The Isle of Stone

by Nicholas Nicastro

  Second, word had arrived from home that the army of King Agis was rushing to Pylos. News that the annual invasion of Attica was abandoned after only two weeks must have been received with jubilation in the city. What other evidence was necessary to prove that the Spartans were worried? The troops on the island, after all, represented one tenth of their entire citizen army. While fools who knew nothing of war took the Lacedaemonians to be indomitable, Demosthenes knew firsthand how reluctant they were to sacrifice their precious Spartiates. The possibility that the Athenians’ little stockade would become the nucleus of a new Messenian revolt must also have weighed on their enemies’ minds. He could only hope that these developments would strengthen the hand of the peace faction over the warmongers in the Assembly. By seizing this insignificant piece of Messenia, the Athenians stood to force concessions from the enemy that a dozen naval victories couldn’t achieve—if only they agreed to negotiate in good faith.

  All uncertainty on this score was dispelled when Leochares brought him a letter from home. It was brought in by supply ship in the form of a short scroll. Demosthenes was about to break the seal when he looked up and saw Leochares was still standing there, his curiosity having overwhelmed his tact.

  “I’ll tell you what it says, my friend,” the general said, “but for now let’s observe the formalities.”

  Leochares blushed to his ears. “Yes, of course,” he said, backing out. Demosthenes watched him go. This man, one of the best officers he had ever served with, had learned that both his elder brothers had been killed in the fighting, one off Sicily, the other in the Chalcidike. Since then his face had taken on that ashen cast often seen among the Athenians in those days. He performed his duties well, of course—but it was competence rooted in obligation, in the fact that there was little else he could do.

  Demosthenes broke the seal and scanned the first lines of the letter:

  To Demosthenes, son of Alcisthenes, citizen of the deme of Colonus Agoraeus, General-select of the Ægeides tribe, from his friend and colleague in the People’s service, Cleon, son of Cleaenetus, felicities and greetings. The People rejoice at the news of your recent victory over the Spartans in Messenia. Please understand that this comes as no surprise to your friends here in the Assembly, who have had nothing but the highest regard for your talents. . . .

  Even without the salutation Demosthenes would have known the author was Cleon. Only the demagogue would arrogate upon himself the right to speak for “the People.” The sole question in his mind was whether Cleon had the sophistication to draft his own letters: it was well known that he was the scion of a low-born family in the skinning trade. The fact that old Cleaenetus had made a lot of money as a tanner, and then discarded his former friends to consort exclusively with the nobles, only seemed to amplify his absurdity, like a manure carter who collected droppings from only the best homes. The son had at least charted his own course—Cleon was now a shit peddler of a different stripe, devoting his energy to flattering the scum and layabouts who dominated the Assembly.

  We have learned further that your forces have trapped a large number of Spartiates on a mountain [sic]. This achievement greatly pleases the People, for it affords the opportunity now to exact terms from the enemy that are right and proportionate to their injury. And while we have every confidence that it is not necessary to say so, we expect that you will not fall prey to misplaced compassion, but allow the assault to proceed apace, so that the Lacedaemonians will understand that time is not on their side. We therefore write to you now with the understanding that no unauthorized accommodations will be made before the People have had their chance to dictate terms. The Assembly expects that peace emissaries with plenary powers will arrive in Athens as this letter reaches you. And so your friends bid you continued good fortune in your campaigns, and that you will continue to prove ever a faithful servant of the public good, as those who await your return endeavor themselves, until victory crowns the efforts of all of us who keep the People’s trust. . . .

  Demosthenes threw the scroll across the tent. The People’s trustkeeper, it seemed, had decided to “dictate” terms that were “right and proportionate to their injury.” Would that “the People” have understood the true precariousness of their position! The wind-lashed ramparts of the island prevented a landing in force in all but a few easily guarded places. To attack with infantry, on ground covered with thickets, against an enemy who undoubtedly knew the field better than anyone, would risk having his troops scattered and annihilated. And while he could maintain the blockade for the present, his long supply line back to Piraeus would be cut with the arrival of the fall storms. By then the fleet would have to leave, whether the Sphacteria garrison had surrendered or not. These were facts even a tanner’s son should have been able to grasp.

