“No, no, it’s a marvelous play. You’re another Euripides,” Agnonides lied easily. “It’s politics. I fear my duty to Athens calls me away.” It was a good excuse to get out of this travesty of a tragedy.
☆ ☆ ☆
By the time Agnonides reached the street, some of his associates showed up telling him that Xander was calling out the garrison. Then his man from the docks reported back. “Phocion and half his toadies are headed to the docks with Silver Shields. It’s all over the place. King Philip III is on that grain ship with his wife Eurydice and a company of Silver Shields.”
“We need to get there. Nikator, get to our people and get them ready. It could be that they are going to do a sweep for dissenters. We might have to run.”
“But what if it’s not? What if she’s just shown up?”
“Then Xander will probably grab her for his papa.”
“Wouldn’t it be better if we got her? She could repeal Antipater’s peace and restore the citizenry to their rights,” Nikator insisted.
“In either case, we are going to need our people ready. Now get to it.”
Nikator went.
Agnonides sent another messenger to warn his wife to be ready, then he made his way to the harbor.
☆ ☆ ☆
“The Queen of the Sea went back to Alexandria to get resupplied by that other ship, the Reliance,” Phocion was explaining. “Though how they knew it had arrived I have no—”
“Roxane wrote me about that,” Eurydice interrupted. “They have something called radio that uses fluctuations in the aether to send messages.”
Phocion looked doubtful, and Eurydice didn’t blame him. She was doubtful herself and it was only, oddly enough, trust in Roxane that had made her take this risk. But she did trust Roxane. And she found that she missed Alexander the Great’s pretty mouse of a wife. She shrugged. “I haven’t seen it either, but I trust Roxane.”
At which point Phocion looked even more doubtful.
“Wait until the Queen of the Sea gets here, and if you still don’t believe, you can try something. Just let me get far away first.”
Phocion’s mouth twitched into something that might have been mistaken for a smile. “Well enough. But until it gets here, we Athenians can’t defend you from the garrison. And however a battle goes, it seems unlikely it will go well for Athens.” His expression, if anything, was more sour than usual.
☆ ☆ ☆
So it stood while the garrison formed up and the mob gathered. The Silver Shields, warned by the delegation of what was going on, moved everyone else off the docks around the Demetria and prepared for whatever was coming. The dock was a wooden pier that stretched out a hundred yards from shore. It was twenty feet wide and wagons carrying bags of grain often used it as a roadway. Two of those wagons were converted into a barricade, and when the garrison got there, they faced a gap that would have made Thermopylae seem a wide highway.
Trajan stepped out from the wagons to see a red-faced Xander, and he felt like laughing. He was also angry, and used to speaking pretty bluntly to Eurydice. This pampered puppy of Polyperchon’s didn’t impress him at all. “What? You expected us to roll over on our bellies and make it easy for you? We’ll just wait here till the Queen of the Sea arrives.”
“What are you going to eat?”
Trajan stopped, stared, then bellowed, “We’re on a grain ship, you idiot! What the fuck do you think we’re going to eat?”
The peace talks didn’t go well after that. Or last long.
☆ ☆ ☆
“Bows ready!” Xander shouted, and Trajan hurried back behind the overturned wagons.
That’s when the bows started raining arrows. It was a slow rain. The garrison had a thousand men and only two hundred were archers. There were six hundred infantry and two hundred cavalry, and they were all stopped dead by the barricade. The only way around it was to get a boat and row it over to the docks behind the barricade and attack from there. But that too would provide the Shields an opportunity to position themselves for maximum defense.
For a few minutes, it was a stalemate. The garrison fired arrows, then stopped as it became clear they weren’t doing much damage. Then everyone waited.
Everyone…except the mob.
☆ ☆ ☆
Agnonides watched the scene on the docks with a sort of terrified glee. He could start the revolution right here and right now, but the danger had never been the garrison. As long as they were in the citadel on Munychia, they would have been safe and hard to attack.
