The Isle of Stone

by Nicholas Nicastro

  “. . . never seen it done so fast . . .”

  “. . . that face with such a body . . . !”

  “He seems pretty enough to me now!”

  “Say what you will about him, but the boy absorbs.”

  The last voice belonged to Zeuxippos. As befitted any patron on such an occasion, with his peers lining up to shake his hand, he basked in the reflected glory of his protégé.

  But it was a figure that said nothing at all that drew Antalcidas’ attention: a thin female with her back to him, her head tilted slightly to the left. After nine years, he could still recognize that receding form. He felt an impulse to run after her, to seize her in some single manner that would express the totality of his feelings. Instead, he found himself surrounded by the faces of his packmates, assaulting him with the force of their admiration. When he looked again for his mother, she was gone.

  His showing on the Plane Stand landed him in the front row of the minor chorus during the year’s Festival of the Unarmed Boys. The day of his choral performance was not as hot as during the Flocks, but it was cloudless and the sun strong as it bore down on the dirt of the dancing circle in the marketplace. Except for the tasseled wreaths around their heads, Antalcidas and his packmates took the stage naked. The dance began as a simple march that grew into a complicated series of steps particular to his age-class. As he concentrated on the dancing, he had to remember the words of the paean to be sung, and endure the taunts of the older men as they scrutinized the boys for every imperfection in physique or conduct. At certain points in the performance the boys, in unison, had to stop, raise their fists, and proclaim, “By the glory of the Muses, we will be braver than our fathers!” The crowd would roar back, and the dance begin anew, only faster.

  On and on it went, as the hours passed and the sun soared midway between Parnon and Taygetus. By then the temperature was irrelevant: all the performers gleamed with sweat and swooned with exhaustion as the audience only seemed to get bigger, more delightedly hostile. By the nineteenth round some of the boys could barely stand, and their promise to exceed their fathers had a decidedly uncertain ring. By the twenty-sixth the dancers in the back row collapsed. By the thirty-fifth, Antalcidas had stopped caring whether the words or the steps were correct, but thought only of the joints in his legs screaming, and the pounding on the balls of his feet, and the sensation like the tip of a knife searching the clefts in the back of his skull. He stopped, raised his arm, and declared nothing at all as his voice betrayed him. Coughing up the dust of the marketplace, he croaked the declaration as the adult faces seemed focused only on him, on his failure. Despite himself, he felt the rising of tears in his eyes. He commenced the marching step again, balancing himself on the insensate clubs of his extremities. But Endius and Zeuxippos were beside him then, holding him by either arm, as the sound of distant applause rose around them.

  “It’s over, my boy,” Endius was saying. “You can stop moving your feet. . . .”

  “They say many see great Phoebus for the first time during the minor chorus,” asked Zeuxippos. “Can we hope you were so lucky?” Antalcidas saw his lips move, heard his voice, but could only stare back without understanding. If Apollo had truly come to him during the ordeal, he would not have understood a word the god said.

  5.

  Zeuxippos perpetuated his approval of Antalcidas that night by buggering him at last. The old man sought nothing untoward in this: the strength to rule and be ruled, physically and otherwise, was the aim of a Spartan male’s education, and to that end it was not unusual to mix a little intimacy with lessons in politics and history. And so Antalcidas found himself on his stomach on the bug-infested cot where Zeuxippos took his sleep. The old man was kneeling above him, going on about the nobility of the Spartan rectum, as he seemed to wrestle with the gnarled root between his fingers.

  “Give me the honest ordure of a Lacedaemonian crotch anyday!” he said. “The Tegeans are as dry as crones, and the Corinthians—great Aphrodite’s tits!—they grease themselves so much with unguents they might as well be women! In Athens they do it like they do everything else, with their great yapping mouths. But our Spartan diet produces shit as wholesome as butter, and an asshole so soft and sweet it practically winks at you!”

  Perhaps as inspired by his own words as by any winks Antalcidas might have given, Zeuxippos pressed down on him with his boney frame. His cock snaked its way into whatever crevice it could find, settling at last into a refuge between the boy’s thighs. He was well wide of the mark, bobbing up and down like the head of some agitated lizard, but Antalcidas felt no urge to direct him.

