A Murder in Thebes

by Paul Doherty

Genres: Historical Fiction; Historical Mysteries; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

Alexander the Great cannot be fooled... Paul Doherty writes an unputdownable Greek mystery of adventure and intrigue in A Murder in Thebes. Perfect for fans of Gary Corby and Margaret Doody. Never try to fool Alexander the Great... or betray him. The Thebans tried, and he burned their great city to the ground. But he left the temple of Oedipus untouched, hoping to obtain the legendary crown inside. Politically, the sacred crown may give him divine status. Privately, it will boost his ego... even more. Practically, it can kill him. Unless, of course, he discovers the ancient secret of crossing the pits of fire and poisonous snakes surrounding it. But as Alexander calls in his clever Hebrew friends Miriam and Simeon to help, he faces another baffling puzzle. An old soldier, alone inside a locked room and guarded by a ferocious dog, has been murdered. But how? The clues point to a traitor among Alexander's men. Now, amid the agonies of war and the ashes of Thebes, Alexander needs answers, and fast, before his own life becomes just another Greek tragedy.... What readers are saying about Paul Doherty: 'Held me enthralled ' 'Paul Doherty writes THE best historical mysteries ' ' Five stars '

Release date: June 6, 2013

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 164

Sample

IN 336 B.C., Persia, ruled by Darius III, was a world power. Its only rivals were the Greek city-states led by Athens, Thebes, Sparta,
and Corinth. They, in turn, were becoming alarmed by the increasing military power of Philip of Macedon, who had forced his
will upon them. In 336 B.C., Philip was brutally murdered. Both Persia and Greece thought this would mark the end of Macedon’s Power. Alexander, Philip’s
son, soon proved them wrong. He left his mother Olympias as regent of Pella and, in a brilliant show of force, brought the
Greek city-states into line. He was given the title of captain-general, and he formed the League of Corinth against Persia.


Alexander, who had dreamed of marching in glory through Persopolis, still had to make sure that all of Greece acknowledged
him. He marched into the wild mountain region of Thessaly intent on bringing its tribes under submission. While he was gone,
rumors began to circulate in Greece that Alexander and his army were no more and that Queen Olympias had succumbed to a successful
coup in Pella. The Thebans rose in revolt, besieging the small garrison Alexander had left in their citadel, the Cadmea. The Thebans, however, were soon proved wrong. Alexander hurried back, leading
his bedraggled army, to show all Greece that he would brook no opposition.


THE OEDIPUS LEGEND

Oedipus is a figure from Greek mythology. The son of king Laius and Queen Jocasta, when Oedipus was a child his foot was pierced
and he was abandoned, at the behest of his father, because of a warning from the gods that he would kill his father and marry
his mother. Unbeknownst to his parents, Oedipus was rescued by a shepherd. He grew to manhood and returned to Thebes to find
his parents: by accident, he killed Laius and married Jocasta, and though unaware that these were his parents, he incurred
the wrath of the gods. When their identities were revealed, Jocasta committed suicide, and Oedipus, blinded, wandered Greece,
a man cursed by the gods and man. Sophocles, the playwright, wrote three brilliant plays—a trilogy that had a profound effect
upon Alexander and the world he lived in—based on this legend.




THEBES AUTUMN 332 B.C.


“YE SHALL BEHOLD a sight even your enemy must pity.”


“A quote from the Iliad, my lord?”


Alexander King of Macedon didn’t bother to turn but stared out across the dusty plain toward the soaring gray wall of Thebes.
He was studying the Electra Gate, one of the seven great entrances to Thebes. Beyond this rose the Cadmea, the fortified citadel
of the city where his men—leaderless, trapped, and besieged—could only look on helplessly at the drama unfurling below. Alexander
clawed at his hair. Usually it was styled, cut by his barber so as to imitate the busts and statues of the gods, curled and
oiled to cluster round his forehead and fall in layers to the nape of his neck. Now it was dirty, dusty, and far too long.
Alexander lowered his hand.


“If mother sees me, she’ll moan,” he murmured. He shielded his eyes against the light. The Theban army had now deployed in
front of the walls: phalanx after phalanx of heavily armed hoplites. In the wings stood the cavalry, their conspicuous blue
cloaks ruffling in the strong winds.


“Look.” He pointed. “In the center is the Sacred Band, the cream of the Theban infantry if we break them?” He paused. “What will it matter? The Thebans will simply retreat behind
their gates and the siege will continue.” He stared back over his shoulder to where his own Macedonians were now deploying
for battle. The foot companions in the center, his own cavalry, were held back. Alexander would wait to decide how to deploy
those.