  The letter had unrolled flat in its flight across the tent. Retrieving it, Demosthenes saw it had a postscript:

  P.S. As we are most interested in assuring solidarity with our friend Demosthenes, we have instructed the courier to delay his return to await his answer to our message.

  So much for the People’s confidence in him! Rolling up the scroll, he called for Leochares. The latter stuck in his head with scarcely a moment’s delay.

  “Yes?”

  “Tell the guards I’ll see the Spartan emissaries now. And tell the steward to bring a wine jug—the good Chian white, perhaps—and three cups.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Back at his desk, Demosthenes searched for his stylus under the mountain of tablets and dispatches. As a third of his mind cursed his disorder, and a second third Cleon’s presumption, the remainder was busy composing his response:

  Greetings to Cleon, son of Cleaenetus, from Demosthenes of Colonus. Only now being in receipt of your most recent letter, I must first express my thanks for your confidence in my modest efforts in Messenia. As you must know, there is none among us who would rather see the Lacedaemonians defeated unconditionally. I must report, however, that the military situation here has already obligated me to conclude a truce with the enemy that is, of course, on the most favorable terms to Athens. If you will indulge me, I will explain the tactical problems that led me to believe that a cease-fire will be in our long-term interests. . . .

  7.

  The next day the sea was too high for the Athenian ships to rest in the cleft. For three days after that Namertes was assigned elsewhere; since Antalcidas couldn’t budge the stone by himself, their attack would have to wait. It wasn’t until the fifth day, with the wind blowing from the east, under a sky filled with plump clouds in slowly drifting archipelagoes, that conditions seemed right for the attack.

  He found Namertes in the same posture as before, peeping down on the Athenians. When the younger man heard him come up he greeted him in a loud voice, prompting Antalcidas to silence him abruptly. There was no way to know how much the enemy could hear from below.

  Antalcidas looked down: the lithe vessel had only just cocked her oars, the oblong blades alive with the glint of shedding droplets. The peculiar pattern of the current in that spot made the cleft a perfect vortex, holding the hull in a state of almost imperceptible rotation. Just then the bow turned through the imaginary bull’s eye where the boulder would strike the water. Antalcidas summoned Namertes to take his position behind the rock; in a few moments the stern would come around and they must be ready. The time passed reluctantly, and Antalcidas thought what a miserable kind of warfare this was, to hide and watch the unsuspecting movements of men doomed to die. It was not out of pity for the Athenians that he thought this—a Spartiate could feel no sadness for the enemy archers carousing there, laughing, passing a canteen of water between them in what they believed to be a moment of peace. Nor could he feel much empathy for the helmsman, an ancient man with a pate flecked with the liver spots, as he released his oar to spread sweat over his scalp with a slow, spiraling movement of his hand. Antalcidas was restive, instead, because he was a mere man in a position that was proper only to the im
mortal Fates. Such presumption was ruinous to the order of the world. Yet to forsake an opportunity to kill his adversaries, while they were in Lacedaemonian territory, was just as surely a sin against his ancestors. There was nothing else he could do.

  He braced himself behind the boulder, envisioning the turning of the ship in the water. Locking eyes with Namertes, he pushed forward to relieve the weight on the braking stone, then kicked it away. The whole mass of the boulder was bearing down on them now. Antalcidas, his heart leaping in his chest, squared his shoulders and drove toward the cliff.

  “Now, boy! Push!”

  The rock seemed to have settled in that precarious spot, stuck as if glued there, but after they managed to roll it the last few inches to the edge, it seemed to shoot out of their hands. Antalcidas fell forward with his own momentum; he saw the boulder tumble over as it fell, revealing more of the Athenian deck as it receded. In the instant before it hit he didn’t think to notice who was standing under it, but only lay grimacing, his gut filled with disgust and suspense.

