‘He’ll fuck anything that moves,’ Kallimachos said.
‘What a rare disability,’ Phila muttered.
‘There’s a rumour he’s dressing as a commoner at night and going out in the festivals, looking for love,’ another Athenian said. ‘How ridiculous.’
‘He is quite young,’ a third man said.
Talk turned to the disasters of the summer suffered in Rome. Despite years of alliance with Aegypt or Antioch, the Assembly of Athens had begun to make overtures to the Romans, but the series of disasters disheartened them.
‘And now Philip will join in the feeding frenzy,’ Kallimachos said. ‘Or at least, that’s what we hear on the wind.’ The Athenian archon glanced at Alexanor. ‘You are the Hierophant of Lentas, yes? You must hear all the news.’
‘Perhaps not as quickly as Kos or Epidauros,’ Alexanor said modestly. ‘But I was just on Rhodes, and then Kos. I have indeed heard that there is contact between Hannibal Barca and Philip.’
Phila rolled over and gazed at him. ‘Ordinarily, I know all the best gossip. Now everyone will come to your parties.’
The men laughed, but the archon was interested.
‘Do you think Philip will back Hannibal?’ he asked.
‘It would not hurt Athens to see the Macedonian armies go over the sea,’ another man said. ‘Especially if they never came back.’
‘On Rhodes, they don’t think Rome is finished,’ Alexanor said.
Kallimachos shrugged. ‘I’d like to believe it, but if you come to the slave market tomorrow, I can show you fifty noble Romans going on the block for a song. Hannibal has flooded the market with Romans and their allies – by Ares, he’s taken fifty thousand slaves, or more. How long can Rome take it?’
‘We’re better off making whatever peace we can with Philip and hoping he leaves for Italy,’ another man said.
The conversation veered off into slaves, and slave auctions, and the price of good servants.
After a while, the wine stopped coming, and the men began to leave. Kallimachos showed signs of trying to outwait Alexanor but, in the end, despite his wealth and power, he showed good manners, bowed with a smile, and withdrew, his dozen slaves holding torches to light his way.
When he was gone, Phila kissed him lightly on the lips.
‘So,’ she said.
‘I’m about to be married,’ he said.
‘I know, silly. As long as there are ships between Athens and Rhodes, I’ll know things. Are you happy?’
‘Yes!’
She laughed and put a hand on his chest in the familiar way.
‘Men who are happy with their wives are a rare sight in my home,’ she said. ‘I was very sorry not to be in Gortyna for the celebrations. I hear it was a great victory.’
‘It was,’ Alexanor said. ‘Have you seen Philopoemen?’
‘He writes to me. I invited him here before he went to Pella, but he went straight to Amphipolis.’
She walked back inside. Slaves were clearing the feast and the drinking party from the side tables. Thais waved, and then walked about, pouring wine into a krater from guests’ cups.
‘But I thought she freed you?’ Alexanor said to Thais.
‘I like it here,’ Thais said. ‘Now she pays me.’ She shrugged. ‘Regularly.’
Alexanor poured himself a little more wine.
‘Well …’ he began.
Phila looked at him and sat down on a kline.
‘Has he sold out to Philip?’ she said. ‘I thought he was a radical. He certainly fought the good fight on Crete. But now …’
‘I think he found that he’s very good at war,’ Alexanor said. ‘If Philip offers him a command …’
She shook her head. ‘He should have come here.’
‘You would have turned his head?’ Alexanor asked, raising a cup to toast her.
She was just as beautiful – perhaps more so, in Athens – wearing the most fashionable clothing, one perfect shoulder exposed, her eyebrows touched with make-up, bathed in the glow of her golden lamps. She was like an exotic creature, a goddess or a nymph, and not a woman at all. And he had not made love to Aspasia. He flirted with his own desire, and then put a spear in it.
Some things are worth a wait.
Phila smiled at him as if she could read his mind.
‘With my feminine wiles?’ she asked, her head thrown back. She batted her eyelashes. ‘Perhaps – I won’t pretend I don’t fancy him. But no. I mean that I know things about Macedon that he doesn’t know, and one of them is that no matter how good an officer he is, the other Macedonians will never, ever, let a Greek command troops.’
‘I think his goal is to be Hipparchos of the Achaean League.’
