By midafternoon the flames had reached the upper firebreak, but the break appeared to be holding. The two lochoi near Kardamyle were given a hot meal and then sent to reinforce the Mesoan Lochos at the upper firebreak.
The fire was raging across the face of the mountain, nipping already at the last trees on the far edge of the tree line. Beyond that, it would burn itself out on the limestone. But Leonidas’ estate was obliterated. He couldn’t even locate the buildings in the charred, still smoking devastation left behind. If Eirana hadn’t made it to safety …
They stayed by the firebreak through the night, watching the flames slowly starve for lack of anything left to consume. The wind had died down, too, helping to stabilize the situation. At least here. The night sky was still marked by lurid light coming from other fires to the north and east. Weary beyond caring, Leonidas wondered who was fighting those fires. Then his watch was over and he fell asleep.
He awoke, disoriented. The sun was bright for the first time in days, and bizarrely, Alkander was bending over him. “Leo,” he woke him gently. “Leo.”
Leonidas sat up. His whole enomotia was on their feet, already awake but doing nothing, just standing around looking strange. Apparently Oliantus had woken them, but not him. Oliantus’ ugly face was deformed even further by an expression of deep worry, while Mantiklos hovered beside him anxiously as if he’d been sick. And where did Alkander come from? He was with the Conouran Lochos. Were they back? Apparently.
“Leo, I’ve been sent to tell you we found them.”
“Found who?” Leonidas still wasn’t fully awake. Then he remembered. “Eirana and the twins? Are they in Kardamyle?” He dragged himself to his feet, his aching muscles protesting painfully.
“They didn’t make it out, Leo.”
They stared at one another. Leonidas wanted to deny it, say it couldn’t be true—but obviously they wouldn’t have sent Alkander otherwise.
“Where are they? Where were they found?”
“Search parties went in at first light. Kyranios sent men to your estate straight away. All that is left of the house and outbuildings are the cellars.”
“What do I care about the house? Are you sure she was there? Are you sure she didn’t get away in time?”
“She wasn’t in the house, Leo. We found her and the twins about two hundred yards from the house—and her daughter by Asteropus another hundred yards away. It looked as if the elder girl had run away, and Eirana went after her, but we can’t be sure what happened. Only that they are dead.”
“I want to see them,” Leonidas told him.
“No. Not really. It would be better if you didn’t,” Alkander told him honestly; but he did not expect to be heeded.
Leonidas roared at him that he had a right to see his wife and children, no matter what state they were in; and Alkander dutifully led him away with a last look at Oliantus, who nodded understanding.
Chilonis stopped by Leonidas’ kleros to tell Laodice the news. “I just wanted you to know,” she explained to the helot woman, who stood drying her hands helplessly on her apron. “He might not say anything himself; and without knowing what happened, you might have said something that hurt or angered him inadvertently.”
Laodice nodded, her hands wringing her apron in distress.
“Is something else the matter?” Chilonis asked.
Laodice shook her head. Between them Pelopidas, Polychares, and Kleon had managed to save the main field of barley with their pump; and the apples and pears were coming, smaller than normal, but they would yield. They would have an olive harvest, too, though the wine was uncertain. Laodice wasn’t worried about herself at the moment, only Leonidas. “Will the master come back, do you think, ma’am?”
“I think so,” Chilonis answered, but she wasn’t sure. He had spent his wedding night here; his two children had been conceived and born here. He might not want to come back. “I hope so,” she added with a sad smile to Laodice. “You’ve done so much to make it lovely.”
Laodice shook her head. “The garden’s ruined, ma’am. We couldn’t waste water on useless plants this year.”
“Of course not,” Chilonis agreed, following the helot’s gaze to the brown, brittle wrecks of rosebushes and oleander that bordered the terrace. “But you might be surprised. Plants are more resilient than we think—and people, too.”
