Spartan

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  ‘As was mine,’ said Kleidemos.

  ‘Well, at first it seemed that way to me, too. But then you either imagined or found out, and you were repulsed. I’ve felt your scorn for months, even though you try to hide it. And the shell that I gave you that day on the beach is no longer on your armlet – you had it when I first saw you in Thrace.’

  ‘Lahgal . . . I didn’t want to hurt you,’ said Kleidemos. ‘I can’t judge you for what your destiny has forced you to endure, perhaps against your own will. I’ve been living as a soldier for four years and I have seen so much blood and so many massacres that I can hardly believe that a man loving a woman or loving another man makes the world any worse than it already is.

  ‘Maybe the real reason that I asked you that question is because there is a terrible doubt that seizes me when I’m trying to sleep at night. I’m alone in the world, Lahgal, and I have no one to confide in. All those I’ve loved are dead, or so far away I feel as though I’ve lost them forever. Your reappearance and the words of the king reawakened hope in me; I felt alive again. But what I fear is that perhaps not everything I’ve been told is true.

  ‘I don’t know whether the king is sincere about his plans or is merely using me to satisfy his own ambitions. There were a lot of rumours going around the camp in Thrace about him. They say he is a hard, cruel man, consumed by his insatiable thirst for power. That his soul has been corrupted by his desire for wealth and luxury . . . and that he is a slave to his passions.

  ‘I’m sure you can understand how I feel, and yet, in all these months of travelling together, you’ve never said a word. I’m sure you can read the doubt in my face, and yet if you know things that I don’t know, you haven’t revealed a thing. And so I imagined that your bond with Pausanias must be stronger than anything else; that the little Lahgal who gave me coloured shells on a beach in Cyprus was a person I’d have to forget.’

  ‘You’ve changed too,’ said Lahgal. ‘Your eyes are vacant and troubled and your voice is often harsh and cutting. I’ve felt like I’ve been travelling with a stranger this whole time. How could I speak to you as a friend? I thought you despised me. When we left, it seemed that you were happy to carry out this mission and to support Pausanias’ plan; how could I imagine you had any doubts? And I know that . . . there’s a secret you’re keeping from me.’ Kleidemos looked at him with a puzzled expression. ‘Pausanias gave you a message that you can read on your skythale,’ Lahgal insisted.

  ‘You can know anything you want about me, Lahgal. When I told you the story of my life you were only a boy. But what is written in that message regards neither you nor me. It concerns the destiny of many men, entire populations, perhaps. I can’t—’

  ‘But have you read that message?’ interrupted Lahgal.

  ‘No, not yet. I have orders to read it only after my mission has been accomplished.’

  ‘And you haven’t even thought about reading it before then?’

  ‘I gave the king my word, and I have but one word, Lahgal. But tell me, why do you want to know what’s written in the message?’

  ‘Two-Names,’ Lahgal wrung his hands as if searching for words. ‘Two-Names . . . I’m afraid.’

  ‘I don’t understand. We’re not in any danger here.’

  ‘I’m afraid of dying.’

  Kleidemos looked at him in suprise. ‘Why would you? You’ve been ill, but it was nothing serious. It’s easy to fall ill when you’re travelling in foreign countries – the food, the water—’

  ‘That’s not what I mean. King Pausanias has already sent other messages to the Great King, but those who carried them . . . never returned.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I know only what I’ve said, Two-Names, nothing more. I know for certain that the bearers of those messages never returned. You don’t understand why I’m afraid? That message might be an order for you to kill me. If not, why would the king have ordered you not to read it until you had completed the mission?

  ‘Listen to me. When I brought you the king’s message in Thrace, I realized that the mere thought of returning to Sparta, of reuniting with the woman who raised you, of seeing the people you love, was enough to make you want to live, to fight again. I think . . . I’m afraid . . . that you would do anything to have what was promised you. I don’t know what the king told you in the meeting you had with him alone. Important things, certainly. I know that he thinks very highly of you. And the life of a Syrian servant is certainly nothing with respect to all this. And that’s why I’m afraid, Two-Names.

