7.

At the foot of the painted stairway, the bodyguard leaned on his spear. It was Keteus, a stocky iron-bearded veteran rising sixty. It had not been thought seemly for youths to guard the Queen, since the King had ceased to visit her.

The young man in the black cloak paused in the shadowed passage with its checkered floor-mosaic. He had never been so late to his mother's room.

At his footfall, the guard threw up his shield and pointed his spear, bidding him declare himself. He showed his face, and went up the stairs. When he scratched on the door there was no answer. He drew his dagger, and rapped sharply with the hilt.

A sleepy bustle sounded within, followed by a breathing silence.

'It is Alexander,' he said. 'Open the door.'

A blinking rumpled woman, a robe dragged round her, put out her head; behind her the voices rustled like mice. They must have thought, before, that it was the King.

'Madam is sleeping. It is late, Alexander, long past midnight.'

His mother's voice from beyond said, 'Let him in.'

She stood by the bed, tying the girdle of her night-robe, made of wool the colour of curded cream edged with dark fur. He could just see her by the flickering night-light; a maid, clumsy from sleep, was trying to kindle from it the wicks of the standing lamp-cluster. The hearth was swept clean, it was summer now.

The first wick of the three burned up. She said, 'That is enough.'

Her red hair mixed on her shoulders with the dark sleekness of the fur. The slanting lamplight etched the frown-creases between her brows, the lines that framed the corners of her mouth. When she faced the light full, one saw only the fine structure, the clear skin and the firm closed lips. She was thirty-four years old.

The one lamp left the room's edges dark. He said, 'Is Kleopatra here?'

'At this hour? She is in her room. Do you want her?'

'No.'

She said to the women, 'Go back to bed.'

When the door closed, she threw the embroidered coverlet over the tumbled bed, and motioned him to sit by her; but he did not move.

'What is it?' she said softly. 'We have said good-bye. You should be sleeping, if you march at dawn.

What is it? You look strange. Have you had a dream?'

'I have been waiting. This is not a little war, it is the beginning of everything. I thought you would send for me. You must know what brings me here.'

She stroked back the hair across her brow, her hand masking her eyes. 'Do you want me to make a divination for you?'

'I need no divination, Mother. Only the truth.' She had let fall her hand too quickly, his eyes had seized on hers. 'What am I?' he said. 'Tell me who I am.'

She stared. He saw she had expected some other question.

'Never mind,' he said, 'whatever you have been doing. I know nothing about it. Tell me what I ask.'

She saw that in the few hours since they had last met, he had grown haggard. She had nearly said to him, 'Is that all?'

It was long past, overlaid with living; the dark shudder, the fiery consuming dream, the shock of waking, the words of the old wise-woman brought by night to this room in secret from her cave. How had it been? She no longer knew. She had brought forth the child of the dragon, and he asked, 'Who am I?' It is I who need to ask that of him.

He was pacing, quick and light as a caged wolf, about the room. Coming to a sudden stop before her, he said, 'I am Philip's son. Isn't it so?'

Only yesterday she had seen them together going to the drill-field; Philip had spoken grinning, Alexander thrown back his head and laughed. She grew quiet, and with a long look under her eyelids said, 'Do not pretend you can believe that.'

'Well, then? I have come to hear.'

'These things cannot be scrambled at, on a whim at midnight. It is a solemn matter. There are powers one must propitiate...'

His searching, shadowed eyes seemed to pass clean through her, going too deep. 'What sign,' he said softly, 'did my daimon give you?'

She took both his hands, pulled him near and whispered. When she had done, she drew back to look.

He was wholly within, scarcely aware of her, wrestling it out. His eyes did not tell the outcome. 'And that is everything?'

'What more? Even now are you not satisfied?'

He looked into the dark beyond the lamp. 'All things are known to the gods. The thing is how to question them.' He lifted her to her feet, and for a few moments held her at arms' length, the corners of his brows pulled together. At last her eyes fell before his.

