The Golden Mean - Annabel Lyon [38]
“No. I don’t.”
“Absolutely,” he says. “Absolutely. You think about it. He’s at an impressionable age, the sap only just rising. Wouldn’t want to confuse him, would we? One thing from me, another from you? We connect, he and I. He’s always eager to hear what I have to say. Enjoyed your talk this morning, by the way. You’re confident, aren’t you.”
So, an enemy.
I’M NEVER SURE HOW much Arrhidaeus understands, but decide to ignore his affliction when possible and speak to him as I would to any boy his age. When I tell him I’ll be visiting him for a long time to come, he smiles his sudden sweet smile and I wonder if he’s almost understood. We’re readying Tar and Gem for a ride in the fields when a group of boys, including Alexander, enter the stables. The boys busy themselves with their tack, preparing for lessons of their own. Alexander looks at Arrhidaeus and away.
“What are you doing?” he says to me.
“Tutoring the prince.”
He flushes, a trait he must get from his mother, along with the fair skin and rusty hair.
“Do you spend much time with your brother?”
“Don’t call him that.”
“Do you?”
Alexander won’t look at Arrhidaeus, who’s mounted now and clutching the reins, watching the younger boy with unconcealed pleasure, his mouth slackly open. “My brother died when I was three. He was five.”
“I’m surprised no one told me,” I say, trying to hook a laugh, but Alexander won’t be caught. “Why don’t you come riding with us? You’d be surprised, I think, at all he can do. He’s not how you probably remember him as a child.”
“How I probably remember him?” Alexander says. “I used to have my lessons with him. I know him better than you do. He drools, he shits. He walks on two legs instead of four—I’ve seen trained dogs do that too. Now you’re teaching him more tricks. You know what? I don’t think you’re doing it to help him. I think you’re doing it to prove you can. I think you’ve probably tried to teach your horse to talk. I think you probably have a trained bird at home. It hops over to you and you make it do a trick, nod or flap its wings, and then you give it a seed, and tell yourself you’re a great teacher. I think that animal”—he points to his brother—“is another laurel leaf for you. A challenge.”
He’s flushed, he’s breathing hard. This is the longest conversation we’ve had. Hatred, or maybe just disgust—let’s say disgust, something I can work with—has lit a fire in him.
“Every student is both a challenge and a laurel leaf.” I mean his own self, and mean him to know it. “I like a challenge. Don’t you? And if he drools and shits like an animal in a human skin, wouldn’t it be worthwhile to make him a little more like us if we can? To clean him up, teach him to speak more clearly, and see what he has to say?”
“What would a dog say? Feed me, scratch me.” Alexander shakes his head. “He used to follow me around everywhere. I took care of him and taught him the names of animals, and songs, and things like that. I taught him to beg and fetch because it made people laugh, but it never made me laugh. He’s never going to fight a battle or ride a horse properly or travel anywhere. He’s going to stay right here until he’s an old man, doing the same things day after day. Feed me, scratch me. It makes me sick.”
Arrhidaeus grunts out some sounds. He’s eager to be off and is telling me so.
“He doesn’t seem to remember you,” I say.
Alexander looks at him and again away, as though from something painful, the sun. “I told my father I didn’t want him near me any more. Not for lessons, not for meals. I didn’t want to look at him ever again.”
“How old would you have been?”
“Seven,” he says. “I know, because it was right around the time of my first hunt. Arrhidaeus, fetch!”
The older boy’s head snaps up sharply, looking for the thrown object.
“He remembers me,” Alexander says.
“You’re a cruel little