The Golden Mean - Annabel Lyon [64]
“That is enough drawing, Arrhidaeus,” I tell him today. “We play music now.”
“No.”
I try to take the tablet from his hands but he fights me. He stands up and shoves me, and I lose my balance and fall on my ass, at which point of course Philes returns. He stands in the doorway, his hair still oily-damp from the baths, surveying our wretched little scene.
“Help me up, please, Arrhidaeus,” I say. “I think that was an accident, wasn’t it?”
He gives me his hand, pleased, and yanks on my arm about as forcefully as he pushed me down. Warrior stock, I remind myself, and it was I myself who suggested he be trained at the gymnasium.
“What happened?” Philes is all womanish concern, advancing into the room. “You’re not hurt?” He hovers close, plays at straightening my clothes and brushing me off, while I shrug away, fluttering my hands like a man beset by bugs.
Arrhidaeus picks up the lyre as studiously as he bent over his tablet a few moments ago, ignoring our clown show, and strums a passable chord, stopping us both.
“Again,” I say.
He refits his fingers and manages the same chord again. He’s remembered something.
“Shall we sing?” I say.
And we make a ridiculous joyous noise, the three of us, clapping our hands, snapping our fingers, the prince strumming his one wavering chord, Philes and I singing like cows (he’s no better than me), the boat, the boat, the boat and the silver sea, until a palace guard sticks his head in the door to see who’s in so much pain and smiles despite himself when he sees the morose nurse, the idiot prince, and the great philosopher conducting themselves like people who are simply happy.
ONE MORNING AT THE BATHS I find Callisthenes scrubbing himself vigorously with pumice.
“You haven’t heard?” he says. “Alexander rode out this morning. A revolt at Maedi. A courier came in the night.”
The young man seems invigorated, by either his scrubbing or the potent news.
“He is a child,” I say.
“Well, he’s not, though.” My nephew turns the stone over in his hand thoughtfully. He’s right, of course: Alexander is sixteen. “I hear Olympias isn’t too pleased,” he says.
“Respect.”
“The queen would have preferred him to leave the Maedians to the generals. You should have seen him ride out, in full armour, on Ox-Head. He looked like a king already.”
“I should have been told.”
Again, my nephew seems perplexed and thoughtful and amused and sweetly reasonable all at once. “Why? He can’t get permission from his own mother and he’s going to ask it of a philosopher?”
I feel a hot sweet splash of guilt in my chest and wonder if guilt, too, is a humour, and, if so, where is its gland.
“We got up before the cocks to see them ride out.”
“Did you wish you had been one of them?”
“You should have seen them,” my nephew repeats, frowning, avoiding the question, answering it, and chiding the questioner all in the same breath. He, too, is young.
Alexander’s troops retake Maedi and, for good measure, establish a colony named Alexandropolis. A bit of arrogance with Philip still alive, but there were already a Philippi and a Philippopolis in Thrace, and the man was probably more than happy to indulge his son’s first successful command. I attend the formal greeting of the victors at court a few weeks after my conversation with Callisthenes, where Alexander is subdued and leaves almost immediately after the ritual offerings. I can’t get close enough to see if he’s picked something up on his travels, some bit of sickness, or if he’s just tired from all the excitement.
When I return home, I find Pythias has ordered a lamb sacrificed in the boy’s honour.
“You do love him,” I say.
Pythias, by now, is fat with child, and her lassitude has given way to dogged industry as she prepares for its arrival. She strokes her belly placidly while we speak. Athea no longer speaks to me, won’t look me in the eye. If she had anything to do with it, I don