The Isle of Stone

by Nicholas Nicastro

  The basket was opened, the barley cakes inside shared out and consumed. The exposure of the knife produced a gasp in the crowd as if nothing of the kind had ever been seen before. With the cutting of a vessel in the animal’s neck, a strong stream of blood projected onto the side of the altar, which was stained black with the residue of a hundred previous sacrifices. As the ram poured out its life, the women in the crowd raised their hands and ululated—a sound that always sent chills up Antalcidas’ neck.

  “In my sixty-two years I’ve never seen the rites done better,” avowed Zeuxippos, with a formulaic tone that suggested he said the very same thing every year.

  The competitions in music and dance resumed, including a choral hymn by twenty-four maidens in purple. They stood at first in four lines of six, stepping in time to the verses, their swaying alternately exposing and hiding the nakedness between the ungirt sides of their tunics. They sang:

  In the center of Delphic Pytho, navel of the world, divine Phoebus Touches the strings of his hollow kithara, sending its sweet ring Over the rocky heights of Parnassus, beloved of the Muses. But faster than the glint of light from his golden plectrum, He flies to the mansions of Olympus, aerie of Zeus the Orderer. There he diverts the gathered immortals, pleased to hear the son Of fair-haired Leto play in honeyed notes, and step in radiance For the Graces so finely tressed, and Artemis pourer of arrows, And his sister, sea-born Aphrodite, who dance with hands entwined, As the Hours sing of the love of the gods, that gift to mortal men In their short, feeble spans, where there is no recourse from decay, No reprieve from death . . .

  The blonde he had seen before was there, on the left end of the third rank. She danced and recited with her brow furrowed in concentration, lifting and placing her sandaled feet, kicking out with filleted ankles, grasping an invisible bow with the evocation of Artemis. In unison, the girls fell into a circle with each grasping the wrist of the dancer beside her, their turnings livened by ample flashing of shins and buttocks. At the quality of their extremities Antalcidas was compelled to stare: unscarred, round, softly glowing in the light as if covered with velvet. The knees of Spartan women, on the other hand, cut like swords. They were slightly discolored with the dirt of the gymnasium, or as foreign men liked to believe, in the kneeling service of their lovers. Antalcidas became so excited by these sights that he was compelled to run away without warning Zeuxippos.

  “Where are you going?” the old man called after him. “We must tour the encampment!”

  Antalcidas ran into the fields and found a grove of apple trees. Picking a fruit with a color as hale as the girl’s thighs, he retreated to a private place and began to kiss the smooth surface of it, using his lips in ways that increased his frenzy. His kisses became nibbles, then bites, exposing the flesh, drawing the juice through his toothmarks, driving himself to bore at the bitter center of her, splitting the whole against his cheeks, reducing seeds and rind until all that was left was—nothing.

  3.

  On his fourteenth birthday Antalcidas moved on to the age-class of the propaides. He was mostly beyond the rigors of outdoor life, having long since become a thief with the skills to appropriate food, water, and shelter from helots or, if possible, from the unguarded estates of Equals. Unwary weaklings and youngsters supplied the rest, including the fawning respect due to their superiors. On the negative side of the ledger, he was under increasing responsibility to educate the boys beneath him, even as he continued to receive punitive thrashings from the three age-classes above. Being both men and boys, authorities and subordinates, propaides like him were caught in the middle.

  This dilemma became more acute when, upon a raid on an olive grove, he stumbled on a brawl between two younger boys. Thibron and another Firstie sat watching the fight from a log as they passed a canteen between them. The boys dueled with iron sickles, lunging awkwardly at each other. The spectators shouted encouragements, spurring them to soldier on despite their exhaustion.

  “Are you finished, girls?” asked Thibron. “Didn’t your boy-herd teach you that a Spartan never raises a hand in surrender?”

  “Look at the way he stares at you! Will you let him get away with that?” exclaimed the other.

  The boys dutifully went at each other again, their blades flashing as they cut the air. When the taller antagonist stepped into a column of sunlight, Antalcidas was stunned to see the face of Epitadas.

