Despite liberal watering of the wine, they were all a little tipsy by the time they broke up, and Leonidas was grateful that Meander, contrary to his usual practice, had waited for him. He had two horses with him and helped Leonidas mount, then rode with him through the city, past the royal palace and beyond. Leonidas had talked enough at dinner and was silent.
The kleros appeared to glow in the darkness as they approached. Leonidas realized that torches had been set up and lit all across the front, but they were now burning very low. Oh dear, he thought: Pelopidas and his whole family had probably wanted to give him a royal welcome, and he had failed to turn up ….
Sure enough, as he reached the front of the house it was clear that the helots, who would have to rise early the next morning, had retired. In fact, except for the spluttering torches, the house was dark and still.
“I’ll see to the horses, sir,” Meander offered, and Leonidas turned over his reins without a word. He walked into the darkened hall and cocked an ear.
“I’m out here,” Gorgo called from the back terrace.
Leonidas went to her at once, an excuse on his lips. “I’m sorry I’m late. Everyone was―what’s the matter? Gorgo? What’s happened?”
Gorgo was sitting on the bench with her back against the house, and tears streamed down her face in such a flood that they glittered even in the darkness.
In answer to Leonidas’ question, all she managed was a ragged sob and a shake of her head.
Gorgo could be very snippy and sarcastic when she was annoyed or felt slighted. Leonidas had been prepared for that. He was not prepared for this picture of sheer misery. He was seized with panic. Something terrible must have happened in his absence!
“Gorgo! The children? Has something―”
“No!” She put her hand to his lips and then pulled him down beside her on the bench. “Hold me!”
Leonidas gladly took her into his arms, thinking of all she meant to him. She leaned her head on his shoulder and he felt her tears on his naked arm. He felt and heard her hiccup. He heard Meander say something in the distance and Pelopidas answer. A breeze rustled the leaves of the orchard.
“Leo?”
“Yes?”
“I don’t want to go.”
“Go? Go where?”
“To the palace.”
He didn’t answer. The kings lived in the royal palace. When Cleomenes had become king, he had given his stepmother, with all her brood, just hours to get out. When Leotychidas had become king, he had been nearly as ruthless to Demaratus and Percalus. And Gorgo had grown up in the palace. It was her home more than it had ever been his ….
Gorgo was speaking again. “The happiest times of my life were spent right here. I don’t want to move back into the palace―with all its ghosts and memories. I don’t want to sleep in the room where my parents fought and tore each other apart. I don’t want to put Pleistarchos to bed in the room where my brothers died, one after another. I don’t want to walk every day across the courtyard where my father cut himself to pieces. I don’t want to go.”
Leonidas took a deep breath and looked across the terrace toward Taygetos. He could understand her feelings, but they didn’t have a choice. He had been elected king, and all that came with that title was now his sacred duty.
CHAPTER 12
LACEDAEMON RISING
THE WIND BLEW OUT OF THE north at gale force, and the Athenian merchantman had been forced to shorten sail. With the mainsail reefed, however, the little freighter could hardly make headway. The yard was braced hard to starboard, but still the vessel could claw only a few hundred yards to windward with each tack. The waves, whipped up until they were crested with whitecaps, broke over the bows of the ship. The two lookouts clinging to the forward rail could hardly keep their footing on the corkscrewing foredeck, while aft two helmsmen struggled to hold the little vessel on course as it soared and plunged.
The Athenian captain looked nervously over his shoulder at the ominous coast of Kythera. A high promontory of land hid the port of Skandia from view, and the coast here was inhospitable, steep, and barren. The only sign of habitation was a herd of goats grazing haphazardly among the gorse bushes. A little to starboard, low against the higher cliffs of the island, were the Dragoniden, two tiny islands that jutted out from the end of the high promontory. On the larger of these, the temple to Poseidon gleamed white in the summer sun.
