The Macedonian

by Nicholas Guild

  That boy knew, absolutely knew. He had come back from the very jaws of death, and he knew everything. He was more dangerous than a hundred Alexandroses. Everyone laughed at his suspicions, but in the end he would make himself believed and then it would be Ptolemy’s turn to spill his life into the dust.

  But when Alexandros was dead, Philip would be harmless.

  During the course of the day, Ptolemy met with Pelopidas’s lieutenants to settle the final details of the treaty between Macedon and Thebes. It was the work of the file, the smoothing out of the rough places that, in a year’s time, one side or the other might find rubbing them raw. It was the sort of business with which Alexandros had no patience—which was one more reason he was a bad king.

  In the evening there was a banquet. Pelopidas, as the host, sat at the head, with Alexandros at his right side. What was astonishing was that Philip sat at his left—and the Boeotarch of Thebes seemed to have full as much to say to the youngest brother as to the eldest.

  Ptolemy was not close enough to hear their conversation, but he was well placed to watch and found a kind of morbid pleasure in comparing Pelopidas’s modes of address as his attention moved from one to the other. With Alexandros he was all hearty cheer, full of jests and loud laughter; they spoke briefly, like men exchanging formal salutes, and then would each turn aside and seem to ignore one another. But with Philip the great general and statesman dropped his head and spoke in what looked like a familiar murmur, as if the two of them had been in each other’s confidence for years. Their conversations went on sometimes for several minutes, and when Philip spoke—and he did speak, occasionally at length—the Boeotarch favored him with his complete attention, forgetting sometimes even to smile. It appeared to be a dialogue of equals.

  And finally, after witnessing this for perhaps an hour, it occurred to Ptolemy, with something like genuine surprise, that he was jealous. Alexandros, predictably, was both too vain and too stupid even to notice, but Ptolemy did—and felt it as an almost physical anguish. He envied Philip the interest and respect of so great a man, for certainly Pelopidas had never taken him as seriously. And with envy was mixed fear—the fear that shadowed his every thought of Philip—for he was forced to wonder what quality there might be in this mere boy that could be so lacking in himself.

  But whatever it was it would be swept into oblivion, almost as soon as they returned to Pella. Philip without his brother was merely a clever youth who could safely be ignored and, when once the sons of Amyntas were all together again at home, Ptolemy had something in the nature of a surprise prepared for Alexandros.

  * * *

  At last Philip gave up. He could not persuade his brother that the Lord Ptolemy was a dangerous traitor who should be destroyed the way one destroys a viper. He did not doubt his own conclusions, but the weight of Alexandros’s disbelief, plus the prestige Ptolemy seemed to enjoy as a result of his negotiations with the Boeotarch, finally persuaded him to silence. He did not enjoy being made to feel like a fool.

  Very well, he thought. If Alexandros puts no value on his own safety I cannot force him into prudence. The king must choose for himself whom he believes.

  And thus, when the treaty with the Thebans was concluded and the king’s nobles, celebrating defeat as if it were victory, had drained the last cup of wine with their conquerors, Alexandros, his brother, his trusted friend and cousin Ptolemy, and the whole host of the Macedonian army took the road back to Pella, precisely as if nothing had happened.

  Five days later they reached the city gates, and everyone was still alive. Thus did Philip, in a disgust that was almost indistinguishable from shame, return to the private pursuits of his life.

  But he was not alone. There was general relief that a war with Thebes had been averted, and a city is never so frivolous as when it is full of humiliated soldiers. There was much drunkenness when the army returned, and the whores earned a good living. And the revels of Alexandros and his nobles had never been merrier.

  Philip, still smoldering with anger, at first concentrated on hunting. All alone he rode far across the plains, sometimes not returning for two or three days at a time, and conducted a great slaughter of deer and wild pigs.

  Once, he killed a boar almost as big as the one in Lynkos. He burned the fat and the skin as a sacrifice to appease the envy of the gods, roasted a shoulder for his dinner, and left the rest to the crows. He did not bring the head back with him to Pella, although such a kill would have earned him a place at table among the King’s companions. He did not mention the incident to anyone. He had not yet finished sulking.

