The Golden Mean - Annabel Lyon [69]
“We are at war with Athens.” Ptolemy comes closer. “You might rather speak of Macedon.”
“I might, equally, speak to you of monarchy.” I skate over the interruption and the warning it implies, of thin ice below. “Where one family exceeds all others in excellence, is it not right that that family should govern?”
“Is that a question?” Alexander says.
“What are the goals of the state? I propose two: self-sufficiency and liberty.”
Ptolemy, at my elbow now, leans over and upends the bowl of ants. The boys cry out in shivery pleasure as the ants spill over their hands and feet and clothes and onto the floor.
“Liberty.” Ptolemy shrugs, brushing dirt from his hands. “Chaos.”
“You said best of seven,” Hephaestion calls suddenly, with the precisely ridiculous timing of a very bad but determined actor. “We’re only at three and two. Caught your breath or do you need more time?”
Their collision, the sound of it, reminds me that men, too, are meat. The cheers of the boys drown out the sounds of the fight, and I quickly recover my bowl before it gets broken. They have no respect for me today; there will be no further lesson. As I prepare to withdraw, I meet Ptolemy’s look.
“Pretty place, was it, Stageira?” Ptolemy asks, not unkindly.
I thank him for his interest.
“In fact, I know it was pretty.” The boys scream and roil about us and Alexander and Hephaestion abandon wrestling for fists, messier and more true. “I was there when they—”
“Yes. I wondered.”
“Only you should be more careful.” Ptolemy glances at the pages, then meets my eyes again with his straight, cool, frank look, sympathetic, though with no purchase for friendship in it. “No one wants to hear about the glories of Athens right now. We are at war.”
“Am I to fear boys, then?”
“Boys,” Ptolemy says. “Boys, their fathers.”
“What do you hear from the army?” Philip is on campaign again. Thermopylae was supposed to hold him back, as it had so many invaders in the past, but the Athenians and the Thebans between them forgot to reinforce the back roads, and Philip simply took the long way round. He has recently taken the city of Elateia, two or three days’ march from Attica and Athens.
“Diplomatic overtures to Thebes,” Ptolemy says. “Join us against Athens, or at least stay neutral and let us pass through your territory without trouble. Though I hear Demosthenes himself is in Thebes, waiting to deliver the Athenian pitch.”
“You hear a lot.”
“I do.”
“I’m surprised you’re not with them.”
“Antipater asked me to stay here.”
We watch the fight.
“He’s feeling much better,” Ptolemy says.
I thank him for the information.
At home I’m met by Tycho, who tells me Pythias has given birth to a daughter. I find her asleep in clean sheets with her hair dressed, and the baby already bathed and swaddled, sleeping in a basket beside her. Athea is in the kitchen kneading bread, thank you, as though this were the day’s real work that she’s had to interrupt to deliver a baby.
“Easy,” she says before I can speak. “Long time but no problems. Always first is long time. Next is easier. My lady—”
She struggles for the words. I wonder when Pythias became her lady instead of my wife, when that affection set in.
“Resting?” I suggest.
She raps a knuckle on a cooking pot. “Iron.” Satisfied, she turns back to her doughs.
“Thank you.”
“Next time easier.” She doesn’t bother to look over her shoulder at me. “Maybe I even let you watch.”
A