by Mary Renault
317 B.C.
THE SPRING SUN WARMED THE HILLS, melting the snows; first filling, then tempering the streams. Roads deep in mud and silted with scree grew firm again. The land opened to war.
Kassandros, with the fleet and army Antigonos had lent him, crossed the Aegean and landed at Piraeus, the port of Athens. Before his father was dead, he had sent a man of his own to take command of the Macedonian garrison in the harbor fort. While the Athenians were still discussing the royal decree and the offer of their ancient liberties, they found that the garrison had come down and occupied the harbor. Kassandros had sailed in unopposed.
Polyperchon, getting this news, despatched advance troops under his son Alexandras. The campaign hung fire; he prepared to set out himself. When he began to mobilize, he came to the palace to see King Philip.
Eurydike received him with the offerings of formal hospitality; she was resolved to have her presence recognized. Polyperchon, as formally, asked after both their health, listened to Philip’s account of a cockfight to which Konon had lately taken him, and then said, “Sir. I have come to tell you that we shall soon be marching south together. The traitor Kassandros must be dealt with. We shall start in seven days. Please tell your people to have your baggage ready. I will see your man about your horses.”
Philip nodded cheerfully. He had been on the march for nearly half his life, and took it as a matter of course. He did not understand what the war was about; but Alexander had seldom told him. “I shall ride Whitefoot,” he said. “Eurydike, which horse will you ride?”
Polyperchon cleared his throat. “Sir, this is a campaign. The lady Eurydike will of course remain at Pella.”
“But I can take Konon?” said Philip anxiously.
“By all means, sir.” Polyperchon did not look that way.
There was a pause. He awaited the storm. But in fact Eurydike said nothing.
It had never occurred to her that she could be left behind, She had looked forward to the escape from the tedium of the palace to the freedom of the camp. In the first moment of learning that she had been relegated to the women’s rooms she had been as angry as Polyperchon had expected, and had been on the point of protest, when there came into her mind Kassandros’ unspoken message. How could she influence affairs, trailing along with the army, watched at every turn? But here at home, with the guardian away at war …
She swallowed her anger at being so belittled, and held her peace. Afterwards, she found a lingering hurt that Philip had found Konon more necessary than her. After all I have done for him, she thought.
Polyperchon meantime was at the other end of the palace. Here were the quarters where the elder Philip had moved, when he ceased to share the great bedchamber with Olympias. They were handsome enough to satisfy Roxane, and her son did not complain of them. They opened onto an old orchard where he liked to play now that the days grew warmer. The plum-trees were already budding, and the grass smelled of hidden violets. “Considering his tender years and need of his mother,”
Polyperchon said, “I shall not expose the King to the hardships of the march. In any treaties I may sign or edicts I may issue, his name will of course appear with King Philip’s, as if he were present too.”
“So,” said Roxane, “Philip will go with you?” “Yes; he is a grown man, it will be expected.” “Then his wife will go to care for him?” Her voice had sharpened.
“No, madam. War is not women’s “business.” She opened her black eyes till the clear white showed all round. “Then,” she cried, “who will protect my son and me?”
What could the foolish woman mean? He brought down his brows in irritation, and answered that Macedon would be left well garrisoned.
“Macedon? Here, in this house, who will protect us from that she-wolf? She will only wait to see you gone before she murders us.”
“Madam,” he said testily, “we are not now in the wilds of Asia. The Queen Eurydike is a Macedonian and will obey the law. Even if she wished otherwise, she would not dare touch the son of Alexander. The people would have her blood.”
He left, thinking, Women! They make war seem a holiday. The thought consoled him among his cares. Since the new decree, nearly all the Greek cities were in a state of civil war, or on the verge of it; the coming campaign promised every kind of confusion and uncertainty. Roxane’s notion that he would add to his troubles by taking that termagant girl along was enough to make a man laugh.
