The Conqueror's Wife

by Stephanie Thornton

  I found him standing at the start of the narrow causeway that was the ruined mole, the wreckage from the siege towers still floating in the turquoise waves like detritus after a storm. The Macedonians labored to lash two ships together with a massive battering ram atop their decks. Only two days ago, I might have marveled at the ingenuity of the Greeks in the face of such a terrible setback as the fireship, but now I only shoved past Alexander’s assembled onlookers.

  He looked surprised at my approach and some part of my mind noted Hephaestion sitting on a crate next to his friend, his eyes bloodshot and both of their faces covered in several days’ worth of stubble. I felt as terrible as they looked and collapsed in a heap at Alexander’s feet, too exhausted to remain upright any longer.

  “Alexander of Macedon,” I murmured, my throat raw. “I bear unfortunate news from the tent of Queen Stateira.”

  To my surprise, Alexander knelt beside me and his assembled Companions drew back like a wave, granting the illusion of privacy. “What has happened?” he asked.

  “Queen Stateira is dead,” I said, wiping away the sudden deluge of tears with the back of my hand, the same hand that still ached from being crushed during the labor pangs.

  “How can that be?”

  “She delivered a child this morning—a stillborn son.” I forced myself to stop and draw a deep breath. “She didn’t survive the ordeal.”

  Alexander stared at me with such distress that I might have told him of his own mother’s death. He hadn’t known of my mother’s pregnancy or that he harbored Darius’ potential heir in his own camp. Now he was spared from having to decide what to do with the child, although my sister and I had been served a double portion of grief. “You and your family have my deepest condolences,” he said in a tone that sounded genuine.

  My gratitude for his sincerity was quickly replaced by anger as I realized he was likely only relieved that he hadn’t been forced to kill the child.

  I struggled to my feet, ignoring his proffered hand. “Thank you,” I said, remembering the other reason I’d sought him out. “My mother and brother must be exposed before the sun sets. You’ve taken Old Tyre; the city’s tallest building is its Tower of Silence for the dead.” And within the tower were the long-legged vultures that would purify their bodies, along with the deep dry well where their bones would be laid to rest. I only hoped a four-eyed dog could be found somewhere in Tyre’s alleys to help guide them to the afterlife.

  But Alexander recoiled and dropped my hand. “Exposure is a barbaric practice. Your mother shall have a funeral and burial befitting her rank as Persia’s Queen of Queens. I myself shall make a sacrifice to the gods on her behalf. I will not let it be said that I allowed vultures to tear the flesh from her bones. For to do so would be a crime.”

  I stepped closer, my palms balled into savage fists. “All of Persia’s kings going back to Cyrus the Great have been exposed in a Tower of Silence. Would you deny my mother the final rites that will see her soul to paradise?”

  “I would indeed—,” Alexander began, but Hephaestion cleared his throat.

  “The Tower of Silence still stands in the northern district of Old Tyre, despite the heavy bombardment the city received in that area,” he said, leaning forward to rest his thick forearms on his knees. He exchanged a silent conversation with Alexander, although I couldn’t quite decipher its meaning. I felt a pang of jealousy, wishing there were someone with whom I might share a bond stronger than words. “Perhaps that is a sign that Queen Stateira was meant to be taken there.”

  A pulse ticked in Alexander’s jaw and I expected him to lambaste Hephaestion, but instead he gave a slow nod, his face softening and the angry pulse calming. “Fine,” he said to me. “Take your mother to the Tower of Silence and let the remaining vultures do as they will.”

  “Thank you,” I said, not understanding his change of opinion but too weary to question it. “And will you arrange for a herald to carry the news to my father?”

  “I shall inform Darius of the passing of his queen when I deliver the answer to his latest ransom demands.”

  “The ransom that you denied and then lied about to your advisers?” Now hardly seemed the time to discuss the release of my family, but I wanted nothing more than to leave this place, to escape to the mountains and valleys where our family had been together. Yet my family would never be together again.

