The Golden Mean - Annabel Lyon [39]
His eyes go wide.
“Leonidas says you frighten people. You don’t frighten me, you make me sad. You’re supposed to be brilliant. Everyone tells me so: your father, Lysimachus, everyone I meet at court who congratulates me on the honour of becoming your master. You know what I see? An utterly ordinary boy. I train birds, you pull the wings off flies. I haven’t seen anything in you that tells me you’re extraordinary in any way. Athletics, I wouldn’t know or care about that. I’m talking about your mind, your personality. Just an ordinary boy with too many privileges. A violent, snotty little boy. How could you possibly know what your noble brother might or might not be capable of?”
Now we’re both breathing hard.
“Stop insulting me,” he says quietly.
“Stop insulting me. You’re late to lessons when you come at all. You don’t do your homework. I don’t think you try to understand anything I teach you. Are you really as stupid as you seem, or are you just putting on a show?”
“You need to stop right now.” He’s almost whispering.
“Or what?”
“There are three cavalry officers about ten paces behind you. If they hear you talking to me like that, they’ll kill you. Don’t look back. Act like we’re joking around.”
Slowly I reach a hand up to tousle his hair.
“I don’t understand your lessons,” he says. “I don’t understand what they’re for. Maybe I am stupid. Smile. They’re coming over.”
“You’re an actor, aren’t you?” I murmur, smiling stiffly.
“I have to be.”
The officers pass, saluting Alexander, squinting at me, ignoring Arrhidaeus, who sits oblivious through all of this, high up on Tar, plucking at his thick lips.
“Thank you,” I say when they’re out of earshot.
Alexander looks up at his brother on my horse. “I can’t ask questions in front of the others. I can’t let them know I don’t understand. When I’m king they’ll remember and they won’t respect me.”
“Private lessons, then. I’ll arrange it with Leonidas.”
He nods.
“Can I clear up one thing quickly, before you go? My lessons are to make you think in ways others don’t. To make your world bigger. Not this world”—I wave a hand to take in the stables, the palace, Pella, Macedon—“but the world in here.” I tap my temple.
“I thought you didn’t believe in two worlds.”
I point at him. He smiles for real now, pleased with himself, and runs off to rejoin the boys, who are now under the eye of one of the officers, their riding master. Alexander swings up onto Ox-Head and joins the file out of the yard and into the arena.
“Look, Arrhidaeus.” I point after him. “Look how tall he sits, and how he keeps his heels down.”
“Down.” Arrhidaeus bumps up and down a couple of times, impatient for us to go our own way.
CAROLUS SAYS I’M WRONG. “It’s not the father at all, it’s the mother. Olympias takes up so much room in his head, I’m surprised her hands aren’t sticking out of his ears. He gets a lot from her, no doubt at all.”
We’re in my house, summer ending, supper just finished, talking about the prince’s weirdness. “It’s like he already is king in his mind,” I say. “Never showing weakness. The insolence, the dramatic gestures. The brains, for that matter. Philip’s not stupid.”
“Nor is Olympias.” Carolus lies back on his couch, wine cup trailing from his long fingers. “Can you believe she used to be a beauty? Not all tight and dried like she is now.”
“A dried apricot.”
“It’s difficult skin, red-haired skin.” Carolus closes his eyes. “I’ve seen it in actors. The reds age quicker than others. Darker skin looks younger longer, for some reason. Do you know why that is?”
“More oils?” I guess.
“Alexander got her looks, anyway. I don’t see Philip in him at all.”
“You find him attractive?”
Carolus doesn’t miss a beat. “I find them all attractive, friend. Though, yes, he’s got a little something extra. Just who he is, maybe, the power he has, or will have. You can’t help wanting to see that on its knees. You don’t?”
I shake my head.
“You do,” Carolus says. “You just don’t know it yet.”
“Lysimachus does. You know Lysimachus, his history master?”
Carolus nods. “Always