A week later the army marched. From the balcony of the great bedchamber, Eurydike had watched the troops assemble on the great drill-field where Philip and Alexander had trained their men; had seen the long column wind slowly down alongside the lagoon, making for the coast road to the south.
As the lumbering baggage train began to follow the soldiers, she looked about her at the horizons of the land she still meant to rule. Over the near hills was her father’s house where Kynna had taught her war. She would keep it for her hunting-lodge, her private place, when she was Queen.
She looked down idly at the grandiose front of the palace with its painted pediment and columns of colored marble. On the broad steps the tutor Kebes came down, the child Alexander beside him, trailing a wooden hobby-horse by its scarlet bridle. The child of the barbarian, who must not reign. How would Kassandros deal with that? She frowned.
Roxane behind her curtains grew weary of watching wagons, a sight too long familiar. Her eyes wandered. There on a balcony, brazenly showing herself to the world like a harlot looking for trade, stood Philip’s mannish wife. What was she staring at so fiercely? Roxane’s ear caught the sound of her own child’s piping chatter. Yes, it was at him that she was looking! Swiftly, Roxane made the sign against the evil eye, and ran to her casket. Where was the silver charm her mother had given her against the malice of harem rivals? He must put it on. A letter was beside it, with the royal seal of Epiros. She reread it, and knew what she must do.
Kebes proved easy to persuade. The times were doubtful; so was his own future. He could well believe that the son of Alexander was in danger, and not only from his mother’s spoiling. He had softened to Roxane; she might need protection too. It was eleven years since her beauty had hit Alexander like a fiery arrow across a torchlit hall; but her looks had been tended, her legend lived in them still. It seemed to the young man that he too could enter the legend, rescuing the woman Alexander had loved, and his only child.
It was he who chose the litter-bearers and the armed escort of four; who swore them to secrecy, who bought the mules, who found a messenger to ride ahead with news of their coming. Two days later, just before dawn, they were on the mountain road making for Dodona.
The royal house had a steep-pitched roof to throw off the winter snows. Roofs in Molossia gave no platform for watchers. Olympias stood in the window of the King’s bedchamber, which she had taken when her daughter left it. Her eyes were fixed on a curl of smoke from the nearest hilltop. On three heights in an eastward line she had had beacons laid, to signal the approach of her daughter-in-law and grandson. Now she sent for the captain of the palace guard, and ordered him to meet them with an escort.
Olympias had assented to her age. In the month of mourning for Alexander she had washed the paint from her face, and covered her hair with a dark veil. When the month was over, and she put the veil away, her hair was silky white. She was sixty, and lean where she had been slim. Her fine redhead’s skin was brittle like pressed petals; but lacking color the proud bone showed more. Under their white brows, the smoky grey eyes could still pale dangerously.
She had waited long for this day. As the emptiness of loss came home to her, she had craved to touch this last living vestige of him; but the child was unborn, there was no remedy for waiting. With the wars’ delays, her longing dulled and earlier doubts returned. The mother was a barbarian, a campaign wife, whose son he had meant to pass over—in a secret letter he had told her so—if the Great King’s daughter had borne a boy. Would anything remain of him in this stranger?
When the child reached Macedon, her feud with Antipatros had left her only two ways to go back there, submission or war. The first was unthinkable; against the second Eumenes, on whom she must depend, had warned her. Then Roxane had written begging for a refuge, and she had answered, “Come.”
Next day the cavalcade arrived; the tough Molossian troopers on their shaggy ponies, two disheveled waiting-women on stumbling donkeys, a covered litter with its mules. Her eyes on the litter, she did not see at first the young man who carried across his horse’s withers a six-year-old boy. He lifted him down and spoke to him quietly, pointing. Resolutely, on legs more a boy’s than a child’s, he walked up the steps, gave her a soldier’s salute, and said, “May you live, Grandmother. I am Alexander.”
