The Conqueror's Wife

by Stephanie Thornton

  “I think she’s magical, and beautiful,” he said. This time his eyes flicked to mine. “Not as beautiful as you, of course . . .”

  It was a simple matter after that to lead Leander back to my chambers and let him take me against the wall there. It wasn’t long before he’d forgotten his Helen and I’d convinced him to write letters on my behalf to Olympias’ cousin the king of Epirus. The dear boy even taught me how to sign my name, fondling my breasts with an eager hand while I struggled to form each imperfect letter. So while I remained caged in Amphipolis, my whispers flew on the wind, for I was unwilling to die in this forsaken village, stoned to death like Olympias or poisoned like Arrhidaeus.

  Or worse. Forgotten.

  Now that the message had been sent, I’d put Leander off with the excuse of my women’s bloods and settled in to play with little Alexander. My son was walking now in stunted little steps and he was often irritable from the tiny white teeth breaking through his gums. He pulled himself to sitting and shoved his clay rattle shaped like a goat into his mouth, gnawing it like he might devour it while a slick of spittle oozed down his chin.

  There was a commotion in the courtyard, but I’d long ago grown accustomed to the self-important comings and goings of the many guards. Yet the clamor outside my chambers this morning was louder than usual. I hefted my son onto my hip and carried him to the window, wincing as he shook the pebble-filled rattle at my ear.

  And then I swayed on my feet, for this was no ordinary change of sentries or delivery of fresh ox meat for the kitchens. Instead, Cassander dismounted his horse among his entourage of salute-snapping soldiers. He paused to assist two women robed in costly silks from their sedans and then marched toward my chambers.

  Whereas once I’d had perfumed attendants to announce every supplicant and visitor to my traveling tent, now my door was flung open without ceremony and Cassander stormed into my room, his purple chlamys fluttering behind him.

  The purple he’d stolen from my son, and from me.

  “Cassander,” I said, holding my son before me as I bent my knee and kissed my fingers in a flawless proskynesis before I remembered the way he’d scoffed at the Persians for heralding Alexander as a god.

  “Rise, Roxana,” he commanded.

  There was only one reason Cassander would visit me now, especially accompanied by his she-bitches and a contingent of men armed with swords and pikes. But perhaps I might persuade him to see another, more elegant solution that would benefit him, and save my own head.

  “I understand your position as regent is quite secure now,” I said. “I pray every morning that your able hand shall usher in an era of peace and prosperity for my late husband’s empire.”

  Perhaps the praise was a bit heavy-handed, but surely a thick-browed ape like Cassander enjoyed hearing a woman’s praise now and again.

  “There shall be no peace and prosperity in Macedon, much less in the remainder of the empire, while you still live,” Cassander said.

  “We intercepted the letter you sent to Epirus,” Thessalonike said, waving the tattered parchment between her thumb and forefinger. “The one where you offered him your bed and your son’s claim to the crown in exchange for his marching on Amphipolis?”

  “I can neither read nor write,” I scoffed, pressing little Alexander’s head to my chest in a vain attempt to still my pounding heart. “Surely you don’t believe I wrote such treason.”

  “We intercepted a soldier named Leander as he came from your villa earlier today,” Drypetis said calmly. “He admitted to composing the letter at your behest. You’ve finally lost this time, Roxana.”

  I tasted the metallic tang of panic then, like a fighting cock backed into a corner. I calmed as my thumb caressed the reassuring bulge I’d kept tucked into my girdle since the day of Arrhidaeus’ death even as my son looked at me with trusting blue eyes inherited from his father. I wanted to scream against the injustice of all the years I’d spent clawing my way from the bottom of life’s dung heap, first against Oxyartes and then Bessus, at Sogdian Rock and now in Macedon.

  So once again, I was to fight for my life.

  I ignored Thessalonike and Drypetis to address Cassander as if only he and I occupied the room. “A king needs a queen. Ally yourself with me, become the new Alexander with his first wife as your Queen of Queens.”

