Orion and the Conqueror Page 15

  "Certainly it was."

  We fell silent as we marched on to the house of Demosthenes. It was not as grand as Aeschines' house, where once again we were staying, but it was a large and handsome house with a whole detachment of uniformed city constables standing guard before it. Like Aeschines, Demosthenes was a lawyer. It must have been a profession that paid very well, I thought, judging from their homes.

  Demosthenes knew we were coming, of course. His servants bowed us in through the front gate. He received us in the central courtyard, where gnarled fig trees provided shade by day. Now, with night's shadows creeping across the city, the courtyard was lit by lanterns hung from the trees' twisting limbs.

  He stood as Alexandros and I approached, his eyes going wide at the sight of his shield. Our six-man guard stood out by the house's front gate, with the constables' detachment, within shouting range.

  "I believe this is yours," said Alexandros, gesturing me to lay it on the ground at Demosthenes' feet. The man seemed to have aged ten years in the few days since Chaeroneia. His face was lined, a pallid gray, and his beard was ragged.

  He stared down at the shield. It was unscratched. He had never come close enough to the fighting to have it marred.

  "Wh-what do you w-w-want of me?" He could not look directly at Alexandros.

  "Only to tell you that you have nothing to fear from Philip, King of the Macedonians. Despite all that you have said, despite your personal insults, he has instructed me to tell you that he bears you no ill will and he will not harm you in any way."

  Demosthenes looked up then, his eyes more puzzled than surprised.

  "But let me add this, Demosthenes," said Alexandros. "I, Alexandros, will one day be king of the Macedonians. And on that day you can begin to number the hours left to your miserable, lying, traitorous heart."

  "T-traitorous? Whom have I b-betrayed?"

  "The thousands of your fellow Athenians who died at Chaeroneia while you flung your shield and weapons away and ran to save your filthy neck. The brave Sacred Band of the Thebans, who fought to the last man because you, bought by Persian gold, talked them into making war against us. The people of your own city who trusted you to lead them to victory and now bless Philip's name for his magnanimity."

  Demosthenes was trembling, but he managed to choke out, "So y-you intend to k-k-kill me once you g-gain the throne."

  "You can run to the Great King, your secret master, but it will do you no good. Hide at the ends of the earth and I will find you," Alexandros snarled.

  "My secret master?" Some of the old fire seemed to rekindle in Demosthenes. "I have no m-master except the democracy of Athens!"

  "You deny you took money from the Persians?"

  "Of course not. I would have t-taken money from the dead souls in Hades if it would have helped to stop Philip."

  "Little good it did you."

  "Athens still stands," he challenged.

  "Your people love Philip now. If you showed yourself on the streets they would no doubt tear you to pieces."

  "Yes. Likely they would. Today. Tomorrow. But in time, perhaps a few weeks, perhaps a few months, they will come back to me."

  Alexandros laughed.

  And Demosthenes scowled at him. "You have no idea of how the p-people actually behave, do you? This is a democracy, princeling. Loyalty is not forced. Obedience is not coerced. Where the people are free to make up their own minds, they change their minds often." As before, the warmer his passion became the less he stuttered.

  "Where the people are dazzled by demagogues," Alexandros countered, "they can be led by their noses by the man who tells the biggest lies."

  "By the man who offers them the clearest vision of their own future," Demosthenes corrected.

  "The same thing," said Alexandros.

  "I will lead Athens again, sooner or later."

  Nodding, Alexandros agreed. "Yes, I understand that a democracy will follow the smoothest talker. I hope they do make you their leader again. I hope it happens when I am king. Then I will smash you once and for all."

  "You will try, I'm sure."

  Alexandros took a step closer to Demosthenes. "I will crush you like a grape, demagogue." He scuffed a boot against the blue shield. "You'll need more than that to protect you, next time."

  If Alexandros thought that Pella would ignore his return, he reckoned without his mother. We were only a small band: Alexandros and his Companions, and those of us of the royal guard who had been assigned to them. With the servants and horse handlers and mule drivers and all we came to fewer than a hundred and fifty men.

