“No; true friends should be everything to one another.”
“It is what you really want?”
“You should know that.”
“I can’t bear you to be sad.”
“It soon goes by. It’s the envy of some god perhaps.” He reached up to Hephaistion’s head, bent anxiously above him, and settled it on his shoulder. “One or two of them were shamed by unworthy choices. Don’t name them, they might be angry; still, we know. Even the gods can be envious.”
Hephaistion, his mind freed from the clouds of longing, saw in a divining moment the succession of King Philip’s young men: their coarse good looks, their raw sexuality like a smell of sweat, their jealousies, their intrigues, their insolence. Out of all the world, he had been chosen to be everything which those were not; between his hands had been laid, in trust, Alexander’s pride. As long as he should live, nothing greater could ever happen to him than this; to have more, one would need to be made immortal. Tears burst from his eyes, and trickled down on the throat of Alexander, who, believing he too felt the after-sadness, smilingly stroked his hair.
In the next year’s spring, Demosthenes sailed north to Perinthos and Byzantion, the fortified cities on the narrow seas. Philip had negotiated a peace treaty with each: if let alone, they would not impede his march. Demosthenes persuaded both cities to denounce the treaties. The Athenian forces based on Thasos were conducting an undeclared war with Macedon.
On the drill-field of the Pella plain, a sea-flat left bare in old men’s living memory, the phalanxes wheeled and countermarched with their long sarissas, graded so that the points of three ranks, in open order, should strike the enemy front in a single line. The cavalry did their combat exercises, gripping with the thighs, the knees, and by the mane, to help them keep their seats through the shock of impact.
At Mieza, Alexander and Hephaistion were packing their kit to start at dawn next day, and searching each other’s hair.
“None this time,” said Hephaistion, laying down the comb. “It’s in winter, with people huddling together, that one picks them up.”
Alexander, sitting at his knees, shoved off a dog of his that was trying to lick his face, and changed places. “Fleas one can drown,” he said as he worked, “but lice are like Illyrians creeping about in the woods. We’ll have plenty on campaign, one can at least start clean. I don’t think you’ve…no, wait…Well, that’s all.” He got up to reach a stoppered flask from a shelf. “We’ll use this again, it’s far the best. I must tell Aristotle.”
“It stinks.”
“No, I put in some aromatics. Smell.” During this last year, he had been taken up with the healing art. Among much theory, little of which he thought could issue well in action, this was a useful thing, which warrior princes had not disdained on the field of Troy; the painters showed Achilles binding Patroklos’ wounds. His keenness had somewhat disconcerted Aristotle, whose own interest now was academic; but the science had been his paternal heritage, and he found after all a pleasure in teaching it. Alexander now kept a notebook of salves and draughts, with hints on the treatment of fevers, wounds and broken limbs.
“It does smell better,” Hephaistion conceded. “And it seems to keep them off.”
“My mother had a charm against them. But she always ended in picking them out by hand.”
The dog sat grieving by the baggage, whose smell it recognized. Alexander had been in action not many months before, commanding his own company as the King had promised. All of today the house had sounded with shrill susurrations, like crickets’ chirping; the scrape of whetstones on javelins, daggers and swords, as the young men made ready.
Hephaistion thought of the coming war without fear, erasing from his mind, or smothering in its depths, even the fear that Alexander would be killed. Only so was life possible at his side. Hephaistion would avoid dying if he could, because he was needed. One must study how to make the enemy die instead, and beyond that trust in the gods.
“One thing I’m scared of,” said Alexander; working his sword about in its sheath till the blade glided like silk through the well-waxed leather. “That the south will come in before I’m ready.” He reached for the brush of chewed stick with which he cleaned the goldwork.
“Give me that, I’ll do it along with mine.” Hephaistion bent over the elaborate finial of the sheath, and the latticed strap-work. Alexander always rid himself of his javelins quickly, the sword was already his weapon, face to face, hand to hand. Hephaistion muttered a luck-charm over it as he worked.
“Before we march into Greece, I hope to be a general.”
Hephaistion looked up from rubbing the hilt of polished sharkskin. “Don’t set your heart on it; time’s looking short.”
“They’d follow me already, in the field, if it came to a push in action. That I know. They’d not think it proper to appoint me yet, though. A year, two years…But they’d follow me, now.”
Hephaistion gave it thought; he never told Alexander what he wished to hear, if it could cause him trouble later. “Yes, they would. I saw that last time. Once they thought you were just a luck-bringer. But now they can tell you know what you’re about.”
“They’ve known me a long time.” Alexander took down his helmet from the wall-peg, and shook out its white horsehair crest.
“To hear some of them talk, one would think they’d reared you.” Hephaistion dug too hard with the brush, broke it, and had to chew a new end.
“Some of them have.” Alexander, having combed the crest, went over to the wall-mirror. “I think it will do. It’s good metal, it fits, and the men can see me.” Pella had no lack of first-class armorers. They came north from Corinth, knowing where good custom was. “When I’m a general, I can have one to show up.”
Hephaistion, looking over his shoulder at his mirrored face, said, “I’ll bet on that. You’re like a gamecock for finery.”
Alexander hung back the helmet. “You’re angry, why?”
“Get made a general, then you’ll have a tent of your own. We’ll never be out of a crowd from tomorrow till we get back.”
“Oh…Yes, I know. But that’s war.”
“One has to get used to it. Like the fleas.”
Alexander came swiftly over, struck with remorse at having forgotten. “In our souls,” he said, “we’ll be more than ever united, winning eternal fame. Son of Menoitios, great one, you who delight my heart.” He smiled deeply into Hephaistion’s eyes, which faithfully smiled back. “Love is the true food of the soul. But the soul eats to live, like the body, it mustn’t live to eat.”
“No,” said Hephaistion. What he lived for was his own business, part of which was that Alexander should not be burdened with it.
“The soul must live to do.”
Hephaistion put aside the sword, took up the dagger with its dolphin hilts and agate pommel, and agreed that this was so.
Pella rang and rattled with sounds of war. The breeze brought Oxhead the noise and smell of war-chargers; he flared his nostrils and whinnied.
King Philip was on the parade ground. He had had scaling-ladders rigged up against tall scaffolding, and was making the men climb up in proper order, without crowding, jostling, pinking each other with their weapons, or undue delay. He sent his son a message that he would see him after maneuvers. The Queen would see him at once.
When she embraced him, she found he was the taller. He stood five foot seven; before his bones set, he might make another inch or so, not more. But he could break a cornel spear-shaft between his hands, walk thirty miles in a day over rough country without food (for a test, he had done it once without drink either). By gradual unnoticed stages, he had ceased to grieve that he was not tall. The tall men of the phalanx, who could wield a twenty-foot sarissa, liked him very well as he was.