His fingers tightened; then he embraced her, quickly and closely, and let her go. When he had left, the dark crept up all around her. She kindled the other two lamps, and slept at last with all three burning.

Alexander paused at the door of Hephaistion's room, opened it quietly and went in. He was fast asleep, one arm thrown out, in a square of moonlight. Alexander stretched out a hand, and then withdrew it. He had meant, if his mind had been satisfied, to wake him and tell him everything. But all was still dark and doubtful, she too was mortal, one must await the certain word. Why break his good sleep with that? It would be a long ride tomorrow. The moon shone straight down on his closed eyes. Softly Alexander drew the curtain half across, lest the powers of night should harm him.

In Thessaly they picked up the allied cavalry; they came streaming down over the hills, without formation, yelling and tossing their lances, showing off their horsemanship. It was a land where men rode as soon as they could walk. Alexander raised his brows; but Philip said they would do what they were told in battle, and do it well. This show was a tradition.

The army bore south-west, towards Delphi and Amphissa. Some levies from the Sacred League joined them along the way; their generals were made welcome, and swiftly briefed. Used to the confederate forces of small rival states, the edging for precedence, the long wrangles with whichever general had been given chief command, they were drawn amazed into a moving army of thirty thousand foot and two thousand horse, each man of which knew where he had to be, and went there.

There were no forces from Athens. The Athenians had a seat on the League Council; but when it commissioned Philip, no Athenian had been present to dissent. Demosthenes had persuaded them to boycott it. A vote against Amphissa would have antagonized Thebes. He had seen no further.

The army reached Thermopylai, the hot gates between the mountains and the sea. Alexander, who had not passed this way since he was twelve, went with Hephaistion to bathe in the warm springs for which the pass was named. On the grave-mound of Leonidas, with its marble lion, he laid a garland. 'I don't think,' he remarked after, 'that he was really much of a general. If he'd made sure the Phokian troops understood their orders, the Persians could never have turned the pass. These southern states never work together. But one must honour a man as brave as that.'

The Thebans still had the fort above. Philip, playing their own game, sent up an envoy, politely asking them to leave so that he could relieve them. They looked down at the long snake of men filling the shore-road and thickening into distance; stolidly they picked up their gear, and left for Thebes.

Now the army was on the great south-east road; they saw on their right the stark mountains of Hellas'

spine, barer and bleaker, more despoiled by man's axes and man's herds, than the wooded heights of Macedon. In the valleys between these tall deserts, flesh between bones, lay the earth and water that fed mankind.

'Now I see it again,' said Alexander to Hephaistion as they rode, 'I can understand just why the southerners are as they are. They're land-starved; each man covets his neighbour's, and knows the neighbour covets his. And each state has its fringe of mountains. Have you seen two dogs by the fence where one of them lives, running up and down barking?'

'But,' said Hephaistion, 'when dogs come to a gap, they don't rush through and fight, they just look surprised and walk off. Sometimes dogs have more sense than men.'

The road towards Amphissa turned due south; an advance party under Parmenion had gone ahead, to take the strong-point of Kytinion and secure this road, as earnest of Philip's purpose to pursue the holy war. But the main force marched on by the highway, still going south-east, towards Thebes and Athens.

'Look,' said Alexander, pointing ahead, 'there's Elatia. Look, the masons and engineers are there already.

It shouldn't take long to raise the walls, they say all the stone's still there.'

Elatia had been a fort of the god-robbing Phokians, pulled down at the end of the previous holy war. It commanded the road. It was two days' fast march from Thebes, and three from Athens.

A thousand slaves, under skilled masons, soon put back the well-squared ashlar. The army occupied the fort and the heights around it. Philip set his headquarters up, and sent an envoy to Thebes.

For years, his message said, the Athenians had made war on him, first covertly, then openly; he could no longer hold his hand. To Thebes they had been hostile even longer; yet now they were trying to draw Thebes, too, into war against him. He must ask the Thebans therefore to declare themselves. Would they stand by their alliance, and give his army passage south?

