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I went right through the loose ring of Thracians behind me, and took a sword-slash across my shoulders and upper back – most of it caught in the bunches of fabric under my shoulder brooches, but some of the cut went home.
But most of the Thracians were so surprised that they stumbled over each other.
We ran along the street, back towards the palace.
‘Get them, you idiots!’ Diomedes shouted.
But they were foreigners, didn’t know the city and had riding boots on. I was a former page wearing light sandals, and I flew. Nearchus was with me, stride for stride – street, right turn, alley, under an awning, along an alley so narrow that the householders had roofed it over, up and over a giant pile of manure – euch – into a wagon yard that I knew well and north, along the high wall of the palace, and we were clear.
Diomedes bragged of our cowardice.
Two days later, despite orders to go in groups of at least ten, a gang of Attalus’s retainers caught Orestes and Pyrrhus and Philip the Red. They were stripping Orestes to rape him when Polystratus put an arrow into one of the men, a muleteer, and the would-be rapists ran.
Alexander was exact in describing what he would do to the next man who was caught. ‘I care what happens to you,’ he said carefully. ‘But you must care what happens to us all. They are trying to break us. To make us the butt of humour. Humiliated boys, in a world of men. Do you understand?’ he asked, his voice calm and deadly, and we did. I had seldom heard him sound more like his father.
Our wing in the palace became like a small city under siege, and out in the town, our slaves and our houses burned.
One of the slaves who tasted Alexander’s food died. In agony.
The next day, Alexander took me aside. ‘I want you to strike back,’ he said. ‘I can’t be seen to act in this. I must be seen to be the oppressed party. My father is openly contemptuous of me. So be it. But if we do not strike back, our people will lose heart.’
The next day, I had Philip the Red go to the royal companions’ quarters and ask for bread.
They refused. Some suggestions were made as to what Philip could do to get bread.
Philip lost his temper and told them what he thought of grown men behaving in such a way to their cousins and sons. And the whole mess of the royal companions laughed him out of their barracks.
Then I sent Polystratus to scout. On his return, he reported that every entrance to the palace was watched, and he’d been ‘allowed’ to go out.
Sometimes the best plan is to give your enemies what they expect. That night, while I was on guard, I poured wine for Alexander.
‘It will be tomorrow,’ I told him.
He nodded. ‘Don’t tell me any more,’ he said.
Later, coming off duty, I went to Olympias’s wing and visited Pausanias. The queen was sitting on his couch, singing to him quietly – one of the bear songs of Artemis. I stopped in the doorway. She caught my eye and shook her head, and I retreated.
The queen came out of the room into the corridor and I bowed.
‘He is not ready for visitors,’ she said. ‘Especially not men in armour.’
I wanted to ask her – Is he broken? Ruined?But I could not. She shook her head.
‘He is better. I will restore his wits. Women know more than men about this.’ She smiled, and her smile was terrifying. ‘Oh, if only men could be raped by women – the world would be more just.’
I had to reconsider my views on Alexander’s mother – because her care for Pausanias was genuine. All her women said she was with him every moment of her day. And this for a boy who had been her husband’s lover.
Then she caught my eye. ‘Be careful tomorrow,’ she said.
That sent ice down my spine.
She laughed. ‘Half my maids are missing chitons. I can guess.’ She nodded. ‘And if I can guess, so can Attalus.’
‘Since you know, would my lady condescend to give us some kohl?’ I asked.
Eight of us went out of the palace in the first light, dressed as female slaves, with a pair of carts. We left through the slave entrance and we had the same carts that they used every day to fetch bread. I had Orestes and Pyrrhus and Perdiccas, but not Black Cleitus or Philip the Red or any of the blooded men. Polystratus drove one of the carts, but in the first narrow street, he switched with me, pulled himself from the top of the cart on to the tiled rooftops and ran off into the darkness, no doubt cursed by every man and woman sleeping under the tiles.
Our little procession of carts and slaves rolled up the alleys and into the main market, then along the northern edge of the agora to the great ovens where bread was baked. If they were on to us, they gave no sign.
We loaded the bread. And the baker’s apprentices behaved so oddly that even if I hadn’t already been suspicious, I’d have been suspicious. I didn’t let any of my ‘girls’ get close to the baker’s boys, and I kept my distance and spoke low.
The lead apprentice watched the last round loaves loaded into the carts. ‘Hurry up,’ I said impatiently.
He gave me an insolent stare. ‘Fuck off, maiden.’ He laughed. ‘By the time you walk back to the palace, you’ll walk more like matrons, I wager!’
The other apprentices tittered.
We moved off with a noisy squeal of wheels. The sun was well up, the temples were opening their bronze gates and there were enough people in the streets that I wondered if Attalus would dare come at us, even if he knew who we were.
We took a different route back to the palace – farther west, through the wealthier neighbourhoods where the nobility had their town houses. They were big houses, two or three storeys, with tile roofs and balconies and exedra – Athens boasted thousands of such houses, and Pella had about two hundred.
We passed within two blocks of Attalus’s compound. Our strategy was to hide in plain sight, and baffle ambush by passing too close to Attalus for him to dare attack us.
Actually, that wasn’t our strategy at all. That was our apparentstrategy.
In a street lined with high walls, the squealing wheel gave way, and our convoy had to stop.
Eight slave girls and a broken-down cart full of bread.
We worked on the wheel as slowly as real slave girls. The sun rose, and as far as I was concerned, our enemies had proved themselves too incompetent to live. I was just at the point of moving on – the wheel was fine – when Orestes froze at my side.
‘Now what have we here?’ Diomedes swaggered. He was on horseback. ‘Palace slaves?’ He laughed. ‘If you aren’t girls now, sweetings, you will be soon.’
He had a dozen retainers. Not Thracians, but men sworn to his family. When I looked back, there were at least as many at the other end of the block.
Far more than I had counted on.
Orestes made a pretty girl. He bowed deeply. ‘Lord, if you and your men would favour us . . .?’
He indicated the wretched wheel.
Diomedes rode in, laughing, and his fist knocked Orestes to the ground.
I wanted him, so I ran forward, bare legs flashing, almost under his horse’s hooves.
It is amazing how a woman’s dress blinds a man, even when the man suspects that he’s dealing with other men. Diomedes should never have let me in so close. On the other hand, he was too stupid to live.
I didn’t throw myself on poor Orestes, who had a broken jaw.
I sliced Diomedes’ horse from forelegs to penis with a very sharp knife and kept going under, grabbed one dangling foot and pulled him from the dying horse’s back.
One of his men was awake, and close at his master’s side. He cut at me, and I never saw the blow.
It fell on the shoulder of my scale corselet. We were all in armour, under our dresses.
I screamed something – the blow hurt, the opening of a bloom in spring exploding colour into the world, except faster, because it fell right on my wound of two days before. But the scales held, and my scream had the desired effect.