Gabius, the king’s intelligencer, brought a stool and sent most of the courtiers out. And he and the king asked Satyrus questions – hundreds of questions – about Antigonus and about how Eumenes died, about the mountains south of Heraklea and about the coast of the Euxine – on and on, battles and deserts and everything Satyrus had seen in his busy young life.
But he was served rich cheese and pomegranate juice and crisp bread with honey. And neither the king nor the intelligencer was rude, or forceful. Merely thorough.
Sometimes Leon had to answer, or had to coax the answer from his ward, but Satyrus had lived with soldiers for two campaigns, and he knew what was expected of him. He explained as best he could the source of Antigonus’s elephants, the horse breeds of the steppe and a hundred other details, while a dozen Aegyptian priests and a pair of Greek scholars wrote his words down on papyrus.
When they were done, the king leaned forward again, and put a gold ring into the boy’s hand – a snake with his tail in his own mouth.
‘This is the sign of my people – my secret household,’ Ptolemy said. ‘Wear it in good health. And whenever you need me – well, your uncle knows how to find me. You are a remarkable young man – your father’s son. Is there anything I can do for you?’
Leon shook his head.
But Satyrus couldn’t restrain himself. ‘You knew . . . Alexander?’ he asked.
Ptolemy sat up as if a spark from the fire had struck bare skin. But he grinned. ‘Aye, lad. I knew Alexander.’
‘Would you . . . tell me what he was like?’ The boy stepped forward, and the guards by the throne rustled, but Ptolemy put out a hand.
The King of Aegypt rose, and every officer left in the great hall froze.
‘Come with me, boy,’ he said.
Together, the King of Aegypt and the adolescent boy walked out of the great hall of the palace. A dozen bodyguards fell in behind them. Leon and Gabias came with them, bringing up the rear of a fast-moving column that crossed the palace in deserted corridors or past scurrying slaves.
They entered a tunnel behind the royal residence. Ptolemy was silent, so Satyrus did his best not to ask questions. The one look he’d caught from Leon told him that his guardian was angry.
They climbed steps from the tunnel into a sombre hall, almost as big as the throne room. The walls were of red stone, lit by the last light of the sun through a round hole in the middle of the low dome above them.
The hole of the dome was covered in crystal or glass. Satyrus stared like a peasant.
In the midst of the hall was a dais as tall as a grown man’s knees, and on it was a bier – a closed sarcophagus in solid gold, with chiselled features and ram’s horns in ivory.
Satyrus fell on his knees. ‘Alexander,’ he said.
The King of Aegypt went to the bier and opened a cabinet set in the side of the dais. There were twenty-four holes – neat boxes made of cedar with silver nails. They held scrolls.
‘I kept a military journal, from our first campaign together to our last,’ Ptolemy said. He took one of the scrolls – the first – from its box, and handed it to Satyrus. Satyrus opened it, still on his knees. In the first hand’s-breadth of parchment, he saw water marks, mud, a grass stain, and a bloody handprint.
Satyrus wanted to raise the parchment to his lips – his awe was religious.
‘Of course,’ Ptolemy said with the impish grin of a much younger man, ‘it’s a tissue of lies.’
Gabias laughed. Leon smiled. Satyrus felt his stomach fall.
‘He was like a god, but he was the vainest man who ever walked the bowl of the earth and he couldn’t abide a word of criticism after the first few years.’ Ptolemy shrugged. ‘I loved him. I know what love is, youngster, and I don’t toss that word around. He was like a god. But he’d have had me killed if I had written everything just as it happened. The way he killed most of his friends.’
Satyrus swallowed with difficulty.
‘Would you really like me to tell you about Alexander?’ Ptolemy asked. ‘I will. I’ve always meant to put down a private memoir for the library, when it is finished. So that some day someone will have the real story.’ He looked at Satyrus. ‘Or would you rather I kept it between me and the scribes, lad? It’s not always a pretty story. On the other hand, if you plan to be a king, there’s a lesson in it you must learn.’
Satyrus looked at Leon, but the Nubian’s face was carefully blank.
‘Yes,’ Satyrus said. ‘Yes, I would like you to tell me about Alexander.’
Ptolemy nodded. He smiled with half his mouth, and then he took the crown of Lower Aegypt from his head and handed it to a guard, handed another the sceptre, slipped the cowl over his head. Satyrus noticed that the King of Aegypt’s left hand was badly scarred, two of the fingers almost fused, but he seemed to use it well enough. He also noticed that the great King of Aegypt had a dagger on a thong around his neck. Satyrus had one, too.
When he was done taking off the regalia, Ptolemy sat down in the red light of sunset on the steps of the dais. Alexander’s sarcophagus lay above him, the figure of the god-man himself reclining over his head, lit too brilliantly for mortal eyes to see by the last rays of the sun on his chryselephantine face.
Gabias leaned forward. ‘My lord, Cassander’s envoy has waited all day.’
Ptolemy put an elbow comfortably into the relief of the dais, where a young Alexander was putting a spear into a lion. ‘Let ’em wait. I need this.’ He looked at Satyrus. ‘I doubt I can do this in a day, lad. So you’ll have to come back, now and then.’
‘I will,’ said Satyrus. The sunset on Alexander’s head was blinding him – he had to look away.
‘Well, then,’ Ptolemy began . . .
ONE
Macedon, 344–342 BC
It’s not my earliest memory of him – we grew up together – but it’s the beginning of this story, I think.
There were three of us – we must have been nine or ten years old. We’d been playing soldiers – pretty much all we ever did, I think. Black Cleitus – my favourite among the pages, with curly black Thracian hair and a wicked smile – had a bruise where Alexander had hit him too hard, which was par for the course, because Cleitus would never hit back, or never hit back as hard as the prince deserved. Mind you, he often took it out on me.
No idea where Hephaestion was. He and Alexander were usually inseparable, but he may have been home for his name day, or going to temple – who knows?
We were in the palace, in Pella. Lying on the prince’s bed, with our wooden swords still in our hands.
There was a commotion in the courtyard, and we ran to the exedra and looked down to see the king and his companions ride in – just his closest bodyguard, his somatophylakes. They were wearing a fortune in armour – brilliant horsehair plumes, Aegyptian ostrich feathers, solid gold eagle’s wings, panther skins, leopard skins, bronze armour polished like the disc of the sun and decorated in silver and gold, tin-plated bronze buckles and solid silver buckles in their horse tack, crimson leather strapping on every mount, tall Persian bloodstock horses with pale coats and dark legs and faces. Philip was not the richest or the best armoured – but no one could doubt that he was in command.
It only took them a moment to dismount, and a horde of slaves descended on them and took their armour and their horses and brought them hot clothes and towels.
That was dull for us, so we went back to Alexander’s room. But we had seen a dream of power and glory. We were quiet for a long time.
Cleitus scratched – he was always dirty. ‘Let’s play knucklebones,’ he said. ‘Or Polis.’
But Alexander was still looking towards the courtyard. ‘Some day they’ll be dead,’ he said. ‘And we’ll do what they do.’