Zopyrus, mounted on one of his stallions, rode up to take his place directly beside them and ordered the gates opened. They drove out into the night.
Danei heard a short, low shout and then an indefinable sound like many people stamping in unison. Peering into the darkness he saw them, and his heart missed a beat. Spartiates in full battle kit! It was too dark to distinguish colors, but their himations and the crests on their helmets were dark, and their shields gleamed even in the dull light of the moon.
A man separated himself from the others and came to stand at Zopyrus’ stirrup. “The city is under curfew and quiet. I expect no trouble.”
It was Leonidas! Danei’s heart was fluttering in his chest and Leonidas’ words echoed in his skull. “…They did not go crawling on their bellies … the sons of free men.”
“My wife is a niece of the Great King by his most important wife. If any harm comes to her, he will see you skinned alive and then burn your entrails in front of you before he does the same to your wives and children.”
Leonidas shrugged. “If fear motivated me, I would have already killed you.” Then he stepped back, leaving Zopyrus no option but to spur away in a showy but futile display of horsemanship.
Danei twisted in his seat to keep his eye on Leonidas as long as he could. Abruptly Leonidas seemed to feel his gaze and looked over. Their eyes met.
The streets were deserted in the moonlight. The temples gleamed white, the barracks were dark, the public buildings brooded. Here and there a fountain gurgled gently, catching the moonlight, and the plane trees lining the wide avenue whispered in a light wind. Gradually the density of the buildings thinned. Proud public buildings and monuments to heroes, statues and stoas gave way to humble workshops, dwellings, warehouses, and lumberyards. They passed a whole series of low buildings with similar porticos that looked like the treasuries Danei had seen when he went to Olympia with his father ….
They came to an urban cluster of taverns and inns, but even here most of the lights had burned out and the voices were silenced by sleep. Beyond, the countryside opened up. The road followed the wide river of the Eurotas, while the flanks of Taygetos loomed to their right. The escort relaxed enough to start singing, led by Leonidas himself. Danei held his breath. It was the “Song of Troy,” a song he had learned as a boy. Once or twice Danei mouthed the words with the men beside him, but he dared not sing. His voice would never have the timbre of a man; it was frozen in its high, childish octaves by the knife that deprived him of his manhood.
When the sky was graying to the east, setting the Parnon range into dark silhouette, they came to an inn. Zopyrus ordered a halt and announced his intention to spend what was left of the night here. They turned into the courtyard and the drivers climbed down to unhitch the horses as the innkeeper stumbled out, rubbing sleep from his eyes in amazement.
Zopyrus ordered the eunuchs to get the women inside, indicating that they should follow the innkeeper’s wife. Danei and Phaidime were shown to a room that was little more than a closet. It was windowless and dank. There was nothing but filthy straw pallets on the floor. Phaidime sucked in her breath in horror and clutched her rich robes about her to keep them from getting dirty.
“I’ll fetch cushions,” Danei promised and went back out into the courtyard, doubled over with pain and moving like a man with a false leg. Grimacing, he hauled himself up onto the wagon again and collected as many cushions as he could carry, then took them back to spread them about the little room for Phaidime. At once she sank down with a sigh of relief and ordered, “Bring me something to drink and a snack. I’ve had nothing to eat since midday.”
Danei had not had anything to eat, either. And while Phaidime had sat waiting, he had worked through the night. He was in pain. Didn’t she realize that? Didn’t she notice he could hardly stand, much less walk? Didn’t she see that his limp was worse than ever? Didn’t she care?
With cold clarity, Danei realized that Phaidime was happy enough to let him comfort her when she was in distress, but he was still just a slave to her, a eunuch. And as he stared at her in this new light, he noticed for the first time that she was growing up. He confronted something he had tried to ignore: that Phaidime no longer feared Zopyrus’ visits as she had at the start of her marriage. Nor was she frightened of the other women, because she was Zopyrus’ favorite wife―and proud to be his favorite.
