“And I love you, big sister, even if you are a lackwit with barley mush for brains.”
It didn’t take long for the herbs to make me feel as if I’d swallowed a host of poisonous, writhing asps. I moaned and curled into myself, vomiting into one of Bessus’ alabaster urns as Parizad hollered for the physician. Through the haze of pain, I dimly recalled seeing my father’s red face as I was carried to a set of empty palace chambers. Perhaps I’d get lucky and find a way to stay in the palace longer than one night—perhaps forever—if, of course, that didn’t require bedding the mountain of flesh that was our satrap.
I felt a surge of triumph then, mingled with a hefty dose of agony as I begged Ahura Mazda to strike me dead where I lay.
I was free from the spider. But even I knew that couldn’t last forever.
CHAPTER 5
Tyre, Phoenicia
Drypetis
My grandmother was a dowager with iron for bones, my mother a pampered queen who preferred that her feet never touch the ground, and I might have passed for a blacksmith with my scarred hands, permanently filthy from my fiddling with winches and jibs. Only Stateira was without fault, yet my father loved us all. Still the days passed into weeks and weeks into months, and no ransom came as we traveled south. We had only silence from my father, and from Alexander.
“To see Persepolis again,” my mother moaned. “The throne room and the Damascus prunes . . . They’re in season now and we’re missing them. This dreadful sea air makes my nose twitch.”
“At least Alexander has kept his word,” Stateira said, trying to maintain the peace, as she had through these long months while the Greek army marched along the blue-waved coast toward Tyre.
My grandmother grunted, dismissing the chatter. “You’ll have to let those robes out again,” she said, eyeing the ever-growing swell of my mother’s belly, and the flash of fear crossed all our eyes. We’d kept her secret so far, but for how much longer?
“I’ll take to my bed,” my mother said, massaging her belly. “If Alexander complains, we will tell him the constant traveling is wearing to my delicate constitution.”
I snorted softly. If my mother was delicate, then I was a winged simurgh capable of carrying off a whale . . . but Alexander didn’t know any better, and the secret held even as we came into Tyre, a home port for the Persian fleet.
Tyre was in the midst of its annual celebration to the god Melkarth, an ancestor of the Tyrian royal family whom the Greeks identified with Heracles. Hearing of our approach, the city’s inhabitants had wisely fled the old quarters on the mainland in favor of New Tyre, the city-within-a-city situated on an island a mile from shore. Alexander deigned to ask permission to join the festivities and even made a great show of sacrificing two shaggy goats to their shared ancestor. But when Alexander sent messengers to sue New Tyre for peace, his heralds were killed and their decapitated heads flung over the walls into the sea.
Thus, Tyre sealed its fate.
The city’s walls stretched like a mother’s arms, standing as high as thirty men. Those stones had withstood a siege from King Nebuchadnezzar for thirteen years, yet that Babylonian king hadn’t possessed Alexander’s terrible war machines or his plan to build a mole, a colossal wooden causeway that would span the full mile to New Tyre so he might simply knock down their gates. I marveled with a grudging awe at Alexander’s growing fleet of stone throwers and siege towers, cringing when the impressive inventions were turned to the buildings of Old Tyre for target practice.
Still, New Tyre defended itself, and its engineers were more creative than even Alexander imagined.
Alexander granted us permission to walk to the hill overlooking both Old Tyre and the island of New Tyre across the bay, under guard, of course, but I was glad for the freedom. Stateira and I went one afternoon and stayed out past sunset. It was a moonless night with a favorable wind.
Favorable for Tyre, but not for Alexander.
The wind whipped the hair about my face and the smell of the fresh-hewn oak and fir beams invigorated me. “The tallest of Alexander’s siege towers have twenty different levels for archers and battering rams,” I said to Stateira, prompting her indulgent smile.
“Twenty levels,” she echoed, arching an eyebrow at my excitement, but I continued on undeterred. Stateira, a veritable font of patience, was the only person besides our father who indulged my love of machines.
