The Conqueror's Wife

by Stephanie Thornton

  My hand itched to slap him, but I didn’t relish the idea of a bruise to match Bagoas’, especially as my wrists still ached. “I won’t trouble you further,” I said. “Thank you for not murdering Bagoas with those big fists of yours.”

  He inclined his head, then called after me, “But you still owe me something.”

  I stopped and turned slowly on my heel, gritting my teeth. “What might that be? A blood oath of obedience? My firstborn child?”

  Hephaestion grimaced. “Obedience would be a start, but I doubt you could keep that oath past sundown. I leave to quell a revolt in Greece and I don’t wish to hear from afar that you’re causing Alexander problems. You’ll swear now that you’ll keep to your tent, or I promise I’ll make Alexander clap you in irons before he marries you off to the first moldering Greek governor he can find, preferably a hideously fat one with a penchant for buggering pretty young girls.”

  “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “Is that a challenge?”

  I stared at him, then gave a neat bow. “I swear I shall not commit any further treason while you’re gone.”

  Then I turned on my heel and stormed away, away from Hephaestion and my failure, away from my mother’s bones, and toward whatever miserable future Alexander planned for me.

  I’d promised I wouldn’t commit treason while Hephaestion was in Athens.

  But I’d said nothing about what I’d do upon his return.

  CHAPTER 6

  331 BCE

  Pella, Macedon

  Thessalonike

  The brown whip snake twined its way up my arm, its scales as cool and smooth against my flesh as the night air. It didn’t have a tooth in its mouth and its eyes were occluded with age, but still I stood motionless while Olympias poured a goblet of spiced wine from the painted amphora. The vessel’s sides were emblazoned with stark images of Dionysus’ initiates in various states of ecstasy, men’s bare arms wrapped around the women’s waists, their heads all thrown back in abandon.

  And snakes. Slithering across its black and red borders were images of snakes to match the live serpents writhing beneath my feet and up my arm. Nonvenomous, they could still strike if provoked, yet they were the least of my worries on this evening of the harvest’s full moon.

  The very scene on the amphora would play out before me tonight, and I would wake not merely a fourteen-year-old woman, but a maenad initiate of the wine god, Dionysus.

  Olympias had commanded that I partake of the Dionysian revels and I had no choice but to obey. My life had been empty in the four years since Alexander had left as I did my utmost not to attract Olympias’ wrath. My childhood plumpness had hardened, so that Olympias often muttered that I resembled my father, thick-boned and heavy-jawed, save my pelt of golden hair, which I kept braided tightly down my back. Wealthy suitors from all over the Peloponnese had begun asking for my hand in marriage, but Alexander had ordered his mother to refrain from making any alliances and I’d stewed in boredom until I almost wished some man would storm the walls and take me away from here.

  Over the past weeks, I’d sacrificed and prayed to the god of grapes and pleasure that this ceremony would fill me with purpose, that my brother’s frequent letters would cease taunting me with all I was missing in the wider world while I remained here to obey Olympias’ every whim, saved from madness by only my brother Arrhidaeus and my menagerie of animals.

  It seemed a trick of the gods that the very man who had conquered the world was my brother, yet I remained unable to breach Pella’s walls until some man claimed me as his wife. I prayed that my future husband would be one of Alexander’s generals, anyone except a future king.

  I would never be a queen, not after I’d seen the monster Olympias had become once a diadem had graced her head.

  “Drink,” Olympias commanded me, curling my fingers around the goblet of wine. Arrhidaeus whimpered in the background, his fear growing palpable as slaves added more cedar and olive oil to the fire until the flames leapt taller than the barren apricot trees. Despite our move from Aigai to the palace at Pella, he’d been fearful of fire ever since the night Eurydice died; both the flames and the dark still provoked his terrible fits of crying. “Go, Arrhidaeus,” Olympias said, not even looking at him. “The revels of Dionysus are not for you to enjoy.”

  “Go,” I murmured to my brother, in a voice more controlled than I felt. “In the morning I’ll take you fishing.”

  “You promise?” Arrhidaeus asked, twisting his meaty hands together even as his eyes strayed toward the gate that led away from Olympias’ garden and back to the safety of the palace.

