The lips of Olympias parted, and the blacks of her eyes grew wide, invading the grey irises; he saw them like soft silk, pleating together. Her arms slackened about him; he was held in the grasp of her eyes.
“He knows you,” she whispered. “Tonight, when he came, be sure it was not for the first time. He must have come often, while you slept. See how he clings to you. He knows you well. He comes from the god. He is your daimon, Alexander.”
The lamp flickered. The end of a pine-brand slipped into the embers, and threw up blue flame. The snake squeezed him swiftly, as if to share a secret; its scales trickled like water.
“I shall call him Tyche,” he said presently. “He shall have his milk in my gold cup. Will he talk to me?”
“Who knows? He is your daimon. Listen, I will tell you—”
The muted noises from the Hall broke out loud as its doors were opened. Men shouted to each other good-nights, jokes or drunken taunts. The noise flowed in on them through their closed defenses. Olympias broke off, gathered him close into her side, and said softly, “Never mind, he won’t come here.” But he felt her taut with listening. There was a sound of heavy feet, a stumble and a curse; then the rap of Agis’ spear-butt on the floor, and the slap of his soles as he presented arms.
The feet came scuffing and tramping up the stairs. The door flew open. King Philip crashed it behind him, and without a glance at the bed started taking off his clothes.
Olympias had pulled up the covers. The child, eyes round with alarm, had for a moment been glad to lie hidden. Then, cowered in the womb of soft wool and scented flesh, he began to feel horror of the danger he could not confront or see. He worked down a fold to make a peephole; it was better to know than to guess.
The King stood naked, one foot up on the cushioned stool of the toilet-table, loosing his sandal strap. His black-bearded face was cocked sideways to see what he was doing; his blind eye was towards the bed.
For a year or more, the child had run in and out of the wrestling-ground, when anyone dependable would take him off the women’s hands. Bare bodies or clothed, it was all one, except for being able to see men’s war-scars. Yet his father’s nakedness, seldom seen, always disgusted him. Now, since one eye had been blinded at the siege of Methone, he had become frightful. At first he had kept it covered with a bandage, from which blood-tinged tears had stained a track down into his beard. Then these had dried, and the bandage had come off. The lid, which the arrow had pierced on its way in, was puckered and streaked with red; the lashes were gummed with yellow matter. They were black, like his good eye and his beard, and the mats of hair on his shins and forearms and chest; a track of black hair led down his belly to the bush, like a second beard, between his loins. His arms and neck and legs were seamed with thick scars, white, red or purple. He belched, filling the air with the smell of stale wine, and showing the gap in his teeth. The child, glued to his peephole, knew suddenly what his father looked like. It was the ogre, one-eyed Polyphemos, who had picked up Odysseus’ sailors and crunched them raw.
His mother had risen on one elbow, with the clothes pulled up to her chin. “No, Philip. Not tonight. It is not the time.”
The King took a stride towards the bed. “Not the time?” he said loudly. He was still panting from the stairs on a full stomach. “You said that half a month ago. Do you think I can’t count, you Molossian bitch?”
The child felt his mother’s hand, which had been curved around his body, clench into a fist. When she spoke again it was in her fighting voice. “Count, you wineskin? You’re not fit to know summer from winter. Go to your minion. Any day of the month is the same to him.”
The child’s knowledge of such things was still imperfect; yet he had a feeling of what was meant. He disliked his father’s new young man, who put on airs; he loathed the secrets he sensed between them. His mother’s body had tightened and hardened all over. He held his breath.
“You cat-a-mountain!” said the King. The child saw him rush upon them, like Polyphemos on his prey. He seemed to bristle all over; even the rod that hung in his black bushy crotch had risen by itself and was thrusting forward, a sight of mysterious horror. He pulled back the bedclothes.
The child lay in his mother’s arm, his fingers dug into her side. His father started back, cursing and pointing. But it was not at them; the blind eye was still turned that way. The child perceived why his mother had not been surprised to feel his new snake beside her. Glaukos had been there already. He must have been asleep.
“How dare you?” panted Philip hoarsely. He had had a sickening shock. “How dare you, when I forbade it, bring your filthy vermin in my bed? Sorceress, barbarian witch…”
His voice stopped. Drawn by the hatred in his wife’s two eyes, his one eye had moved that way, and he had seen the child. The two faces confronted one another: the man’s empurpled, with the wine, and with anger heightened now by shame; the child’s as brilliant as a jewel set in gold, the blue-grey eyes fixed and wide, the skin transparent, the delicate flesh, taut with uncomprehended agony, molded close to the fine bones.
Muttering something, Philip reached by instinct for his robe to cover his nakedness; but there was no more need. He had been wronged, insulted, exposed, betrayed. If his sword had been at hand, he might well have killed her.
Disturbed by all this, the child’s living girdle writhed, and lifted its head. Till now, Philip had not seen it.
“What’s that?” His pointing finger shook. “What’s that upon the boy? That thing of yours? Are you teaching him now? Are you making him into a back-country, snake-dancing, howling mystagogue? I tell you, I’ll not endure it; take heed of what I say, before you suffer; for by Zeus I mean it, as you will feel. My son is a Greek, not one of your barbarous cattle-lifting hillmen…”
“Barbarous!” Her voice rose ringing, then sank to a deadly undertone, like Glaukos’ when angered. “My father, you peasant, sprang from Achilles, and my mother from the royal house of Troy. My forebears were ruling men, when yours were hired farm-hands in Argos. Have you looked in a mirror? One can see the Thracian in you. If my son is Greek, it is from me. In Epiros, our blood runs true.”
Philip gritted his teeth. It squared his chin and broadened his cheekbones, which were wide already. Even under these mortal insults, he remembered the child was there. “I scorn to answer you. If you are Greek, then show a Greek woman’s manners. Let us see some modesty.” He felt the lack of clothes. Two pairs of grey eyes, smokily rimmed, stared from the bed. “Greek schooling, reason, civility, I mean the boy to have them as I have had. Make up your mind to that.”
“Oh, Thebes!” She threw out the word like a ritual curse. “Is it Thebes again, now? I know enough of Thebes. In Thebes they made you a Greek, in Thebes you learned civility! In Thebes! Have you heard an Athenian speak of Thebes? The byword of Greece for boorishness. Don’t make such a fool of yourself.”
“Athens, that talking-shop. Their great days are done there. They should keep quiet about Thebes for shame.”
“It is you should do that. What were you in Thebes?”
“A hostage, a pledge of policy. Did I make my brother’s treaty? Do you throw that in my face? I was sixteen. I found more courtesy there than you ever showed me. And they taught me war. What was Macedon, when Perdikkas died? He had fallen to the Illyrians with four thousand men. The valleys lay fallow; our people were afraid to come down out of the hill-forts. All they had were the sheep whose skins they wore, and those they could hardly keep. Soon the Illyrians would have taken everything; Bardelys was making ready. Now you know what we are and where our frontiers stand. Through Thebes, and the men who made me a soldier there, I came to you a king. Your kindred were glad enough of it.”