The Isle of Stone

by Nicholas Nicastro

  “There is nothing wrong with this boy. Rejoice in your good fortune,” Arcesilaus pronounced. With that, his gaze shifted to the next candidate. Antalcidas had been passed.

  Damatria drifted a few steps away, her useless eye throbbing in its socket. Seeing the other women with their cherished babes made her dizzy with revulsion. The sound of Antalcidas’ little breaths, his cloying smell, his very weight on her arm, filled her with unspeakable indignation. She whirled back at the elders.

  “I see that wisdom is dead among you. Before the gods, then, hear me: one day, one way or another, this child will grow up to be the shame of this city! Remember that a Spartan mother told you this, when you lacked the courage to act!”

  After this disaster she took the boy home and put him on the floor. She left him there a long time as she sat and thought. Might she have disposed of him earlier, she wondered, while sickness remained a plausible excuse? Could she still do so? Her mistake, she decided, was to leave her salvation in the hands of others. She resolved that she would not move until she knew what she might do to tolerate the prospect of her own future.

  3.

  Antalcidas was quiet at first, turning his head back and forth across the blur of the rafters above. At length he felt a discomfort in his stomach. He began to whimper, kicking off his blanket as he rooted for the nipple against his cheek. Feeling nothing, his fear rose, though he could not understand it as such, and he began to cry. His voice, scratchy and croaking, resounded through the soft tectonics of his skull, magnifying his dejection. He was alone.

  He cried some more, grew tired, and stopped. In the silence he felt his need again, and went from quiet to full-on bawling in an instant. But then he stopped just as suddenly, and when the hunger ailed him again he produced only a murmur. What had been a bright blur above him was now an opaque gloom. Opening his mouth to root, he produced a yawn.

  When he awoke he saw nothing but blackness. He had somehow lost his blanket, and felt a damp rigidity pressing against his back. His bladder had emptied as he slept, the fountain of his own water soaking him. In that instant his cold, his loneliness, and the discomfort in his stomach fused into a single knot of misery. He poured his heart into a long, arcing wail, and then a staccato of piercing sweeps. As he screamed, his face burned red and wet as his tiny fists punched the air. He cried with such violence that his breathing could not keep up. He choked, wept, choked. No one came.

  Other voices came to him from beyond the walls. Across vastnesses he could not yet conceive, his brothers and sisters whispered to him from their stony cradles. They were collected at the bottom in their thousands, tender humeri scattered in the stream, toothless jaws rolled and polished by the water. Bits of scalp clung to some, covered with fine hair, residues of blood mingled across the boulders. Like Antalcidas, the bones lay in silence, but did not lack for attention from the rats and jackals that suckled their soft ends. As their mothers lived their days nearby, weaving their shrouds of forgetting, the children of Sparta lay gathered against that hard but eternally accepting bosom, calling to him.

  Then something loomed at him from out of the dark. He felt it snatch him up, and through his tears he saw the gathering of a luminant mass, a moonscape of light and dark that resolved into his mother’s face. What he could not recognize, though, was the peculiar shape of her mouth as she brought him close. For the first time, as she offered her breast, she was smiling.

  4.

  Damatria had realized a single, sustaining prospect—to have a truly legitimate child. To that end, she attacked her husband in a procreational frenzy. Molobrus kept up as best he could, but showed fear in his eyes as she bared her legs for the third, fourth, fifth go in a night. Even in his ignorance he could sense there was no pleasure in the act for her, only the obstinate purpose of a commander marshaling his forces for some greater end.

  A son was born the following summer. Molobrus took an afternoon to come home from the barracks, looked down at young Epitadas, and pronounced himself pleased. But to Damatria his arrival marked the time of her own rebirth, of joys that were finally unmixed. Her months of shame, of lies of omission, were over.

  She responded with a tenderness that surprised Lampito. The infant’s wine baths were diluted to one-sixth strength and less. While Antalcidas lay without cover in a basket across the room, Damatria took Epitadas to bed with her. His hunger and chills, his teething, and the softness of his blankets, were constant matters for concern. One day, when Lampito looked in on them, she was pleased to see that Antalcidas had begun to pull himself upright against his mother’s legs. Damatria, however, would barely glance at him as she cooed at Epitadas.