Laodice didn’t hear him come. She awoke in the middle of the night, as she so often had this horrible summer, and sat up listening for what had disturbed her. Pelopidas was lying on his stomach with one hand on the floor, snoring softly. He had every reason to sleep hard, and she slipped out of bed carefully so as not to disturb him. Pulling on the chiton she had worn the day before, she tiptoed out of the room, past Kleon fast asleep by the hearth, and glanced at the bed under the loft where Melissa lay curled in Polychares’ arms, the cradle in easy reach. Their infant slept as soundly as his parents.
Laodice went up the first several rungs of the ladder to get a look in the loft and check that both the girls were there—not off trysting with some hot-blooded and foolish meleirene. But to her relief, two pairs of feet stuck out at her on the bed the girls shared.
Still, she could not shake the sense that something was amiss. She was standing in the middle of the cold kitchen, trying to decide what to do, when something snapped outside the kitchen window, and she caught her breath in alarm. Something was indeed moving just outside the kitchen; but the longer she stood still and listened, the more certain she became that a horse was tied up outside. She slipped outdoors and found Leonidas’ stallion loosely tied to the railing of the barn, doing his best to graze on the sunburned grass. He raised his head at the sight of her and nickered, expecting feed. Laodice dutifully returned to the pantry and selected one of the shriveled-up, worm-eaten apples that she kept in a special barrel. She brought this back to the stallion and then moved cautiously toward the terrace to find his master.
She saw Beggar first. The bitch was sitting in front of the bench, looking into the shadows with mute concern. Leonidas was entirely lost in the shadows cast by a rising moon. Laodice hesitated. He clearly wanted to be alone with his memories and ghosts. She had no right to intrude. But an instinct stronger than reason compelled her forward.
He had leaned his head back against the whitewashed plaster of the house, and tears were trickling down the side of his face. She sat down beside him, taking his left hand in both of her own without a word. He didn’t start or open his eyes, but he closed his hand around hers while the tears streamed in a heavier flood. Laodice found she was crying as well, but it didn’t matter. Beggar looked from one to the other, tapping the terrace tiles with her tail in confusion.
Eventually he swallowed and lifted his head, opening his eyes. Laodice at once withdrew her hands and stood to leave.
“It’s all right,” he told her. “Sit with me a moment more.”
She sat down again, a little nervous now.
“It was a bad marriage,” he told her simply. “She never loved me, and I’m not sure I loved her—not in the end. I did once, when I was young; but the rejection hurt, and I wasn’t sure I wanted her when her father asked me. But at first she seemed so … loving. Later I realized she only wanted more children.”
Laodice took his hand again and held it firmly.
“What kills me is Kleopatra and Kleodakos. I shouldn’t have let her take them so far from me. I should have made her live in the city like most young brides, so I could see them daily. I should have watched them growing up, and been a father to them—like Alkander is to his boys. As it is, I know the children of every man in my enomotia better than my own. Isn’t that sick?”
“No,” Laodice told him firmly, shaking her head. “It was Apollo’s way of protecting you. Your children were marked to die, master. The mistress had dreams about it. She knew the fire would consume her. She had dreams here every night. We all thought it was the old fire that haunted her, the fire that burned down this kleros; but, yo
u see, none of us ever had nightmares. Now it is clear the dreams were a warning of what was to come.”
“But if she’d stayed here, she would have been all right.”
Laodice shook her head. “No, master. We can’t run away from our destiny. If she had stayed here, we all would have died with her. The fires would have struck here and not in Messenia.”
Leonidas gazed at the aging helot woman. He was not convinced about destiny—but he could see Laodice believed absolutely in what she said. He could see that she was grateful his wife had taken her curse somewhere else. The helots on the estate where she had chosen to live had all died with her. (And if they hadn’t, Leonidas would have personally seen to it that they were executed for abandoning Eirana and his children.)
“Please come home, master,” Laodice found the courage to beg him softly. “Next year when you go off active service, don’t go and live somewhere else. Come back here. We’ll fix up everything for you. I’ll replant the garden.”