She smiled. It was a bitter smile, full of knowledge. ‘He’s being gulled. Used.’
‘What?’
‘Aratos sent him to Pella,’ she said, ‘hoping that he’d take a command with the king of Macedon.’
She lay back, and Alexanor tried not to admire her breasts and her hips. And her lips.
‘I don’t like the sound of this.’
‘Hades, I could be wrong. But I think Aratos, who has the ear of the king, is playing Philopoemen until his status as hero of the hour has worn off.’ She drank some wine, and put the cup aside. ‘My wedding present to your Aspasia will be not trying to seduce you. But I confess that having you here reminds me that we spent almost a year together. I’ve never put so much work into one man.’
He laughed. He got up and stepped away, so that he was sure of his own position.
‘Every part of me is aware of you,’ he said.
‘Good, then. I’m not an old hag yet. Go to bed – Thais will show you to a room. Goodnight.’
She blew him a kiss and walked around, blowing out the golden lamps. He watched her for a moment, because she was so beautiful. But then the gods sent him a vision of Aspasia, in the moment she’d seen him in her yard.
He watched her for another moment, as she stretched to extinguish the last lamp. She glanced at him, a smile on her face.
He turned and went to bed. It was one of his bravest acts. One he looked to in other days, to remember that he was a good man.
In the morning he awoke, and smiled at the ceiling, and after a light-hearted breakfast with Phila, he kissed her and sent for his horse.
‘No long goodbyes,’ she said. ‘I’m sending you with a couple of amphorae of wine for Philopoemen. After all, Macedon is pretty barbaric. I doubt they have good wine, unless they steal it from someone.’
He left her to her busy day and mounted to ride back to Marathon, but then he had an idea, and he turned and rode down to Piraeus. There, he visited the slave market, where cohorts of blank-eyed Roman slaves stood, or sat, or crouched in abject despair.
Alexanor was modestly wealthy. He walked up and down the market, listening to the prisoners speak in their barbaric tongue, and after speaking to the slave factors, he found two men who spoke Greek.
‘What do you know about horses?’ he asked the two slaves.
One man shook his head and turned to the wall of the market, lost in his own thoughts.
The other man met his eye. ‘A fair amount,’ he said. ‘Although,’ he added with his Latin accent and a fair amount of bitterness, ‘I had a slave groom to do most of the work.’
‘You were a cavalryman?’ Alexanor asked him.
‘My pater raises horses for the army.’ The man shrugged. ‘I volunteered. And now they say we were all cowards.’
‘I’ll buy this one,’ Alexanor said. ‘What’s your name, lad?’
‘Kaeso,’ the young man said.
They sailed across the Aegean, untouched by the thunderheads they could see to the south. By the time they’d coasted around to Thessalonike, Kaeso’s Greek had improved, his fear of Alexanor had dwindled and the haunted look had begun to leave his eyes.
They landed on the beach and sacrificed in the temple, stayed a night at a local inn, rented bad horses and then Alexanor
rode up country to Pella. It was a strange experience being back in Macedon; they had no love for Greeks and never stopped reminding him of it, at stage houses and inns and tavernas.
As a mounted man with only one slave, Alexanor was assumed to be someone of no importance, and he was treated accordingly. He was assigned a room in a public inn in Pella and the wine was virtually undrinkable.
‘So this is Pella,’ his new slave said. ‘It has a lot of fine buildings.’ The Roman looked around. ‘I’d like a new cloak, if you can get me one.’
‘Cold?’
‘Yes, sir. Master.’ The boy laughed.
‘You don’t have to call me Master,’ Alexanor said.
‘Good,’ the young man said. ‘Can I have a cloak anyway?’
Pella was a fine city, laid out on a grid and with a magnificent, stoaed agora built in the centre for civic activities and shopping.
Kaeso looked around, a smile on his face. ‘It’s laid out like an army camp,’ he said.
Alexanor raised an eyebrow. ‘It is laid out according to mathematical principles, as determined by Hippodamus of Miletus,’ he said.
‘Oh,’ the boy said. ‘I thought Romans invented the grid plan.’
Alexanor wondered why barbarians always assumed that they had invented everything.