  “I would think you were a first-time mother, the way you coddle him,” Lampito said. “Remember I told you that Sparta needs . . .”

  “Sparta needs spears, yes,” the other interrupted. Breaking her gaze at Epitadas, she looked down at Antalcidas with something more than her usual severity. As she stroked his head, he became excited, trying to pull himself into her lap. She withdrew her hand.

  It would be untrue to say Damatria never developed any feelings for Antalcidas. With the blessing of Epitadas’ arrival, the well of her compassion overflowed enough for her to spare a few drops for his brother, who was really a fine, strong boy. When she thought about how cruel she had been to him, she was even inclined to regret—though for Epitadas’ sake she did not take her self-recriminations too far. In time, she came to make peace with her secrets, and to the temporary weakness in her that had spawned her eldest. In place of useless resentment, she nurtured grandiose plans for achievement. Epitadas stood at the focus of her ambition, but his brother would have an important role to play. She pulled Antalcidas up and gave him the other breast; she fell asleep with both boys clinging to her, staring into each other’s eyes across the chasm.

  5.

  The austerity of the Lacedaemonians was practiced in the richest landscape in Greece. Sheltered between the Parnon range in the east and Taygetus in the west, Laconia was secure, expansive, and fertile. The river Eurotas descended from the borderlands of Sciritis to water the estates of citizens in the valley. Figs, almonds, olives, grapes, pomegranates, pears, cherries, and apples fell from tree and vine; the climate was so congenial for barley that farmers reaped two harvests a year. The profusion of boar and stag in the foothills afforded ample hunting, while goats, sheep, and oxen flourished on grasses nurtured by pure snowmelt that persisted deep into the summer.

  It was a common rite of passage for young Spartan males to climb into the lower reaches of Taygetus, to the very spur where, two thousand years later, the tonsured monks of Frankish Mistra would fly to escape secular corruption. The Spartan boys would flee nothing, but gaze in pride at the verdant tapestry below, comprehending better than ever the magnitude of their worldly good fortune. Even the helots seemed to go around in a permanent state of wonder at such stupendous plenty—the wealth that for some, in their secret hearts, was worth the sacrifice of their freedom.

  In due course the damage from the earthquake was repaired. Houses were rebuilt larger and stronger, with luxuries such as windows. This drew the criticism of the elders, who wondered aloud if the Lacedaemonians were going soft. But in fact the indiscriminate destruction had pauperized, not spoiled, many of the citizens. Men who lost the produce of their farms by physical loss or the shortage of helots could no longer contribute to their dining clubs, costing them their citizenship. Families whose farms were spared could then afford to acquire more land. Some used the extra income to build bigger houses.

  The loss of citizens-soldiers through penury aggravated Laconia’s chronic shortage of manpower. Spartiates were enjoined to multiply, and spawn they did. But the fruits of this boom would not enter the army for another generation. Meanwhile, the revolt of the helots seemed interminable, costing the city more casualties, more ruined estates. At last, four years after it had begun, the toughest of the rebels were confined to fortified positions at the top of Mount Ithom
e, sixty miles northwest of Sparta. There they remained, resisting all attempts to dislodge them.

  The Gerousia, envisioning operations against Ithome might drag on indefinitely, then did something unheard of in the history of Sparta: it asked for foreign help against a domestic foe. The Athenians, in particular, were known to be skilled in siege warfare. Why not let the allies of Sparta do the bleeding against the Messenians? At best, the Athenians would solve the problem; at worst, the rebels would hold the mountain, but Athens would lose men and prestige fighting them. Indeed, as the Athenians acquired alarming wealth and power after the Persian Wars, it was hard to say which result most benefited Sparta.

  But the old men of the council had not anticipated the effect of four thousand Athenians let loose among the people. Damatria encountered them in the streets of Kynosoura: gangs of jabbering, overdressed, smooth-cheeked children. As respectable Athenian women rarely ventured out of doors, their men assumed every Spartan female they saw was a streetwalker. In her short peplos, her hair uncovered, Damatria got more than her share of attention.