“We’ll have battle within the hour,” Alexander declared. He looked at the man who had spoken, Timeon, leader of the Athenian
delegation to the Macedonian camp outside Thebes. “I thought you’d recognize the quotation.” Alexander’s weather-beaten face
creased into a smile, his different-colored eyes crinkling in amusement. “That’s not the Iliad! It’s a quotation from Sophocles’ Oedipus!”


Alexander strode down the hill, his captains and generals gathering behind him. He paused and stared up at the sky. There
was really nothing to see. The clouds had broken, the previous night’s storm had ended. Alexander was copying his father.
Philip had known all the tricks for keeping people guessing as he acted the role of a preoccupied commander. In fact Alexander
didn’t have a clue as to how the coming battle should be fought. The Thebans would stay in their positions; his infantry would
attack. He would try the usual feint—go for the center, then suddenly switch, sending his crack troops into the enemy’s right
or left flank, thereby trying to roll up the enemy like a piece of string. He’d force them back, but then what? The Electra
Gates would open, the Thebans would retreat, and the bloody siege would continue.


“I’m hungry,” Alexander declared. He rested his hands on the shoulders of two of his commanders, tall Hephaestion and Perdiccas.
Hephaestion’s eyes glowed with pleasure at being touched by a man who was both his lover and his king. Perdiccas, short, wiry, dark-faced, and black-haired as a Cretan, wondered what trickery Alexander was up to.


“We’ll break our fast,” Alexander declared. He pulled his purple cloak around him and flicked the long hair from his face,
a girlish flirtatious movement. “We have the best of stages, gentlemen; the play we are going to present will be witnessed
by all of Greece.”


Alexander pursed his lips in satisfaction. He liked such lines; his scribes and clerks were taking them down. They would be
passed from mouth to mouth: dramatic words before a fateful battle!


I should have been a playwright, Alexander thought. He walked back through the ranks, nodding and smiling at the men standing
at ease, their weapons piled before them.


“Will we fight today, my lord?” one of them shouted.

“We fight every day,” Alexander replied. “We are Macedonians.” He stopped. “That’s old Clearchus, isn’t it?”

The guard who had spoken shuffled his feet in pleasure. Alexander shook his finger at him.

“That’s your problem Clearchus—too much fighting, too little loving. It’s time I got you a wife and you settled down.”

Alexander moved on, smiling at the ripples of laughter his retort had caused. The men on either side formed a wall of armored
flesh. Alexander continued smiling even though he noticed how thin his soldiers were, how dusty and tired. They had marched
hundreds of miles in a few weeks, pouring down from the mountains of Thessaly to confront this great danger to his new rule.
If we fight, Alexander wondered, are we going to win? Are the men too tired? He passed the horse lines. The ribcages of many
of the cavalry mounts were visible, their coats mangy and dull. The baggage carts lay about, the wood was splintered, the
wheels cracked. The tents were rain-soaked, weather-beaten, and a hand-picked group of archers guarded their precious stores of food.
Alexander snapped his fingers, indicating for his companions to disperse.


“If the Thebans begin to move,” he declared, “tell me.”

Once inside his tent Alexander let the flap fall and sighed, his shoulders sagging. He took off the leather corselet, threw
it on the ground, and slumped down onto a camp stool.


“What’s the matter?”

Alexander looked up startled. Two figures sat on cushions at the far end of the tent. Alexander peered through the gloom;
one of the figures moved: a woman, rather tall and wiry with a clever pointed face, her oiled hair bound with a fillet. She
picked up a cushion, came and knelt beside Alexander.


“What’s the matter?” She put a hand on his knee, her fingers pressing the leather kilt. “Alexander, are you ill?”

The king raised his head and grinned at Miriam.

“I had forgotten I had invited you here. . . . I am sorry, Simeon.” He gestured at the man still squatting on the cushions.
“Come closer.”


The man joined his sister. Alexander stared at them. The two Israelites, Miriam and Simeon Bartimaeus, childhood companions
who had joined him in the groves of Midas where his father, Philip, had sent him to be educated by the foppish, brilliant
Aristotle. Simeon was slightly shorter than his sister, more closed-faced. Miriam, if she hadn’t look so sharp, would have
been pretty, with her large, lustrous eyes and slender nose, but that determined mouth would put many a man off. She showed
a steely determination; this reminded Alexander of his mother, Olympias, now busy ruling in Pella and slaughtering any opposition.
He sighed and ruffled his hair.


