The Conqueror's Wife

by Stephanie Thornton

  Olympias’ lips thinned into a tight smile. “How benevolent of you.”

  “I forbid it, Mother.”

  “Of course, my son,” Olympias said. “I shall do whatever you deem necessary, yet surely it is far from wise to allow your closest rival and his mother to prosper under your roof.”

  “There is no need to harm a child and his mother, her breasts still heavy with milk,” Alexander said, his voice hard as stone. “That is my final decision in the matter, Mother.”

  I shuddered, chilled to the marrow of my bones at Olympias’ suggestion. I wondered then what she would have done had I been born a boy, a threat to Alexander’s place as Macedon’s heir. Would my name have been whispered along with insinuations of murder before I was old enough to toddle and talk?

  For once, I was glad I was merely the worthless daughter of my father’s third wife.

  • • •

  I stood behind Arrhidaeus in the funeral ekphora as my father’s court gathered in the main courtyard that night. Slaves bearing golden spears and arrows, ivory-studded armor, and silver shields emblazoned with Macedon’s star would carry my father’s final treasures to surround his golden larnax before his bones and ashes were forever locked in his tomb, its frescoes of Hades’ abduction of Persephone still damp to the touch. My father’s wives were draped in linens dyed with black oak apple and carried an assortment of golden urns, bronze pouring kraters, and a gilded Medusa head to protect the grave goods from robbers. It was only later that I realized two of the wives were missing from the flock of perfumed black women honking their noses into their sleeves.

  Alexander lit a torch that illuminated our father’s body, wrapped in fine linen and crowned with a golden diadem of acorns and laurel leaves. My father had been gruff and sometimes even cruel in life, but my throat felt raw as I tried to swallow, remembering the man who had gifted me with a pony and a wooden sword, reenacted the battle of Thessaly from the day of my birth, and taught me to parry his blows with Alexander’s cast-off toy shield. I’d failed with the sword and shield, but the pony and I had become inseparable, the first in my little menagerie.

  Next to me, Arrhidaeus began to whimper and the sounds quickly turned to ragged sobs. “I don’t want Father to be dead,” he whined. “And I don’t want him in the fire or alone in the dark.”

  Alexander glanced back at us with irritation, but it was Hephaestion who approached, carrying a torch to cast us in light stolen from the sun.

  “How are you faring, Arrhidaeus?” he asked.

  “It’s dark and our father is about to be burned and buried,” I muttered under my breath. “How do you think he fares?”

  Arrhidaeus cried louder, like a puppy being whipped.

  “He should remain here,” I said. “I’ll stay with him.”

  Hephaestion shook his head. “Philip was your father too. You follow Alexander and I’ll take care of Arrhidaeus. Maybe you can beat me at the discus again, eh, Arrhidaeus?”

  If there was anyone who could best Hephaestion at discus throwing, it was Arrhidaeus, but even that didn’t soothe my brother’s sobs.

  “You go,” I said to Hephaestion, then tugged on Arrhidaeus’ hand. “Let’s see if we can teach my goat, Pan, to carry our new tortoise on her head like a helmet.”

  “A tortoise helmet?” Arrhidaeus said, rubbing his nose and leaving behind a trail of glistening snot. “That’s silly, Nike.”

  Hephaestion winked at me. “If it works, perhaps I’ll ask Alexander to commission tortoise helmets for the entire army.”

  Arrhidaeus’ crying eased enough for me to lead him away from the entourage with its flaming torches that would soon light my father’s pyra, but my cheeks flushed as I glanced back in time to see Hephaestion offer me a little bow.

  Arrhidaeus and I had scarcely entered the palace corridors, freshly scrubbed with seawater and hyssop to purify them of my father’s death, when I plunged my brother into a hell worse than any tomb.

  It started with a baby’s cry and a woman’s unceasing scream.

  And the smell of fire.

  Lit by the sickle moon, a burgeoning flag of colorless smoke billowed from above the nursery roof. Still holding my brother’s hand, I ran toward the nursery, but the plumes now swelled skyward from the children’s small tiled courtyard, with the fountain I loved to run through and the wicker cages of doves that pecked delicately at the sesame seeds I brought them. I reared back to see a pyra burning amid the juniper bushes and potted lemon trees.

