Chapter 17
Drowning: All my life, I have known few fears—Father, certainly; failure, absolutely.
And water—an apprehension rendered more realistic after I nearly caught my death of cold in the Cydnus River. I was saved then from my convulsive fever by my personal physician, Philip, who prepared a purgative that I drank as I handed him a note—given me by Parmenion—saying that the draft was poisoned.
You see, I didn’t think Philip was capable of betraying me—or that I would die that way, in any event. Or perhaps I merely had the invincibility of youth.
Age, however, knows that you cannot escape what is meant for you. Try to outmaneuver it, and it will hunt you down in unexpected ways. For here I was—I, who had conquered an entire empire by land, even taking Tyre from a causeway—drowning
