The Golden Mean - Annabel Lyon [62]
The siege began again on the second wall. Behind it were tiers of houses accessible only by narrow, steep streets, easy to plug. The Perintheans throughout the siege received money, arms, and corn from Byzantium and several Persian satrapies. The Athenian navy hung back and watched. Philip, foreseeing a nasty fight, suddenly withdrew half his forces and rushed to Byzantium, short-handed now because of its support of Perinthus. But somehow that city, too, escaped a quick defeat. Philip, in a second surprise attack, took the Athenian corn fleet, then on its way back from the Black Sea, heading through the Bosporus. A success to enrich the Macedonian treasury and boost the army’s morale; open war now, incidentally, with Athens, though hostilities did not erupt immediately. Now the siege of Byzantium began in earnest, and lasted most of the fall and winter and into the following spring. Again the siege-train came out; again the city, backed by its allies in the region and Athens openly now, resisted. Then the Macedonian navy took its first hard hit from the Athenian navy, and finally Philip had to cut his losses and withdraw.
“Am I boring you?” Philip says.
I snap to. When I woke this morning I wept to realize I was awake and had a whole day to get through. Pythias woke too but pretended not to while I wiped my eyes. My tears must bore her, at least sometimes.
“No. I was considering the problem.”
Thrace something, Alexander something, I could weep again for the stupidity of all of it. Should he take Alexander to Thrace? Was that the problem? Truly, I have no idea what he was asking.
“May I offer a suggestion?” Lysimachus jumps in.
I’m grateful, and give him a look that says so. He’s a scholar, after all; maybe he suffers something similar. Maybe he recognizes it and is helping me. A kindness returned, for the invitation to dinner.
“May you fucking the fuck get on with it?” Philip says. “Can’t any of you just get a sentence out?”
“Leave him here,” Lysimachus says. “He’s in the best of hands, and at a delicate age too, when the metal is just hardening, if you see what I mean. Don’t want to muck with the tempering.”
“Eh?” Philip says.
“My esteemed colleague here has been a wonderful influence.” Lysimachus bows to me. “A wonderful influence. I’ve never seen such an influence on a boy. I’ve never seen a teacher have such an impact on a student. I look at them together sometimes, their heads bent together over something, and it’s hard to believe they’re not father and son. Modelled so finely after the great one’s mind, if you see what I mean. I’m not sure anyone apart from me has quite realized how close they’ve become. Rip him away now and he’ll bear the wound for the rest of his life. The mind is just ripening. What’s more important than the mind?”
Philip looks at me. I look at Antipater. Antipater shakes his head, minimally.
“He very much wants to see the world,” I say.
Philip looks at me.
“He’s the brightest student I’ve ever had.”
Philip looks at me.
“I’m unwell. Will you excuse me?”
I leave the court with Lysimachus’s dagger sticking from the small of my back.
TEN DAYS LATER, I’m told by an attendant to gather my things: Mieza is done. Alexander is required back at court; his military training has been neglected; we are at war with Athens; he is enough of a philosopher for now. Lysimachus’s dagger, in to the hilt, though Philip has returned to Thrace without his son after all. The prince will be disappointed. Abruptly the boys are gone and we old men, their retinue, linger in the slow business of packing, myself especially, two years’ worth of books and specimens and manuscripts, while the temple attendants watch impassively as ever. We are a storm that has finally passed from their lives. I am told I will continue to attend the prince in Pella, but less intensively, less often, as other duties encroach on their studies.
Pythias welcomes me with an expensive meal and later a shy fuck in