Alexander and Alestria Read Online Free PDF Page A

have children I can harm!"
    She looked away and said nothing.
    I grabbed her by the shoulders and gave full vent to my anger.
    "Look at me," I bellowed, shaking her. "I'm not the man you think you love. I'm not a god. I destroy cities for the sheer pleasure of showing that I'm more fierce and dangerous than Philip, to exceed him in every crime he committed. I have decapitated children, eviscerated women, burned men alive when they have done me no harm at all. Oh, Olympias, you gave birth to a tyrant!" She held me in her arms and wept.
    "Give me a child," she whispered. "Then go and never come back! If I raise a son of yours, he will be a good and just king, he will be wise and clement…"
    Her words touched my heart, which had no armor against her. My tears mingled with hers, and we wept together for our ruined lives. Night fell, and Olympias sang me the same songs that had lulled my childhood. I lay with my head on her stomach and fell asleep as I used to then.
    Women are stronger than men. Even Philip, despite his drunken rages, had never succeeded in defeating Olympias. How could I escape her will? I set off on horseback again, leaving her in charge of the palace and the scheming trappings of power. But her letters followed me beyond mountains; her voice silenced the tumult of war and brought me back by her side, in her bedchamber looking out over orange trees and fountains. I could not help myself replying, and our exchanges were like butterflies flitting over fields strewn with corpses. She and I were harnessed together by the timeless link that joins a man and a woman. Philip was dead; I in turn had become her intrepid warrior, her devouring force, her hand reaching out to expand its territories over the world. She was my home; she had the keys to my treasure and watched fiercely over Pella. I waged war at the front, and she pacified to the rear. I pillaged, and she balanced the accounts. I killed, and she dressed the wounds.
    How to fight a woman who had borne suffering, accepted violence, survived brutality? There was a small room in the palace where black crystals were laid out on an altar. My mother shut herself away in there, and no one, not even Philip, had ever dared open that door. Olympias knew everything about me; I had been a part of her. I knew nothing of her, nothing except the mountainous land she came from, a place where people wore black and went to market to sell scorpions, snakes, spiders, and precious stones with magic powers and evil promises. The men practiced vengeance as others might sing and dance. The women of her family, promised to Dionysus by an ancestral pact, learned from him the skill to subdue warriors.
    Preparations for a military expedition against the Persians had begun many years before. Philip had reformed our armies to make them more mobile. With archers marching ahead of the phalanxes and walls of lances hiding the cavalry, our square formations could transform themselves into curved lines at any moment. After good harvests and with our grain stores full, the mention of a war against the Persians motivated Greek cities that had once submitted in terror: they regained their dignity and aspired to a sense of unity. Meanwhile, Olympias had taken several lovers, and she hid behind them, governing from the shadows, the intrigues of one group neutralizing those of another. I was no longer afraid my throne would be usurped.
    I introduced more rigor and discipline to Philip's army. I studied maps of roads and gathered useful information. I knew the names of influential ministers and eunuchs. I knew exactly where the favorite of Darius, the Great King, had a beauty spot. Knowledge paralyzes action. The more I learned, the more I realized how little I knew of an empire a thousand times more powerful than mine. Days passed, and still I made no decision. It was Olympias who hastened my departure. Knowing that she could not hold me back, she harassed me day and night about taking a wife. Her