"Mary Renault - Greece 8 - Funeral Games" - читать интересную книгу автора (Renault Mary)

moistly on the tablet he was fair-copying; he plunged it back into the
cold-water tub where his clerk had left it, with the other drafts, to keep the
surface set. Local scribes used wet clay; but that would have set hard before
one could revise on it. For the third time he went to the doorway, seeking a
slave to pull the punkah cord. Once again the dim hushed noises-soft feet,
soft voices furtive or awed or grieving-sent him back behind the drawn
door-curtain to his listless task. To clap the hands, to call, to shout an
order, were all unthinkable. He had not sought his clerk, a garrulous man;
but he could have done with the silent slave and the waft of the punkah. He
scanned the unfinished scroll pinned to his writing-board. It was twenty years
since he had written with his own hand any letter not of high secrecy; why now
was he writing one that would never go, short of a miracle? There had been
many miracles; but, surely, not now. It was something to do, it shut out the
unknown future. Sitting down again he retrieved the tablet, propped it, dried
his hand on the towel the clerk had left, and picked up his pen. And the
ships commanded by Niarchos will muster at the river-mouth, where I shall
review them while Perdikkas is bringing the army down from Babylon; and
sacrifices will be made there to the appropriate gods. I shall then take
command of the land force and begin the march to the west. The first
stage... When he was five, before he'd been taught to write, he came to me in
the King's business room. "What's that, Eumenes?" "A letter." "What's the
first word that you've written big?" "Your father's name PHILIP, king of the
Macedonians. Now I'm busy, run back to your play." "Make me my name. Do, dear
Eumenes. Please." I gave it him written, on the back of a spoiled despatch.
Next day he'd learned it, and carved it all over the wax for a royal letter to
Kersobleptes of Thrace. He had my ruler across his palm... Because of the
heat he had left open his massive door. A brisk stride, half hushed like all
other sounds, approached it. Ptolemy pushed aside the curtain and drew it to
behind him. His craggy war-weathered face was creased with fatigue; he had
been up all night, without the stimulus of action. He was forty-three, and
looked older. Eumenes waited, wordlessly. "He has given his ring to
Perdikkas," Ptolemy said. There was a pause. Eumenes' alert Greek face-not a
bookish one, he had had his share of soldiering- searched the impassive
Macedonian's. "For what? As deputy? Or as Regent?" "Since he could not
speak," said Ptolemy drily, "we shall never know." "If he has accepted
death," Eumenes reasoned, "we may presume the second. If not...?" "It's all
one, now. He neither sees nor hears. He is in the death-sleep." "Do not be
sure. I have heard of men who were thought already dead, and who said later
 Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html



that they heard everything." Ptolemy suppressed an impatient gesture. These
wordy Greeks. Or what is he afraid of? "I came because you and I have known
him since he was born. Don't you want to be there?" "Do the Macedonians want
me there?" An ancient bitterness pinched, for a moment, Eumenes' mouth. "Oh,
come. Everyone trusts you. We shall need you before long." Slowly the
Secretary began to put his desk in order. He said, wiping his pen, "And
nothing, to the last, about an heir?" "Perdikkas asked him, while he could
still get a whisper out. He only said, 'To the best man. Hoti to