  There were other occasions for pride in his two years in the Rearing. By the end of his time as a Yearling he took part in the rites of Artemis Orthia, attempting to steal cloth-wrapped cheeses from the altar of the goddess’ sanctuary. Firsties with whips guarded the altar as the priestess of the temple stood by with a wooden image of the goddess in her arms. If the guards spared the back of a thief, the priestess would shout that the image was getting heavy with the displeasure of Orthia-the-Willow-Borne. By the time Antalcidas darted in for the last ball of cheese, the priestess screamed that she could bear the weight no longer. A grim-faced Firstie brought the switch down on Stone’s back with such force that it cleared a furrow in his back he carried for the rest of his life.

  He fell. The tormentors converged, laying into him as he writhed in every direction. The pain slashed through his mind as the snapping ends of the whips cut his skin. Yet at some point, as the blows all seemed to merge into a single molten core of agony, he could no longer distinguish between that torment and the sensation of a frigid wind cutting his skin during some cold night on Taygetus. Screwing his eyes shut, he saw what he took to be a blade of light piercing the darkness behind his eyelids. And just as he thought to himself, “Is this it? Is it He?”, the heavenly knife flashed again, and again, until the Firsties over him were astonished to see a smile come over him, and the women in the audience, awed, gave indecent, animal cries.

  By now even the priestess of Orthia was satisfied. Antalcidas was pulled to his feet, and his right arm raised for the crowd to see. Despite it all, he had never let go of that last ball of cheese. The Lacedaemonians, thrilled by the uncanny as much as by courage, hailed him—until some spoilsport cried, “Remember Thibron!” The crowd then fell into a confused cacophony of cheers and jeers.

  Zeuxippos came to him after this with pride pouring from every bristly orifice in his face. “You must tell me now,” he said, grasping his hand with womanly earnestness. “Did you see Him? Did you at last see the Shining One?”

  “I think so,” he replied, not too flush with pain and excitement to forget what he was expected to say.

  With that, Endius suddenly appeared on his other shoulder. “Now you know the other answer to the question I once asked you, about the purpose of the Rearing,” the boy-herd said. “The purpose is joy.”

  “Joy, yes,” Antalcides repeated.

  “Let the foreigners and fools call it cruelty. Today you join the ranks of men who know better.”

  Laying his hands on either side of the boy’s head, Endius placed a tender kiss on his brow. Zeuxippos, meanwhile, threw his own cloak across the boy’s slashed back and led him away to rest.

  Antalcidas took a week to recover. When he was up again, he learned that his triumph had earned him an invitation to one of most eminent messes in the city. This was the so-called Spit Companions, otherwise known as Nuts of the Boar, among whom even royalty was known to sit. Zeuxippos was elevated to its membership more than forty years before. In that time, he boasted, neither the quarters nor the menu had ever changed, so that the members knew that they lay before the very same serving table, eating the very same food that King Leonidas did the night before he departed for Thermopylae. There was, Antalcidas expected, a story to be told for every scratch in the cushionless benches where cups clanked and swords dangled. But as much as he was there to learn from his surroundings, he
was also on display, for it was for his elders to determine that night whether he deserved full membership in that or any mess.

  “Sit in the proper spot, eat up, and bring honor on yourself,” Zeuxippos instructed him. “But most of all, don’t embarrass me. You’ll get a thrashing if you do!”

  By his eighteenth year Antalcidas had fulfilled the promise of his boyhood beauty. His limbs, once sleek, now bore sinews under skin pitted and broiled red by the Laconian sun; he stood a head taller than his contemporaries, with long, knot-knuckled fingers that seemed made to grasp the spear. His features, to be sure, still had a thick, coarse quality, with eyes half-lidded and vague. But attractiveness of face was only important for boys. Men were expected to grow beards at their earliest opportunity. The members of the Spit Companions therefore looked on him with approval as they came in out of the dark and took their places.

