The Conqueror's Wife

by Stephanie Thornton

  “Nuts,” he said in a monotone voice, warming his hands in front of the oven’s open front, steam pouring from its smoldering black coals. He was as ugly as she, with a bulbous red nose and a tangled beard that might have housed a family of rats. “Pistachios, walnuts, and almonds.”

  I fished for a coin in my pocket and tossed the bit of gold to him. His face slackened with shock when he realized its value, but then twisted in annoyance as his wife grabbed it, biting the gleaming metal between brown teeth before shrieking and shoving it between her ample breasts.

  “Women,” I said to the man, shaking my head with a commiserating smile as she jabbered and filled the largest bag of steaming pistachios. “Can’t live with them . . .”

  “I could live without this one,” the husband hissed, receiving a thunk on the head from his foulmouthed wife as she shoved the bag into my hands. She reminded me of another Persian woman, one whose slightly fairer face did little to make up for her fishmonger’s mouth.

  Yet the threat of banishment to Susa had silenced Darius’ gorgon of a daughter, a feat on par with Heracles’ slaying of the Hydra. I popped a warm nut in my mouth, wondering if perhaps I might persuade Alexander to commission a song or two in my honor for surviving another encounter with the ghastly she-cat.

  Immediately upon entering Susa two weeks ago, Alexander had marched past the city’s sissoo-wood temples to the inner palace and thrown open the doors to the throne room, its flame-scarlet and night-black walls studded with tasteful ebony and tiny flecks of glittering gemstones. One could fault the Persians for gelding their eunuchs and retreating like cowering dogs on the battlefield, but their palaces were luxurious and their gardens lush paradises, especially compared with the stark utility of our Macedonian architecture back home.

  In the presence of Susa’s satrap and priests, Darius’ sour-faced womenfolk, and all his Companions, Alexander had mounted the short dais, hesitating only briefly before the solid gold throne beneath its gilded canopy, emblazoned with a purple and gold lion on the base and a bouquet of peacock feathers and gem-laden blossoms. He sheathed his sword, turned with a flourish, and hoisted himself upon the great throne.

  His feet didn’t reach the ground.

  Among other things, the gods had endowed my friend, commander, and lover with a noble birth, a quick mind, and more courage than Achilles, but he was no taller than most men and apparently, he was far shorter than Darius.

  A Persian king would never sully his feet with something as inane as the floor, and a low gilded stool waited patiently for Alexander’s dusty boots. A eunuch scurried to place the stool, then glanced up at Alexander with an expression of sheer panic. Drypetis sniggered into her hand, silenced only by her grandmother’s glare.

  Alexander’s feet still didn’t touch.

  His mouth tightened like a length of steel, but I jutted my chin to a short table at his elbow, its sides carved to resemble a winged sphinx with decorated clawed feet. The eunuch took the cue and moved the table to replace the footstool, thereby eliminating the dangle of Alexander’s feet.

  “There’s dust and manure on his sandals,” Drypetis groused under her breath. “Our father would cut off his feet for the insult.” I turned to silence her—I’d stuff her veil in her mouth if I had to—but Alexander hesitated, moving his sandaled feet as if to admire the hammered gold filament of the sphinx’s wings. “It is a fine table,” he said, replacing his feet. “A fitting stool for the true basileus of Persia.”

  He continued as if nothing had happened, reappointing the Persian satrap, ordering sacrifices to our gods, and proclaiming a bout of athletic games fit for the twelve Olympians and possibly the Titans too.

  Artemis’ tits, but I was sick of running about naked for the honor of Zeus and his ilk. Let the lord of thunder gambol about in the cutting winter winds without his chiton and see how he enjoyed it.

  “My troops depart for Persepolis before the solstice,” Alexander informed Susa’s satrap, a man with so much oil in his ringleted beard that walking by an oil lamp might set him afire.