  “I promise,” I said, although staring at the placid waters of a lake all day sounded as exciting as reading anything written by Homer. “Take my fat orange cat to bed with you to warm your feet.”

  I watched my brother tiptoe around the snakes (like watching an elephant sidestep mice) and lumber out of the garden. Just as he craved the solid safety of the palace walls, I thrilled at finally leaving them behind, at least for one night.

  “Will Cynnane be at the revels?” I asked Olympias, smoothing the fawn skin that was draped over my shoulders and masking the hope in my tone. I desperately wanted to see my warrior half sister, to ask a thousand questions about where she’d learned to throw daggers and whether she thought I could ever learn.

  Olympias sniffed. “Cynnane has no taste for the rituals, savage that she is.”

  She lifted the goblet to my lips and I drank deeply. The wine was potent, unwatered and full of foreign spices, and something else I couldn’t quite name. It was cool to the tongue, kept in a clay amphora and chilled in the palace well all day, but it burned down the back of my throat and spread warmth like fingers through my belly. It would be a night of fire as we traveled from one bonfire to the next, drinking Dionysus’ bounty of wine that would set our insides aflame.

  Olympias only smiled. “More,” she murmured. “You must drink it all to show the god of revels your willingness to accept him.”

  I hesitated but did as she asked, trembling as I stared unblinking at her over the rim. Olympias was made more beautiful by the power she wielded, but there was no denying how much she frightened me, especially tonight with the shifting shadows and snakes curling up her arms.

  I drained the cup in a final gulp and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. I’d dressed simply, barefoot and clad in only a white chiton made of the finest cotton. My pale hair fell loose past my shoulders and I shivered in the night air, gooseflesh rolling down my arms.

  “You’ll warm soon,” Olympias said, her attire matching my own. “The god shall embrace you and wrap you in his heat.” She turned, taking a torch from a waiting slave, then walked languidly to the gate that led away from the palace and toward the hills behind Pella. “You may dance and drink tonight, Thessalonike,” she called over her shoulder. “But you shall not couple with any of the revelers. Do you understand?”

  I blushed and nodded, but my feet grew heavier with every step toward her. Mist clouded my vision and I tripped, giggling as I stumbled. Olympias looped her arm through mine, setting me aright. “Dionysus favors you,” she whispered in my ear. “To see the world through the haze of the god is a precious and powerful gift. Perhaps tonight he shall honor you with a vision as well.”

  I was entranced with the snakes twined around her neck and my wrist, their beady eyes glinting in the torchlight. A spotted leopard snake draped like a pendant at the base of her throat flicked its forked tongue at me. We continued on our way, drawn forward by the rhythm of far-flung drums and the golden glow of a crackling bonfire atop the hill, its embers tangling with the scattered stars.

  We stopped, and I gaped at the pinnacle of a rugged hill encircled by a ring of torches held aloft by faceless shadows. The drumbeat reverberated into my bones, and this time when I stumbled, Olympias let me fall to the earth. Rocks scraped my hands, although
I felt no pain.

  “It is the earth that feeds our god,” she proclaimed, and I watched an acolyte offer her a terra-cotta rhyton in the shape of a giant phallus. Olympias drank greedily before she handed the cup to me and I took a sip, luxuriating in the flavor this time before it was passed to the next initiate. “It is in his honor that we abandon ourselves this night,” Olympias said, “to feel the power of the god flow through our veins. Rise and welcome the god of mysteries!”

  Someone thrust a thyrsus into my hand, its wooden fennel stalk topped with a pinecone dripping with honey to symbolize a phallus and its erupting seed. I knew I should blush, but even that was beyond me with all the wine sloshing in my belly.

  The female dancers burst into song then, a bawdy hymn to Dionysus, while they tossed another thyrsus between them in a mockery of the thrusting I’d seen bulls and dogs perform while mating.

  To Dionysus do I pray,

  A long man do I hope to catch,

  But alas, only a thyrsus pole do I snatch,

  With its pinecone I shall not lay!