  Their aim was perfect: the rock’s arcing path took it down amidships, to strike the body of the trireme not with a crash, but with a discrete, hollow sound, like the slamming of a door on an empty room. The ship recoiled on itself just before the first screams went up. It reminded Antalcidas of what a man’s body did when he took a spear on the run, the point sinking straight through to his spine.

  The aftermath was like the frenzy of a disturbed anthill. The Athenians scrambled as if they were not sure where the blow had come from. The old helmsman, who wasn’t injured, swore before the gods that they had not run aground, as the oars lost all semblance of order, falling across each other as their operators struggled to flee the ship. It seemed as if no one was in charge; some men were diving into the water to save their lives, others falling as the top deck pitched in the chaos. Antalcidas and Namertes had no need to hide themselves because no one thought to look up.

  Before long the ship began to sink. Swells broke over the wales, forcing the last of the topsiders into the water. The shoreline in that area was pitted but sheer, leaving them no place to swim for refuge. The survivors, who seemed to number more than a hundred, clung around the waterlogged hull on broken strakes, oars, and each other. It would have been easy to kill a few more of them with another rock, but there were no more sizable ones at hand. Antalcidas noticed that several other Lacedaemonians were watching the commotion from a vantage up the coast.

  Namertes nudged him and pointed south: a second Athenian vessel was rounding the point. As it came closer, Antalcidas saw that the archers on that ship were looking right at him, arrows slung in their bows. A grayheaded figure whom he took to be the captain was standing on the bow, his hands cupped to his mouth.

  “This is Xeuthes of the Terror! Who is that?”

  “Isocrates of the Sounion,” replied a voice from the water. “Our keel is broken, Terror!”

  “So I see. You are still in danger.”

  Xeuthes pointed to the top of the cliff. A hundred pairs of eyes turned up at Antalcidas and Namertes, who reflexively withdrew. As they struck inland they heard a few desultory bow shots from the Terror fall around them, striking sparks as they hit the rocks. This was the first time Antalcidas saw the Athenians waste arrows in this way.

  The two men separated on the high ground along the spine of the island, clasping hands but not looking into each other’s eyes. They never indulged in whoops of triumph; they never exchanged congratulations. Their attack evidenced more cleverness than virtue, and was by their mutual reckoning only marginally honorable. The whole regrettable business was the Athenians’ fault, Antalcidas told himself, because they had been so foolish to place themselves in danger. Though they were on a small island, he hoped never to see Namertes again.

  The unapproachable shore prevented the Lacedaemonians from seizing the waterlogged hulk as a prize. Instead, after a transport ship arrived to rescue the crew, Xeuthes had a bowline rigged to tow the Sounion into the prevailing northerly current. The garrison watched as the Terror labored nearly the entire length of Sphacteria, not reaching the Sikia Channel until the sun sank into the sea. It hardly seemed possible that the enemy would refloat the wreck. Then again, they would need all their ships to defend their position and keep up the blockade. If nothing else, these Athenians had proved themselves a tireless people.

  Antalcidas reached the summit fort just in time to hear Frog speaking. Long before he could make out his words he could discern his tone: mocking. His brother was listening to him but not responding, his eyes turned away to face the dying day. The rest of the garrison was spread over the slope, clearly as uncomfortable with the argument as children before their bickering parents.

  “So this is your victor’s strategy, Epitadas? Spartiates reduced to behaving like Arcadian hillmen, toppling rocks on people? My, my, what would Leonidas have accomplished at Thermopylae if he’d just rolled a few stones! I guess both you and your brother are just chips off the old block!”

  “How do you know it was Antalcidas?” Doulos demanded. “What proof do you present?”

  Hand on his sword hilt, Frog gaped in the direction of the helot as if a worm or a weed had spoken. Then he turned back to Epitadas.

  “We may well ask whether you have control over your brother. After all, he is the elder between you!”

  “No one controls me!” Antalcidas declared. “And I affirm before the gods that the attack was mine alone. My brother had nothing to do with it.”