“There’s another marvel at the pinnacle: a stone thrower powered by twisted ox-sinew springs,” I said. “They throw stones and metal-tipped bolts.”
My sister cringed. “They sound dreadful.”
Tucking my face deeper into my cloak, I touched a bolt I’d found left discarded on the earth, the cold iron that would soon find itself hurled into stone, destroying Tyre’s illusions of safety.
“What is that?” I murmured, squinting at a dark shape drifting across the bay from New Tyre toward the Greek siege towers and the old city. Suddenly, orange flames streaked across a Persian transport ship on the water, its deck packed with iron cauldrons, as it approached the shore and Alexander’s causeway. The explosions of the cauldrons were louder than any war drum, a cacophony orchestrated by the gods that shook the marrow of my bones.
Oil. The crafty Tyrians had filled the ship with cauldrons of oil, and a single ember had ignited utter destruction.
Macedonians screamed and scattered as the fireship collided with the mole and its wooden siege towers, lighting the night sky like a shattering crimson sun.
“We must go,” Stateira yelled, covering her ears. “Mother will worry about us.”
I ignored her, stomping my feet into the hillside, hollering and cheering for Tyre until I went hoarse and the last orange sparks fell to the sea. Only then did I consent to let Stateira drag me back to our tent, still craning my neck and grinning as the Tyrians trounced Alexander of Macedon once and for all.
“You’ll never believe it,” I whooped as I entered. “Alexander has lost—”
A wall of blazing heat hit me; a roaring fire had been lit in every brazier as if this were the dead of winter instead of spring. The tent smelled of sweat and something primal, and a terrible odor I’d smelled only once before, on the banks of a muddy river many years ago.
“What’s happening?” I asked. Despite the late hour, the entire tent was a flurry of chaos like the battle I’d just seen, every oil lamp lit, and our servingwomen scurried about like retreating soldiers, laden with sloshing basins of water and piles of fresh linen.
“Your mother is about to deliver,” my grandmother said. “I sent one of the eunuchs to fetch a midwife, but he hasn’t returned.”
“The camp is in an uproar,” I said, casting a glance at my dumbstruck sister. “The Tyrians are using wildfire to destroy Alexander.”
“I care little for Tyre right now,” my grandmother snapped. “Not when your father’s heir is about to be born.”
An heir that Alexander would likely expose. We’d prayed to Ahura Mazda every day since our capture for another girl, after so many years of praying for a son.
“I’ll fetch the midwife,” Stateira said, surprising both of us as she darted back out of the pavilion, imbued with a sudden bravery, or cowardice.
“Go to your mother, Drypetis,” my grandmother ordered. “She shall require all our strength in the fight to come.”
I found my mother draped halfway over her bed, knees on the ground while she moaned into her swan-feather mattress. Her hips swayed back and forth, as if to entice the stubborn child to slide from her womb. I placed my hands over hers, knotted though they were in the soft sheets.
“This one may yet kill me,” she groaned, clutching my hands so the bones threatened to splinter. “Promise me that you’ll keep the child from the river. And from Alexander.”
I recalled that terrible day, one of my earliest memories, as our family camped along the Euphrates wh
ile on progress from Babylon. It had been a fine day and my father had taken down several ducks and a magnificent white-plumed crane with his hunting stick. My elder brother, Cyrus, twice my five years and stronger than the hero Achaemenes to my young eyes, had snuck out in my father’s skiff when no one was looking. My mother yelled for him to come back, but he stood on the prow in the middle of the river, hefting my father’s bow and quiver of arrows onto his back. We watched in horror as he tottered and the skiff swayed drunkenly; then my dark-haired brother lost his balance and tumbled into the river with a violent splash. My mother screamed and my father dived into the water. Stateira and I clutched each other, waiting for him to resurface, but there was nothing. River debris matted Cyrus’ hair and his lips had gone blue by the time my father pulled him back to shore. My mother collapsed and wailed into the earth even as my father pounded on my brother’s chest and begged him to breathe.