But the real threat, the threat that let the garrison exert power over all Athens, was the rest of the Macedonian empire and its eastern conquests. It wasn’t Antipater who had stopped the League of Greek States before. Antipater had been forced back, holed up in his little fort until he was rescued by Craterus and the eastern army.
Now Antipater and Craterus were both dead. Eumenes, Ptolemy, Antigonus and the rest were all busy fighting against each other. He could start up the Lamian war again, and maybe win. But they had thought they could win when Alexander died too and they had been wrong. That possibility was why he was terrified.
But the glory of leading Athens to liberty…that was why he acted.
“Attack them!” Agnonides said, pointing at the garrison crowded around the pier. “Attack!” he yelled.
Citizens of Athens went through two years of military training. Every citizen of Athens. For many of the mob, that training was years or decades past. But for many, it was fresh. There were veterans of the Lamian war in that crowd, veterans with something to prove.
They were, for the most part, armed. And they hit the garrison troops from behind. But the truth was, they were a mob…not an army. And if the garrison weren’t Silver Shields, they were veterans of Alexander’s army, and they were in formation, armed and armored.
It was a stalemate.
The garrison couldn’t get out of the trap their commander had put them in, but the mob couldn’t break them either. On the other side, the Silver Shields were holed up behind overturned wagons, and if the garrison ignored them, the Shields could come out and bugger them good.
☆ ☆ ☆
Eurydice had watched the whole battle from beginning to the present, sitting in a cabin of the grain ship. She saw the Shields stop the garrison and the garrison stop the mob, and the whole thing come to a frustrated end, as no one could move.
And then she saw it. It all fit together, her training as a little girl, her experience with the army on the way to Triparadisus, the fight at the bridge and Antigonus One-eye sitting his horse in his armor, trying to force the bridge with sheer presence. And she knew what to do.
She was up and out of the cabin before anyone could react. She leaped from the Demetria to the dock in a single bound and ran for the overturned carts.
Trajan was running the battle and the sergeant he left to watch her was not expecting anything. He was still on the boat when she got to the wagons. “Lift me up!” she shouted. “Lift me up!”
Trajan turned and cynicism warred with something he had long thought dead. This was Alexander, made new in the form of a young girl. Alexander going over the wall. And this time he would be protected. Trajan started giving orders then, and in only moments Eurydice was standing on an overturned wagon shouting to the soldiers of the garrison to put up their arms.
She was surrounded by a forest of shields as the Silver Shields left themselves exposed to keep her protected. But with all those shields, she couldn’t be seen. She pushed them out of the way, and shouted again.
There it was. The painting, the statue of glory. Nike herself with the shields spreading like wings to reveal her.
The whole battle came to a stop. All three forces, staring at the seventeen-year-old hatchet-faced girl.
“Put up your arms and stop while we settle this!” She pointed imperiously. “Xander, son of Polyperchon, come to me. Phocion, you too, or whoever is in charge of—” Eurydice managed, barely, to stop hers
elf before she called it a mob. “In charge of that force behind the garrison. Join me here, for I am the regent for my husband and I hold the reins of Alexander’s empire.”
CHAPTER 25
Demetria, Piraeus dock
May 28
The sun was setting over Athens as Phocion, Agnonides, Xander and Eurydice sat down on a hatch cover on the Demetria and decided the fate of Athens. Or tried to. Having brought the battle to a halt and declared herself queen of the empire, Eurydice didn’t know what to do to settle the rather complex issues involved.
Part of the problem was simply that Alexander the Great and Antipater were not king and loyal retainer. Alexander the king had never trusted Antipater, who had been his father Philip II’s general, not his. He had been planning to execute the old bastard at the time of his unexpected death. That meant that the commands that Antipater had issued in regard to the Greek states were often in conflict with what Alexander the Great had wanted. After Alexander’s death, Antipater’s handling of the Lamian war was probably not what Alexander would have done. In fact, as Phocion explained, “It was fear of what Antipater might do without Alexander to rein him in that led to the rebellion in the first place.”