  “A daring proposal,” Cassander mused. “Yet I’ve already proclaimed myself king of Macedon and I have no desire to spend my rule sniffing out your machinations to maneuver your son onto my throne. I’m through with your schemes and betrayals, Roxana, but your son shall be raised at my hands, so no harm shall ever come to him.”

  Behind Cassander, both Thessalonike and Drypetis smiled like cheetahs as little Alexander began to fuss, giving me an opportunity to remove the tiny treasure from my girdle.

  “He’s teething,” I said, removing the lid from the vial and rubbing its liquid onto his gums. “Poppy milk soothes the pain.”

  Now all I needed was time. . . .

  “If you’re to kill me now, you may as well know the truth about Hephaestion,” I said calmly, rubbing my fingers over little Alexander’s swollen gums. For a glorious moment I delighted to see the blood drain from Drypetis’ face. She might have her revenge on me for her sister’s death, but my next words would haunt her until the end of her days. “Don’t tell me that you never puzzled out how your precious husband died after he humiliated my brother,” I said to her. “He cast Parizad aside like an unwanted toy after he’d married you. It took me until we arrived in Ecbatana to find a cook who was willing to add wolfsbane to Hephaestion’s ptisan without asking questions, in exchange for some of my favorite Indian jewels.”

  “You lie,” Drypetis whispered, but I only cackled with glee, my words coming fast and reckless as the dark lord Ahriman himself cleaved my face with a wild grin.

  “I even sent Parizad with a purgative the night that Hephaestion died to ensure that no suspicion would fall on him,” I lied, for not even Ahura Mazda himself could have stopped my brother from fawning over his dying lover. And much as I wished I’d had a hand in Hephaestion’s death, the gods had rendered that bit of justice on their own. “And no one ever suspected either of us, now, did they?”

  In one deft movement, Drypetis stole Cassander’s iron sword from his belt and pointed it at my throat. Alexander’s sister unsheathed a bronze blade aimed at my belly.

  I saw the end, yet it didn’t matter. Not anymore . . .

  “Lower your weapons,” Cassander commanded the women, but they ignored him.

  “Set down your son,” Drypetis ordered me, her voice trembling with emotion. “For unlike you, I won’t harm an innocent child.”

  I would die before I lost my beauty, and my son would die before he could betray me, as had all the other men in my life: my father in selling me, Bessus in using me, Alexander by dying, my brother in his love for Hephaestion, Bagoas in going from my bed to my husband’s. . . .

  I laughed then, a strangled sound as I repositioned Alexander on my hip, his head lolling to one side and his open eyes blank. I held out a hand, Olympias’ empty vial still clasped in my palm.

  “You think I’d let you have my son?” I asked, my breath coming in desperate gasps. “The venom of a valley viper guaranteed you’d never steal him from me, never turn him against me.”

  I howled still harder as Thessalonike and Drypetis lunged toward me with faces like terrible daevas. I cackled to think of all the men I’d manipulated through my life and the strange twist now that it was two women who would bring me down.

  I’d never been any good with women. . . .

  And I choked back a sob of rage as they plunged their cold swords into me with a rush of red, wet pain.

  CHAPTER 29

  Thessalonike

  “Let it be known that I’ve executed Roxana and her son,” Cassander ordered as he finally restr
ained Drypetis and me both back from the business of Roxana’s murder. Drypetis gasped and dropped her bloodied blade to the tiles with an earth-rending clatter. I continued to clutch my sword, staring at the raw wounds in Roxana’s bloody carcass. I looked away, reminded too much of Cynnane’s murder even as Drypetis fell to her knees, her entire body shaking. Cassander removed his purple chlamys and wrapped it around her heaving shoulders.

  Royal purple and the crimson of freshly spilled blood. Were the two ever inseparable?

  A glance at the unmoving child in Roxana’s lap confirmed that young Alexander Aegus was truly gone, an innocent pawn in his mother’s twisted game.

  Yet I balked at Cassander shouldering the blame for both of these two new murders, not only because his hands were clean, but also because the world should know what sort of monster Roxana had become.