  ‘In two days we will reach Kelainai where you will deliver your message, and then you will read Pausanias’ orders. I beg of you, if that order is to kill me, please do not open my throat with your sword; let me take my own life. I know of a potion that produces a sweet stupor which lets you pass without suffering from life to the endless night . . .’

  Two big tears fell from Lahgal’s dark eyes. He fell still, not daring to look his companion in the face. Kleidemos fell silent as well. Shaken, he thought of everything that had happened: of the huge hopes that Pausanias’ words had awakened in him; of the horror of the act that might be looming before him. But maybe Lahgal was wrong. Perhaps the men he was talking about had disappeared for other reasons; they may have lost their way, or been ambushed on the long journey home. But his knapsack held the roll of leather with the king’s orders, and the skythale, his walking stick, held the key to reading them. He no longer carried the cornel crook which Kritolaos had chosen for him; he had burned it on Brithos’ pyre at Plataea. It had been destroyed, as had his boyhood life, on that blood-soaked field. He was startled by Lahgal’s trembling voice.

  ‘You’ve read many a death order on your skythale before, Two-Names, for thousands of men. You are a Spartan warrior and you must surely follow your destiny. The gods have spared your life many times. When you were a child, you were saved from the fangs of the wolves, and as a man, from thousands of Thracian arrows. Your soldiers have never been able to understand how you can challenge death with such impunity on the battlefield. You, the lame warrior, you who were destined to have two names and two lives, you who escaped the death that you yourself were about to administer with your own sword. It’s the truth, Two-Names. There must be a great destiny awaiting you, perhaps a terrible one. You cannot escape it.

  ‘That day that I saw you under that tree in Thrace you’d touched bottom. I could see the distress in your eyes, yet your face was stony, resolute. What could the life of a mere servant mean, sold before he could ever hold it for a moment in his own hands. A body prostituted for five obols—’

  ‘That’s enough, Lahgal!’ shouted Kleidemos, his head in his hands.

  But the voice continued, without a tremor now. A voice deep and dark, a voice of pure pain: ‘You’ve reached the point where you can’t turn back. Read that message now, as if I were not here, and if I must die let me die. I will accompany you today and tomorrow as your faithful servant, but the morning after that there will be no awakening for me. You’ll never even notice. There’s just one thing I ask of you. Don’t leave my body to the jackals. Bury me as if I had been a free man, a friend, whom you loved. Do not let my shade wander in despair along the icy banks of the Acheron, which they say is the fate of those who go unburied—’

  Kleidemos placed a hand on his head: ‘You will not die by my hand, Lahgal. Nor shall you be forced to kill yourself.’ He took the sealed roll from his knapsack and wrapped it around the skythale to make it legible. It said:

  The servant I sent with you has completed his task. Now you know the return route, a road you will take alone because there shall be no witness to your journey in the interior. You will destroy this message as well.

  ‘You were right to be afraid, Lahgal,’ he said, tossing the roll into the river. ‘The king orders me to kill you.’

  *

  The walls of Kelainai stood out against the blue sky. On the top of each tower sat a stork’s nest. The huge birds soared slowly
over the city, gliding with unmoving wings spread wide, buoyed by the wind of the high plain. The silver ribbon of the Meander descended behind a hill; the river’s source was said to be in a dark cave within the city, once inhabited by nymphs and satyrs, surrounded by a forest of poplars filled with singing birds.

  ‘We have arrived,’ said Kleidemos to Lahgal. ‘The envoy of the Great King, Satrap Artabazus, will meet us in the city.’

  ‘Look, the summer residence of the Great King, above the fortifications. The satrap lives there,’ observed Lahgal. They approached the southern gate, guarded by two Phrygian archers. Kleidemos handed Lahgal a sealed wooden tablet, which he delivered to one of the archers.

  He told the man, in his language, ‘Bring this to Satrap Artabazus, and tell him that noble Kleidemos of Sparta, son of Aristarkhos, Kleomenid, waits to be received.’ The archer had him repeat the long, difficult name twice so he was sure of remembering it exactly, and went off.

