by Mary Renault
The King and Queen were installed already. Reading as he crossed the threshold those signs in which the years had made him expert, Alexander judged that, publicly at least, they were on speaking terms. But they were unlikely to be found together. This had been his first long absence; which should be greeted first?
It ought to be the King. Custom decreed it; to omit it would be an open slight. Unprovoked too; in Thrace, Philip had gone to trouble to keep things decent before him. No girl about the place; never a glance too many at the handsomest of the body-squires, who thought himself a cut above the rest. His father had commended him handsomely after the battle, and promised him his own company when next he went into action. It would be boorish to insult him. Indeed, Alexander found that he wished to see him; he would have much to tell.
The King’s business room was in the ancient tower which had been the first core of the castle, filling its upper floor. A ponderous wooden ladder, mended through the centuries, still had beside it the heavy ring to which earlier kings, whose bedchamber it had been, had chained a watchdog of the great Molossian breed that could rear up taller than a man. King Archelaos had hung a smoke-hood over the hearth; but he had made few changes at Aigai, the Palace at Pella had been his love. Philip’s clerks had the anteroom below the ladder. Alexander had one of them announce him, before he went up.
His father got up from his writing-table, to thump him on the shoulders. Their greetings had never been so easy. Alexander’s questions burst from him. How had Kypsela fallen? He had been sent back to school while the army still sat before it. “Did you go in from the river side, or breach that blind bit next the rocks?”
Philip had been saving him a reprimand for visiting, without leave, the wild eyrie of young Lambaros on his journey home, but this was now forgotten. “I tried a sap on the river side, but the soil was sandy. So I built a siege tower for them to think about, while I sapped the northeast wall.”
“Where did you put the tower?”
“On that rise where—” Philip looked for his tablet, found it filled with notes, and made gestures in the air to sketch the site.
“Here.” Alexander ran to the log-basket by the hearth, and came back with both hands full of kindling. “Look, this is the river.” He laid down a stick of pine. “Here’s the north watchtower.” He stood a log on its end. Philip reached for another, and made a wall next the tower. They began eagerly to push bits of wood about.
“No, that’s too far out, the gate was here.”
“Look, but Father, your siege tower…Oh, there, I see. And the sap was here?”
“Now the ladders, give me those sticks. Now here was Kleitos’ company. Parmenion—”
“Wait, we left out the catapults.” Alexander dived into the basket for fir-cones. Philip set them up.
“So Kleitos was partly covered, while I—”
Silence fell like a sword-stroke. Alexander, whose back was to the door, needed only to read his father’s face. It had been easier to leap into the gatehouse at Doriskos than now it was to turn; so he turned at once.
His mother was dressed in a robe of purple bordered with white and gold. Her hair was bound with a gold fillet, and draped with a veil of byssos silk from Kos, through which its red showed like fire through wood-smoke. She did not glance at Philip. Her burning eyes sought not the enemy, but the traitor.
“When you have done your game, Alexander, I shall be in my room. Do not hurry. I have waited half a year; what are a few hours more?”
She turned rigidly and was gone. Alexander stood unmoving. Philip read into this what he wished to see. He raised his brows with a smile, and turned again to the battle-plan.
“Excuse me, Father. I had better go along.”
Philip was a diplomat; but the rancor of years, the present exasperation, robbed him of his instinct for the moment when generosity would pay. “You can stay, I suppose, till I have finished speaking.”
Alexander’s face changed to that of a soldier awaiting orders. “Yes, Father?”
With a folly he would never have shown in parley with his enemies, Philip pointed to a chair and said, “Sit down.” Challenge had been offered, beyond recall.
“I am sorry. I must see Mother now. Goodbye, Father.” He turned towards the door.
“Come back,” barked Philip. Alexander looked round from where he was. “Do you mean to leave all this filth on my table? You put it there; clear it up.”
