The New Achilles Read online

  ‘I loved her. My father … forbid me to wed. And she …’ Alexanor looked away. ‘Thought me a coward. I left Rhodes. She married someone else.’ There it was, in a sentence. Words he had not spoken in five years.

  She looked at him. Her face was remarkable, her eyes huge, her cheekbones high, her teeth perfect and white, her lips strong and …

  ‘I very much doubt that anyone ever mistook you for a coward,’ Phila said. ‘I think you are leaving something out.’

  Alexanor was amazed at what he’d just said.

  ‘I …’ he began, and then he was kissing her again.

  ‘My,’ she muttered when he began to nuzzle her neck. ‘You are a hero,’ Phila said, running a hand up him as she lay back down.

  Again, it was like the soup. Alexanor watched himself from afar, as he took her – shocked at the animalistic urge of his passion. He was not untutored in the arts of sex; he had known a beautiful woman before, with carefully controlled …

  He was gone.

  Much later, she lay with one arm over the back of the kline, her diaphanous linen enhancing rather than hiding her. He was sitting, eating candied almonds.

  ‘You over-value your control,’ she said. ‘I agree that it is important. It makes us Hellenes. But it is important to know when to let the daemon free.’

  ‘A priest of Asklepios must always be in command of his body,’ he said, although he smiled.

  ‘Even if the gods command otherwise? Do you think I might have a few of my own honeyed almonds, or must you eat them all?’

  He handed her the bowl. ‘Who made you so wise?’

  She shrugged. ‘Motherhood? Prostitution? Half the men who buy you would do better with a chat than a fuck.’ She shrugged again. ‘Or both. Sex is very healing.’

  ‘You have just made a correct diagnosis and delivered a powerful treatment. The patient is healed.’ Alexanor shook his head. ‘If I’m not killed by the king of Macedon. Will you be …?’

  She shook her head. ‘The king chose his boyfriend for the night of his victory. In fact, I’m mostly here as decoration. And you are not leaving. When I left the world of leaning against the theatre walls to service my clients, I swore that no man would have me unless he spent the night in my bed. So you will sleep here. I’ll make it right with the king.’ She smiled. ‘And you are not telling me everything about this woman. You are no light o’ love. When did you last have sex?’

  Alexanor finished the almonds.

  ‘I am deeply in your debt …’ He shrugged. ‘Doctors make poor patients,’ he admitted. ‘Many years.’

  ‘Exactly. Did she really think you a coward? And if she’s such a fool, why do you still love her?’

  Alexanor ran a hand across that marvellous, muscled back.

  ‘I …’

  She laughed. ‘I can’t help myself. I am almost to my diagnosis, but you are working on another bout of exercise.’

  ‘Perhaps I could help with your stomach ailments,’ he murmured, kissing her hard stomach.

  ‘Yes, well, any girl likes free medical care,’ Phila said. ‘Do not, I pray you, get your sticky hands on this linen. You know where the wash bowl is.’

  Alexanor washed, checked one more time on his patient, and lay down by the hetaera. She put her head on his shoulder and curled against him, and he marvelled at her, and at himself, and he was almost instantly asleep.

  He awoke to the oddest sensation. After a moment of disorientation, he remembered it all: the blood, the Illyrian, the sex. The woman who was sleeping at his side.

  Alexanor had never slept next to a woman. He smelt her hair and pulled her closer and went back to sleep. But then he dreamt of Aspasia, walking up the hill to the temple of Apollo in the dawn.

  The next morning, clean, neat, and dressed in a plain brown chiton borrowed from one of Phila’s slaves, Alexanor reported to the hospital. Before the sun was a hand’s width above the horizon, he and Leon had performed two trephines on men with fractured skulls.

  Leon held the head of the third patient perfectly steady while Alexanor cut.

  ‘Now that you are a full priest …’ Leon said.

  The sharp teeth of the round saw cut into the man’s head.

  ‘Yes?’ Alexanor said.

  His hand was steady. He felt … clean. Rested.

  ‘I’d like to stay with you. As your assistant. And eventually be promoted myself. Take my full vows.’

  Leon continued to hold the man’s head, his thighs like a clamp.

  Alexanor’s hand never wavered, although his heart soared.

  ‘You would stay at the temple?’ he asked.