  “It will be easier for me to take the blame,” he said softly as if reading my thoughts, kneeling to chafe Drypetis’ arms as her teeth started to chatter. “Everyone expected that I would order their executions.”

  Drypetis stirred, blinking hard. “Roxana was a demon from the deepest abyss of Duzakh. She deserved to die.” She glanced at the broken vial on the tiles and shuddered. “But her son did not.”

  With the cutting of Roxana’s tangled lifestring and Alexander’s tiny thread, the three crones of Fate grew weary of my family’s saga and finally let fall their rusted shears. There was no one left who wished us harm, no one left to challenge Cassander’s rule.

  “The people won’t believe that Roxana poisoned her own child,” Cassander said, bending down to close her eyes with a rough hand. “Olympias shouted to the heavens that I poisoned Alexander. This shall be a small slander to bear compared to that.”

  And Cassander had proved himself to be loyal and true time and again since Alexander’s death. While the men might not follow him blindly, they would follow him.

  We watched silently as soldiers removed the bodies, little Alexander Aegus destined for a well-placed tomb near that of Cynnane, Arrhidaeus, and Adea, as Cassander commanded that they be buried together in a sumptuous mausoleum befitting their sacrifices. I cared little for what happened to Roxana’s body; feeding her to sharp-toothed rats would be more than she deserved.

  “I need fresh air,” Drypetis said. She thrust Cassander his chlamys and rushed outside to the courtyard’s rainwater cistern. I motioned for Cassander to remain behind, following as she thrust her befouled hands into the sun-dappled water. The blood dissipated as if it had never been, but she continued to scrub as if she meant to flay the flesh from her bones. I forced her to turn and look at Amphipolis’ sprawling vista until her breathing calmed, at the river Strymon surrounding us like a brown snake, hugging the hill beneath our feet.

  She wrapped her arms around herself and I wondered then how much misery one soul could bear before it buckled and became permanently warped from the burden. My own arrival into the world had killed my mother, and since then my sister, my brothers, and the only mother I’d known had bowed a knee to Hades. Yet Drypetis had watched her parents, siblings, and husband die, and today her blade had joined mine to slay Roxana. I knew not what could fill the dark void that her life had become.

  “What will you do now?” I asked her, drawing a hand around her waist and pressing my temple against hers. “You can always stay in Macedon.”

  She stared east, toward the lands of spices and silks. “I was born in a king’s traveling pavilion as my father moved us from Babylon to Persepolis. Perhaps one day I’ll stop moving. . . .” Her voice trailed off, as if she was trying out the words in her mind before speaking them aloud. “For now I want to see the world as Hephaestion and I once planned.”

  “Hephaestion would like that.” I smiled, for it was a dream I’d once shared, although my dream had involved swords, shields, and the grime of battle. I could do without swords after all the recent bloodshed.

  “Do you think what Roxana said was true?” I asked. “That she killed Hephaestion?”

  Drypetis hesitated, then shook her head. “Wolfsbane induces vomiting and kills instantly. Hephaestion was felled by fever, not poison.”

  I was grateful for that at least. Roxana had done enough damage to Drypetis’ life without having killed Hephaestion too. It was a sign of her depravity that she had used her last words to boast and lie about still another murder.

  “I wish you well while you travel the world,” I said to Drypetis, “but you must promise to visit Pella every so often.”

  “Is that where you’ll go?”

  “It’s home,” I said. “Right now I want nothing so much as to walk Pella’s golden hills with a dog at my heels, to come home and kick my muddy feet onto a table surrounded by a menagerie of animals.”

  Drypetis drew me into a long embrace scented with cassia and our shared grief but also infused with a heady dose of hope. “I pray you’ll be happy there,” she said. “I wish you a long life of peace and contentment, my sister.”

  “Ours is a strange friendship,” I said. And it was, forged and strengthened by Hades’ touch.

  “One that will end only when we’re dead,” she said, echoing my sentiments, and I thought of myself and Arrhidaeus, Cynnane and Adea, Hephaestion and Alexander.

