Alexander at the Worlds End Tom Holt

by Alexander at the World's End (lit)

  duel to the death, or something equally quaint?’

  Her scowl deepened; then she giggled. ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘that’s rather sweet

  of you. But I don’t think it’ll improve matters if Pisander kills you too. But

  yes, we do have divorce, and it’s only legal to kill an adulterer if you catch

  him in the act.’

  I nodded. ‘Same as in Athens ,’ I said, ‘more or less.’

  She sighed. ‘Oh, you’re all right,’ she said. ‘The worst that can happen to you

  is an order for damages.’

  ‘What about you?’ I asked.

  She shook her head. ‘He won’t kill me,’ she replied. ‘Dead, I’m not worth

  anything. No, he’ll divorce me and sue you, and that’ll be the end of it. It’ll

  probably cost you the price of a couple of good horses but you can afford that,

  I’m sure. Still, I’m sorry. I didn’t do it on purpose.’

  I frowned. ‘Don’t be horrible,’ I said. ‘Everything’s going to be fine, you’ll

  see. I mean, this isn’t the first time something like this has happened, and I

  don’t suppose it’ll be the last. Just so long as we both take it as it comes and

  don’t panic—’

  That made her really angry.

  I know, I know. But really, I was completely out of my depth here. After all, I

  hardly knew the girl. And in Athens , we have a rather more pragmatic attitude

  to these things. Well, for a start it’d all have been sorted out by men; her

  father or her brother would have talked to me about it, and we’d have put

  together some sort of deal for the husband, and then we’d have made arrangements

  for her and the baby. A nation that’s produced some of the finest minds the

  world has ever known is more than capable of dealing with such minor domestic

  crises in an organised and efficient manner. Up in the wild and woolly north,

  however, it seems to be the case that situations of this kind aren’t held to be

  properly concluded without substantial displays of emotion.

  ‘You bastard,’ she said; and she was clearly about to expand on the subject when

  someone started banging on the door.

  Hell, I thought. ‘You told me he was away at the steading,’ I hissed.

  ‘He is,’ she replied nervously. ‘He rode up there this morning with a string of

  yearlings.’

  More banging on the door. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Go in the back room till I can

  get rid of them.’

  The good news was, it wasn’t her loathsome husband Pisander. The bad news was,

  it was three soldiers.

  ‘Are you Euxenus?’ said one of them. ‘The Athenian?’

  I nodded.

  ‘He wants to see you.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’

  You didn’t need to be Solon or Pythagoras to work out who he was; and it didn’t

  require much imagination to guess what He wanted to see me about. I should have

  been expecting it, of course. A man drops dead at the King’s table, and a fellow

  guest hurriedly makes his excuses and darts away. Furthermore, said fellow guest

  had pre­viously been arguing with the dead man; said fellow guest and said dead

  man were both Athenians. Hell, if I’d been in Philip’s place I’d have arrested

  me before they’d finished sweeping up the spilt chickpeas.

  ‘Can I just get my cloak?’ I said, heading for the back room.

  ‘No need for that,’ the soldier replied. ‘We’re only going to the other side of

  the yard.’

  Not that it’d have done you any good, his expression added. Military history and

  tactics seminar number three: always post a man outside the back-room window.

  Why they thought I could teach them any­thing about the subject, I haven’t a

  clue.

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Any idea what this is about?’

  The soldier shook his head. ‘Sorry,’ he added; and the hint of genuine

  compassion in his voice as he said it was probably the most chilling thing I’d

  ever heard in my life. When the arresting officer’s sorry for you, you know it’s

  not going to be fun.

  As a fountain of justice, Philip had a certain reputation for flair —when he was

  sober, at any rate. For example, when sentencing two undesirables to permanent

  exile, his judgement had been: (to the first undesirable) ‘Leave Macedon

  immediately’; (to the other one)

  ‘Catch him up’. Then there was the old man who was convinced for some reason

  that Philip had decided the case against him on account of his age; so he dyed

  his hair and appealed. ‘Go away,’ Philip said. ‘I’ve already said no to your

  father.’ A laugh a minute, in other words, provided you were sitting in the

  right part of the room.

  As I was led back into the hall, therefore, I wasn’t feeling par­ticularly

  chirpy; and any residual traces of confidence I may have had left melted away

  when I saw that, as well as King Philip, I was in the presence of General

  Parmenio, Prince Alexander and a bunch of other high-ranking Macedonians who

  hadn’t been at the dinner. The whole assemblage had too much of an air of

  justice being seen to be done for my liking, and I was wondering whether there

  was any point at all in trying to argue that strictly speaking I was still an

  accredited Athenian diplomat (having never reported to Assembly, filed my

  accounts and been officially discharged from my duties) when Philip looked up

  and nodded to the soldiers. They took a few steps back­wards, and Philip

  gestured for me to join the party.

  ‘Not disturbing you, I hope,’ he said.

  ‘No, no, not at all,’ I replied.

