Demosthenes found it a constant nuisance. He had no doubt that he was laying out in the City’s interests the gold that the Persians sent him; but a great deal passed through his hands, he was accountable to no one, and the agent’s cut was naturally allowed for. It freed him from daily cares, and his time for public service; what object could be worthier? But he had to take care with Phokion.
In the Great War with Sparta, the Athenians had fought for glory and for empire; they had ended beaten to the dust and stripped of everything. They had fought for freedom and democracy, and had finished under the most brutal tyranny of their recorded years. Old men still lived who had starved through the winter siege; the middle-aged had heard of it at first hand, mostly from people it had ruined. They had lost faith in war. If they turned to it again, it could only be in one cause, for mere survival. Step by step they had been brought to think that Philip meant to destroy them. Had he not destroyed Olynthos? So at last they gave up the public dole, to spend it on the fleet; the tax on the rich was raised above the old flat rate, in proportion to what they owned.
It was the Athenian navy which made her safer than Thebes. Few understood that its high command was not just then very talented; Demosthenes took for granted that mere numbers must be decisive. Sea-power had saved Perinthos and Byzantion and the corn route of the Hellespont. If Philip forced his way south it must be by land. Demosthenes was now the most powerful man in Athens, her symbol of salvation. Alliance with Thebes was in his grasp; he had replaced the ancient enmity by a greater.
Thebes paused in doubt. Philip had confirmed her rule over the Boeotian countryside around her, an age-long issue; where Athens, declaring it antidemocratic, had sought to weaken her by giving the Boeotians self-rule. But Thebes controlled the land route into Attica; this was her value to Philip; all her bargaining power with him would vanish, if he and Athens made a separate peace.
So they debated, willing things to be as they had always been, unwilling to know that events are made by men, and that men had changed.
In Macedon, Philip grew brown and weathered, he could endure first half a day on horseback, and then a day; on the great horse-field by Pella lake, the cavalry wheeled and charged in complex maneuvers. There were now two royal squadrons, Philip’s and Alexander’s. Father and son were seen riding together deep in counsel, the gold head bent towards the grizzled one. Queen Olympias’ maids looked pale and fretted; one had been beaten, and was two days laid up.
In midsummer, when the grain was tall and green, the Council of Delphi met again. Kottyphos reported the Amphissians still defaulting, the proscribed leaders unexpelled; it was beyond his makeshift army to force them to their knees. He proposed in Council that King Philip of Macedon, who had championed the god against the impious Phokians, be asked to undertake the holy war.
Antipatros, who was there as envoy, rose to say he was empowered to give the King’s consent. What was more, Philip, as a pious offering, would campaign at his own expense. Votes of thanks and an elaborate commission were drafted, and inscribed by the local writing-master; he finished his task about the time when Antipatros’ courier, for whom fresh horses had stood by all the way, arrived at Pella.
Alexander was in the ball-court, playing odd-man-out with his friends. It was his turn to stand in the center of the ring, and try to stop the ball on its way. He had just got it with a four-foot jump, when Harpalos, condemned as usual to watch others limbering up, caught a flying rumor from outside, and called that the courier was here from Delphi. Alexander, in his eagerness to see the letter opened, brought it in to the King while he was in his bath.
He stood in a broad basin of ornate bronze, steaming his wounded leg while one of the squires rubbed in a strong-smelling liniment. His flesh was still sunken, his scars were plowed and knotted all over him; one collarbone, broken long ago when his horse was killed in battle, had knit with a thick callus. He was like some old tree on which the cattle year after year have rubbed their horns. With unthinking instinct, Alexander saw what kind of weapon had made each wound. What scars shall I carry, when I am as old as he?
“Open it for me,” said Philip. “My hands are wet.” He drooped his eyelid as a sign to hide bad news. But there was no need.
When Alexander ran back to the ball-court, the clean-shaved young men were splashing in the fountain, throwing jars of water at each other to sluice off the dust and cool down. Seeing his face, they paused, arrested in action like a sculpture group by Skopas.
“It has come!” he said. “We are going south.”
7
AT THE FOOT OF the painted stairway, the bodyguard leaned on his spear. It was Keteus, a stocky iron-bearded veteran rising sixty. It had not been thought seemly for youths to guard the Queen, since the King had ceased to visit her.
The young man in the black cloak paused in the shadowed passage with its floor-mosaic of black and white. He had never been so late to his mother’s room.
At his footfall, the guard threw up his shield and pointed his spear, bidding him declare himself. He showed his face, and went up the stairs. When he scratched on the door there was no answer. He drew his dagger, and rapped sharply with the hilt.
A sleepy bustle sounded within, followed by a breathing silence.
“It is Alexander,” he said. “Open the door.”
A blinking rumpled woman, a robe dragged round her, put out her head; behind her the voices rustled like mice. They must have thought, before, that it was the King.
“Madam is sleeping. It is late, Alexander, long past midnight.”
His mother’s voice from beyond said, “Let him in.”
She stood by the bed, tying the girdle of her night-robe, made of wool the color of curded cream edged with dark fur. He could just see her by the flickering night-light; a maid, clumsy from sleep, was trying to kindle with it the wicks of the standing lamp-cluster. The hearth was swept clean, it was summer now.
The first wick of the three burned up. She said, “That is enough.”
Her red hair mixed on her shoulders with the dark sleekness of the fur. The slanting lamplight etched the frown-creases between her brows, the lines that framed the corners of her mouth. When she faced the light full, one saw only the fine structure, the clear skin and the firm closed lips. She was thirty-four years old.
The one lamp left the room’s edges dark. He said, “Is Kleopatra here?”
“At this hour? She is in her room. Do you want her?”
“No.”
She said to the women, “Go back to bed.”
When the door closed, she threw the embroidered coverlet over the tumbled bed, and motioned him to sit by her; but he did not move.
“What is it?” she said softly. “We have said goodbye. You should be sleeping, if you march at dawn. What is it? You look strange. Have you had a dream?”
“I have been waiting. This is not a little war, it is the beginning of everything. I thought you would send for me. You must know what brings me here.”
She stroked back the hair across her brow, her hand masking her eyes. “Do you want me to make a divination for you?”
“I need no divination, Mother. Only the truth.” She had let fall her hand too quickly, his eyes had seized on hers. “What am I?” he said. “Tell me who I am.”
She stared. He saw she had expected some other question.
“Never mind,” he said, “whatever you have been doing. I know nothing about it. Tell me what I ask.”
She saw that in the few hours since they had last met, he had grown haggard. She had nearly said to him, “Is that all?”