“That, too,” said Hephaistion calmly. “Well, then, as you say. You want to go home, he wants you back. You’ve exchanged mortal insults, no one will speak first. So you must find a proper go-between. Who is it going to be?”
Firmly now, as if it had been some time settled, Alexander said, “Demaratos of Corinth. He likes us both, he’ll enjoy the importance, he’ll do it well. Whom shall we send him?”
It was Harpalos, with his sad graceful limp, his dark vivid face, his quick smile and flattering grave attentiveness, who rode south. They convoyed him to the Epirote border, for fear of robbers; but he carried no letter with him. It was the essence of his mission, that no record of it should exist. He took only his mule, a change of clothing, and his golden charm.
Philip learned with pleasure that his old guest-friend Demaratos had business in the north, and would like to visit him. He was at pains to choose the supper, and hire a good sword-dancer to enliven it. Food and dancer were cleared away; they settled down to their wine. Corinth being the listening-post for all southern Greece, Philip asked at once for news. He had heard of some rub between Thebes and Sparta; what did Demaratos think?
Demaratos, a privileged guest and proud of it, fed with the expected cue, shook his distinguished iron-grey head. “Ah, King! That I should hear you ask if the Greeks are living in harmony! With your own house in the midst of war.”
Philip’s dark eye, not yet much engorged with wine, slewed sharply round. His trained diplomatist’s ear had picked up a certain note, a shade of preparation. He gave no sign of this. “That boy. He flares up at a spark, like pitch. A silly speech from a man in liquor, only worth a laugh next day if he’d kept the sense he was born with. But he runs off in a blaze to his mother; and you know her.”
Demaratos made sounds of fellow feeling. A thousand pities, he said, that with the mother of such a jealous temper, the young man should feel his future threatened by her disgrace. He quoted faultlessly (having had them ready) some apt elegiacs of Simonides.
“Cutting off his own nose,” said Philip, “to spite his face. A boy with his gifts, the waste of it. We’d get along well enough, but for that witch. He should know better. Well, by now he’ll have paid for it. He’ll have had a bellyful of Illyrian hill-forts. But if he thinks I’ll…”
It was not till next morning that the talking began in earnest.
Demaratos was in Epiros, the King’s most honored guest. He would be escorting back to Pella the King’s sister and her pardoned son. Being rich already, he must chiefly be paid in kudos. King Alexandros toasted him in an heirloom gold cup, and begged him to accept it as a small memento. Olympias put out for him all her social graces; if her enemies called her vixenish, let him judge for himself. Alexander, wearing the one good chiton he had left, was most attentive; till one evening when a tired stiff old man came plodding down to Dodona on a weary mule. It was Phoinix. He had met hard weather on the pass, and almost fell from the saddle into his foster son’s lifted arms.
Alexander demanded a hot bath, sweet oils, and a skilled bath-man; no one in Dodona, it turned out, had ever heard of such a calling. He went in to rub Phoinix down himself.
The royal bath was an antique affair of painted clay, much mended and prone to leak; there was no couch, he had had to send for one. He worked on the knotted-up thigh muscles, following their path as Aristotle had shown him, kneading and tapping as, at home, he had taught his slave to do. In Illyria, he had been doctor to all the others. Even when, knowledge or memory failing, he had relied upon omens seen in dreams, they had preferred him to the local witch-wife.
“Ugh, aah, that’s better, that’s where it always catches me. Have you studied with Cheiron, like Achilles?”
“No teacher like necessity. Now turn over.”
“Those scars on your arm are new.”
“My leopard. I had to give the skin to my host.”
“Did the blankets reach you safely?”
“Did you send blankets too? They’re all thieves in Illyria. I got the books; they can’t read, and by luck they weren’t short of tinder. The books were the best. They stole Oxhead, once.”
“What did you do?”
“Went after the man and killed him. He’d not gone far, Oxhead wouldn’t let him mount.” He kneaded Phoinix’ hamstring.
“You had us all on edge half a year and more. Here and there like a fox.” Alexander laughed shortly, not pausing in his work. “But time went by, and you’re not one for putting off. Your father set it down to your natural feeling. As I told him he should.” Phoinix screwed round his head to look.
Alexander straightened up, wiping off his oily hands on a towel. “Yes,” he said slowly. “A natural feeling, yes, you may call it that.”
Phoinix withdrew his steps from the deep water, as he had learned when to do. “And did you see battle, Achilles, in the west?”
“Once, a tribal war. One has to support one’s host. We won.” He pushed back his steam-moistened hair. His nose and mouth looked pinched. He threw the towel hard into a corner.
Phoinix thought, He has learned to boast of what he suffered under Leonidas; it taught him endurance; I have heard him at Pella and smiled. But these months he will never boast of; and the man who smiles should take care.
As if he had spoken aloud, Alexander said, in sudden anger, “Why did my father demand I should ask his pardon?”
“Well, come, he’s a bargaining man. Every bargain starts with asking too much. In the end he didn’t press it.” Phoinix swung down his stocky wrinkled legs from the couch. By it was a little deep window, with a marten’s nest in an upper corner; on the sill, speckled with droppings, lay an ivory comb with chipped teeth, in which clung some reddish hairs from King Alexandros’ beard. Combing himself, his face shielded, Phoinix looked his nurseling over.
He has conceived that he could fail. Yes, even he. He has seen there are rivers over which, once the spate has risen, there is no way back. Some dark night in that land of robbers, he has seen himself, who knows what? A strategos of mercenaries, hired out to some satrap at war with the Great King, or to some third-rate Sicilian tyrant; maybe a wandering comet, such as Alkibiades once was, a nine days’ wonder every few years, then burnt out in darkness. For a moment he has seen it. He likes to show his war-scars; this scar he will cover like a slave-brand, he hides it even from me.
“Come! The bargain’s struck; wipe old scores away and start with the tablet clean. Remember what Agamemnon said to Achilles, when they were reconciled:
“But what could I do? All things come to pass from God. Blindness of heart is old-born of Zeus, Ate the deadly, Who fools us all.
Your father has felt it. I have seen it in his face.”
Alexander said, “I can lend you a cleaner comb than that.” He put it back under the bird’s nest, and brushed his fingers. “Well, we know what Achilles said:
“This has been all to the good for Hector, and for the Trojans; The Greeks, though, I think will long remember our falling out. Even so, we will put it all by, finished and done with, though it hurts us, beating down the inward passion because we must.”
He picked up the fresh chiton creased from Phoinix’ saddlebag, dropped it neatly over his head like a well-trained page, and handed him his sword belt.
“Ah, child, you’ve always been a good boy to me.” Phoinix fiddled with the buckle, head down. He had meant these words to open an exhortation; but, the rest failing him, he left them to stand as they were.