Alexander walked back to the table. Crisply, precisely, he put the wood in a pile, strode with it to the log-basket, and flung it in. He had knocked a letter off the table. Ignoring it, he gave one deadly look at Philip and left the room.
The women’s quarters had been the same since the first days of the castle. From here they had been summoned, in Amyntas’ day, to greet the Persian envoys. He went up the narrow stairs to the little anteroom. A girl he had not seen before was coming out, looking over her shoulder. She had fine feathery dark hair, green eyes, a clear pale skin, and a deep bosom over which her thin red dress was tightly bound; her lower lip was caught in a little, in a natural line. At the sound of his step she started. Her long lashes swept up; her face, as frank-looking as a child’s, showed admiration, realization, fright. He said, “Is my mother there?” and knew there had been no need to ask the question, he had done it from choice. “Yes, my lord,” she said, dipping nervously. He wondered why she looked scared, though a mirror might have told him; felt sorry for her and smiled. Her face changed as if a pale sun had touched it. “Shall I tell her, Alexander, that you are here?” “No, she expects me, you need not stay.” She paused a moment, looking at him earnestly, as if not satisfied that she had done enough for him. She was a little older than he, perhaps a year. Then she went on down the stairs.
He paused a moment outside the door, staring after. She had looked fragile and smooth to touch, like a swallow’s egg; her mouth had been unpainted, pink and delicate. She had been a sweet taste after a bitter one. From outside the window came drifting the sound of a men’s chorus, practicing for the Dionysia.
“You have remembered, then, to come,” said his mother as soon as they were alone. “How soon you have learned to make your life without me!”
She stood by the window in the thick stone wall; a slanting light touched the curve of her cheek and shone in her thin veil. She had dressed for him, painted; intricately done her hair. He saw it; as she saw that he had grown again, that the bones of his face had hardened, his voice lost the last flaws of boyhood. He had come back a man, and faithless like a man. He knew that he had longed for her; that true friends share everything, except the past before they met. If only she would weep, even that, and let him comfort her; but she would not humble herself before a man. If only he would run to her side and cling to her; but his manhood was hard-won, no mortal should make him a child again. So, blinded by their sense of their own uniqueness, they fought out their lovers’ quarrel, while the roar of the Aigai falls pounded in their ears like blood.
“How shall I be anything, without learning war? Where else can I learn it? He is my general; why affront him without a cause?”
“Oh, you have no cause now. Once you had mine.”
“What? What has he done?” He had been gone so long, Aigai itself had looked changed, like the promise of some new life. “What is it, tell me.”
“Never mind, why should you be troubled? Go and enjoy yourself with your friends. Hephaistion will be waiting.”
She must have been questioning someone, he had always been careful. “I can see them any time. All I wanted was to do the proper thing. For your sake too, you know that. One would think you hated me.”
“I only counted on your love. Now I know better.”
“Tell me what he’s done.”
“Never mind. It is nothing, except to me.”
“Mother.”
She saw the crease drawn across his forehead, deeper now; two little new lines came down between his brows. She could no longer look down at him; his
eyes, drawn at the inner corners, met hers level. She came forward and laid her cheek to his. “Never be so cruel to me again.”
Once through this rising river, and she would forgive him everything, all would be rendered back. But no. He would not give her this. Before she could see his tears, he broke from her and ran down the narrow stair.
At the turn, his eyes blurred, he collided with someone head-on. It was the dark-haired girl. “Oh,” she cried, fluttering and soft like a pigeon, “I am sorry, I am sorry, my lord.”
He took her slender arms in his hands. “My fault. I hope I did not hurt you?”
“No, no indeed.” They paused a moment, before she swept down her thick lashes and went on up the stairs. He touched his eyes, in case there had been anything to notice; but they were scarcely wet.
Hephaistion, who had been looking for him everywhere, found him an hour later in a little old room which looked towards the falls. Their sound was deafening here when the water was in spate; the very floor seemed to shudder with the grinding of the rocks below. The room was lined with chests and shelves of old musty records and title deeds, treaties, and long family trees going back to heroes and gods. There were a few books too, left there by Archelaos or by the accidents of time.
