Authors: Stephanie Thornton
Olympias sniffed. “Cynnane has no taste for the rituals, savage that she is.”
She lifted the goblet to my lips and I drank deeply. The wine was potent, unwatered and full of foreign spices, and something else I couldn’t quite name. It was cool to the tongue, kept in a clay
amphora
and chilled in the palace well all day, but it burned down the back of my throat and spread warmth like fingers through my belly. It would be a night of fire as we traveled from one bonfire to the next, drinking Dionysus’ bounty of wine that would set our insides aflame.
Olympias only smiled. “More,” she murmured. “You must drink it all to show the god of revels your willingness to accept him.”
I hesitated but did as she asked, trembling as I stared unblinking at her over the rim. Olympias was made more beautiful by the power she wielded, but there was no denying how much she frightened me, especially tonight with the shifting shadows and snakes curling up her arms.
I drained the cup in a final gulp and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. I’d dressed simply, barefoot and clad in only a white
chiton
made of the finest cotton. My pale hair fell loose past my shoulders and I shivered in the night air, gooseflesh rolling down my arms.
“You’ll warm soon,” Olympias said, her attire matching my own. “The god shall embrace you and wrap you in his heat.” She turned, taking a torch from a waiting slave, then walked languidly to the gate that led away from the palace and toward the hills behind Pella. “You may dance and drink tonight, Thessalonike,” she called over her shoulder. “But you shall not couple with any of the revelers. Do you understand?”
I blushed and nodded, but my feet grew heavier with every step toward her. Mist clouded my vision and I tripped, giggling as I stumbled. Olympias looped her arm through mine, setting me aright. “Dionysus favors you,” she whispered in my ear. “To see the world through the haze of the god is a precious and powerful gift. Perhaps tonight he shall honor you with a vision as well.”
I was entranced with the snakes twined around her neck and my wrist, their beady eyes glinting in the torchlight. A spotted leopard snake draped like a pendant at the base of her throat flicked its forked tongue at me. We continued on our way, drawn forward by the rhythm of far-flung drums and the golden glow of a crackling bonfire atop the hill, its embers tangling with the scattered stars.
We stopped, and I gaped at the pinnacle of a rugged hill encircled by a ring of torches held aloft by faceless shadows. The drumbeat reverberated into my bones, and this time when I stumbled, Olympias let me fall to the earth. Rocks scraped my hands, although I felt no pain.
“It is the earth that feeds our god,” she proclaimed, and I watched an acolyte offer her a terra-cotta
rhyton
in the shape of a giant phallus. Olympias drank greedily before she handed the cup to me and I took a sip, luxuriating in the flavor this time before it was passed to the next initiate. “It is in his honor that we abandon ourselves this night,” Olympias said, “to feel the power of the god flow through our veins. Rise and welcome the god of mysteries!”
Someone thrust a
thyrsus
into my hand, its wooden fennel stalk topped with a pinecone dripping with honey to symbolize a phallus and its erupting seed. I knew I should blush, but even that was beyond me with all the wine sloshing in my belly.
The female dancers burst into song then, a bawdy hymn to Dionysus, while they tossed another
thyrsus
between them in a mockery of the thrusting I’d seen bulls and dogs perform while mating.
To Dionysus do I pray,
A long man do I hope to catch,
But alas, only a thyrsus pole do I snatch,
With its pinecone I shall not lay!
I staggered to my feet as they dragged me stumbling up the hill, joyous at the heat that surged just beneath my skin. I looked at my arms, expecting to see flames there, but instead only the little brown snake was watching me.
“Dance with us and you dance with the god,” someone whispered in my ear. I turned, expecting to see Olympias, but the world was slow in catching up. The hilltop had filled with other revelers, their eyes glazed and their heads thrown back in rapture. The heat flamed hotter, sounds grew sharper, and the rank smell of the torches and sweat filled my nose. Around me, men and women shed their clothes, and some clung to one another, their naked bodies writhing together in rhythm to the drums. The notes of Pan’s pipes rose into the air and the sounds of a wood and cord bull-roarer circled like a giant wasp, crescendoing into the buzz of an entire hive.