She took him between her hands while the company made respectful gestures, and kissed his brow, dirty with travel, and looked again. Kebes had fulfilled his trust. Alexander’s son was no longer the podgy nursling of the harem tent. Olympias saw a beautiful young Persian, fine-boned and dark-eyed. The hair was cut sloping to the nape, as Alexander used to wear it, but it was straight, heavy, and raven-black. He looked up at her from under his fine dark brows and his blue-brown, thick-lashed eyelids; and though there was nothing of him anywhere that was Macedonian, she saw Alexander in his upward, deep-set gaze. It was too much, it took her a few moments to gather herself together. Then she took his pale slender hand. “Welcome, my child. Come, bring me to your mother.”
The roads from Pella down into Greece had been smoothed since old Philip’s reign for the swift march of armies. The roads to the west were rough. Despite the difference in distance, therefore, it was at about the same time that Polyperchon in the Peloponnese, and Olympias in Dodona, got news from Macedon that Eurydike had assumed the regency.
Polyperchon got, in addition, an order signed by her, directing him to hand over to Kassandros the Macedonian forces in the south.
Speechless for a while, the old soldier kept his head, offered the courier wine without disclosing the message, and asked for news. It seemed that the Queen had called Assembly, and addressed it with great spirit. The barbarian woman, she told them, had fled the land with her child, fearing the anger of the Macedonians; she would do well not to return. All who had known Alexander would testify that the child looked nothing like him. He had died before the birth, had never acknowledged the infant; there was no proof that he was the father. Whereas she herself had on both sides the Macedonian royal blood.
For a time, Assembly had been in doubt. But Nikanor, Kassandros’ brother, had given her his voice and the whole clan had come in with him. That had carried the vote. She was now giving audiences, receiving envoys and petitioners, and in all ways acting as reigning Queen.
Polyperchon thanked the man, rewarded and dismissed him, cursed to relieve his feelings, and sat down to think. He quickly decided what he himself would do; and, soon afterwards, what to do with Philip.
He had had hopes of him, if he could be removed from his wife’s control; but had soon learned better. At first, he had been so docile that it had seemed safe to produce him, set up impressively on a gold-canopied throne, for a delegation from Athens. In the midst of a speech he had guffawed at a rhetorical trope which, like a child, he had taken literally. Later, when Polyperchon had rebuked a speaker, the King had grabbed at his ceremonial spear; if Polyperchon had not grappled with him in front of everyone, the man would have been run through. “You said,” he had protested, “that he told lies.” The delegation had been dismissed too hastily, causing a political disaster and some lives.
It was now clear to Polyperchon that all Philip was good for was to hold the throne for Alexander’s son, who had better come of age quickly. As for Eurydike, her claim was plain usurpation.
Konon came when sent for, saluting woodenly. His silent “I told you so” had irked Polyperchon after the incident of the spear and several others. Good riddance to both of them. “I have decided,” he said, “to send back the King to Macedon.”
“Sir.” The general felt, reverberating from this blank surface, knowledge that the campaign had gone badly, that he had had to raise the important siege of Megalopolis, that Kassandros still held the Piraeus and might well get Athens, in which event the Greek cities would join him. But that was irrelevant now.
“I will give you an escort. Tell the Queen that I am sending back the King in obedience to her wishes. That is all.”
“Sir.” Konon left, relieved. He could have told them all beforehand, if he had been asked. Now, he thought, they would all have a chance to live in peace.
At a massive table of inlaid hardstone with lion-feet of gilded bronze, Eurydike sat in the royal study. King Archelaos, nearly a century ago, had designed this splendid sanctum when he built the palace to stun foreigners with its magnificence. From it, whenever they were at home, Philip the Second had ruled Macedon and his spreading conquests, and Alexander had ruled all Greece. Since Alexander had gone to rule the world from a moving tent, no king had sat at the table under Zeuxis’ mural of Apollo and the Muses. Antipatros, rigidly correct, had governed from his own house. She had found everything swept, polished, scrupulously neat, and empty.
It had awaited a tenant for seventeen years, as long as she had lived. Now it was hers.
