“I don’t think that’s necessary, do you?” she answered.
And so it was in far-flung Pydna-on-the-Sea that Cassander surrounded us with both his ships and his infantry. Olympias mustered all her available resources against him, even the war elephants that Alexander had sent from Persia before his campaign into India. The gray animals trumpeted and threw their gleaming tusks into the air as they were led out to fight. They returned relatively unscathed, but fewer and fewer of Olympias’ Macedonians and Thracian mercenaries survived. I’d never learned to do figures, but as the months dragged on, even I could tell that we’d lost too many men. No food came into the city and Cassander’s men scavenged our fields, leaving us to starve.
There was no grain for the elephants and so they were fed on sawdust. Then they were butchered, and the beleaguered villa was heavy with the smell of boiling elephant, without even an onion or a head of garlic to season the chewy meat. I cried tears of salt when Olympias thrust my bowl at me that first night, the gray at her temples starting to show through without the regular washes of wood ash and goat tallow.
“Cease your sniveling,” she snapped as a slave approached and fell on one knee, the hollows beneath her cheeks turning her face skeletal in the quivering lamplight. She wore a red peplos with Macedon’s customary eight-pointed suns along the bottom, but the stark shade leached her complexion of its color. “What is it?” Olympias demanded of the slave.
“A messenger from Cassander’s camp requests an audience.”
“I’ve endured far too much whining this night,” Olympias said, waving a hand at the slave while casting me a withering glance. “I refuse to hear Cassander’s latest terms for my surrender, not when we may well have to flee from him come high tide.”
The slave’s eyes darted to me and back in a way I didn’t relish. “The messenger swore that she had information you would wish to hear, especially regarding the mother of Alexander Aegus.”
Olympias followed his gaze to me and her eyes narrowed. “Do you know about this?”
My mind raced and my hands went clammy under her stare, akin to a freshly sharpened blade against my throat, but I only shook my head. “Not at all.”
And I had no idea which of my secrets this messenger claimed to know: my true parentage, the depravities I’d committed as the Whore of Sogdian Rock, or the truth of Stateira’s murder.
Olympias scowled, then rose and followed after the scurrying slave. And so I set down my portion of elephant and watched Olympias go, feeling as if a horned daeva was clawing my stomach. I sniffed, then bashed a girl slave about the ears as she tried to refill my wine cup.
I would not be cowed by Olympias, for I was mother to Alexander’s only legitimate son, regardless of the crimes I’d committed. Little Alexander was my treasure, my jewel that I would never part with.
And without Alexander Aegus, Olympias was nothing more than an old woman who had once tasted power and lost it. I’d see that she didn’t forget it.
• • •
I awoke the next morning with breasts aching and hard with milk, for Alexander Aegus hadn’t woken during the night and demanded to suckle. I’d fallen asleep to the sound of his even breathing after much tossing and turning, finally resolving to demand that Olympias move Alexander Aegus and me to Pella, where we might live in some semblance of comfort. But when I went to pick up my son from the twisted willow branch cradle, I found it empty, not even his goat-shaped clay rattle left behind.
I screamed then and ran into the deserted corridor, grabbing the nearest slave by the neck. “Where is Olympias?”
“She is gone,” she blubbered, scratching at my hands. “So is everyone else.”
I released her, my palms falling open at my sides. “What do you mean?”
“She left before dawn.” She dragged her bare arm across her nose, hiccuping between her words.
The tides had turned before dawn. Olympias had fled, and taken my son with her.
She’d left me behind.
I screamed in impotent rage, shaking the slave girl so hard that her neck threatened to crack until she managed to shake me off. She ran down the corridor, blustering like a simpleton without sparing me even a final glance.
Olympias had escaped and taken my son—my shield—but there was one woman that I wouldn’t allow to elude me, the unnatural harridan who might give me the leverage I needed to sway Cassander to my side.
But Thessalonike’s apartments were emptier than a tomb.
