Read Alexander: Child of a Dream for Free Online Page A

it’s your turn to kick.
If you don’t catch it I get a point and I get to kick again. Understand?’
Alexander nodded in agreement and they started playing; soon the courtyard was filled with their shouting. They only stopped when they were dead tired and dripping with sweat.
‘Do you live here?’ Hephaestion asked as he sat on the ground.
Alexander sat down beside him. ‘Of course. This is my palace.’
‘Don’t tell tales. You’re too little to have a palace this big.’
The palace is mine because it belongs to my father King
Philip.’
‘By Zeus!’ exclaimed Hephaestion, waving his right hand in a gesture of amazement.
‘Do you want to be friends?’
‘Of course, but to become friends we have to exchange some token of friendship.’
‘What’s a token of friendship?’
‘I give you something and you give me another thing in exchange.’
Hephaestion rooted in his pocket and pulled out a small white object.
‘Gosh! A tooth!’
‘Yes,’ whistled Hephaestion through the gap where one of his front teeth had been. ‘It fell out a few nights ago and I almost swallowed it. Here it’s
yours.’
Alexander took it and immediately felt at a loss because he had nothing to give in exchange. He fumbled in his pockets while Hephaestion stood there in front of him holding his hand out in expectation.
Alexander, finding himself completely lacking in a gift of equal significance, gave a deep sigh, gulped, and then put his fingers into his mouth and took hold of a tooth that had been wobbling for some days but which was still quite solid.
He began to rock it backwards and forwards, pushing and pulling hard and holding back tears of pain until it finally came
     
out. He spat out a gob of blood, washed the tooth in the drinking-water fountain and handed it to Hephaestion. ‘There you are,’ he mumbled. ‘Now we’re friends.’ ‘Until death?’ asked Hephaestion, pocketing his token. ‘Until death,’ replied Alexander.
Summer was already coming to an end when Olympias told her son that there was to be a visit from his uncle, Alexander of Epirus.
He knew he had an uncle his
mother’s younger brother -and he knew that they shared the same name. But even though Alexander had seen his uncle on previous occasions, he had no real recollection of him because he had been so young.
Prince Alexander saw his namesake arrive on horseback one evening, accompanied by his escort and his tutors.
He was a handsome boy of twelve with dark hair and deep blue eyes; he carried all the trappings of his dignified rank: a ribbon of gold around his hair, a purple cloak and in his right hand an ivory sceptre, because he too was a king, albeit a young one and of a country that was all mountains.
‘Look!’ exclaimed Alexander, turning to Hephaestion who was sitting next to him with his legs dangling over the balcony. ‘That’s my uncle, Alexander. He has the same name as me and he’s a king too, did you know that?’
‘King of what?’ asked his friend, swinging his legs.
‘King of the Molossians.’
He was still speaking when Artemisia grabbed him from behind. ‘Come here! You have to get ready now to meet your uncle.’
Alexander kicked his legs because he didn’t want to leave Hephaestion, but Artemisia carried him bodily to his mother’s bath chamber where she undressed him, washed his face, made him put on a tunic and a Macedonian cloak trimmed in gold, put a ribbon of silver around his head and then stood him up on a chair to admire him. ‘Come on, little King. Your mother’s waiting for you.’
She led him to the royal antechamber where Queen Olympias was waiting, already dressed and perfumed and with her hair arranged. She was stunning: her black eyes contrasted with her flame-coloured hair and the long blue stole embroidered with golden palmettes along the edges covered a chiton tunic in the Athenian style, slightly low-cut and held up on her shoulders with a thin cord, the same colour as the stole.
Her cleavage, which the