Alexander must fight for his throne, his father... and his life. Paul Doherty transports his readers to Ancient Greece in A Murder in Macedon - a gripping mystery featuring Alexander the Great. Perfect for fans of Gary Corby and Margaret Doody. 'If you want to know whodunit in ancient times, Doherty is your man' - Good Book Guide In the summer of 336 BC, Philip of Macedon is to celebrate his glorious reign. He has waded through a sea of blood to become master of Greece, but he also has troubles at home. He has divorced and rejected his first wife, the witch queen Olympias, while her son Alexander is the subject of a whispering campaign that he is not Philip's true heir. Philip summons all of Greece to attend his great celebration in the old capital of Aegae, but the Macedonian court is plunged into chaos and bloodshed when he is murdered by Pausanias. Alexander must fight for his rights against intrigue and treachery at home and abroad. In order to prove his own innocence, he also has to find out who was really responsible for Philip's death and why. Was Pausanias a lone assassin or acting on behalf of others? What readers are saying about A Murder in Macedon : 'A very enthralling story' 'An interesting twist ' 'Paul Doherty - brilliant - nothing more to say'
Release date:
June 11, 2013
Publisher:
Headline
Print pages:
182
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Mysteries of Alexander the Great (as Anna Apostolou)
A MURDER IN MACEDON
A MURDER IN THEBES
Alexander the Great
THE HOUSE OF DEATH
THE GODLESS MAN
THE GATES OF HELL
Matthew Jankyn (as P C Doherty)
THE WHYTE HARTE
THE SERPENT AMONGST THE LILIES
Non-fiction
THE MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF TUTANKHAMUN
ISABELLA AND THE STRANGE DEATH OF EDWARD II
ALEXANDER THE GREAT: THE DEATH OF A GOD
THE GREAT CROWN JEWELS ROBBERY OF 1303
THE SECRET LIFE OF ELIZABETH I
THE DEATH OF THE RED KING
PERSEPOLIS 336 B.C.
IN A SMALL, towered chamber off the Apanda, the great, pillared audience hall of his palace in Persepolis, Darius III, King of Kings,
ruler of Persia and its empire, god’s regent on earth and possessor of men’s necks, ran his fingers through his oiled beard
and smiled crookedly at the figure opposite. Darius shifted on the silk-clad cushions and, closing his eyes, savored the fragrant
flavor of frankincense and myrrh. The slave girl, squatting between his thighs, one hand against his crotch, the other pushing
a grape between the wet lips of her master, blinked and sighed softly.
“You may go,” Darius whispered.
The girl disappeared. Darius sighed and rearranged his robes. His eyes wandered around, observing the gilt-topped pillars,
the ceilings of gold and silver, the marble frescoed walls before returning to catch the sightless stare of Vizier Barses.
Darius, born Cadoman, newly raised to the purple by this most subtle of viziers, quietly rejoiced at his own cunning. His
gaze fell to the table in front of him and all the merriment died. A map was spread out: to its right, across the Hellespont, the empire of Persia, to its left the kingdoms of Greece. Darius stabbed each of the names etched there: Athens
with its fleet; Corinth with its wealth; Thebes and its soldiers; Delphi with its oracle. All the great cities and sacred
places of Greece that his revered forebear Xerxes had tried to drag as low as Hades. Darius’s finger moved north and stopped.
He picked up the two small statues, one slightly larger than the other, each representing a Greek hoplite in full battle dress.
The large, horsehair-plumed helmet, cuirass, leather skirt, rounded shield, and long pike or lance. Darius put them back so
they covered the title MACEDON.
“The situation is quite clear, my dear Barses,” he murmured. “Philip of Macedon is now master of Greece. He’s defeated Athens
and Thebes at Chaeronea. Soon he will be hailed as ruler of Greece, captain general of its armies.” Darius moved his finger.
“And then he wishes to take what is mine. You see, my dear Barses, he’s already despatched two generals, Attalus and Parmenio,
across the Hellespont. They led a small force, two or three regiments, to hold the crossing till he arrives.” Darius closed
his eyes and gnawed on his lips. One-eyed, lame Philip! A Macedonian barbarian! Darius opened his eyes. “A small army, Barses,
but, we mustn’t forget Xenephon, must we? He showed all the world that a Greek army can wander around Persia unscathed. So,
what Xenephon did, Philip of Macedon can do. And, where Philip goes, his son Alexander will undoubtedly have to follow.”
Darius paused at the faint cry from outside. He waggled a finger at Barses.