  When at last he abandoned the field it was not to be reconciled with his brother but because his cousin the Lady Arsinoe had once more entered his life.

  And he had seen her, as before, outside the temple of Athena.

  Though her shrine was obscure, the gray-eyed Athena was almost never without an offering of wheat cake and honey, and this because Philip, believing that he lived his life cradled in the goddess’s hand, wished to show his gratitude. Almost every morning he went to the temple district to make sacrifice and to pray. It was only there, in the whole city of Pella, that he felt at peace, as if his life was lived to some purpose. It was only within the narrow walls of this smallest of shrines that he could believe existence was not what it appeared to be, some vast, pointless jest. He always came away restored in spirit.

  Nor is it always chance when two young people meet where they have met before. A place that has been lucky once may be lucky again—this every hunter knows, and every lover. And who can say what promptings of her heart had brought Arsinoe here to make sacrifice to the lords of life, whether of piety or of something else?

  The rest was easy. A nod, a smile, a word—a promise to meet again. Love grows quickly in the heated breast of youth. Soon Philip could hardly think of anything else. With men his words came readily enough, but in her presence he was almost mute. He had only to look at her to make his heart pound and his throat close off with a longing that was more like pain than pleasure.

  “Could you…?” he would begin. “Could I see you…?”

  “You see me now,” she would answer, smiling in a way that both seemed to mock him and to thrill his soul.

  “I cannot speak here. I would feed my eyes on you—I would…”

  “Then perhaps it is best if we do not meet, if you really mean to devour me.”

  Yet she understood, and the hunger in her woman’s heart was as great as his own.

  “Perhaps someday,” she would say. “But not now—not yet.”

  And she would smile again, turning his bowels to water.

  He had seen her five, perhaps six times since they were both children, playing in the dust, fighting over a painted wooden ball. Where, then, had been her flashing eyes and her hair the color of fallen leaves? Perhaps he simply had not noticed. Now she consumed him. His mind was numb and he could not sleep. Love is a thing the gods send when they wish to torment us.

  Or, just perhaps, to preserve our souls, against the times when all else lies broken in the dust.

  * * *

  Even since his return to Pella, Ptolemy had been driven to the point of near exhaustion by the demands of two greedy lovers. Each night the Lady Eurydike required him in her bed, and the hunger of her lust seemed never to be satisfied—seemed, in fact, to feed upon itself. In the blackest part of the night they would lie there, clinging to one another, slippery with warm sweat and panting for breath. She seemed intent on burning herself to ashes with the heat of her own desire.

  And then there was Praxis, with his blond, curling hair and his doglike loyalty, who would wait doglike outside the door to Ptolemy’s apartments, cringing in the shadows, sometimes until dawn. For the most part he would be content with a good thrashing, but from time to time his demands for love became more urgent.

  During the day, Ptolemy would sit in council with the king, hardly able to sit at all for the throbbing pain in his groin. He had tried cold wate
r, lemon juice, heated mud, everything. His member felt tender and bruised, and each night he had no idea how he would ever manage to fill a man’s part, but somehow he did.

  The king’s mother and the groveling pederast. Soon they would each have their part to play in the little drama he was planning to stage: The Death of Alexandros—Eurypides could hardly have done better. And it would have to be very soon, or he himself would perish from weariness—either that or become impotent—before he ever had a chance to listen to the audience’s applause.

  His wife, he knew, cried herself to sleep at night, wondering how she had so sinned against the bright gods that they punished her with her husband’s indifference. Well, let her weep. She would weep the harder when her brother was dead. And harder still afterward, when she realized how completely she had outlived her usefulness.

  And at last the time had come to carry his plan beyond the bedroom, and to make Praxis ready, for the first and the last time in this life, to do his duty as a man.

  “Do you understand what is required?”

  “Yes,” Praxis answered, touching his lover’s hand as it held the sword. “I understand.”