Suddenly Danei knew he had to run away. Tonight. He could not crawl on his belly to the Persians any longer. He would rather die standing upright as his father had…. “I’ll see what I can find,” Danei promised her, thinking only of the immaculate Spartan Guard. If they were still outside….
He hobbled around the peristyle past the other slaves unloading this or that, or simply rolling themselves in blankets to try to catch some sleep. He hobbled to the front of the inn and put his hand on the door.
“Where are you going, gelding?” It was the sneering voice of the black man, standing with his arms crossed on his chest and his legs wide apart, guarding the exit.
Danei felt his knees go weak. His resolve collapsed. He had witnessed what this man’s fists could do, and he knew he could not endure it. “I need to pee,” he told the Nubian, doubled over as if trying not to wet himself.
The Nubian laughed. “Use that corner over there with the other mules.” He pointed toward the stables.
Danei hobbled toward the stables and slipped inside. The horses and mules stirred, but at the far end of the room was a square of gray light. It was a door. It stood wide open. Danei stood straighter and walked toward it, disbelieving. There was no one guarding it. He looked around, over both shoulders. There was not another person in the stables. He walked out the door. The Eurotas valley was starting to awake. Birds were singing in the orchards, goat bells tinkled from the hillside behind him, and somewhere men were singing a round, a song to Hyacinthos and the dawn of a new day ….
Zopyrus woke from his drugged sleep with a groan. Every muscle in his body ached. His shoulders had been wrenched and his knee and hip bruised in the horrible scuffle the day before. He had numerous bruises and cuts, which his slaves had diligently cleaned and salved before giving him a heavy date wine, brought all the way from home. Zopyrus had been too dazed to do anything but let them minister to his body the night before. Now, even by the light of a new day, he could not fathom what had transpired.
The Spartans had murdered two Persian ambassadors. He could not yet decide which aspect of the crime was worse: that they were so disrespectful and foolhardy as to lay hands on men representing the Great King, or that they were so barbaric as to violate diplomatic immunity. Any way one looked at it, the Spartans were madmen, and despite his immediate escape from harm, Zopyrus felt anything but safe.
His head ached as much as his body. Indeed, his head throbbed and felt swollen. He needed something cool. Without opening his eyes, he snapped his fingers.
There was no response.
Frowning more darkly, he snapped his fingers again, but still no one answered. He could not even hear anyone moving. He opened his eyes and turned his head from side to side.
Sunlight was stretching its greedy fingers between the slats of the shutters on the windows. His golden goblet lay on its side, spilling its sticky contents onto the floor. Ants and flies were swarming over the drying liquid. Otherwise, the room was empty.
Zopyrus sat up with a groan, but anger overpowered discomfort. He clapped his hands loudly. “Come here! I need to dress! Hurry!”
No one answered.
Furious, he stood sharply, and then had to catch his breath and stop as the room spun around him. He yanked open the door and stared into an empty hallway.
Only at the far end of the corridor did anything move. A little crowd of slaves was standing about, chattering in agitation.
“What is the matter with you?” Zopyrus called at them. “What are you all gaping at?”
An old slave came running, shaking his head helplessly as he came. “I was aslee
p―like you. But they―they killed the Nubian. Cut him into little pieces and―left. They took most of the horses and they plundered the wagons.”
“Who did? The Spartans?” Zopyrus couldn’t believe it, but then again he could. They were barbaric cutthroats and thieves!
“The drivers and some of the other slaves.”
Zopyrus stared at the man in disbelief. “What did you say? My slaves ran away?”
“Some of them,” the man answered, wincing in anticipation of the blow, “including that Greek eunuch.”
“Danei? Where’s my wife?”
No sooner had he asked the question, however, than he registered that someone was sobbing miserably. His gaze followed the sound, and he strode into the little closet that housed his wife. She was sitting on the floor amidst her silk cushions, crying miserably.
Zopyrus went down on his heels beside her and stroked her shoulder. “Hush. There’s nothing to fear.”