I overturned a polished mahogany gaming table, sending the abandoned glass playing pieces scattering across the floor mosaic. “Piss and shit!” I yelled, letting my voice echo as I fell to my knees and pounded the floor with my fists until the knuckles bled.
I didn’t have long to wait before Cassander’s men came for me.
My nerves screeched louder than the long-legged vultures in a Tower of Silence when the set of perfectly matched military footsteps finally approached. I’d returned to my chamber and dressed for the occasion, trying in vain to ease my swollen breasts before robing myself in turquoise silk embroidered with peacock feathers. Alexander’s gold lion brooch was pinned at my shoulder and a head scarf sewn with tiny bells fell like a waterfall to my waist.
“Roxana of Balkh,” called out a thick-necked soldier while his companions—at least ten of them, all armed with swords and Macedon’s golden sun shields—filed into my chambers. “We have been ordered to seize you and bring you to justice before Cassander, basileus of Macedon.”
My throat tightened with panic as they bound my wrists with iron manacles streaked with fingers of rust and what might have been dried blood. I followed the guards, spewing curses with every step and expecting a gloating Cassander outside the dilapidated villa, but the soldiers prodded me off the grounds to Pydna’s decrepit market square, its cobbles emptied of merchants hawking toasted melon seeds, hide-wrapped cheeses, and copper bowls so tarnished that not even a two-obol streetwalker would piss in them.
Cassander stood in the center of the square surrounded by his many supporters, their assorted shield sigils claiming the entirety of Greece and Persia. Yet there were those other than soldiers assembled: men who appeared from their dress to be merchants or artisans, old men missing half their teeth, and even a scattering of women. I had eyes for none of the faceless crowd, only for the two women who flanked Cassander, one clad in mud brown silk and the other outfitted like an unnatural soldier.
I knew not how they had done it, but there was no doubt that they had somehow betrayed me to Olympias.
I snarled at Alexander’s sister and Darius’ younger daughter, wishing I could claw out their eyes, but they only stood like twin statues.
“Roxana of Balkh,” Cassander said, and I winced at the absence of all my lofty titles, leaving me as defenseless as if I stood naked in the square. “You have been brought here to stand trial for your crimes. But you are not the only one who faces the scales of the goddess Dike’s divine justice today.”
To my shock and triumph, Olympias was marched from the back of the crowd to stand beside me, her wrists shackled in fetters identical to my own. She wore the same rumpled red peplos from the prior evening, its border of tarnished Macedonian suns embroidered by her own hand along the hem, and the sardonyx pendant of Alexander and herself. The crowd seethed at the sight of her, hurling angry epithets and shouting so not even Cassander could calm them.
“You foul, conniving bitch.” I threw the words at her as she assumed her typical rigid posture. “Where is my son?”
“Yours wasn’t the only womb my son filled before he died,” Olympias said, scarcely deigning to look at me. “You slew the babe in Stateira’s belly, my second grandson.”
She must have read my unspoken question, for she only tipped her chin toward the women next to Cassander. “Drypetis informed me last night, in the same breath with which she demanded my surrend
er and Thessalonike’s release.”
“Stateira’s and her child’s murder were an idea I stole from your sordid history,” I said, struggling to keep my voice level as everything unraveled around me. “Or don’t you recall doing the same to Eurydice and her son? We are similar, you and I, both queens seeking to protect our sons.”
My eyes scanned the crowd for my child, but the crowd was too thick to see him.
Olympias ignored me.
“You promised me safety if I surrendered and released Thessalonike,” she said to Cassander in a voice that brooked no argument, raising her wrists in a silent command of release. The mob stilled at the sound, but there was no mistaking the fury that shimmered in the air as they glowered at her.
“Safety in that I didn’t set fire to the ship beneath your feet and watch you jump burning into the sea,” Cassander answered. “I fear you mistook my promise.”
So Olympias had sought to flee with my son. My eyes darted in and around the crowd again, searching for Alexander Aegus and my lone chance at survival, but there were no babes in arms to be seen.
“You have ushered countless undeserving souls to Hades, most recently Arrhidaeus and Adea.” Cassander continued his tirade against Olympias, his voice ringing out over everyone’s heads. “Do you deny your role in their murders?”