  “Drypetis has just lost her mother,” Hephaestion interrupted, standing and clapping a hand on Alexander’s shoulder. “Surely this discussion can wait.”

  “Of course,” Alexander said. “We shall sort out the rest of this sordid business after Tyre has fallen.”

  “After Tyre has fallen?” I echoed. “When shall that be?”

  “Weeks, perhaps months.” He snapped his fingers and his Companions parted to allow a graceful young boy to pass in a cloud of myrrh perfume, bedecked in an immaculate white Persian robe and finely wrought golden bangles. My jaw fell at the realization that my father had dared part with Bagoas, his favorite eunuch, whom my mother had never decided whether to love or loathe, so often had he supplanted her in my father’s bed. “In the meantime,” Alexander said, “I hope you will welcome your father’s messenger back into your family’s service. Your mother was a noble queen,” he said. “May Charon carry her easily over the river Styx.”

  Bagoas bowed to me, and I noted the way Alexander followed his every elegant movement and how Hephaestion frowned. My heart thudded as I realized the true gift Alexander had just placed in my hands.

  My head spinning, I beckoned Bagoas to follow me and wound my way back toward my mother’s tent, where my words would be drowned out by the servants’ mournful wails.

  “You must carry a message to my father,” I whispered in Bagoas’ ear. He was scarcely older than twelve summers, dark and lithe with skin like a lustrous pearl. “Tell him of my mother’s passing and the games Alexander plays with the ransom demands. Tell him how many soldiers the yona takabara has and how the siege of Tyre is draining his food supplies.”

  Bagoas stepped back and pushed the dark curls from his face. It seemed unfair that even this boy was prettier than me with his dark eyes like polished river stones and lashes like a camel’s. “But your father commanded me to stay until Alexander answered his offer of ransom.”

  “You heard Alexander,” I said. “That could be months from now, if ever. You must go and tell him to ride against Alexander, to rout these Greeks and free us. Please,” I said, clutching his delicate wrist. “Take one of the horses after dark and don’t stop until you find him.”

  “I shall serve the house of Darius in this,” he said. “I will not fail.”

  “Thank you.” I pressed my forehead to his. “Travel well, and fast.”

  And thus, I put my last hope in the hands of a smooth-faced eunuch. I only prayed that Bagoas would reach my father before Alexander discovered my trickery.

  • • •

  We carried the bier of my mother and tiny brother through Old Tyre’s deserted streets just before the sun fell that day, our footsteps echoing off the walls of abandoned homes and granaries, and accompanied by the steady thuds of Alexander’s ballistae as the Macedonians hurled rocks at New Tyre’s sturdy battlements. The Tyrians were fresh out of ships, but they had hung thick leather skins stuffed with fresh seaweed along their walls to cushion the blows and continued to drop stones upon Alexander’s foundering battering ships, which swayed in the choppy seas. Alexander had ordered every spare man not at work repairing the causeway or manning the battering ships to attend the funeral procession, an honor my mother surely would have remarked upon if she’d been here.

  Yet I thought only of the five days yet to come, calculating how far Bagoas would need to ride each day to reach my father in the east.

  The fight for Tyre became more apparent as we approached the northern section of town, its buildings bearing gapin
g holes left from Alexander’s ballista practice and exposing tables once set for evening meals that now fed swarms of flies and families of crows. We picked our way around piles of rubble from a collapsed building, the stench of something rotting coming from beneath the mud bricks and plaster.

  The Tower of Silence cast a cold shadow over the wide avenue leading to it, which was broad enough for our funeral procession and all those that had come before us. Three interior concentric circles comprised every tower for the dead: the inner for children, the second for women, and the outer for men. My mother and brother would be laid in the proper circles, naked as they were when they entered this world, where first the vultures and then the sun might strip and bleach their bones. Only then would their travails on this earth be complete and the gods ready to welcome them into paradise.