“How would you know, you old fool? You were opposed to the revolution from the beginning,” Agnonides said.
“Because it was a bad idea, you young idiot. It left us with a garrison of Macedonian troops sitting on Munychia hill and our democracy restructured.”
“Yes, restructured so that you’re in charge.”
“That wasn’t my idea. It was Antipater’s.”
“Why?” Eurydice asked.
“Because he felt that it was the poorer citizens of Athens who had pushed for the rebellion,” Xander said. “He was right, too. Agnonides here can get the mob to do almost anything. Though they usually end up regretting it later.”
“Athens is not Macedonia’s helot and never will be!” Agnonides proclaimed in ringing tones, which sort of proved Xander’s point to Eurydice’s mind.
She remembered something in the book they had received. Philip doted on the thing. Something about the Greeks not knowing how to run an empire, that the knowledge of how to run a nation had been developed later. “We need to talk to Marie Easley.”
“Who is Marie Easley?” Xander asked, sounding confused.
“Haven’t you read the butterfly book? It says on the cover page ‘A description of the prior history and the probable effects of the Queen of the Sea’s arrival by Marie Easley.’ Marie Easley is the scholar of that time who came with the Queen of the Sea. Roxane wrote me about her.”
“And what can she tell us?” asked Agnonides, suspiciously.
“I don’t know. But the ship people know a great deal more than we do about building, making, and medicine. Isn’t it likely that they know something of politics as well? We don’t have to actually do what they say, but it might be useful for us to hear it before we make any final or irrevocable decisions.”
Mostly what Eurydice wanted was to buy some time so that tempers could cool. “I suggest that things like trials for treason against Athens, Macedonia or the treaty be put off until the ship arrives and we have a chance to talk to the ship people.”
That produced even more argument from everyone, especially Xander, who still wanted to arrest her and force her to declare his father regent of the empire. Eventually, everyone ran out of energy, and since no one was willing to give ground on any of the complex issues of state, they put them off until the Queen of the Sea arrived.
Queen of the Sea, Piraeus, port of Athens
June 9
After staying two weeks in Alexandria, the Queen resumed its schedule, heading for Athens. On arrival, they found the city waiting for their pronouncements on government.
Lars Floden watched the ship’s boat head in to pick up the delegation, which included Polyperchon, whom they had missed on their stop at Amphipolis. He’d apparently been visiting Aegae, the historical capital of Macedonia. Lars suspected it was because he didn’t want to meet the ship people, but Polyperchon had to respond to what Eurydice had done here in Athens. The extra time the Queen had spent in Alexandria meant that Polyperchon had the time to get here.
Lars was looking forward to meeting the young firebrand who was married to Philip III. The boat was getting close. Lars got up and headed to the Royal Lounge. Never before The Event had its name rung so true as it did nowadays.
☆ ☆ ☆
“Welcome to the Queen of the Sea,” Lars said when the delegation arrived. They filled all the elevators near the boarding area. Philip and Eurydice required one to themselves because Philip didn’t like being too close to people. But now that they were in the lounge, Philip was the one who was handling the ship best. The rest were gawking at the LED lights, the screens, large glass windows, the leather chairs with rollers, and the hard plastic tables. But Philip, while examining everything with undisguised curiosity, wasn’t at all concerned or overwhelmed.
“Take your seats please and we can get started,” Lars said.
There were place cards arranged around the oval table. Pencils and tablets of paper as well. There was some confusion as Phocion and Agnonides realized they were seated next to each other.
Marie Easley was seated at one end of the table, with Roxane on her right and Eurydice on her left. Alexander IV was next to Roxane in a high chair and Philip was next to Eurydice. The Athenians were on Eurydice’s side of the table and the Macedonians were on Roxane’s. At the other end, Lars took his seat and Staff Captain Dahl took his, along with Jane Carruthers.
