Alexander returned his kiss. It seemed to him that this was a moment nothing could undo. “Thank you, Father. Thank you for my horse. I shall call him Oxhead.”
The horse gave a sudden start. Philonikos was coming up, beaming and full of compliments. Alexander looked round, and motioned with his head. Philonikos withdrew. The buyer was never wrong.
A surging crowd had gathered. “Will you tell them to keep off, Father? He won’t stand people yet. I’ll have to rub him down myself, or he’ll catch a chill.”
He saw to the horse, keeping the best of the grooms beside him for it to know him another time. The crowd was still in the horse-field. All was quiet in the stable yard when he came out, flushed from the ride and the work, tousled, smelling of horse. Only one loiterer was about; the tall boy Hephaistion, whose eyes had wished him victory. He smiled an acknowledgment. The boy smiled back, hesitated, and came nearer. There was a pause.
“Would you like to see him?”
“Yes, Alexander…It was just as if he knew you. I felt it, like an omen. What is he called?”
“I’m calling him Oxhead.” They were speaking Greek.
“That’s better than Thunder. He hated that.”
“You live near here, don’t you?”
“Yes. I can show you. You can see from over here. Not that first hill there, the second, the one behind it—”
“You’ve been here before. I remember you. You helped me fix a sling once, no, it was a quiver. And your father hauled you off.”
“I didn’t know who you were.”
“You showed me the hills before; I remembered then. And you were born in Lion Month, the same year as me.”
“Yes.”
“You’re half a head taller. But your father’s tall, isn’t he?”
“Yes he is, and my uncles too.”
“Xenophon says you can tell a tall horse when it’s foaled, by the length of leg. When we’re men you’ll still be taller.”
Hephaistion looked into the confident and candid eyes. He recalled his father saying that the King’s young son might have more chance to make his growth, if that stone-faced tutor would not overwork and underfeed him. He should have been protected, some friend should have been there. “You’ll still be the one who can ride Boukephalos.”
“Come and look at him. Not too near just yet; I shall have to be here at first every time they groom him, I can see that.”
He found he had fallen into Macedonian. They looked at each other and smiled.
They had been talking some time, before he remembered he had meant to go straight up from the stable, just as he was, and bring the news to his mother. For the first time in his life, he had forgotten all about her.
A few days after, he made a sacrifice to Herakles.
The hero had been generous. He deserved something richer than a goat or a ram.
Olympias agreed. If her son thought nothing too good for Herakles, she thought nothing too good for her son. She had been writing letters to all her friends, and her kindred in Epiros, relating that Philip had tried again and again to mount the horse, and had been thrown with indignity before all the people; how it was as savage as a lion, but her son had tamed it. She opened her new bale of stuffs from Athens, inviting him to choose stuff for a new festal chiton. He chose plain, fine white wool, and, when she said it was too mean for so great a day, answered that it was proper for a man.
He brought his offering in a gold cup to the hero-shrine in the garden. His father and mother were present; it was a court occasion.
Having made the proper invocation to the hero, with his praises and his epithets, he thanked him for his gifts to mankind, and finished, “As you have been to me, so remain; be favorable to me in what I shall henceforth undertake, according to my prayers.”
He tilted the cup. A translucent stream of incense, like grains of amber, shone in the sunlight, and fell on the glowing wood. A cloud of sweet blue smoke rose to heaven.
All the company, but one, pronounced amen. Leonidas, who had come to watch because he thought it his duty, compressed his lips. He was leaving soon; another was taking up his charge. Though the boy had not yet been told, his good spirits were offensive. The Arabian gum was still showering from the chalice; the cost must run into scores of drachmas. This after his constant training in austerity, his warnings against excess!
Among the cheerful pieties, his voice said tartly, “Be less wasteful of such precious things, Alexander, till you are master of the lands they grow in.”
Alexander turned from the altar, with the emptied cup in his hand. He looked at Leonidas with an alert kind of surprise, followed by grave attention. At length he said, “Yes. I will remember.”
As he came down the steps from the shrine, his eyes met the waiting eyes of Hephaistion, who understood the nature of omens. There was no need for them to speak of it after.
5
“I KNOW NOW WHO it will be. Father’s had a letter, he sent for me this morning. I hope this man will be bearable. If not, we must make a plan.”
“You can count on me,” said Hephaistion, “even if you want to drown him. You’ve put up with more than enough. Is he a real philosopher?”
They were sitting in the trough between two of the Palace gables; a private spot, since only Alexander had climbed there till he showed Hephaistion the route.
“Oh, yes, from the Academy. He was taught by Plato. You’ll come to the lessons? Father says you can.”
“I’d only hold you back.”
“Sophists teach by disputation, he wants my friends. We can think later who else to have. It won’t just be logic-chopping, he’ll have to teach things I can use, Father told him that. He wrote back that a man’s education should be suited to his station and his duties. That doesn’t tell us much.”
“At least this one can’t beat you. He’s an Athenian?”
“No, a Stagirite. He’s the son of Nikomachos, who was my grandfather Amyntas’ doctor. My father’s too I suppose, when he was a child. You know how Amyntas lived, like a wolf in hunting-country, throwing out his enemies or trying to get back himself. Nikomachos must have been loyal. I don’t know how good a doctor he was. Amyntas died in bed; that’s very rare in our family.”
“So this son—what’s he called—?”
“Aristotle.”
“He knows the country, that’s something. Is he very old?”
“About forty. Not old for a philosopher. They live forever. Isokrates, who wants Father to lead the Greeks, is ninety-odd, and he applied for the job! Plato lived to over eighty. Father says Aristotle had hoped to be head of the School, but Plato had chosen a nephew of his. That’s why Aristotle left Athens.”
“So then he asked to come here?”
“No, he left when we were nine. I know the year, because of the Chalkidian war. And he couldn’t go home to Stagira, Father had just burned it and enslaved the people. What is it pulling my hair?”
“It’s a stick from the tree we came up.” Hephaistion, who was not very neat-handed, unwound with anxious care the walnut twig from its shining tangle, which smelled of some expensive wash used on it by Olympias, and of summer grass. This done, he slid his arm down to Alexander’s waist. He had done it the first time almost by accident; though not rebuffed, he had waited two days before daring to try again. Now he watched his chance whenever they were alone; it had become a thing he thought about. He could not tell what Alexander thought, if he thought at all. He accepted it contentedly, and talked, with ever more ease and freedom, about other things.
“The Stagirites,” he said, “were confederates of Olynthos; he made examples of those who wouldn’t treat with him. Did your father tell you about the war?”
“What?…Oh yes. Yes, he did.”