Authors: Stephanie Thornton
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 each 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.
I found him standing at the start of the narrow causeway that was the ruined mole, the wreckage from the siege towers still floating in the turquoise waves like detritus after a storm. The Macedonians labored to lash two ships together with a massive battering ram atop their decks. Only two days ago, I might have marveled at the ingenuity of the Greeks in the face of such a terrible setback as the fireship, but now I only shoved past Alexander’s assembled onlookers.
He looked surprised at my approach and some part of my mind noted Hephaestion sitting on a crate next to his friend, his eyes bloodshot and both of their faces covered in several days’ worth of stubble. I felt as terrible as they looked and collapsed in a heap at Alexander’s feet, too exhausted to remain upright any longer.
“Alexander of Macedon,” I murmured, my throat raw. “I bear unfortunate news from the tent of Queen Stateira.”
To my surprise, Alexander knelt beside me and his assembled Companions drew back like a wave, granting the illusion of privacy. “What has happened?” he asked.
“Queen Stateira is dead,” I said, wiping away the sudden deluge of tears with the back of my hand, the same hand that still ached from being crushed during the labor pangs.
“How can that be?”
“She delivered a child this morning—a stillborn son.” I forced myself to stop and draw a deep breath. “She didn’t survive the ordeal.”
Alexander stared at me with such distress that I might have told him of his own mother’s death. He hadn’t known of my mother’s pregnancy or that he harbored Darius’ potential heir in his own camp. Now he was spared from having to decide what to do with the child, although my sister and I had been served a double portion of grief. “You and your family have my deepest condolences,” he said in a tone that sounded genuine.
My gratitude for his sincerity was quickly replaced by anger as I realized he was likely only relieved that he hadn’t been forced to kill the child.
I struggled to my feet, ignoring his proffered hand. “Thank you,” I said, remembering the other reason I’d sought him out. “My mother and brother must be exposed before the sun sets. You’ve taken Old Tyre; the city’s tallest building is its Tower of Silence for the dead.” And within the tower were the long-legged vultures that would purify their bodies, along with the deep dry well where their bones would be laid to rest. I only hoped a four-eyed dog could be found somewhere in Tyre’s alleys to help guide them to the afterlife.
But Alexander recoiled and dropped my hand. “Exposure is a barbaric practice. Your mother shall have a funeral and burial befitting her rank as Persia’s Queen of Queens. I myself shall make a sacrifice to the gods on her behalf. I will not let it be said that I allowed vultures to tear the flesh from her bones. For to do so would be a crime.”
I stepped closer, my palms balled into savage fists. “All of Persia’s kings going back to Cyrus the Great have been exposed in a Tower of Silence. Would you deny my mother the final rites that will see her soul to paradise?”
“I would indeed—,” Alexander began, but Hephaestion cleared his throat.
“The Tower of Silence still stands in the northern district of Old Tyre, despite the heavy bombardment the city received in that area,” he said, leaning forward to rest his thick forearms on his knees. He exchanged a silent conversation with Alexander, although I couldn’t quite decipher its meaning. I felt a pang of jealousy, wishing there were someone with whom I might share a bond stronger than words. “Perhaps that is a sign that Queen Stateira was meant to be taken there.”
A pulse ticked in Alexander’s jaw and I expected him to lambaste Hephaestion, but instead he gave a slow nod, his face softening and the angry pulse calming. “Fine,” he said to me. “Take your mother to the Tower of Silence and let the remaining vultures do as they will.”
“Thank you,” I said, not understanding his change of opinion but too weary to question it. “And will you arrange for a herald to carry the news to my father?”
“I shall inform Darius of the passing of his queen when I deliver the answer to his latest ransom demands.”
“The ransom that you denied and then lied about to your advisers?” Now hardly seemed the time to discuss the release of my family, but I wanted nothing more than to leave this place, to escape to the mountains and valleys where our family had been together. Yet my family would never be together again.
“Drypetis has just lost her mother,” Hephaestion interrupted, standing and clapping a hand on Alexander’s shoulder. “Surely this discussion can wait.”
“Of course,” Alexander said. “We shall sort out the rest of this sordid business after Tyre has fallen.”
“After Tyre has fallen?” I echoed. “When shall that be?”
“Weeks, perhaps months.” He snapped his fingers and his Companions parted to allow a graceful young boy to pass in a cloud of myrrh perfume, bedecked in an immaculate white Persian robe and finely wrought golden bangles. My jaw fell at the realization that my father had dared part with Bagoas, his favorite eunuch, whom my mother had never decided whether to love or loathe, so often had he supplanted her in my father’s bed. “In the meantime,” Alexander said, “I hope you will welcome your father’s messenger back into your family’s service. Your mother was a noble queen,” he said. “May Charon carry her easily over the river Styx.”
Bagoas bowed to me, and I noted the way Alexander followed his every elegant movement and how Hephaestion frowned. My heart thudded as I realized the true gift Alexander had just placed in my hands.
