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Philip grabbed my hands. ‘Look, you idiot – if Alexander tries for me and fails I’ll have to kill him. If he kills me, he’ll never manage to rule – he’s too weak, too womanish, too easily swayed. Someone like Attalus will drag him down. Tell him from me – I need the balance. So does he. Let it be as it is now.’ He released me.
I shrugged. ‘I’ll tell him,’ he said. ‘No idea what he’ll say.’
‘Does he know his own limitations?’ Philip asked the ceiling. ‘If I die, the whole thing is gone – Athens wins, and Macedon is a memory. None of the nobles will follow Alexander. He’s too . . . arrogant. Ignorant. Young.’
Philip saw his son only through a veil of his own failings. Very human, but surprising from the man who was King of Macedon. Philip couldn’t let himself imagine that Alexander could do without him.
Alexander couldn’t imagine that his father could conquer Asia without him.
I stood silent and judged them. On behalf of Macedon.
‘You will make a public apology to Diomedes at the wedding.’ He pointed at the door.
I bowed. ‘What wedding, lord?’
Philip laughed. ‘I am marrying young Cleopatra to my cousin, Alexander of Epiros. Olympias will be removed from the succession and I’ll be shot of her for ever.’ He smiled and poured more wine. ‘I’m inviting all of Greece, boy. Athens will be empty.’
I said nothing. Cleopatra was Attalus’s niece, remember. Not the same Cleopatra as Alexander’s sister, due to be married to Alexander of Epiros at Aegae. Pay attention, boy – it’s not my fault they were all inbred and had the same names.
‘And this time next year, I’ll cross into Asia. You could be with me, Ptolemy. I saw what you did at Chaeronea. You can lead. Men will follow you, despite that ugly mug you’ve got.’
Philip poured another libation. Drank more.
‘It’s like riding an unbroken horse,’ he said, after he had allowed himself a sip. ‘Sooner or later I’m going to slip and get thrown.’ He frowned. I wasn’t sure he knew I was there. ‘And then it all comes down. Fuck them all.’
I got out of the room as fast as I could.
I was one of the first at court to know of the wedding, but in a few days it was the only topic. The court was to be moved to the ancient, sacred capital at Aegae. The theatre had been rebuilt, there were two new temples and everything shone with marble, polished bronze and new gilt.
Philip was going to sponsor a set of festivities lasting fifteen days, to overawe Greece with his civilised power as much as his armies dominated their thoughts of war and violence. He had hired the best playwrights and the best poets, the best rhapsodes, the best musicians.
I’m telling this out of order, because it’s all jumbled up in my mind. I beat the living shit out of Diomedes and then, a week or so later, we rode north for Aegae and in that time, a great many things changed.
Cleopatra – the king’s fourth wife – gave birth to a son. A healthy son. Philip was openly delighted.
That night he threw a feast. All were invited – even Alexander and his men.
Pausanias rose from his bed in the queen’s wing of the palace and went to Philip to make a formal complaint. He did this before the entire court, two hundred of the most powerful men in Macedon and Thessaly, with fifty more highland noblemen of his own family to listen, most of the royal companions and every one of the pages of his own generation except me.
Alexander ordered me to stay in his rooms. He thought that Attalus would try to kill me if he saw me.
But Pausanias did something incredibly brave. He did what Attalus never imagined he’d dare to – he swore a complaint. He admitted that he’d been raped. In effect, he admitted his weakness, but at high political cost to Attalus, who thought that the man would suffer in silence.
Attalus pretended that nothing had happened, but they watched – I heard this from Nearchus and from Black Cleitus too – as they watched, Philip turned his back on his senior adviser.
Later – an hour later – when Attalus demanded my head on a platter, the king again turned his back on Attalus. He didn’t even respond.
But still later – and very drunk – Philip also dismissed the charges against Attalus, with a weak joke about how everyone knew that Pausanias was prone to exaggerate. The ‘joke’ carried – intended or not – the suggestion that Pausanias had wanted what happened.
Pausanias turned very pale. Nearchus, who was closest to him, said for the rest of his life that Pausanias stumbled as if he’d been struck.
The next day Philip attended the newborn’s naming ceremony. He held the squawking infant high in front of a thousand Macedonians and named him Caranus – the name of the founder of the dynasty, and thus a strong suggestion that he would be King of Macedon. Alexander held his tongue. But he was as pale as Pausanias that night. That part I saw. And the king kept his back resolutely to Attalus, who was forced to accept that the birth of his grand-nephew wasn’t going to save him from the king’s anger.
And that day – almost convenient, the timing was – we received a dispatch from Parmenio, who was already in the field in Asia, saying that he had taken Ephesus, the mighty city of Artemis, without a fight – that they had opened their gates to him – and that he had set up an image of Philip beside the image of Artemis in the great temple.
All the court applauded. Even the ambassadors applauded. Alexander spilled his wine and then apologised for his clumsiness.
But after two more days of it, Attalus gathered his staff and his picked men – and Diomedes – and rode away to Asia with recruits and reinforcements for Parmenio. He was supposed to have had a major role in the ceremonies at Aegae, but he left. I still think that the king ordered him to go. I think it was something of a working exile.
Alexander knew all about the dispatch from Asia, and he knew all about the preparations for the ornate wedding of his sister. He watched those preparations with the same anger he showed over the preparations for war in Asia. He watched the priests gather, watched Olympias arrange for a new gown with new, heavy gold jewellery, watched the musicians practise.
‘The Athenians, at least, will view us with the contempt we deserve.’ Alexander shrugged. He indicated a new statue of Philip in marble with bronze eyes, being loaded on a cart.
‘My father, the god,’ he said.
In fact, Philip seemed to have included himself in the pantheon – a sort of unlucky thirteenth god, but he’d built a small temple at Olympias that could be interpreted as a temple to Philip, and now, in the procession of the gods, he’d included an image of himself. And Parmenio had put his image in the Temple of Artemis. Which seemed to me like hubris.
On the other hand, I was inclined to think that the Athenians would think whatever they were told, at least until they’d rebuilt their fortunes. I had begun to experience that cynicism that comes easily to young people. And to anyone who has anything to do with politics.
We travelled north from Pella to the old capital. Pausanias travelled with us. No one could make a joke near him, but he was alive and apparently unbroken, although pale and subdued. If he had been prone to exaggeration before, now he was merely silent. His hands shook all the time.
We rode up to the old capital in a band, like we were going to war. All the older pages wore armour, and the younger ones too, if they owned any. We didn’t dare go to the armoury, which Attalus virtually owned. I, for one, thought his ‘exile’ was a ruse and suspected he was out in the countryside with a band of his retainers, ready to attack us. There was an agora rumour that he meant to kill the king and seize power.
I was concerned to see that Olympias and her household travelled with us. She was as big a target as we were, and Attalus had apparently stated – in his rage the day after I taught Diomedes a lesson – that Olympias had arranged the whole thing and he’d have her killed. Apparently Attalus told the king – repeatedly, right up until the moment he left for Asia – that Olympias and Alexander were plotting his death.