  I winced at the remembrance of the singer left behind to die at the Eternal Fires of Baba Gurgan. In the days since, I often wondered if I might have stopped Alexander from committing such a terrible crime against Adurnarseh, but my own fear had paralyzed me, recalling the fire Alexander had set in a cave while we camped in the Precinct of the Nymphs at Mieza as boys. We’d been sent into the foothills of Macedon’s Bermius Mountains by Aristotle in order that we might observe the natural world via the lush orchards and waterfalls around us. We’d stayed up half the night as boys are wont to do, ignoring the bugs and bushes we were meant to be studying in favor of practicing our swordplay with wooden blades and telling haunting tales of vengeful gods, until I’d finally dozed off. We’d chosen a cave to sleep in and I’d dreamed of the forges of my namesake Hephaestus, the crippled god sweating inside his volcano while hammering armor and weapons for his family of gods. Instead, I’d woken to a cave filled with smoke and fire, the scalding flames that licked at my hair and limbs also obscuring the entrance. Disoriented, I might have died in that tiny rock tomb had it not been for Alexander’s strong hand around my wrist pulling me into the clean, fresh air. I’d fallen to the ground, coughing until my smoke-scorched throat threatened to bleed while Alexander watched the flames in rapturous silence.

  “What happened?” I had finally been able to ask, my voice rasping like an old hag’s.

  “I wanted to see how big the fire could get,” Alexander said, a wild grin splitting his lips in two.

  In that moment I wanted to split more than just his lip. If my wooden sword hadn’t been left in the cave, I might have bashed in his head. Instead, I still crouched on the damp earth, my entire body shaking.

  “Have you been breathing Apollo’s vapors?” I’d gaped, incredulous. “You could have killed me!”

  Only then did Alexander look abashed.

  “I just kept feeding it with tree limbs and old brush . . . ,” he muttered, staring at his feet as if I were Philip reprimanding him. “I’ll give you my new copper sword to replace your training sword. And . . . I’m sorry.”

  It was Alexander’s first encounter with the power of fire, and it wouldn’t be the last.

  I forgave him for the accident—my new copper sword was almost worth the terror and my singed curls—but since then, fire held the power to make the gorge rise in my throat. That fire at the Mieza cave was when I recognized that it would fall to me to rein in Alexander’s passions, but my feeble actions at stopping him at the Eternal Fires had proved too little, too late. And while I’d scarcely known the singer, one day I’d greet Adurnarseh’s shade in Hades and be forced to atone for my part in his death.

  “I leave behind precious spoils,” Alexander continued to the satrap with a graceful wave of his hand toward Darius’ women, trussed like turtledoves in their full plumage. “I entrust to you my adopted mother, the Queen Mother Sisygambis, and her granddaughters Stateira and Drypetis. It is my command that they receive every comfort here in Susa, and that they enjoy the privilege of the finest Greek tutor that can be procured for their private use.”

  Drypetis balked. “We already speak Greek.” The girl may have been raised in four palaces, but she possessed less polish than a kitchen slave wringing shit from the guts of a freshly slaughtered goat.

  “It is my wish that you should learn to speak our tongue more fluently, and write it too,” Alexander said. “As befits women of your station.”

  A station that should have guaranteed Alexander’s marriage to one if not both of Darius’ daughters by now. But he’d only shrugged when I’d asked him about the matter on our way to Susa.

  “I’m scarcely twenty-six,” he’d answered. “There’s plenty of time for marriage after I’ve conquered Persia and wear her eagle diadem.”

  “We are honored at your thoughtfulness,” Stateira said. �
�And we shall endeavor to please you by becoming adept at your language.” She clasped Drypetis’ wrist hard enough to break the bones anew. It was the first time I’d seen proof that Stateira possessed a mind of her own, and I suspected that she had one goal: pleasing Alexander.

  “I shall be happy to receive letters written by your own hand, Stateira, daughter of Darius,” Alexander said. He gifted her with a true smile, the one that shone with the sun’s own warmth. “You shall bring great pride to your grandmother.”

  Drypetis snorted, but Stateira didn’t answer, only bowed her lovely head so a lock of gleaming copper hair slipped from her veil as she backed slowly down the stairs. Alexander’s gaze followed her the entire way. His weren’t the only eyes on her; it seemed as if every man in the throne room had only just now taken notice of Darius’ elder daughter. Stateira was everything her younger sister was not: elegant as the Graces, beautiful as Aphrodite, and demure as Hestia.