Lars Floden found himself wishing that President Allen Wiley were here.
He waved at Marie. She nodded and started to speak. “I have looked over the treaty by which the League of Greek States was formed. It is binding on all the Greek states, and places the head of government firmly in the hands of the Argead dynasty. However, it doesn’t authorize the actions that Antipater took at the end of the Lamian war. The garrison should be removed from Athens.”
“That garrison was placed in response to Athens and the rest of their allies breaching the oath,” Polyperchon said. “Antipater was the deputy hegemon of the league. He had full authority to punish the oath breakers. When and whether to remove them is a decision for the government of Macedonia.”
Thereby, Lars thought, proving that his freeing of the Greek states was a political move in that other history.
“He had the right to make them stop,” Marie said. “He didn’t have a right to overturn their government. In fact, the very same oath forbade him from doing so.”
“Ha! So we are not bound by Antipater’s ruling,” Agnonides crowed.
Lars noted that the always dour Phocion was looking even more sour than usual.
“Have a care,” Marie said. “Just because I say it, that doesn’t mean that the generals will abide by it. Even if they do, you could set in motion your own execution. In the history that led to my world, you managed to get Phocion executed. After you got the mob to condemn Phocion, they regretted it and condemned you.” Then she gave a small shrug, dismissing the fate of both Phocion and Agnonides as matters of little import. “But that is not truly the problem. Between them, Philip II and Alexander the Great carved out an empire, but they didn’t develop the techniques to administer it.”
“That was why Alexander was adopting Persian customs,” Roxane said. “He knew that the Greek customs were not suited for empire.”
Polyperchon and Agnonides both expressed derision at that. Then looked at each other in consternation.
So it went. They broke some hours later and while Agnonides went to the casino and the rest of the delegates went to their own pursuits, Roxane and Marie Easley took Eurydice and Philip to visit the ship’s doctor.
☆ ☆ ☆
Dr. Laura Miles was still alive and almost shocked to be so. The locals in Trinidad knew of a plant that thinned the blood. It was considered a poison and it had some unfortunate side ef
fects, but it was working, so far, to keep Laura from dying. She’d read everything she could find on autism spectrum disorders and their treatments. Partly that was just a good doctor, concerned about the welfare of an expected patient, but in large part it was a politically motivated move. She knew perfectly well that if they managed to help Philip, they would have proven the efficacy of their treatments to this part of the world.
“The famous treatment,” she explained, “was developed by Temple Grandin, who herself suffered from spectrum disorders. And it’s only a treatment, not a cure. It seems there are two kinds of touches, soft touch and more firm touches…”
Laura made sure she was talking to Philip, who didn’t look at her, but everywhere else in the room. Knowing that was one of the symptoms that was sometimes present in spectrum disorder patients, she didn’t take offense or assume that because he wasn’t looking at her he wasn’t paying attention. She was especially heartened that he jerked his head in understanding when she talked about the kinds of touch.
Laura showed him the rig they had set up. “You control it by use of the rope. You can pull it tight or open it up.” She demonstrated by using the rope, and again got that jerky nod not looking at her.
Philip climbed in, pulled the rope hard, and held it. He stayed that way for a while. After about twenty seconds, which—surprising as it may seem—is a good long while when you stand around and watch nothing much happening, he said, “It helps.”
He got out of the device and Eurydice reached out. Philip flinched away.
“It won’t happen all at once, girl,” Laura said in very broken Greek. “Give it time. There are drugs we may be able to use to reduce his anxiety, and that may help. But it’s going to take a while.”
☆ ☆ ☆
Marie Easley and Roxane, Eurydice, Phocion, Polyperchon and Agnonides first worked out a temporary settlement for the city of Athens. The garrison would stay, for now at least. At the same time Athens’ original constitution would be restored and the citizens who had lost their franchise would have it returned to them. However, they agreed that any death sentences the assembly decreed would need to be endorsed by the garrison commander, Xander, son of Polyperchon, before taking effect.