  “Look at that, will you! Give my pay for a go with her!”

  “A real thigh-flasher, that one!”

  “Hey girlie, look here!”

  The Athenian parted his tunic to reveal what he carried there. As he stared at her unashamed, he commenced to yank back and forth on the foreskin. Furious, Damatria would have buried her fist in his face, but knew that would accomplish nothing. It was the third time that day she had been accosted.

  Worse in the eyes of most Lacedaemonians was Athenian presumption. Gold and silver jewelry appeared openly in Laconia for the first time in living memory. The corrupting influence of these baubles was the subject of much discussion around the mess tables; the effect on Spartan women was feared the most. The conceit of the Athenians went hand in hand with their vanity: when one of them saw a desirable helot, he invariably proffered either some high-handed objection to Greeks enslaving other Greeks, or else made an offer to purchase. Since helots were public resources, not private slaves, it was illegal to buy or sell them. Yet few of the visitors seemed to respect this or any other Spartan law.

  In the end, the Athenian troops were as useless as they were offensive. Cimon, their leader, took one look at the ridge of Ithome, more than four stades tall, and declared that the task required not siegecraft but wings. This was the final straw: the Gerousia, with the support of the kings Pleistarchus and Archidamus, delivered an official disinvitation. The Athenians were deeply insulted to be sent home. Some of them (but not Cimon) went around claiming it was democracy, not Athenian arms, that Sparta feared most. With their departure the treaty between Sparta and Athens was finished. Insofar as Athens was a rising threat to Spartan interests, the end of the alliance was not unwelcome in some quarters.

  Soon after these events, Molobrus turned thirty. According to tradition, this was the age when a married man was supposed to leave the barracks to go live with his family. Damatria first thought she would welcome this, but very soon realized how wrong she had been. Her husband came home with very odd ideas about running things in his own household. The first days of his homecoming were awkward, with Molobrus moping about, missing his comrades. Soon he turned to making ignorant comments about the condition of the gardens, the olive grove, the hearth, the helots’ work, and whatever else displeased him. The celebrated reticence of the Laconian male, she learned, was nothing more than a myth—or more precisely, a tale for ignorant outsiders. Spartiates chattered like sparrows when they didn’t get their way.

  Damatria soon tired of defending a way of life she had managed alone since the day of their marriage. Nor did Molobrus’ actual presence do much for their physical intimacy. Spartan sex, predicated as it was on mystery and rarity, did nothing to prepare her for this stranger at her door.

  Equally disturbing to her was the way he treated his sons. At first, he knew no other way of dealing with them than as barracks mates. In one instance, Damatria was upset to find an unsheathed sword in the hands of little Epitadas. She snatched it up, causing the boy to scream in protest.

  “Are you a fool, giving a sword to a six-year-old boy?” she cried.

  Molobrus shrugged. “He wanted to see it. Should a Spartan be kept from blades?”

  “And how will he ever carry a weapon in the line if he loses a hand or some fingers?”

  “I’m going to the barracks,” he said, slamming the door. There was a cold winter rain falling, but he left in too much of a hurry to take his cloak.

  In time, Molobrus acquired enough common sense for her to trust him with the boys. What soon became apparent to her, though, was that he was determined to treat Antalcidas and Epitadas with equal affection. She would stand in the shadows, watching him play war games with them. His ignorance sickened her. True, she had never told him that Antalcidas was not his son. Yet some part of her could not help but wonder why he failed to perceive in him the bastard vigor, the doglike desire to please, the slave’s devious cleverness. “Can’t you see the truth?” she wanted to scream, making the wife’s eternal complaint at her husband’s failure to divine what she could not bear to say.

  Fortunately, within the year Antalcidas was of age to begin the Rearing. The boy-herd, Endius, son of Melancidas, came for him one morning when Molobrus was away on the hunt. Damatria had not made the mistake of heaping warm clothes on her son’s back, or packing him a last meal for the road, because she understood such things would be tossed in a ditch by his teachers. She had, in fact, not prepared him at all for his final departure from his parents’ home.