  The funeral procession halted before the tower, and the white-cloaked Companions carrying the bier disappeared within to carry the bodies up the flights of winding stairs to the topmost level, where the vultures and the afterlife awaited. As the only royal family members present, my grandmother, Stateira, and I would remain here for the next five days, keeping the sacred fire burning and ensuring that my mother’s and brother’s bones were stripped clean before they were deposited in the tower’s communal well. Yet there was one thing missing, for although I’d glanced down each of Old Tyre’s dark alleys for a sacred dog, it seemed even the strays had abandoned this beleaguered city.

  A soldier approached Alexander’s chariot. “My apologies,” he murmured to the conqueror, “but the Tyrians have cut through the ropes anchoring the battering ships.”

  “By the gods,” Alexander muttered. “Cannot the Tyrians wait until after this funeral to torment me? How in the name of Heracles did they cut the ropes?”

  “Underwater divers,” the man answered.

  I snorted with mirth, marveling at Tyre’s ingenuity, and mumbled, “If only you’d thought to use iron chains instead of rope.”

  Alexander swiveled to face me. “An apt observation,” he said, then turned back to the soldier. “Ensure that the ships have all the iron chain they need.”

  My mother would have pinched me if she were here, or worse. Instead, I withered under the full wrath of my grandmother’s glare, blazing fiercer than Tyre’s fireship.

  “They’re running out of stones,” the man said. “Soon they won’t have anything left to throw at us, save their own walls.”

  Alexander gestured for Hephaestion. “Go with him and get the ships under control. Harpoon their divers if you have to, but I don’t want to hear of my ships drifting again.”

  Hephaestion nodded, but didn’t move away at once. Instead, he motioned to a waiting slave, who brought forth the most pitiful scrap of mangy fur with four legs I’d ever seen. The paltry excuse of a dog was missing patches of a coat that had once been mostly yellow, his pink skin surely riddled with fleas.

  But he had two dark spots of fur above his eyes. A four-eyed dog.

  “My apologies that he’s uglier than Cerberus the hellhound,” Hephaestion said, offering the dog’s rope to my grandmother. “But I believe you have need of a four-eyed dog.”

  “The state of his fur doesn’t concern Ahura Mazda,” my grandmother said, standing straighter even as she took the rope, as if it were woven of gold. The sacred beast would be brought before the Queen of Persia five times during the next five days, his potent stare used to drive off the druj Nasu, the evil matter found in every corpse. “How did you know of our need?”

  Hephaestion shrugged. “I’ve read the Avesta once or twice,” he said.

  I was shocked that the yona takabara knew how to read, much less that he’d studied our sacred text, but my grandmother only gave a terse nod and gathered her skirts, stepping over the threshold of the Tower of Silence. The dog and then Stateira followed, my sister’s eyes downcast, but I hesitated as I passed Hephaestion and Alexander, knowing that gratitude was owed. “Thank you,” I ground out, then hurried after my family.

  My appreciation survived only until I reached the topmost floor of the tower, where Stateira and my grandmother stared at the span of blue sky gaping at us from an open hole shorn from the roof. Any long-legged vultures kept to service the dead had long since flown to feast on Tyre’s corpses, although their white droppings still spackled the floor and stone walls. A breath of wind sent several gray feathers skittering across the flagstones like furtive mice.

  I recalled the knowing glance Hephaestion had exchanged with Alexander when he’d appeared to accommodate my mother’s funeral requirements.

  Take your mother to the Tower of Silence and let the remaining vultures do as they will.

  “That filthy, toad-faced liar,” I said, kicking at the feathers and obliterating the tower’s sacred rule of silence. The Companions laid my mother’s white-clad body on the stone bier in the middle circle, while my brother’s tiny, naked body already lay in the center of the chamber. The men exchanged worried glances, then bowed and strode from the room, their footsteps echoing down the stairwell.

  “Perhaps Alexander didn’t realize the state of the roof,” Stateira offered.

  But it wasn’t Alexander I spoke of, though I knew Stateira was too generous. It was Hephaestion who had reminded Alexander of the location of the Tower of Silence. They had agreed to honor our mother, all the while knowing that her rites would be incomplete.