The River of Copper had stolen his last breath. That same day we carried him to Babylon’s Tower of Silence, exposing his pale body and allowing him to greet the gods and cross the Chinvat Bridge into paradise.
I’d refused to touch even my bathwater for weeks afterward and Stateira still mumbled pleas to Ahura Mazda’s holy flame each time we traversed a river, the flickering light from the god’s fire making her appear six years old again. Life had soured for my mother after that, then grown more bitter with each miscarriage and stillbirth that followed.
“I swear it, Mother,” I said, kissing her brow. “No rivers. This child will be so overindulged that elephants shall carry her over every river in the empire.”
But my mother didn’t hear me, for an unexpected midwife had arrived with Stateira, swathed in her customary blue and gold. I wondered if Barsine would have preferred to plunge back into the turmoil of war once she took in the scene before her.
“The camp is in disarray,” Stateira said, wringing her hands. My lovely sister detested having a single brush or charcoal nub out of place in her drawing box; the chaos of the fireship and our brother’s birth might well send her sobbing into the tent corner before the sun rose again. “The midwife is nowhere to be found, but Barsine offered her assistance.”
“You brought Alexander’s whore to catch my child?” my mother nearly growled.
“Barsine’s mother was a midwife before their exile,” Stateira offered.
Barsine shrugged off her cumbersome head scarf, which fell past her waist and was covered with gold embroidery and a king’s ransom in shining coins. “I’ve helped several of my handmaids deliver healthy children. The Greek midwives during our exile were averse to catching Persian babes. I swear I won’t spit on the queen or her child as they did us.”
My grandmother pursed her lips, but nodded. “We are grateful for your help, Barsine.”
But there was another reason Barsine had offered to attend my mother.
“I have news from your father,” she whispered to me as she submerged her smooth hands in a bowl of boiled vinegar. “Alexander received a messenger—a eunuch from your father—today.”
“And?” I prompted. “What did the messenger say?”
She glanced at me, her eyes as blue as her necklace and almost as wide. “He spoke of your father’s pain at your capture and begged for your release in return for ten thousand talents.”
I gasped. It was a colossal sum that would overfill the largest treasury in the kingdom, but I was sure Alexander would demand no less. “When will the exchange occur?”
She shook her head and allowed a eunuch to dry her hands with a towel. “It won’t. Alexander burned the letter.”
“What?” My voice was so sharp it drew my grandmother’s attention, but my mother’s animal wail of pain saved me.
“He told his Companions that the Great King insulted him and demanded your freedom, claiming this war to be the fault of the Macedonians. You can imagine the Companions’ reaction when Alexander asked their opinion on your release.”
“They probably cursed my father and all of us to the furthest depths of Duzakh,” I said, keeping my hands busy with refolding a stack of towels. “Right before they laughed the messenger all the way back to Babylon. Alexander toys with us for his entertainment.” But I arched an eyebrow at Barsine. “Why would you risk telling me all this?”
She shrugged. “Alexander enjoys my company now, but his tastes may change in days to come. I hope that your family would remember my assistance and look upon me kindly should that happen.”
“A practical plan.”
Barsine was saved from answering by my grandmother’s barked command. “I need your help examining her, Barsine,” she said.
I didn’t watch. The axles and suspension beams of chariots entranced me, but the workings of my mother’s body held no allure. It was our duty as women to bring forth children, but I thought men had it better, for they could count on the strength of their sword arms when they risked their lives in battle. There was little a woman could do to guarantee her survival in childbed.
“The babe’s feet are first,” my grandmother muttered.
Despite the heat of the tent, a chill made me shiver as Barsine nodded. “We can try to turn the child, but it will cause the queen great discomfort. And she is no longer a young woman. . . .”
“We have no choice,” my grandmother said.