  “One quick thrust—up under the ribs and to the heart. He will not be armed. He will not be expecting this. And you will kill him before he has a chance to react.”

  “Yes.”

  “You have practiced? You are ready?”

  “Yes.”

  Ptolemy smiled, putting the sword into Praxis’s hand and touching his hair. They were alone together in one of the sweating rooms in the garrison of the king’s own guard, of which they were both members. Two men, naked and alone, two shadowy presences in a cloud of steam dense enough to muffle their voices.

  “You hate Alexandros, don’t you—yes, I know you do.”

  He let his fingers slide down the boy’s smooth neck, thinking that no one would imagine this puppy capable of murder. Yet Praxis was as vicious as a bitch in heat, and as dangerous. And he was besotted, with love and with malice, which was nothing more than love gone putrid.

  “Well, you will have your revenge. And when you have had it, I will protect you. I will have all the king’s power when he is dead, and I will use it to shield you. I will raise you above all other men.”

  Ptolemy had only to glance down to see how the thought excited Praxis. He took the boy in his arms, stroking his back and shoulders.

  “No one will ever dare to scorn you again,” he whispered. “You will be feared and envied. You will be the man who killed the king.”

  Praxis kissed him with all the urgency of submissive lust, and the Lord Ptolemy let him, kissing him back. Why should not this fool have his little moment of joy? he thought.

  This licking dog imagines he loves me, he thought. Yet he is not mine. His heart is all Alexandros’s, if he but knew it. And tomorrow I shall be rid of them both.

  12

  Alexandros had declared that he would hold games to celebrate the treaty with Thebes, which he was rapidly convincing himself constituted some sort of personal triumph. Macedon would be great again because she now enjoyed the friendship of the Boeotian Confederacy and of its great leader, Pelopidas. Any mention of hostages was tactfully avoided.

  The king still persisted in regarding his youngest brother as a child and did not allow him to compete, not even in the horse races, which, as everyone knew, he could easily have won. Perdikkas, on the other hand, was now almost a man and had besides been accepted as the heir. He was not given any choice—he finished last in the javelin throw and, later, was thrown by his horse in the second race and badly bruised. He went home to sweat out his humiliation in the baths, complaining that Alexandros showed him less respect than he did even Philip.

  Ptolemy’s son, the child of his first wife, competed for the first time and placed fourth in the javelin, which was his father’s weapon. Everyone said he did very well, but Ptolemy was someone whose vanity everyone was eager to flatter.

  Hardly anyone even noticed Praxis, although afterward it was mentioned that he had carried a sword all that day but had not competed with it in any event.

  Alexandros was particularly splendid. He won both the footrace and the horse race—some said this was why he had excluded Philip, that he feared to come second behind his youngest brother—and he took third place in the wrestling. Someone later said that he had declared it the best day of his life.

  On this occasion the king held to the old custom and allowed no women or foreigners among the spectators. In theory the games were open to any free man of Macedonian birth, but in fact no one competed except members of the court. Everyone felt himself among friends, and there was much drinking. Even the grooms were drunk. In the middle of the day, one of them fell from a horse he was taking back to the royal stables to be rubbed down and fed. He simply dropped to the ground and was dead, as if the shock had stopped his heart. But even in the presence of so bad an omen, the games went on.

  If Philip could not compete, he could at least watch. He did not allow himself to be offended by Alexandros’s decision, even though he knew it was unjust, but enjoyed himself immensely, cheering on his brothers and friends and growing as drunk as everyone else.

  Perdikkas came back in time for supper, which was to be eaten out of doors, just as if they were on campaign. His knee was purplish black and he walked with a stick, as indeed he was probably in as much pain as he pretended. During the meal he sat beside Philip, who treated him with consideration and made sure he had plenty of wine to take the edge off his suffering.

  “Games like these are a brutish relic,” Perdikkas said when he was drunk enough. “That grown men should disport themselves like children…”

  “Games keep the martial spirit alive—besides, brother, you only dislike them because you are not good at them. But I agree with you that these games are childish.”