  And within the pyra, a woman I knew, in a blue peplos I knew, bound arms curved around a bundle I knew. Only now her violet perfume was gone in a cloud of embers as she writhed and screamed.

  Bile rose in my throat as the breeze tossed the scent of burning flesh and cedar into the wine-dark heavens. The heat of the fire pushed me back and Eurydice’s screams and her son’s cries fell silent, replaced by the greedy crackle of flames and Arrhidaeus’ renewed howls.

  Olympias stood before the conflagration, wearing an expression of ecstasy as shadow-flames danced on her face and her golden snake bracelets seemed to writhe up her arms. I choked and clamped my eyes closed, wishing I could unsee the image seared into my mind.

  And I knew then that my father was right, that Olympias was worse than any viper.

  “No,” Arrhidaeus shouted. “No, no, no!”

  “Remove Arrhidaeus to his rooms,” Olympias commanded. I opened my eyes as guards stepped from the shadows and pulled Arrhidaeus back from the makeshift pyra even as he reached out as if to rescue the bodies from the flames. I ducked my head and turned to follow, my lungs screaming as I tried not to breathe, but Olympias’ voice stopped me cold. “You shall stay by my side, Thessalonike.” I cringed, my every muscle trembling as if Poseidon shook the ground beneath my feet. “One day you may be queen of Thessaly or Illyria or even Sparta, and this”—she gestured toward the pyra—“is a lesson all queens must learn.”

  I had no choice but to obey, yet I set my gaze beyond the fire with its hisses and smell of Hades’ brimstone and desolation, trying desperately to ignore the blackened silhouettes—one tall and one so very tiny—in the middle of the flames. I’d harbored no love for Eurydice, but surely she hadn’t deserved to die. And her tiny son . . .

  “Eurydice was a traitor,” Olympias said, as if reading my thoughts. “And traitors must die terrible deaths. Remember that, if ever you are tempted toward leniency for your enemies.”

  “But Eurydice only wanted what you wanted,” I choked out, shocked at my own daring and stupidity. “To put her son on the throne.”

  “Perhaps,” Olympias said. “And for that, I gave her the mercy of dousing the wood with olive oil.”

  I was saved from having to speak, or perhaps from having my tongue chopped out, as Alexander barreled into the courtyard behind me, the disbelief on his face warped first by shock and then by rage. His wild eyes scanned the fire and he recoiled; then he drew his sword and pointed its tip at Olympias’ throat. “You’ve overstepped yourself, Mother!”

  “You are supposed to be at your father’s tomb,” Olympias said. She tilted her chin back as if daring him to slit her pale throat. “This was to be done and the ashes swept away before you returned.”

  “I forbade this!” he yelled, motioning at the pyra. “Eurydice and her son were as harmless as Arrhidaeus!”

  My mouth went dry and it became impossible to swallow around what might have been shards of glass embedded in my throat. Arrhidaeus shared my father’s blood, but he was simple and illegitimate, surely no threat to Olympias or Alexander.

  “You’re too soft, son of mine.” She spoke calmly, her voice almost drowned out by the crackling flames. “Eurydice was an ambitious bitch, and would have used her son to garner support against you and steal your father’s throne. This is my gift to you, Alexander. It is my name that shall be blackened with their deaths, not you
rs.”

  Alexander seemed to hesitate, then growled deep in his throat and lowered his sword so fast that it clanged against the tiles. “If you dare touch Arrhidaeus, I swear I’ll build your pyra with my own hands.”

  Olympias gave an elegant shrug, her copper hair still catching the light of the dying fire. “His mind and his bastard birth preclude his being a competitor for your throne. Keep him alive if you will.” I sagged with relief, but her next words stopped my heart. “My brother, Alexander of Molossia, has turned tail and run back to Epirus, but what shall you do with Amyntas? As Cynnane’s husband, he might set his sights on your throne. You still have the army to persuade—”

  “The army is mine, for Antipater has sworn to throw his weight behind me. The men will do as their general commands.”

  Olympias thrummed her fingers against her arm. “Antipater was always your father’s dog. I’m glad to see he shall be yours to command now. And Amyntas?”