Barsine, no doubt wishing she’d never answered the summons to attend to Darius’ queen, helped my mother remove her sweat-stained robes and arranged her onto her back. No longer was my mother the regal consort of the King of Kings, but instead just a woman like any other, the skin of her stomach stretched thin and streaked with angry purple veins. My grandmother shoved pillows beneath my mother’s hips, then placed the heels of her hands atop her swollen stomach and shoved hard. I winced at my mother’s scream, a bloodcurdling shriek to rival any battle cry, and pushed back sweaty tendrils of hair from her forehead, feeling like the mother consoling her child.
Again, Barsine checked the babe, eliciting more exhausted moans from my mother. “The child still faces the wrong direction. I need sheep fat,” she ordered. “Warm it over the brazier.”
A servant scurried to attend to the fat while my mother cried softly to herself. “My girls,” she whispered through her tears. “You must be brave. Whatever Alexander plans for you, remember who you are, daughters of the King of Kings.”
I knew then she believed herself dying, but every laboring woman wishes for death just before bringing forth new life. My mother would survive this to outlive all of us and complain to our corpses about the quality of wine served at our funerals.
The sour tang of tallow filled the air and I watched in confusion as Barsine slathered her hand and forearm with the warmed sheep’s fat. Confusion turned to horror as she waited for my mother’s belly to slacken at the end of a pain. Barsine parted my mother’s legs and worked first her fingers, then her entire hand and wrist into my mother’s body. My mother screamed again, and hot tears slipped down my cheeks.
By the time Barsine finished, rivulets of sweat dripped down both her and my mother’s temples. Alexander’s pampered mistress sat back hard, her chest heaving. “The child is lodged firm,” she said. “I cannot turn it.”
My grandmother leaned over my mother to clasp her cheeks in age-spotted hands. “Stateira,” she whispered. “You must push this child from your womb. Think of Darius, and of holding this child together when you see him next.”
My mother seemed to rouse then, allowing my grandmother to help her squat next to the bed. I watched in horror as the skin across her belly tightened and she cried out in agony, her eyes bulging, as over and over the pains repeated and my mother, now on all fours and almost unrecognizable from the pain and struggle, pushed and screamed while her sweat soured the very air we breathed.
To no avail.
We took turns murmuring to her and whispering encouragement into her ears as e
ach new pain sapped her remaining strength.
Still, she clung to life.
I tried to stay awake, but the sun rose and set, then rose again before the infant finally fell from her womb feetfirst, a son with a blue face like my brother Cyrus, strangled by the cord wrapped tight round his neck. My mother lay on the bed as her lifeblood flooded from her body, staining the mattress and floor with an oncoming tide of scarlet. My throat grew tight as my grandmother forced her to swallow a mouthful of consecrated Haoma water and barked for the slaves to fetch pomegranate seeds, both harbingers of immortality served to the dying. Barsine tried to stanch the flow of blood, but there was naught she could do. Even before the pomegranates arrived, my grandmother bent to press her cheek to my mother’s nose, feeling for the breath that wouldn’t come.
I choked as she removed a golden thread from her pocket—the sacred kusti always kept near a laboring woman—and girdled it about my mother’s engorged waist, murmuring the Padyab-Kusti prayer to keep Ahriman’s demons at bay. “Your mother awaits her entrance into paradise,” she finally proclaimed. “Someone must inform Alexander.”
Without waiting for a response, I burst into the garish sun’s light for the first time in two days, gulping in the crisp air still tainted with the ash and smoke from the fireship.
My mother was dead. She had been alive when dawn tinted the sky today, but now she was dead.
I stumbled through the camp, ignoring the shocked stares, some of the soldiers making the sign against evil and death as I passed. I glanced down, only now realizing that the bottom of my stale robe was stained with my mother’s blood. My heart was heavy with grief and guilt for all the moments I’d squandered these past months that I might have spent with her, for all the times my temper had grown short as she complained of her swollen ankles and aching back.
A Companion pointed me toward the waterfront when I asked where I might find Alexander, and I trudged in that direction, each step draining the last of my energy.
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