The Isle of Stone

by Nicholas Nicastro

  Dorcis was not pleased with her management. To keep him occupied, Erinna would prop him up in front of the window, allowing him to witness the subversion of his legacy. At the destruction of his vineyard he screamed in impotent rage; with the demise of his ancestral olives he seemed to swoon, giving Erinna hope that he had at last dropped dead. He recovered, demanding in vain to see his wife. But Damatria’s days of jumping at the summons of men were over.

  Her commercial success was only a means to a greater end. With scores of helot families paying their allotments to her, she could afford to make donations of wheat bread to all the preeminent mess tables, taking care to inform the Spartiates that the gifts were from “Damatria, daughter of Evagoras, mother of Epitadas.” The more traditional of the clubs returned the loaves, ostensibly because they would not give up their barley bread. More likely they simply resented the largesse of a woman. But enough of them accepted them to make her confident that her dear Epitadas would, in due time, be elected to one of the better messes.

  8.

  When Antalcidas’ year as a Firstie ended, the city turned out at the Sanctuary of Artemis to honor his age-class. It was then that those who had distinguished themselves in the Orthian rites received their rewards: the boy who had seized the highest number of cheeses overall from the altar got a reserved place in the ranks of the Knights, the elite guard of three hundred who protected the king in battle. The champions of the individual packs got a marble plaque with his name, birth-year, and paternity inscribed around an iron sickle embedded in the stone. To receive this honor before the entire city filled Antalcidas with a simple filial pleasure, that unquestioned love of land and countrymen, that was always the true object of the Rearing. He also hoped he was well on his way toward burying forever the prophecy that he would be “the shame of Sparta.” Yet even this, the very moment of his triumph, was almost ruined.

  Since young graduates owned no walls on which to display their trophies, their plaques were handed over to their fathers. If the father was dead, the line of succession ran from the paternal grandfather through the eldest uncle to the youngest uncle to, finally, the mother. In Antalcidas’ case only Damatria was left, and when she didn’t appear at the ceremony he was left with the awkward task of carrying his own plaque around. Talk of the boy’s abandonment spread quickly among the people, for the Lacedaemonians—despite their reputation for reticence—lived and died by personal reputation, and were therefore obliged to be irrepressible gossips. Antalcidas felt all eyes on him, and the words “Thibron” and “shame” hovering in the air, until the scandal of this humiliation threatened to overshadow the achievement that brought him the honor in the first place.

  At last his mother appeared. Damatria was standing at the edge of the crowd, looking both familiar and utterly unlike his memory of her. She was familiar in the way she stood slightly back on her heels, as if trying to appear more imposing—and the way she held her head, favoring her sighted side; unfamiliar, in the way her scar had thrown out a web of premature wrinkles that spread beyond her patch and over her left cheek, like ejecta from some ancient eruption. She was also dressed in more ostentatious style than most Spartan matrons, with an ankle-length linen tunic of blinding white, a wide sky blue girdle, and a cloak folded and draped around her shoulders. Her ears shed pendants of gold hanging from filigreed rosettes. It was the kind of kit designed to arrogate all the attention to herself, provoking furtive glances from the Spartan men and outright hostility from the women.

  “I suppose you’ll want to give that to me,” she said to him in lieu of a greeting. It was the first time he heard her voice in years.

  “I think so.”

  “Come walk with me,” she said, taking the plaque under her arm. “I have something to tell you.”

  As she led him away from the sanctuary, he saw that she wasn’t alone. Two helots—one female and one male—detached themselves from the background to follow them. The latter, who was dressed in a short household tunic with one shoulder bare, revealed his curiosity with nervous, darting glances from the ground to Antalcidas and back again. The female was dressed to match her mistress, though with only a thin girdle and no cloak, and had perfected the ancient helot art of being physically available while mentally elsewhere.