  Philip nodded. ‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘I was afraid you might have gone to

  bed.’

  I shook my head vigorously, as if denying charges of having murdered my mother.

  ‘Not a bit of it,’ I said. ‘Wide awake, in fact.’

  ‘That’s all right, then,’ Philip said, looking as if he was slightly taken aback

  at the force of my assertions. ‘It’s been an eventful eve­ning,’ he went on.

  ‘And I know you’re not one for staying up late.’

  That, clearly, was a dig at my habit of sloping off from the communal feasting,

  which I knew was bad form by Macedonian standards. I couldn’t think of anything

  to say, though, so I just stood there. Philip helped himself to a drink, then

  went on.

  ‘If you’d cast your mind back to what we were talking about earlier,’ he said.

  ‘Before Myronides had his — accident. You remember?’

  Here we go, I thought. ‘More or less,’ I said, trying not to sound too cautious;

  bewildered innocence was going to be my line, I’d decided (and, come to think of

  it, I was innocent, though in the circumstances I didn’t feel innocent in the

  least. And neither would you, with all those grim-faced people staring at you).

  ‘The proposed colony. And colonies in general.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Philip said. ‘It’s a rather interesting subject. And what you had to

  say seemed to make a lot of sense.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘Well,’ Philip went on, ‘we’ve been discussing the subject, and the consensus

  seems to be that there’s a lot to be said for Myronides’ idea, but the points

  you raised against it were also pretty valid. Good points on both sides, in

  fact.
’

  ‘Ah,’ I said.

  ‘Talking of which,’ Philip went on, ‘I’d forgotten till you reminded me that

  Archilochus led a colony to the Black Sea . Interesting.’

  I blinked. For the moment I hadn’t a clue who he was talking about. ‘Excuse me?’

  I said.

  ‘Archilochus,’ Philip repeated. ‘Archilochus the famous poet. The famous poet

  you’ve been teaching to Alexander and his friends.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Archilochus. Yes. I found this book of his poetry, you see, it

  was in an outhouse, and...’

  With uncharacteristic forbearance, Philip ignored me. ‘Very inte­resting,’ he

  went on. ‘I can’t help wondering, in fact, with all the work involved in setting

  up a whole new city , how he ever found time to sit down and write all that

  poetry.’

  ‘Well, quite,’ I said, nodding like a buffoon. ‘Still, you know what they say,

  if you want something done, ask a busy man.’

  Philip smiled. ‘Are you a busy man, Euxenus?’ he asked.

  ‘Me?’ My mind went blank. ‘I suppose so,’ I said. ‘Well, not all that busy, I

  suppose. But fairly busy.’

  ‘Good. Because there’s something I want you to do for me.’

  Somewhere at the back of my mind I heard a little voice timidly suggesting that

  possibly I wasn’t going to die quite yet after all. ‘Any­thing,’ I said. ‘You

  name it. I’d be honoured, of course.’

  Philip clicked his tongue. ‘You don’t know what it is yet,’ he said.

  ‘No. No, I don’t, that’s perfectly true. What can I do for you?’

  Philip swigged down the rest of his wine and snapped his fingers for another

  jug. ‘This idea for a colony,’ he said. ‘As I said, I like the idea but I don’t

  like the problems you pointed out. Tell me, do you think those problems could be

  sorted out, or is the whole idea not worth bothering with?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘I’d have to think about it some more.’

  ‘You do that,’ Philip said. ‘And when you’ve got an answer, come and tell me.

  And if it’ll help concentrate your mind, if the project’s viable and if you want

  the job, I can’t see any reason why you shouldn’t be in charge of it. After

  all,’ he went on, ‘Alexander here speaks very highly of you; very highly

  indeed,’ he added, with a slight edge to his voice. ‘And Aristotle reckons

  you’ve got the necessary grounding in economics and politics and all that stuff,

  as well as a healthy dose of common sense, which is what I’d say is the most

  important qualification. And Olympias —‘ he smiled; no, grinned. Definitely a

  grin ‘— I know you can count on her support. She’ll agree, you’re uniquely

  qualified. So, why not go and get a good night’s sleep, and start thinking it

  over in the morning?’

  I felt like a fish who finds a hole in the net just when he’s about to drown in

  air. ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Right away. That’s . . . Well, thank you.Yes. Right

  away.’ And, still babbling, I backed away and got out of there as quickly as I

  could.

  Theano was still there when I got home.

  ‘Well?’ she said. ‘You’re not dead, then. What was all that about?’

  I flopped down in a chair and started to shake. ‘It’s all right,’ I said.

  ‘Everything’s going to be fine.’

  ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’

  I made myself sit up, and looked her in the eyes.

  ‘Go home and pack,’ I said. ‘We’re going to Olbia.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  O f course, that was just more melodrama; sure, we were going to Olbia, but not

  for some time.