  “He fell on his sword this night,” Alexander said.

  “At your request?”

  “Yes.”

  The world went cold then, that my golden brother had widowed brave, beautiful Cynnane with a mere command. My fear and revulsion ripened, expanding in the night air until I thought I would choke on it.

  Olympias smiled, an expression more fearful than if she’d ranted or raged. “Good boy. You learn quickly.”

  But Alexander only glowered at his mother. “I’ll have your word right now that neither Cynnane nor her daughter shall share Eurydice’s fate.”

  “Of course,” Olympias answered, as if granting a trinket. “Cynnane was a lucky woman to marry such a wise man as Amyntas. We must assure that she and her daughter are provided for.”

  A strangled cry of outrage escaped from my throat and drew Alexander’s and Olympias’ attention. “Thessalonike,” Olympias said, in a voice I knew too well from all the times she’d caught me in the cellars, my cheeks stuffed with dried figs. “Return to the nursery. You shall not speak of what you’ve seen here.”

  I nodded and turned to run as fast as my feet would carry me, but Alexander caught me by the hand. “Don’t touch me,” I hissed. I withdrew my hand in disgust and then I ran—away from them and the heat of the fire, from Eurydice’s shade and that of her son, back to my goat and my tortoise and my gentle brother, whose sobs still echoed down the hallways.

  And I swore a solemn vow to myself that if Olympias was right and this was what it meant to be queen, I’d never allow the golden diadem to touch my head.

  Lest I become a monster like her.

  • • •

  A letter came a few days later, on the morning my brother took control of the army. A dust-laden messenger launched himself from his nut-brown horse with a flourish, but it seemed only I noticed him, what with all eyes fixed on my brother and the aging general at his side. I still felt nauseated every time I looked at Alexander or Olympias and had set my eyes on everything except them to avoid the remembrance of the fire in the courtyard, the smell of roasting flesh, and the treachery that had shattered my innocence.

  Antipater of Macedon, my father’s dog and a general whose many years and battles meant that his unfashionable beard was more frost than ash, had just finished a speech urging the army to love Alexander as they had our father. Alexander stood before them dressed in full battle armor: a leather cuirass on his chest, his fair hair hidden beneath a bronze helmet topped with eagle feathers and crowned by a gold sphinx, and his shoulders draped with a lion skin as his ancestor Heracles had once worn. It was Olympias who stepped forward to relieve the rider of his message as Alexander spoke to his men, something about spreading our father’s legacy and the might of Macedon across the craggy mountains and beyond the churning seas. I listened with half an ear while Olympias scanned the paper. A slight smile tugged at her lips as she took her place among the women and children once again.

  And then she beckoned to me.

  I hesitated before wading past Arrhidaeus and the remainder of my father’s wives (all of whom sat as far from Olympias as decorum allowed), ignoring their pinched lips and pale faces.

  “The homeland of your mother revolts again,” Olympias said. “Its armies move against my son.”

  I wiped my suddenly sweaty palms on my chiton. Surely Olympias wouldn’t hold me responsible for a rebellion in a land I’d never seen, even if I did share its name. My mother had looked upon me in my cradle from her deathbed and claimed that I was as strong as the Aegean waves that crashed on the rocks below her childhood home in Thessaly. Yet I was born on the day my father’s men conquered her homeland at the Battle of Crocus Field, and so he had decreed my name should be Thessalonike: Victory in Thessaly. Now the Thessalians revolted again, and I wished I knew some good words to curse them with. Too bad I refused to speak to Alexander or he might have taught me some.

  Then Olympias smiled, a gesture that might have frozen the sun. She didn’t offer any explanation, only watched as Alexander led his men in the ceremonial march between the two severed halves of a recently sacrificed dog, its red and purple entrails spilling from the furry brown body. I looked away, recognizing the poor beast as one my orange tom had often taunted, my eyes stinging at the thought that the poor animal had been wagging its tail and eating a fine feast of minced liver only this morning. The army would be purified once the cavalry and infantry had passed between the sanctified dog as decreed by the oracles, and Alexander would officially take his place as their commander.

  And then I knew why Olympias smiled so.

  “Alexander will lead the army against Thessaly, won’t he?” I asked.