“I thought I was alone. My men are tired, exhausted, and now we face a crack infantry that, at a moment’s notice, can scuttle behind thickset walls.” He grasped Miriam’s hand and
squeezed it. “Tell me again, Miriam, how this happened! Read the draft of that proclamation I am going to issue.”


Miriam leaned back on her heels, head slightly to one side. Alexander was gray with exhaustion. Like all of them, he had hardly
bathed or changed. They had been campaigning in the mountains of Thessaly, mandating that the savage tribes accept Alexander’s
rule. News had come, seeping through like a breeze in the forest, rumors from Greece, that a revolt in the Macedonian capital
of Pella against Alexander’s mother had been successful. That Alexander himself had been killed, his Macedonian army annihilated.
That the League of Corinth, that confederation of Greek cities forced by Alexander to accept his lordship, were plotting revolt,
taking gold from the Persian King Darius. Alexander raised his head.


“What are you waiting for, Miriam?”

“If you win the battle,” she answered tartly, “there’ll be no need for a proclamation. All of Greece will know that you are
still alive, that you are king and that you are ever victorious.”


Alexander stared at this sharp-spoken young woman. “And if we lose the battle?”

Miriam smiled slightly, “Proclamations will be the last thing on our minds.”

Alexander threw his head back and laughed.

“Some wine,” he murmured. “Three cups, two-thirds water.” Simeon got up, filled the goblets, and brought them back on a tray.
The king took one and handed it to Miriam. He waited until Simeon sat down and took his and then toasted them quietly.


“Father has been dead twelve months,” he murmured. “I have troops in Persia and I have taught the Thessalians a lesson they’ll never forget. Now I return to find trouble in
my own garden.”


“It’s only Thebes,” Simeon murmured.

“It’s only Thebes,” Alexander mimicked. He jabbed a finger at the entrance to the tent. “Out there, my dear Simeon, throng
the delegates from every city in Greece. In their wallets jingle the golden darics of Persia; Thebes’ revolt is serious. It’s
thrown off my rule, killed my officers.” Alexander’s face grew hard. “That’s what I wanted to see you about. It’s blockaded
my garrison in the fortress of the Cadmea. Now they shout defiance from the walls. If I don’t teach the Thebans a lesson,
then by this time next week Athens, Corinth, Argos, will all be in revolt, the fires of rebellion breaking out all over Greece.”


“Thebes will be defeated,” Miriam declared.

Alexander shook his fist and stared above their heads as if talking to someone else.

“I’ll not leave one stone upon another,” he whispered hoarsely, his eyes half closed. “I’ll teach Greece a lesson it will
never forget.” He blinked and lowered his fist. “Simeon, you’ve sent my orders out to the commanders?”


“If the city is taken,” Simeon repeated Alexander’s stark commands, “every house is to be leveled and plunder taken; fighting
men will be killed, women, children, and the aged taken to the slave pens. Only the house of Pindar the poet will be spared.”


“And the temples?” Alexander asked. “You told them about the temples?”

“You know I did,” Simeon replied crossly. “No temple is to be entered, no priest or priestess violated!”

“Especially?”

“Especially,” Simeon continued, “the small shrine of Oedipus in the Archon quarter.”

“Why is that?” Miriam asked.

“It is a very small and ancient temple,” Alexander explained. “It stands in its own olive groves. Father took me there once
on a visit to Thebes; it is built out of white marble in a sea of quiet greenness.” Alexander closed his eyes. “The path up
to it is a dusty chalk. I remember holding father’s hand. You turn a corner and the shrine’s there: white columns, crumbling
steps leading up to a porticoed entrance. The doors are of Lebanese wood reinforced with brass studs. Inside there is a small
vestibule; the walls are white and there is a black marble floor. Yes, yes.” Alexander’s face was like a boy’s flushed with
excitement. “On the right is a small shrine to the god Apollo. Yes.” Alexander opened his eyes. “And on the left. . . .” His
eyes were bright. Miriam felt a pang: Alexander was going back to his childhood, when the father he’d adored deigned to show
him some love and affection. Cunning, one-eyed Philip with his lame leg and his gruff manner that was interspersed by moments
of brilliant charm. Philip could treat an individual as if he or she were the only person in the world. Great Philip, Warrior
King, cruelly slain by one of his own bodyguards.


