Alexander was in the doorway.
‘He has a great deal of life left in him, I suspect,’ the prince said. He was smiling.
Calixeinna sank gracefully to one knee and rose again, her back straight. Then she moved away.
Alexander’s eyes never left her. I watched him watch her, when he thought that I was lust-raddled myself.
In the same kind of flash that had come to me over the fighting skills, I understood him in that moment. Calixeinna didn’t have a chance.
He wanted her.
But to take her at his mother’s insistence would involve a loss of a battle.
‘I would not poach your deer,’ I said.
‘You may have her,’ he said. His eyes said otherwise.
I shook my head. ‘Lord, if I were . . . in a moment of hubris, and even if she would part her legs for me – to take that woman, everyone would punish me for it.’ I shrugged. ‘Your father, your lady mother, Aristotle, the other pages – Aphrodite herself, no doubt.’
Alexander sat on my bed. ‘How’s your head?’
‘The tisane helped,’ I said, which made him happy. I took out a stylus and scratched a note on his wax tablet.
‘You want her,’ I said. Boldest thing I’d ever said to him.
He read the note. ‘Yes,’ he admitted. He sighed. ‘But I cannot. I think . . .
‘I think so,’ I said.
‘A king must never surrender to his lusts. A man must never surrender to the views other men have of him. This would be both.’ Alexander nodded, having learned his lesson by heart.
He was very serious. Only an eighteen-year-old can be that serious. You should know.
‘Have her in secret – win her to your side and have her deny that you were ever together,’ I suggested.
‘When did you become so wily?’ he asked.
It occurred to me that in one blow I could become his confidant, undermine Hephaestion and help him with his mother and father. But that wasn’t my intention.
On the other hand, once I’d thought these things, I realised that I had become wily – at some point between the bandit’s knife and pulping Amantys. Odysseus, not Achilles, was always my favourite.
Alexander’s nails were pressed into his palms. He used pain quite a bit, to control himself – I’d seen it, and he was hardly alone in that regard.
‘Prince – you will be king. If you want the woman – let’s arrange it.’ I smiled.
He didn’t smile. ‘It is a wrong action,’ he said.
Aphrodite, the things Aristotle drilled into him. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Aristotle doesn’t want you to have any fun. And your father wants to make you behave like a beast. Surely there’s a middle road. Your own road.’
Alexander’s self-control was such that he almost never touched his face. Try it – try to go fifteen minutes without touching your face. I mention this because I remember that at that moment he put his chin in his left hand and gave me a long look. ‘How?’ he asked me.
It took me ten days. I felt a little like a pimp, to be sure.
And of the two, the less willing conspirator was the prince. He did not like to conspire. He wanted to be Achilles. I was listening when Aristotle talked, by this time, and I’d finally figured out why we all love Achilles – who is, let us admit it, venal, selfish and somewhat given to boasting and drama.
What we love is the freedom that comes with absolute mastery. Achilles can do whatever he wants – sulk for days in his tent, as we all wish to, or rage among his enemies, or mourn his dead friend, or take Briseis back from a great king. The limitations on his absolute freedom drive him almost to madness. And because the rest of us don’t live that way at all – because we submit to the will of others every day – we admire Achilles’ freedom.
Alexander wanted to be Achilles, and sneaking about in the dark was not his way.
As it turned out, my plan was over-complex and almost unnecessary.
My plan involved Cleitus the Black taking a beating from Philip the Red – they could both be trusted. That evening, Hephaestion was to take wine to Aristotle – it was his turn. Every evening, one of the oldsters took him wine and sat and practised ‘good conversation’ for a few hours.
Alexander would go to visit Cleitus – no unusual thing.
But instead of Cleitus, he’d find Calixeinna, waiting on the bed in the infirmary. Not bad, eh?
But on the day, Hephaestion had a virulent head cold and stayed in the barracks. And I was sent for by Aristotle.
Alexander was nursing his best friend – a little too much nursing, and Hephaestion drove him away with his blanket snapping at his friend’s head and threw a vial of medicine after him for good measure. Sometimes Aphrodite takes a hand.
I went to see Aristotle. I took a flask of good Chian – my father was rich, after all. This was the sweet Chian made from raisinated grapes. Sweet and strong. And instead of cutting it with water, I cut it with a mixture of wine and water I’d made in advance, and my tutor was as drunk as Dionysus by the time he’d finished his second bowl.
He had a wife – a nice enough woman – whom he largely ignored. His tastes didn’t go that way, and she managed his household and not much more. I can imagine him telling others that a wife was cheaper than a slave butler – that’s what he’s supposed to have said to Alexander. On this evening, she came in, and she was on to me in a moment – saw me pouring my watered wine mixture into the Chian.
She said nothing. Either Aphrodite was with us, or Aristotle’s wife was as happy to see him too drunk to move his legs as I was. Before he was done with me, though, he’d told me that I was the best of the pages again, and he tried to kiss me. He really was a moral man, but no man, no matter how controlled, can restrain himself with a jar of Chian under his belt. His wife took him to bed, singing a hymn to Ares of all things, and I cleaned up the wine-serving things – part of the training was learning what to mix and how to judge taste against quality of conversation.
I was never good at the subtleties, but I had just figured out how to knock a middle-aged philosopher out cold.
But I’m a worrier, and I cut across the compound, my slave laden with wine things, wondering if the prince had managed to make love to Helen of Troy, or whether some iron-clad principle had stood in the way.
I thought that I’d just have a look. I had as much right to take a peek at Cleitus as anyone.
I was sorry I looked. Not sorry, exactly. More . . . intrusive. Sensitive men do not last as household companions to princes – but at the same time, if you have no ability to read and feel other people, you’ll never be much of a battlefield commander, will you?
My prince was lying with his head on her chest in the light of the vigil lamp. He was asleep. Her eyes were open. They met mine, and the very smallest smile – the sort that Pheidias put on Aphrodite – flickered around the edge of her mouth.
I slipped away, mortified at his weakness – he looked like a boy sleeping on his mother.
What had I expected?
‘Lord, there’s a rider at the gate.’ That was my forgotten slave, Hermonius, a big barbarian from the north. He was laden with the wine service, and despite that he was alert enough.
‘Go and drop the wine things in a chest and wake . . .’ Herakles – the prince was in the wrong bed. ‘I’ll deal with it,’ I said.
I went to the gate, already wondering what could bring a messenger at this hour. Another way that the fight at the hunting camp had changed me – violence was real. Alone of the pages, or perhaps with Philip the Red, I realised that the Illyrians had intended to take or kill the prince and that meant he’d been betrayed. I’d only told two men – my father, and Aristotle. My father told Parmenio, or so he told me.
The man at the gate was Laodon.
‘My lord?’ I said, swinging the gate open. And wondering, all of a sudden, if Laodon could have been the traitor.
‘Hello, Ptolemy. I need the prince – we’re fucked, and that’s no mistake.’ He was covered in mud, wearing beautiful scale armour and a fine red cloak both fouled from the road. He slid from his horse and embraced me –