The royal tent had been put up within the walls; the shepherds who had made hovels in the ruins had fled when the army came. Philip had had a supper-couch carted along, to rest his game leg after the day's work. Alexander sat on a chair beside him. The squires had set out wine, and withdrawn.

'This should settle it,' said Philip, 'once for all. Time comes when one must put down the stake and throw.

I think it's long odds against war. If the Thebans are sane, they'll declare for us; the Athenians will wake up and see where their demagogues have brought them; Phokion's party will come in; and we can cross to Asia without a drop of blood shed in Greece.'

Alexander turned his winecup in his hands, and bent to smell the local vintage. They made better wine in Thrace, but Thrace had been given it by Dionysos. 'Well, yes... but look what happened while you were laid up and I was raising the army. We gave out we were arming against the Illyrians; and everyone believed it, the Illyrians most of all. Now, what about the Athenians? They've been told for years by Demosthenes to expect us; here we are. And what becomes of him, if Phokion's party gets the vote?'

'He can do nothing, if Thebes has declared for us.'

'They've ten thousand trained mercenaries in Athens.'

'Ah, yes. But it's the Thebans who will decide. You know their constitution. A moderate oligarchy they call it, but the franchise test is low; it takes in any man who can afford a hoplite panoply. There you have it. In Thebes, it's the electorate that will fight in any war it votes for.'

He began to talk about his hostage years there, almost with nostalgia. Time had misted the hardships; it had the taste of vanished youth. He had been smuggled once by friends into action under Epaminondas.

He had known Pelopidas. Alexander as he listened thought of the Sacred Band, which Pelopidas had gathered into one corps, rather than founded; for their heroic vows were ancient, going back to Herakles and Iolaos, at whose altar they were sworn. Men of the Band, having each in his charge a twofold honour, did not retreat; they advanced, or stood, or died. There was much Alexander would have liked to know of them, and tell Hephaistion, had there been anyone else to ask.

'I wonder,' he remarked instead, 'what is going on now in Athens.'

Athens had had the news at sunset, on the day Elatia was occupied. The City Councillors were at their civic meal in the Council Hall, with some old Olympic victors, retired generals and other worthies honoured with this privilege. The Agora was clamorous; the courier from Thebes came only on the heels of rumour. All night the streets were like market-time, with kindred running to kindred, merchants to the Piraieus; strangers talking passionately to strangers, women running with half-veiled faces to the women's rooms of houses where they had friends. At daybreak the City Trumpeter called Assembly; in the Agora the hurdles of the stock-pens and the market stalls were set alight to beacon the outer suburbs. The men poured across to Pnyx Hill with its stone rostrum. They were told the news; that Philip was expected to march south at once, and that Thebes would make no resistance. Old men recalled a black day of their childhood, the beginning of shame, starvation, tyranny, when the first stragglers had come in from Goat River on the Hellespont, where the fleet had been annihilated; the Great War lost and the death-throes still to come. The crisp cool air of an autumn morning struck to the bone like a winter frost. The presiding Councillor called aloud. 'Does anyone wish to speak?'

A long silence followed. All eyes turned one way. Nobody had the folly to come between the people and their choice. When they saw him mount the bema, no one cheered; the chill was too deep for that; there was only a deep murmur, like the sound of prayer.

All night the lamp had burned in Demosthenes' study; men walking the streets, too troubled to go to bed, had been comforted by its light. In the dark before the dawn, the draft of his speech was ready. The city of Theseus, Solon, Perikles, at her crux of fate had turned to him. She had found him ready.

Firstly, he said, they could dismiss their fear that Philip was sure of Thebes. If he were, he would not be sitting in Elatia; he would be here now before their walls, he who had always aimed at their destruction.

