I shouldn’t have been surprised to see bearded Hephaestus holding an anvil and tongs in the place of honor. The god of metalwork was a logical choice for any warrior to worship, to ask that the iron of a sword be true and the metal of one’s armor be impenetrable. But there were two goddesses behind Hephaestus. The first was easily identifiable and I stroked the wings of my namesake: Nike. The second wore a helmet similar to Athena’s but was otherwise unadorned, bearing no shield or identifying owl insignia.
A woman behind me cleared her throat and I turned to see Cynnane enter the courtyard. I’d half expected to greet an Amazon, a shield strapped to her back and one breast shorn off, the better to facilitate drawing arrows from the quiver at her back. But the woman approaching me could have been any proper matron, save that her measured paces might have been stolen from an infantry soldier.
And her hair. It really was a disaster, and I was scarcely one to notice as I still sometimes pulled brambles from my own unraveled braid after a day spent in the woods.
“Greetings, Thessalonike,” she said. “To what do I owe this honor?”
As always, my words snarled together when I was around Cynnane. She was everything I dreamed of being as a woman: strong, independent, and worldly. Next to her, I was just a knob-kneed girl.
“Arrhidaeus and I were fishing. . . . Well, we haven’t started yet, but we were almost to the creek and he had a sudden craving for pomegranates,” I said, my heart beating a wild tattoo in my chest. “So I said we could stop at your villa.”
“Arrhidaeus is always welcome here,” Cynnane said, ruffling his hair and bending to wipe a crimson smear from his cheek with the corner of her peplos. “You are also welcome, Thessalonike, although I’ve not seen you since . . .”
“Father’s death,” I said. “I know.”
When Cynnane had felled our father’s assassin with a well-thrown dagger, and I’d managed only to throw rocks at his feet.
Silence fell, punctuated by Arrhidaeus’ loud slurps and smacks.
“We share a patron goddess, I believe,” I finally said, gesturing to winged Nike. “My namesake.”
“The goddess of victory was our father’s patron,” she said.
“I’ve recently become an initiate of Dionysus,” I said too quickly.
Cynnane clasped her hands before her. “Olympias’ patron.”
I wanted to tell her that the god of grapes was the only thing I shared with Olympias, but my protest withered under the full weight of Cynnane’s stare.
“Who is the second goddess?” I asked. “Not one of the Olympians, I presume.”
“No indeed,” Cynnane said. “She is Metis, Athena’s mother.”
Metis was Zeus’ first wife, swallowed by her husband while pregnant with Athena. Undeterred, Metis had worked inside Zeus’ head to fashion a helmet for her daughter, causing such a racket that Zeus roared in pain, prompting the god Hephaestus to cleave open the thunder god’s skull, thereby freeing Athena. “The original goddess of cunning and wisdom,” I said.
“Naturally,” Cynnane said. “A woman of any age must be cunning, but I fear she needs those skills even more nowadays.”
With that, she turned and strode toward a room on one side of the courtyard. I worried for a moment that I’d been dismissed, or worse, that she was retreating to the gynaeceum to weave, as Olympias so often did, but instead she crooked a finger at me to follow.
“Do you mind if I borrow Thessalonike?” she asked Arrhidaeus. He shook his head, already reaching for another pomegranate in a bowl.
“I’ll be right back,” I whispered to Arrhidaeus, but he scarcely looked up from his feast.
I followed Cynnane not into placid rooms decorated with frescoes of gardens or frolicking porpoises, which so often denoted the women’s chambers, but instead into the black and red chambers of what must have been Amyntas’ andron. The stone floor was sloped toward the middle to allow for easier cleanup of the wine thrown during the men’s symposions and its walls were lined with weapons fit for an armory: swords, shields, lances, and daggers. A girl needed to be careful in here; one wrong move and I might lose an eye.
“I spend most of my time here, at least while my daughter, Adea, is at her lessons,” Cynnane said. I’d never met Cynnane’s daughter, but she must be close to five by now, having been born just before her father’s death. “She’ll finish soon and go down to play with Arrhidaeus. They get along well.” She mixed what I thought was spices into a kylix of wine, then poured and handed me a cup before arranging herself on one of the couches. “I suspect whatever you came here to discuss might best be done in private.”