  I staggered to my feet as they dragged me stumbling up the hill, joyous at the heat that surged just beneath my skin. I looked at my arms, expecting to see flames there, but instead only the little brown snake was watching me.

  “Dance with us and you dance with the god,” someone whispered in my ear. I turned, expecting to see Olympias, but the world was slow in catching up. The hilltop had filled with other revelers, their eyes glazed and their heads thrown back in rapture. The heat flamed hotter, sounds grew sharper, and the rank smell of the torches and sweat filled my nose. Around me, men and women shed their clothes, and some clung to one another, their naked bodies writhing together in rhythm to the drums. The notes of Pan’s pipes rose into the air and the sounds of a wood and cord bull-roarer circled like a giant wasp, crescendoing into the buzz of an entire hive.

  Then someone shouted and women ran down the hill, chasing the unfortunate goat that had been brought to the revels. The maenads would catch the beast and tear it apart with their bare hands, offering the softest bits to Dionysus’ fire before feasting on the bloody flesh.

  The animal bleated in terror, the bell around his neck clanging with every step.

  I ran, tripping several more times, and shoved half-naked women away from me, intent on catching the unfortunate goat and chasing it into the shadows. Several revelers in my path stumbled and one especially plump matron fell so hard that she rolled partway down the hill. Yet still I ran.

  Until one of the maenads I elbowed whirled on me and an explosion of white lightning lit my vision.

  I wheeled back, but recovered from the punch to lunge forward, grabbing fistfuls of hair and clawing at the blurred face I could scarcely see through the fog of wine. The goat forgotten, we fell to the earth with screeches like two cats in heat, rolling over and over in trampled grasses. I tasted dirt and my own blood, felt her fists, knees, and teeth as they attacked my soft flesh.

  And I’d never felt so alive.

  I crowed with laughter when the faceless maenad stumbled to her feet and lurched back up the hill. I knew now why Alexander and even my sister Cynnane craved the heat of battle, the euphoria of a good fight.

  The faces and bodies that passed me became a blur of flesh lit by fire shine. I saw familiar faces long since gone: Alexander and Hephaestion, my mother and father. I laughed, but when I reached up, it was to find my cheeks were slick with tears.

  Fear gripped my heart and I cried out, but the drums and the ecstatic cries of the revelers swallowed the sound. I crawled toward the exterior ring of torches, into the darkness that beckoned to me with its promise of quiet and calm. There was no euphoria this time, only a wave of panic, as my arms collapsed and I hit the earth.

  I couldn’t move.

  I felt another surge of panic, wondering if I was dying, if my wine had been mixed with more than just spices, if I might be trampled by Dionysus’ crowd. I prayed for the god’s mercy then, to release me from his grip.

  Instead, faithless Dionysus abandoned me to continue his revelry and I fell blissfully unconscious.

  • • •

  A brutal shaft of sunshine stabbed my skull as I blinked my way back to life the next morning, recognizing my light-filled chamber despite having no recollection of how I’d gotten there. A sound like boots hitting the floor sent more daggers grinding into my temples and I moaned in agony.

  “She lives,” a man’s voice boomed, reverberating off the stone walls of my chamber. A familiar slow grin greeted me, one I’d not seen in four long years.

  I groaned again, then wished that Zeus might strike me with one of his bolts.

  “So, little Nike survived the Dionysian Mysteries,” Hephaestion said, his voice louder than it needed to be. With his foot, he nudged away a jumbled tangle of wool yarn, an embroidered scene of Athena and her sacred owl that I’d started ages ago and had left neglected on the floor for the past year. “I expect you want to die about now.”

  Medusa’s snakes, but he was right.

  Hephaestion’s eyes crinkled at the corners, his face leaner and the skin toughened from the time he’d spent riding with my brother beneath Persia’s Eastern sun. I was no lovesick girl, but I’d have had to be as blind as Homer not to appreciate Hephaestion’s brawny allure.

  I’d expected to feel different after my initiation, more alive and worldly, but all I felt was a curdled stomach, a vise around my head and ribs where the maenad had kicked me, and utter mortification that Hephaestion was seeing the mess I was now. I’d count it a blessing from the four goddesses if I could keep from hurling the contents of my stomach into an urn while Hephaestion was here. His almost-black eyes sparkled now with mirth at my obvious discomfort.