  The boy seemed to guess the nature of the stranger’s business as he entered the yard. He ran to Damatria, wrapping his arms around her legs, and she looked down at him, frowning.

  “Mother, who are they? Are they here for me?”

  “What do you want from me, boy?” she cried, deeply embarassed in front of Endius. She yanked her skirt from Antalcidas’ grip and lifted it to midthigh. “Do you want to crawl back up under here? Now off with you!”

  The boy-herd pried him loose, and with the kind of curt nod given by someone collecting alms or taxes, carried Antalcidas away. But the boy bit down hard on his forearm. He ran back to his mother, this time locking his arms around her ankles. Damatria, not entirely willing to kick him, finally asked Endius to wait outside.

  “This is very disappointing,” she said as she got him to his feet at last. “Can’t you see that everyone is watching you?”

  “But . . . I . . . leaving . . . go . . . don’t . . . wanna . . .” the boy uttered between sobs.

  She gripped his arms tightly enough to make him yelp.

  “Listen to me, you little shit. You will not unman this house. Don’t you think your father did his duty? And his father before him?”

  More tears. She brought his face close to hers, with almost their noses touching, and said, “Antalcidas, look here. I need you to be brave. You need to take care of Epitadas for me one day, when I can’t be there. Do you understand?”

  Lower lip aquiver, he nodded.

  “To do this for me, you need to become strong. These men want to help you. Will you go with them?”

  Uncertain, he showed a brave face as Endius returned and took him by the hand. The boy-herd had a poultice of mud and spit on his arm where Antalcidas had bitten him.

  “No need for an apology!” declared Endius, though Damatria had not offered one. “We see all kinds of reactions . . . better tears now than in front of the other boys!”

  He was gone. Damatria stood dreading the sound of him bolting back to the house, but she heard nothing more. Straightening the linen over her legs, she winced at the stains of Antalcidas’ tears on the fabric. A torment to the very end! Yet with that, Damatria hoped the ordeal that had begun more than seven years before, beside the rubble of her father’s house, was finally over. She looked to Epitadas, who had been watching through a doorway.

  “By the gods, I don’t expect such a fuss from you!�
�� she told him.

  6.

  Endius took him to a place in the fields where a wide circle of grain had been trampled flat. Fifteen other boys his age romped inside the circle. There were no introductions and little talking—just the vegetal crack of fifteen bodies jumping, wrestling, and flopping on the stalks. Endius stripped off Antalcidas’ cloak, leaving him with only a thin tunic. The boys halted to examine the new arrival. When Antalcidas looked up at him with a questioning look, the boy-herd winked and walked away through the rows of barley.

  Antalcidas wondered if he was supposed to follow, until he was shoved from behind. Turning, he was confronted by an older boy, about twelve years old, who bore a striking mole on his right cheek.

  “Are you really just seven years old?” asked Birthmark.

  “Yes.”

  “He’s too tall,” he said to the other boys. “Betcha his mother kept him at home an extra year, maybe even two!”

  “Did not.”

  “Don’t argue, Grub!” a redheaded boy ordered, holding his little fist under Antalcidas’ nose.

  “Grub?”

  “It’s a kind of useless worm . . . Grub!”

  “We call all the new ones grubs,” said Birthmark. “If you’re lucky, you get a real name when you prove yourself.”

  “Wake up! Scarecrow due east!” a third boy announced with hushed excitement.

  All eyes looked to Birthmark, who Antalcidas realized must be the pack’s leader. The boy crouched suddenly, and was joined in the huddle by everyone else. Redhead turned back to Antalcidas.

  “What are you doing, Grub? Get in here!”

  The others made a space for Antalcidas to join them. Birthmark was in the middle giving orders, jabbing a finger at each boy in turn.

  “Frog, Ho-hum, Cricket, and Beast take flanking position. Redhead, Rehash, and Cheese guard against the countermarch, while the rest of you circle around with me to the front. . . .”