He must have been there some time. Philip seemed quite at ease with him, and was telling him a rambling story about snakes in India. “Konon found it under my bath. He killed it with a stick. He said the little ones were the worst.”
“Quite right, sir. They could get into a boot, a man of mine died of it.” He turned to Eurydike, complimented her on her husband’s health, begged her to call on him if he could be of service, and took his leave. Clearly it was too soon, with the Regent still unburied, to ask him about his plans; but she was angry that he had told her nothing, and presented himself to Philip without regard for her absence.
All through the long pompous funeral rites, walking in the procession with shorn hair and ash on her black dress, adding her wail to the chant of lamentation, she scanned Kassandros’ face, whenever he came in sight, for some hint of purpose. It was only solid, correct, shaped for the occasion.
Later, when the men went to the pyre to burn the body, and she stood apart with the women, she heard a loud cry, and saw some kind of stir beside the fire. Then Konon was running through all the men of rank towards it. Soon he came out, with a couple of the guard of honor, carrying Philip, with flaccid limbs and open mouth. Lagging, ashamed, she went over and walked with them towards the palace.
“Madam,” Konon muttered, “if you could speak to the General. He’s not used to the King, he doesn’t know what upsets him. I had a word with him, but he told me to remember my place.”
“I will tell him.” With the back of her head, she could feel scornful Roxane looking after her. One day, she thought, you will not make light of me.
In the palace, Konon undressed Philip, washed him—in the fit he had wetted his robe—and put him to bed. Eurydike in her room took off her mourning dress and combed the soft wood-ash from her ritually disheveled hair. She thought, He is my husband. I knew what he was before I took him. I did it from free choice; so I am bound to him in honor. My mother would tell me so.
She called for a warm egg posset with a splash of wine, and took it in to him. Konon had gone off with the dirty clothes. He looked up at her pleading, like a sick dog at a hard master. “See,” she said, “I have brought you something nice. Never mind that you were taken ill, you couldn’t help it. Many people don’t like to watch a funeral pyre.”
He looked at her thankfully and put his face to the bowl. He was glad that she asked no questions. The last thing he remembered, before the drumbeat in his head and the terrible white light, was the beard of the corpse blackening and stinking in the fire. It had brought back to him a day a long time ago, before he went journeying with Alexander. That had been the funeral of the King, so they had told him, but he had not known whom they meant. They had cut short his hair and put a black robe on him and dirtied his face, and made him walk with a lot of people crying. And there was his frightening father, whom he had not seen for years, lying on a bed of logs and brushwood, with a grand bedspread, grim-faced and dead. He had never seen a dead man before. Alexander was there. He too had had a haircut, the fair crop shone in the sun. He had made a speech, quite a long one, about what the King had done for the Macedonians; then, suddenly, he had taken a torch from someone who had been holding it, and stuck it in among the brushwood. Horrified, Philip had watched as the flames rushed up, roaring and crackling, running along the edges of the embroidered pall, then bursting through it; then the hair and the beard … For a long time afterwards, he would wake with a scream in the night, and could tell no one that he had dreamed of his burning father.
The polished marble doors closed on Antipatros’ tomb, and an uneasy calm fell upon Macedon.
Polyperchon gave out that he had no wish for arbitrary powers. Antipatros had governed for an absent ruler. It was now proper that the chief men should share his counsels. Many Macedonians approved this sign of antique virtue. Some others said that Polyperchon was incapable of decision and wished to avoid too much responsibility.
The calm became easier. Every eye was upon Kassandros.
His father had not wholly passed him over. He had been appointed Chiliarch, Polyperchon’s second in command, a rank to which Alexander had given high prestige. Would he be content with it? Men watched his rufous impassive face as he came and went in Pella, and said to each other that he had never been a man to swallow slights.
However, having buried his father he went quietly about his business through the mourning month. When it was up, he paid his respects to Philip and Eurydike.
“Greet him,” she said to her husband when he was announced, “and then don’t talk. It may be important.”
Kassandros’ greetings to the King were brief. He addressed himself to the Queen. “I shall be gone for a time; I am going to our country place. I have had a good deal to try me; now I mean to make up a hunting party of old friends, and forget public affairs.”
She wished him well with it. He did not miss the questioning in her eyes.
“Your goodwill,” he said, “has been a solace and support to me. You and the King may count on me in these troubled times. You, sir”—he turned to Philip—“are your father’s undoubted son. Your mother’s life was never a public scandal.” To Eurydike he said, “As no doubt you know, there have always been doubts about the birth of Alexander.”
When he had gone, Philip said, “What did he mean about Alexander?”
“Never mind. I am not sure what he meant. We shall find out later.”
Antipatros’ country place was an old run-down hill-fort, overlooking a well-managed rich estate. He had lived at Pella, and run the land with a bailiff. His sons had used the place for hunting parties, such as this one had, till now, appeared to be.
In the upper room of the rude keep a fire was burning on the round hearth under the smoke-hole; autumn nights were sharp in the hills. Around it, on old benches or sheepskin-covered stools, sat a dozen or so of youngish men, dressed in the day’s leather and tough-woven wool, smelling of the horses which could be heard stirring and champing on the floor below, where grooms speaking Thracian were mending and waxing tack.
Kassandros, a red man in the red firelight, sat by his brother Nikanor. Iollas had died soon after he got home from Asia, of a quartan fever picked up in the Babylonian swamps; he had gone down quickly, showing little fight. The fourth brother, Alexarchos, had not been invited. He was learned, slightly mad, and mainly employed in inventing a new language for a Utopian state he had seen in visions. Besides his uselessness, he could not be trusted to hold his tongue.
Kassandros said, “We’ve been here three days and no one’s come spying. We can begin to move. Derdas, Atheas, can you start early tomorrow?”
“Yes,” said the two men across the hearth.
“Get fresh horses at Abdera, Ainos; Amphipolis if you must. Take care at Amphipolis, keep away from the garrison, someone might know you. Simas and Antiphon can start next day. Keep a day between you on the road. Two men aren’t noticed, four make people look.”
Derdas said, “And the message for Antigonos?”
“I’ll give you a letter. You’ll be safe enough if you don’t draw notice. Polyperchon’s a blockhead. I’m hunting, good, he can go to sleep again. When Antigonos reads the letter, tell him anything he wants to know.”
They had been hunting boar in the woods all day, to keep up appearances; soon afterwards the party went off to bed, at the far end of the big room behind a dressed hide curtain. Kassandros and Nikanor lingered by the hearth, their soft voices muted by the stable sounds below.
Nikanor was a tall, lean, sandy-colored man; a capable soldier, who stood by the family loyalties and feuds and looked no further. He said, “Are you sure you can trust Antigonos? He wants more than he has, that’s plain.”