He was making a show of force, to hearten his bought friends in Thebes and daunt the patriots. Now at last they must resolve to forget the ancient feud, and send envoys to offer generous terms of alliance, before Philip's men had done their evil work there. He himself, if summoned, would not refuse the call.

Meantime, let the men of fighting age put on their arms, and march up the Theban road as far as Eleusis, in token of readiness to take the field.

As he ended, the sun rose, and they saw across the dip the Acropolis bathed in splendour; the mellow old marble, the white new shrines, the colour and the gold. A great cheer ran over the hill. Those who had been too far to hear all joined in it, sure that salvation had been proclaimed.

Demosthenes went back home, and drafted a diplomatic note to Thebes, heaping scorn on Philip. '...

acting as might be looked for in one of his race and nature; insolently using his present fortune, forgetful of his unforeseen rise to power from small mean origins....' Thoughtfully he chewed his pen; the stylos moved on over the wax.

Outside his window, young men still new to war, on the way to report to their tribal officers, were shouting to each other; the jokes of the young, whose meaning he no longer knew. A woman was crying somewhere. Surely, it was in the house. It must be his daughter. If she had anyone to weep over, it was the first he knew of it. Angrily he closed his door; the noise was ill-omened, and disturbed his thoughts.

When the Assembly met at Thebes, no man who could stand on his feet was absent. The Macedonians, being formal allies, had first hearing.

They recalled Philip's good offices to Thebes; his help in the Phokian War, his support for her hegemony over Boeotia; rehearsed her ancient injuries from the Athenians, their efforts to weaken her, their alliance with the impious Phokians, paying their troops with Apollo's gold. (With this too, no doubt, they had gilded the Theban shields they had set up, in blasphemous affront to Thebes and to the god.) Philip did not ask that Thebes should take up arms against Athens; Thebans might do so if they chose, and share the fruits of victory; but he would still count them as friends, if they gave him only right of passage.

The Assembly turned it over. They had been angered by Philip's surprise of Elatia; if he was an ally, he was a high-handed one, it was late to consult them now. For the rest, it was true enough. The great issues of power remained unspoken. Once Athens had fallen, what would they be worth to him? And yet, he had power in Thessaly and had done no harm there. They had fought the long Phokian war; Thebes was full of dead men's sons with a family on their shoulders, the widowed mother and the younger ones. Was it not enough?

Antipatros ceased, and sat down. A not unfriendly murmur, almost applause, was heard. The marshal called the Athenian envoys. Demosthenes climbed the rostrum, in a hush of expectation, mostly hostile.

Not Macedon, but Athens, had been the threat here for generations. There was no house without a blood-debt from the endless border wars.

He could strike one answering nerve; the common hate for Sparta. He recalled how after the Great War, when Sparta had imposed on Athens the Thirty Tyrants (traitors like those who wanted peace with Philip now) Thebes had given harbour to the Liberators. Beside Philip, the Thirty were mere schoolboy bullies; let the past be forgotten, only that noble act remembered. With skilled timing, he brought out the Athenian offers. Theban rights over Boeotia should be undisputed; if the Boeotians should rebel, Athens would even send troops to put them down. Plateia too, that old bone of contention. He did not remind his hearers that Plateia, in return for Athens' protection against Thebes, had joined in the stand at Marathon, and been granted Athenian citizenship for ever. It was no time for hair-splitting; Plateia should be conceded. Also, if there was war with Philip, Thebes should command all land-forces, while Athens would meet two-thirds of the expense.

The burst of applause was missing. Thebans in doubt were looking at other Thebans they knew and trusted, not at him. They were slipping his grip.

Striding forward, lifting his arm, he invoked the heroic dead, Epaminondas and Pelopidas; the glorious fields of Leuktra and Mantinea; the record of the Sacred Band. His ringing voice dropped to a note of silken irony. If these things were no longer of account to them, he had only one request to make on behalf of Athens; right of passage, to oppose the tyrant alone.

He had caught them now. That nip of the old rivalry had done it.

