“Eurydike, come, hurry.” A little group, some of her court, had found its way to her. Wiping her eyes, she saw they were not defiant but afraid; marked men all of them, old allies of Antipatros, who had thwarted Olympias’ intrigues, had intrigued against her, had crossed her will and wounded her pride and helped drive her out of Macedon. “Quickly,” they said. “Look, that cavalry there, those are Molossians, they’re heading this way, it is you they will be looking for. Quickly, come.”
She galloped with them cross-country, cutting the corners of the rutted road, letting her horse pick its line over the heath; thinking how Nikanor had said that he was doing as he knew his brother would wish; remembering Kassandros’ red hair and inflexible pale eyes. No messenger from her had fallen among thieves; he had had her cry for help, and decided she was expendable.
On the shoulder of the next hill they stopped to breathe their horses, and looked back. “Ah!” said one of them. “That was what they were after, to loot the baggage train, There they are at it; so much the better for us.” They looked again; and there was a silence which no one liked to break. In the distance they saw, among the wagons, a single tent with men surrounding it. A small far-off figure was being led outside. Eurydike realized that from the moment when Olympias had appeared and her army melted, she had forgotten Philip entirely.
They made their way east towards Pella, avoiding the look of fugitives as best they could, using for hospitality the mesh of guest-friendship that webbed every Greek land, excusing by their haste their lack of servants. They kept ahead of the news, pretending that a treaty had been signed upon the border, that they were hurrying to Pella to call Assembly and confirm the terms which the army in the west had agreed to. In this way they lodged for several nights, and left each morning aware of a cloud of doubt.
Nearing Pella, she glimpsed the tall keep of her father’s house. With unbearable longing she remembered the quiet years with Kynna, the small boyish adventures and heroic dreams, before she entered the great theater of history, to enact a tragedy in which no god came down at last from the machine to vindicate Zeus’ justice. From her childhood on she had been given her role and taught her lines and shown the mask she must wear. But the poet was dead, and the audience had booed the play.
At Mieza, they passed an old manor whose overgrown gardens scented the warm air with roses. Someone said that this was the schoolhouse where Aristotle had taught many years ago. Yes, she thought bitterly; and now his boys were ranging the earth to pick up the leavings of their schoolfellow, who, grasping at power to serve a use beyond it, had put his stake upon love and swept the board.
They dared not enter Pella. They had only traveled at their own horses’ pace; a courier with remounts on the way could have been there long before them, and they could not be sure of the garrison after the news from the western army. One of her suite, a certain Polykles, was brother to the commandant of Amphipolis, an old stronghold near the Thracian border. He would help them to get away by sea.
Henceforward they must try not to be seen. Their arms discarded, wearing homespun bartered for with peasants, they nursed their weary horses, skirting the great timeworn road that had carried Darius the Great towards Marathon, Xerxes to Salamis, Philip to the Hellespont and Alexander to Babylon. One by one, pleading sickness, or just disappearing in the night, her small company fell away. On the third day, there was only Polykles.
From a long way off they saw the great keep of Amphipolis, commanding the mouth of the Strymon River. There was a ferry there; troops were there also. They turned inland to seek the nearest ford. But at the ford, too, they were awaited.
When they brought her into Pella, she asked them to untie her feet, which were bound under the mule she rode, to let her wash and comb her hair. They replied that Queen Olympias had ordered her brought just as she was.
On the low hill above the town stood what looked at first like a thicket of stunted trees, laden with birds. When they came near, ravens and crows and kites rose, angrily cawing, from the branches. It was Gallows Hill, where the corpses of criminals were nailed up after execution, like vermin in a gamekeeper’s larder. Philip’s murderer had hung there once. The present corpses were no longer to be recognized—the scavengers had fed well—but their names had been painted on boards nailed at their feet, NIKANOR SON OF ANTIPATROS, one board said. There were more than a hundred crosses; the reek almost reached the town.
In the audience hall, on the throne where Eurydike had heard petitioners and envoys, Olympias was seated. She had changed her black robes and was dressed in crimson, with a gold diadem on her head. Beside her on a chair of state sat Roxane, the young Alexander on a stool at her knee. He stared with round dark eyes at Eurydike when she was led in, unkempt and dirty, with fetters on her legs and wrists.
The irons had been forged to restrain strong men. Her wrists with their dead weight hung down before her. She could only walk by sliding each foot in turn along the floor, and every step chafed her ankles. To keep the fetters from tripping her, she had to walk with an ungainly straddle. But she held her head high as she shuffled towards the throne.
Olympias nodded to one of the guards. He gave Eurydike a hard shove in the back; she toppled forward, bruising her chained hands. Struggling to her knees she looked up at the faces. Some had laughed; the child had laughed with them, but was suddenly grave. Roxane was still smiling. Olympias watched under dropped lids, intently, like the cat that waits for the caught mouse to move.
She said to the guard, “Is this slut the woman who claims to be Queen of Macedon?” He assented, woodenly. “I do not believe you. You must have found her in the harbor stews. You, woman. What is your name?”
Eurydike thought, I am alone. No one wishes me courage or will praise it. Any courage I have is for me, alone. She said, “I am Eurydike, the daughter of Amyntas son of Perdikkas.”
Olympias turned to Roxane, and said conversationally, “The father a traitor, the mother a barbarian’s bastard.”
She stayed on her knees; if she tried to rise, her weighted wrists would pull her over. “And yet, your son the King chose me to marry his brother.”
Olympias’ face tautened with an old anger; the flesh seemed to grow dense. “I see he did well. The trull is well matched with the fool. We will keep you apart no longer.” She turned to the guards and for the first time smiled. Eurydike could see why she did it seldom; one of her front teeth was black. The guards seemed to blink before they saluted. “Go,” she said. “Take her to the marriage chamber.”
When she had toppled twice trying to rise, the guards set her on her feet. She was led to the rear courts of the palace. Dragging her fetters, she passed the stables, and heard her horses whinny; the kennels, where the deep-voiced hounds she had hunted with barked at the foreign sound of her weighted footsteps. The guards did not hustle or harry her. They walked awkwardly at her dragging pace; once, when she tripped over a rut, one of them caught her to keep her from falling; but they did not look at her or speak to one another.
Today or tomorrow, or soon, she thought; what matter? She felt death present in her flesh, its certainty like a sickness.
Ahead was a low-walled stone hut with a pointed roof of thatch. A stink came from it; a privy, she thought, or perhaps a sty. They steered her towards it. A muffled sobbing sounded from within.
They lifted the crossbar from the rough timber door. One of them peered into the fetid gloom. “Here’s your wife, then.” The sobbing ceased. They waited to see if she would go in without being forced. She stooped under the low lintel; the roof inside was hardly higher, the thatch pricked her head. The door closed behind her, the crossbar clattered back.