  He had not glimpsed his brother in many years, yet he recognized him instantly. He knew that Epitadas would have been a year behind him in the Rearing; in his idle moments, as when he lay awake on his nest of rushes at night, Antalcidas wondered where Epitadas’ pack must be. Had they been on the same mountain before, out of sight of each other around some impassable outcrop? How many times had his brother taken cover when Antalcidas’ group passed him, just as Antalcidas’ had once fled at the sight of older boys?

  The fight, it seemed, had not been bloodless. Epitadas had a cut over his eye, and his opponent was bleeding from a slashing wound on his upper left arm. Both were too tired to hold up their weapons, but just circled each other out of arm’s length, darting in to attack when they saw an opening. More disturbing, neither of the adults present seemed to be interested in keeping the boys from harm.

  “Honored fathers!” Antalcidas addressed them. “Do you wish me to take spotting position, or to confiscate their weapons—as custom demands?”

  This sudden interference, and his particular emphasis on established custom, got the men’s attention. Thibron turned to him with a mouth full of wine, surprised; his companion frowned.

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  This exchange distracted Epitadas, who swiveled his head around, gaped—and took a blow from a sickle handle in the temple. He collapsed, dropping his weapon.

  “There, it’s finally over.”

  Epitadas’ opponent, a scrawny youth who had bitten down so hard on his lower lip that his incisors were lodged there, moved in. Laying the chipped edge of his blade against Epitadas’ neck, he waited as the latter groaned and wiped the blood from his eyes.

  “Give up now,” he commanded.

  Epitadas focused on his enemy above him, saying nothing.

  “I said, yield to your master.”

  A bolus of blood-soaked spittle rolled from his perforated lips onto Epitadas’ cheek. The sickle blade was pressed harder against his throat.

  “That’s enough, young man,” said Thibron, who rose and scratched his balls as if after a long afternoon at the theater.

  “Yes, a boy needs to learn when it’s worth it, does he not?” chimed his comrade.

  Having lost interest, the Firsties departed. Antalcidas rushed to remove the weapons, which the victor released with what appeared to be decided relief. Epitadas, for his part, glared at his opponent and didn’t look at Antalcidas at all. His face betrayed nothing but a sullen, smoldering hatred.

  The other boy, whose name and affiliation Antalcidas never learned, turned and walked away. There was a moment while the adults were still in sight and Epitadas climbed to his feet. And then, before Antalcidas could move to stop him, Epitadas pursued his enemy into the woods, running at him with admirable stealth.

  Antalcidas followed with a mounting sense of dread. He was just in time to see his brother insert the point of the sickle into the center of the boy’s back. It was a pitiless blow, inflicted with no warning or hesitation on a defenseless opponent. Epitadas watched with faint curiosity as his enemy, eyes gaping white, spun around, trying to reach the handle behind him. As this went on for some time Epitadas smiled, clapping his hands as if watching a dance. Blood poured trembling from the crook of the blade, spattering the amber carpet of pine needles. When the boy fell at last, it was on that soft bed. Epitadas crouched to watch his face as he went still.

  “What have you done, Brother?” Antalcidas asked.

  Epitadas narrowed his eyes.

  “So it is you.”

  They watched as a blood-colored bubble appeared
at the victim’s left nostril. It seemed to grow forever until it burst and was replaced by another. A curious gurgling sound came from the vicinity of the wound.

  “You’re not as tall as I imagined, stone-thrower,” Epitadas remarked.

  Stepping across the prone body, he extracted the sickle and tossed it into the brush. Then he approached Antalcidas, coming to within inches of his face, looking down on him despite being eleven months his junior.

  “You were saying something back there, distracting me when I had matters in hand. . . .”

  “Epitadas.”

  “Never interfere again. Understand? Never.”

  “Brother, listen—”

  “I’ll take that as your word.”

  The reunion over, Epitadas made off in the direction of the river. When he was gone, Antalcidas flew to Mesoa for help. As he ran, the odd thought occurred to him that Thibron, handsome and ingenious Thibron, so square-jawed and ideal, might be in trouble with his elders like any other boy. He also wondered just how many of the people of Sparta knew about the incident of the stone-throwing. What would his mother say?