The shops in the stoa were good, and Alexanor bought himself a riding hat and a whole suit of clothes for Kaeso, and, after some patient shopping, saw what he really wanted – Arkas.
Philopoemen’s groom was happy to see him, and they clasped hands.
‘This is my new groom, Kaeso,’ Alexanor said. ‘Roman.’
‘Rome!’ Arkas grinned. ‘That’s amazing. Everyone’s talking about invading Italy.’
‘Wonderful,’ Kaeso muttered.
‘Where is Philopoemen?’ Alexanor asked.
‘We’re staying on a farm outside the city,’ Arkas said. ‘I’m here doing some shopping for the hipparchos.’ He looked around. ‘We’re very careful here,’ he said with too much emphasis.
That Arkas should say such a thing told Alexanor a great deal.
‘Can I follow you home?’ Alexanor asked.
‘Of course! The hipparchos will be delighted to see you.’
The three of them, with three slaves following them, rode out along a rain-swept road. Kaeso enjoyed his new cloak, at least until the pouring rain soaked it through, but he didn’t admire the road.
‘This is a terrible road,’ he said to Arkas. ‘If the kings of Macedon are so powerful why don’t they build better roads?’
Arkas shrugged. ‘To an Achaean, Macedonians are very like hill-tribe barbarians.’ He shrugged. ‘They hire Greeks to do everything.’ He looked back at Alexanor. ‘Except fight. They don’t want us as soldiers,’ he said, with surprising rancour.
Arkas glanced at Alexanor. ‘What do you think of Pella, sir?’
‘Sterile,’ Alexanor said.
Kaeso laughed.
An hour later, Alexanor was embracing his friend.
‘What brings you to gods-forsaken Pella?’ Philopoemen asked. ‘You are welcome, regardless.’
‘The high priest of my order sent me to address Philip,’ Alexanor said. ‘But the steward at the palace treated me like a servant, so I’m unsure how to go about this.’
Philopoemen ushered him into a fine country house, with whitewashed walls, red tile roof, a fine sweep of shuttered windows, and a roaring fire on the central hearth.
‘You bought a house?’ Alexanor asked.
‘Rented. I imagined I might be here a while.’ He turned and met Alexanor’s eye. ‘As it proved, I was wrong.’
‘Wrong how?’ Alexanor asked. ‘By the way, I brought you a present.’
‘I like a good present. But damn it, I’ve been had. Twice. I imagined that Aratos wanted me home. I was wrong. And I imagined that Philip wanted me as a cavalry officer.’ He winced.
‘You are insufficiently Macedonian?’ Alexanor asked quietly.
‘That about sums it up. And by Athena, brother, they’re a vicious lot. Gossipy, nasty, mad as hares in spring, and violent like criminals while rutting like stags and rabbits. I can’t stay here.’ He shrugged. ‘It was a mistake to come.’
Alexanor could not remember having seen the man so defeated since he lay wounded on the sand at Epidauros.
‘Because Philip won’t have you?’
‘Because I allowed myself to be outmanoeuvred by Aratos, damn it.’
‘Phila sends her regards. She said some of these things—’
‘I know. It irks me that I could have visited her in Athens on my way here – I’d have known all the gossip.’ He shook his head. ‘I thought I was in a hurry. You know what happened last week? Philip ordered me to disband my troop of cavalry.’ He shrugged. ‘I’ll be going back to Achaea. I probably won’t win against Cercidas, but I’ll run for hipparchos and make some trouble.’ He shrugged again. ‘I’m a bad host. Here’s some wine.’
Alexanor tasted it. ‘Not bad, but Phila sent some better.’
Philopoemen smiled.
In fact, it was the most military house Alexanor had ever visited. There were no women; not in the kitchen, not in the stable or the house. The food was military food; the ‘servants’ were cavalry troopers, most of whom waited on Alexanor with broad smiles, which was only fair, as he’d fixed most of them up. A broken nose he’d straightened brought him a second cup of wine; a compound fracture he’d set brought in skewers of goat meat, which they cooked on the hearth as if they were soldiers at a campfire.
Alexanor introduced the Roman lad, Kaeso. Philopoemen immediately began to question him, and the Roman narrowed his eyes.
‘I don’t want to tell you anything you’ll use when you attack us,’ he said.