  I smiled, a bittersweet gesture. “Then we shall tell our story backward. Everything from this moment shall be sunshine and happiness.”

  Drypetis looked over my shoulder and a knowing smile tugged at her lips. “I believe there is much joy to be had in your future, Thessalonike of Macedon, if only you’ll allow it to catch you.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I started to say, then glanced behind me to see Cassander, his soldiers and guards dismissed and his chlamys tossed carelessly over his forearm, its hem flapping in the wind.

  “Let him catch you,” Drypetis whispered, squeezing my arm. “Happiness often finds you when you least expect it. Seize it while you still can.”

  She left me in the courtyard then, but paused in front of Cassander. “I would take my leave from your court, King of Kings, for now at least.”

  “You need no permission, Drypetis of Persia, but you shall be missed among us.”

  She bowed to him and kissed her fingertips, but spared a glance and a smile for me.

  Then, just as abruptly as she’d entered my life, Drypetis ascended her litter and was gone, merely a pale hand waving to me from the open window of her sedan.

  I clutched the hem of my cursed peplos that threatened to trip me with every step and followed her out of the villa, waving wildly until she disappeared from view. Cassander approached slowly, standing beside me, so close that our arms brushed.

  “You’ll proclaim yourself the basileus of all of Greece now, won’t you?” I asked him, staring out at the river and hills to avoid looking at him.

  “I will,” he said.

  “Don’t think I’m going to bow and scrape to you,” I said. “You’re still just Cassander, and I could still beat you with a sword if it came to it.”

  “A fact I can never forget due to your constant reminders.”

  The heavy silence that followed was punctuated by the call of a hawk in the distance. I startled when Cassander’s hesitant hand clasped my own, yet I didn’t pull away. His was a strong hand, scattered with dark hairs that gleamed in the sunshine, which hinted at the courage and stability of the man.

  “You once claimed that you didn’t need me, Thessalonike, but I need you,” he said, his voice gruff with emotion. “So I’ll ask you again. Marry me and be my queen.”

  “I swore as a child with the heat of Eurydice’s pyre on my face that I’d never let the queen’s diadem touch my head,” I said. “Lest I become like Olympias.”

  Yet I’d plunged my blade into Parizad’s belly and helped to slay Roxana.

  Perhaps I had already become Olympias.

  “You are
nothing like Olympias,” Cassander argued. “Alexander’s mother was single-minded about her son’s power, and her own. You’ve never sought to gain power or to control others.”

  No, but as queen I’d possess both.

  I scoffed. “You only wish to marry Alexander’s last surviving sister, to make me your queen in order to solidify your claim to his throne.”

  “Of course I do,” he said simply. “I’m weary of fighting. I’m just a common bore who’s spent too much time memorizing rules and looking down my nose at you, but if you marry me, I swear I’ll be the most dutiful of husbands.”

  I opened my mouth to lambaste the echo of his first proposal, but the glint of laughter in his eyes stopped me. Funny, but I’d never noticed how warm his eyes could be, when he wasn’t droning on about duty and Greek values.

  Instead, I turned up my nose. “I want—I deserve—a husband who will worship the earth beneath my feet until the day he carries me to my tomb.”

  Cassander smiled, a rare gesture that transformed him even as he looked shyly away. “Then I have a confession to make. I’ve been enamored of you since the night of the Dionysian revels, when you were debauched with wine and spouting nonsense from that pert little mouth of yours, and you hurled your fists at anything that moved.”

  I snorted in disbelief even as something warm fluttered in my heart and I recalled his prior proposals, his tenderness at Athens’ Acropolis. “How could you have been so enamored when you’ve since lectured me about the impropriety of everything I’ve ever done?”

  “The feeling wasn’t by choice, I can assure you,” he said, his lips still curled in a smile. “I couldn’t keep my thoughts from turning to such an improper little beast.” He looked to the horizon but leaned sideways to whisper, “It’s part of your allure.”