  When they were well outside the village, Damatria ordered the servants out of earshot. Turning to Antalcidas, she said nothing at first as she regarded his naked body from head to toe, then reached out to feel the veneer of olive oil applied to his skin for the ceremony. Damatria had not planned to touch him; it was an act done out of impulse, sparked perhaps by surprise at his unexpected maturity. She never lost track of how old he was, of course—that was difficult in a city divided into age-classes. But that knowledge counted little against her recollection of the small boy she had given up eleven years before. In the end she allowed her face to reflect her approval. Despite the coarseness of his face, he had grown up well.

  “I am going to say something to you, and I want you to keep your peace until I am finished.”

  He kept his peace.

  “Well then . . .” she began, now tempted to delay despite the importance of her charge. “You should know first that you have fulfilled your duty so far. Molobrus would have been pleased. . . .”

  He glanced down at the plaque at her side. It occurred to him that she had yet to as much as glance at the inscription.

  “What pride you must have! What vindication against your cold, uncaring mother! Yes I think you must feel that, though that all may change when I tell you something that will . . . surprise you. Understand that I say this not to diminish what you’ve done. If it is worth diminishing, that is for you to decide. I tell you because, as you know, an Equal must always look truth in the face.”

  He wondered if she took him for a weakling. For why else would she hesitate? When have mere words ever harmed a man of any courage? He opened his mouth to interject, but she cut him off.

  “You are not of Molobrus’ blood. That is something not even he knew.”

  She paused to watch him. In his detestable, servile face, that reflection of an original that still came to her in her nightmares, she saw nothing but a brief flash of confusion, a momentary flickering in his eyes. His mouth softened, as if something mildly foul had passed down his throat.

  “I can’t tell you who your father was. All you need to know is that he was a helot, and that he is dead. What matters more now, I think, is what you choose to do with this knowledge.”

  Despite the years of training, the relentless drum-beat of injunctions to honor his gods, his ancestors, and his elders, Antalcidas felt the impulse to mock the stranger standing before him. The impulse manifested in a mildly ironic edge to his voice:

  “So tell me, what would you say I do with this?”

  “Don’t take that tone, boy! If I tell you the truth it doesn’t make me the fraud. Nor does it undo all that you have done—necessarily.”

  “Does anyone else know?”

  “Not yet. But how long do you believe it would take for it to become obvious? Aren’t there reasons why Spartiates rule helots—reasons that show in their quality as men?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know if it would show. Maybe not for a long time . . . maybe never.”

  “And even if you manage to hide it, how long would you force me to keep your secret? What a cruel thing to expect of me, to go on lying in this way!”

  She lifted her hand to wipe away a well-timed tear.

  “Like I said, that is your decision to make. Endius tells me you have a good mind, so you must already see your choices.”

  All he could see at that moment was the web of creases, spread over the left side of her face, marring what was still a formidable beauty. It was the beauty seen on the faces of cult statues, Athena-the-Protectoress or Aphrodite-the-Warlike or Artemis-the-Right-Way. He was fortunate that she had only one eye, because he could not bear the scrutiny of another.

  “You might sacrifice yo
urself,” she continued. “In truth, that is a course that would reflect well on you.”

  Though he could not believe his ears, she appeared to be speaking in all seriousness.

  “How you do it is your business. You could accomplish it in the field, against our enemies. You know now that you cannot become a true Spartiate, though you might learn to act like one. That would probably be best. . . .”

  “Who are you?” he asked her. “Is this the way a mother speaks?”

  “Is this how a son honors his mother, with interruptions? If you kept silent, you would hear another option that may please you more. Do you want to hear it?”

  He shook his head, the accumulating absurdities beginning to crack his reserve. Sweat was beginning to mix with the oil on his skin.

  “You should know that your brother Epitadas is properly the son of Molobrus. For some time now I have been arranging for his advancement. I won’t say how, but you may well guess. What I suggest is that you become my partner in this task.”

  “Your partner?”

  “I want you to support him, to do all you can to advance his interests. Devote yourself to his success. I would think that would hardly be a burden at all for a brother! Do what you would do anyway.”

