Ptolemy hauled himself to his feet, keeping a wide berth of the furious prince. “Alexander,” he said, “I can explain—”
“I don’t want to hear it,” said Alexander.
“You already know it,” said Philip. “He’s been reporting back to me. Good information, too—”
“You bastard,” said Alexander.
“Well, that’s exactly what your lifelong friend is. My bastard son.”
Now Alexander looked like he was the one who had been punched. “What?”
“Do I have to spell it out for you? My son via someone other than your dead and rotting mother. You remember her, don’t you? The one who had a dream the night before I married her that a lightning-bolt penetrated her and then flame shot out from between her legs to engulf the world? And who then became convinced that it wasn’t me who had conceived you, it was Zeus? An interesting theory, one guaranteed to attract the attention of fools and peasants the world over.”
Now Alexander was angrier than Eumenes had ever seen him—and also more confused. “But Ptolemy’s father—I thought Lagos—”
“—was given Arsinoe by me when I’d finished with her. She was a peach, I tell you—excuse me, Ptolemy. So she received her reward—I raised her from concubine to the wife of one of my barons—not such a bad deal, really. But raising the seed I’d left within her was part of the bargain.”
Which wasn’t an atypical arrangement for Macedonian nobility, Eumenes reflected. But usually the bastard in question was identified as such, rather than being left under the legitimate son’s nose. It was no wonder that Alexander was still breathing hard, still struggling to control his temper—no wonder that Philip was enjoying himself so much.
“So if you don’t wish to be my son,” he said languidly, “I can hardly regard myself wholly deprived.”
“That leaves you with a bastard and an idiot,” snarled Alexander—this last a reference to Arrhidaeus, Philip’s other legitimate son, who was mentally retarded and incapable of any kind of command. “Such impressive progeny.”
“Well, we can’t all be gods,” said Philip. “I suppose I’ll have to content myself with being just a king.”
“You put your statue amidst the Olympians,” said Alexander. “If that’s not the seeking of divine honors, then what else would you call it?”
“I call it propaganda,” said Philip. “In preparation for the march into Persia. I figured that if you’re going to go to war with a king that half the world thinks is blessed by heaven, then it might help to have a little sacred mystique up your sleeve. Whereas you… you seem to actually believe this shit. You heard exactly what you wanted to at Siwah—”
“What I saw at Siwah would be blasphemy to repeat,” said Alexander.
“Everyone heard you addressed outside the temple as son of Zeus,” said Philip. “I’m sure it only got more interesting once you got inside. Did the priests suck you off? Or did they get the temple whore to do it?”
He’s goading him, thought Eumenes—wondered if Philip wanted Alexander to spring at him like he’d done at Ptolemy. In which case he’d promptly be cut down by the guards. Perhaps Philip really had decided Alexander was too unreliable. Perhaps he wanted to make Ptolemy his heir and general. Perhaps there was no reason behind it other than blind rage. Or maybe (it abruptly occurred to Eumenes) Philip intended to make peace with Athens. In which case the sacrifice of Alexander would be an excellent way to kick off the negotiations.
But suddenly—as though Eumenes was reading his mind—Alexander’s face became as calm as a statue.
“It would be blasphemy,” he repeated softly. “Which may come easy to you, but not to me. Regardless: you are the father that gave me life and I’m still your heir.”
“So nice to hear,” said Philip. “Though I suspect the latter means far more to you than the former. And I can’t help but notice you’re still evading my question.”
“I won’t talk about what was broached to me in trust at Siwah—”
“So don’t. Just tell me straight up: beside myself, do you or do you not believe yourself to have any other fathers?”
The ghost of a smile fluttered across Alexander’s face. “Zeus is the father of us all,” he said.
Philip laughed outright. “I forgot how well Aristotle instructed you in sophistry.”
“Are the rumors about him true?” asked Alexander.
Philip stared at his son as though deciding whether to let him get away with changing the subject. “They are,” he said at last.
“So he really left.”
“He really did.”
“Did he give you a reason?”
