His father got up from his writing-table, to thump him on the shoulders. Their greetings had never been so easy. Alexander’s questions burst from him. How had Kypsela fallen? He had been sent back to school while the army still sat before it. “Did you go in from the river side, or breach that blind bit next the rocks?”
Philip had been saving him a reprimand for visiting, without leave, the wild eyrie of young Lambaros on his journey home, but this was now forgotten. “I tried a sap on the river side, but the soil was sandy. So I built a siege tower for them to think about, while I sapped the northeast wall.”
“Where did you put the tower?”
“On that rise where—” Philip looked for his tablet, found it filled with notes, and made gestures in the air to sketch the site.
“Here.” Alexander ran to the log-basket by the hearth, and came back with both hands full of kindling. “Look, this is the river.” He laid down a stick of pine. “Here’s the north watchtower.” He stood a log on its end. Philip reached for another, and made a wall next the tower. They began eagerly to push bits of wood about.
“No, that’s too far out, the gate was here.”
“Look, but Father, your siege tower…Oh, there, I see. And the sap was here?”
“Now the ladders, give me those sticks. Now here was Kleitos’ company. Parmenion—”
“Wait, we left out the catapults.” Alexander dived into the basket for fir-cones. Philip set them up.
“So Kleitos was partly covered, while I—”
Silence fell like a sword-stroke. Alexander, whose back was to the door, needed only to read his father’s face. It had been easier to leap into the gatehouse at Doriskos than now it was to turn; so he turned at once.
His mother was dressed in a robe of purple bordered with white and gold. Her hair was bound with a gold fillet, and draped with a veil of byssos silk from Kos, through which its red showed like fire through wood-smoke. She did not glance at Philip. Her burning eyes sought not the enemy, but the traitor.
“When you have done your game, Alexander, I shall be in my room. Do not hurry. I have waited half a year; what are a few hours more?”
She turned rigidly and was gone. Alexander stood unmoving. Philip read into this what he wished to see. He raised his brows with a smile, and turned again to the battle-plan.
“Excuse me, Father. I had better go along.”
Philip was a diplomat; but the rancor of years, the present exasperation, robbed him of his instinct for the moment when generosity would pay. “You can stay, I suppose, till I have finished speaking.”
Alexander’s face changed to that of a soldier awaiting orders. “Yes, Father?”
With a folly he would never have shown in parley with his enemies, Philip pointed to a chair and said, “Sit down.” Challenge had been offered, beyond recall.
“I am sorry. I must see Mother now. Goodbye, Father.” He turned towards the door.
“Come back,” barked Philip. Alexander looked round from where he was. “Do you mean to leave all this filth on my table? You put it there; clear it up.”
Alexander walked back to the table. Crisply, precisely, he put the wood in a pile, strode with it to the log-basket, and flung it in. He had knocked a letter off the table. Ignoring it, he gave one deadly look at Philip and left the room.
The women’s quarters had been the same since the first days of the castle. From here they had been summoned, in Amyntas’ day, to greet the Persian envoys. He went up the narrow stairs to the little anteroom. A girl he had not seen before was coming out, looking over her shoulder. She had fine feathery dark hair, green eyes, a clear pale skin, and a deep bosom over which her thin red dress was tightly bound; her lower lip was caught in a little, in a natural line. At the sound of his step she started. Her long lashes swept up; her face, as frank-looking as a child’s, showed admiration, realization, fright. He said, “Is my mother there?” and knew there had been no need to ask the question, he had done it from choice. “Yes, my lord,” she said, dipping nervously. He wondered why she looked scared, though a mirror might have told him; felt sorry for her and smiled. Her face changed as if a pale sun had touched it. “Shall I tell her, Alexander, that you are here?” “No, she expects me, you need not stay.” She paused a moment, looking at him earnestly, as if not satisfied that she had done enough for him. She was a little older than he, perhaps a year. Then she went on down the stairs.
He paused a moment outside the door, staring after. She had looked fragile and smooth to touch, like a swallow’s egg; her mouth had been unpainted, pink and delicate. She had been a sweet taste after a bitter one. From outside the window came drifting the sound of a men’s chorus, practicing for the Dionysia.
“You have remembered, then, to come,” said his mother as soon as they were alone. “How soon you have learned to make your life without me!”
She stood by the window in the thick stone wall; a slanting light touched the curve of her cheek and shone in her thin veil. She had dressed for him, painted; intricately done her hair. He saw it; as she saw that he had grown again, that the bones of his face had hardened, his voice lost the last flaws of boyhood. He had come back a man, and faithless like a man. He knew that he had longed for her; that true friends share everything, except the past before they met. If only she would weep, even that, and let him comfort her; but she would not humble herself before a man. If only he would run to her side and cling to her; but his manhood was hard-won, no mortal should make him a child again. So, blinded by their sense of their own uniqueness, they fought out their lovers’ quarrel, while the roar of the Aigai falls pounded in their ears like blood.
“How shall I be anything, without learning war? Where else can I learn it? He is my general; why affront him without a cause?”
“Oh, you have no cause now. Once you had mine.”
“What? What has he done?” He had been gone so long, Aigai itself had looked changed, like the promise of some new life. “What is it, tell me.”
“Never mind, why should you be troubled? Go and enjoy yourself with your friends. Hephaistion will be waiting.”
She must have been questioning someone, he had always been careful. “I can see them any time. All I wanted was to do the proper thing. For your sake too, you know that. One would think you hated me.”
“I only counted on your love. Now I know better.”
“Tell me what he’s done.”
“Never mind. It is nothing, except to me.”
“Mother.”
She saw the crease drawn across his forehead, deeper now; two little new lines came down between his brows. She could no longer look down at him; his eyes, drawn at the inner corners, met hers level. She came forward and laid her cheek to his. “Never be so cruel to me again.”
Once through this rising river, and she would forgive him everything, all would be rendered back. But no. He would not give her this. Before she could see his tears, he broke from her and ran down the narrow stair.
At the turn, his eyes blurred, he collided with someone head-on. It was the dark-haired girl. “Oh,” she cried, fluttering and soft like a pigeon, “I am sorry, I am sorry, my lord.”
He took her slender arms in his hands. “My fault. I hope I did not hurt you?”
“No, no indeed.” They paused a moment, before she swept down her thick lashes and went on up the stairs. He touched his eyes, in case there had been anything to notice; but they were scarcely wet.
Hephaistion, who had been looking for him everywhere, found him an hour later in a little old room which looked towards the falls. Their sound was deafening here when the water was in spate; the very floor seemed to shudder with the grinding of the rocks below. The room was lined with chests and shelves of old musty records and title deeds, treaties, and long family trees going back to heroes and gods. There were a few books too, left there by Archelaos or by the accidents of time.