  Leon was silent, and just then the skull gave very slightly and Alexanor relaxed his fingers, gave a twist, and the broken patch of skull came free. A long splinter went down into the pink-grey matter.

  ‘Apollo,’ Leon breathed. ‘He should be dead.’

  ‘But he is not,’ Alexanor breathed.

  His roll of instruments was open on the bloody sand next to him. He reached out and took a pair of tweezers, long tweezers of shining bronze.

  ‘Not a move, now,’ he said.

  He reached in with the tweezers, took the protruding nub of the bone splinter, and drew it smoothly out along what he guessed was the path of entry.

  ‘Oh, mother!’ the man cried. ‘Oh, mother, I never meant to hurt you! I lost the spoon!’

  A drop of blood appeared on the cranial matter, but no more.

  At the hospital they had wafers of pure gold to cover holes in skulls. He’d taken three. He slipped one under the dangling scalp and attached it with two tiny pins as he’d been taught, and folded the scalp back across the skull. In a dozen careful stitches, he had the scalp back in place, and then he and Leon finished, each taking one of the cross cuts until all the slack was out of the scalp. There was a lot of blood – scalp wounds always bled copiously.

  ‘I guess that man will never be poor again,’ a Macedonian said.

  Alexanor got to his feet. His leg was cramped. He used the trephine sitting like a tailor, and Leon was trained to hold the patient’s head between his powerful thighs. Both men got slowly to their feet to find that they were surrounded by Macedonian officers, and several of the Achaeans. Cercidas the poet was there, as was Doson. Alexanor’s concentration had been so great that he hadn’t noticed.

  ‘That was his brain? The inside of his head?’ the king asked.

  ‘Yes, my lord,’ Alexanor answered.

  ‘He cried for his mother when the bone was removed.’ The king’s eyes gleamed with a hard intelligence.

  ‘Or perhaps,’ Alexanor shrugged, ‘I think he had a memory, perhaps trapped by the splinter and released by its removal.’

  ‘And now he’ll always have a gold piece,’ the king said with a broad grin.

  Alexanor was sticky with blood. But today, it bothered him not at all, and he smiled at himself, at the fragility of the mind, and at Phila’s powers of healing, all while glancing at the king.

  The golden young man, Prince Philip, stood with Doson.

  ‘You did it beautifully,’ he said. ‘Will the man live?’

  Alexanor liked the young man instantly; his eager curiosity and his good manners. He raised his bloody hands in an attitude of supplication and prayed.

  ‘With the will of the gods, he may live,’ he said.

  Philip pressed closer. ‘How many men have you saved?’

  Alexanor shrugged.

  ‘Ask him how many he’s killed,’ spat one of the Macedonian officers. He was a big man, as big as Philopoemen, with dirty blond hair and a knowing smile.

  Again, Alexanor shrugged. ‘I killed a man last night. My arrow-mould slipped.’

  Philip was fascinated. ‘But surely you do not blame yourself? You were not the cause of his death, merely the agent.’

  ‘Perhaps a surer hand than mine would have saved him,’ Alexanor said.

  ‘Maybe he’ll kill Philopoemen,’ Cercidas said.

  Alexanor turned to
look at the man, appalled.

  ‘You heard me, foreigner,’ the Achaean Taxiarchos said. ‘He’s a danger to his friends and his community. Feel free to make a “mistake” on him.’

  The king shook his head. ‘No, my friend. I saw the speed of your cut – the way you pulled the bone splinter. I have a hoplomachos – a weapons teacher. His movements are like yours – sure, quick, like an eagle stooping on prey.’

  Alexanor was unused to praise. He flushed.

  Doson nodded. ‘Your efforts here will not go unrewarded. I have to settle with the Spartans – then I’m for Argos. I would appreciate it if you would accompany me at least to the Isthmus. Besides, you might enjoy the trip. I hear you are a fine rider.’

  Alexanor bowed. ‘I will be happy to accompany you, my lord. But a fine rider? I think not.’

  Doson laughed quietly. ‘And on my own mare,’ he whispered.

  Alexanor froze, but the king was laughing loudly.

  His laugh cut off like an extinguished candle, and the king turned on Cercidas.

  ‘Philopoemen won the battle where you almost lost it,’ he said. ‘Your comments are of a piece with your incompetence, Cercidas. Philopoemen is the best officer your fucking Greeks have. And you want him dead?’