Leonidas nodded and said “Thank you,” ambiguously.
Laodice knew she had done as much as she could. She dared not press him further, so she slipped away. Returning to her bedroom, she pulled her chiton off over her head and lay down. Pelopidas turned over in his sleep and pulled her into his arms. His breathing resumed its normal rhythm. Laodice lay contentedly in his embrace; but her senses were too alert to let her sleep until she heard Leonidas collect his horse outside their bedroom, then ride at a canter up the drive to return to Sparta in the moonlight.
Chapter 16
Full Citizens
At the winter solstice, the men who had completed ten years of active service symbolically turned over their standard-issue lambda-bearing shields to the graduating class of eirenes and joined the reserves. For the first time in twenty-four years, the young men would not be required to sleep in barracks, and for the first time in their lives they would be eligible for public office. Alkander was looking forward to living on his kleros full time rather than simply visiting on holidays, and in the last fortnight before the solstice he spent all his free time fixing it up.
The smell of Hilaira’s cheese balls wafted up from the kitchen to the loft, where Alkander was building beds for his two sons from reeds he had cut on the banks of the Eurotas. As he worked, he explained to his wide-eyed boys what he was doing. “The reeds are flexible but strong, so you can weave them together like this and then they’ll hold together. See? Now we’ll fill up the frame with straw and sweet-smelling sprigs of lavender, but when you’re out camping you can use leaves, pine needles, or grass. And even if you can’t find anything to fill it with, you can lay your himation over it, and at least the frame will keep you up off wet or hard ground.”
“Hungry!” two-year-old Simonidas announced, completely bored by his father’s long lecture on bed construction; already he was scrambling down the ladder from the loft with the agility of a monkey. His elder brother Thersander watched him go; but when he was sure his brother had run off in the direction of the kitchen and he was alone with his father, he asked in a low voice, “What is it like, Dad? The agoge, I mean.” In just two weeks’ time, when the holiday at the solstice was over, Thersander would enter the agoge for the first time, because he would turn seven in the course of the coming year.
Alkander had been concentrating on the bed, and the question took him by surprise. At some level he had been expecting this question since the day his son was born, but he hadn’t been expecting it today, right now. It caught him like a kick in the gut, and he held back a gasp. Then he looked over into his son’s earnest face and wanted to scream. Instead, he said, “It takes some getting used to at first, Sandy, but you’ll find that it is mostly fun.”
Thersander did not look convinced, and he gazed at his father with large, dark eyes that seemed to know he was lying. Alkander tried harder. “The agoge is where I met Uncle Leo. We did everything together when we were little—riding and swimming and cave exploring.” All on holidays from the grim agoge, Alkander noted to himself mentally. “And you’ll learn about tracking and trapping, and to play ball.” He exerted himself more.
Thersander nodded solemnly, evidently still not convinced. He looked at the reed bed his father had made and rubbed the frame absently. “Did you have to go to the pits very often?”
“Just once in my whole life,” Alkander assured him. At least that was an honest answer.
“Why?” Thersander wanted to know.
“Uncle Leo and I were supposed to fend for ourselves for ten days, if I remember correctly; only we’d been lazy and hadn’t set enough traps, and so we got hungry and thought we’d steal some cheese from a helot family. But their geese caught us red-handed, and we had to go to the pits. Which was only right.”
“And Uncle Leo?”
“He went to the pits with me.”
“Just that once?”
“No, he got in trouble a second time, but that is a long story. I’m sure he’ll tell you about it if you ask. But for now I agree with Simonidas. Let’s go get something to eat.” He smiled at Thersander, and the boy took the hint, scampering down the ladder as if he’d forgotten the topic.
Alkander, however, could hardly eat for inner agitation. As soon as they had put the boys to bed for their nap, he addressed Hilaira. “You married a coward and a liar,” he opened in a rush of self-contempt. “I told our son today that the agoge is ‘fun.’ Fun!”