Alexander sat curled in the small deep window-hole, like an animal in a cave. A handful of scrolls was strewed around him.
“What are you doing here?” Hephaistion asked.
“Reading.”
“I’m not blind. What’s the matter?” Hephaistion came up nearer, to see his face. It had the fierce secretiveness of a wounded dog which will bite the hand that strokes it. “Someone said you went up here. I’ve never seen this room before.”
“It’s the archives room.”
“What are you reading?”
“Xenophon on hunting. He says the tusk of the boar is so hot that it singes dogs’ fur.”
“I never knew that.”
“It’s not true. I put a hair on one to see.” He picked up the scroll.
“It will soon be dark in here.”
“Then I’ll come down.”
“Don’t you want me to stay?”
“I just want to read.”
Hephaistion had come to tell him that their sleeping-quarters had been set out in the archaic manner, the Prince in a small inner room, the Companions in a dormitory outside it, devoted to that purpose immemorially. Now, without asking, Hephaistion could see that the Queen would take notice if this arrangement were changed. The groan of the waterfall, the lengthening shadows, spoke of grief.
Aigai was in its yearly bustle for the Dionysia, enhanced by the presence of the King, so often absent at war. The women ran from house to house, the men met to practice their phallic dances. Mule trains of wine came in from the vineyards and up from the castle storerooms. The Queen’s rooms were a buzzing secret hive. Alexander was barred from them, not in disgrace but because he was a man. Kleopatra was inside, though she was not yet a woman. She must know nearly all the secrets now. But she was too young yet to go with them up the mountain.
On the day before the feast, he woke early and saw dawn glimmer in the window. The first birds were chirping; the water sounded more distantly here. He could hear a woodman’s ax, and cattle lowing for the milkers. He rose and dressed, thought of waking Hephaistion, then looked at the little postern stair which would let him out alone. It was built within the wall, so that the Prince could have women brought in discreetly. It could have told some tales, he thought as he stepped quietly down and, at the bottom, turned the key in its massive lock.
There was no garden at Aigai, only an old orchard enclosed in the outer wall. On the black bare trees, one or two buds were splitting at the thrust of unfolding flowers. Dew was heavy in the long grass; it hung in the spiders’ webs like crystal beads. The peaks, still snowbound, were flushed with pink. The cold air was quickened with spring and violets.
He traced them by their scent to the bank where they grew deep in rank grass. When he was a child, he had gathered them for his mother. He would pick some now, and bring them while the women were doing her hair. It was as well he had come alone; even with Hephaistion, he could not very well have done it.
His hands were full of the cold wet flowers, when he saw something gliding through the orchard. It was a girl, with a thick brown wrap over a pale filmy gown. He knew her at once, and went towards her. She was like the plum buds, the light enfolded in the dark. When he came out from the trees, she gave a great start, and went as white as her linen. What a shy girl she was. “What is it? I shan’t eat you. I only came to say good day.” “Good morning, my lord.” “What’s your name?” “Gorgo, my lord.”
She still looked quite blanched with fright; she must be extremely modest. What should one say to girls? He knew only what his friends, and the soldiers, claimed that they had said. “Come, smile for me, Gorgo, and you shall have some flowers.” She gave him with dropped lashes a little smile, fragile, mysterious, like a hamadryad slipping out briefly from her tree. He almost found himself dividing the flowers in two, to keep some for his mother; what a fool he would have looked. “Here,” he said, and, as she took them, bent and kissed her cheek. She leaned it a moment to his lips, then drew back, not looking at him, softly shaking her head. Opening her thick cloak she tucked the violets between her breasts, and slipped away through the trees.
He stood looking after her, seeing again the cold crisp stems of the violets going down into the warm silky crease. Tomorrow was the Dionysia. And holy Earth made fresh young grass grow under them, dewy clover and crocuses and hyacinths, a thick soft bed between them and the hard ground.
