He picked his way between mats and blankets, by the light from holes in the roof. Peithon, a youngish man who in battle had looked stern and Homeric, lay with his bandage seeping, limp with loss of blood. His pale face was pinched, his eyes shifted anxiously. Alexander knelt by him and clasped his hand; presently, as his exploits were recalled to him, his color livened a little, he bragged, and essayed a joke.
When Alexander got up, his eyes had grown used to the shadows. He saw they were all looking at him, jealous, despondent, hopeful; feeling their pain, and wanting their contribution recognized. In the end, before he left, he had spoken to every one of them.
It was the hardest winter old men remembered. Wolves came down to the villages and took the watchdogs. Cattle and herd-boys died of cold on the low slopes of the winter grazing. The limbs of fir trees cracked under their weight of snow; the mountains were blanketed so thick that only great cliffs and clefts in them still showed dark. Alexander did not refuse the fur cloak his mother sent him. Taking a fox among the stark black tangle of the rose-thorns near Mieza, they found that its pelt was white. Aristotle was very pleased with it. The house was pungent and smoky with its braziers; nights were so bitter that the young men doubled up together, only for warmth. Alexander was anxious to keep well hardened (the King was still in Thrace, where winter blew down straight from the Scythian steppes). He thought he should get through the cold spell without such coddling; but gave way to Hephaistion’s view that people might suppose they had quarreled.
Ships were lost at sea, or land-bound. Even from as near as Pella, the roads were sometimes snowed up. When the mule train got through, it was like a feast-day.
“Roast duck for supper,” said Philotas.
Alexander smelled the air and nodded. “Something’s wrong with Aristotle.”
“Has he gone to bed?”
“No, it’s bad news. I saw him in the specimen room.” Alexander went there often; he was now apt to set up his own experiments. “My mother sent me some mitts; I don’t need two pairs, and no one sends him presents. He was there with a letter. He looked dreadful; like a tragic mask.”
“I daresay some other sophist has contradicted him.”
Alexander held his peace, and went off to tell Hephaistion.
“I asked him what the trouble was, if I could help. He said no, he’d tell us about it when he was more composed; and that womanishness would be unworthy of a noble friend. So I went off, to let him weep.”
At Mieza, the winter sun went down quickly behind the mountain, while the eastward heights of Chalkidike still caught its light. Around the house, the dusk was whitened by the snow. It was not yet time to eat; in the big living-room with its peeling frescoes of blue and rose, the young men hung round the fire-basket on the hearth, talking about horses, women or themselves. Alexander and Hephaistion, sharing the wolfskin cloak sent by Olympias, sat near the window because the lamps were not yet lit. They were reading Xenophon’s The Upbringing of Kyros, which, next to Homer, was just then Alexander’s favorite book.
“And she could not hide her tears,” read Hephaistion, “falling all down her robe to her feet. Then the eldest man of us said, ‘Don’t be afraid, Lady; we know your husband was noble, but we are choosing you out for one who is not below him in beauty, or mind, or power. We believe that if any man is admirable, it is Kyros; and to him you will belong.’ When the lady heard this, she rent her peplos from top to bottom, crying aloud, while her servants wept with her; and we then had a sight of her face, her neck and arms. And let me tell you, Kyros, it seemed to me and all of us that there was never so beautiful a woman of mortal birth in Asia. But you must be sure to see her for yourself.’
“‘No, by God,’ said Kyros. ‘Especially if she is as lovely as you say.’
“They keep asking me,” said Hephaistion, looking up, “why Kassandros doesn’t come back.”
“I told Aristotle he fell in love with war and forsook philosophy. I don’t know what he told his father. He couldn’t have come back with us; she broke two of his ribs.” He pulled another roll out of the cloak. “This part I like. Bear in mind that the same toils do not bear equally on the general and the common soldier, though their bodies are of the same kind; but the honor of the general’s rank, and his knowing that nothing he does will go unnoticed, make his hardships lighter to endure. How true that is. One can’t bear it in mind enough.”
“Can the real Kyros have been quite so much like Xenophon?”
“The Persian exiles used to say he was a great warrior and a noble king.”
Hephaistion peered into a roll. “He trained his companions not to spit or blow their noses in public, not to turn round and stare…”
“Well, the Persians were rough hill-people in his day. They must have seemed to the Medes like, say, Kleitos would to an Athenian…I like it that when his cooks served him something good, he sent pieces round to his friends.”
“I wish it were suppertime. I’m clemmed.”
Alexander edged more of the cloak around him, remembering that at night he was always drawing close because of the cold. “I hope Aristotle will come down. It must be icy upstairs. He ought to have some food.”
A slave came in with a hand-lamp and tinder-stick, and kindled the tall standing lamps, then reached his flame to the hanging lamp-cluster. The raw young Thracian he was training closed up the shutters, and gingerly pulled the thick wool curtains across.
“A ruler,” read Alexander, “should not only be truly a better man than those he rules. He should cast a kind of spell on them…”
There were footsteps on the stairs, which paused till the slaves had gone. Into the evening snugness, Aristotle came down like a walking corpse. His eyes were sunken; the closed mouth seemed to show beneath it the rigid grin of the skull.
Alexander threw off the cloak, scattering the scrolls, and crossed the room to him. “Come to the fire. Bring a chair, someone. Come and get warm. Please tell us the trouble. Who is dead?”
“My guest-friend, Hermeias of Atarneus.” Given a question of fact to answer, he could bring out the words. Alexander shouted in the doorway for some wine to be mulled. They all crowded round the man, grown suddenly old, who sat staring into the fire. For a moment he stretched his hands to warm them; then, as if even this stirred some thought of horror, drew them back into his lap.
“It was Mentor the Rhodian, King Ochos’ general,” he began, and paused again. Alexander said to the others, “That’s Memnon’s brother, who reconquered Egypt.”
“He has served his master well.” The voice too had thinned and aged. “Barbarians are born so; they did not make their own base condition. But a Hellene who sinks to serve them…Herakleitos says, The best corrupted is the worst. He has betrayed nature itself. So he sinks even below his masters.”
His face looked yellow; those nearest saw his tremor. To give him time, Alexander said, “We never liked Memnon, did we, Ptolemy?”
“Hermeias brought justice and a better life to the lands he ruled. King Ochos coveted his lands, and hated his example. Some enemy, I suspect Mentor himself, carried to the King tales he gladly believed. Then Mentor, pretending a friend’s concern, warned Hermeias of danger, and invited him to come and take counsel on it. He went, believing; in his own walled city he could have held out a long time, and was in reach of help from…a powerful ally, with whom he had agreements.”
Hephaistion looked at Alexander; but he was fixed in entire attention.
“As a guest-friend he came to Mentor; who sent him, in fetters, to the Great King.”