The Conqueror's Wife

by Stephanie Thornton

  Only once I was spent did Bagoas lift me from the floor and spread me on my poor excuse of a bed. I let him undress me and soothe me with his caresses, tears still seeping from the corners of my eyes until his lips kissed them away. “Your life isn’t over, Roxana,” he murmured, his voice like the purr of a dove as he lay down beside me. “We are survivors. No matter what happens, we keep our head above water.”

  “Like rats on a sinking ship,” I said, feeling his chuckle reverberate up my spine.

  “Like rats on a sinking ship,” he agreed.

  CHAPTER 14

  330 BCE

  Pella, Macedon

  Thessalonike

  Sweat dripped down the backs of my legs, pooled inside the wool strophion that bound my breasts, and threatened to blind me (as if my helmet didn’t do that enough already) as Cynnane came at me like a she-demon freshly released from the depths of Tartarus.

  “Again,” she cried, hefting her sword overhead. “Faster—guard up—angle your shield—again!”

  I was so intent on not taking a sword to my ribs that I didn’t notice we were being watched until a woman clapped her hands, breaking us apart.

  “Your games are finished for today,” Olympias announced. “We must discuss Antipater.”

  Olympias’ rare and unexpected visit should have soured my stomach, but the fact that my arms were about to fall off made me almost grateful. I tossed my blade to the ground and glanced beyond the gurgling fountain where Arrhidaeus and Adea played with her latest litter of kittens and my aging orange tomcat. Cassander waited at the courtyard’s entrance, ostensibly to begin my lessons on Plato’s endorsement of philosopher kings or something equally dreadful. Antipater’s son was scarcely out of earshot and he stood rigid as always, as if bracing himself against the unpleasant chore that was his life.

  Perhaps there was one benefit to Olympias’ presence, for if she stayed long enough, I might weasel my way out of whatever lecture he had planned for today.

  “Cassander!” I relished his flinch, which I knew by now was no gesture of surprise but instead a reaction to a woman raising her voice louder than the coo of a dove. “Fetch us wine. And glasses too.”

  I settled back in my leather-slung chair, watching the apple of his throat work hard as he swallowed his lecture about the impropriety of sending a nobleman’s son several years my senior to do the work of a kitchen slave. Instead he gave a tight bow under Olympias’ watchful eye and left the courtyard. If he were anyone else, I’d know to look for spit in the wine I’d ordered, but I doubted whether such a crass insult would ever occur to Cassander.

  “What has Antipater done this time to displease you?” Cynnane scarcely looked up as she kicked the heels of her Macedonian silver-studded boots onto the wooden table. She unbuckled the clasps on her greaves and let them fall to the ground with a clatter, ignoring a look from Olympias that might have chilled the fires of Mount Etna.

  “Antipater has grown too powerful since he quelled the Agis revolt in Sparta,” Olympias said, her lips drawn tight as a rope as she crossed her arms over her chest, the sardonyx cameo of herself and her son winking at her throat. “Alexander agrees that Antipater’s power must be checked.”

  I recalled my brother’s most recent letter, his pen stroke so heavy that it had indented the parchment when he claimed that while he had been conquering King Darius, a battle among mice had broken out on the Peloponnese. My brother was accustomed to being obeyed and adored, both at home and abroad, and the tone of his letter had swung between anger and sulking.

  “And how do you propose to check Antipater?” Cynnane asked with a brusque chuff of laughter. “Raise an army?”

  I chuckled along with her, but fell silent as Olympias leveled her cold glare at me.

  “I will welcome that day when it comes,” she said to Cynnane. “Unfortunately, the time isn’t yet ripe for us to meet on the battlefield.”

  Because try as she might, the Macedonian army was loyal first to Alexander and next to Antipater, its aged general and regent.

  “But Antipater defers to Alexander in everything,” Cynnane said. “Even when Alexander proclaimed the Spartans could keep their freedom after their revolt, despite the Macedonian blood they’d spilled.”