  Epitadas’ victim was not quite dead. As the craft of medicine still bore a whiff of foreignness for the Lacedaemonians, and was therefore regarded with suspicion, no physician attended to the boy. Instead, two veteran Spartiates put him on a table in a nearby house and applied a field dressing. This stopped the external bleeding but accomplished nothing more. The boy’s abdomen continued to fill with blood.

  To inflict a mortal injury on a peer, even in the guise of training, was a crime in Sparta. Isidas the Ephor was summoned, along with five of the knights to apprehend the accused. Draping the gray locks of his beard back over his shoulder, Isidas leaned down to talk to the boy.

  “Who did this to you, son?”

  The other looked up at him with studied fortitude in his eyes.

  “Am I hurt, father? I can’t feel it.”

  “You are hurt. Who did it?”

  The boy smiled. “I know what you’re doing, elder. This is a test. You want to see if I will bear the wound.”

  The ephor squeezed his hand. “It is not a test.”

  “There is no crime to avenge—I would have done the same to him if I had the chance.”

  Isidas went on trying to convince the boy to name his murderer until he stopped giving replies. His last words were about going to tell his parents he had passed “the trial.” The ephor stood, a crease of regret crossing on his face.

  “A shame to lose a boy like that,” he said to the knights. “And I believe his father now has nothing but girls.”

  He turned and saw Antalcidas standing there.

  “You—I understand you like to throw stones.”

  Antalcidas shifted nervously, not knowing how to reply.

  “Yes, elder.”

  “I know you were there, son. Speak freely—no one will hurt you. You have my promise.”

  Antalcidas took care to look the ephor in the eye as he answered, and to use as few words as possible.

  “It was Thibron,” he said.

  4.

  The testimony of the son of a free-born Spartiate, and the fact that the dead boy was under Thibron’s supervision, were enough to bring an indictment. The Gerousia met to hear the evidence. In his defense, Thibron made a brief account of his service to the army and to the boy-herd. And while no one could dispute his record of excellence, a certain reputation for mischief—and rumors of private drinking—weighed against him in the elders’ minds. Isidas, who still had a bald spot where one of Thibron’s protégés had shaved hairs from his leg, was most adamant for the prosecution. In the end they voted twenty-six to four to convict, with both kings voting guilty.

  Discussion over punishment ran well into the night. The prescribed penalty was death, but in light of the defendant’s distinguished pedigree, King Archidamus moved for permanent exile. There was no consensus when the elders broke up at last to make their way home, torchless, over the empty paths. The final vote was a contentious sixteen to fourteen for banishment. On pain of execution, Thibron was obliged to cross the boundaries of Laconia by the following nightfall. In such cases this meant the convicted had to leave right away, without a pause to collect his personal property or bid his messmates farewell.

  Thibron’s trial and disappearance preoccupied public discussion for days. That Antalcidas, son of Molobrus gave the decisive testimony was the object of much comment, for his mother’s prediction that her son would grow up to be “the shame of Sparta” was not forgotten. The ruin of a young man as promising at Thibron, who came from one of the most ancient Heraclid families, might have qualified as such a disgrace. Questioned about this by Lampito in front of witnesses, Damatria neither confirmed nor denied the fulfillment of her prophecy. She still had plans for her eldest son.

  Antalcidas took a big step toward that future with his appearance in the Plane Stand. It began with a chance encounter on the Eurotas, when his pack and a rival gang of sixteen-year-old Yearlings met on the shoreline path and refused to give way to each other. The customary manner of resolving such conflicts was to fight it out in a special arena: an artificial island ringed with plane trees and a moat, with wooden bridges on opposing sides. From time immemorial Spartan boys had settled their differences there, under the eyes of Herakles and Lycurgus, in any manner short of the use of weapons. Many a hardened Spartiate, if asked how he had earned that gouged-out eye or torn, fishhooked mouth, would boast that he had not received it on the battlefield but, in fact, in a boyhood scrimmage on the Plane Stand. Every young man was expected to fight there sooner or later.