“Only a letter he left behind.”
“Which said?”
“That you had betrayed the Greeks by going to war with Athens.”
“You should have stopped him from leaving.”
“He’s a resourceful man,” said Philip. “Escaped from the palace by a boat of his own devising. And he must have had accomplices waiting for him on the shore with horses. My agents tell me he reached Athens within the week.”
“And where he is now?” asked Alexander.
“We have reason to believe he went to Syracuse.”
“Why didn’t he stay in Athens?”
“Presumably because he knows the place is crawling with agents on my payroll.”
“And Syracuse isn’t?”
“I’d ask you to give me time.” Philip picked up a goblet at his side, drank from it. Wine dribbled onto his tunic. “Which, of course, you didn’t.”
“I did what you always taught me,” said Alexander. “I saw an opportunity and took it.”
There was a long pause. The two men stared each other down to the point where Eumenes became convinced neither would blink. It felt like the next words could prove explosive—like anything could happen.
And then suddenly Eumenes heard his own voice filling in the silence.
“War with Athens was inevitable,” he said.
Both men looked at him—as did Ptolemy and Hephaestion, the latter of whom raised his eyebrows at such daring. Philip put down his goblet. “Ah, Eumenes. I’ve missed your candid counsel these last several years.”
“I serve Macedonia, sire.”
“No doubt.” But the tone said that Eumenes was as expendable as anyone else. “Tell us what’s on your mind.”
“Athens is a democracy—”
“Such insight,” said Hephaestion.
Eumenes ignored him. “That means they are fickle and inconstant. Their Assembly is a glorified mob. It decides one thing one day, and something else the next. No peace with them can last. We can never trust them.”
Philip nodded slowly, absorbing this.
“Besides,” added Eumenes, “to them, you’re the one that can’t be trusted.”
“Because?”
“To them, you’re a tyrant. As Demosthenes never tires of pointing out.”
“He’s been removed from power,” said Philip.
“But he’ll be back, sire. That’s the point. Political office in democracies is like a wheel. What’s down one moment is up the next. And Athens has been filling up with Persian refugees during the Prince Alexander’s conquests. Persian refugees—and their gold. In a democracy, influence is measured in money. So the more successful our war against Persia has gone, the more anti-Macedonian influence in Athens has risen.”
“Persian refugees,” repeated Philip. He seemed to be mulling this over. “Many of whom are noble.”
“They’re the ones with the money,” said Eumenes.
“And some of them might be royal.” As Philip said this, he glanced at his son. Eumenes realized there was something here to which he wasn’t privy. He cleared his throat.
“It’s a bit of a fine distinction, sire.”
Philip looked impatient. “Meaning what?”
“Legitimacy in the Achaemenid dynasty runs—ran—through the paternal line. The son of a concubine was technically eligible to su
cceed to the throne, unlike, say in”—Eumenes was about to say Macedonia, but suddenly saw the trap he’d set for himself—“most other places. Several generations of Achaemenid kings have resulted in hundreds—possibly even thousands—of would-be royal heirs. At this point, most of the noble houses in Persia have at least some royal affinity. So, yes, there is almost certainly Persian royalty in Athens.”
“Well,” said Philip, looking back at his son, “we’ll just have to keep an eye on them, won’t we?” Then, turning back to Eumenes—“so how would you proceed against Athens?”
This is what I get for opening my mouth, thought Eumenes. “There are many options, sire,” he said carefully.
“I’m sure there are,” said Philip, brushing off the all-too-transparent attempt to buy time. “Which one would you stake Macedonia on?”
But Eumenes had his answer. It wasn’t the most original one, but it would get the discussion moving again. “Treachery,” he said.
“Indeed.”
“We bring the entire army up to Athens and put on a show. Let the elephants trumpet while the men bang their sarissae against the shields. Indicate we’re willing to assault the city unless it surrenders unconditionally. Meanwhile we make contact with those inside who would spare Athens that fate.”
Philip drained the last of his wine. “Those people being?”