I’d expected the aroma of cloves and sweet raisin wine, but instead beheld a brackish beer with chunks of stale bread floating on top, its recipe likely stolen from Sparta’s meanest barracks. At least it wasn’t their famed black broth made from boiled pigs’ legs, blood, and vinegar. I held my breath and took a sip, refusing to allow myself to choke.
I set the cup aside and folded my hands in my lap, but quickly took to turning the snake bracelets on my wrists. “I told you,” I said, my courage failing. “We came for pomegranates.”
“A meager lie, meagerly told. Let me guess.” Cynnane sighed. “You’ve come to me because you fancy work with a sword. Why else would you seek me out?”
My head jerked up. It was possible that Olympias had sniffed out my motives and forewarned Cynnane; her spies were more plentiful than Medusa’s snakes.
And Olympias kept me close, pulling me to follow in her footsteps with her serpents and love of Dionysus. She sought to mold me into her shadow so I might serve our family as she had. But I was not Olympias.
And I had no intention of ruling anything, not Macedon or Aigai or even the garbage midden outside Pella.
“Will you teach me to fight?” I asked.
Cynnane stared at me a long moment, then shook her head. “No,” she said, and my heart fell. “I won’t teach you.”
“Why not?”
“A sword will only give you blisters, my pampered little sister. You ask for something to nibble on when a banquet is laid for you. You sneeze and a barrage of slaves arrives with rags to dab away your snot.” She waved a dismissive hand at me. “Return to the palace and ask Olympias for a new puppy instead. I won’t have you diminishing the honor and sanctity of my Illyrian steel with your playing at war.”
A red rush of anger and embarrassment roared in my ears and I was on my feet in a heartbeat. “I’m not playing at war,” I said. “I’ll go mad if I stay in that palace with my only hope of escape tied to a husband and a far-flung marriage bed. I asked Hephaestion to take me with him to Persia, but he refused.” I practically spat the next words at her. “I even snuck here without Olympias’ permission, thinking you might understand, but I see I was wrong. I won’t trouble you further.”
With that, I turned and stormed away. I tried to open the door, but somehow I’d neglected to notice that Cynnane had locked it upon our entrance. It didn’t budge, meaning either I would have to wait for her to produce the key or I could jump out the window and land in the juniper bush outside.
The bush wasn’t too big. Perhaps I might escape with only bruises to my pride and scratches on my backside.
Cynnane cleared her throat behind me and I waited for her laughter to follow, curling my hands into fists.
“You truly asked Hephaestion to take you with him?” she asked. “And he refused?”
I turned slowly, trying to ascertain whether she would mock me next, but her expression was empty of malice. Instead, she bit her bottom lip, a mannerism she shared with Alexander when they were thinking deeply about something. “He did,” I said. “He claimed a battlefield was no place for a woman.”
She scoffed, then stood on tiptoe and removed a gleaming broadsword from its mount on the wall. “Hephaestion is an idiot.”
I�
��d never heard him described as such, but I wasn’t going to argue with her, at least not while she balanced the wicked blade in her palms.
“I wrote a curse tablet for him after that,” I admitted. I’d taken my curse to a bent-backed old man in the market who made a living writing the tablets. The metal panel was a lovely little thing, what with its tiny letters that cursed Hephaestion’s life, mind, memory, lungs, liver, and heart scratched into the lead. (I’d have cursed his eyes, nose, fingers, and even his big toe if it were up to me, but alas, the tablet had only so much room.)
Cynnane gave a snort of laughter that might have come from a swineherd. An ill-mannered one at that.
“You can add your tablet to my pile,” she said. “Unfortunately, Hephaestion is protected by every god under the sun, and our brother as well. Curses roll off him like quicksilver.”
I wondered then what had transpired between Hephaestion and Cynnane. Hephaestion was as easy to love as summer, but that season’s heat too often burned if one wasn’t careful.