  Drypetis tried to saunter past, but I caught her by the forearm. “A word, if you don’t mind, Princess?”

  She scowled. “I have more than one word for you, but I suspect the length and breadth of them would make your ears bleed.”

  “Interesting, because I have only one word for you.” I leaned down to whisper to her, catching a whiff of her spicy cassia perfume, so different from the typical musk and myrrh perfumes most Persians favored. Strange, as I’d imagined that Drypetis smelled only of axle grease and rust. “And that word is treason.”

  Yes, I’m more evil than a venomous manticore and all manner of other monsters, for I reveled in her blanching face and wide eyes; she looked as though she might be sick all over my sandals. She recovered quickly, but the admission of guilt was there, although I already had plenty of proof.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she said, her pupils dilated like those of someone who’d overindulged in poppy milk.

  “Don’t insult either of us by lying. I have in my possession—not that you’ll ever find it—a foul screed written in your hand, inciting the Babylonian satrap, Mazaeus, to rebellion and offering your hand in marriage. Granted, you claimed to be your father, but your skull must be full of gnats to think that anyone would believe that the King of Kings would beg one of his lowest-ranking satraps to save him and take his foulmouthed daughter off his hands.”

  “You stole that letter! You laid your hands on me while I was sleeping—”

  “I did indeed,” I snarled, “and when I read the letter’s contents, I almost wrung your skinny little neck. Do you think Alexander will be so benevolent when I inform him of your plot?” I walked around her, hands clasped tight behind my back to keep from shaking her. I almost stumbled when she turned and stepped so close I thought she might shove me out of her path. I’d half expected her to cower with fear and beg forgiveness when I confronted her, but I must have temporarily lost my wits; Drypetis of Persia would make Medusa herself tremble in terror.

  “Then why wait so long to confront me?” she demanded. “Why not proclaim my guilt to Alexander before we left Babylon?”

  “Because the letter guarantees your good behavior while you’re in Susa.”

  The little weasel dared to laugh in my face. “Why in the name of Ahura Mazda would it do that?”

  “Because if I hear one whisper that you’re rabble-rousing while we’re in the east, I’ll present it to Alexander.” I stepped closer, ensuring that her next step backward pushed her against the throne room’s magnificent frescoes. “But I won’t tell him that you wrote it. No; instead, I’ll tell him that it was written by your sister.”

  “You wouldn’t dare. And he wouldn’t believe you even if you did.” Her words were bluster, her battle stance and bravado deflating before my very eyes as she realized she’d lost.

  “You will stay in Susa as Alexander commanded,” I said, stepping back and flicking imaginary dust from my robe. “You will learn Greek and be a perfect specimen of obedience, even though it may well kill you.”

  “Which I’m sure would please you to no end.”

  I shrugged. “It would save me the trouble of killing you later.”

  I’d thought we were alone, but someone cleared his throat behind me and I turned to see Alexander standing before the colossal ebony doors, his arms crossed before his chest and an annoyingly amused curl to his lips.

  “Am I interrupting something?” he asked.

  “Not at all,” I said, even as Drypetis sounded her own emphatic no. I barely kept myself from quipping that I was hunting down traitors. “We were just finished,” I answered instead.

  “Seems like you were just getting started,” Alexander said. Not even my stoniest glare could stop him from raising a bemused eyebrow in my direction.

  My last glimpse of Darius’ younger daughter was of her fists clenched tight, looking as if she might hurl daggers or any handy projectile at my back as I departed the throne room.

  I’d silenced the gorgon, but I was under no illusion that I’d broken her.

  It was enough, at least for now.

  • • •

  Days passed, and fortunately, I didn’t cross paths again with Drypetis while we remained in Susa. Neither did I hear any rumblings about rebellion, so I was content that she’d behave herself in order to keep her beloved sister safe from harm.