He said nothing of it to Hephaistion.
When he went to greet his mother, he saw that something had happened. She was raging like a banked-down fire; but from her looks he was not the offender. She was asking herself whether or not to tell him of it. He kissed, but did not question her. Yesterday had been enough.
All day his friends were telling each other about the girls they meant to have next day, if they could catch them on the mountain. He threw back the old jokes, but kept his own counsel. The women would be setting out from the sanctuary, long before the dawn.
“What shall we do tomorrow?” Hephaistion asked him. “I mean, after the sacrifice?”
“I don’t know. It’s unlucky to make plans for the Dionysia.”
Hephaistion gave him a secret, startled glance. No, it was not possible; he had been moody since he got here, and cause enough. Till he got over it, one must let him be.
Supper was early; everyone would be up next day before cocklight; and on the eve of Dionysos no one, even in Macedon, sat late over the wine. The spring twilight fell early, when the sun sank under the western ridges; there were corners in the castle where lamps were kindled half through afternoon. The meal in Hall had a transit air; Philip made use of its sobriety to seat Aristotle by him, a compliment less convenient on other nights, for the man was a poor drinker. After supper, most people went straight to bed.
Alexander was never fond of sleeping early. He decided to look up Phoinix, who often read late; he was lodged in the western tower.
The place was a warren; but he knew the short-cuts from childhood. Beyond an anteroom, where spare furniture for guests was kept, was the well of a little stair which took one straight there. The lobby was unlit, but a wall-cresset from beyond shone through. He was almost inside, when he heard a sound, and saw a movement.
Silent and motionless, he stood in shadow. In the patch of light, the girl Gorgo faced towards him, wriggling and squirming in the arms of a man who stood behind her, one dark square hairy hand squeezing her groin and the other her breast. Breathless soft giggles stirred her throat. The dress slid off her shoulder under the working hand; a couple of dead violets fell out on the flagstones. The man’s face, muzzling for her ear, appeared from behind her head. It was his father’s.
Stealthily as in war, his footfalls covered by her squeaking, he drew ba
ck, and went through the nearest door into the cold, water-loud night.
Upstairs, in the lodging of the Prince’s Guard, Hephaistion lay awake, waiting for Alexander to come to bed so that he could go in and say good night. Other nights here, they had all gone up together; but tonight, no one had seen him since supper. To go searching about for him might make people laugh; Hephaistion lay in the darkness, staring at the line of light under the thick old door of the inner room, watching for the shadows of feet to cross it. No shadow stirred. He drifted into sleep, but dreamed he was watching still.
In the dark small hours, Alexander went up by the postern to change his clothes. The lamp, nearly burned out, flickered dimly. Stripping in the bitter cold, his fingers almost too numb to fasten things, he got into the dressed leather tunic, boots and leggings he used for hunting. He would get warm when he began to climb.
He leaned from the window. Already here and there, wavering among trees, twinkling like stars in the down-drafts from the snows, the first torches shone.
It was long since he had followed them to the grove. Never, at any time of his life, had he followed them to the rites upon the mountain. He could have given no reason now, except that it was the only thing. He was returning, though it was unlawful. There was nowhere else to go.
He had always been a quick, light-footed hunter, impatient of others’ noise. Few men were astir so early; they were easily heard, laughing and talking with time in hand to find in the footslopes the willing tipsy stragglers who would be their prey. He slipped past unseen; soon he had left them all below him, going up through the beech woods along the immemorial track. Long ago, the day after an earlier Dionysia, he had traced this path in secret, all the way to the trodden dancing-place, by footprints, threads caught on thorns, fallen sprays of vine and ivy, torn fur and blood.
She should never know; even in after years, he would never tell her. Forever possessed in secrecy, this would belong only to him. He would be with her invisibly, as the gods visit mortals. He would know of her what no man had known.