“I’d start with the archons who threw Demosthenes out of power.”
“I thought you said you weren’t in favor of peace negotiations.”
“I’m not looking for those who would negotiate,” said Eumenes. “I’m looking for traitors. Those who despise democracy. Those who want oligarchy. Our foremost priority should be to find such individuals.”
“The problem isn’t finding such individuals,” said Hephaestion. “It’s those individuals finding the means to act. Athens has built countless safeguards into its defenses. No tower is ever left under a single commander. No gate is ever entrusted to a single unit. The ships in the moats are from multiple commands. And they have two walls, the inner of even greater strength than the outer, each one just as hard to enter from the inside as the outside.”
“Nothing’s impregnable,” said Ptolemy.
“Sneak into Athens and convince me,” replied Hephaestion.
“Ptolemy’s right,” said Alexander. “Any wall can be scaled.”
“So you’d assault Athens?” asked Philip.
“I’d assault their empire.”
“Easier said than done,” said Ptolemy. “The Athenians have done what any sensible naval power would do. They base themselves on islands.”
“Athens isn’t an island,” said Hephaestion.
“It may as well be,” said Alexander. His delivery was crisp, self-assured. Eumenes realized that he’d been holding back, letting others commit before he stated his own views. “You couldn’t make Athens any more difficult to reach if you put it in the middle of the Mediterranean. Same with the rest of their empire. Our problem is defeating a naval power from the land. We face the added problem that even if Athens falls, it doesn’t mean their empire will go with it. Whereas the converse does apply—if we peel their empire away from them, Athens no longer matters. She will wither, like unplucked grapes upon the vine.” As he spoke, Philip nodded in agreement, and Eumenes wondered if father and son had been on the same page all along—if the real issue in this discussion had been whether the two could put aside their rivalry in order to cooperate on the defeat of Athens, and now that was settled, the rest was simply the ratification of the plan.
“So you want to march West,” said Philip.
“It’s the only way,” said Alexander. “We had to march to defeat Persia, and it’s by marching that we’ll defeat Athens. Father, what happened to your wall-maps?”
“I found something better,” said Philip. He gestured to a guard, who pulled a lever on the wall. There was a rumbling and part of the floor in front of the throne-dais begin sliding aside. The men moved to get out of its way—and stared at the map of the Mediterranean that was thus revealed. It was as beautiful as it was expensive, made mostly of precious jewels. Azure was the ocean; gold the land. Cities were marked with rubies, while Athens and Pella were both denoted by diamonds, scarcely a fraction of a yard apart on a map that was more than ten across. So very close…and not for the first time, Eumenes pondered how much easier this all would have been if Athens had lost the war against Sparta a century ago. The world would have been a very different place, most of it for the better as far as Macedonia was concerned. Sparta’s world-view was fundamentally negative: it had neither the vision nor the manpower to impose itself on all of Greece, let alone the Mediterranean. Had Athens’ expedition to Syracuse not succeeded, the subsequent runaway chain of conquests would never have occurred, and the rise of Macedonia would have found a Greek world factionalized and bickering: easy meat.
But the gods never made things easy.
“I’ll marshal the army on the Black Sea,” said Alexander. “We’ll use the captured merchant vessels from Phoenicia and Egypt to get the troops back from the East quicker than if they marched—keep them within bolt-thrower range of the coast so the Athenian fleet can’t get at them. Once we’ve got them mobilized, we move north up the Danube and then turn southwest to reach the coast of Gaul. If we can catch Massilia by surprise and raze it, so much the better, but regardless: we keep going, through the Pyrenees, south into Iberia, to Gibraltar.”
He paused momentarily. Everyone except Philip was looking at him in stunned amazement. Alexander turned to one of the guards and—almost absently—plucked the spear from the surprised guard’s hands, before turning back to the map and using the weapon to illustrate the overall route. “So across Europa and then down into—”
“Put down the spear,” said Philip.
Alexander looked genuinely surprised. “I thought we were past that.”
“We’re never past that.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“When you won’t even acknowledge me as father?”