  “Still, the soldiers love Antipater,” I said. I knew this because I’d lost count of the times Cassander had bemoaned the injustice of being relegated to instructing me when he might have been learning diplomacy and military leadership at his father’s elbow.

  “All the more reason that Antipater is a threat,” Olympias maintained. “He pretends contentment as Alexander’s subordinate, but that is the facade of a patient man biding his time. Alexander still has no heir and it falls to me to protect his interests at home in his absence. I’d prefer to see Antipater slain, his body burned and his ashes poured into a funerary chest, but the army would decry the execution of its leader.”

  “So,” Cynnane repeated, “what shall you do?”

  “I go at once to Epirus, to my brother’s palace.”

  “Alexander of Molossia?” I asked.

  “An excellent deduction, Thessalonike,” she said, closing her eyes and pressing her middle finger to her forehead as if pushing away an ache there. “Considering that I have only one brother.”

  Cynnane clasped her hands behind her head. “But you haven’t been on speaking terms with your brother since he abandoned you in your exile in Epirus.”

  Just before the wedding that had set my father on the path to be murdered in his arena.

  “I haven’t spoken with my dear brother since then, nor shall I ever,” Olympias said, examining the heavy emerald rings on her hand. “For he’s dead.”

  Cynnane set her feet on the ground and brushed back her frizz of hair. “You have my condolences.”

  Olympias waved away her words. “My brother was never going to amount to anything. He trundled off to Pandosia to become a hero against the Lucanians and found himself instead skewered by one of their spears in the heat of the battle. So now I must travel to Epirus to honor what little is left of him.”

  Cynnane and I exchanged a frown. “What do you mean,” she asked Olympias, “what’s left of him?”

  Olympias snorted. “The Lucanians wished to make an example of him and cut him in half. They pelted one side with stones and javelins until almost nothing remained.”

  She spoke as if describing the menu for tonight, but my gorge rose at the very thought. I’d hardly known Alexander of Molossia, but no man’s body deserved such desecration. “But there will be no rituals for your brother,” I said, swallowing hard. “No prothesis to ready his body or procession to honor him. Surely a man fallen in battle deserves more. . . .”

  I let the thought hang, for if my brother Alexander fell in battle, I knew that Olympias would demand his body be returned to Macedon preserved in a coffin of the clearest honey so she might prepare his body and consign him to the flames herself.

  “A woman stumbled upon the execution and asked for the rest of my brother so that she might ransom her husband and children, who had been sent back to Epirus.” Olympias yawned. “I’ve no need for my brother’s worthless bones—and only half of them at that—but my infantile brother left our cousin Aeacidas as his heir. The boy is still a child.”

  “So you shall leave for Epirus,” I said slowly, fitting all the pieces together. “And rule in your cousin’s place?”

  Leaving me in Pella without Olympias’ constant surveillance. The very thought made me feel as if Atlas’ burden had been lifted from my shoulders.

  Olympias patted my hand like I was a doddering old crone, then rose regally to her feet. “Antipater will believe we are going to mourn my brother, but in fact, I shall rule as Aeacidas’ regent while we consolidate our power, waiting for the right time to strike.”

  “We?” Cynnane asked, sitting up straighter.

>   “You would both prove valuable assets for Antipater’s ambitions,” Olympias said, her eyes narrowing dangerously. “Surely you’re not proposing you remain here, vulnerable to his many plots and schemes?”

  I waited for Cynnane to protest, for she was less vulnerable than the hunter goddess Artemis with her gleaming bow and immaculate aim, but my half sister’s eyes only flicked to where Adea fed daisies to my shaggy goat, having abandoned the cats. Both Adea and Arrhidaeus squealed as Pan munched the early blossoms, her hairy lips tickling Adea’s fingers. Cynnane had filled my ears with colorful curses about the trouble of having to leave her own estate when she’d first relocated to Pella’s palace, but I’d caught her amused smile on more than one occasion as she watched Adea play with Arrhidaeus during our training sessions. Cynnane’s own husband had fallen on his sword for Alexander’s and Olympias’ ambitions; I knew she’d protect Adea with her very life.