They were shamed, he could hear it in the deep muted sound. Here and there two voices called together for the voting to begin; the men of the Sacred Band were considering their honour. The pebbles rattled into the urns; tally-clerks under close scrutiny flicked their abacuses; a long tedious business, after the efficient slot-counters at home. The Thebans had voted to tear up the treaty with Macedon, and ally with Athens.

He walked back to his lodging, hardly feeling his feet touch ground. Like Zeus with his scales, he had held and tilted the destiny of Greece. If ordeal lay ahead, what new life came forth without birth-pangs?

They would say of him now, for ever, that the hour had found the man.

They brought Philip the news next day, as he ate his noon meal with Alexander. The King sent his squires out, before even opening the dispatch; like most men of the time, he had not mastered the knack of reading with the eye alone, he needed to hear himself. Alexander, taut with suspense, wondered why his father could not have trained himself, as he had done, to read in silence; it was only a matter of practice; though his lips still moved with the words, Hephaistion had assured him that no sound at all came out.

Philip read levelly, without anger; the lines of his face only deepened into seams. He laid down the scroll by his dish, and said, 'Well, if they will have it, they will have it.'

'I'm sorry, Father; I suppose it had to be.' Could he not see that however the Thebans had voted, Athens would still have hated him? That there was no way he could have entered her gates, but as a victor? How had he nursed so long this insubstantial dream? Better leave him in peace, and think about realities. It would be the second war-plan, now.

Athens and Thebes made ready at fever-heat to meet Philip's southward march. Instead he went west, into the mountain ribs and gorges that fringed the Parnassos massif. He had been commissioned to drive the Amphissians from the sacred plain; this he would do. As for Thebes, let it be said he had only tested a doubtful ally's loyalty, and knew the answer.

The young men of Athens, roused for war, prepared to go north to Thebes. The omens were taken; the fires smouldered, the diviners misliked the entrails. Demosthenes, finding the dead hand of superstition raised against him, declared these portents were meant to reveal the traitors in their midst, paid by Philip to stop the war. When Phokion, back from a mission too late to change events, urged that the city should get an oracle from Delphi, Demosthenes laughed, and said that all the world knew Philip had bought the Pythia.

The Thebans received the Athenians as the Lynkestids had welcomed Alexander, with careful courtesy.

The Theban general disposed his joint force to guard the southern passes, and to block Philip from Amphissa. All over the wild stony uplands of Parnassos, and in the gorges of Phokis, the armies scouted and manoeuvred. Trees turned brown, then bare; on the tops the first snows fell. Philip took his time. He was busy rebuilding the forts of the impious Phokians, who gratefully leased them to his men, in exchange for a cut in their fines to the plundered god.

He would not be tempted into a major battle. There was a skirmish in a river-gorge, another in an upland pass, both broken off when he saw his troops being drawn into awkward country. Athens hailed them as victories, and thanksgiving feasts were held.

One winter night, Philip's tent was pitched out of the wind against a cliff-face, above a river in snow-spate churning its stony gorge. On the slopes between, a pine-wood had been felled for cook-fires. Dusk was falling; eddies of pure mountain air pierced through the heavy mingled smells of wood-smoke, porridge, bean broth, horses, crudely-cured tent hides, and many thousand unwashed men. On leather camp-chairs, Philip and Alexander sat warming their wet boots at the glowing crumble of their fire. The steamy reek of his father's feet blended for Alexander with the other homely and familiar scents of war. He himself was no more than fairly dirty; when streams were hard to come at, he would rub himself down with snow. His attention to these things had created a legend, of which he was still unaware, that he was endowed with a natural fragrance. Most of the men had not bathed for months.

Their wives would scrub them, when they returned to the marriage bed.

'Well,' said Philip, 'didn't I tell you Demosthenes' patience would wear out before mine? I heard just now.

He's sent them.'

'What? How many?'

'The whole ten thousand.'

'Is the man mad?'