  She didn’t glance at me, only nodded. “And he will rout them.”

  I’d sought to curse the Thessalians mere moments ago, but I felt only one thing for them as the army raised swords, banging on their glaring sun shields and cheering their acceptance of my brother.

  Pity.

  • • •

  Regret and relief roiled deep in my belly as I watched Alexander leave our city, a golden lion at the front of a long line of shield bearers and foot companions, all dressed in greaves and leather breastplates, carrying lances and Macedonian sarissas, those deadly pikes made of sturdy cornel wood and tipped with iron that could pierce through the strongest cuirass. Their shields were freshly stamped with my brother’s newly claimed symbol: a sixteen-pointed star, one spoke for each of the twelve gods of Olympus and the four seasons, as if Alexander planned to harness all of those mighty powers. Alexander rode his black horse, Bucephalus, an untamed beast whelped in Hephaestus’ fiery forges that he’d broken as a young man and since taught to kneel in full armor, and the crowds threw fragrant jasmine petals into the air and chanted his name. And my golden brother threw back his head and laughed, a glorious sound that made the crowd cheer louder.

  “I love Alexander,” Arrhidaeus said next to me, grinning his lopsided grin. He’d lost weight since the night in the courtyard and I’d had to give him my three-legged tortoise to coax a smile out of him, but now the parade distracted him and he clapped his hands. “Everyone else does too.”

  I watched as Alexander threw his fist into the air, prompting a deafening cheer. It seemed Arrhidaeus was right; the army cared little for the recent murders and not even Achilles and Heracles could have looked more glorious as they strode into battle. A shudder passed through my bones as I remembered the way those brave heroes had perished. Only the gods knew whether my brother would follow in their footsteps, and I was ashamed to feel myself softening toward him, knowing as I did what horrors he’d sanctioned for his throne.

  I longed to leave Aigai, to climb Egypt’s ancient pyramids and gape at Persia’s renowned Ishtar Gate, as Alexander claimed he would on this conquest, yet I could never leave Arrhidaeus. And a girl could never travel with the army, although I’d heard stories that King Darius of Persia kept his entire family with him when campaigning
.

  Alexander met my gaze and grinned, then beckoned to his newly appointed bodyguard: Hephaestion. My brother riffled in his saddlebags and pressed something into his friend’s hand, winking at me before turning away. Hephaestion guided his horse toward the shaded dais where I sat with the royal family.

  “A gift for Thessalonike,” Hephaestion said. His slow smile was the one I’d seen prompt giggles from both the kitchen slaves and the stableboys, but I sensed he was laughing at me as he pressed the bulky package into my hands.

  I looked down to see my eldest brother’s dog-eared copy of Homer’s Song of Ilium. I wrinkled my nose, prompting a laugh from Hephaestion.

  “Surely my brother cannot bear to part with his precious book,” I said, holding the thing like a dead rat. I much preferred The Odyssey, with its tales of adventure and exploration.

  “Alexander sleeps with that poem. It’s dearer to him than almost anything.” Hephaestion winked at me. “Except me, of course. Your brother bids you keep it safe for him; he shall order Aristotle to send him another copy,” Hephaestion continued. “He wishes you well versed in the accomplishments of the great heroes, for he claims he will one day rival even Achilles.”

  “Something about animals would have been more interesting,” I grumbled. Maybe something on snakes or dogs. I’d already read Aristotle’s ideas in the History of Animals. I’d taken to heart his suggestion to crack open chicken eggs at regular intervals in order to observe the generation of organs like the lungs and the brain, a practice that had earned me a round scolding from the cook and a lecture about how only uncivilized barbaroi would keep fertilized eggs in their kitchens. I wondered if perhaps Aristotle had penned a manual on spear throwing or how to wield a sword, both skills that seemed suddenly practical in this upside-down world I now lived in.

  “I had a feeling you’d turn your nose up at Homer, so I brought something else.” Hephaestion laughed again and tweaked my ear, revealing a lumpy burlap bag in his palm. I tore it open greedily, my bruised heart expanding at the honey cakes inside. “And you, little lioness, shall be full-grown when we see you again. Shall you honor Aphrodite with your beauty then or Athena with your wisdom? Perhaps Artemis, lover of animals?”