  “Alexander dislikes the practice of exposure, so Hephaestion sought to pacify us and placate him—”

  My grandmother cut me off. “It matters naught. We have the dog and fire, and tomorrow we shall have the sun. Your mother must be attended at all times; we will make do with what we have for the next five days. Then your mother and brother shall join the rest of the dead in the well, and we shall rejoin the living.” She held her hands up to stop my argument. “From this moment forward we shall not speak, of this or anything else.”

  I bit my tongue and took my place at my mother’s side, seething in silent anger. We might soon rejoin the living, but to repay the insult to my mother, I’d do everything in my power to make Alexander and Hephaestion wish they were dead.

  • • •

  Five days later I emerged from the Tower of Silence, faint with hunger and smelling of death after seeing my mother’s and brother’s bodies—still laden with flesh from this world—lowered into the deep well of bones in the barren courtyard. I expected to find Alexander waiting for us, but while my grandmother and Stateira gratefully accepted the litters waiting for them, I was instead greeted by a contingent of guards and the man I’d dreamed of strangling. Perhaps it was the lack of food or the company of the dead that I’d kept too long, but I gave little thought—or at least less than usual—to what I did next.

  “You,” I growled, lunging toward Hephaestion.

  He moved faster than I expected for one so large, catching my wrists neatly in one of his massive hands. I kicked at him, but feasting only on hate and grief for five days had made me weak and the toe of my soft slipper on his shin might as well have been a playful nudge for all the harm it caused. The four-eyed dog had followed me and growled low in its throat.

  “I hope you’ve not spent all your tears on your mother, Drypetis, daughter of Darius,” Hephaestion snarled, “for you’re going to have far more to weep about when I finish with you.”

  Alexander’s lover could pulverize me with his fists if he chose, run me through with a deft attack of his sword, or bash my head against the wall of the Tower of Silence. My heart plummeted as I recognized a smaller figure with a mop of dark curls chained by iron shackles in a waiting cart, the fragrant smell of myrrh and the potent stench of fear in the air.

  “Release him,” I demanded, stomping on Hephaestion’s foot and dancing from his grasp, gesturing angrily toward Bagoas. I gaped when the eunuch lifted his head, revealing a swollen eye with a bruise roughly the size of Hephaestion’s fis
t.

  “How dare you?” My voice at that moment rivaled that of any cat looking to rut as I whirled on Hephaestion. “Shall I find small children for you to beat next? Little girls with golden curls, perhaps puppies or a simpleton?”

  Hephaestion stopped short, blinking as if taken aback before he shook the irons around Bagoas’ wrists, the perfumed boy whose skin was accustomed to touching only the finest silks. “Five days ago, while on my way to deal with Tyre’s ships, I discovered this eunuch of yours attempting to slip from camp, carrying a message you ordered him to deliver to your father. Explain to my poor, feeble mind how King Darius also deserves to know the strength of our numbers. And the exact movements of all our men?”

  I cringed to realize that Bagoas had spilled all that information to Hephaestion. Better that I’d chosen a eunuch without a tongue than one without a backbone. I reminded myself that he was only a boy with no hope of ever becoming a man, but that didn’t lessen my ire.

  “Release him,” I commanded, my gaze flicking to where Bagoas cowered behind Hephaestion. “He acted on my orders and has already suffered for it.”

  To my surprise, Hephaestion swallowed hard as if he might eat his rage before producing the key to the irons and freeing the boy. “You may return to the tent of the dowager queen,” he said. “Take the mongrel with you.” It was only then that I noticed my grandmother standing behind me, her litter abandoned and her hands tucked into her sleeves with her chin tilted in a most imperious manner.

  “It seems my granddaughter and I have much to discuss,” she said to Hephaestion, allowing Bagoas to take his place behind her, although he held the dog’s dirty rope collar between two dainty fingers. “I thank you for the return of my son’s favored eunuch.”

  “You’re most welcome, Queen Sisygambis,” he said. He barked a command and the rest of the men parted to let us return to the litters. Hephaestion gestured me forward with a flourish, as if he had the power to command my very movements.