The Isle of Stone

by Nicholas Nicastro

  Two hours before dawn of the third day, they carried Epitadas out the door, feet first. The cortege lined up behind the wagon carrying the bier, with the relatives walking behind Damatria and the helot mourners and flute players going last. The streets were more than typically full at that hour: it was well known in the city that the only hero of Sphacteria would be honored that morning. As the retinue passed and the pipers played, soldiers stood and saluted; from the road around the base of the Acropolis, Damatria saw the caretakers dim the lamps of the Brazen House.

  The pyre flared to its full magnificence just as the sun rose over Parnes. Curiously, it was at that point, as the body neared consumption and the flames began to wane, that Damatria felt her first stab of genuine grief. For the burial ground was one of the places where she had met her son in secret, during his first years in the Rearing, to deliver him extra food. She would see him in the twilight, stepping out of the forest and wearing nothing but grime and a ravenous look on his face; he would make no greeting as he snatched the bread from her hands, his hunger as elementary as a newborn baby’s. The tracks of real tears creased her soot-caked cheeks as they wrapped his bones in his chiton, and the last libation was poured on the ground. They buried the remains under a handsome marble stone she had commissioned in his honor. Unlike most of the other stelae around it, his grave bore a personal inscription: ΕΠΙΤΑΔΑΣ.

  By consensus it was the finest funeral seen in Laconia for some years. Though there was some concern that Damatria’s ostentatious ways would spoil the event, her taste this time was impeccable, her conduct beyond reproach. She gave all the requisite feasts on the third and thirteenth days after the ceremony. Best of all, she did not embarrass the Spartans by breathing the name of her other son.

  Epitadas was held exempt from the general decree that stripped the capitulators of Sphacteria of their status as Spartiates. The prisoners in Athens, who were now publicly known as “tremblers,” were denounced in absentia by their dining clubs. If they ever returned from their captivity they would find their legal rights to land and helots curtailed. Those they left behind in the city, such as wives and daughters, were no longer welcome to participate in the festival choruses, or become betrothed to boys of respectable families. The trembler and his family were required to give way to other pedestrians in the streets, and forbidden to wear bright or conspicuous clothes. That a trembler or his wife would smile or otherwise show good humor in public was inconceivable, for such a miserable fate could leave them nothing to be happy about.

  With the prisoners on their way to captivity, little came back to Sparta about the circumstances of the disaster. At some point Cleon and Demosthenes would testify before the Assembly, of whose deliberations the Peloponnesians received regular reports from their paid informants. Until then, gossips spoke of an uncoded message sent to Antalcidas from Zeuxippos, regarding the existence of an unborn son. Zeuxippos’ rivals among the Spit Companions brought the story up at the mess, hinting that the message might explain the surrender of his former protégé.

  The old man rose from his bench, and with an expression more sad than indignant, said, “Gentlemen, if you wish to suggest that I would do anything to make the boy behave disgracefully, I believe you already have my answer. The message was sent out of compassion for the wife, who wished to reassure her husband that his line would live on, regardless of what Fortune had in store for him.

  “For my own part, it pains me to know that I will not live long enough to learn what really happened on the island. But I am more troubled to see the direction of this discussion, which seems designed to blacken the name of a young man who has been noted for his fighting skill. In the past, it was the virtue of the Lacedaemonians not to assassinate without cause the characters of decent men. I see now that I no longer live in the city I once loved. And so, for the first time in a half century, I must surrender my spot on this board—the one I remind you was once occupied by Eudamos, son of Styphon, who died with Leonidas at Thermopylae. Good night.”

  With that, Zeuxippos removed his chiton and overcloak, left his staff leaning against the wall, and strode out of the mess wearing nothing but a breechcloth. Later, a helot reported seeing a bony figure walking into the forest, toward the moonlit wall of Taygetus. The old man was never seen alive again.

  3.

  Though she dreaded it, Andreia was prepared for word of her husband’s death. But what was she to do with news that he was a prisoner?

  The helots were removed from her household the day after the Gerousia demoted Antalcidas. She was eight months pregnant and already quite large; being reluctant to leave Melitta alone in the house, she fretted over what to do with the child when she went to the springhouse or on market days. But the girl, who was perceptive beyond her few years, laid a small hand on her mother’s arm and begged, “Let me carry too!”

  At the market, Andreia felt a sharp plunge in the social temperature. She overheard snatches of whispered conversation around her—phrases like “poor Thibron,” “he stole the credit from Praxitas,” and, of course, the epithet Antalcidas’ own mother had once used against him, “the shame of Sparta.” Some voices were less subtle: under-thirties felt license to murmur lewd insults as they passed, and her bread-seller made her burn with humiliation by proclaiming, loudly enough for all to hear, that he didn’t sell to the families of tremblers.

  She wrote to her father for advice. Ramphias, who usually replied to her letters in rapid order, took a week to respond, and then only by sending her two of his own helots to keep her house. “Has he given you any message for me?” she asked them. The helots shook their heads.