“I do not,” Olympias said. “They were criminals who threatened my son’s legacy and the legitimacy of my grandson’s rule.”
“Arrhidaeus was no criminal!” Thessalonike shouted even as Drypetis held her back. “He was Alexander’s brother!”
“He was a simpleton,” Olympias retorted in a cool tone. “And unfit to rule.”
“Olympias, wife of Philip II and mother of Alexander,” Cassander droned on in the monotone voice I had already come to loathe. “You have been tried and found guilty of the erstwhile execution of Eurydice and her infant son, as well as of the recent murders of Arrhidaeus and Adea. You are also responsible for the deaths of hundreds of my supporters in Pydna’s recent siege and their families bear witness to this trial. The only acceptable penalty for such crimes is death.”
I suddenly understood the furious crowd: a whole mob of enraged families seeking revenge.
Olympias tilted her head as the grieving horde stomped its feet in a terrible drumbeat like a thousand angry hearts. This time they fell silent at Cassander’s upraised palms.
“You must die this day,” he said to Olympias, “but I would allow you the option of honorable suicide.”
There was no doubt that he’d already planned this, seeking to cast himself as a magnanimous while still just ruler. The blood roared in my ears as I wondered if I too would soon face the choice of an execution or suicide. I almost laughed aloud; would Cassander be so charitable as to offer Olympias the three options she’d given Adea?
A slow smile spread across Olympias’ face. “Coward,” she accused him. “Only a weakling would be unwilling to sully his hands with my blood.” She spread her arms then, like a supplicant to the gods. “If you wish me dead, you’ll have to kill me yourself.”
Soldiers yanked me away from her as the crowd stirred. “I think not,” Cassander said, giving them a nod.
I expected the bereaved family members to fall upon Olympias like a pack of rabid wolves, tearing at her hair and brandishing all manner of blades and cudgels. Instead, they revealed cruel smiles alongside countless bags of rocks tied to belts and larger stones pulled from pockets. The more ambitious among them wielded crude slingshots, like children’s playthings.
Olympias would be stoned to death.
Even formidable Olympias couldn’t hold in her terror against the dark face of Ahriman. She screamed as the violent volley began and tried to shield her face. Then came the hail of wet thuds and the sickening crunch of bone. I covered my eyes with my arm, tasting the blood as I bit my cheek and cowered, willing the sound away and waiting for the mob of ravening beasts to turn upon me.
Eventually, an appalling silence fell and the seething tide of stones receded.
I peered through eyes screwed tightly shut to see Thessalonike kneeling over Olympias’ broken body, arranging her bloodied arms over a chest brutalized by at least a thousand stones. “Good-bye,” she whispered. “May you fall forever into the abyss of Tartarus.”
“Roxana, daughter of Oxyartes of Balkh and wife of Alexander.” Cassander’s voice made me flinch. “You have been found guilty of the murders of Stateira, daughter of King Darius, and Parysatis, daughter of King Artaxerxes. As such, you too must die this day.”
“But we will allow you a kindness you denied my sister,” Drypetis said, motioning to someone at the fringe of the crowd. A plain-faced woman stepped forward with a bundle in her arms.
I knew even before the child cried that it was my son she held.
“You may say good-bye to Alexander Aegus,” Drypetis said.
Some in the crowd tossed their remaining stones in eager hands even as I clutched my son tighter. The iron shackles were cold against his soft skin and he cried, flailing his tiny fists as his face turned redder than blood. My breasts leaked milk in response to his wails, and I knew then how he might yet save me.
The soldiers eyed me warily as I fumbled with my husband’s lion clasp that pinned together my Greek peplos, baring the hard mound of one of my milk-filled breasts. My son grunted and latched on to the dark nipple, his cheeks working hard as his blue eyes met mine in a sort of understanding.
He and I would face the world together.
I stood before Cassander not as a murderer or even as Alexander’s wife, but as the revered mother of the future king.