  Philip had hardly touched his wine, but lately he felt no inclination to speak anything but the truth. It was, he had decided, one of the compensations for being the youngest of three brothers and thus so far removed from the succession.

  “Why? Because Alexandros and his friends behave like green boys?”

  But Philip, after appearing to consider the point for a moment, shook his head.

  “No. They are childish because they celebrate a defeat by pretending it is a victory.”

  “Then you think the alliance with Thebes a bad thing?”

  “No, because it is a necessary thing—and, in any case, it is hardly an alliance at all, but rather a capitulation. What I regret is the conduct of policy that made it necessary. In that the Lord Ptolemy is quite right. Alexandros did blunder in overextending himself in Thessaly.”

  “But Ptolemy never said…”

  Philip only smiled, but his smile mirrored such withering contempt that Perdikkas did not dare even to finish his sentence.

  “Perdikkas, since it seems possible you may be king one day, you would do well to listen more to what men do not say.”

  When he realized that he was merely tormenting his brother, Philip turned his head away and started pushing bits of meat around his plate with a torn piece of bread, although at that moment the sight of food disgusted him.

  “I believe I shall grow very drunk tonight,” he said. “I believe I shall drown myself in this Lemnian red until my piss is that precise same color, and then I shall puke violently all over one of Alexandros’s favorites and be carried off to bed to snore until tomorrow nightfall. That would be, I fancy, the proper way for a loyal Macedonian to celebrate this most recent of our king’s glorious triumphs.”

  “Shut up, Philip—it is dangerous to talk thus.”

  “Dangerous? Nonsense!” Philip threw his hand across his elder brother’s neck and shook him good-naturedly. “What danger could anyone imagine there is in a loyal drunkard? Only look around you, Perdikkas.”

  With a gesture of his free hand he seemed to take in the whole of Alexandros’s outdoor banquet, a jumble of tables and benches cove
ring an area of perhaps fifteen paces square, illuminated now by a paling of torches set up on iron staffs. Indeed, the King’s companions were making so much noise that his two younger brothers could have been shouting treason and no one would have noticed. Men who the month before had been commanding an army in Thessaly were now hurling wine cups and pieces of mutton at each other.

  “I look forward to many such occasions in the new reign. I expect to grow into quite an accomplished table soldier, the very archetype of the modern courtier. That you even think there is anything of danger in such an innocent ambition is proof that you have not drunk enough wine.”

  Philip’s gaze settled on the Lord Ptolemy, who was seated only a few tables distant from the king, and his eyes narrowed.

  “Now there is danger, if you have but eyes to see it,” he said, pulling Perdikkas toward him to murmur the warning into his ear. “Look at him, brother. I have been watching him this half hour, and he has yet to refill his wine cup. A man who stays sober in such a gathering as this is a man to be feared—the Lord Ptolemy is so drunk with ambition that he dares not relax. He is like a serpent, coiled to strike.”

  And indeed, Ptolemy’s javelin was within easy reach, sticking point first into the ground beside him. At the sight of it Philip felt a twinge of something almost like an intuition, but, as always after a day of games, there were many weapons strewn carelessly about. So Philip dismissed his little flutter of dread, half-ashamed of it.

  “I see that you are drunk enough,” Perdikkas sneered.

  “No, brother—were I drunk enough I might think our cousin Ptolemy the best man in the world. It is only when my head is clear that I mistrust him.”

  But Perdikkas appeared not to have heard, for he laughed suddenly and his eyes were on the king’s table, where Aristomachos, the king’s current favorite, had risen to entertain the company with an obscene song about a donkey and a tavern master’s daughter. The comic effect was heightened by the fact that Aristomachos was so deep in wine that he tended to forget the crucial verses and would then grow red-faced and angry when his audience shouted them up to him. Finally he became so enraged that he let go of the edge of the table, to which he had been clinging for balance, and his legs promptly buckled underneath him. He never did finish the song, but no one cared because everyone knew it already—people went on singing snatches of it all during the banquet.