Then someone shouted and women ran down the hill, chasing the unfortunate goat that had been brought to the revels. The
maenads
would catch the beast and tear it apart with their bare hands, offering the softest bits to Dionysus’ fire before feasting on the bloody flesh.
The animal bleated in terror, the bell around his neck clanging with every step.
I ran, tripping several more times, and shoved half-naked women away from me, intent on catching the unfortunate goat and chasing it into the shadows. Several revelers in my path stumbled and one especially plump matron fell so hard that she rolled partway down the hill. Yet still I ran.
Until one of the
maenads
I elbowed whirled on me and an explosion of white lightning lit my vision.
I wheeled back, but recovered from the punch to lunge forward, grabbing fistfuls of hair and clawing at the blurred face I could scarcely see through the fog of wine. The goat forgotten, we fell to the earth with screeches like two cats in heat, rolling over and over in trampled grasses. I tasted dirt and my own blood, felt her fists, knees, and teeth as they attacked my soft flesh.
And I’d never felt so alive.
I crowed with laughter when the faceless
maenad
stumbled to her feet and lurched back up the hill. I knew now why Alexander and even my sister Cynnane craved the heat of battle, the euphoria of a good fight.
The faces and bodies that passed me became a blur of flesh lit by fire shine. I saw familiar faces long since gone: Alexander and Hephaestion, my mother and father. I laughed, but when I reached up, it was to find my cheeks were slick with tears.
Fear gripped my heart and I cried out, but the drums and the ecstatic cries of the revelers swallowed the sound. I crawled toward the exterior ring of torches, into the darkness that beckoned to me with its promise of quiet and calm. There was no euphoria this time, only a wave of panic, as my arms collapsed and I hit the earth.
I couldn’t move.
I felt another surge of panic, wondering if I was dying, if my wine had been mixed with more than just spices, if I might be trampled by Dionysus’ crowd. I prayed for the god’s mercy then, to release me from his grip.
Instead, faithless Dionysus abandoned me to continue his revelry and I fell blissfully unconscious.
• • •
A
brutal shaft of sunshine stabbed my skull as I blinked my way back to life the next morning, recognizing my light-filled chamber despite having no recollection of how I’d gotten there. A sound like boots hitting the floor sent more daggers grinding into my temples and I moaned in agony.
“She lives,” a man’s voice boomed, reverberating off the stone walls of my chamber. A familiar slow grin greeted me, one I’d not seen in four long years.
I groaned again, then wished that Zeus might strike me with one of his bolts.
“So, little Nike survived the Dionysian Mysteries,” Hephaestion said, his voice louder than it needed to be. With his foot, he nudged away a jumbled tangle of wool yarn, an embroidered scene of Athena and her sacred owl that I’d started ages ago and had left neglected on the floor for the past year. “I expect you want to die about now.”
Medusa’s snakes, but he was right.
Hephaestion’s eyes crinkled at the corners, his face leaner and the skin toughened from the time he’d spent riding with my brother beneath Persia’s Eastern sun. I was no lovesick girl, but I’d have had to be as blind as Homer not to appreciate Hephaestion’s brawny allure.
I’d expected to feel different after my initiation, more alive and worldly, but all I felt was a curdled stomach, a vise around my head and ribs where the
maenad
had kicked me, and utter mortification that Hephaestion was seeing the mess I was now. I’d count it a blessing from the four goddesses if I could keep from hurling the contents of my stomach into an urn while Hephaestion was here. His almost-black eyes sparkled now with mirth at my obvious discomfort.
“You shouldn’t be in my chamber,” I said, struggling to sit. “Olympias will have your hide.”
“And miss this opportunity? Never.” He sat beside me on the bed and lifted the lid of the wicker basket, then dropped it back on my snake with a grimace.
I wrinkled my nose and buried my face in my linen sheet. “You smell like you bathed in
garos
.”
And from the way my stomach lurched, the fermented fish sauce was the last thing I should be smelling right now.
Hephaestion sniffed his tunic, then shrugged. “A drizzle of
garos
will go splendidly with the trout Arrhidaeus caught this morning.”
“Arrhidaeus . . .” I groaned. “I told him I’d take him fishing today.”
“He accepted me in your stead, although not without a fair bit of grumbling.”
“You’ve already been and gone?”
“You slept the morning away, little Nike.” Hephaestion chuckled. “And most of the afternoon too. I found Arrhidaeus waiting outside your door at dawn, his birch poles and a basket of worms ready to turn your stomach.”
My gorge rose at the very idea, imagining the squirming worms and a morning spent gutting fish. “Thank you.”
“You’re quite welcome. Without you fidgeting and scaring away all of the fish, Arrhidaeus and I caught enough trout to feed a small army at the banquet tonight.”
“What banquet?” I croaked.
“The one to celebrate the peace treaty I brokered with Athens.” He leaned back in his chair, hands clasped loosely behind his head, a pose surely perfected to reveal his well-shaped arms with their glorious battle scars. “Alexander sent me to prevent the revolt of Agis from spreading to Athens. I negotiated a mean settlement with Demosthenes, not that I would ever boast.”
I snorted at that, for Hephaestion possessed more than a healthy dose of confidence. Only days ago, Olympias had received a runner in her weaving room, a sweat-streaked messenger bearing news of Greek states allying against Macedon, led by Agis of Sparta. The Spartan
basileus
had died during a pitched battle, but the entire mainland had held its breath and waited to see whether Athens would join the cause and continue the revolt. Now it appeared we had our answer.
Hephaestion dropped a folded parchment into my lap. “I come on Alexander’s orders. This just arrived from him.”
I tore into the letter like a starving dog, knowing that the words within carried hazy visions of foreign lands I’d never see. I breathed deeply of the parchment and imagined its scent as that of blowing sand and aromatic spices, the boiling sun and musty tombs. Perhaps if I wished hard enough . . .
But when I opened my eyes, I was still sitting on my bed with Hephaestion opposite me, a bemused expression on his face. “It’s only a piece of paper,” he said. “There’s no need to hold it like a lover.”
I flushed at the very mention of a lover, for I’d never even been kissed, but stuck out my tongue as a cover for my embarrassment. I’d seen four winters and four summers come and go since Alexander had marched out of our city, and since then my brother had conquered the Peloponnese, Granicus, Issus, Tyre, and Gaza before moving on to Egypt, where he was welcomed with open arms. Each letter from him was exquisite torture, sketching for me pictures of places I could only imagine and never truly see with my own eyes.
“You wouldn’t understand,” I muttered.
“It’s true that I’m just an insensitive dullard with a skull thicker than a marble pillar,” Hephaestion said. “I’d certainly never understand why you’d want to leave Pella’s little harbor to see the world.” He moved to a nearby chair and kicked his heels up on my bed. I felt quite dignified as I ignored him, imagining Alexander’s silken voice in my head.
Dearest Thessalonike,
This afternoon, as the sun-god Ra reached its pinnacle in the sky, I was crowned pharaoh of Upper and Lower Egypt. It is no boast, but only the truth to claim that my collection of crowns now rivals that of King Priam.
My men and I will winter here in Alexandria, thus far a veritable city of tents along the coast. The boundaries of my glorious new city were laid out with barley sprinkled by sacred priests draped in leopard skins, drawn in the shape of a proper Macedonian military cloak. This city shall be my monument to the world, the brightest jewel among my conquests.
I hope you continue to read your Homer—you shall marry one day and I shall require that your groom be well versed in all the poet’s great works. Any man who cannot recite The Song of Ilium shall find himself unworthy of my sister’s hand.
Your dutiful brother, Alexander
And he’d scribbled an afterthought beneath his flourish of a signature. . . .
Eat an extra helping of beef at your next meal and think of me. I fear to repeat the acts of Artaxerxes, when he offended the Egyptians’ sensibilities by roasting their sacred Apis bull for a feast. Thus, I’ve forbidden any of my Companions to eat beef while we travel along the Nile.
“What does it say?” Hephaestion’s eyes were hooded, but I’d felt him watching me while I read.
“That he pines for beef,” I answered, rolling my eyes. I’d have gladly sacrificed all the bulls in the world if it meant I could witness the fresh temples of Alexandria being built or see the leopard-bedecked priests performing their dedication rituals.