  This admission caused a pained expression to wash over Epitadas’ face. Frog smiled.

  “There was never any doubt of that, Stone.”

  Antalcidas loomed over him. “Would you care to see my skill with the sword?”

  The other turned to face him. A rare moment followed—one that was not lived like most others, with the next moment much like the last, but where a thousand possible fates ramified from the smallest choice. Antalcidas slipped his sword from its sheath.

  Epitadas rushed in to interpose himself between them. “How happy the Athenians would be, to see Spartiates quarreling like their democratic rabble! Both of you, stand down.”

  “Yes, stand down, Antalcidas!” cried Frog. “Can’t you see that your little brother will always defend your dishonor for you?”

  He opened his mouth to reply, but Epitadas broke in first, saying, “Dishonor? Not at all! Our duty is to kill the enemy—Antalcidas killed them. There is nothing for him to defend.”

  Frog scowled and spat at his feet. Antalcidas waited until he turned away to replace his sword. Epitadas ignored Frog and watched his brother; there was a commander’s fixity in his eyes, a determination to fight by his side if necessary. But not far beneath it was a plaintive, almost womanish hurt—the question, why do you test me this way? Antalcidas felt compelled to explain himself.

  “Brother, I . . .”

  “No need!” Epitadas cut in. “I suppose we know now why they discourage relatives from serving together. Our ancestors were wise.”

  He found Doulos preparing his sleeping hole for the night—removing stray burrs and rocks, laying down his chiton as a liner. Antalcidas dropped his shield at the helot’s feet.

  “Frog would have been within his rights to run you through, the way you disrespected him.”

  “So be it,” said Doulos. “I recall my Ibycus: ‘An argument needs no reason, nor does a friendship.’ ”

  “If you must. But remember, our enemies have friends of their own.”

  The dispute between Epitadas and Frog left an ugly cloud over the island. There was little chatter as the men gathered in their hillside rookery to comb their hair and bind their lacerated feet with strips of fabric blackened with old blood. Lacedaemonians were used to short campaigns and clear lines of command—circumstances that were not in evidence as the siege wore on. But just before the day ended, as the last rays of the sun reddened the highlands, the mainland army flashed a message across the bay. The Spartiates gathered
on the summit to read the news.

  A truce had been negotiated with the Athenians. The next day, a Peloponnesian ship would arrive to feed the garrison.

  V

  She-of-the-Tapering-Ankles

  1.

  He guarded his target with a militant ardor. As the helot paced his little patch of earth Epitadas lay watching, drinking in every detail of the way he moved. He chose him like an admirer would, as the most appealing of his type, and having marked him he would allow no one else to encroach. One day, as the helot stripped his clothes to haul a large stone from the path of his plow blade, Epitadas spied another young member of the Hidden Service crouching behind a hedge of wild plane. He allowed the newcomer to stay for the show—the sweat of honest labor, the pursing of buttocks, the unfurling of magnificent muscles—but after the helot removed the stone Epitadas ejected his rival with a whistle and a jerk of his head. The other turned in his direction with the promise of challenge in his eyes, but when he saw who claimed this helot, his resistance died. He slunk away. Epitadas, meanwhile, found a way to creep still closer, his eyes full of lust for the culmination that must come.

  If the helot had been of any other race he would have been handsome. The brow was high and straight, undergirded by a fine, chiseled ridge that, in turn, sheltered eyes that twinkled through its shadow. Long hair was denied his class, but what remained was black and glossy with the humors of genuine, unwashed poverty. His short beard was as red as a freshly quenched blade in the armorer’s shop. Yet what was most impressive of all about him was his confidence: everything he did, from handling his plow ox to planting a hand on his wife’s wide rump, was done with the grace of effortless virility. He stooped when Spartiates were near, of course, eyes downcast, denying the mark of his natural aristocracy. But Epitadas saw what happened after, when the Spartiates were gone and the helot unreeled his spine to its superior height. He would have towered over his masters.