The Golden Mean - Annabel Lyon [98]
“Stageira?”
“A repayment, for all you’ve done with the boy. A gift. Call it whatever you want. I know things haven’t turned out the way either of us expected, but you can’t look at him and think you’ve wasted your time.”
“No. I don’t.”
“You can’t. Anyway. I’ve ordered the work started, and I want you to go there later this summer and oversee it. You can tell me what needs doing and I’ll have it taken care of. Fields, crops, buildings, boats, whatever it needs. We could bring the people back, too, try to. You’d know where to find some of them, maybe?”
“Maybe.”
“I remember you had a brother.”
“Yes.” I don’t tell him that Arimnestus died in his eighteenth year after a fall from a horse, nor that the following year Arimneste died giving birth to her second child, a daughter who died with her, and that Proxenus and Nicanor left Atarneus before I ever got there and are settled now in Eresus, on Lesvos. Pythias and I visited them there once or twice during our years in Mytilene. Stageira doesn’t mean anything to them. And it surely isn’t Athens, but I understand that promise is in the spheres now, with the Theban.
We rise together and embrace one last time.
“He’s like a god, isn’t he,” Philip says. “Who understands the gods? You can’t blame me for making backup plans. Some days I just look at him and wonder what he’ll do next.”
· · ·
“WATCH THIS,” ALEXANDER SAYS.
At his sign, the actor begins to declaim.
“You can’t do that,” I say, within a couple of words, when I’ve caught the gist of the speech.
The actor stops. Alexander turns to me with his old look of amused incredulity.
“Majesty,” I add quickly.
We’re in the palace library, where Alexander summoned me ostensibly for a lesson.
“But I can, and I will,” Alexander says. “Who do you think he’ll prefer for his daughter, Arrhidaeus or me? Would he dare refuse me?”
The actor is tall and slender and handsome, and stands with an unnatural stillness while others speak. I recognize him as Thessalus from Corinth, the famous tragedian, a new favourite of the Macedonian court.
“Again,” Alexander says, and the actor starts over. He speaks lengthily of Alexander’s qualities while the prince beats time on the arm of his chair.
“You’ve met this girl?” I ask when he’s done.
Alexander tosses a few coins that the actor catches neatly and pockets. He bows low and slow, with tragic dignity, and leaves the room.
Alexander brushes away the remark, and by implication all casual conversation, with a toss of his hand, as though at a fly. “He arranges a marriage for my brother. My feeble, idiot, older brother. Why not me, then? Am I not marriageable? Does he think Arrhidaeus has something I lack? Caria is our most important ally against the Persians.”
I wonder if I dare point out this isn’t true.
“He’s trying to replace me. He doesn’t trust me. He had a daughter, you see, so now he must find another way. He’ll take Arrhidaeus’s whelp before me, even.”
I notice a pile of papers on the table at his elbow. “Do you hear from your mother?” Olympias has remained in Epirus with the king her brother, sulking, the Macedonians say.
“She writes me.” Alexander indicates the papers.
I counsel him to reconsider.
“I suppose you think I am not fit for marriage either.”
“Not for this marriage, no. It’s beneath you.”
I watch the boy consider my words, holding himself nobly still, as the actor did.
WHEN PHILIP FOUND OUT about Alexander’s scheme, he banished four of Alexander’s companions, including Ptolemy, but not Hephaestion. Never a fool, Philip, even in anger; he wanted to punish his son, not break him. When Philip learned Thessalus was already on his way back to Corinth, he sent soldiers out after him and had him brought back to Pella in chains. This indignity the actor bore with great nobility and quiet suffering.
“I can imagine,” I say.
Herpyllis, who’s telling the story, pokes my arm reprovingly. We’re in bed. We’re screwing now, a nice salty business I don’t have to explain to