  “You shouldn’t be in my chamber,” I said, struggling to sit. “Olympias will have your hide.”

  “And miss this opportunity? Never.” He sat beside me on the bed and lifted the lid of the wicker basket, then dropped it back on my snake with a grimace.

  I wrinkled my nose and buried my face in my linen sheet. “You smell like you bathed in garos.”

  And from the way my stomach lurched, the fermented fish sauce was the last thing I should be smelling right now.

  Hephaestion sniffed his tunic, then shrugged. “A drizzle of garos will go splendidly with the trout Arrhidaeus caught this morning.”

  “Arrhidaeus . . .” I groaned. “I told him I’d take him fishing today.”

  “He accepted me in your stead, although not without a fair bit of grumbling.”

  “You’ve already been and gone?”

  “You slept the morning away, little Nike.” Hephaestion chuckled. “And most of the afternoon too. I found Arrhidaeus waiting outside your door at dawn, his birch poles and a basket of worms ready to turn your stomach.”

  My gorge rose at the very idea, imagining the squirming worms and a morning spent gutting fish. “Thank you.”

  “You’re quite welcome. Without you fidgeting and scaring away all of the fish, Arrhidaeus and I caught enough trout to feed a small army at the banquet tonight.”

  “What banquet?” I croaked.

  “The one to celebrate the peace treaty I brokered with Athens.” He leaned back in his chair, hands clasped loosely behind his head, a pose surely perfected to reveal his well-shaped arms with their glorious battle scars. “Alexander sent me to prevent the revolt of Agis from spreading to Athens. I negotiated a mean settlement with Demosthenes, not that I would ever boast.”

  I snorted at that, for Hephaestion possessed more than a healthy dose of confidence. Only days ago, Olympias had received a runner in her weaving room, a sweat-streaked messenger bearing news of Greek states allying against Macedon, led by Agis of Sparta. The Spartan basileus had died during a pitched battle, but the entire mainland had held its breath and waited to see whether Athens would join the c
ause and continue the revolt. Now it appeared we had our answer.

  Hephaestion dropped a folded parchment into my lap. “I come on Alexander’s orders. This just arrived from him.”

  I tore into the letter like a starving dog, knowing that the words within carried hazy visions of foreign lands I’d never see. I breathed deeply of the parchment and imagined its scent as that of blowing sand and aromatic spices, the boiling sun and musty tombs. Perhaps if I wished hard enough . . .

  But when I opened my eyes, I was still sitting on my bed with Hephaestion opposite me, a bemused expression on his face. “It’s only a piece of paper,” he said. “There’s no need to hold it like a lover.”

  I flushed at the very mention of a lover, for I’d never even been kissed, but stuck out my tongue as a cover for my embarrassment. I’d seen four winters and four summers come and go since Alexander had marched out of our city, and since then my brother had conquered the Peloponnese, Granicus, Issus, Tyre, and Gaza before moving on to Egypt, where he was welcomed with open arms. Each letter from him was exquisite torture, sketching for me pictures of places I could only imagine and never truly see with my own eyes.

  “You wouldn’t understand,” I muttered.

  “It’s true that I’m just an insensitive dullard with a skull thicker than a marble pillar,” Hephaestion said. “I’d certainly never understand why you’d want to leave Pella’s little harbor to see the world.” He moved to a nearby chair and kicked his heels up on my bed. I felt quite dignified as I ignored him, imagining Alexander’s silken voice in my head.

  Dearest Thessalonike,

  This afternoon, as the sun-god Ra reached its pinnacle in the sky, I was crowned pharaoh of Upper and Lower Egypt. It is no boast, but only the truth to claim that my collection of crowns now rivals that of King Priam.

  My men and I will winter here in Alexandria, thus far a veritable city of tents along the coast. The boundaries of my glorious new city were laid out with barley sprinkled by sacred priests draped in leopard skins, drawn in the shape of a proper Macedonian military cloak. This city shall be my monument to the world, the brightest jewel among my conquests.