The Golden Mean - Annabel Lyon [99]
“That poor girl, though,” Herpyllis says. “Not knowing which brother she’s getting.”
I turn onto my back to help her. “She’s getting Arrhidaeus. I think Philip took care of that pretty quickly.”
“Poor girl.”
I close my eyes. “Poor boy.”
My mind goes to work on the categories of pleasure and how to teach them. The first time or two, Herpyllis let me go at it in my own way. When she began to guide me a little, I assumed she was offering me liberties she thought I was hesitant to take: tongue at the tit, fingers in the hole. Then, one night after I had spent myself, she continued to grunt and shift until I asked her what was wrong. I ran my fingers down her arm to her own fingers to see what she was doing.
“Do you need a cloth?” I asked. Not wiping, though, but rubbing. She tried to use my fingers but I pulled away and told her to be more modest.
“What?” she said.
“I am finished.” I was aware of sounding like my father. “That is not necessary.”
“You’re finished. I’m not.”
Not knowing what to say, I let her continue. She arched her back a little and then collapsed in a series of spasms, moaning weakly with each exhale. An annoying sound.
“And what was that?”
I assumed her answer was a lie. My father had taught me what she claimed to experience was not physically possible.
“Next time, you can help,” she said.
I asked her to describe her pleasure.
“Like honey,” she said, and, “Like a drum.” And other similes: cresting a hill, waves breaking, the colour of gold.
She said when I came I sounded like a man lifting something heavy and then, with a great effort, setting it down.
· · ·
THE FIRST GREEK KING in Macedon was told by an oracle to build a city at the place where he first saw the aigas, the goats. Twenty-four years ago, Philip’s first military outing as king was the defence of Aegeae—former capital, site of the royal tombs—against Athens. Late this summer, the court relocates to Aegeae.
The palace, protected from behind by a mountain, faces north, with a view across the shrine and the city to the plain below. It’s smaller than the palace at Pella but older and holier; all important ceremonies are held here. At the heart of the complex is a square courtyard forested with columns; then reception rooms, shrines, living rooms. The circular throne-room has an inscription to Heracles in mosaic; elsewhere the floor is worked with stone vines and flowers so that it’s like walking across meadows in bloom. Near the west wall is the outdoor theatre. A tall stone wall shelters courtiers on their way from the palace to the theatre, cutting them off from the public space of the city. The theatre is stone and beaten earth, with platforms for the audience and an altar to Dionysus at the centre of the pit.
In addition to the court from Pella comes the king of Epirus, Olympias’s brother Alexandros. Philip, politicking to the last, has arranged for his and Olympias’s daughter to wed her own uncle. The marriage is widely understood as a tool to confirm Alexandros’s loyalty to Philip, rather than to Olympias. It’s an important wedding, too, not so much because of who the bride and groom are—Philip, presumably, still has a thumb free for each of them—but as an opportunity for Philip to display his grand greatness before all the world. Macedon itself will be on display. There will be a festival of the arts, games, and massive banquets over many days. Foreign guests come from everywhere; this is not the season when foreigners are refusing Philip.
On the morning of the first day of celebrations is to be a performance of Euripides, the Bacchae, again. Is Philip indulging in a little irony, reminding his brother-in-law of the last performance they attended together, all those years ago? We all love the Bacchae.
I sit in the audience with my nephew, toward the back, waiting for the play to begin. Below us sit a few hundred of Philip’s choicest guests, men all bright and lovely in their festival clothes, flowers