“To the left,” Alexander continued, “is a statue of Oedipus. He was King of Thebes.” He explained, “Oedipus can mean lame foot. As a child Oedipus was abandoned by his parents, King Laius and Queen Jocasta. He was raised by shepherds.”
He waved his hands. “You know the story from Sophocles’ three brilliant plays. Oedipus grew to manhood. He later killed his
own father, married his own mother, and the gods turned against him.” Alexander paused as he picked at the leather kilt, studying
one of the brass embossments that had worked loose.


Miriam held her breath. She knew the story, the legend of Oedipus. In many ways it might also be the story of Alexander. People
accused Alexander of having had a hand in his father’s murder, and they maintained that the relationship between Alexander and his mother, Olympias, bordered on the unnatural. Both
were blasphemous lies. Alexander had been innocent of Philip’s death. Miriam knew the full truth behind it. And as for Olympias,
no one was more wary of his mother than Alexander. Privately he called her Medea, deeply concerned as he was by her lust for
blood, her practice of secret rites, and her constant demands that her authority and status be enhanced.


“You were talking about the shrine?” Simeon broke in.

“Yes yes, so I was.” Alexander picked up his wine goblet and swirled it round. Despite the water, it looked like blood. He
sipped at it. It was coarse and bitter. He had finished his own wine stores weeks ago and now he was drinking the same coarse
Posca as his soldiers.


“The shrine itself,” he said, “lies behind heavy bronze doors. The walls are black and gold, oil lamps burn in niches. The
floor is of pure porphyry marble. The windows are mere slits. It’s very warm; the heat comes from a horseshoe-shaped ditch
that runs from one wall around to the other. The ditch is over two yards across and always full of glowing charcoal. On the
far side stands a row of spikes and beyond that another ditch full of poisonous snakes.” He looked up and smiled. “Mother
would like that. Father said there were enough snakes there to even keep her happy.”


“A ditch full of glowing coals, a row of spikes, and a snake pit?” Miriam asked. “What do they protect?”

“The Iron Crown of Oedipus,” Alexander replied. “It lies on top of a stone plinth. Very ancient,” he whispered. “There is
a legend in Thebes that only the pure in heart can wear it; a god-man guilty of no crimes against his parents. It’s guarded
by a group of priestesses who take their names from Sophocles’ plays. No one can remove the Crown with anything brought into the shrine. Only the high priestess knows the secret.”


Miriam studied the king’s tired, dusty face. Alexander’s looks were a mirror of his ever-shifting moods. Sometimes he could
look so young, even girlish, his hair coiffed and his face painted like some Athenian scholar. At other times he looked older,
the skin more drawn, the lips a thin bloodless line, the eyes ringed with shadows. When he laughed Alexander reminded her
of Philip. And when he brooded Miriam shivered, for it reminded her of her childhood and of watching Olympias bent over a
spinning wheel, crooning softly to herself while she planned the bloody assassination of some rival.


Alexander was clicking his finger against the wine cup. He lifted his head. “You know why I want that shrine saved?”

“You will take the Crown of Oedipus?”

“I want the Crown of Oedipus; I want to put it on my head.” Alexander was almost speaking to himself. “I want the mark of
the gods, the acclamation of the people and their affirmation that I am not a patricide.”


“You don’t need that,” Miriam insisted. “Philip’s blood is not on your hands.” She glanced sideways at her brother.

They knew the truth and had shared most of it with Alexander. Philip had been murdered by a crazed guardsman, a former lover,
just before Philip himself was going to launch a bloody purge on his family and court. Alexander cocked his head to one side
as he heard the sound of trumpets from outside.


“I want to wear that Crown,” he insisted. “I know I’m no patricide, but I want the gods to sanction me.” He grinned. “Just
like Achilles.”


“Achilles, Achilles, Achilles!” Miriam exclaimed, “Achilles was your ancestor, but that doesn’t mean you have to be like him in every way!”


“We’ll take Thebes!” Alexander announced, abruptly changing the subject. “I want that shrine saved.”

“It would be a brave man who took on a hundred snakes,” Simeon retorted.

“I also want that business at the Cadmea investigated.” Alexander put the wine cup down, mood changing as he became more businesslike.

“You remember Hecaetus?”

Miriam pulled a face. Everyone in the Macedonian court knew that Hecaetus was Alexander’s spy-assassin—a mincing, lisping
fop. . .