In the talk which followed, much more was exchanged than was said in words, This was the self-evident training of a royal heir. Alexander saw his father took it as a matter of course. Had all the rebuffs, ambiguous double-edged words, been more than sparring in the endless war with his mother? Had all the words really been said? Once he had believed she would never lie to him; but he had known for some time that this was vanity.
“In the next few days,” said Philip, “I’d like to know which friends of your own you want to spend your time with. Think it over.”
“Thank you, Father.” He remembered the hours of tortuous stifling talk in the women’s rooms, the reading of gossip and rumor, the counterintrigues, the broodings and guessings over a word or look; cries, tears, declarations before the gods of outrage; smells of incense and magic herbs and burning meat; the whispered confidences that kept him awake at night, so that next day he was slower in the race or missed his aim.
“Those you go about with now,” his father was saying, “if their fathers agree, will all be quite acceptable. Ptolemy, I suppose?”
“Yes, Ptolemy of course. And Hephaistion. I asked you about him before.”
“I remember. Hephaistion by all means.” He was at pains to sound easy; he had no wish to disturb a state of things which had taken a load off his mind. The erotic patterns of Thebes were engraved on it; a youth and a man, to whom the youth looked for example. Things being as it began to seem they were, there was no one he wished to see in this place of power. Even Ptolemy, brotherly and a man for women, had been throwing too long a shadow. What with the boy’s startling beauty, and his taste for grown-up friends, he had been an anxiety for some time. It was of a piece with his oddness, suddenly to throw himself into the arms of a boy his own age almost to a day. They had been inseparable now for weeks; Alexander, it was true, was giving nothing away, but the other could be read like an open book. However, here there was no doubt at all who looked for example to whom. An affair, then, not to be interfered with.
There was trouble enough outside the kingdom. The Illyrians had had to be thrown back last year on the west border; it had cost him, as well as much grief, trouble and scandal, a sword-slash on the knee from which he was still limping.
In Thessaly, all was well; he had put down a dozen local tyrannies, made peace in a score of blood-feuds, and everyone, except a tyrant or two, was grateful. But he had failed with Athens. Even after the Pythian Games when, because he was presiding, they had refused to send competitors, he had still not given them up. His agents all said that the people could be reasoned with, if the orators would let them be. Their first concern was that the public dole should not be cut; no policy was ever passed if it threatened that, not even for home defense. Philokrates had been indicted for treason, and got away just ahead of a death sentence, to enjoy a generous pension; Philip rested his best hopes now on men never for sale, who yet favored the alliance because they thought it best. They had seen for themselves that, his first aim being the conquest of Asian Greece, the last thing he wanted was a costly war with Athens in which, win or lose, he must stand as Hellas’ enemy, for no better reward than to secure his back.
He had sent therefore this spring another embassy, offering to revise the peace treaty, if reasonable amendments were put up. An Athenian envoy had been sent back, an old friend of Demosthenes, a certain Hegesippos known to his fellow citizens as Tufty, from his effeminate topknot of long curls tied in a ribbon. At Pella it became clear why he had been chosen; to unacceptable terms he added, on his own account, uncompromising rudeness. No risk had been taken of Philip winning him over; he was the man who had arranged Athens’ alliance with the Phokians, his mere presence was an affront. He came and went; and Philip, who had not yet enforced the Phokians’ yearly fine to the plundered temple, gave them notice to start paying up.
Now there was a war of succession boiling up in Epiros, where the King had lately died. He had been scarcely more than one chieftain among many; soon there would be chaos, unless a hegemon could be set up. Philip meant to do so, for the good of Macedon. For once he had his wife’s blessing on his work, since he had chosen her brother Alexandros. He would see where his interest lay and be a curb on her intrigues; he was eager for support and should be a useful ally, Philip thought. It was a pity that, the affair being so urgent, he could not stay to welcome the philosopher. Before he limped out to his war-horse, he sent for his son and told him this. He said no more; he had been using his eyes, and had been many years a diplomat.
“He will be here,” said Olympias ten days later, “about noon tomorrow. So remember to be at home.”
Alexander was standing by the little loom on which his sister was learning fancy border-work. She had newly mastered the egg-and-dart pattern and was anxious to be admired for it; they were friends just now and he was generous with applause. But now he looked round, like a horse when it pricks its ear.
“I shall receive him,” said Olympias, “in the Perseus Room.”
“I shall receive him, Mother.”
“Of course you must be there, I said so.”
Alexander walked away from the loom. Kleopatra, forgotten, stood with the shuttle in her hand, and looked from face to face with a familiar dread.
Her brother patted his sword belt of polished chestnut leather. “No, Mother, it’s for me to do it, now that Father’s away. I shall make his apologies, and present Leonidas and Phoinix. Then I shall bring Aristotle up here, and present him to you.”
Olympias stood up from her chair. He had grown faster lately; she was not so much the taller as she had thought. “Are you saying to me, Alexander,” she said in a swelling voice, “that you do not want me there?”
There was a short, unbelievable silence.
“It’s for little boys, to be presented by their mothers. It’s no way to come to a sophist, when one is grown up. I’m nearly fourteen, now. I shall start with this man in the way I mean to go on.”
Her chin rose, her back stiffened. “Did your father tell you this?”
The moment found him unprepared, but he knew it for what it was. “No,” he said. “I didn’t need Father to tell me I’m a man. It was I who told him.”
There was a flush on her cheekbones; her red hair seemed to rise by itself from its central peak. Her grey eyes had widened. He gazed transfixed, thinking no other eyes in the world could look so dangerous. No one had yet told him otherwise.
“So, you are a man! And I, your mother, who bore you, nursed you, suckled you, who fought for your rights when the King would have thrown you off like a stray dog to set up his bastard—” She had fixed him with the stare of a woman who drives home a spell. He did not question her; that she willed his hurt was truth sufficient. Word followed word like a flight of burning arrows. “I who have lived for you each day of my life since you were conceived, oh, long before you saw the light of the sun; who have gone through fire and darkness for you and into the houses of the dead—! Now you plot with him to beat me down like a peasant wife. Now I can believe that you are his son!”
He stood silent. Kleopatra dropped her shuttle and cried urgently, “Father’s a wicked man. I don’t love him, I love Mother best.” Neither of them looked at her. She started to cry, but no one heard.
“The time will come when you look back upon this day.” Indeed, he thought, it would not soon be forgotten. “Well? Have you no answer?”
“I am sorry, Mother.” His voice had been breaking for some time; it betrayed him, cracking upward. “I have done my tests of manhood. Now I must live like a man.”
For the first time, she laughed at him as he had heard her laugh at his father. “Your tests of manhood! You silly child. Come and tell me that when you have lain with a woman.”