“I do not claim to be free from evil, and there is no doubt that I’ve sometimes followed the lure of the dark god Ahriman,” I said, allowing my voice to quaver even as I blinked back false tears, my heart racing so I thought it might break my ribs. “But I committed no murders, although the whispers from the East claim otherwise. I throw myself upon your mercy, for I am a mother still nursing her firstborn son. I allow myself to be guided by Hera now, your goddess of the hearth and home.”
I cared little for Cassander’s reaction, for I’d made my plea to the mob, locking eyes with as many of them as I could.
“Killing a mother would incur Hera’s wrath,” a man called out. “We have no quarrel with Alexander’s wife, only with Olympias.”
In that moment, their bloodlust banked, replaced by a growing murmur of assent. Only then did I dare glance at Drypetis, triumph coursing through me even as I fell to my knees and bowed my head to Cassander.
“I seek your mercy,” I said to him. “And swear to be your loyal subject from this day forward.”
“You cannot let her live,” Drypetis said to Cassander. “You know her guilt as well as I.”
But the crowd said otherwise, growing agitated and calling for my release.
“Seize Roxana and her son,” Cassander ordered his soldiers. “They shall be taken to Amphipolis for confinement, so as not to elude us again.”
Drypetis turned purple-faced with anger as soldiers swarmed over me like wasps, the spoiled bitch’s glare so murderous that it might have pierced the strongest armor.
Yet I only grinned, wanting to crow my victory to the heavens.
Against all odds, I had survived.
• • •
My dour chamber in Amphipolis echoed just as had Sogdian Rock, both prisons built of stone to keep me trapped within. As the months passed, a great mounded tomb began to take shape nearby, hewn from Amphipolis’ hillside by an army of stonemasons and mosaic masters. Lifelike marble female caryatids disappeared within and workmen set fearsome lion statues with ribs straining against their stone hides to guarding the entrance. I knew not for whom the tomb was intended, nor did I care.
So long as it wasn’t my name being chiseled onto its walls.
Cassander solidi
fied his base of support within Greece and kept me so heavily guarded that I couldn’t breathe without inhaling the acrid stench of his soldiers’ sweat. Yet nothing in Amphipolis escaped my notice as I bided my time until I could flee with my son.
My little Alexander, who would never abandon or betray me as even his father and my own brother had done.
After months of the guards’ ignoring me, several new sentries joined their ranks. I watched their every move and listened from behind closed doors as they traded news of the recent maneuverings of Cassander, Ptolemy, Seleucus, and Lysimachus—Alexander’s generals were a busy lot these days, tromping all over the world—and bragged about the whores they’d buried their pricks into in Amphipolis’ brothel. It was tiresome work, but one day I was finally rewarded for my vigilance.
A new guard, an unimpressive youth whose voice still cracked when he spoke, sat in the meager excuse of a courtyard, a piece of cheap parchment spread across his lap as he scratched painstaking letters onto it with a broken stylus.
“What are you writing?” I asked.
He leapt to his feet, the letter clutched tight in his hand. “Do you require something?” he asked, staring determinedly at my feet. “If so, I can fetch your slave girl.”
“I require your name,” I said.
“L-Leander,” he stuttered, twisting the parchment as if it were a goose he meant to strangle. “It means strong, like a lion.”
I almost laughed then, for this poor boy was a scrawny cub compared to the Macedonian lion I’d once had.
“It’s so dull here, Leander,” I said, stepping so close that my breasts touched his arm as I took his seat, forcing him to step back. “I was just curious who you were writing to.” I gave him my most alluring smile, letting my finger trace the neckline of my robe. “Who is she?”
His flush, turning his cheeks the color of a ripe peach, was all the answer I needed. A peach mottled with the red eruptions of youth, but a peach nonetheless.
“Her name is Helen.”
“And is her love magic to make the sanest man go mad?” I’d listened to Alexander recite the convoluted Song of Ilium enough times to remember the line. Helen was the only character I’d cared for out of the entire dreary tale, mostly because her beauty might have rivaled my own.
The Conqueror's Wife Page 44