  ‘There is more to politics than war, my lord,’ Cercidas said. ‘I’m sure that the young man excels at war.’

  ‘If you do not excel at war, someone conquers you. Begone, Cercidas. Don’t appear before me again until someone tells you it’s safe.’

  Doson appalled the Achaean League by releasing all the Spartiate prisoners and forbidding the sack of the city of Sparta. His own phalanx was none too happy, to judge by the grumbling of the wounded men under Alexanor’s care; Sparta was a rich city and they had all expected loot. Philopoemen and his friends were livid.

  ‘That wily bastard …’ Dinaeos spat.

  Philopoemen, who was, again, recovering faster than any physician would have believed, was sitting on Phila’s couch, leaning back with his feet up.

  ‘He planned this all along,’ Philopoemen said bitterly. ‘He gains the reputation for clemency with the other Greek cities, and he puts shackles on the Achaean League.’

  Another of his companions, Aristaenos, who had fought bravely in the battle, shook his head.

  ‘But our city is restored,’ he said. ‘Our farms, our people. Megalopolis is free.’

  ‘Free,’ Philopoemen nodded. ‘Until the Spartans attack us again. Free for Doson to make our foreign policy. Free to be taxed to support his armies.’

  ‘You sound like Cercidas,’ Dinaeos said.

  ‘Just because he hates me doesn’t mean he is altogether wrong,’ Philopoemen said.

  ‘We have our own army!’ Aristaenos said. ‘The Achaean phalanx did well enough, and everyone says …’

  Phila smiled from her chair. ‘You all have such good manners. Everyone says the Megalopolitan cavalry saved the battle.’ She waved. ‘You. The Exiles.’

  Philopoemen nodded. ‘Everyone says so a little too loudly,’ he said. ‘Cercidas will hate me all the more.’

  As it proved, it only took Doson four days to settle the affairs of Sparta. The king, Cleomenes, fled into exile, boarding a ship in the south with his Royal Companions. Doson settled the government on the other king of Sparta; as Phila said, it was convenient for everyone that the Spartans always had two.

  And Doson had other problems, as a steady stream of causia-wearing Macedonian messengers brought news of new Illyrian incursions into Western Macedon as they journeyed towards the Isthmus.

  ‘I thought that all of the Illyrians were fighting for us?’ Alexanor asked Kleostratos. The Thracian was the best horseman Alexanor had ever seen, managing his horse with no apparent effort.

  Kleostratos barked a laugh. He was tattooed over most of his body and had gold studs in his nose and gold cuffs in his ears. His beard was bright gold, and he had a huge smile.

  ‘Fucking Illyrians,’ he said. ‘They all fight each other. We have our Illyrians, at least as long as we pay them, and then the Aetolians have their Illyrians, as long as they pay theirs, if you take my meaning. Fucking barbarians.’

  This from a man covered in geometric tattoos.

  He grinned.

  Alexanor realised he was being mocked.

  Kleostratos shrugged. ‘Really, they are worse than Thracians. When we’re bought, we stay bought.’

  ‘Aetolians?’ Alexanor asked.

  Philopoemen appeared from behind him. He reined in.

  ‘Aetolians?’ he asked.

  ‘They have a confederation, do they not?’ Alexanor asked.

  Philopoemen put out a hand, like a physician taking a pulse.

  ‘Are you feeling well, friend? Are you losing your memory?’ He laughed. ‘The Aetolian Federation is our true enemy.’

  Alexanor shrugged. ‘For myself, I have no enemies.’

  Philopoemen laughed. So did Kleostratos. The Thracian pointed at him.

  ‘I heard you bare your teeth at the Aegyptian ambassador. You all but went for him, the pious windbag. Pirate! Slaver!’ the Thracian said, in a fair imitation of Alexanor’s Rhodian accent.

  Philopoemen nodded. ‘Aye, my friend,’ he said, ‘so don’t tell us how you have no enemies. The Aetolians are our bane. They send money to Sparta, they raid our coasts, and they send mercenaries to help the pirates.’

  ‘I’m sure they love their children,’ Alexanor said.

  ‘Don’t be sure of it,’ Philopoemen said.

  ‘Probably sell them into slavery. For more armour,’ said Kleostratos.

