God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great (9 page)

Anyway, she and Aristotle were adversaries. These days, it has become popular to suggest that Olympias and Philip were the enemies, but I never saw that. It seemed to me that Olympias and Philip were united in wanting their boy to grow up to be a good, solid, dependable Macedonian nobleman – something, I’d like to note, that Philip never was – and Aristotle wanted something more – a great king, an Athenian-style philosopher who had the mettle of Achilles and the mind of Socrates.

Calixeinna became their battleground. She could flirt, a talent wasted on young men, and she could play the lyre and the flute and recite poetry. She could also do geometry, and this fascinated Alexander and even Aristotle. She was not without weapons. Nor was Alexander indifferent to her. He loved beauty, and she was beautiful.

One day, Alexander was paired with me in a war game. We were to live without supplies for three days, stealing food from the kitchens or outlying farms. This was in emulation of the Spartan training, and deeply unfair – if we were caught, I would be beaten. Alexander was never beaten.

We were taken some miles from the Gardens of Midas, and our horses were taken by slaves. We were to live three days off the country, never being caught or even seen, and then we were to steal food from the manor itself, and finally, we were to surrender ourselves to Aristotle at a set time.

Alexander wanted to be paired with Hephaestion, but for whatever reason, he was paired with me. We were taken into the chora, the farmland west of the manor, and left at the edge of the forest without food, water or weapons of any kind.

Perhaps this sort of thing challenges Spartan boys. Alexander and I had a very pleasant three days. We lay up until dark, stole into the first farm and took the dog leashes off the wall of an outbuilding we’d observed at last light. We slept together for warmth and in the morning we unwove the hemp leashes and made slings. Instead of going into the chora, we went up into the hills and killed every rabbit we wanted. There were ripe berries on the bushes, and Alexander got us not one but two magnificent trout out of a stream by standing stock still in the freezing water until the trout trusted him – and then he abused that trust. He was very proud of his feat and I praised him extravagantly, both while I cooked the fish in clay and later, when my belly was full.

Trout, rabbit – by the gods, we ate more than we ate in the pages’ mess, and we slept as long as we wanted. It makes me laugh to think of it.

The second night, we were watching the stars come out. We’d been talking about war – as a generality.

‘I want to conquer Persia,’ he said, as if the stars had just told him.

My belly was full and I was sleepy. ‘I want a cup of good wine,’ I said.

He shook his head. ‘Don’t be an ass,’ he said. ‘Pater is not going to get the invasion together until Athens is subdued. Athens can’t be subdued until the Chersonese is cleared. The Chersonese can’t be cleared until the Athenian fleet is neutralised. The Athens fleet can’t be neutralised until Persia is conquered. Persia can’t be conquered until Athens is subdued.’

He grinned, proud of his deliberately circular logic.

‘But this season he’s campaigning in Thrace, against the Scyths and the Thracians,’ I pointed out.

Alexander laughed. ‘You know as well as I that fighting the Thracians and the Scyths is merely an extension of fighting for the Chersonese.’

I did know that, so I laughed. ‘But we don’t have to beat Athens,’ I said suddenly.

‘Why not?’ the prince asked.

‘Athens is a democracy,’ I said.

Alexander nodded. ‘Good point.’

This was, I have to add, one of the chief features of discussing anything with Alexander. He was so intelligent that when you
did
make a good point, he always – or almost always – understood immediately, which had the boring effect of keeping the rest of us from ever getting to explain ourselves. What I had meant was,
Athens is a democracy, and sooner or later one of their factions will screw up their alliance with Persia, or lose interest in the war, and then we’ll have them.
And the moment I said it, Alexander understood.

It saved time in argument, anyway. But our conversations may have seemed stilted to outsiders. The insiders – Hephaestion, Cleitus the Black, me, Craterus – we could often have whole conversations in single words.

At any rate, he lay there and finally he said, ‘Until he defeats Athens, he can’t send all his force against Persia.’

‘True,’ I said.

‘I will need you, when I go to conquer Persia,’ he said. What he meant was,
Philip will never finish with Athens, and I will have a turn.

I laughed. But he sat up and put a hand on my arm.