“Don’t worry,” he whispered. “Their pain will soon be over. I doubt if they’ll be alive at dawn. My real worry is Philip.
He has the impudence to proclaim himself a god.” Darius rubbed a finger round his lips. If only he knew more about the politics of the Macedonian court! Philip was at war with his wife Olympias, that queen of snakes. Alexander was
Olympias’s boy and, when Olympias fought, Alexander would not stand aside. “I would have loved more time to meddle there,”
Darius declared. “Stirred up the hatred between father and son a little more. Nothing like a civil war, is there, Barses,
to keep a tyrant occupied?”
Darius heard another cry. He rose and walked out onto the balcony and stared down. The huge parade ground below where the
Immortals, the royal Persian guard, drilled and maneuvered, was now lit by a long row of bonfires stretching as far as the
eye could see. In between each bonfire was a cross with a writhing figure nailed against it.
“How many live?” Darius’s voice carried.
A captain of the guard stepped out of the shadows. He knelt and covered his face with his hands.
“Great king,” he called, “only five survive. The rest—” The captain gestured with one hand. “They have choked.”
Darius smelled the rottenness of the corpses that mingled with the exotic night odors from the imperial gardens.
“What is your wish, Great King?”
Darius stared up at the moonlit sky. He muttered a prayer to the Lord of Light. The moon was full and rounded, like a silver
disc; the more he stared at it, the closer it came. Perhaps Philip was staring at that moon? Darius’s hands balled into fists.
He tapped these gently against the balustrade. Demosthenes, too, in his little house near the Agora in Athens, that great
democrat, that fiery demogogue, that taker of Persian gold! Demosthenes would be dreaming his dreams. Of being a second Pericles,
a man who could proclaim that he had saved Greece from tyranny. Well, Demosthenes could dream but he’d better earn the gold
he’d taken.
“Great King?” the captain of the guard called.
Darius breathed in.
“Kill them!” he shouted, “but not with a lance. Break their legs. Let them choke like the rest!”
Darius watched his orders being carried out. Two guards ran across to a cross, a wooden board between their hands. The noble
crucified there, naked, knew what was coming. He glimpsed the wooden board and screamed for pity. The two soldiers stopped
on either side and, holding the board between them, brought it back and struck the man’s legs just beneath the knee. Darius
heard the crack and watched the body slide farther down the cross. As the soldiers moved to the next victim, he walked back
into his small chamber and took a seat opposite the silent Barses. Darius poured himself a goblet of wine. He toasted his
vizier silently and began to sip. A curtain was pulled back. A chamberlain entered this holy of holies and prostrated himself.
Darius let him wait. It was good for all to know that he, king of kings, possessed their necks. Let them all know what it
was like to press their faces against the cold marble floor of his palaces. Darius sipped again, putting his cup down; he
clicked his fingers. The chamberlain approached, head down, face averted. He placed the scroll on a cushion beside Darius
and withdrew into the darkness. Darius broke the seal and undid the scroll. It was a report from a Persian spy in Athens who,
in turn, had received news from another in the old Macedonian capital of Aegae. Darius sighed long and noisily.
“It is done! It is done!” he repeated.
He snatched grapes from the bowl, placed one before Barses and chewed carefully. As he withdrew his hand, one of the rings
on his finger caught the two Greek hoplites, knocking them both over. Darius saw this as a sign. He joined his hands in prayer
and bowed.
“Good news, Barses! Within days, Philip of Macedon and his mongrel son will be no more!”
Darius studied his dead vizier. The embalmers had performed a most exquisite and delicate task. They had kept everything as
it should be, except for the life in those dead eyes! Darius chuckled softly. Barses, the great vizier, stuffed like a cushion!
A man who had helped him to the throne but dared offer him poison. However, Darius, by the lord of lights’ intervention, had
been saved from Barses’s evil plotting. Indeed, in this very chamber, Darius had made Barses drink the same poison, drop by
drop, watching the terror in his eyes and listening to that evil, old mouth beg for mercy. Outside, all those who had supported
Barses had been crucified – a warning to those in Persia and abroad, not to lift their hands against the king of kings. Darius
lay back on the cushions. Soon others would learn their lesson. Philip and his Macedonians. Darius puckered his lower lip
between his fingers; perhaps, when he had finished with Macedon, he might visit Athens and demand that Demosthenes repay his
gold.
THE PALACE OF AEGAE: JUNE 336 B.C.
