The Golden Mean - Annabel Lyon [46]
“Savages, the Thracians,” Antipater says. “Fight like animals.”
I understand this is praise.
“He’ll overwinter there.”
Antipater doesn’t seem like he’s much given to chit-chat, and I suspect a test. I like tests. “Leaving his own territory unattended for so long?” I say. “Surely war with Athens is inevitable. I’m surprised he doesn’t watch his back more closely.”
“Unattended?” Antipater says.
“If he were to leave someone behind, someone to give them pause. One of his better generals. Parmenion, say.”
Antipater frowns. “I suppose I’m a pet rabbit?”
“A lion of Macedon. Alexander’s most worthy adviser.” Alexander is now old enough to serve as keeper of the royal seal, but it’s clear enough who wields true power. “As such, not to be risked in open warfare if it should come to that.”
“Piss off.” He pats my shoulder. “Take care of our boy.”
“MIEZA,” PYTHIAS SAYS, without expression. I show her on a map. “Goodness.”
“I’ll come back to visit you.”
Her face hardened a little when she saw the distance, but it’s a hardening I can’t read: displeasure, fear, disappointment, or a mask on some more pleasant emotion? Relief, anticipation?
“An elaborate arrangement I’m sure everyone will get tired of eventually,” I say.
A few days later I pack minimally and ride out alone, for the pleasure of being alone. It’s pretty, pastoral countryside, a morning of brooks and meadows and glens dotted with stone huts and sheep pens fenced with brambles.
Just outside the village of Mieza, the rambling temple complex features assorted shrines and sanctuaries and modest living quarters. The attendants give me a room, an austere little cell: bed, table, chair. I ask for many lamps. Leonidas has the room next to mine; the boys, I’m told, have a dormitory to themselves, out of earshot. The attendants are old men who accept our presence impassively; I’m reminded of Pythias. Who knows what goes on in their heads, those secret houses? They shuffle about, avoiding us, the older the shyer, shy as deer.
Once, late at night, as I’m working at my table with all my lamps, I hear a man’s laughter. Once I pass an attendant carrying a tray, the remains of a meal, from a hallway I had thought uninhabited. “Penitents,” he says tersely, when I ask about other guests. “They’re in seclusion.” Once, rounding a corner, I bump into Lysimachus, who carries on without acknowledging me. I wonder whom to inform—the attendants, Antipater, the newly recalled Parmenion (so!), Philip himself—and decide no one.
It’s a charming place, though, especially by springtime, when we can take our lessons outside. Stone seats, shady walks, caves dripping stalactites I can use for my little stories for the boys, metaphors we can climb in and out of. My old master was much taken with the metaphorical value of caves. I come to enjoy the rhythm of my life here, of the commute back and forth to the city: this or that familiar rock, tree, field, face, the boys at this end, my wife at that, tossed from one to the other, always a hot meal waiting, a more or less luxurious bath. In the end I prefer to be with Pythias. Yet I don’t get back to her as often as I’d planned, and sometimes months go by without us seeing each other. A ride in hard frost yields to a ride in tender spring greenery, and I’ll realize how long it’s been. She never reproaches me. She weaves, she tends the garden; she reads a little, she says when I ask. Nothing, poetry.
I’m not sure how I feel about her helping herself to my library, wonder if she knows the food rule. The next time I return to Mieza, I take the cart so I can bring the most significant volumes with me. I leave her some simple, appropriate material, and make a mental note to buy her some new to make up for my possessiveness. She watches the loading of the cart as she thanks me, but I can’t help it. All the way back to Mieza I fuss over the oilcloths covering the crates, and can relax only once my library is safely installed in my room, where I