  Her consignment to oblivion took time to sink in, and had a curious effect when it did. For all her years she had looked with ambivalence at her membership in the community. To be a Spartan seemed something petty, parochial. Of her fellow Lacedaemonians, her feelings had always been divided between pity and contempt; when she learned of the civilized pursuits of Athens or Thebes, she was convinced that she was literally mislaid by Fortune—born into a tribe for which she was not intended. Antalcidas, who accepted her as she was, would listen to her opinions and look at her as if she had dropped out of the sky. Would it ever occur to him to feel so detached from his people? She thought not.

  Yet, to be a true outsider was something for which she was completely unprepared. When she appeared in the street and was made to feel like nothing more than a ghost, she shed tears like a young girl shunned by her schoolmates. She conceived an irrational attachment to roads, buildings, and statues she had barely looked at before. Avoided by all those she respected, she found herself respecting everyone. She fell to such depths that she worried for the son within her, thinking that he might somehow partake of her sadness, and be tormented by low feelings for the rest of his life.

  She knew only one person who might have influence over the powers that had condemned her husband. When she left to find Damatria, she considered leaving Melitta behind, but thought the girl’s presence could only help her suit. And so they went off together just after sunup, in overcloaks with heads wrapped, as an autumn haze lay over the fallow fields. It was a short walk to her mother-in-law’s house—just out to the wagon road, over a small hill, and right at the cobbled way. As she made her way slowly, rehearsing in her mind what she might say, she saw a group of six young women approach from the other direction.

  They all seemed to be late teenagers, barefooted, dressed in short tunics and hair tied back with fillets, as if on their way to exercise in the gymnasium. As the distance closed between them, Andreia perceived the exact moment when they recognized her: she saw that look, that resentment of her existence on the public roads, that she had seen in the faces of a hundred others. Partly out of shame, partly to save herself the pain, she had learned to avert her eyes. Yet something made her keep staring back this time—something about Melitta’s presence, perhaps, that made Andreia slow to abase herself. She locked eyes with the evident leader of the group, the ta
ll, long-faced, sharpkneed girl around whom the others seemed to orbit. The face-off continued until they were abreast of each other.

  “What are you looking at, coward’s wife?” the leader asked.

  Andreia, startled at such brazen disrespect, could say nothing at first. One of the other girls, whose features hinted that she might be the leader’s sister, put a hand on the other’s arm.

  “Leonis, let’s go.”

  “Shame on you, Gorgo!” said Leonis. “Don’t you want to know why a breeder of tremblers goes around with her head up?”

  Andreia was so furious that she forgot her circumstances. “How dare you address your elder so impertinently!” she snapped. “What kind of mother raised you?”

  “A mother of brave Spartiates raised me, whore.”

  Without thinking, Andreia slapped the girl across the left cheek. “That’s for showing disrespect in front of my daughter,” she said.

  Leonis turned to give her sister a single glance. Gorgo reacted with dread, as if having seen this look before.

  The girl’s fist landed on Andreia’s temple, knocking her backward. Andreia fell hard, landing with a sharp rock square in her back. Through the pain, a memory flashed before her: an incident many years before, when she was beaten in the gymnasium by a girl one year her senior. Spartan schoolgirls were not encouraged to brawl by their elders—it was something they seemed to do because they wanted to. Just like in school, the other girls gathered around in a circle, their purpose as much to screen the fight from view as to watch it. Only Gorgo hung back.

  Leonis was kicking Andreia indiscriminately around the neck and face. Melitta, frightened, let loose a scream. Between blows Andreia begged, “Hold my child! Don’t hurt my child!” Gorgo picked up Melitta and walked some distance away, holding the girl’s face away from the spectacle.

  Leonis cried, “Bitch of a trembler, beg my pardon!”

  Andreia uncovered her face, and fixing her eyes on Leonis again, made clear she would not beg. Meanwhile, the other girls shouted out encouragements to Leonis—“In the belly! Hit her in the belly!” Leonis reared back and kicked Andreia hard in her swollen abdomen. Having underestimated the toughness of it, her bare foot recoiled hard from the blow. She planted herself and tried again, striking just under the navel. The impact seemed to reverberate through Andreia’s insides; she soiled herself as her bladder gave way. Then Leonis hit her again, and again, until it felt as if her baby’s body was spinning within her, trying in his own way to avoid the blows. Melitta was still screaming in Gorgo’s arms as Gorgo begged her sister to stop; couldn’t she see that the woman was pregnant? Leonis shifted her wrath back at Andreia’s face, landing a kick that cut her cheek and broke her nose.

  A pair of eyes stared at the melee through cracked shutters. The eyes withdrew into the darkness within; Damatria sat on the stairs to the women’s quarters, listening but not intervening. She thought about Andreia’s fair good looks when they first met, and her expertise with herbs. When, she asked herself, had she conceived such a hatred for the girl? Never, came the reply: she had no right to interfere in the beating, because it was the prerogative of decent citizens to discipline the families of tremblers. The fault was Antalcidas’, for putting his wife in that position. There were other considerations too—her newfound honor in the community as the mother of a hero, for one. Nor could she deny that Antalcidas’ disgrace had discouraged her charitable feelings toward him and his family. If not for Epitadas’s sacrifice, everything she had worked for would have been for nothing. The thought frightened her.