‘I am serious. There’s only a hand of you I really trust. I need you. And to be the man I need, you must stop surrendering in contests,’ he said. ‘Here, in the woods, you kill game, you cook, you find trails, you cut bedding – you are the perfect companion, afraid of nothing, quick with good advice – but among the pages, you lie down and let lesser boys triumph over you.’

I remember a hot flush of anger – which of us likes to have our innermost failings exposed? And the temptation to tell him that I was practising, that I meant to strike back, was like the pressure of a swollen river on a dam. But I resisted.

‘Aristotle has spoken to you about it,’ Alexander said.

‘Yes,’ I said, my voice thick. I wanted to say
fuck of
, or words to that effect.

‘Get it done. Our time is coming.’ Alexander sounded very sure of himself, but then, he always did.

I struggled for words. But none came, and suddenly he turned to me.

‘I know where Calixeinna bathes,’ he said. Again, it was as if the stars had spoken to him.

‘You can see her naked any time you want,’ I shot out, still full of emotions.

‘Isn’t there something terribly . . . ignoble, in giving orders to a woman purchased for you by your mother?’ he said. He shrugged. ‘I love to look at her. She has the most beautiful body I have ever seen.’ He shrugged again. ‘But I will not order her to disrobe for me.’

I shook my head. ‘Give her to me, then,’ I said. I meant to be playful, but he rolled over suddenly on our bed of grass and his face was inches from mine. ‘No,’ he said coldly. ‘She is mine.’

Never a dull moment with Alexander.

‘I want to go and watch her bathe,’ he said.

‘Let’s not forget what happened to Adonis,’ I mused, with the false levity that always follows a serious moment.

‘I am not Adonis,’ Alexander said. ‘She is not Artemis, and anyway, no one will catch me.’

He woke me while the stars were still a cold and distant presence, and we stretched, did some exercises and started down out of the hills. Far from sneaking across the plains, we ran – about thirty stades, I think. Ah, to be young! Alexander had thought it all through, and decided that Aristotle’s slaves, pretending to be guards, would not guard anything or patrol at all in the dark. So instead of creeping from tree to tree across central Macedon, we ran down the roads in the moonlight.

As the sky bgan to pale in the east, we ran past the manor house, bold as brass, and went down the orchard lane, past the olive groves and up the big hill to the west of the manor. There was a spring there, and we ran to the spring, drank water and prayed to the gods.

‘You must not look,’ Alexander told me. ‘Go and take a nap.’

So I snuck away, and he concealed himself in a tree. We were enacting his fantasy – I knew him well enough to understand that. He played the game according to his own rules, and this was his way.

But I was a boy on the edge of manhood myself, and I had no intention of letting him have her all to himself. So I found a little knoll of soft grass under an olive tree and lay down, knowing my man. He came soon enough. He was checking to see that I was asleep.

I pretended to sleep, and then, when he was gone and I had counted to a thousand, I went all the way around the hill and climbed up behind the spring.

Waiting in ambush is dull. I waited a long time. After perhaps a full hour, I guessed where Alexander was hidden from the behaviour of the birds and squirrels. And when the sun was well up and I was regretting my temerity and wondering why I
hadn’t
just gone for a nap, Calixeinna came.

She had three slaves with her, and they dropped their chitons by the pool and splashed each other, shrieking and calling names. I had a girl of my own – and some experience of women – but I remember being struck almost dumb by the four of them, all beautiful, all splendidly muscled and all very, very different. A dark-haired Thracian girl had short but beautifully muscled legs with heavy thighs, large breasts and a waist and hips that were all swooping curves. A Greek slave was taller and slimmer, with subtler curves, small breasts and a long, graceful back and a magnificent neck. The third woman, a Persian, had the most beautiful eyebrows I had ever seen, graceful hands, and breasts of a different shape from the other two, almost like wine cups. They were all women, all beautiful and all utterly different.

And then there was Calixeinna, who was tall and willowy, with a waist so small that I could have put my hands around it, lips that were the colour of dawn, hair that was a particular blushing shade of red-blond, and heavy, full breasts as yet untouched by age. Her hips were wide and her legs long, and she was
perfect.