“Danei! Danei abandoned me!” Phaidime wailed in heartfelt misery.
Zopyrus pulled his little bride into his arms. “Hush, little bird. I will buy you two new eunuchs to replace that worthless wretch. He will pay for his treason, I promise you. He and all Sparta will pay. We will return with the army. We will turn this fertile valley into a desert and crush and burn the pathetic heap of stones they call a city. We’ll cut Danei’s hamstrings when we catch him, so he’ll have to crawl for the rest of his life. As for the others, we will seize every man, woman, and child and parade them naked through the streets of Susa before we turn every male into a mule and put every woman into the brothels that service the lowliest and filthiest of our subject soldiers. Sparta will not just regret what they did yesterday. Sparta will be obliterated so completely that no one will ever know it existed.”
CHAPTER 6
FOXES LARGE AND SMALL
THE SCREAM WAS FALLING, FALLING, FALLING …and then with a horrible crash it ended and Sperchias sat bolt upright in bed, screaming. He was drenched with sweat and his breath came in gasps.
“Good heavens!” his wife complained from the bed beside him. “Quiet down! You’ll wake the children.”
Sperchias could only stare into the darkness, his breath ragged and his eyes wide. Tisibazus was staring back at him―bloated and bloodless as he had been when they retrieved his body from the well, but with alert, glittering eyes alive with reproach and threat. He did not need to say anything. Revenge was already winging toward them from the four corners of the heavens. The Furies were undoubtedly plaguing the Great King. They would drive him mad with rage. The priests had read it in the entrails of every beast sacrificed since the day the ambassadors were murdered. The Gerousia and ephors had consulted the heavens, and the stars hissed back in the silence of the night: doom.
Worse. From the Temple of Talthybius, the herald of Agamemnon and ancestor of all Spartan heralds, noises had been heard on each successive night since the murders. The sounds were unclear, and yet the terrified meleirenes patrolling the streets and the residents of nearby dwellings reported it was like the crashing of shields against one another, the moan of wind in canyons, and the cry of vultures. One didn’t have to be a seer to understand that war and death were the herald’s message.
“Come, lie down and go back to sleep!” Sperchias’ wife patted the bed invitingly, but Sperchias knew it would be no use. The nightmare would only return. He shook his head and threw the covers off his legs. Grabbing a chiton from where he’d left it on a chest, he pulled it over his head and went out of the bedroom, closing the door behind him.
On bare feet, he tiptoed past his widowed mother’s chamber. He could hear her snoring. He went to the ladder leading to the spacious loft where the children slept. The wood of the ladder creaked under his weight, so he moved very slowly. When he reached the top, he had to bend over to move under the slope of the roof. Just beyond the small dormer he came to the bed of his two daughters. They lay on their sides, the older girl holding the younger in her arms; their bright curls framed their soft, round faces. The sight of them always filled Sperchias with a sense of overwhelming protectiveness, and the dark, inchoate threats that were gathering made him shiver. There was nothing he could do to protect them from the wrath of the Gods.
He continued to the other bed. His only son, Aneristus, lay on his belly, a naked leg falling off the bed. How he loved the boy! And at the next winter solstice he would be admitted into the agoge, Sperchias thought with a tightening around his heart. He would leave home, and they would see him only at holidays thereafter. His laughter would be missing from the kitchen and his shouts of excitement gone from the fields. He would no longer come home bedraggled from a day of adventure to tell them breathlessly of the birds he’d almost caught and the fish that somehow slipped away. The thought of the kleros without him made Sperchias sad, but even worse was the thought of him at the mercy of Alcidas.
At Leonidas’ insistence, an inquiry into Alcidas’ policies had been initiated, but the process was long and Alcidas was fighting back, supported by Brotus and the other conservatives. Meanwhile, a boy had died from an adder bite simply because he had been afraid to seek help in time. Sperchias hoped Aneristus knew he could always―always―come to him, but he was afraid just the same. Peer pressure could be brutal.