  “Of course not,” Cynnane said, answering Olympias’ barbed smile with one of her own.

  “Be ready to travel within the week.” Olympias lifted the hem of her flawless peplos and stepped over Cynnane’s discarded greaves, then swept away from the courtyard, leaving us aghast.

  Cynnane sighed and thrust her long legs out in front of her, her chiton barely reaching the tops of her knees. “Your wish is my command, Olympias,” she muttered.

  “I’m still not sure why she wants to take us with her,” I said, frowning at my blurred reflection as I polished my sword with the hem of my chiton.

  “Because she can’t have Philip’s warrior daughters throw their support behind Antipater’s army,” Cynnane answered. “She might intend to marry us off for convenient alliances, or at least keep Antipater from doing the same. Olympias can scheme all she likes, but not even a sword at my throat will induce me to marry again. Being widowed once was more than enough.”

  It was difficult to imagine anyone, even Olympias, holding a sword at Cynnane’s throat. I, on the other hand, was fifteen, a ripe age for marriage, an idea toward which I was still ambivalent. Cynnane had been a wife, a mother, and a warrior, proving that a woman could combine the seemingly irreconcilable domains of Hera, Demeter, and Athena. Marriage would free me from Olympias, but might saddle me to a man who was even more domineering.

  Perhaps a man whose presence I suffered through each day . . .

  “I can think of one good that shall come of this trip,” I said, damping down the smile that threatened to spread across my face.

  “That’s one more than I can think of,” Cynnane said. “What might that be?”

  I jutted my chin toward Cassander as he returned with the wine and a tray of clay cups. He stopped directly in front of me, so close that I could smell the mint on his breath. After all, Cassander could never upset the natural order of the world with something as heinous as less than perfect breath.

  “You took so long that we’re not thirsty anymore,” I said. He looked ready to dump the amphora of wine on my head, but I had good news for the both of us. Olympias had turned on Antipater and thus, surely she wouldn’t wish his son lurking about where he might spy on us.

  “I’m pleased to inform you that we’re finally free from the torture of each other’s company,” I said. “I travel with Olympias to Epirus this week and therefore shall no longer require your services as my tutor.”

  Nor would I require his commentary on my unconventional behavior, the way I styled my hair, or how I shouldn’t count my scars and bruises the way most women did their pearls and bangles.

  Cynnane arched an eyebrow at me. I glanced up to find Cassander still standing there, as if baffled by the fact that no one wanted him.

  “You’re free,” I said, waving an impatient hand. “You can return to your father’s house, roam the streets, or take up residence in a whorehouse for all I care. May the gods keep you.”

  “May they keep you as well,” he answered by rote, his eyes widening in an expression akin to Heracles’ relief after cleansing the Augean stables of the dung accumulated from one thousand immortal cattle.

  Not that I cared to equate myself to thirty years of animal dung, but I felt the same about him.

  Cassander turned on his heel and left the courtyard with what might have been described as a jaunty step, ostensibly to return to his boor of a father and while away his days memorizing his even duller collection of books.

  Whereas I would finally leave Macedon to journey to the mountains of Epirus, something I’d only ever dreamed about. Yet visiting Epirus under Olympias’ shadow was worse than waking in the golden Fields of Elysium with a fanged viper wrapped around one’s throat.

  I’d have to tread carefully, lest the viper strike at my first misstep.

  • • •

  We might have traveled overland to Epirus, but Olympias decreed instead that she wished to skirt the coast aboard a string of red-oared biremes carrying everything our entourage would require for a lengthy stay to bury and mourn Alexander of Molossia. Yet I’d peered into one of the many crates on the dock and found neither silks nor jewels nor even her collection of slithering snakes, but instead hundreds of neatly stacked and gleaming swords.

  “A queen must always guard her resources,” Olympias said as she pressed the box closed, nearly shutting it on my fingers. “Our foundries shall not make weapons for Antipater to use against us.”