  ‘Even now, Macedonians are marching north to fight Illyrians who are taking Aetolian silver,’ Philopoemen said.

  ‘You can’t know that,’ Alexanor said.

  Kleostratos shrugged. ‘The king of Macedon needed a rapid solution to the Spartan problem. He wouldn’t listen to Aratos or Philopoemen or any of the other Achaean leaders – he said he “didn’t have time”.’ The Thracian smiled mirthlessly. ‘So by paying off the Illyrians, the Aetolians have saved their butt-boy, Sparta, from a whipping.’

  Alexanor shook his head.

  Philopoemen smiled grimly. ‘How long have you served at Epidauros?’ he asked.

  ‘Almost six years,’ Alexanor answered.

  ‘The sacred wall must cut off more than infection,’ Philopoemen said. ‘Every peasant in Achaea knows this. Listen, my friend. Just as the kings – the Seleucids, the Macedonians, the Aegyptians – pour their money into the Peloponnese to show their riches … do they not?’

  Alexanor had only to think of the magnificent theatre at the temple, the second-largest in the world. Built by the king of Aegypt.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘They also like to fight their surrogate wars here,’ Philopoemen said bitterly. ‘They pay the gold, and we die, so that various tyrants can proclaim themselves the “Liberator of Athens” and the “Liberator of Olympia” at parties.’

  Alexanor looked back and forth between the two horsemen.

  ‘If you have such a low opinion of the kings,’ he asked, ‘what are you doing here?’

  Philopoemen nodded. ‘Good question. Aratos ordered me to obey Doson, and Doson commanded that my cavalry escort him north.’ He shrugged. ‘We’ll see. My suspicion is that we’re hostages.’

  The Thracian clapped a broad hand on Alexanor’s back.

  ‘Welcome to the game, priest,’ he said. ‘The game of kings.’

  Alexanor bridled. ‘I think I understand the game, as you call it. In Great Alexander’s day, my city, Rhodes, was an ally of Athens – later, of Macedon. When Demetrios attacked us, we turned to Ptolemy of Aegypt for aid. When other Ptolemies began to use the Cretan pirates to undermine us, we found other allies. That is the way of politics.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Philopoemen, ‘and for us, the Achaean League was under the heel of Macedon until Aratos freed us by taking Corinth – the greatest military feat of the age, I assure you. And now we are back und
er the Macedonian yoke because we cannot face Sparta with her Aegyptian money and her Aetolian allies. Not unaided. Someday, I swear, if the gods spare me, I will make men fear the name of the League, and no Spartan kinglet will disturb men who wish only to till their farms and be free.’

  They rode along in silence, until Dinaeos laughed.

  ‘What a politician you will be, Phil, when you’re done playing war! You make beautiful speeches. But no one will ever fear the name of the Achaean League – look!’

  He was pointing at a bend in the road, where the Achaean phalanx, homeward bound, had tangled where two roads crossed – the northern road to Arkadia, and the eastern road to the coast. Listening to the angry voices, it was clear that the coastal men wanted to go home, while the northern members of the League wanted the phalanx to march to Megalopolis before they dispersed.

  A group of men in red caps and grey cloaks gathered their slaves and walked away down the road to the coast while officers bellowed at them.

  ‘Look,’ Dinaeos said with contempt. ‘The Achaean League.’

  More and more men were picking up their shields and walking off down the coast road. The Strategos of the League – the highest elective office in the Peloponnese – watched helplessly as half his men trickled away.

  ‘If I was in command, I’d crucify half a dozen of the bastards right now, and this would never happen again,’ Dinaeos spat, eyes hot with anger.

  Philopoemen nodded. ‘You and Cercidas would agree, then,’ he said softly.

  The Strategos stood in the middle of the crossroads, shaking with rage.

  Dinaeos turned on his friend.

  ‘I have nothing in common with that pompous windbag,’ he spat.

  Philopoemen didn’t back down, or smile. He sat on his horse like an equestrian statue: calm, but stern.

  ‘You would give an order without knowing that it would be obeyed,’ the cavalry officer said. ‘Who, exactly, would hold six fishermen of Hermione to crosses? Hmmm? What men could you trust to perform these executions? I say nothing of the ethics of the act, my friend. Merely the practicality. Although they are related. I, for example, would not obey you.’