She felt she could have struck him; but she held back, fearing to lose her hold on him. Indeed, she had some fear of his strength.
The Assembly was held next day with ancient procedure. Foreign soldiers, the legacies of Alexander’s catholic racial mix, were barred. An impressive rostrum was raised in the biggest clearing, with seats of honor below it. As Eurydike took her place, whispering to Philip a last order to keep still, she felt in the huge throng a new, impalpable change. Something was different, and yet somehow familiar. It was the feel of the homeland, the native hills.
Antigonos spoke first. Here, at Assembly, the angry general was gone. A statesman spoke, not without the skills of oratory. With dignity he reminded them of their heroic past under Alexander, urged them not to disgrace it, and introduced the Regent.
The old man stepped briskly up to the rostrum. His own army cheered him; no hostile sound was heard. As he looked about him, as with perfect timing he signed for silence, an unwanted voice said within Eurydike, This man is a king.
He had reigned over Macedon and Greece throughout Alexander’s, wars. He had crushed the sporadic risings of the south, imposed on its cities the rulers of his choice, exiled his opponents. He had defeated even Olympias. Now he was old and brittle, his height had begun to shrink, his deep voice to crack; but still, given off from his inner core, the aura of power and command surrounded him.
He told them of their forefathers, he told them of Philip who had rescued their fathers from invasion and civil war, and begotten Alexander who had made them masters of the world. They had become a tree with wide and spreading branches—he gestured to the noble timber standing round—but the greatest tree will die if its roots are sundered from its native earth. Could they bear to sink down among the barbarians they had conquered?
He told them of the birth of Arridaios, the lackwit they had honored with Philip’s name; he told what Philip had thought of him, ignoring his presence in the seats below. He reminded them that in all their history, they had never had a woman ruler. Would they now choose a woman and a fool?
Philip, who had followed this peroration, nodded sagely. He found it somehow reassuring. Alexander had told him he ought not to be King, and now this forceful old man agreed. Perhaps they would tell him, now, that he could be Arridaios again.
Antipatros’ own men had been for him from the start.
For the rebels, it was like a slow awakening, from restless dreams. All round her, like the sough of shingle on an ebb-tide beach, Eurydike felt the lapse of the withdrawing sea.
She would not, could not admit defeat. She would speak, it was her right; she had won them once and would again. Soon this old man would finish talking, and she must be ready.
Her hands had clenched, her back and her shoulders tightened; her stomach contracted, achingly. The aching turned to a cramp, a low heavy drag which, with dismay, she tried at first not to recognize. In vain; it was true. Her menses, not due for four days, had started.
She had always counted carefully, always been regular. How could it happen now? It would come on quickly, once begun, and she had not put on a towel.
She had been strung-up this morning; what had she failed to notice in all the stress? Already she felt a warning moisture. If she stood on the rostrum, everyone would see.
The Regent’s speech approached its climax. He was talking of Alexander; she hardly heard. She looked at the thousands of faces round her, on the slopes, in the trees. Why, among all these humans made by the gods, was she alone subject to this betrayal, she only who could be cheated by her body at a great turn of fate?
Beside her sat Philip, with his useless gift of a strong man’s frame. If she had owned it, it would have carried her up to the rostrum and given her a voice of bronze. Now she must creep from the field without a battle; and even her well-wishers would think, Poor girl!
Antipatros had finished. When the applause subsided, he said, “Will the Assembly now hear Eurydike, daughter of Amyntas, the wife of Arridaios?”
No one dissented. Antipatros’ men were curious; her partisans were ashamed to vote against her. Their minds were made up, but they were prepared at least to listen. Now was the moment for a true leader to compel their hearts … She had come, the morning being fresh, with a himation round her shoulders. Now, carefully, she slipped it down to her elbows, to drape in a curve over her buttocks, as elegant ladies wore it in fresco paintings. Getting to her feet, taking care over her draperies, she said, “I do not wish to address the Macedonians.”
Roxane had kept her tent in a good deal of alarm, among scared eunuchs and terrified women; sure that if the mutiny succeeded, Eurydike’s first action would be to kill her and her child; it was, as Roxane saw it, the natural thing to do.
It took her some time to learn the Assembly’s decision, since only Macedonians had attended. At length her wagoner, a Greek-speaking Sidonian, came back to report that the wife of Philip had been quite put down without a word to say; that Antipatros the Regent had been made guardian of both the Kings; and that, as soon as the great lords had agreed to divide the satrapies, he would take both royal households back to Macedon.
“Ah!” she cried, and threw off fear like a cloak. “All will be well, then. It is my husband’s kingdom. They know the fool Philip from his childhood days; of course they will have none of him. It is my child they will wish to see. Alexander’s mother will be waiting.”
Alexander had never read her the letter Olympias had sent him when he had informed her of his marriage. She had advised him, if the barbarian girl should bear a boy, to have it smothered lest it should someday pretend to the throne. It was high time for him to visit the homeland and beget a Macedonian, as she had begged him to do before he crossed to Asia. This letter had not been placed in the royal archives. He had shown it to Hephaistion, and then burned it.
319 B.C.
BESIDE THE GREAT PALACE of Archelaos at Pella stood Antipatros’ house. It was solid but unpretentious; scrupulously correct, he had always avoided a regal style. Its only adornments were a columned portico and a terrace.
The house was hushed and closed. Straw and rushes were laid on the terrace paving. Small groups of people stood at decent distances, to watch the comings and goings of the doctors and the kin: townspeople drawn by curiosity and the sense of drama; guest-friends awaiting the signal for condolence and funeral plans; dealers in mourning-wreaths and grave-goods. Hovering more discreetly, or represented by spies, were the consuls of client cities, who had the most at stake.
Nobody knew who would inherit power when the old man unclenched at last his grasp of life, or whether his policies would be continued. His last action, before he took to his bed, had been to hang two envoys bringing a petition from Athens, a father and son who he found had corresponded with Perdikkas. Neither age nor his wasting sickness had softened Antipatros. Now the watchers scanned, whenever it appeared, the set frowning face of his son Kassandros, trying to read the omens.
Near by in the palace, that famous wonder of the north, where both the Kings maintained their separate households, the tension was like the string of a drawn bow.
Roxane stood in her window, looking from behind a curtain at the silent crowd. She had never felt at home in Macedon. The mother of Alexander had not been there to receive her or admire her son, having vowed, it seemed, never to set foot in Macedon while Antipatros lived. She was still in Dodona. To Roxane the Regent had behaved with formal courtesy; but before they had crossed the Hellespont he had sent her eunuchs home. They would cause her, he told her, to be taken for a barbarian, and people would ill-use them. She was now fluent in Greek, and could be attended by Macedonian ladies. The ladies had instructed her, politely, in the local customs. Politely, they had dressed her suitably; and, very politely, made it clear that she spoiled her son. In Macedon, boys were made ready to be men.