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All my boys had swords, and they turned on anyone near at hand.
Our surprise was far from complete – Diomedes’ men must have expected it, because they were trying to keep their distance. Spears were thrown, and we were about to have a vicious street fight. A fight wherein my side was young, inexperienced and had no missile weapons.
Diomedes got his feet under him, and rage overcame any attempt at sense.
He drew, whirled his chlamys over his arm and came at me.
‘You seem to like the mud,’ I said. I got my woman’s chiton over my head in one pull – I’d practised – and around my arm. It was fine Aegyptian linen, and somewhere in the palace the owner was going to be none too happy with me.
They were two to one against us, and yet they hung back. That was human nature – they were freemen and thugs against nobles, and they feared both our superior training andthe consequences even if they triumphed. I wanted to curse them. I wanted them to come in. But no plan is ever perfect.
As it was, the half-dozen who came at us from the north had no real notion of fighting mounted, and my pages were able to overcome them with simple adolescent ferocity.
I was aware of none of this, except as a distant set of blows and howls, because for all his failings, Diomedes was fast and mean and bigger than me. He was large enough that most of my superior skills were negated.
He hacked overhanded at me, and I had to step quickly to avoid getting my chlamys arm broken. His reach was the same as mine.
I needed to get inside his reach.
I crouched in my guard, flashed a glance behind me to see how the pages were doing – I was worried, by then – and Diomedes took advantage of my distraction to strike.
He went for a grapple. He was big, but he was not trained the way I had been trained. The moment he was in range, I punched my xiphos pommel into his teeth, passed my left foot over my right and threw my left hand into the needle’s eye between his sword-arm elbow and armpit. My weight slammed into him as I got my arm up – the gods were with me, and by pure sweet chance my little finger went deep into his nostril and he stumbled – and I had him.
Arm up, elbow locked, turned into the ground.
The simplest control hold in pankration, and I had him kneeling at my feet, my sword at his cheek.
His retainers froze.
And that’s when Polystratus and Philip the Red appeared over the walls on either side of the alley with a dozen more men, all armed with bows.
‘Lay down your arms,’ Philip shouted.
One of Diomedes’ thugs turned to run and Polystratus shot him dead.
They dropped their swords and clubs with a series of clatters and a soft thwopas the weapons went into the mud.
Diomedes grunted, and I put more pressure on his arm and he gave a little scream. I had his right arm just at the edge of dislocation. As it was, his arm would hurt for a week.
I didn’t hesitate to hurt him. In fact, I dragged Diomedes the length of the agora by his right arm, ruthlessly dislocating the shoulder.
To tell the truth, there was nothing ruthlessabout it. I enjoyed it. He screamed quite a bit.
The retainers were stripped naked and tied together by Philip’s men. In what we might call ‘revealing postures’. If this makes you feel queasy, try to remember that these were the men who had raped our friend.
My sword made a bloody little furrow in Diomedes’ cheek. I remember that best of all – the blood ru
I didn’t. I dragged him into the agora and up to the rostrum where merchants a
In the middle of the agora, surrounded by Athenian merchants and Thessalian horse dealers, I stopped. It was possible that Attalus had grown powerful enough to kill me in broad daylight with fifty witnesses, but I doubted it.
I waited. Diomedes screamed. I thought of Pausanias, lying on a couch in the queen’s chambers, his face to the wall, and I twisted the bastard’s dislocated shoulder again. And again.
‘This man who is screaming like a woman dishonoured my friend,’ I shouted from the rostrum. ‘His name is Diomedes. He is the nephew of the king’s friend Attalus, and he is a faithless coward, a whore and a hermaphrodite. Aren’t you, Diomedes?’
And I rotated his shoulder, and he screamed.
Shall I leave the rest out?
But that’s how it was, in Macedon.
Eventually, the royal companions came, ‘rescued’ Diomedes and arrested me. That was the dangerous part – being walked to the palace, I wondered whether they’d let me be killed. But they were serious men, in armour, and Diomedes was a wreck of excrement and fear. He couldn’t even speak.
I was dragged before Philip, dirty, disarmed and with my hands tied behind me like a thief. Diomedes was, after all, the royal favourite.
Philip was sitting on an ivory stool, playing with his dogs. As I came in, he scratched his beard and growled, and for a moment he looked like one of his mastiffs.
‘Ptolemy,’ he grumbled. He looked deeply unhappy. ‘What the fuckhave you been doing?’
I bowed. ‘Lord,’ I said, ‘Attalus is pla
Philip spat. ‘Attalus – Lord Attalus, the Commander of Asia – is plotting to murder some boys?’ He shook his head angrily.
I shrugged. ‘Do you know that he ordered Pausanias raped? By fifty men? By slaves?’ I asked.
‘I am your king, boy. You do not question me. I question you.’ Philip picked up a cup of wine, poured a libation on the floor like a farmer and drank the rest off. ‘Yes, I have heard that there was some matter involving Pausanias. But the boy always exaggerates everything.’
I shook my head and pointed towards the queen’s wing of the palace. ‘Go and see him,’ I said. ‘In this, he need say nothing. Just look at him and see if I exaggerate.’
Philip turned his head away. ‘Ptolemy,’ he began. Cleared his throat. ‘This is more complicated than you can imagine, boy.’
I raised my head and met him eye to eye. ‘Lord, your friendAttalus is trying to kill my friends – or rape them with slaves.’
‘ Iwill deal with men who break my laws!’ Philip said. ‘You ca
I shrugged. ‘If I had not ambushed Diomedes, his men would have killed me on the spot. Or worse.’
Philip gazed at a tapestry on the wall – the Rape of Europa, of all things.
I was not making any headway, and it occurred to me – for the first time, I think – that Philip could not actually accept what I was saying, because to accept it would have been to give up on a number of his cherished notions of how his court should function. Of his own power. Of his need to dispossess Alexander, although I’m not sure he ever admitted that to himself.
In fact, when you are a royal page, you are so deep in the court intrigue that it is like the blood in your body. And here, suddenly, I had to face the reality that the king himself didn’t really know what was going on.
‘Does my son plot to kill me?’ Philip asked, suddenly.
‘No,’ I said, although my heart beat so loudly that I was afraid the king would hear it in my chest.
‘Attalus says he has a plot – with that bitch his mother. Tell it to me, and I will see that you are protected and favoured.’ Philip was showing his old iron – telling me to my face that he knew that something was up.
I remember that, because up until then, I had tried to be loyal to Alexander and loyal to the old king, as well.
But in that moment, I had to choose.
I was smart enough to stay in my role – as an angry youth. I forced a sneer. ‘I’m sorry you think I look like the sort of man who informs on his friends,’ I said.