“Fine,” Cynnane said, the single word as sharp as the sword she carried. “I’ll train you.”
“What?” I gaped for a moment, then clapped my mouth shut. “Really?”
“I’ll surely regret it,” she said. “But you’ll go mad in Pella without something to occupy you and I’m already well on my way to madness. We can’t have two of Philip’s daughters turn into raving loons, now, can we?”
“Thank you!” I squealed the words and flung my arms open to hug her, but Cynnane hunched over and something metallic whizzed past my ear, followed by a wooden thud. A dagger protruded from the whitewashed beam behind me, and my ribs suddenly felt as thin as drum canvas being smashed by my heart.
“You wish me to teach you the ways of a sword and shield,” she said. “Anything else?”
I remembered another dagger flying through the air and embedding itself in the flesh of our father’s murderer.
“It appears you’re handy with daggers as well,” I managed to squeak out.
Cynnane gave a slow smile. “An Illyrian soldier is proficient in all weapons.”
She tossed the sword to me, and I thanked Nike that I didn’t drop it or, more likely, cut off my hand. “Let’s see how strong you are,” she said, digging through a chest and removing a wooden training sword, polished smooth but battered about its oak blade. She kicked a low table out of the way and opened her arms wide. “No sniveling and no whining, no matter how much it hurts.”
And it hurt.
One wouldn’t imagine that a woman with a battered wooden sword could inflict a lot of damage, but by the time Cynnane called the match, I was winded and bruised, and every muscle screamed in protest. Although I’d lunged and parried with a real blade, the closest I’d come to disarming or besting Cynnane was when I crashed into the ground, scraping my shoulder on the tiles and losing my sword. She’d pointed her blade at me, but I kicked it away and scrambled for my own weapon, rising and swinging wildly. Surprise had flared in her eyes, but she parried hard and backed me against the wall, this time aiming the point of her blade at the soft skin at the base of my neck while covering her yawn with her free hand. She’d released me and I thrust forward again and again, all while Cynnane’s insults and instructions rained upon my head.
“Is that the fastest you can move? I’ve seen snail slime dry faster. Feint, don’t block, donkey brain!”
My body was battered, but it was my pride that stung the most.
But pride led to hubris and hubris led to nothing good, as my father’s grave could attest.
Finally, the torture ended. I dragged a sleeve across my face, ignoring the stink of perspiration that clung to me. My slaves would be hard-pressed to scrub the sweat stains from the underarms of my chiton and I’d have to invent a story explaining why the hem was ripped.
“I’m hopeless,” I said, tears stinging my eyes.
If I’d yearned for sunny compliments and gentle words of wisdom, I’d come to the wrong place. For that matter, I’d been born into the wrong family.
“You are indeed,” Cynnane agreed, removing her dagger from the wall and replacing it in an ingenious leather sheath strapped below her knee. “But you’ll improve.”
“When can I return?” I asked.
“Whenever it pleases you,” she said. “I’m always here.” I took some satisfaction in the fact that she was breathing harder than normal. She unlocked the door of the andron, leaving me to scurry after her.
Arrhidaeus had fallen asleep in the courtyard, curled up in a patch of sun like an oversized, snoring cat. Cynnane’s little daughter, Adea, covered her giggle with chubby hands as we approached, surrounded by a veritable herd of multicolored kittens. She’d inherited her father’s black hair instead of her mother’s mass of copper tangles, and it captured the sunlight now. She said, “Uncle Arrhidaeus gurgles like a fountain between his snores.”
As if on cue, Arrhidaeus did just that. It took the toe of my sandal on his backside to finally wake him with a snort worthy of a Cyclops. For a moment I thought I detected a hint of a smile on Cynnane’s face as Adea wrapped her pale arms around my brother’s leg.
“You’re like a great cuddly dog, Uncle Arrhidaeus,” she said. “I like you even more than my kittens.”
To my surprise, Arrhidaeus gave a sheepish grin, then opened his arms and laughed as she launched herself into his embrace. “And I like you more than pomegranates,” he said, setting her down.