The captain cursed. He had been in too great a hurry with his cargo of Sicilian wheat to stop and make an offering to Poseidon. His vessel was small, and he counted on earning a higher margin by beating the rest of the fleet into Athens. He had not reckoned with this wind springing up suddenly―much less with the ominous black penteconter that was lurking off the tip of Maleas.
The captain turned his nervous gaze back toward the penteconter on his port bow. He didn’t like the looks of her. She was pitch black―as if fresh from the dockyard―with evil eyes flanking her prow. He could not make out any nationality. In these waters she ought to be Lacedaemonian, but he didn’t like the way she just prowled offshore with no apparent goal. Or was she getting closer?
He braced himself against the moving deck and squinted into the wind. It was hard to tell, but she seemed to have turned away from the shore and to be rowing eastwards. He didn’t like that, and ordered the helmsmen to fall off the wind a fraction. No harm in going a little farther eastward for the moment. Let the penteconter be on her way….
Not that he wanted to hold this course for long. There were currents out there that carried a ship southwards. Against wind and current, he didn’t have a chance. Maybe it would be better to come about and try to pass astern of the penteconter? But that would make it more difficult to clear Maleas. Better to hold course for the moment.
He looked over his shoulder at the helmsmen. Usually one man could steer his handy little craft. He’d owned her for nearly twenty years now, and rarely had he seen her struggle so hard. She was heavily laden, of course. Maybe they should set the foresail again?
He squinted forward, trying to gauge the wind, and caught his breath as he realized the penteconter had changed course again and was plunging straight down at him. She had her sail set and all fifty oars were pushing off from the water in frightful unison, making the penteconter all but fly. Too late, the Athenian captain recognized the danger: painted proudly on the bellying canvas sail was the sea turtle of Aegina.
There could be no more question about the ship’s evil intentions. For more than a decade Athens and Aegina had been entangled in an undeclared war. After Athens refused to release the hostages the Spartan king Leotychidas had taken and treacherously turned over to them, Aeginan ships had raided coastal towns in southern Attica, burning, looting and raping the girls just like common pirates. This spring Aeginan ships had captured an Athenian ship carrying priests and sacrifices bound for the Sanctuary of Poseidon at Sunium, and Aegina still held the passengers captive. The Athenian captain knew he could expect no mercy from an Aeginan penteconter.
In panic, he ordered the helmsmen to fall off the wind more, and screamed forward to the deckhands to set the foresail and shake the reef out of the main. His only hope was to outrun the oared ship.
The ship responded to the helm and started to fall off the wind, wallowing briefly as it lay broadside to the waves. The Athenian captain shaded his eyes and peered toward his adversary. Sunlight glinted on bronze. The penteconter had marines on board!
In his heart he knew it was hopeless. He couldn’t possibly outrun a penteconter, not a well-manned one like this. The oars rose and fell in perfect unison. Were those archers moving on to the foredeck? Ares! This isn’t fair! I’m not a man of war! My daughter isn’t married yet! I’m in debt to half the chandlers in Piraeus!
Panic had gripped the Athenian captain so completely that he didn’t hear the helmsmen call out in alarm. In any case, it was too late.
With a horrible thud the ship came to a sudden stop. Every man aboard was knocked off his fe
et, and then the mainmast came crashing down on them. The planks of the ship started screaming as they were wrenched and twisted. The bow was stuck fast on an underwater ledge, while the stern was grasped inexorably in the waves and flung forward. Men started screaming as within seconds, with a horrible crunching and cracking of wood, the wreck was torn in two. The merchantman started to bleed its cargo into the sea. The sacks of grain sank silently into the shallow water, while barrels of oil and wine bobbed like corks on the blue and aquamarine waters of the bay.
The penteconter sheered off to the east, turned into the wind to hand sail, and then started rowing toward the wreck at a leisurely pace. Like a living thing, it circled its stranded prey as if gloating, apparently oblivious to the trireme that was bearing down on it from the west.