‘There’s a lad with spirit,’ Philopoemen said. ‘I hope my men would speak as well, captured and enslaved. But listen, young man. I’m unlikely to invade Italy with all the armed might of Achaea.’
‘What’s Achaea?’ the Roman asked.
‘That about sums it up, doesn’t it?’ Lykortas asked. ‘Hello, Alexanor. For whatever reason you’ve come, you should get the fuck out of here as soon as you can. It’s a madhouse.’
‘I lived here for a year,’ Alexanor said. ‘I know it.’
Lykortas shook his head. ‘Who’s this?’ he asked, and the Roman slave was introduced.
They ate, and the troopers stood or sat along the walls and ate their food too. It was all fairly democratic; men spoke up when they wished, and Arkas, who’d grown to full manhood all of a sudden, spoke up often.
‘Can you get me in to see the king?’ Alexanor asked Philopoemen.
Philopoemen nodded. ‘I think my credit at court is still good enough for that. But not much more. I have no interest in disbanding my troop and I think the king is foolish for wanting to invade Italy.’ He smiled bitterly. ‘Time to go and be a farmer, I think.’
In the morning, the rain had stopped. Alexanor woke on a pallet of straw; the farm had little furniture. He rose and went to the wellhead to have a drink, wrapped only in his winter chlamys, and at the well he found Arkas and Philopoemen.
‘Going to run?’ Philopoemen said.
Alexanor laughed. ‘I got enough exercise to last me the rest of my life just getting here.’
Philopoemen shrugged. ‘Brother, you are the doctor and I am the politician, but it seems to me we’re reaching the time of life when men layer on fat, if they aren’t careful.’ He put a hand on Alexanor’s belly. ‘And Kaeso says you are to be wed. She’ll want you hard.’
Arkas turned red and then turned away to bray a young man’s laugh.
Philopoemen smiled sheepishly. ‘Ah, I didn’t see that coming,’ he admitted.
Alexanor bit back various unfortunate replies. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘In fact, I agree. Let’s run.’
It was cold, and they ran naked. After a few minutes, the cold fell away, and the sun began to rise in the east over Thrake. The day was beautiful, and they r
an along the farm roads, chased a rabbit over someone else’s field, and made a long circle up an oak-crowned ridge before running back down into Philopoemen’s rented farmyard. All three men were covered in sweat.
‘We have never had our pankration bout,’ Philopoemen said suddenly.
Alexanor drank a cup of watered wine that one of the cavalry troopers handed him. Then he leant forward on his knees. They’d run much farther than he’d intended; something about Philopoemen made it impossible to say ‘Are you serious’ about a running distance.
When he was master of his own lungs, he shook his head.
‘You outweigh me by what … ten talents? Maybe more. I don’t need a broken nose when I plead with the king.’
Philopoemen shrugged, but something in his face made it impossible for Alexanor to refuse. Philopoemen was not Achilles today. He was at the edge of a great darkness; Alexanor could see it as if written on his face.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Three throws or three good blows.’
‘Ah!’ Philopoemen said. ‘Now I feel bad, like a man pushing a slave girl.’
‘I think you just called me an unwilling slave girl. After suggesting I might not be hard enough for my wife.’
‘That was not my intention …’
Alexanor had wrapped his heavy wool chlamys around his body as soon as they entered the yard, but now he tossed it to Alcibiades, one of Kleostratos’ file leaders, and he unlaced his heavy winter sandals.
‘No studded sandals,’ he said.
Philopoemen untied his own. He was half a head taller and heavily muscled. The two wounds in his abdomen showed only as a deep pit, like a second belly button. Otherwise, his abdomen was as hard as an ephebe’s, which Alexanor could not say for his own.
His arms were so long that Alexanor had a moment of real doubt. But he set his teeth, worked his jaw, flexed his hands, and then knelt and made a brief prayer to Apollo, settling his mind.
‘Are you ready?’ Philopoemen said.
‘Yes.’
Alexanor was relaxed now, his muscles only pleasantly tired from running. He was warm and alert, and the morning sun was beautiful.
They circled while the cavalrymen in the courtyard called out to the late sleepers to come and see. Alexanor moved carefully, until he stopped thinking at all.
The New Achilles Page 41