“Yes. We have to get used to blood.”
“That man on the wall at Doriskos, his entrails fell out and he tried to put them back.”
“Did he? I must have looked away.”
“One must be able to look at anything. I was twelve when I took my man. I cut off the head myself. They’d have done it for me, but I made them give me the ax.”
“Yes, I know.”
“She came down from Olympos to the plain of Troy, walking softly, that’s what the book says, walking softly with little steps like a quivering dove. Then she put on the helm of death.”
“Of course you can look at anything, everyone knows you can. You’ve been up all night…Alexander, are you listening? Can you hear what I say?”
“Be quiet. They’re singing.”
He sat with hands on knees, his eyes upturned towards the mountain. Hephaistion could see white below the iris. He must be found, wherever he was. He ought not to be alone.
Quietly, insistently, without touching him, Hephaistion said, “You’re with me now. I promised you I’d be here. Listen, Alexander. Think of Achilles, how his mother dipped him in the Styx. Think how black and terrible, like dying, like being turned to stone. But then he was invulnerable. Look, it’s finished, it’s over now. Now you’re with me.”
He put out his hand. Alexander’s came out and touched it, deathly cold; then closed on it crushingly, so that he caught his breath with mingled relief and pain. “You’re with me,” Hephaistion said. “I love you. You mean more to me than anything. I’d die for you any time. I love you.”
For some time they sat like this, with their clasped hands resting on Alexander’s knee. After a while the vise of his grip relaxed a little; his face lost its masklike stiffness, and looked only rather ill. He gazed vaguely at their joined hands.
“That wine was good. I’m not so very tired. One should learn to do without sleep, it’s useful in war.”
“Next time, we’ll stay up together.”
“One should learn to do without anything one can. But I should find it very hard to do without you.”
“I’ll be there.” The warm spring sun, slanting now towards afternoon, slid into the glade. A thrush was singing. Hephaistion’s omens spoke to him, telling him there had been a change: a death, a birth, the intervention of a god. What had been born was bloodstained from a hard passage, still frail, not to be handled. But it lived, it would grow.
They must be getting back to Aigai, but there was no hurry yet, they were well enough as they were; let him have some quiet. Alexander rested from his thoughts in a waking sleep. Hephaistion watched him, with the steadfast eyes and tender patience of the leopard crouched by the pool, its hunger comforted by the sound of light distant footfalls, straying down the forest track.
6
THE PLUM-BLOSSOM HAD fallen, and lay beaten with spring rain; the time of violets was done, and the vines were budding.
The philosopher had found some of his students a little scatterbrained after the Dionysia, a thing not unknown even in Athens; but the Prince was studious and quiet, doing well at ethics and logic. He remained sometimes unaccountable; when found sacrificing a black goat to Dionysos, he evaded questions; it was to be feared philosophy had not yet rid him of superstition; yet this reticence showed, perhaps, a proper self-questioning.
Alexander and Hephaistion stood leaning on one of the small rustic bridges which spanned the stream of the Nymphs.
“Now,” Alexander said, “I think I have made my peace with the god. That’s why I’ve been able to tell you everything.”
“Isn’t it better?”
“Yes, but I had to master it first in my own mind. It was the anger of Dionysos pursuing me, till I made my peace with him. When I think about it logically, I see it would be unjust to be shocked at what my mother did, only because she’s a woman, when my father has killed men by thousands. You and I have killed men who never injured us except for the chance of war. Women can’t issue challenges to their enemies, as we can; they can only be avenged like women. Rather than blame them, we ought to be thankful to the gods for making us men.”
“Yes,” said Hephaistion. “Yes, we should.”
“So then I saw it was the anger of Dionysos, because I profaned his mystery. I’ve been under his protection, you know, ever since I was a child; but lately I’ve sacrificed more to Herakles than to him. When I presumed, he showed his anger. He didn’t kill me, like Pentheus in the play, because I was under his protection; but he punished me. It would have been worse, but for you. You were like Pylades, who stayed with Orestes even when the Furies came for him.”
“Of course I stayed with you.”
“I’ll tell you something else. This girl, I’d thought, perhaps, at the Dionysia…But some god protected me.”
“He could protect you because you’d a hold over yourself.”
“Yes. All this happened because my father couldn’t be continent, even for decency in his own house. He’s always been the same. It’s known everywhere. People who should be respecting him, because he can beat them in battle, mock him behind his back. I couldn’t bear my life, to know they talked like that of me. To know one’s not master of oneself.”
“People will never talk like that about you.”
“I’ll never love anyone I’m ashamed of, that I know.” He pointed to the clear brown water. “Look at all those fish.” They leaned together over the wooden rail, their heads touching; the shoal shot like a flight of arrows into the shadow of the bank. Presently straightening up Alexander said, “Kyros the Great was never enslaved by women.”
“No,” said Hephaistion. “Not by the most beautiful woman of mortal birth in Asia. It’s in the book.”
Alexander had letters from both his parents. Neither had been much disturbed by his unwonted quiet after the Dionysia, though each, at parting, had been aware of a certain scrutiny, as if from a window in a doorless wall. But the Dionysia left many young lads changed; there would be more cause for concern if it passed them by.
His father wrote that the Athenians were pouring colonists into the Greek coastal lands of Thrace, such as the Chersonesos; but, faced with a cut in the public dole, had refused to maintain the supporting fleet, which kept going perforce on piracy and inshore raids, like the reivers of Homer’s day. Macedonian ships and steadings had been looted; they had even seized a Macedonian envoy sent to ransom prisoners, tortured him, and extracted nine talents’ ransom for his life.
Olympias, for once almost at one with Philip, had a similar tale to tell. A Euboian dealer, Anaxinos, who imported southern goods for her, had been seized in Athens on the orders of Demosthenes, because the house of his host had been visited by Aischines. He was tortured till he confessed to being a spy of Philip, on which he was put to death.
“I wonder how long,” Philotas said, “before it comes to war.”
“We are at war,” said Alexander. “It’s only a matter of where we shall fight the battle. It would be impious to lay Athens waste; like sacking a temple. But sooner or later, we shall have to deal with the Athenians.”
“Will you?” asked crippled Harpalos, who saw in the fighters round him a friendly but alien race. “The louder they bark, the more you can see their rotten teeth.”
“Not so rotten that we can do with them in our backsides when we cross to Asia.”
The war for the Greek cities of Asia was no longer a vision; its essential strategy had begun. Each year saw the causeway of conquered lands pushed nearer to the Hellespont. The strongpoints of the narrow seas, Perinthos and Byzantion, were the last great obstacles. If they could be taken, Philip would need only to secure his rear.
This fact being plain, the Athenian orators were touring Greece again in search of allies whom Philip had not yet persuaded, scared or bought. The fleet off Thrace was sent a little money; an island base was garrisoned in Thasos, close at hand. In the garden of Mieza, the young men debated together how soon they would get another taste of fighting, or, under the eye of the philosopher, discussed the nature and attributes of the soul.