“That’s high praise coming from him,” I whispered to her with a wink, earning another giggle.
I was still smiling as the gates closed behind us and Arrhidaeus chased after a yellow swallowtail butterfly, his big feet sending up puffs of dust. I paused to glance back at the villa’s high walls and rubbed the growing pain in my shoulder. It would ache for days, but each twinge was a reminder of time not spent at a loom or wasting away in Pella’s bathing pavilion, letting slaves rub me with rose-scented salves while streaking lemon juice into my hair.
Right now I wouldn’t argue against a salve or two, although I still wasn’t sure how I was going to explain my absence to Olympias if she asked. The sun hung closer to the horizon than I’d planned by the time we’d caught enough trout to cover our tracks, but we still might slip back into the palace undetected.
“Will we see Adea again soon?” Arrhidaeus asked, alternately swinging his pails of pomegranates and trout. “I miss her, and her kittens.”
I gave him a stern look. “Remember what I said—that you can’t tell anyone we went there together or Olympias will lock me away until I’m an old crone?”
Arrhidaeus nodded. “No one can know about you with Adea. Or Cynnane. But secrets are bad.”
“This secret would mean you’d get to come back and eat pomegranates, to play with Adea and the kittens.”
Arrhidaeus frowned, then gave a thoughtful nod. “Then, yes, I swallow our secret.”
I smiled. “Then, brother, I think we’ll see them often.”
We’d barely closed the garden gate and paused to pet my shaggy goat, enjoying her dinner of grass, when a shadow darkened our path. Olympias waited with her arms crossed over her chest, and behind her stood Antipater, my father’s former general and Alexander’s regent here in Macedon. If the old boor wasn’t bad enough, Cassander flanked his father, standing as rigid as any god’s statue. He was as ugly as the god Hephaestus with a scowl that made his lips shrivel like the twisted god of the forge.
“Where have you been?” Olympias asked. Not even a snake’s face ever looked so cold and calm.
“Fishing,” I said, nodding to Arrhidaeus’ pail and lifting my own basket. The smell made my goat baa and storm away to seek calmer pastures. “And filching pomegranates.”
“So I see,” Olympias said. “And did you have a fine day fishing, Arrhidaeus?”
My brother looked to me, then mirrored
my slow nod. “I brought my best worms,” he said, holding out the fish pail for inspection.
“The trout will make a fine meal for us tonight,” Olympias said, her tone as smooth as if he’d offered her a pail of rubies. “Would you like to take them to the kitchen? I believe the cooks just finished a batch of sweet rolls as well.”
Olympias knew the magic words to steal away my ally. Arrhidaeus didn’t even wave to me as he bounded over the tiles, his pail swinging so wildly that several dead trout looked as if they were trying to escape. I was left alone to face Olympias, Antipater, and Cassander.
I’d rather have fought the nine-headed Hydra with only a spoon.
“You are not a simple peasant’s daughter, Thessalonike,” Olympias said. “And I am not a simpleton. Did you really think you could slink off to Cynnane’s villa and no one would notice?”
“Cynnane is my sister—”
“And you asked her to train you to fight,” Olympias said.
I didn’t get a chance to answer, for Antipater crossed his spindly arms beneath his trailing beard. “It is unseemly for a woman to even think of engaging in swordplay.”
“Thessalonike can learn to wrestle naked in the Olympic arena for all I care,” Olympias said.
My eyes bulged, but nothing could have saved me from bursting out into laughter at the horror that warped Cassander’s already ugly face.
“That’s sacrilege,” he stuttered. “Women are meant to wield a shuttle and loom, not a sword or shield.”
“Thessalonike won’t be fighting in the Olympic arena anytime soon,” she said. “For as you’ve pointed out, she is a woman now and a sister to the basileus of Macedon, Egypt, and Persia. But she is a passionate young woman, and until she can funnel that energy into pleasing her husband and producing his children, she must have an outlet. You are valuable, Thessalonike,” she said, turning to me while Cassander gawped, “yet you traipse across the countryside, begging all manner of men to take advantage of you.”
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