When she called Assembly to claim the regency, she had not told Nikanor of what she meant to do. She had guessed he would think it rash, but that confronted with the fact he would support her, sooner than hurt his brother’s cause. She had thanked him afterwards, but had fended off his efforts to advise her. She meant to rule for herself.
Awaiting news from the south, she had spent most of her time on what she most enjoyed, exercising the army. She felt, at last, that she was fulfilling her true destiny when she rode along a line of cavalry, or took the salute of the phalanx presenting their great sarissas. She had seen a good deal of army drill and talked to many soldiers; she knew all the procedure. They were amused and delighted with her. After all, they thought, they were just a garrison army; if there was action the generals would of course resume command. Taking this for granted, they performed for her indulgently.
Her fame was spreading, Eurydike, the warrior Queen of Macedon. One day she would strike her own coinage. She was tired of seeing the eager long-nosed face of Alexander hooded in his lion-skin. Let Herakles give place to Athene, Lady of Citadels.
Each day she waited to hear whether Polyperchon had surrendered his command to Kassandros as she had ordered. So far she had heard from neither. Instead, unheralded, Philip returned to Pella. He carried no despatches and did not know where his guardian was going next.
He was delighted to be home, and ran on at length about his adventures on campaign, though all he knew of the debacle at Megalopolis was that the wicked people in the fort had put down spikes to hurt the elephants’ feet. Even so, had she had patience to listen to his ramblings she might have learned something of value. He had been present, as a matter of form, at several councils from which Konon was excluded. But she was busy, and answered him with half her mind. She seldom asked where he was; Konon took him about and amused him. She had ceased to issue orders in his name, and used only her own.
Until just lately, everything had gone smoothly. She understood the disputes of Macedon, nearly all brought by petitioners in person. But suddenly, all at once, a flood of business was coming in from the south, even from Asia. It had not yet occurred to her that all these matters had been going to Polyperchon, who had dealt with them in Philip’s name. Now, Philip was here; and Polyperchon, for good reasons, was no longer accessible.
She looked with dismay at petitions from towns and provinces she had never heard of, seeking judgments on land claims; reports on delinquent, distant officials; long obscure letters from priests of temples founded by Alexander, seeking guidance-about rituals; reports from Asian satraps on the encroachments of Antigonos; passionate protests from pro-Macedonians of Greek cities, exiled or dispossessed under the new decree. Often she
had trouble even in reading the script with its many contractions. Turning over in helpless bewilderment this heap of documents, she reflected unwillingly that it must be a fraction of what Alexander had dealt with in an army camp, in the rest-breaks of conquering an empire.
The chief secretary, who knew all this business, had gone south with Polyperchon, leaving only a subordinate at Pella. She would have to send for this underling and try to hide her ignorance. She rang the silver bell with which, long ago, her grandfather had summoned Eumenes.
She waited. Where was the man? She rang again. Urgent muttering voices sounded outside the door. The secretary came in, shaken, without apology for delay, without asking her what she wanted. She saw fear in his face, and the resentment of a frightened man towards someone who cannot help.
“Madam. There is an army on the western border.”
She sat up with brightening eyes. The border wars were the ancient proving-ground of the Macedonian kings. Already she saw herself in arms, leading the cavalry. “The Illyrians? Where have they crossed?”
“Madam, no. From the southwest. From Epiros. Won’t you see the messenger? He says Polyperchon is leading them.”
She straightened in her chair, her pride answering his fear. “Yes, I will see him. Bring him in.”
It was a soldier, anxious and dusty, from a garrison fort on the Orestid hills. He begged pardon, his horse had gone lame, he had had to come on by mule, a poor beast, all he could get. It had lost him a day. He gave her the despatch from his commander, shocked to discover how young she was.
Polyperchon was on the border, announcing by heralds that he had come to restore Alexander’s son. He was in the country of his clan and kindred, and many of them had joined him. From the fort itself there had, unhappily, been some desertions, and the post was gravely undermanned. Between the lines, she read the intention to surrender.