  Yet the streets of Pella were decked with flowers when we returned. Crowds lined the streets as we made our way to the palace, cheering us and throwing even more flowers. Young women ran to us as we rode through the streets to beam smiles up at us and touch us with their outstretched fingertips. Boys pranced along beside our horses, proud to pretend they were part of us.

  At the head of the palace steps, at the end of our procession, stood Olympias, resplendent in a red gown that swirled to the ground, her hair decked with garlands, her I eyes bright with victory.

  The king was nowhere in sight.

  We were feted at a royal banquet. Even those of us in the guard were invited to recline on couches in the main dining hall and be served by comely young women and smooth-cheeked young men. Alexandros was up at the head of the hall, his mother beside him. Much wine was poured and most of the men became quite drunk. But neither Alexandros nor his mother did more than sip at their goblets. I drank freely, knowing that I never got drunk. Something in my body burned away the alcohol almost as quickly as I consumed it.

  "Where is the king?" I asked Ptolemaios, on the couch next to mine. He was fondling one of the serving girls. Thais had elected to remain in Athens a while; he had complained loudly on the trip back to Pella that the woman was trying to drive him mad. And succeeding.

  "Who cares?" he said. Then he returned to nibbling at the serving girl. She could not have been more than fifteen, but that was well past marriageable age among the Macedonians.

  The dinner became rowdier. The young men began tossing morsels of food at one another. The more the wine flowed the more uproariously they laughed and bellowed obscene jokes back and forth. Olympias, up on the dais at the head of the hall, seemed to ignore it all as if she saw and heard nothing. She was deep in conversation with Alexandros, whose head was bent toward her.

  At last they got up together and left the hall. Then the party became really raucous. Whole platters of food were hurled back and forth, goblets of wine sloshed through the air. Harpalos, the dour giant of the Companions, jumped atop a table and announced that he could make a roasted chicken fly as if it were alive. He pegged the seared bird halfway across the hall, narrowly missing dark-skinned Nearkos, who was intently slicing the skin off a peach in a single spiraling cut.

  One by one, the Companions and guards staggered out of the hall, most of them with a girl or boy on their arms. Except for Ptolemaios, who brought two young women with him. "I'll forget all about her," he muttered. "At least, for tonight."

  I got up from my couch and pushed past the few couples still carousing, heading for the door. I still wondered where Philip was and why he had not deigned to greet his returning son. And I hoped that Ketu was still somewhere in the palace; there was much I wanted to learn from him.

  As I neared the door, however, I noticed a messenger boy scanning the spattered, littered hall. His eyes stopped on me.

  "Are you the one called Orion?" he asked me.

  "Yes."

  "The queen summons you."

  Glad that I had stayed out of the food fights, I followed him toward the stairs that led to the queen's rooms.

  "She said I would recognize you by your size," said the lad. While some of the mountain people were big-boned, most of the Macedonians were much smaller in stature than I.

  The lad smiled up at me as we started up the stairs. He held his lamp up to my face. "And
your beautiful gray eyes," he added.

  I knew that boys his age often sought a mentor who would guide them into adult male society. Homosexual relationships were an accepted norm between noblemen and pubescent boys. Usually the boy grew up to marry and raise a family, and then take on a boy companion at a later stage in life. From what I saw, Macedonian wives had closer bonds with their husbands than those in the cities further south, where wives were left at home and men sported with hetairai, professional courtesans like Thais. Still, men could remain lovers throughout their lives if they wished; Alexandros and Hephaistion seemed to be, although neither of them spoke about it and the other Companions only mentioned it jokingly when neither of them was within earshot.

  "I am a stranger here," I said, "and only a member of the royal guard by the king's favor. I am not a nobleman."

  "So I had heard," the boy said, looking a bit disappointed. He was ambitious, I realized. He would find someone other than a hired soldier.

