Bubores tossed his head a little impatiently. ‘I can hunt a fly on the ocean,’ he said.
Alectus appeared in armour, with twenty men and a rather rumpled royal officer. When he saw me, he laughed and we embraced.
He escorted me around the compound, and I saw more slaves than I thought existed in the palace at Pella, and more courtiers than soldiers, and a tent full of scribes busy writing, with Callisthenes, Aristotle’s useless nephew, leading them. Then I found the king, and walked in.
He was being massaged. Hephaestion was arming. He smiled when he saw me.
‘Look who’s back,’ Hephaestion said.
Alexander raised his head and smiled. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Ptolemy. Well done. A little too well done. I dangled you to draw Memnon, but instead of drawing him, you singed his nose and then he died.’ Alexander smiled, and put his head back down. ‘Why did you go to Parmenio first, Ptolemy?’
‘I had his troops, and I needed to have a place for them to camp,’ I said.
‘You see?’ Alexander said. ‘Always an excellent explanation.’
I didn’t like that. ‘If I wanted to dissimulate, I’d tell you that it is difficult to gain access to the king. I was refused entry at the gate.’
Alexander raised his head again. ‘Then how is it you are here?’ he asked.
‘I cut the comb of a rooster who needed it,’ I said. ‘The hypaspitoi all know me.’
Alexander lay getting his back pounded for a long minute.
‘I will let this pass this time,’ he began.
I laughed. ‘No, my lord,
Alexander sat up. ‘Leave me,’ he said to the masseur. When the slave was gone, he frowned at me. ‘This is not Macedon,’ he said.
‘I can tell, because your tent is full of Greek prostitutes masquerading as politicians,’ I said. ‘But this is the army of Macedon, and we have laws. Parmenio wants to let you run free, lord, so you will let power go to your head and become an oriental, so he can depose you. Or so Thais and I think his thought tends.’ I shrugged. ‘I won’t let you drift, and neither will Hephaestion. You are not the Great King of Persia. You are the King of Macedon.’
‘I am your king, and I may decide who comes and goes from my enclosure!’ he said. He was angry, and red spots were forming on his cheeks.
I nodded. ‘Yes – with the exception of your closest friends and bodyguards.’ I shook my head. ‘This is foolishness, lord – I am, of course, your willing servant and officer, and you may strip me of my rank in a moment. But even you must obey the law.’
‘A few months of independent command have only increased your arrogance,’ Alexander shot back. ‘You are insufferable.’
‘He’s in a bad mood,’ Hephaestion said.
‘Fuck off!’ Alexander said.
‘Why?’ I asked Hephaestion, as if the king weren’t right there.
‘He’s going to face the prophecy this morning, and the whole camp is coming to see him do it,’ Hephaestion said. ‘He swore he could solve it, and everyone expects he can, and now he’s touchy—’
‘Get out of my sight, you ingrate,’ Alexander barked, and he was on the verge of tears.
‘Darius has sixty thousand men moving on the Euphrates, and he means business,’ Hephaestion said. ‘Although you must know that, since we had it from Thais. We don’t have that many men, and Darius has a whole second army forming in Ionia to hit Greece if we lose. Our supply lines to Macedon are largely cut by Pharnabazus and his fleet, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Athens is teetering on the brink of open rebellion, which will be the end of our fleet. But Golden Boy here had to mistreat their ambassadors yesterday, just to show them who’s in charge.’
‘Leave me!’ Alexander roared.
‘No!’ Hephaestion roared back.
They glared at each other.
‘Lord, your camp is full of vultures in silk and you have boys at your gate keeping men at bay. That needs to be fixed. It makes you appear weak.’ I bowed my head.
Alexander was crying.
Cleitus – Black Cleitus – caught me outside the pavilion and embraced me.
‘What in Hades is happening here?’ I asked.
He shrugged. ‘I just obey,’ he said. ‘He’s getting harder and harder to handle and he has all these new friends and a lot of useless tits.’ He looked around, clearly afraid he’d be overheard.
‘And he swore to everyone that he’d solve the Gordian Knot, today. The prophecy says that he who solves it will be Lord of all Asia,’ Hephaestion put in.
I made a face, and Thais giggled.
Cleitus looked at me. ‘What?’ he said. ‘It’s the prophecy.’
‘Was Cyrus the Great Lord of Asia?’ I asked. ‘Darius? Xerxes?’
Cleitus nodded and looked around. ‘Oh. You know, sometimes you remind me of fucking Aristotle, Ptolemy. With your snide laugh and all.’
‘I’m not well loved today,’ I admitted. ‘Was that Callisthenes I saw in the Military Journal tent?’
Cleitus nodded. ‘We call it the “School of Lies”.’
Ouch.
‘The Military Journal is now for public consumption in Greece and Macedon,’ Cleitus said bitterly. ‘So its contents now reflect our unvarying path to victory.’
‘Make that up yourself?’ I asked.
Cleitus barked his laugh.
‘Come on, and I’ll find you a place to camp,’ he said. ‘Maybe now that you’re back, everything will be all right.’
Cleaner and more richly dressed, I was in the middle of a long procession of soldiers, sycophants and priests processing up the ridge to the temple at the top. At the head of the procession was Alexander, who looked as scared as I’d ever seen him.
My invitation to attend had come too late to allow me to be up at the front with the other philoi. I assumed that was done on purpose. But Alexander looked
I caught up with the king at the base of the temple steps. His eyes passed over me without recognition. The whites showed all the way around his eyes, and if he’d been a horse, he’d have been on the edge of bolting.
Hephaestion caught my eye, and he was desperate, somehow.
I pushed through to the king’s side.
Alexander looked at me. ‘Ptolemy!’ he said.
I touched his shoulder. He didn’t always like to be touched, but sometimes he did, like a nervous horse when you need to get a pebble out of his hoof. When he didn’t flinch, I put my arm around his shoulder.
‘Cyrus the Great,’ I said. ‘Xerxes,’ I added softly.
He looked at me.
‘It’s all horseshit,’ I said. ‘Something to draw the credulous.’
Alexander had the oddest habit of clinging to superstitious nonsense – as if his mighty brain took rests from reason.
He glared at me, but I smiled resolutely, and he finally returned my smile and straightened his shoulders. I took away my arm and he looked around. In a moment, he was through the great bronze doors and into the temple.
Well – you know the story. Everyone does. There must have been five thousand men and women there to see it, crushing so close we could simply have trampled the Gordian Knot.
The old wagon – it wasn’t a chariot at all, but a four-wheeled wagon – had a long draught pole attached to the harness bar by a massive and very complex knot. The knot was done in an ancient rawhide, and whoever had done it – about eight hundred years earlier, was my guess – whoever had done it had had a lot of skill, and both