“What choice did you have? It wouldn’t do him any good to be afraid of it,” Hilaira reasoned.
“Are you sure? I don’t know anymore.” Alkander dropped his head in his hands and ruffled his still-cropped hair. After the solstice he would be allowed to start growing it out and would soon wear the braids of a full citizen.
Hilaira reached out and laid a hand on her husband’s knee. “Not all boys hate it like you did. Prokles and Leo got on just fine for the most part. Sandy is strong and self-confident. There’s no reason why he should suffer like you did.”
“No other civilized city in the world does to their young children what we do!” Alkander replied, jumping to his feet and starting to pace around the hearth room. “It’s nearly freezing out there,” he continued, pointing to the shuttered windows, which only partially kept out the chill, “but we will make the boys go barefoot! They’ll be expected to wear nothing but a coarse chiton and himation, and they will freeze! Some boys become so sick that they have sore throats and running noses from the first week practically to the summer solstice! Why?”
Before Hilaira could even draw a breath to answer, Alkander answered himself. “The idea of a public school is right, of course. When you hear Leo’s stories about the way rich Corinthian and Athenian youths have private tutors and trainers while the poor cannot read or write, I know that the concept of a public school is a good and just idea. We ensure that every boy in the next generation learns our laws, our history, and our musical traditions, and we ensure they have the skills they will need as citizens, to reason and think logically, to argue cogently and express themselves succinctly. Their training makes them good hoplites, capable of withstanding hardship and privation when necessary and able to endure pain for the sake of the line. But why do we have to go to such extremes?”
“Maybe you don’t,” Hilaira suggested, looking her husband in the eye as he turned to stare at her. “My grandfather claimed that the agoge wasn’t always as harsh as it is now. He said when he was young the food was better, for example; but then a Paidonomos came along who wanted to encourage trapping and hunting by making the food so monotonous that the boys wanted to hunt and trap. He said the Phouxir was shorter, too, and earlier in the year so that the weather was generally milder.”
Hilaira had Alkander’s undivided attention; her grandfather, Lysandridas, had been the closest thing Alkander had ever had to a grandfather (not having known his own), and he respected him greatly. “According to Granddad,” Hilaira continued earnestly, “shortly after Chilon died, the Eurypontid King Ariston maneu
vered his candidate for Paidonomos into the agoge. At the time, Leo’s father was still too inexperienced to know how to oppose him. The new headmaster was a fanatic who coined the phrase, ‘What doesn’t kill them will make them stronger.’”
Alkander snorted, adding, “What rubbish! As if the boys can’t become sick and maimed and carry lasting damage from bad diet and excessive hardship.”
“He ran the agoge for almost two decades, making it harsher the older and more inflexible he became. I remember Granddad saying to my mother that we were lucky Epidydes took over shortly before your age cohort was enrolled. He expected Epidydes to change things.”
Alkander gazed at his wife. As a schoolboy, Epidydes had seemed more distant and more powerful than the Gods. The Paidonomos held the fate of all the boys in his hands. He had the final say on whether a boy was punished and how, and on whether or not a boy was to be expelled and so excluded from citizenship. Even as an adult Alkander had long avoided Epidydes, acutely aware of his own inadequacies as a schoolboy and secretly suspicious that Epidydes had only allowed him to remain in school as a favor to the Agiads.
“Your grandfather considered Epidydes a good man?” he asked Hilaira again, watching her face closely.
“Yes,” Hilaira insisted, removing her snood and combing her hair back with her hands, twisting it together at the back of her head, and replacing her snood. Then she faced Alkander down. “He supported Epidydes actively in his candidacy for Paidonomos, and he was so relieved when he was elected that he got a little drunk. I remember it very well because he didn’t get drunk often, you know, and I was just a little girl. I didn’t understand much except that he was very happy for Prokles’ sake.”
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