By Zeus, I loved him.
At any rate, he unrolled the scroll – even in a crisis, he couldn’t ever stop explaining his latest enthusiasm, and this was no crisis. ‘Have you read Isocrates?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I said cautiously. It wasn’t always good to admit ignorance with Alexander.
‘Another Athenian – but oh, he has some beautiful ideas. He says it is time for a crusade of all the Hellenes against Persia.’ Alexander held up the scroll and read. He read well – he had a good voice.
Isocrates.
I had a soft spot for Isocrates, because he was a Plataean, and the Plataeans were, to me, the real heroes of Marathon and of all the subsequent campaigns against Persia. Aristotle used some of Isocrates’s speeches in training us. So I was, like any good friend, prepared to be pleased and to support Alexander’s latest passion.
And I have to say that, at that time, every side and every voice in the Hellenic world was advocating a crusade against Persia. First, the Persian court and Persian army and every satrapy in Asia were now full of Hellenes, growing rich, writing letters home to describe in detail the riches of Asia and the relative ease with which it could all be conquered. Every boy in the world – the Greek-speaking world – read Xenophon’s Anabasisat school, and every one of us saw Persia as the empire we would conquer. If our thoughts had carried physical manifestation (something Pythagoras apparently advocated at one time) then Persepolis would have had a bull’s-eye painted across its walls like a Cretan archery target a hundred feet tall.
In addition, every faction in Greece saw a universal crusade against the Mede as the salvation of the endless infighting – Athens against Sparta, Sparta against Thebes, Thebes against Thessaly against Macedon against Athens. Even Philip advocated such a war – as long as he could command it. And there, my friend, was the rub. Everyone imagined that we would all cooperate – even Athens and Macedon – if we could get to grips with the King of Kings, but no one wanted to play second flute, so to speak.
Alexander raced back to his quarters and reappeared with a whole bag of Isocrates. ‘Read these while you go to your father!’ he said.
Now by this point I’d been one of his inner circle for more than a year, and we hunted together – sometimes just the two of us – played Polis, threw knucklebones and sparred daily. I knew him pretty well – but the brilliance and brittleness of his moods still caught me by surprise. He could change topics faster than anyone I’ve ever met. Other men made allusions to femininity – women are supposed to have fickle minds, or so I’m told – but Alexander’s intellectual whims came with spear-points of iron and a will of adamantine, and there was nothing effeminate about them. Only lesser men ever thought so. What happened was that Alexander would finish a subject – often inside his head, with no reference to friends or other company – and move on. If you were up to his speed, you could reason out where he’d gone. If you weren’t, he left you behind all the time, and eventually stopped trying to talk to you.
In this case, all he’d done was share his passion for Isocrates first, and then remember that he hadn’t told me the reason for his visit to Antipater’s rooms. My pater was dying or already dead. I was requested.
‘Take all the time you want,’ Alexander said. ‘I know you love him – I’ve seen the two of you together.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘I am envious.’
What do you say to that? He was envious. He and his pater were locked in a competition when they ought to have been pulling in harness like matched chariot horses.
‘I am lucky, lord,’ I said. ‘Pater has treated me as a man – since before I was one.’
‘Men say Philip is your father,’ Alexander said. He didn’t mean it to hurt. ‘Yet despite the slur, your father sees you as a . . . a person.’ He shrugged.
‘Lagus is my father.’ I was on dangerous ground here.
‘I agree. If Philip was your father, you’d be better-looking.’ Alexander smiled. ‘You are the only one of my close friends with his own estates and his own power – and yet you are completely loyal. Why?’
Chasms were opening at my feet, and legions of Titans preparing to rend me limb from limb. He had that look in his eye.
‘Habit?’ I answered, with a wink.
Alexander stopped, and his face became still for a moment, and then he barked a laugh. ‘By Herakles my ancestor, Ptolemy. Get you gone. Send your pater my respects, if he is alive to hear them, and tell him his son is somatophylax to the prince.’
‘I am?’ I said. I was delighted – for all his moodiness, he was my prince, and I wanted to serve.
He put a gold ring in my hand. ‘You are.’
I still wear the ring. I earned it a thousand times, and I never betrayed his trust. Until I killed him.
Pater was still alive when I arrived – on the mend, it appeared. So we dined by the hearth, all the old servants happy to have me home – Pater was an excellent master, had freed all the good slaves already and paid them wages, and men competed to go to our estates. It always baffled me that men had other ways of dealing with their slaves and serfs than Pater’s – he was hard but fair, quick to reward. Who thinks that there’s another way? I think it is like raising children. Good estate management takes a few more minutes than bad estate management, just as a little time and a few words are the difference between a good child and a bad one.
We had a good dinner, and I showed off my ring, and Pater beamed at me with approval. I saw him to bed, kissed him and gave him Alexander’s respects, and he frowned.
‘Your prince is mad,’ he said. ‘Steer a careful course, my son. He is no Philip.’
I didn’t lash out – I only said, ‘My prince is worth ten of Philip.’
Pater shook his head. ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘But Philip is already looking to be rid of him.’
That was like icy water down my back. ‘What?’
Pater shrugged, coughed and drank off a huge dollop of poppy juice. ‘I’ve said too much,’ he whispered. ‘But people tell me things – and I have some of Attalus’s slaves – they’ve run from him. He’s a dangerous man – more like a felon than a general.’ He nodded.
‘Where are these slaves?’ I asked.
Pater smiled. ‘Safe. Ask Heron.’ Heron was his steward. ‘You are an excellent son. Get a wife and make some more! That’s my only advice, lad. You have the rest in your hand. Oh – and don’t forget to breed Narcissa in the spring.’ Narcissa was a big mare – beautiful and wilful and not very interested in boys, but the largest, heaviest, fastest mare we’d ever had.
I held his hand, found myself choked with tears, reminded myself that he was going to be there for a few more nights at least, and let the nurse have him.
He was dead in the morning. He stayed alive for a few days on poppy and willpower to speak to me one last time.
I’m going to cry now.
The gods know I cried then. I wept for a couple of hours, and then I got up and went riding. I rode over our home farms – three farms that had been in the family for ever, since we were smaller men, I suspect – it was winter, and the leaves were off the trees and it was pissing rain, and I didn’t care.
I rode up the hill – we had a big hill in the middle of our property, with an ancient ruined stone tower from the old people at the top. I looked out over all of it – my land as far as my eyes could see, or close enough.
Then I rode back down and buried my pater. He was never a king, or a general. He spurned the court, and mostly he was interested in breeding horses and dogs and cattle and pigs. But he was an excellent father and husband and lord to his people.
Heron understood that there had to be changes. So I spent two weeks – right through the winter festival of lights – sitting in my pater’s chair. I dispensed some justice, walked some boundaries and talked to Heron about the future of the estates. The problem was that most men like me had some brothers or sisters – even bastards – to hold the home fort, so to speak. I was a close friend of the prince, and in twenty years I had every expectation of being a general, or a King’s Councillor, or something better. Satrap? Really, when I was seventeen, I saw no limit to my ambition.