  ‘Tell me about this city and these lands,’ Kleidemos asked Lahgal, as they sat on a stone bench along the city wall, stretching their tired limbs, still sluggish from the damp night’s ride.

  ‘I don’t know much,’ said Lahgal. ‘I’ve been told that this is the last Phrygian city to the east. Behind those mountains,’ he added, pointing to a bluish chain that crossed the plateau at about two days’ journey from where they were, ‘begins Lycaonia, a dangerous, unstable region, roamed by fierce marauders that not even the Great King’s soldiers can keep at bay. After six days, you reach the foot of Mount Taurus, an impassable range that can only be crossed through a gorge so narrow that a pair of yoked oxen cannot pass. From the mountain you can reach the sea in three days, crossing a region called Cilicia. To the east Cilicia is delimited by another very tall range of mountains that the inhabitants of that place call Saman. Beyond them extends Syria, the land where I was born.

  ‘As for this city, I only know that the Meander river flows through marvellous gardens filled with every kind of plant and wild animal. The Persians call these gardens “pairidaeza” in their language, and you Greeks “para-deisos”: paradise. The Great King hunts there with his noblemen when he is in his summer residence. There is another river that flows through the city as well, smaller than the Meander, called Marsuas by the inhabitants. I believe you Greeks call it Marsyas; do you remember the legend? The satyr Marsyas was said to have challenged Apollo to a musical contest along its banks. Defeated, he was flayed alive, and his skin was hung in the cave at the river’s source. It’s still there – we can see it if you like, although I imagine it’s just the skin of some goat sacrificed long ago to one of the local divinities.’

  ‘I like hearing these stories,’ said Kleidemos. ‘They remind me of the ones my grandfather Kritolaos used to tell me when I was a child. I think it was he who told me of the satyr Marsyas. I never would have imagined that one day I would see the place where the story originated.’ Kleidemos let his gaze range over the plain which stretched as far as the eye could see. The Meander glittered under the sun which had climbed high over the horizon. Just then the archer ran up, saying, ‘Our lord, Satrap Artabazus, awaits you. I shall take you to the palace.’

  Kleidemos and Lahgal followed him through the city as its streets were filling up with people: men and women dressed in an odd fashion, who regarded the foreigners with curiosity. Children began to follow them, pulling at their robes and trying to sell them the odds and ends they carried in their straw baskets. The archer chased them away, shouting and flailing his bow at them. They swarmed off, shrieking, in all directions, only to stream back towards the little group that was making its way towards the centre of the city. The acropolis appeared: a hill surrounded by walls, green with poplars that thickened at the banks of what must have been the Marsyas river. The children ran laughing and shouting towards its gravelly shore. Throwing off their clothing, bags and baskets, they dived naked into the water, splashing one another. The three men climbed the staircase that led to the palace, and soon entered its atrium. Kleidemos was brought to a room where he was bathed and dressed, and finally conducted into the presence of Artabazus. The satrap was seated on a pile of cushions. He rose to greet his visitor.

  ‘Hail, O Spartan guest,’ he said in Greek. ‘You are most welcome in this home. I hope that noble Pausanias is in good health.’

  ‘He was when I left him at Byzantium about two months ago,’ replied Kleidemos, bowing. ‘He should be in Sparta by now.’

  ‘Sparta!’ exclaimed the satrap with a surprised and vexed expression. ‘I thought he had not moved from Byzantium. But sit down, please, you must be tired.’ He indicated a puffy woollen pillow placed on a blue carpet. Kleidemos found it a little difficult to sit in such an uncomfortable position, pulling his Persian garments between his legs.

  ‘The king has had news of growing mistrust in Sparta and did not want to fuel rumours that could have become dangerous. He is sure that no one has the slightest proof against him and that envy is at the root of it all. I would say that his style of living in Byzantium, which certainly breaks with Spartan conventions, has given the ephors and the elders – always fearful that the kings’ power will become too consolidated – the excuse to call him back and find some pretext against him. The king however assures you that his freedom will not be curtailed, and that he will soon be back in Byzantium. I will bring your words, or the words of the Great King, to him there upon my return.’