OLYMPIAS, FORMERLY QUEEN of Philip of Macedon, sat in her small private chamber in a wing of the old royal palace. She, too, thought of death and
plotted murder though she cleverly hid the seething hatred within her. She sat at her spinning wheel, one foot tapping the
floor, flexing the thread, holding the shuttle as expertly as any weaver. She smiled across at the young woman who sat on
cushions against the wall.
“You are well, Eurydice?”
“Oh yes!”
Olympias’s soft, olive-skinned face broke into a smile. She patted her auburn hair back beneath the dark veil that covered her head. She looked at Eurydice, then at the great, golden
figure of the wine god, Dionysus, carved in the wall above her. Dionysus! Olympias’s favorite, whose secret rites she celebrated
in dark, lonely groves well away from the spies of her former husband. Olympias lowered her face. Men called her serene, her
features perfectly sculptured: a slender nose, beautiful mouth, and light-green eyes that would glow with pleasure or gleam
in anger.
“As beautiful as Aphrodite,” one artist had dared to comment. “A figure that would be envied by Hera herself,” another added.
Olympias watched the wheel spin. What did men know? What did they really think went on behind the mask she wore? Did they
know the secret rites or the pact she had made? Or truly realize where she came from? She was the daughter of the King of
Epirus. She was a descendant of Achilles who had fought and killed Hector of Troy in hand-to-hand combat. She had been visited
by a god on the night her son Alexander was conceived! Zeus’s thunder bolt had entered her womb and she had quickened. Zeus
had then sealed her womb with his own special mark. Olympias gathered the flax in her hand. Now she had been displaced so
brutally! A simple messenger had arrived in her quarters and announced:
“Philip of Macedon declares that Olympias is no longer his wife!”
Divorced! Supplanted by that soft-faced, mewling-mouthed girl who now squatted on the cushions holding her loathsome baby.
Eurydice with her melonlike breasts, broad hips, and long legs; her stupid, foppish face, framed by lustrous black hair, showed
all the intelligence of one of Philip’s famous mares.
“Olympias?”
The former queen raised her head and smiled.
“Eurydice, my dear, what is it?”
Philip’s new wife got up and brought across her baby swathed tightly in a purple, gold-fringed robe. Olympias noticed this
and breathed in so noisily her nostrils flared. How dare she? How dare this bitch bring her brat into her presence swathed
in royal purple?
“What is it, my dear?”
Eurydice, who adored Olympias and regarded her as her closest friend, pulled back the robe.
“Caranus is rather hot.”
Olympias stopped her spinning and gently took the child. She pressed a finger against his dimpled cheek. The baby boy opened
his eyes and cooed. Olympias rocked the infant, one finger snaking down the robe, pressing against his throat. If the gods
are good Olympias thought, this brat will have a raging fever but the flesh was cool and silky soft. Olympias shook her head.
She tucked Eurydice playfully under the chin.
“Caranus is well, a bouncing baby boy!”
“Will he grow up like Alexander?” Eurydice asked. “I saw him today on the drill ground. He was talking to his friends you
know, the Jews Simeon and Miriam.”
“Ah yes.” Olympias smiled. “Simeon and Miriam Bartimaeus. Have you heard their story?”
Eurydice shook her head and stared lovingly into Olympias’s light-green eyes. She adored this woman. Eurydice felt little
regret at having supplanted her but, there again, that was Philip’s fault not hers. Moreover, if Philip insisted on spilling
his seed into her night afternight so Eurydice conceived a son whom he called Caranus, after the founder of his house, was
that really her fault? Or, if Philip was even thinking of repudiating his own son Alexander, surely that was his right?
“You have been so kind,” Eurydice broke in before Olympias could reply to her former question.
“Child, child.” Olympias stretched out a hand, turning her fingers slightly so her nails wouldn’t rake the young woman’s cheek.
“Any one who is married to Philip needs all the kindness in the world. He drinks until he can hardly move and he copulates
with anything that will agree with him. Men, women.” Olympias giggled behind her hand. “Sometimes even goats!”
Eurydice swallowed hard in embarrassment. She blushed and looked down at the baby. Philip was such an ardent lover. Drunk
or sober he’d mount her like a stallion would a mare. If she wasn’t available, due to her monthly courses or the last few
weeks of her pregnancy, then one of her slave girls would do just as well. Philip with his one eye, his shattered leg, his
bruised arm, his scheming mind.
“Don’t worry,” Olympias purred. “I know it all, Eurydice! If you need any advice, just come and see me.”
“I came tonight,” the new queen replied, “because Philip is drinking with his companions.”
