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.