My head spinning, I beckoned Bagoas to follow me and wound my way back toward my mother’s tent, where my words would be drowned out by the servants’ mournful wails.
“You must carry a message to my father,” I whispered in Bagoas’ ear. He was scarcely older than twelve summers, dark and lithe with skin like a lustrous pearl. “Tell him of my mother’s passing and the games Alexander plays with the ransom demands. Tell him how many soldiers the
yona takabara
has and how the siege of Tyre is draining his food supplies.”
Bagoas stepped back and pushed the dark curls from his face. It seemed unfair that even this boy was prettier than me with his dark eyes like polished river stones and lashes like a camel’s. “But your father commanded me to stay until Alexander answered his offer of ransom.”
“You heard Alexander,” I said. “That could be months from now, if ever. You must go and tell him to ride against Alexander, to rout these Greeks and free us. Please,” I said, clutching his delicate wrist. “Take one of the horses after dark and don’t stop until you find him.”
“I shall serve the house of Darius in this,” he said. “I will not fail.”
“Thank you.” I pressed my forehead to his. “Travel well, and fast.”
And thus, I put my last hope in the hands of a smooth-faced eunuch. I only prayed that Bagoas would reach my father before Alexander discovered my trickery.
• • •
W
e carried the bier of my mother and tiny brother through Old Tyre’s deserted streets just before the sun fell that day, our footsteps echoing off the walls of abandoned homes and granaries, and accompanied by the steady thuds of Alexander’s ballistae as the Macedonians hurled rocks at New Tyre’s sturdy battlements. The Tyrians were fresh out of ships, but they had hung thick leather skins stuffed with fresh seaweed along their walls to cushion the blows and continued to drop stones upon Alexander’s foundering battering ships, which swayed in the choppy seas. Alexander had ordered every spare man not at work repairing the causeway or manning the battering ships to attend the funeral procession, an honor my mother surely would have remarked upon if she’d been here.
Yet I thought only of the five days yet to come, calculating how far Bagoas would need to ride each day to reach my father in the east.
The fight for Tyre became more apparent as we approached the northern section of town, its buildings bearing gaping holes left from Alexander’s ballista practice and exposing tables once set for evening meals that now fed swarms of flies and families of crows. We picked our way around piles of rubble from a collapsed building, the stench of something rotting coming from beneath the mud bricks and plaster.
The Tower of Silence cast a cold shadow over the wide avenue leading to it, which was broad enough for our funeral procession and all those that had come before us. Three interior concentric circles comprised every tower for the dead: the inner for children, the second for women, and the outer for men. My mother and brother would be laid in the proper circles, naked as they were when they entered this world, where first the vultures and then the sun might strip and bleach their bones. Only then would their travails on this earth be complete and the gods ready to welcome them into paradise.
The funeral procession halted before the tower, and the white-cloaked Companions carrying the bier disappeared within to carry the bodies up the flights of winding stairs to the topmost level, where the vultures and the afterlife awaited. As the only royal family members present, my grandmother, Stateira, and I would remain here for the next five days, keeping the sacred fire burning and ensuring that my mother’s and brother’s bones were stripped clean before they were deposited in the tower’s communal well. Yet there was one thing missing, for although I’d glanced down each of Old Tyre’s dark alleys for a sacred dog, it seemed even the strays had abandoned this beleaguered city.
A soldier approached Alexander’s chariot. “My apologies,” he murmured to the conqueror, “but the Tyrians have cut through the ropes anchoring the battering ships.”
“By the gods,” Alexander muttered. “Cannot the Tyrians wait until after this funeral to torment me? How in the name of Heracles did they cut the ropes?”
“Underwater divers,” the man answered.
I snorted with mirth, marveling at Tyre’s ingenuity, and mumbled, “If only you’d thought to use iron chains instead of rope.”
Alexander swiveled to face me. “An apt observation,” he said, then turned back to the soldier. “Ensure that the ships have all the iron chain they need.”
My mother would have pinched me if she were here, or worse. Instead, I withered under the full wrath of my grandmother’s glare, blazing fiercer than Tyre’s fireship.
“They’re running out of stones,” the man said. “Soon they won’t have anything left to throw at us, save their own walls.”
Alexander gestured for Hephaestion. “Go with him and get the ships under control. Harpoon their divers if you have to, but I don’t want to hear of my ships drifting again.”
Hephaestion nodded, but didn’t move away at once. Instead, he motioned to a waiting slave, who brought forth the most pitiful scrap of mangy fur with four legs I’d ever seen. The paltry excuse of a dog was missing patches of a coat that had once been mostly yellow, his pink skin surely riddled with fleas.
But he had two dark spots of fur above his eyes. A four-eyed dog.
“My apologies that he’s uglier than Cerberus the hellhound,” Hephaestion said, offering the dog’s rope to my grandmother. “But I believe you have need of a four-eyed dog.”