“Ah yes. Philip and his companions! You know, Eurydice, they have all the morals of a herd of mountain goats. They have taken
more women and sacked more cities than Hercules did in his prime.”
Eurydice caught the mockery in Olympias’s voice, the veiled insult to Hercules, the god whom Philip claimed as one of his
ancestors. Olympias touched the spinning wheel with her finger watching it move backward and forward.
“And is my son Alexander there?”
Eurydice shook her head. She squatted on the floor with her baby, rocking gently backward and forward.
“No, he’s in his own quarters with the Jews, Miriam and Simeon.”
“Ah yes,” Olympias replied. “I was going to tell you about them! They are twins you know? Their parents were slaves. Philip bought them from a Sidonian merchant. The mother was,
I remember, small and dark. She did not have your child-bearing hips. Philip had to hire a special physician. Ah.” Olympias
tapped the side of her head. “I forget his name but he had to open the poor woman’s womb and pluck the babes out.”
“What happened to her?” Eurydice broke in, remembering her own labor pains.
“Oh she died,” Olympias retorted. “There was nothing the physician could do except give her an opiate. The twins were a boy
and girl joined at the elbow.”
Eurydice stared back, open-mouthed. Stupid, Olympias thought, you are so stupid you don’t deserve to live. She gave this girl,
her rival, the queen who had supplanted her, a most dazzling smile.
“The physician cut them apart,” she continued. “You can still see the mark on their elbows. I went down to inspect them – ugly,
little creatures they were. Not,” she added quickly, “like your beautiful Caranus.”
Eurydice nodded solemnly. The man Simeon was square, thick-set, clean-shaven, like Alexander. Eurydice was frightened of the
Jew’s dark brooding eyes; his slightly pointed ears and hair that hung in ringlets, gave him an appearance of a satyr. The
woman, Miriam, well, she was of medium height but rather angular, pretty in a sharp-featured way but no breasts or hips to
talk about. Her quick eyes reminded Eurydice of a kestrel Philip kept in their bedchamber.
“Well, their father later died,” Olympias continued. “I remember Philip going down to tell the children; they must have been
about ten years old. Philip, as usual, was drunk. He pointed to the boy and said he could join Alexander’s troop. They led
him away and the girl started screaming. So Philip shouted, ‘or goodness sake, shut her up!’” Olympias tittered behind her hand. “Well, you know Antipater,” she said, referring to Philip’s one-eyed commander. “He drew
his sword, thinking Philip wanted her dead.”
Eurydice joined in the laughter. Antipater was a grizzled, old man with a smile like vinegar and a temper to match. He may
be the bravest of Philip’s companions but he was certainly not the brightest.
“Marched too long in the sun without his helmet on,” Philip had once commented.
“What happened?” Eurydice asked.
“Oh, the boy became one of Philip’s principal scribes; he carries the royal seal.”
“And the girl?”
“I don’t know.” Olympias gathered the wool into her lap. “She’s so thin and sharp-featured. She can’t be my son’s lover. Alexander
doesn’t like women too much. I wonder why? Anyway, Miriam was raised with the other boys. They say she can run like a gazelle
and swim like a fish. But then?” Olympias was genuinely puzzled. She hadn’t really thought about the Jews. They had posed
no danger. Secretive, they worshipped an Unknown God whose name they dared not pronounce.
“Ah yes.” Olympias leaned down and stroked Caranus gently on the brow. “They are also actors. They play stories from their
people’s history. Alexander is intrigued, as he is by anything strange.” The words came out more waspish than Olympias intended
so her smile widened. She licked her lips. “Would you like some wine, Eurydice?” She clicked her fingers.
The old man sitting on a stool in a shadowy corner rose. He shuffled forward, his small, pebblelike eyes caught those of Olympias.
He held up his right hand showing the large ring on the middle finger. Olympias shook her head imperceptibly. Now was not the time, she thought, for Aristander of Telemesus, her seer, her necromancer, to open his ring so Eurydice could
drink more than she intended. There would be a time and a place but this was not it. Aristander brought the cups across. Eurydice
grabbed hers and slurped at it. Olympias lifted her eyes to the ceiling and muttered a prayer to Dionysus, the great god of
the dark glade. Then, turning, she poured a little of the wine on the ground to the shades of her many victims.
“And what does Philip intend to do tomorrow?” Olympias asked.
Eurydice watched the old man shuffle back to his stool. She had forgotten he was there. Eurydice felt a chill and stared round
the room. People whispered so many stories about Olympias. Eurydice nervously picked at the tassels of her baby. . .
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