  The Lacedaemonians tempered the passions of the moment with a heavy dose of procedure. As leader, Stone was expected to conduct the sacrifice of a puppy to Ares Enyalios at his shrine near the village of Therapne. The animal had to be perfectly black, with no spots or imperfections; a regular part of the ritual was for each antagonist to disparage the other’s offering as unworthy. His counterpart, a small-bodied but bigmouthed character named Gylippus, made much of a few gray hairs on the underside of the puppy Antalcidas had stolen from a yard in Limnae.

  “Seems like a simple thing to me, to find a black dog,” crowed Gylippus. “Maybe all our friend Antalcidas is good for is selling out his teachers!”

  To invoke the fate of Thibron in the service of a petty squabble was to slap Antalcidas in the face. He didn’t answer, but swore inwardly to make Gylippus pay for this remark.

  The next preliminary was a fight between wild boars specially kept for the purpose. These animals were brought out by a deputation of Spartiates who seemed to relish the chore. Their eyes shined with amusement when, after Antalcidas and Gylippus cast lots, Gylippus won and picked the larger boar to represent his pack. The root of their humor became clear when the boys assembled to watch the animals square off: after trading snorts, Gylippus’ champion turned rump and wriggled through the boys’ legs to escape. Antalcidas led his pack in a cheer, for the affiliation of the boar that kept the field portended victory on the Plane Stand.

  The next day, the sides cast lots to determine by which route each pack would take the field. Gylippus won again and chose the Herakles bridge. As the opponents gathered on the far side of the moat, the perimeter became crowded with spectators from every age-class, from Grubs to Yearlings to Cows to Firsties, as well as many full-grown Spartiates and women. The mood was one of anticipation but not quite joy: if the combatants fought as they were expected, some would watch their children maimed that morning. Conspicuous injuries on the Plane Stand, like death in war, were supposed to be grounds for celebration for the patrons and families of the wounded. In practice, those who gave damage were more genuinely cheered than those who took it.

  The teams, Herakles versus Lycurgus, filed across to the island. Endius taught that the victory was decided by divine favor, bestowed on the pack that displayed the most manly excellence. There was therefore no huddling or cheerleading once the boys stepped on that
sacred ground—inventive tactics, if attempted at all, were repugnant in Ares’ sight. As he mouthed the ancient prayers in a voice too low for Antalcidas to hear, Alcander the Elder poured a libation to the god into the moat. With that, he sat on a field stool and raised his hand for the contest to begin.

  The opponents formed up in single-rank phalanxes, their arms linked, and charged at each other across the pitch. They met in the center with a crash of unprotected ribs, heads butting, chest-to-chest. There was a murmur of approval from the Spartiates as both phalanxes remained intact after the shock.

  The boys strove to push their opponents off the island, legs and backs bent to the task. The lines undulated as segments of each gained and gave ground. With flanks pouring with sweat, the antagonists began to slip past each other, straining against the linked arms before them. Antalcidas, struggling in the center of his line, found good footing in the ruts left by his ancestors. With a shout, he drove forward, ignoring the stabs to his feet from generations of teeth and severed toenails lodged in the dirt.

  Gylippus’s front broke. Encouraged, the Lycurgus pack shoved them backward, step by begrudging step, until they were mere yards from the moat. Facing defeat, the enemy unlinked their arms to scratch and bite and rip. Cricket suffered a split nostril, and Antalcidas was unnerved to feel someone’s fingers snaking into his mouth to administer the fishhook. He bit back, his teeth sinking straight through the ligaments. Gylippus screamed and fell back into the water with blood shooting from the stumps of his fingers. The rest of Herakles joined him in rout; Antalcidas’ phalanx, meanwhile, had never been broken, though many of his mates were bloodied from gouges and bites.

  The verdict among the spectators was that the melee was a qualified success. Gylippus’s humiliation was aggravated by the fact that he had cried out with the pain of his wound. Antalcidas, fortunately, saved the dignity of the occasion by making no vulgar celebration. Instead, he spat Gylippus’s fingertips out of his mouth and extended a hand to help him out of the water. As the other turned away in his shame, Stone overheard some of what the Spartiates were saying about his performance: