Authors: Stephanie Thornton
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 surrender 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.
• • •
M
y 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 solidified 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.
“I think she’s magical, and beautiful,” he said. This time his eyes flicked to mine. “Not as beautiful as you, of course . . .”
It was a simple matter after that to lead Leander back to my chambers and let him take me against the wall there. It wasn’t long before he’d forgotten his Helen and I’d convinced him to write letters on my behalf to Olympias’ cousin the king of Epirus. The dear boy even taught me how to sign my name, fondling my breasts with an eager hand while I struggled to form each imperfect letter. So while I remained caged in Amphipolis, my whispers flew on the wind, for I was unwilling to die in this forsaken village, stoned to death like Olympias or poisoned like Arrhidaeus.
Or worse. Forgotten.
Now that the message had been sent, I’d put Leander off with the excuse of my women’s bloods and settled in to play with little Alexander. My son was walking now in stunted little steps and he was often irritable from the tiny white teeth breaking through his gums. He pulled himself to sitting and shoved his clay rattle shaped like a goat into his mouth, gnawing it like he might devour it while a slick of spittle oozed down his chin.
There was a commotion in the courtyard, but I’d long ago grown accustomed to the self-important comings and goings of the many guards. Yet the clamor outside my chambers this morning was louder than usual. I hefted my son onto my hip and carried him to the window, wincing as he shook the pebble-filled rattle at my ear.
And then I swayed on my feet, for this was no ordinary change of sentries or delivery of fresh ox meat for the kitchens. Instead, Cassander dismounted his horse among his entourage of salute-snapping soldiers. He paused to assist two women robed in costly silks from their sedans and then marched toward my chambers.
Whereas once I’d had perfumed attendants to announce every supplicant and visitor to my traveling tent, now my door was flung open without ceremony and Cassander stormed into my room, his purple
chlamys
fluttering behind him.
The purple he’d stolen from my son, and from me.
“Cassander,” I said, holding my son before me as I bent my knee and kissed my fingers in a flawless
proskynesis
before I remembered the way he’d scoffed at the Persians for heralding Alexander as a god.
“Rise, Roxana,” he commanded.
There was only one reason Cassander would visit me now, especially accompanied by his she-bitches and a contingent of men armed with swords and pikes. But perhaps I might persuade him to see another, more elegant solution that would benefit him, and save my own head.