There were also rubs more palpable. A savage brawl, which would beget half a dozen blood-feuds, had broken out in a Pella wineshop, between cavalry of Attalos’ tribal levy, and those of a corps lately renamed Nikanor’s Horse, though no one who valued his life would call it this in hearing of its men. Philip sent for the chief offenders; they glared at each other and were evasive, till the youngest, heir of an ancient house that had helped a dozen kings in or out and well remembered it, lifted his shaven chin and said defiantly, “Well, sir, they were slandering your son.”
Philip told them to look after their own households, and leave his to him. Attalos’ men, who had hoped to hear him say, “I have no son yet,” went grieved away. Soon after, he sent out yet another spy, to learn what was going on in Illyria.
To Epiros he sent none; he knew where he was, there. He had had a letter he perfectly understood; the protest of a man of honor, carried just as far as honor required. One could almost see the drawn line. He replied with equal nicety. The Queen had left him from self-will and sullen temper, having suffered no legal injuries. (He was on good ground here; not every Epirote royal house had been monogamous.) She had turned his son against him; the young man’s present exile was her fault alone. The letter contained no mortal insults. It would be understood in its turn. But what was happening in Illyria?
Some few of the young men had ridden home from Epiros, bringing a letter.
Alexander to Philip King of the Macedonians, greeting. I send back to you and to their fathers these men, my friends. They are guilty of no wrong. In kindness they escorted the Queen and me into Epiros; this done, we required no more of them. When the Queen, my mother, is restored to her rights and dignity, we will return. Till then I shall do as I think good, asking no man’s leave.
Greet for me the soldiers I led at Cheironeia, and those who served under me in Thrace. And do not forget the man who was saved by my shield, when the Argives mutinied before Perinthos. You know his name. Farewell.
In his private reading-cell, Philip crumpled the letter and threw it down; then, bending stiffly with his lame leg, picked it up, flattened out the creases, and locked it away.
One after another, the spies from the west brought in uneasy news, never facts one could grip on. The names of the small close band were always there. Ptolemy: ah, if I could have bride-bedded his mother it would have been a different tale. Niarchos: a good sea-officer, due for promotion if he’d had sense. Harpalos: I never trusted that limping fox, but the boy would have him. Erigyios…Laomedon…Hephaistion, well, as soon part a man from his shadow. Philip brooded a moment, in the sad resenting envy of the man who believes himself always to have sought the perfect love, not owning that he has grudged the price.
The names never varied; the news always did. They were at Kossos’ fort; at the castle of Kleitos, who was as near a High King as Illyria would stomach; they were on the Lynkestid border. They were on the coast, said to be asking after ships for Korkyra, for Italy, for Sicily, even for Egypt. They had been sighted in the ranges beside Epiros. They were rumored to be buying arms, to be hiring spearmen, to be training an army in some forest lair. Whenever Philip needed to dispose his troops for the war in Asia, one of these alarms would come in, and he must spare a regiment for the border. Without doubt, the boy was in touch with friends in Macedon. On paper, the King’s war-plans remained unaltered; but his generals could feel him hanging fire, awaiting the next report.
In a castle perched on a craggy headland by a wooded Illyrian bay, Alexander stared up at the night-shrouded, smoke-black rafters. He had spent the day hunting, like the day before. His bed was of rushes, full of fleas, in the guest-corner of the hall; here, among dogs crunching the bones from old suppers, the bachelors of the household slept. His head ached. A draft of clean air blew from the doorway; the moonlit sky looked bright there. He got up and threw his blanket round him. It was soiled and torn; his good one had been stolen some months before, about the time of his birthday. In a nomad camp near the border, he had turned nineteen.
He steered past sleeping bodies, stumbling on one, which grunted curses. Outside on the bare crag ran a narrow rampart. The cliff plunged straight to the sea; far down, moon-gleaming foam crawled round the boulders. He knew the footsteps behind and did not turn. Hephaistion leaned on the wall beside him.
“What is it? Couldn’t you sleep?”
“I woke,” Alexander said.
“Have you got the gripes again?”
“It stinks in there.”
“Why do you drink that dog-piss? I’d sooner go to bed sober.”
Alexander gave him a look like a silent growl. His arm propped on the wall was scored by the claws of a dying leopard. All day he had been in movement; now he was still, looking down the giddy drop to the sea.
At last he said, “We can’t keep it up much longer.”
Hephaistion frowned at the night. He was glad, however, to be told; it was being asked he had most dreaded. “No,” he said. “I doubt we can.”
Alexander picked some stone chips from the wall-top, and pitched them down at the shimmering sea. No ripple showed, no sound returned from the depth, even when they struck rock. Hephaistion did nothing. He offered his presence, as his omens had directed him.
“Even a fox,” said Alexander presently, “runs through all its tricks in time. And the second time round, the nets are waiting.”
“You’ve often had luck from the gods.”
“Time’s running out,” Alexander said. “It’s a feel one gets in war. You remember Polydoros with his dozen men, trying to hold that fort in the Chersonesos. All those helmets propped on the walls; moved, too, now and again. I was fooled into sending for reinforcements, two days, remember? Then a catapult knocked off a helmet and showed the stake. It was bound to happen; his time ran out. Mine will run out when some Illyrian chief crosses the border on his own account, for cattle, or a feud, and Philip hears I wasn’t leading. I’ll never fool him after that, he knows me too well.”
“You could still lead a raid, it’s not too late to change your mind. If you pushed a little way in, and withdrew from strength…With all he has to do, it’s not likely he’d come in person.”
“How can I know that? No, I had a warning…a kind of warning…at Dodona.”
Hephaistion stored away this news in silence. It was the most Alexander had ever told him of it.
“Alexander. Your father wants you back. I know it. You should believe me. I’ve known it all along,”
“Good. Then he can do right by my mother.”
“No, not only for the war in Asia. You don’t want to hear this, but he loves you. You may not like the way it takes him. The gods have many faces, Euripides says.”
Alexander laid his hands on the broken stone, and turned on his friend his entire attention. “Euripides wrote for actors. Masks, you can say; yes, masks; some pretty, some not. But one face. Only one.”
A meteor flared down with a yellow-green glowing head and fading red trail, and plunged into the distant sea. Hephaistion put happiness briskly by, like a cup drunk down in haste. “It’s an omen for you. You must decide tonight. You know; you came out to do it.”
“I woke up, and the place stank like a midden.” A tuft of pale wallflower had rooted itself among the stones; he fingered it unseeingly. Like a great weight thrown suddenly on his shoulder, Hephaistion felt an awareness of being leaned upon, of being needed for more than love. It brought no joy; it was like glimpsing the first mark of a deadly sickness. Rust; he can bear anything but rust. “Tonight,” he said quietly. “Nothing to wait for, you know it all.”
Without movement, Alexander seemed to gather himself together, to grow more compact. “Yes. First, I’m spending time, not using it. This I’ve never felt before. Second, there are two or three men, and I think King Kleitos is one of them, who once they’re sure they can’t use me against my father, will want to send him my head. And, third…he’s mortal, no man knows his hour. If he died, and I away over the border…”