‘Not yet, general. Sit a while,’ she ‘said, smiling up at him. Shaking his head he chuckled and sat down, stretching out his long legs and brushing raindrops from his shoulders and arms.
‘Curious creatures, are women,’ he remarked. ‘You have beautiful rooms, warm and dry, yet you sit here in the cold and the wet.’
‘There is a kind of peace here, do you not find?’ she countered. ‘All around us the storm, yet here we are safe and dry.’
The thunder came again, closer now, lightning forking the sky.
‘The appearance of safety,’ Parmenion replied, ‘is not quite the same as being safe. You look sad,’ he said suddenly, instinctively reaching out and taking her hand. She smiled then, holding back the tears with an effort of will.
‘I am not really sad,’ she lied. ‘It is just … I am a stranger in a foreign land. I have no friends, my body has become lumpy and ugly, and I cannot find the right words to please Philip. But I will, when our son is born.’
He nodded. ‘The babe concerns you. Philip tells me you have dreams of its death. But I spoke to Bernios yesterday; he says you are strong and the child grows as it should. He is a good man and a fine surgeon. He would not lie to me.’
The thunder was now overhead, the wind screaming through the oak and shaking it violently. Parmenion helped the Queen to her feet, covering her head and shoulders with his cloak, and together they returned to the palace.
Leading her to her rooms Parmenion turned to leave, but Olympias cried out and started to fall. The Spartan leapt to her side, catching her by the arms and half carrying her to a couch.
Her hand seized the breast of his tunic. ‘He’s gone!’ she screamed. ‘My son! He’s gone!’
‘Calm yourself, lady,’ urged Parmenion, stroking her hair.
‘Oh, sweet mother Hera,’ she moaned. ‘He’s dead!’
The Spartan moved swiftly into the outer rooms, sending in the Queen’s three hand-maidens to comfort her, then ordered a messenger to fetch Bernios.
Within the hour the surgeon arrived, giving the Queen a sleeping draught before reporting back to Philip. The King sat in his throne-room with Parmenion standing beside him.
‘There is no cause for concern,’ the bald surgeon assured
Philip. ‘The child is strong, his heartbeat discernible. I do not know why the Queen should think him dead. But she is young and given, perhaps, to foolish fears.’
‘She has never struck me as being easily frightened,’ offered Parmenion. ‘When the raiders attacked her, she killed one of them and faced down the rest.’
‘I agree with the surgeon,’ said Philip. ‘She is like a spirited horse – fast, powerful, but highly-strung. How soon will she give birth?’
‘No more than five days, sire, perhaps sooner,’ the surgeon told him.
‘She will be better then,’ said the King, ‘once the child is suckling at her breast.’ Dismissing the surgeon, Philip turned to Parmenion. The Spartan was holding hard to the high back of the King’s chair, his face ghostly pale and blood streaming from his nose and ears.
‘Parmenion!’ shouted Philip, rising and reaching out to his general. The Spartan tried to answer, but all that came from his mouth was a broken groan. Pitching forward into the King’s arms, Parmenion felt a rolling sea of pain engulf his head.
Then he was falling . . .
. . . and the Pit beckoned.
*
Derae’s spirit hovered above Parmenion’s bed, feeling the unseen presence of Aristotle beside her.
‘Now is the moment of greatest peril,’ his voice whispered in her soul.
Derae did not answer. Beside the bed sat Mothac and Bernios, both men silent, unmoving. Parmenion was barely breathing. The seeress flowed her spirit into the dying man, avoiding his memories and holding to the central spark of his life, feeling the panic within the core as the growth reached out its dark tendrils in his brain. It had been an easy matter to block the power of the sylphium, but even Derae was amazed at the speed with which the cancer spread. Most growths, she knew, were obscene and ugly imitations