Fire From Heaven by Mary Renault

cheerful. He had waited in dread, at first, for her to come with her midnight torch, and fetch him to the Hekate shrine. She had never yet bade him call down a curse himself upon his father; the night they went to the tomb, he had only had to hold things and stand by.
    Time passed; it was clearly no such thing; at last he even questioned her. She smiled, the subtle shadows curving under her cheekbones. He should know in good time, and it would surprise him. It was a service she had vowed to Dionysos; she promised he should be there. His spirits lightened. It must be the dancing for the god. These last two years she had been saying he was too old for women’s mysteries. He was eight now. It had been bitter to think that Kleopatra would soon go with her instead.
    Like the King, she gave audience to many foreign guests. Aristodemos the tragedian had come not to perform, but as a diplomat, a role often entrusted to well-known actors; he was arranging ransoms for Athenians taken at Olynthos. A slender elegant man, he managed his voice like a polished flute; one could almost see him caress it. Alexander admired the good sense of his mother’s questions about the theatre. Later she received Neoptolemos of Skyros, a protagonist even more distinguished, who was rehearsing for The Bachkai, playing the god. This time, the boy was absent.
    He would not have known his mother was working magic, if he had not heard her through the door one day. Though the wood was thick, he caught some of the incantation. It was one he did not know, about killing a lion on the mountain; but the meaning was always the same. So he went away without knocking.
    It was Phoinix who roused him at dawn to see the play. He was too young for the chairs of honour; he would sit with his father when he came of age. He had asked his mother if he could sit with her, as he had done till only last year; but she said she would not be watching, she had other business then. He must tell her afterwards how he had liked it.
    He loved the theatre; waking to a treat which would begin at once; the sweet morning smells, dew-laid dust, grass and herbs bruised by many feet, the smoke of the early workers’ torches just quenched at daybreak; people clambering down the tiers, the deep buzz of the soldiers and peasants up at the top, the fuss with cushions and rugs down among the seats of honour, the chatter from the women’s block; then suddenly the first notes of the flute, all other sound dying but the morning bird-song.
    The play began eerily in the dawn-dusk; the god, masked as a beautiful fair-haired youth, saluting the fire on his mother’s tomb, and planning revenge on the Theban King who scorned his rites. His young voice, the boy perceived, was being skilfully done by a man; his maenads had flat breasts, and cool boys’ voices; but, this knowledge once stored away, he gave himself to the illusion.
    Dark-haired young Pentheus spoke wickedly of the maenads and their rites. The god was bound to kill him. Several friends had described the plot beforehand. Pentheus’ death was the most dreadful one could conceive; but Phoinix had promised one did not see it.
    While the blind prophet rebuked the King, Phoinix whispered that this old voice from the mask was the same actor’s who played the youthful god; such was the tragedian’s art. When Pentheus had died offstage, this actor too would change masks, and enact the mad queen Agave.
    Imprisoned by the King, the god broke out with fire and earthquake; the effects, set up by Athenian craftsmen, entranced the boy. Pentheu?s, defying miracles, infatuate for doom, still rejected the divinity. His last chance gone, Dionysos wound him in deadly magic and stole his wits away. He saw two suns in the sky; thought he could move mountains; yet let the mocking god disguise him absurdly as a woman, to spy on the maenad rites. The boy joined in the laughter whose edge was sharpened by the sense of terrors to come.
    The King went off to his