  Artabazus stroked his grey moustache pensively, then spoke again. ‘You shall give him this message from the Great King: “Hail, Pausanias. The proof of friendship that you send has profoundly moved us. You have liberated persons very close to our heart who had fallen prisoner under your soldiers. We are henceforth willing to consider you our ally and to provide you with everything you may need, whether this be money or another form of assistance. As far as your request for betrothal with one of our daughters, we are pleased to give our consent and await news from you on your movements in the future. Your answers may hereafter be communicated to our satrap in Dascylium, in the province of Caria, whom your messengers can reach easily from Byzantium.” ’

  Kleidemos replied, ‘His words have been written in my mind, and will be relayed as you have pronounced them.’

  ‘Very good,’ said the satrap. ‘But please tell me now, what actions does King Pausanias plan to take?’

  ‘He must first remove any distrust from the minds of the ephors and the elders,’ answered Kleidemos. ‘They regard him with suspicion, despite the great prestige he enjoys for his victory at Plataea.’

  Kleidemos noticed a slight but perceptible expression of disappointment on Artabazus’ face, and he realized that perhaps he should have started with something else. He continued nonetheless. ‘He is also commander of the Army of the Straits and of the Peloponnesian fleet, and the guardian of King Pleistarchus, Leonidas’ son, who as you well know is still a child. In any normal situation, the ephors and the elders usually manage to set one king against another, provoking a rivalry that effectively allows them to exercise and reinforce their power. But Pausanias is practically alone, and concentrates enormous strength in his hands: this is the reason for which he arouses their misgiving and apprehension. It’s evident that the ephors and the elders are looking for some pretext by which to control him, nothing more . . . I believe. In any case, Pausanias seems very sure of himself. And you must remember that he can count on the support of the assembly of equals: our warriors greatly admire his intelligence and his military valour. Traditionally, they feel much closer to the king that guides them in battle than to the ephors and the elders.’

  Artabazus was pacing the room, back and forth. He stopped at its centre to offer his point of view. ‘It is thus in our interests to act while we can count on an ally at the height of his power. If Pausanias were charged with some offence or relieved of his command of the army, all of our plans would have to change. As you know, the situation in Athens is in great disarray at the moment.’ Kleidemos, completely
unaware of what the satrap was referring to, nodded in assent. ‘Themistocles, the Athenian commander who defeated our fleet at Salamis, has been expelled from his city and is in exile.’ Kleidemos found it difficult to hide his surprise. ‘He could also become our ally one day, if for no other reason than to take revenge on his thankless homeland. You can tell your king now to be ready to act at a moment’s notice, because the time could be very near. You were able to take your time arriving here because you knew that Pausanias would not be back in Byzantium before the end of the summer, but you will have to rush on your return journey. You must be waiting for the king in Byzantium, to give him this message as soon as he returns. Make contact with the satrap at Dascylium immediately, but ensure that this journey remains a complete secret. I know you have a servant with you; we cannot risk him talking and ruining everything. I will provide you with another servant. Do you prefer a young woman this time, or a good-looking boy?’ asked the satrap solicitously.

  ‘Oh, no, sir,’ replied Kleidemos promptly. ‘Too much of a luxury for me, and besides, it might attract the attention and the envy of my comrades. I’d rather not be too conspicuous. I will eliminate the servant myself as soon as we are near the coast. I’ve already been instructed to do so.’

  ‘As you wish,’ nodded the satrap. ‘Now let me offer my hospitality, so you may have several days to restore your strength before your long journey back.’

  Kleidemos accepted, curious to see how those the Greeks called ‘barbarians’ really lived.

  The palace was much more beautiful than any he had ever seen in Greece or Asia. Lahgal was taken to the slaves’ quarters, but Kleidemos was given a large, spacious room in the upper quarters of the palace, open both to the east and to the west, refreshed by evening breezes.