  There were fourteen of them around the tables, not counting Antalcidas. Among them he recognized Damonon, son of Ischagoras, and Herippidas, son of Lysander, and Ariston, who distinguished himself in the conquest of Delphi before the Athenians took it back. There was Dorieus, son of Alcidas, and Iphitus, son of Periclidas (the admiral, not the governor). Eudamidas, who led the center at Tanagra, was there, as was Antepicydas, son of Epicydas and Edicus, son of Nabis, both Heraclids. Near the head of the table was Zeuxippos, and Isidas who was by that time an ex-ephor. First in honor that evening, with a chair set out for his use, was the Agiad king himself, Pleistoanax, son of Pausanias.

  They all stood as they waited for Pleistoanax to arrive. Light came from a single brazier in the center, which cast flicking shadows of the diners and the helot attendants along the walls. Antalcidas was set at the far left corner from the king’s vantage, in the position formally reserved for guests. Zeuxippos watched him there, narrowing his eyes in rebuke when he seemed too comfortable, or too standoffish, until Antalcidas had no idea how he should behave.

  The king arrived with an escort of two knights. Unlike commoners, who were discouraged the use of fire to accustom them to travel by night, Spartan crown princes were not obligated to undertake the Rearing. Pleistoanax therefore came in with attendants bearing torches. What little conversation preceded his arrival stopped as the king removed his woolen overcloak and fur boots. Free of this gear, he revealed himself to be a pale, rather stout figure who more resembled the aristocracy of other Greek cities. His shaved upper lip and long, forked beard were typically Spartiate, however.

  Pleistoanax nodded to each of the diners in turn, mouthing their names inaudibly as he went around the room. Antalcidas was surprised when the king seemed to recognize him, muttering his name without hesitation or prompting. This honor caused Zeuxippos to fairly swell with gratification.

  With Pleistoanax settled in his chair, the rest threw themselves on the benches. A helot entered with the meal’s first course—a massive loaf of barley bread and a crock of black broth. Conversation among the Spartiates commenced as if picking up from where it had left off the previous evening:

  “I have heard of the excellence of a comb none of you have mentioned, the one made of human bone,” said Dorieus as he tore off a hunk of bread and passed the loaf.

  “It is perhaps unmentioned, but not forgotten,” replied Herippidas, “for I carry one with me all the time. . . .”

  He pulled the comb from a fold in his tunic: a rough-hewn thing with sharp, uneven teeth that were indeed the color of bone. Isidas tugged at his beard as he regarded it.

  “It’s said that a comb made of man is most consonant with the properties of human hair.”

  “That is true, as I have never found it to pull or tangle.”

  “It will still tangle if you wash in ditch water.”

  “Of course. Only river water is fit for washing.”

  “But even then, the hairs might split,” said Dorieus, “unless they are treated first with rendered pork fat.”

  Eudamidas snorted at this, crying “What a keen grasp of the obvious you have, Dorieus! Now tell us the color of black broth!”

  The company had a good laugh at the expense of Dorieus, who was piqued but went along with it because Spartiates are supposed to be thick-skinned. Thick-skinned, that is, at least in front of the king.

  The broth was served on deep wooden trenchers. Though it was the staple dish of the mess, boys undergoing the Rearing had little opportunity to sample it until they were invited to a men’s board.

  Antalcidas stared at his portion as a metallic odor struck him. Black broth was pork meat boiled so thoroughly in its own blood that the flesh fell off the bone. The cooked blood, which had a flavor like salted saliva, was improved by a copious seasoning of vinegar. Depending on how long the broth was simmered, the color of it ranged from rust to inky black, and the consistency from soupy to stewlike. Most of the Spit Companions appeared to prefer it quite thick as they raised their trenchers to their mouths and slurped. A few others, including Zeuxippos and the king, made satisfied noises but buffered the taste with fresh lupine greens or chunks of barley bread. Pleistoanax, as king, got his served in a earthenware bowl with a spoon, and was entitled to a double portion. Having eaten less than half of it, though, he passed the rest to his chamberlain, saying, “Share this among the helots, as a gift from their masters.” The servants blanched at his generosity.