  The queen was in her small sitting room, where the window overlooked the palace courtyard. A stiletto-thin sliver of a moon had just cleared the dark bulk of the mountains. I could see stars glittering out in the night.

  The room was lit by a single lamp on the table beside the queen. Alexandros had apparently been sitting at his mother's knee. He scrambled to his feet as the messenger boy opened the door.

  "Come in, Orion," said Olympias. To the boy she said, "You may go."

  He closed the door behind me, although I did not hear his footsteps leaving. He had been barefoot, and he was slight of build. I gave the possibility of his eavesdropping no further thought.

  Alexandros eyed me uneasily. He always seemed on edge, upset, when he met with his mother this way. Who knew what poisons she was pouring into his ears?

  Olympias seemed content to have me stand at the doorway. She ignored me, reaching for her son's bare arm.

  "Come, sit down again," she urged. "We still have much to talk over."

  Alexandros looked uncertain, but after a moment's hesitation he sat on the floor again. For an instant I thought he would rest his head in his mother's lap.

  "It is certain, then?" he asked, looking up into her coldly beautiful face.

  Olympias nodded once. "As certain as the man's insatiable lust. He will marry her."

  "But what will that mean to you, mother?"

  "Better to ask what it will mean to you, Alexandros."

  "He can't disown me. He can't ignore that I exist."

  "He is a very clever man."

  "But all the army saw me at Chaeroneia. I am a general now, equal in rank to Parmenio and the others."

  "Orion," she called to me, "do you believe that if the army voted for a new king this night they would elect Alexandros?"

  So that's why she wanted me. As a sounding board for her own opinions.

  "He is greatly admired," I said.

  "But not yet nineteen years old," the queen countered.

  "The men trust him. At Chaeroneia—"

  "Answer me truthfully. If the army voted this night, would they elect a nineteen-year-old over Parmenio? Or even Antipatros? Remember that their families are as old and noble as Philip's. They were all horse thieves together only a generation ago."

  "I believe they would vote Alexandros king," I said truthfully. "Probably with Parmenio as regent for a year or so."

  "You see?" she said to Alexandros. "You would get the title but not the authority. They will keep you from true power."

  "But why this question?" I asked. "Has something happened to the king?"

  "He's going to marry Attalos' niece, Kleopatra, the one he calls Eurydice."

  "Marry?"

  "The king may have more than one wife," Alexandros explained.

  "He already has had several political marriages," said Olympias. "His marriage to me was to cement his alliance with the Molossians, originally."

  "He fell in love with you," I said.

  "He lusted after me, just as he's lusted after every wench with hair between her legs. And quite a few boys, too."

  "I don't see it as a problem, Mother—as far as I'm concerned. I know it's a slap in your face, of course."

  "Do you think I care about that?"

  I thought she cared very much. But I kept my mouth shut.

  "I think he hurts you," said Alexandros.

  "And he humiliates you," she said, clutching at his shoulder. "He expects me to be so enraged at him that I will leave and return to my father in Epeiros. If I refuse to do that, he will divorce me. This little baggage he's marrying wants to be his only legitimate wife; that's Attalos' plan."

  Understanding seemed to dawn on Alexandros' face. "Which means that if he has a son by her—"

  "You will have a rival for the throne. Attalos will push for his niece's son because that will bring the throne to his house, his family."

  "But not for many years," I pointed out.

  She shot me a venomous glance. "He could have a new son a year from now. And my son will be pushed aside. He'll claim that he never fathered you, Alexandros. I know he will!"

  "You told me that he didn't," Alexandros said, his voice hollow.

  "I told you that you were fathered by Zeus," she said imperiously. "But Philip has always claimed you as his own."

  "Until now."

  "The clever dog will use your own godly heritage against you. He will call me an adulteress and you a bastard. Wait and see."

  Again I broke in, "But all this is supposition. Philip hasn't even announced his intention to marry again."

  "He will."