An expert might have detected imperfection in the slant or pull of some of the oars on the trireme, but her crew was more than adequate for the current task. All three banks of oars thrashed up the deep at a rate that closed the distance to the penteconter in a matter of minutes. The bronze-sheathed ram sliced through the sea, sending water upward in great curving sheets that shattered and fell back to the sea in glittering showers of water diamonds. The high, curving tail of the great warship left a wake of turbulence visible from the heights of Maleas and Kythera.
Abruptly the penteconter noticed the trireme, and with amazing agility pivoted dramatically to avoid going on the rocks. But the trireme had cut off any escape. “Surrender or we ram!” a voice shouted across the water.
It took the commander of the penteconter only a split second to decide to signal capitulation. Oars were shipped, and the trireme came alongside with a crunch and squeak of wood. A dozen armed men poured over the side of the trireme to take control of the penteconter. Within minutes the penteconter’s officers, their hands tied behind their backs, were being transferred to the trireme. In less than a quarter-hour, the penteconter had been taken and was being towed.
The handful of Athenians from the wrecked freighter who managed to make it to shore alive found the consolation cold. No matter what the fate of the attacking penteconter, they had lost everything. The captain collapsed on the sand; all he could see in his mind’s eye were the bills of his creditors in Piraeus, and the face of his daughter when he told her she was penniless and her marriage was off ….
On the afterdeck of the trireme, Leonidas turned to the perioikoi captain to remark, “Well done.”
Leonidas had come down to Boiai to witness the launch of his latest trireme. Since becoming king two years earlier, he had persuaded the Spartan Assembly to finance the building of no less than six triremes, and had added two from his own resources. This building program had more than doubled Lacedaemon’s fleet to eighteen vessels―hardly large enough to challenge Corinth or Aegina, but no longer insignificant, either. With eighteen triremes and twenty-seven penteconters, Lacedaemon was gaining the capability to protect her merchant fleet and project power.
While the latest trireme was now bobbing peacefully at anchor in the harbor at Boiai, awaiting outfitting, Leonidas had snatched the opportunity to go aboard one of the commissioned triremes when a lookout reported an unidentified penteconter lurking off Maleas. For months the waters around Kythera and Antikythera had been plagued by a series of attacks on merchant ships. At first people had thought it was pure coincidence, but soon it became clear that pirates were operating from somewhere within Laconia. Although no Lacedaemonian ships had been victims yet, everyone presumed it was only a matter of time before this happened. Orders had gone out for Lacedaemon’s nascent fleet to start a systematic search along the coastline for the pirate’s lair. The sighting of the strange penteconter during Leonidas’ visit to Boiai seemed like a remarkable stroke of luck―one quickly attributed by the ever-superstitious sailors to the presence of their king.
“Hmm,” the captain answered his king’s praise, torn between pleasure and honesty. “At least we got her, but the launch took much too long, and half the men aren’t putting their backs into it properly. Didn’t you hear the clatter of oars colliding as we made the final run in? This crew needs much more practice before I’ll be satisfied, but what can you expect from a bunch of farmers?” the captain added rhetorically, half under his breath.
Leonidas had recently passed a measure through the Assembly that granted freedom to helots who manned Lacedaemon’s fleet for a minimum of ten years, provided they were not the oldest tenant on an estate. The law gave younger sons and other impoverished helots an opportunity to better themselves, and it had produced more volunteers than Lacedaemon’s fledgling fleet could absorb. It also caused considerable outrage among Leonidas’ enemies. But they were far away at the moment, and Leonidas was thoroughly enjoying himself.
“The crew of that penteconter is first rate,” the captain continued, “but then, that’s what I’d expect of Aeginans. It’s no wonder their symbol is the sea turtle. No sooner is an Aeginan born than he waddles down to the sea and starts to swim. They can row and sail before they can talk.”
Leonidas glanced back at their prize, and then forward to where two perioikoi marines were escorting the Aeginan officers to him.
“But they failed to capture their prize,” Leonidas pointed out.
“Pah! They never intended to capture her. They drove her onto the rocks intentionally.”