Sperchias went backwards down the ladder and continued down the flight of wooden stairs into the hall. The room was getting lighter, and the sound of birds calling to one another came through the open windows. Sperchias went on to the front porch of the house, enjoying the feel of the cool flagstones under his bare feet. He gazed across the Eurotas toward the pale yellow of the sky beyond the Parnon range. It was going to be another hot, sunny summer day. It was all so deceptively beautiful: the calm before the storm.
With a sigh Sperchias returned inside, found a pair of sandals and tied a leather thong around his waist, then slipped outside again. The helots were coming out of their cottage on the far side of the farmyard, scythes over their shoulders and little bags of food around their necks. They were evidently heading out to cut the hay. They nodded to him wordlessly and he nodded back. Sperchias found no fault with the helot family of six that efficiently worked his estate, but his wife complained that they filched little things―leftover food, eggs, cheese, and the like―and she said she did not trust them. Sperchias sighed; his wife was not a happy woman, and his mother complained about her being lazy.
Sperchias owned several horses, but he left them in the stables and struck off on foot. Riding might get him someplace faster, but walking was more calming to his nerves. Besides, he was in no hurry, because he needed time to think. He was convinced that things couldn’t be allowed to continue the way they were, but he wasn’t sure exactly what to propose.
Sperchias headed downstream to where an enterprising helot kept a flat-bottomed boat tied among the reeds. For an obol he would ferry anyone across the Eurotas, and for two he’d take a man and a beast of burden. It was so early in the morning, however, that the ferryman was still in his thatched hut, and Sperchias had to rouse him.
He came out readily, since customers were rare. Sperchias settled in the bow of the wooden boat, while the ferryman untied the boat from the pole. He waded into the water thigh deep, pushing the boat deeper into the lazy, brown river, then clambered aboard and rowed easily to the far shore.
Sperchias paid him and started up the road along the eastern shore of the river, heading north as the sun cleared the Parnon range and the day started to get warm. About an hour later, he passed below the Temple to Helen on its steep hill and reached Leonidas’ kleros. He turned off the main road to walk down the long, stately drive, flanked by cypress trees. To the right of the drive a half-dozen horses grazed contentedly in a broad paddock, while to the left the field was thick with growing wheat―a reminder of how rich this kleros was. Not every kleros had soil that could support wheat. Sperchias was reminded of when he’d first become friends with Leonidas, the year after they gained citizenship and were se
rving together in the same enomotia of the army. This kleros had been derelict then, ruined five Olympiads earlier by a devastating fire. There had been no cypress trees lining the overgrown drive, and the fields had been fallow and lost in weeds.
It was a mark of Leonidas’ increasing importance that even at this early hour of the morning, Sperchias was not Leonidas’ first visitor. A heavy chariot waited in front of the colonnaded porch. He paused uncertainly. What he had to say to Leonidas was not for everyone’s ears.
Suddenly two little boys came tearing around the side of the house, shouting. They screeched to a halt, stared at him for a moment, and then ran back the other way, shouting even louder than before. A moment later Temenos came around the corner of the house and looked at him solemnly. “Can I help you, sir?”
“I was looking for Leonidas, but I see he has visitors already.”
“Nikostratos is here, with Kyranios.”
Important visitors indeed, Sperchias noted. “Then I won’t disturb them. I’ll just wait here.” He gestured toward the front porch of the house, flooded with sunshine.
“Come around to the back terrace, sir,” Temenos urged, “and I’ll have Chryse bring you some refreshments.”
Sperchias didn’t really want that―it would be rather like accepting Temenos’ relationship with the helot woman―but it seemed rude to say no, so he followed Temenos around to the back, thinking that he liked the young man. Indeed, he felt badly about what had happened to him last year, and agreed with Leonidas that the four assailants deserved disgrace and punishment. He asked, “How are you doing these days? I heard you were back on duty. No permanent damage after all, it seems?”
A Heroic King Page 17