  "Even if he does, even if he marries, it could be years before he produces a son. Alexandros will be a fully grown man, perfectly able to be voted king when Philip dies."

  "Or he may not produce a son at all," Alexandros said.

  "Yes," said Olympias. "He may not live long enough to sire a new heir."

  Chapter 18

  Olympias dismissed her son, but kept me with her. Like the slave that I was I followed her to her bed chamber where we made love until dawn amid her slithering, hissing snakes.

  She did not need the special drugs that her vipers had injected into me other times. I was a cooperative slave that night, a willing lover. My body was unmarked by their fangs, although Olympias had sunk her own fingernails into my flesh more than once.

  "You plan to assassinate Philip," I said to her as we lay together.

  "Is that a question?" she asked lazily.

  "No. An observation."

  "And you will warn him of it, won't you?"

  "I am loyal to Philip," I said.

  "Not to me?"

  "You can force me to do whatever you wish. That does not engender loyalty."

  She laughed in the predawn darkness. "Come now, Orion, can you truthfully say that you don't enjoy what we do together?"

  "My body certainly enjoys it."

  "But your mind . . . ?"

  I hesitated, not wanting to stir her anger. But I heard my voice tell her, "I know what a trained bear must feel when he's made to dance."

  She laughed again, genuinely amused. "A trained bear! Yes! That's what I want you to be: my trained bear."

  I cursed myself for giving her a new source of amusement.

  "Time for another performance, my great big bear," she said. "Must I find a whip to encourage you?"

  I did not need a whip.

  By the time the first pink flush of dawn was lighting the sky beyond her window, she returned to our earlier conversation.

  "You will tell Philip that I plan to assassinate him, won't you?"

  "If you don't prevent me, yes, I will."

  "It's nothing that he doesn't know already."

  I got out of the bed and went to the wash basin on the table across the room.

  "Go ahead and tell him, Orion. Let him know what awaits him. There's nothing he can do to avoid it. Assassination is his fate. The gods have decreed it."

  "The gods!" I spun around and faced her, still
lying languidly in her bed. "There are no gods and you know it."

  She laughed at me. "Careful, Orion. Men have been executed most painfully for blaspheming."

  "For telling the truth," I muttered.

  "Go," she said, her voice suddenly imperious. "Go to Philip and tell him the fate that awaits him. Tell him that it is ordained by the gods. There is nothing he can do to avoid it."

  I left her chamber, Olympias' words and haughty laughter echoing in my mind. She said that Philip's assassination was ordained by the gods. As I strode along the empty corridors of Philip's palace in the dawn's gentle light, I clenched my fists and vowed to do everything I could to stop her.

  "Nothing is preordained," I muttered to myself. "Time itself can be bent and changed, not only by the so-called gods but by their creatures, as well. We create the future by our own actions."

  And I swore that I would protect Philip with every ounce of strength in me.

  I went back to my usual palace duties. By day we of the royal guard exercised the horses, trained our squires, oversaw the slaves who maintained our weapons and armor, shopped in Pella's growing market place for clothes and trinkets. And we gossiped, chattering among ourselves about Ptolemaios' madness over Thais, about the queen's scheming, about whether or not Philip truly intended to invade the Persian Empire.

  Pausanias kept us busy and kept us sharp. He took his duties as captain of the royal guard very seriously, despite the sniggering jokes that the men made about him behind his back. I began to understand that the sly laughter had something to do with Attalos. Whenever anyone mentioned Attalos' name, or spoke about the prospects of the king marrying Attalos' niece, Pausanias' normally dour face darkened like a thundercloud.

  I had to tiptoe around the subject, since it was so obvious that Pausanias was sensitive to the point of homicide about it, but at last I got Ptolemaios to explain it to me.

  "A lovers' quarrel, from years ago. It got very nasty." Ptolemaios' usual smiling good nature turned grim at the memory of it. "You wouldn't think it to see him now, but when Pausanias was a youth he was quite beautiful. So much so that he became one of the king's lovers."