  Even if you’re the king of Macedon, you can’t organise something as complicated

  as the foundation of a new city overnight. Usually, when the Athenians or the

  Corinthians found a colony, it takes a year or so of debate, deliberations,

  acrimony and name-calling before the project is even approved by Assembly (and

  I’ve never heard of a case where they didn’t get approval; but if a thing’s

  worth doing, it’s worth doing properly and with an appropriate level of public

  spectacle). Then there’s another year to eighteen months of arguing over who the

  oecist is going to be — sorry, I keep forgetting. The oecist is the city’s

  official Founder, the man who lays the first stone or ploughs the first furrow,

  the man whose name gets repeated by smiling children at every Founder’s Day

  festival, whose head goes on the coins, whose soul receives prayers and

  sacrifices appropriate to a minor deity for as long as the city continues to

  exist. Doesn’t matter a toss if, having laid the first perfectly square stone or

  clung grimly to the bespoke ivory plough-handle, he immediately hops onto a

  fast, comfortable ship, goes back home and never sets eyes on the place again;

  he’s now as close to being an immortal god as it’s possible for a human being to

  get, short of shinning up a drainpipe into the castle of Olympus when they’ve

  all gone to bed and swigging ambrosia from one of the dirty cups. In this case,

  of course, we already had an oecist (me), but that wasn’t the end of it, by any

  means.

  Oh, there’s all sorts of things that have to be decided before the expedition

  sets sail, some of which may even be important; and you can bet your life that

  every single decision will be hammered out in furious debate between two

  bitterly opposed factions, while the third, fourth and fifth factions sneak

  around behind their backs forming alliances and plotting to overthrow them the

  day after tomorrow. Somehow I’d imagined it’d be different in Macedon, with a

  strong and autocratic king making all the really significant decisions. True

  enough, he did; but those weren’t the decisions that took time. Rather, it was

  the trivia he delegated to the proto-colony’s provisional ruling council that

  caused all the fuss, and really, a man like Philip should have known better. For

  of course these were exactly the sorts of things that I and my fellow babblers

  had been brought up from infancy to argue over in an appropriately fascinating

  manner until somebody paid us to stop, and even though we knew that this time we

  weren’t getting paid by the hour, force of habit’s a terrible thing and so’s

  professional pride.

  Well, at least it gave me ample opportunity to get to know my fellow

  councillors, although on balance I think it’d have been better for all concerned

  if the first time we’d met had been at the dockside. These men were the idealist

  part of the standard colonial mix, the ones who were sailing in the hope of a

  brave new world and a brighter tomorrow. It’s a general rule that cities, like

  prudent men making gifts to a worthy cause, never give away anything for which

  they might conceivably find a use one day, and the upper crust of any bunch of

  would-be settlers tends to be made up in roughly equal proportions of the

  useless and the malignant. Accordingly, among my Founding Fathers I had two

  noblemen’s sons of such unutterable depravity that I couldn’t for the life of me

  work out how they’d managed to pack so much activity into such short lives

  without completely ruining their health; a big-time political loser who’d been<
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  given the choice between a brighter tomorrow in Olbia and no tomorrow at all in

  Macedon; five or six extremely earnest, extremely young noblemen who’d read

  Plato and Aristotle and Xenophon and gods know what else, and who knew for a

  fact that humankind are basically a decent enough bunch of chaps provided you

  dredge deep enough, and there’s no problem so great that it can’t be solved if

  only men of goodwill are prepared to sit down together and talk through their

  differences in a rational manner; and one deaf-mute, one kleptomaniac and a

  congenital idiot.

  And so it went on. My colleagues argued and bitched; Philip sent the occasional

  brisk note asking how much longer he was going to have to keep paying these

  tiresome mercenary soldiers I’d undertaken to get off his hands; I floundered,

  banged tables, wheedled, horse-traded and sent replies to the royal court in

  Pella that weren’t exactly lies provided you interpreted them just right; all in

  my spare time, of course, when I wasn’t teachingYoung Macedon the correct use of

  the caesura in Archilochean iambics and the Spartans’ blockade of Attica during

  the Great Peloponnesian War. Just in case this wasn’t enough excitement, I also

  had the joyful prospect of Theano’s divorce and Pisander’s lawsuit against me to

  look forward to.

  By his own lights, Pisander had been unexpectedly decent about the whole thing.

  Apart from slapping her about a bit and drawing pretty patterns on her left

  forearm with a hot iron, he’d accepted the position without anger or bitterness

  and had come to see me in a thoroughly polite and businesslike manner, as seller

  to buyer, to open negotiations. Unfortunately, I wasn’t nearly as civilised and

  prag­matically minded as he was. I hadn’t actually met him before; as soon as he

  told me who he was and I realised that he was a head shorter than me and quite

  slightly built, my rage at his vicious treatment of his wife knew no bounds, and

  I bounced him off a wall or two before asking him to repeat his opening offer.

  After that, we negotiated through an intermediary.

  Theano herself didn’t seem to be inclined to make things any easier for me. She

  stayed away, didn’t answer the notes I sent urging her to leave her husband’s