  She stood up and ascended the stairs. The girl would survive, of course; someone would put a stop to it. Everyone knew that Sparta needed spears.

  Sure enough, the pummeling stopped when a male voice rang out: “What is this shame? You children, leave her alone!”

  An ancient Spartiate, happening by on his way to Limnae, stood there shaking his staff in admonishment. Leonis, who was as submissive before her male elders as she was domineering to low-class females, backed away from the prone Andreia.

  “Put the brat down, Gorgo,” she said. “We don’t want to be late to the gymnasium!”

  4.

  When it was over, Damatria changed her mind. She sent out two of her helot field hands to collect Andreia from the road and carry her home. Then she realized that she probably needed care for her injuries, and that she was alone. In good conscience, Damatria could not tend her daughter-in-law herself after doing nothing to prevent the incident; someone else would have to do it. Then she remembered that Molobrus’ mother, Lampito, was living not far away in Mesoa, equally alone in her widowhood.

  The old woman knocked on the farmhouse door and Melitta opened it. The child looked at her great-grandmother’s sparse, weedy pate, her milk-stained left eye, and her crumpled posture, and could say nothing except, “My mother is hurt.”

  “I know that, my dear. Will you take me to her?”

  She found Andreia lying on her bed, her chiton parted to reveal the bruises on her abdomen. The other removed the wet cloth from her face, showing a single blood-flecked eyeball as she squinted at Lampito. Her nose was so grotesquely shifted that it almost touched her enlarged, pendent eyelid.

  “Who are you?” Andreia asked.

  She was seized by a sudden, wavelike tightening in her womb, which had the effect of convulsing the flesh under her bruises, causing her even more pain. When the contractions ended she glared at Lampito again.

  “What are you doing here, elder?”

  Lampito stood silent until the next spasm, which came hardly a moment later.

  “You are in labor. I will help you.”

  Andreia shook her head in her pain, saying, “It can’t be . . . it’s too early. . . .” but was in no position to refuse. The old woman took command of the campaign with an assurance that mother and daughter immediately trusted. The girl was kept busy running for cushions and cups of clean water. When she returned Lampito had reached inside her mother up to the third knuckle of her right hand.

  “I can feel him,” she reported.

  As her labor went on Lampito excoriated Andreia for waiting so long without calling for help. “Do you think you’d do this yourself? Don’t look at me, push now. The selfishness of girls today is a scandal; it’s a wonder you bother to make babies at all—PUSH!”

  The rhythm of exertion and rest went on for hours, until night came and Lampito had Melitta fetch oil for the lamps. Sometime after midnight, with Andreia so spent that she was falling asleep between contractions, the old woman reached inside her again. As she pushed the birth canal down, blood and amniotic fluid shining on her leathery hands soaked into the earthen floor. Lampito peeped within with her good eye, then winked at Andreia.

  “He has red hair.”

  Melitta watched agape as her brother was delivered, flipped over, and liberated from his cord by a carving knife. After washing him, Lampito put the infant on his mother’s stomach. All watched in wonder as he crept toward the breast.

  “Our little soldier finds his own mess,” the old woman said, pleased.

  Andreia slept for thirty-six hours after the birth. Lampito stayed by her side, keeping her clean, guiding the newborn’s rooting mouth to her nipples. When she awoke, Andreia was confused by the presence of the stranger, but remembered her arrival when she felt the infant bundled at her side.

  “Who are you?” she asked Lampito again.

  “Sparta has become too big, when relatives don’t know each other.”

  She explained that she was Antalcidas’ grandmother on his father’s side, and that Damatria had summoned her after the attack.

  “Then the lady Damatria has done us a kindness,” said Andreia.

  Lampito tossed her head. “Perhaps.”

  The newborn began to cough; Andreia gathered him closer and rocked him. Then she noticed his color.

  “Why is he so blue?”

  “His lungs are weak. It is not unusual with children born so early.
He may not survive.”

  Andreia reflexively covered the baby’s ears. This prognosis, however justified, struck her as needlessly cruel to say aloud.

  But in time it became clear that something was wrong with the child. In the following days his breathing became more labored, with his color never improving beyond a sickly plum purple. His breaths became so shallow at night that his mother had to put her ear to his chest to see if his heart still beat. The struggle to catch his breath would wake him up after no more than a few minutes of sleep at a time—a schedule that also gave Andreia no time to rest. Lampito watched them suffer, fully knowing the only end that could await the boy. But she kept her thoughts to herself.

  Andreia would not raise a hand in surrender. With Antalcidas away, she took it upon herself to give his son a name she thought would please him: Molobrus, after the boy’s grandfather. And despite what had befallen her the last time she walked the streets of Sparta, she insisted on going out herself, with Melitta in tow, to register the name at the city magistrate’s. As a precaution, she hid the boy’s unhealthy color by wrapping him in blankets. This earned her an unexpected bonus: swaddled babies were such a rarity in Sparta that passersby gawked at the baby and hardly noticed the trembler’s wife.