  And so we would sail down Pella’s narrow inlet into the Thermaic Gulf and around the Peloponnese, docking along the way to view the glories of Athens, Corinth, and Sparta. I suspected that Olympias’ true motive for our travel by sea was to allow the opportunity for her to reinforce support for Alexander while drawing it away from Antipater, but she might have schemed to dance naked on the Parthenon’s roof and I wouldn’t have cared. And although we weren’t marching directly into battle, for the first time, I was going to peer beyond Macedon’s hills, to smell the briny ocean air and see myriad wonders that I’d only ever visited in my daydreams.

  It was enough, at least for now.

  “Can we fish?” Arrhidaeus asked me, leaning over the railing of the largest ship. “I brought my hooks and worm pail.”

  I patted him on the shoulder, then leaned my head there. “Just be careful you don’t hook a tonno so big that it pulls down the ship.”

  I felt a gentle tug on my hand and glanced down to see Adea gazing up at me with big brown eyes. “Will you play with me, Nike?” she asked, jostling a leather bag I knew to be full of carved wooden animals. Her other crate contained smaller versions of Cynnane’s Illyrian swords and shields, for her mother had already started training her in swordplay, just as Adea would one day train her daughter.

  “I’d be happy to, little one,” I said, dropping a kiss on her forehead. “Can Aristomache play too if she promises not to eat the mice?”

  “Yes,” she chirped, opening the bag and riffling through it before offering Arrhidaeus an oaken fish, slightly irregular around the tail where she’d chewed on it while teething as a baby. “Here’s your favorite,” she said to him. I felt a pang as she withdrew a painted goat figurine, for I’d left Pan behind to eat her fill of juniper and gorse bushes in our absence. My cat and the kittens too had been left behind, for it seemed a cruel torture to confine them to a wooden ship for several weeks.

  I released Aristomache from her basket and let her slither about on the deck of the ship, the sunshine gleaming off her brown scales. “We may not get to see Egypt and Persia,” I murmured to my pet snake, picking her up, “but this is a start.” Her dull black eyes seemed to gleam with happiness even as heavy footsteps walked up the gangplank. “Cynnane,” I said, straightening. “You’re just in time—”

  But it wasn’t Cynnane.

  “Medusa’s snakes!” I cursed at Cassander. “What are you doing here?”

  And then I saw the blanket roll and the pack he carried. He was outfitted like a common soldier emb
arking on an extended campaign.

  “No,” I said, shaking my head while Adea and Arrhidaeus gaped. “Not you too . . .”

  Cassander wore the scowl of an executioner as he strode aboard and set down his pack. “Olympias informed my father that my services were still required and requested that I accompany your family. You lied about my dismissal, Thessalonike.”

  “I didn’t lie,” I said. “I only hoped that you were dismissed.”

  It was rude, but I didn’t care. Now I’d have grim-faced Cassander lurking in my shadow while I climbed to the Parthenon to visit Athena’s famed statue and explored Corinth’s wondrous Temple of Apollo. Cassander would likely lecture me on both, droning on like an obnoxious wasp in my ear.

  Why had Olympias commanded that Cassander accompany us, especially as she sought to draw support away from Antipater and raise her own army?

  And then I knew.

  Cassander was a hostage, although I guessed he didn’t realize it, at least not yet. I almost felt sorry for him then, for he was merely another powerless pawn in Olympias’ game. But then, weren’t we all?

  “There aren’t enough cabins for you to have your own room,” I said. “You can share with Arrhidaeus or sleep on deck with the rowers.”

  Arrhidaeus grinned at that. Despite my best attempts to persuade my brother that Cassander was as enjoyable as a brick wall, Arrhidaeus fawned over Cassander. I told myself that was only because he missed Alexander and Hephaestion.

  “Shall we fish tonight, Arrhidaeus?” Cassander asked him, and I knew then that I’d lost. I turned my back on them and settled in to play animals with Adea, letting Aristomache slither back onto the deck, where she wrapped herself loosely around a tiny cedar elephant.

  “I wish I could strangle someone too,” I murmured to my snake.