The noise was rising as the cups were topped up. Philip, shouting above it, invited anyone to give them a tune or a song.
“Here’s your son, sir,” called Phoinix, “who has learned a new tune for this very feast.”
Two or three cups of strong neat wine had made Philip feel much better. It was a known cure for snakebite, he thought with a grim smile. “Come up, then, boy. Bring your lyre and sit up here.”
Alexander signed to the servant with whom he had left the kithara. He put it on with care, and went over to stand by his father’s couch.
“What’s this?” said the King. “You can’t play that thing, can you?” He had never seen it used by a man not paid to do it; it struck him as unsuitable.
The boy smiled, saying, “You must tell me that when I’ve finished, Father.” He tested the strings and began.
Epikrates, listening down the hall, looked at the boy with deep affection. At this moment he could have posed for a young Apollo. Who knows, this may be the true beginning; he may come to a pure knowledge of the god.
All the Macedonian lords, who had been awaiting the cue to shout a chorus, listened amazed. They had never heard of a gentleman playing like this, or wanting to. What had those schoolmasters been up to with the boy? He had the name of being plucky and game for anything. Were they making a southerner of him? It would be philosophy next.
King Philip had attended many music contests. Though without sustained interest in the art, he could recognize technique. He was aware of it here, together with its lack of fitness. The company, he could see, did not know what to make of it. Why had the teacher not reported this morbid fervor? The truth was plain. She had been bringing him again to those rites of hers, steeping him in their frenzies, making a barbarian of him. Look at him now, thought Philip; look at him now.
Out of civility to foreign guests, who always expected it, he had got into the way of bringing the boy to supper in the Hellene fashion; his friends’ sons would not appear till they came of age. Why had he broken this good custom? If the boy had a girl’s voice still, must he tell the world? That Epirote bitch, that malignant sorceress; he would long since have put her away, had her powerful kin not been like a spear poised at his back when he went to war. Let her not be too sure of herself. He would do it yet.
Phoinix had had no notion the boy could play like this. He was as good as that fellow from Samos a few months back. But he was letting himself get carried away, as he did sometimes with Homer. Before his father, he had always held himself in. He should never have had that wine.
He had reached the cadenzas which led to the finale. The stream of sound cascaded through its gorges, the bright spray glittered above.
Philip gazed, almost unhearing, taken up with what he saw: the brilliant glow of the face, the deep-set eyes unfocused and glittering with unshed tears, the remotely smiling mouth. To him, it mirrored the face he had left upstairs, its cheekbones flushed red, its defiant laughter, its eyes weeping with rage.
Alexander struck the last chord and drew a long deep breath. He had not made one mistake.
The guests broke into uneasy applause. Epikrates joined in eagerly. Phoinix shouted rather too loudly, “Good! Very good!”
Philip banged down his wine cup on the table. His forehead had flushed dark crimson; the lid of his blind eye had dropped a little, showing only the white spot; his good eye started in its socket.
“Good?” he said. “Do you call that music for a man?”
The boy turned slowly, as if waking from sleep. He blinked his eyes clear, and fastened them on his father.
“Never,” said Philip, “let me see you make such a show of yourself again. Leave it to Corinthian whores and Persian eunuchs; you sing well enough for either. You should be ashamed.”
With the kithara still strapped on to him, the boy stood stock-still for a few moments, his face blank, and, as the blood receded, growing sallow. Looking at no one, he walked out between the couches and left the hall.
Epikrates followed. But he had wasted a few moments thinking what to say, and did not find him.
A few days later, Gyras, a tribal Macedonian from the inland hills, set out along ancient tracks, returning home on leave. He had told his commander, formally, that his father was dying and had begged for a last sight of him. The officer, who had expected it since the day before, told him not to waste time at home when he had done his business, if he wanted to draw his pay. Tribal wars were winked at, unless they showed signs of spreading; they were immemorial; to put down blood-feud would have taken the army all its time, even had it not been itself steeped in tribal loyalties. Gyras’ uncle had been killed, the wife raped and left for dead; if Gyras was refused leave he would desert. Some such thing happened once a month or so.
It was his second day out. He was a light cavalryman with his own horse, small and scrubby but tough, qualities Gyras shared; a gingery brown man, with a broken nose set slightly skew and a short bristly beard, dressed mainly in leather, and armed to the teeth, this being required for the journey as well as for his errand. He had been favoring his horse over grass wherever he could find it, to keep its unshod hooves sound for the work ahead. At about noon, he was crossing a rolling heathland between the mountain ribs of Macedon. In the wooded dips, birches and larches swayed in a gentle breeze; it was late summer, but up here the air was fresh. Gyras, who did not want to be killed, but preferred it to the life of disgrace which followed a failure to take vengeance, looked about him at the world he might shortly have to leave. Meantime, however, there was an oak grove ahead; in its hushed and grateful shade a stream burbled over pebbles and black oak-leaves. He watered and tethered his horse; dipping the bronze cup he carried on his belt, he approved the water’s sweetness. From his saddlebag he took goat cheese and black bread, and sat on a rock to eat.
Hoofbeats cantered on the track behind him. At a walk, some stranger entered the wood. Gyras reached for his javelins, already laid at hand.
“Good day to you, Gyras.”
Till the latest moment he had not believed his eyes. They were a good fifty miles out from Pella.
“Alexander!” His bread had stuck in his throat; he dislodged and bolted it, while the boy dismounted and led his horse to the stream. “How did you get here? Is no one with you?”
“You are, now.” He invoked the god of the stream in proper form, restrained his mount from drinking too much, and tethered it to an oak sapling. “We can eat together.” He unpacked food and came over. He wore a man’s long hunting-knife on a shoulder-sling; his clothes were tumbled and dirty, his hair had pine-needles in it. Clearly he had slept out. His horse carried, among other things, two javelins and a bow. “Here, take an apple. I thought I should catch up with you about mealtime.”
Dazedly Gyras complied. The boy drank from cupped hands and splashed his face. Concerned with his own affairs, for him momentous, Gyras had heard nothing of King Philip’s supper party. The thought of this charge on his hands appalled him. By the time he had returned him and set out again, anything might have happened at home. “How did you come so far alone? Are you lost? Were you out hunting?”
“I am hunting what you are hunting,” said Alexander, biting into his apple. “That is why I am coming with you.”
“But…but…what notion…You don’t know what I’m about.”
“Of course I do. Everyone in your squadron knows it. I need a war, and yours will do very well. It is quite time, you know, that I got my sword belt. I have come out to take my man.”
Gyras gazed transfixed. The boy must have tracked him all this way, keeping out of sight. He was equipped with care and forethought. Also, something had changed his face. His cheeks had sunk and flattened below the cheekbones; his eyes looked deeper under the shelf of his brows, his high-bridged nose stood out more. There was a line across his forehead. It was scarcely a boy’s face at all. Nonetheless he was twelve years old, and Gyras would have to answer for him.