“Why would they do that?” Leonidas wanted to know. “There’s no booty from a wrecked grain carrier.”
The captain shrugged. “We’ll have to ask them.” He nodded toward the two prisoners. One was a grizzled veteran with shoulder-length hair, more gray than brown, and wearing the breastplate, greaves, and helmet of a marine. His face and arms were burned a dark brown from decades on decks in the blaze of the Mediterranean sun, and the lines around his eyes were cut deep into his skin. The other man looked much younger by contrast, although he was no youth. His almost-black hair was cut short at the back and his beard was neatly trimmed.
Leonidas started violently. The elder man was none other than his childhood friend Prokles, who had been exiled for dereliction of duty just before reaching citizenship. Almost as astonishing, he was accompanied by a young Spartiate, whose name escaped Leonidas at this moment.
“Prokles! What are you doing preying on innocent ships―and under the turtle of Aegina?”
Prokles, who had been fussing at the guard and not focused on the men on the afterdeck, broke into a grin. “Well, I’ll be damned! I never expected a landlubber like you to catch me off guard like that.” He glanced at the perioikoi captain and nodded once in respect, giving credit where he thought it was due.
“You didn’t answer my question,” Leonidas pointed out and turned to the younger man, who at least had the decency to look worried, to add, “and you need to explain yourself, young man!”
“I went off active service at the winter solstice, my lord,” he spoke up at once, “and I’m on leave from my syssitia.”
“With what possible excuse?” Leonidas wanted to know.
“To look after my affairs, my lord. My estates are on Kythera.”
“Since when did looking after your affairs include attacking innocent merchant ships?”
“That’s the second time you’ve used the adjective ‘innocent,’” Prokles pointed out. “But you are using the term inadvisably. The Aeginans provided our ship and are paying us. The Aeginans do not view Athenian ships as ‘innocent,’ while Eurybiades here has a grudge against the Argives, whose ships have been our principal target.”
“The Argives burned my kleros to the ground and murdered every man, woman, and child on it,” Eurybiades explained at once.
Leonidas well remembered the damage wrought by the Argives on Kythera, but he still did not approve of someone taking the law into his own hands. “In my waters, I’ll decide who can be attacked and who can go free,” Leonidas countered.
“Your waters be damned!” Prokles spat in the direction of the side of the ship, and the perioikoi marines stiffe
ned in alarm, looking to Leonidas for orders to put the impudent man in his place. Leonidas signaled for them to relax, even as Prokles continued. “Power has gone to your head, Leo. We didn’t break any law. Can we help it if an Athenian captain puts his own ship on the rocks?”
Leonidas addressed himself to the baffled perioikoi marines, who appeared ready to slit Prokles’ throat for his impudence. “Untie them. They will do us no harm.” The perioikoi obeyed with obvious reluctance, and then moved only a short distance away, both curious and suspicious.
Prokles demonstratively stretched and wriggled his shoulders, while Leonidas asked, “Just what are the terms of your commission from Aegina?”
Prokles shrugged. “Ask Eurybiades. He’s the captain. I’m just commander of the marines.”
Leonidas looked at the younger Spartiate, even more amazed. “How did you come by an Aeginan commission? And where did you learn seamanship?”
Eurybiades, his hands now free, gestured vaguely around them. “Here, my lord. I spent my holidays here, not just on Kythera, but on the waters around it.”
“Who is your father?”
“Eurykleides, my lord.”
The name was familiar. Eurykleides had a distinguished career behind him and had served once as ephor. He stood a good chance of election to the Gerousia when a vacancy came up. Generally seen as a conservative, he had nevertheless, Leonidas now remembered, spoken forcefully in favor of the building of a fleet, and he also supported the law to allow helots to improve their status through service on Lacedaemonian ships.
“My mother killed herself when she realized the Argives had breached the wall of the courtyard,” Eurybiades continued, breaking in on his thoughts. “My father remarried and has two younger sons by his second wife. I inherited my mother’s property here.”
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