  We left behind thirty thousand Persian boys taken during our many campaigns, adolescents with breaking voices and brave attempts at beards who would remain behind and train to one day fill the ranks of Alexander’s army. The boys lined the road leading toward Persepolis at least a hundred deep, and dutiful aristocrats that they were, Sisygambis and Stateira helped festoon the ground with dried rose petals when our regiments departed. Barsine too was there among the cheering crowds and crowing horns, dressed in her customary sapphire silk, for she had asked and received permission to remain behind with the royal Persian women. I watched her whisper something in Alexander’s ear and he gave a mighty cheer, then kissed her with a rare ferocity even as I bade good-bye to a handsome young slave with the most stunning calf muscles—among other parts—that I’d ever had the pleasure to run my hands over.

  I breathed a sigh of relief as Susa finally slipped into the gray smudge of the horizon. “I detest that city,” I said to Alexander as I assumed my place at his side, giving Bucephalus my customary growl by way of greeting. Dependable old Ox-Head threw his head and snorted like a demon from Tartarus, but he lacked his golden horn helm today, making him seem like a normal, mortal horse. In fact, the noble steed’s teeth were browning and going sharp like an old nag’s, showing signs of his age despite his extra pails of alfalfa and constant brushings. Alexander didn’t respond. “I wouldn’t mind if Susa crumbled to the ground,” I continued, “although I will say that spending the winter curled in bed with a pretty slave or two might trump chasing after Darius in this miserable weather. I swear I can barely feel my toes.”

  Alexander scarcely glanced at me, his brows drawn together over his mismatched blue eyes. “Barsine is pregnant.”

  I stared at him a moment, then grinned. That explained Alexander’s display with her as we were leaving. “It was only a matter of time before the world was rife with little golden-haired terrors just like you.”

  But Alexander looked more like the corpse at a funeral than a proud father-to-be.

  “The child will be illegitimate,” he said, stone-faced. “I need an heir, Hephaestion, not a bastard.”

  “As you said before, there’s plenty of time for you to make dozens of heirs.”

  “Perhaps,” he said. “Perhaps I do need to take a wife, and soon.”

  “Then marry Barsine and be done with it.”

  Alexander’s lips made a bitter twist. “I can’t marry a Persian whore, and you well know it.”

  “One thing at a time.” I clapped him on the back, earning an annoyed snort from Ox-Head. “Deal with Darius first a
nd then you can find some pretty girl to make you all the heirs you want.”

  “Speaking of which,” Alexander said, his expression turning suddenly sly, “I won’t pretend to understand it, but I’ve seen the way you look at Darius’ youngest daughter, homely though she is. That day in the throne room you looked ready to devour her. She’s a far cry from the beauties you usually bed, but shall I make you a gift of her?”

  I looked askance at him, grim-faced. “I’d never forgive you if you did.”

  He laughed and spurred Bucephalus with his heels. Moments later we were racing over Persia’s drab winter plains like we had so many times as boys after escaping from Aristotle’s droning lessons, no greater care in the world than the wind in our ears. Alexander leaned over Bucephalus’ reins while the rest of the Companions hollered after us and struggled to catch up.

  That was the last golden day before everything went to Hades.

  • • •

  Persepolis, the richest city under the sun, sent its letter of surrender to Alexander before we even reached the city, and the Persians threw open the grand Gate of All Nations with its massive sculpted lamassus—winged bulls with the heads of bearded men—to allow Alexander entrance into its stunning palace. I’d dreamed of walking the halls of Darius’ famed Apadana palace with its eagle-headed columns and porticoes embossed with exquisite carvings of the famed Immortals, whom I found I enjoyed seeing chiseled in stone far more than their screaming flesh-and-blood inspirations on the battlefield. I watched in awe as the entire court bowed to Alexander in a wave of perfumed silk, kissing their fingers as if they were greeting Ahura Mazda himself. The satrap in his flat-crowned blue hat surrendered 120,000 talents of gold bullion, priceless lapis lazuli plaques, and countless cedar chests of gemstones, so massive a treasure that it would take fifteen thousand beasts of burden to carry away the city’s vast riches. Yet Alexander didn’t even acknowledge the spoils, only marched farther into the palace with a face like one of the many exquisite marble statues being carted away.