  Tasting it, Antalcidas willed himself to swallow. He at last understood the response of a certain ambassador from Sybaris who, being anxious to sample the celebrated dish of the Lacedaemonians, bid his servants to bring him a bowl; after spitting it out in disgust, the Sybarite remarked, “Now I know why the Spartans are so willing to die.”

  Antalcidas grew impatient as the meal progressed. Lying out in the woods during frigid winter nights, he had warmed himself by dreaming that his membership in a prestigious mess would open a whole world of significance to him—a world of mythic personalities, grand strategy, concentrated wisdom. But instead, the table talk continued to consist of petty insults and matters of hygiene, and not even orotund Zeuxippos seemed to be behaving like himself. Indeed, there seemed to be an unspoken agreement among the members not to treat a subject of any importance. Lying there, his shrunken stomach recoiling from its fill of pig blood, Antalcidas resolved that he would see his expectations realized, even if it cost him any prospect of membership later.

  “But what of Athens?” he blurted. “I hear that they have a strong leader in this man Pericles—a leader who knows how to fight. They are building an empire out of reach of any army, at sea. How shall we meet such a challenge?”

  All eyes turned to the young guest. After an awkward instant, Damonon and Herippidas laughed out loud, and Isidas smiled into his cup. “It seems that the boy has some interest in diplomacy!” he exclaimed. Zeuxippos glared at Antalcidas, furious.

  “If you please,” said the helot server, “Polynicus regrets he cannot attend the king tonight because he is on the hunt. In his place, he bids you to enjoy the gift he had sent to the table. . . .”

  The waiters brought out a brace of roasted hares. Pleistoanax, looking much relieved, cleared a place in front of himself. “Let us then remember our friend, the Equal Polynicus, as we envy his good fortune on the hunt.”

  And so Antalcidas’ question was answered only by the sound of ripping tendons, decanted wine, and the clink of sucked-clean bones dropped on plates. Antalcidas, as he gnawed at a stringy foreleg, had all but given up on the prospect of edifying talk. Then old Isidas leaned back with his wine cup and made a clicking sound with his tongue.

  “An interesting question the boy raises. It is all unclear, it seems. Very unclear.”

  “Athens is run by an ignorant, womanish mob!” cried Damonon with sudden vehemence. “They have a few ships, I grant you, but who mans them? Filth and locusts! That rabble will break with the first hint of real opposition, I promise you.”

  “Oh, I’d not be so sure about that. If you’d seen their fleet . . .” began Iphitus, the admiral.

&nbs
p; “Our mistake was to have let them rebuild their fortifications after we chased the Persians out!” Eudamidas interjected. “Without artillery, we might as well piss on those walls as attack them. If only someone had seen through that cocksucker Themistocles, with all his smooth talk!”

  Pleistoanax slammed his cup. “I would think Equals would better govern their tongues in front of the boy. And not let their fears overthrow their reason. What the Athenians don’t know, after all, is that this Pericles, son of Xanthippus, is Sparta’s man.”

  Antalcidas shook his head. “Our man?”

  “The houses of King Archidamus and Pericles have long shared mutual sponsorship in their respective cities,” explained Pleistoanax. “For that reason, there will be no war. In fact, we are on the verge of a treaty of peace.”

  There was another lapse in talk as the helots brought out plates of dried figs and green cheese. As an ex-ephor and soon-to-be member of the Gerousia, Isidas had a special privilege to contradict the king. The others therefore seemed to brace themselves when the elder broke the silence.

  “What you say must be true, Highness: our differences will certainly be resolved in peace, or end us all in war. Or do I show too much of a grasp of the obvious, my dear Eudamidas?”

  6.

  Molobrus did his part to bring honor to his family by dying in battle. It happened a few miles to the west of old Lerna, in a clash with a battalion from Argos. The Lacedaemonians were withdrawing south in the wake of the new thirty-year peace treaty between Sparta and Athens; the Argives, ever eager to exact a toll in blood for the traverse of their territory, blocked their progress. The enemies formed opposing lines and performed their respective sacrifices. Molobrus, to his credit, was in the first rank of the phalanx when the pipes sounded the advance.