While her women shrieked and played, she swam in the small pool, really only about three times the length of her body, the water ice cold and black in the early sun under the great holm oak that shadowed the spring. When she emerged, it was like the rising of the sun, and when she reached her arms back to wring out her hair . . .

Oh, youth.

She played for a while with a turtle by the edge of the pool, and it occurred to me that she knew Alexander was there. I didn’t know much about women, but I knew they didn’t play naked by pools nearly as much as adolescent boys thought they did.

When she was done with the turtle, she lay on a rock, naked. The other nymphs continued to laugh and scream, and the longer I watched, the more like a performance it seemed.

Eventually, I had to wonder how often it had been repeated, and by what mechanism Alexander had been informed of it, and whether he’d been to the performance before.

Eventually, she put on her chiton – so prettily that one breast was free while a lost pin was found in the grass – and she and the Persian girl skipped away down the hill, arm in arm, and the other two stayed for a few minutes, filling jars.

I snuck back to my resting place, and went straight to sleep.

A little later, Alexander wakened me, looking as if he’d had a religious revelation. Then, in broad daylight, we climbed into the walled compound and went to the slaves’ quarters, where we sat to breakfast with the slaves – bad wine and stale bread and a little cheese and some dry figs. They all looked at us, of course. Alexander just smiled.

And we were in our usual places when Aristotle opened his class. The philosopher actually got several sentences into his lecture before he realised that we were supposed to be in hiding.

He was pleased with us.

We were pleased with ourselves.

And I never told Alexander that I had watched Calixeinna bathe. I think he’d have killed me.

My point is, he was very smitten, in his deeply self-controlled and selfish way.

I missed most of the by-play, because the next weeks were the weeks I was off drilling in the late afternoons with Polystratus. But Genny told me everything – sometimes too much of everything. Genny could chatter gossip at me even when her breathing was coming in gasps and her hands were locked behind my back and her nails were cutting into my muscles – ‘and then – ah! – she said – ah! – that he . . .’

It’s good to know that, even as king, I can raise a laugh.

I don’t remember what occasioned it. We hardly ever boxed – it was considered too Greek and effeminate – but when we did we wrapped our hands. That helped me – my left hand was ugly, and I was young, and having it wrapped helped steady me.

Old Leonidas stood wearing his chlamys and holding a heavy staff of cornel wood. I happened to be the first page out the barracks door with my hands wrapped. And Amyntas came out second.

‘Ptolemy, son of Lagus,’ Leonidas snapped. ‘Against Amyntas . . .’ His eyes wandered, and he shook his head. ‘No. A younger boy. Philip the Black.’

‘Oh, I’ll be gentle with him,’ Amyntas said. ‘He’s ugly, but maybe if I roll him over . . .’ He guffawed, and many of the other oldsters laughed.

Alexander looked hurt. And he gave me a look – the whole burden of his eyes. In effect, he said
do it.

I must give the prince this – he was horrified when the other pages began to turn against me.

Hephaestion relished my discomfiture. ‘He’s the only oldster who competes against little boys,’ he said to Leonidas. ‘Make him fight Amyntas.’

‘Hephaestion!’ snapped Alexander.

‘I’d love to face Amyntas,’ I said. ‘But I’m no match for him.’

Amyntas laughed. ‘Put a bag over your head, Ptolemy!’ he said, and his little set laughed, but the other pages – especially Philip the Red, long ago turned from my tormentor to my friend – looked embarrassed.

Leonidas didn’t like it, but he put me in the ring of wands against Amyntas.

Losing can become a habit.

Amyntas put a fist in my gut and instead of twisting away – I had stomach muscles like bands of steel and it wasn’t that bad – I folded around his punch and lay down.

But when I rolled over, he was pushing his hips, pretending to fuck me for his little audience.

I did my very best to hide my rage. I’d had some practice, since the night with the Illyrians, at hiding my thoughts. I hung my head, rubbed my hip and squared off.

Leonidas struck Amyntas with his staff. ‘Don’t be a gadfly, boy,’ he said.

Amyntas turned on me, eager to have me on the ground again. But he stumbled as he took up his guard – the will of the gods and sheer hubris – and I had all the time in the world to strike him.