  “What can I do for him? I hardly know him.”

  “I trust that you’ll know what to do when the time comes.”

  “And what of the secret that is too terrible for you to keep?”

  She smiled. “I’m asking you to serve, which should be entirely in your nature. As for myself—knowledge of Epitadas’ safety would come as a great relief—if you take my meaning.”

  Her meaning, to exchange her silence for his support of Epitadas, was clear. What was also clear was her ignorance of the fact that, of his own free will, Antalcidas had already done his fraternal duty to Epitadas by covering for him in the Thibron affair.

  For Damatria’s part, she could see from the dyspeptic expression on his face that he needed to hear nothing more. She wondered what he was thinking, but decided that beyond assuring that he did as she asked, it didn’t matter. She turned to the helots.

  “You! Come here.”

  The male came forward.

  “Should you choose what is best for your family, your family has a gift for you,” she said to Antalcidas. “Now that you have finished the Rearing, you may have your first attendant. Helot, introduce yourself.”

  The helot lifted his eyes only long enough to pronounce his name, “Doulos.” Antalcidas looked at him: he was young, perhaps no older than himself, and he was short and thin, with the pale skin and soft hands of someone who had never driven plow or spear.

  “There’s not much to the boy, I agree,” said Damatria. “But you’ll see that he has certain talents . . . that is, if you agree to my proposal. Should he stay with you, then?”

  Now both his mother and the helot were looking at him. Under the circumstances Antalcidas thought it was absurd to expect him to agree to anything. He heaved his shoulders in a gesture as much of despair as of assent. Pleased, Damatria held out the back of her hand to him.

  “Good! Now give your mother a kiss.”

  Looking at her standing there, so splendid and terrible, his urge to perversity mastered him at last. Her assurance maddened him; he wanted to spring a striking revelation of his own, though he had none to make. Instead of kissing her, he spat on those shapely knuckles and golden rings. Doulos’ eyes widened in panic. Damatria, however, kept her smile as she retrieved her hand and wiped it on the back of her cloak.

  “Lovely,” she said.

  “For the sake of my young brother, who is innocent in this, you have my word that I will do as you ask,” pronounced Antalcidas. “But even in Sparta, as we honor our elders, every woman is bound to honor the Equals. The words you have spoken to me here today, woman, show me no respect as a man. This will therefore be the last time we speak at all. Now get out of my sight.”

  Turning his back to her, he ignored her reply by focusing his attention on the sound of the cicadas in the trees around them. Rising to a crescendo, the cacophony lapsed, then began again in a different key. Other random insignificances preoccupied him: on the breeze he detected the tinkle of bells from the nearby altar of Aphrodite-in-Fetters, and the fragrance of myrtle. It occurred to him how little he cared to encounter Zeuxippos again, who would see the dejection on his face and chide him for feminine moodiness. When he finally looked back, his mother and her servant were gone; only Doulos was left beside him. His posture was akimbo, inquisitive.

  The helot was puzzled further when his new master sat on the ground. Was he expected to sit too? He would have asked to take his burdens on his back, if Antalcidas had been carrying anything. As the time of his idleness stretched on, Doulos fidgeted, then felt an overwhelming compassion for this cross-legged young man in the weeds. And so he did sit down, and looking into the other’s face, cleared his throat. Antalcidas regarded him as one would examine a puzzling blemish.

  “It is the fate of even great men to be ruled by their juniors,” Doulos ventured. He paused to see if the boss would thrash him or demand his silence, then completed his thought: “Themistocles the Athenian, architect of the victory at Salamis, once claimed that his son was the most powerful of the Greeks. The Greeks, he said, were led by Athens, and Athens by Themistocles, who was in turn ruled by his wife. And the one who ruled his wife was his son.”

  Antalcidas narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, you have pledged to serve your younger brother, just as Themistocles—”

  “Not that! What do you mean, ‘the Greeks were led by Athens’? The Greeks have always been led by Spartiates. Even at Salamis.”

