and refreshed yourselves, I will let you have my answer.”
Outside, Antipatros and Parmenion were telling each other how they thought the envoys would shape in cavalry. Philip, as he turned towards his study where he had his written speech (he had kept a few spaces for matters arising), became aware of his son looking up at him. He signed with his head; the boy followed him into the garden, where, in reflective silence, they relieved themselves among the trees.
“You could have gone out,” said Philip. “I didn’t think to tell you.”
“I didn’t drink anything first. You told me once.”
“Did I? Well; what did you make of Demosthenes?”
“You were right, Father. He isn’t brave.”
Philip let fall his robe and looked round; something in the voice had arrested him. “What ailed the man? Do you know?”
“That man’s an actor, who spoke before him. He stole his lines.”
“However do you know that?”
“I heard him practicing them in the garden. He spoke to me.”
“Demosthenes? What about?”
“He thought I was a slave and asked if I was spying. Then when I spoke in Greek, he said he supposed I was someone’s bedboy.” He used the barrack word which came to him most readily. “I didn’t tell him; I thought I’d wait.”
“What?”
“I sat up when he started speaking, and he knew me then.”
The boy saw, with unmixed pleasure, his father’s slow laughter inform his gap-toothed grin, his good eye, even his blind one. “But why didn’t you tell me first?”
“He’d have expected that. He doesn’t know what to think.”
Philip looked at him glintingly. “Did the man proposition you?”
“He wouldn’t ask a slave. He just wondered how much I’d cost.”
“Well; we may suppose that now he knows.”
Father and son exchanged looks, in a moment of perfect harmony; unalienated heirs of bronze-sworded chariot lords from beyond the Ister, who had led their tribes down in past millennia, some driving further to seize the southlands and learn their ways, some taking these mountain kingdoms where they kept old customs on; burying their dead in chamber-tombs alongside their forebears whose skulls were cased in boar-tusk helms and whose hand-bones grasped double axes; handing down, father to son, elaborate niceties of blood-feud and revenge.
Affront had been requited, on a man immune from the sword and in any case beneath its dignity; with finesse, in terms cut to his measure. It had been as neat, in its way, as the vengeance in the hall at Aigai.
The peace terms were debated at length in Athens. Antipatros and Parmenion, who went to represent Philip, watched fascinated the strange ways of the south. In Macedon, the only thing ever voted on was the putting of a man to death; all other public matters were for the King.
By the time the terms had been accepted (Aischines urging it strongly), and the envoys had journeyed back to ratify, King Philip had had time to reduce the Thracian stronghold of Kersobleptes, and take his surrender on terms, bringing back his son to Pella, as a hostage for his loyalty.
Meantime, in the hill-forts above Thermopylai, the exiled temple-robber, Phalaikos the Phokian, was running out of gold, food and hope. Philip was now treating with him in secret. News that Macedon held the Hot Gates would strike Athenians like an earthquake; they could bear the Phokians’ sins (and had indeed an alliance with them) far more lightly than this. It must be hidden till the peace had been ratified by sacred and binding oaths.
Philip was charming to the second embassy. Aischines was most valuable, a man not bought but changed in heart. He accepted gladly the King’s assurance that he meant no harm to Athens, which was sincere; and, which he saw as not false, that he would deal mildly with the Phokians. Athens needed Phokis; not only to hold Thermopylai, but to contain the ancient enemy, Thebes.