“I called you that earlier—”
“A man doesn’t have two fathers. A prince even less so. Now put down the spear.”
It would have taken Alexander less than a second to hurl that spear and the range was so short he couldn’t miss. Then again, Philip’s throne was clearly no ordinary chair. And Eumenes doubted that the lever that revealed the map was the only lever in this room. Was Alexander weighing all this even as he weighed the weapon? With a flourish, he stuck the spear into the floor. The guard came to retrieve it.
“No,” said Philip to the guard. “Don’t touch it.”
“Sire?” asked the guard, but Philip was already turning to the guards on either side of his throne.
“Take him away,” he said.
For a moment, Eumenes thought Philip meant Alexander. But then he understood: the guards came forward and seized the other soldier by either arm, led him out of the throne room. As the door closed behind them, another guard came over and took the spear.
“Execute him with it,” said Philip.
“Sire,” said the guard, and went out that same door. Philip turned back to the others, shrugged. “Just so we’re clear,” he said. “If a bodyguard loses his weapon, he loses his life. They’re the only ones entrusted with carrying arms within my palace. No one else is. And that includes my son, my bastard son, and it certainly includes any man who wants to renounce the idea of being my son.”
Alexander shook his head. “I haven’t renounced—”
“Tell me more about your plan,” said Philip.
“I’d be happy to,” said Alexander. His eyes were as fiery as his voice was cold. “We bridge the straits of Gibraltar the same way we bridged the Bosphorus, and cross into Africa, setting fire to its granaries as we close on Carthage. Which we will catch in a pincer movement: because while I’m moving through Europa, Craterus will lead the cream of the forces that assaulted Egypt across North Africa. He and I link up at Cartha
ge, after which the Carthaginian navy goes over to us. At that point, Athens will sue for peace on our terms.”
Eumenes couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Nor could he believe that everyone seemed to be going along with it. Even Philip was nodding. Eumenes tactfully cleared his throat.
“Yes?” asked Alexander. There seemed to be a look of warning in his eyes, but Eumenes didn’t care. “You’re talking about marching for thousands of miles,” he said.
“As we did in Persia,” replied Alexander.
“That was mostly desert. Here you’re looking at tractless forests filled with wild barbarian tribes. Each one of whom will want to be known as the people that stopped Alexander.”
“Each one deserves the chance,” said Alexander.
“And we’ll able to rely on ships for much of the Danube,” said Hephaestion.
“But the Danube’s upper parts are unexplored,” protested Eumenes. “We don’t know if it emanates from Ocean itself, or if it disappears amidst the worst portions of the Alps.”
“We’ll find out,” said Alexander.
“And Craterus?”
Alexander’s brow furrowed. “What about him?”
“Back in Egypt, you said it was madness to send an army across North Africa—”
“I fear you misheard me.”
That was the moment when Eumenes realized he had better shut up if he wanted to keep his head. He suddenly understood the true nature of the terrible confluence of wills which he was witnessing. Philip wanted Alexander to go forth where he would conquer or die—wanted his son to either provide him with an empire that stretched from the rising to the setting sun, or else rid him of the greatest menace to his own throne. Alexander wanted the chance to defeat the only power worth more than Persia and prove himself as the greatest soldier who ever was. And as for the drive across North Africa, perhaps it might have been pure folly its own right. But as a diversion, it made just the right kind of sense. A march out of Egypt would attract Athenian attention—would focus all Athenian resources—perhaps even to the point where they missed the army moving beyond the northern edge of the known world. Eumenes didn’t doubt that Alexander intended to capture Carthage—that his contacts with subversive elements in that city were real, and in deadly earnest. But he also suspected that Gibraltar was more than just a stop on the way. Particularly as bridging it would be a far greater task than spanning the Bosphorus. No doubt about it, something about Gibraltar had definitely gotten Alexander’s attention. Eumenes thought about those temples that Harpalus had mentioned—wondered about their connection with the one at Tyre… with the one at Siwah…
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