  “With respect, master, that is not how the Athenians remember it.”

  “Just because the Athenians lie does not oblige us to believe them.”

  “Without question. But I submit that they don’t perceive their version as a lie. . . .”

  Getting to their feet, they went on arguing like this for some time, shoulder to shoulder, as they walked back to the village.

  9.

  In their twentieth year the young candidates for citizenship were cast back into a state of transition. They were not considered children anymore, but would not count as Spartiates until they were granted property and admitted to a dining group. For some, the anxiety of this passage was the hardest of all to cope with, as it seemed to wipe away whatever record of achievement they had compiled over the years of the Rearing. This was, in fact, one of the prime purposes of this time, to level the proud before they could carry their bad habits into the citizenry with them.

  After their years of military training the recruits were ready for promotion into the ranks of the army. They were not placed in regular service at first, but consigned to a reserve force that kept watch on foreigners at Gytheion and the shrines, or patrolled the boundaries with Pisatis, Arcadia, and the Argolid. It was on one of these excursions that Antalcidas, with Doulos carrying his field kit and shield, penetrated as far as the river Alpheus and followed it downstream to Olympia. Indulging his curiosity, he went as far as a hill overlooking the Altis and peered through the oaks at the marble-girt sanctuary. There were no games that day—there would not be for several years—but the helot was determined to show his excitement.

  “Pindar wrote of tradition that is both deeply rooted and always ripening. Can we agree now his wisdom must have been divinely inspired?”

  “I see only vanities,” his master replied, nodding his head at the red-tiled edifices below. “The gods do not need fancy buildings.”

  “Vanity, or the glory of the Thunderer? The poet wrote:

  Water exceeds all, and gold, like a blaze of fire in the night, is monarch of all varieties of wealth. But if, my heart, you wish to praise contests, seek not in vain some star warmer than the sun, shining by day through the heavenly vault, nor let us not pretend any contest is greater than Olympia . . .

  “Helots read,
men do,” Antalcidas said.

  Like any good Spartan boy, Stone was indifferent to any poets other than Homer or Tyrtaeus. He did have one thought of his own that verged on the Pindaric: of all the foreign places he had seen, the green vale of Zeus reminded him the most of Laconia.

  At last the season arrived when the dining groups voted on whether to admit recent graduates of the Rearing. Mess membership was necessary for full citizenship, and demanded in turn the payment of monthly dues—in the form of produce or wild game—that approximated what the member consumed. For this purpose the graduates received farm-land from their families and helots from the state to work it; elder patrons did their part too, helping to set up the households of the young men they had mentored. Damatria gave Antalcidas a corner of her property situated on a west-facing slope, with a modest farmhouse and a view of the mountains. Zeuxippos contributed a suite of furniture, including a sleeping couch, linens chest, and a fine wrought-iron brazier. These were the first significant possessions he owned since he gave up his toys in boyhood. Still, as he was in training or patrol for most of his time, and would be obliged to sleep in the public barracks until he was thirty, his domestic property would stand unused by anyone—with the possible exception of his partner in an early marriage.

  The most immediately useful of Zeuxippos’ gifts was a full panoply of arms and armor. At last, he was free to stop drilling with a blunt-ended pole and wooden training sword. Instead, he was now the proud custodian of an ash-wood spear, about eight feet long, with a iron point and bronze butt-spike. The spear was a veteran, Zeuxippos said, having served in the line at Plataea and during the last helot revolt. A tear swelled in the old man’s eye as he said this, which Antalcidas took to mean that the spear was carried by the young Zeuxippos himself. The sword, with its iron blade shaped like an olive leaf, seemed of similar vintage. Like all Lacedaemonian swords, it was no longer than a man’s forearm, and therefore useful only for the kind of close-in fighting fit for a Lacedaemonian. He also received an old-style muscle-cuirass and greaves, but no one wore such encumbrances on the battlefield anymore.