Spartan

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  ‘Well? Did he talk?’

  The girl covered herself and got up. ‘No, nothing of any interest,’ she said softly. ‘The fumes from the sacred brazier had totally inebriated him. But he kept calling me by a certain name—’

  ‘What name? It could be important.’

  ‘Antinea, I think. He was so passionate, his eyes were full of tears. I felt terribly sorry for him,’ she said, looking over at the youth. Kleidemos stirred but did not open his eyes. ‘You could have spared me this one,’ she added, whispering.

  ‘Don’t complain,’ said the man. ‘You’ll be paid enough to make you forget the inconvenience. But are you sure he said nothing else – not even in his sleep?’

  ‘No, nothing. I stayed awake all night, so I wouldn’t miss a word, just as you ordered. But what makes this young man so special? He’s no Persian satrap or Sicilian tyrant.’

  ‘Don’t ask me because I don’t know myself. I don’t even know who is behind all this. It must be very important, nonetheless; perhaps he is from a powerful family on the continent. Are you absolutely sure he said nothing in his sleep?’

  ‘Nothing that means anything. If there’s a secret in his mind it’s hidden so deeply that not even the abandon of sleep and love can liberate it. I can tell you that he loves this woman called Antinea with immense passion. He must have lost her just when he loved her most, beyond any imagining. And so the wound never closed. He saw Antinea in me, his lost love. That’s all that I can say. But his love was so intense that it frightened me. He might have destroyed me had the illusion been broken.’

  ‘I don’t think so. The illusions that are aroused in this place sacred to the goddess always spring from some source. His soul must be split: another force, another will, lives within him. Like another person.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you allow the great priestess herself to intervene? She would have been able to see all the way into his soul and to understand.’

  ‘The great priestess was watching him as he entered the temple. The shadow of a wolf was behind him, flashing an evil light from his red eyes and baring his fangs when she tried to delve into his mind.’

  The young girl wrinkled her brow and pulled her cloak close around her naked body. She turned away and walked towards the end of the room, followed by the man. They disappeared through the little door which had remained open. Kleidemos opened his eyes and looked up. The light of morning was pouring through the opening in the ceiling. White doves cooed and pecked on the roof cornice, sparrows fluttered into the luminous space, chirping finches announced the rising sun. Kleidemos struggled to get up, bringing his hands to his temples. He crossed the large room and went outside under the portico. Lahgal was there at the bottom of the stairs on his feet, with the ass.

  Kleidemos approached him with a surly look. ‘You little snake!’ he accused him, dealing him a sharp slap. ‘You had it all planned, didn’t you?’

  He leapt onto the ass and spurred it into a trot down the city streets to the western gate, which led to the port. After a while, he slowed the animal to a walk, his thoughts absorbed in what he had heard in the temple. He heard shouting behind him.

  ‘Two-Names! Two-Names, stop! Stop, please!’ It was Lahgal, running fast, crying and shouting all at once. Kleidemos did not turn. The boy rushed up, panting.

  ‘Two-Names, I don’t know what you think, but I didn’t want you to get hurt. My master told me to take you to the temple – what could I do?’ Kleidemos did not answer. ‘Listen to me, Two-Names, what happened in the temple? Did they hurt you?’

  ‘I told you the true story of my life and you tricked me, instead. I don’t want to see you again. Get out of here!’

  Lahgal tugged at his chiton. ‘You are a free man, Two-Names, and you can say whatever you like. I’m a slave and if I don’t do what I’m told they beat me to a pulp, leave me without eating, won’t let me drink.’ He ran ahead of the ass and stopped in the middle of the road, his back turned to Kleidemos. He pulled up his robe, baring his thin, scar-crossed back.

  ‘Look at me, Two-Names!’ he shouted, crying. ‘You’re lying if you say that you were a slave and you can’t understand what Lahgal did.’

  Kleidemos got off the ass and approached the boy.

  ‘I do understand, Lahgal. I know what you’re trying to tell me. Forgive me for hitting you.’ He put a hand on the boy’s bony shoulder.

  ‘Do you mean that I can come with you? You’re not angry any more?’

  ‘No, I’m not.’ The boy dried his tears and covered himself up. They walked silently down the road, holding hands. The sun was rising from behind the hills that sloped down to the sea, casting long shadows over the golden dust on the streets. The sky was filled with swallows.

  *

  The horseman was granted an immediate audience with King Pausanias, who was still awake in his room by the light of a large six-branched candelabrum.

  ‘May the gods preserve your health, sire,’ said the man. ‘I have come to report on the outcome of the mission that was entrusted to me.’

  ‘Sit down,’ answered the king, ‘and speak.’

  ‘Well, sire, everything went according to plan. Young Kleidemos suspected nothing, and entered the temple of his own volition. He spent the entire night there. Unfortunately, however, he revealed nothing of that which you wanted to know. In his drug-induced rapture, he believed that the girl who appeared to him in the temple was a woman that he must have once loved and lost.’

  ‘Did he call her by name?’ asked the king.

  ‘Antinea. He called her Antinea. The girl had no way of really impersonating this woman, because she learned nothing more than her name. The young man seemed to remain in control of a certain part of his consciousness, and she dared not push him further for fear of provoking some violent reaction. The great priestess herself examined him as he entered, and was afraid.’

  ‘Antinea . . .’ murmured the king, bringing his hand to his forehead. ‘She must be a girl from the mountain . . . And he said nothing else that could reveal his state of mind?’

  ‘No, sir. Only words . . . of love,’ replied the man with a touch of embarrassment.

  ‘I understand. All right, you may go. You will receive the sum we agreed upon from my treasurer.’

  The man left, bowing, and the king was left alone to ponder the matter. ‘So the young Kleomenid seems to have no secrets, aside from private, personal matters. Thoughts of love are certainly comprehensible in a young man his age! It’s better this way, all things told – better for what I have in mind for him.’ He would have time, more than enough time, to convince the young man to join him. Kleidemos had no experience of the world he would be living in, after all, and he didn’t have a single friend on the face of the earth.

  15

  ASIA

  PAUSANIAS’ ARMY, PROVISIONED BY the fleet cruising on the Thracian Chersonesus, moved from Byzantium to occupy all the territories north and east of the Sacred Mountain, up to the fields of Salmydessus. For more than three years of campaigns, Kleidemos always acted under the direct orders of the king, even after the Athenians and their allies had assumed command of the naval forces. Day after day, war hardened the young man’s heart, and the iron discipline of the Spartans turned him into a lucid, implacable destroyer. But was this not the will of the gods? An invincible destiny had pushed him to the point of no return and the life he led had banished any innocence or generosity from his heart. The units that he commanded now, the hundreds of men who moved at his orders, had become a monstrous power in his hands. Like an inexorable machine, his battalion swept away any effort at defence and squashed any resistance. But the same fire that devoured the villages, the camps and the houses of the wretches who dared to challenge Sparta was burning up Kleidemos’ tormented soul as well.

  In the evening, he sat under his standard watching the prisoners file by in chains, his whole life reduced to the knowledge that power could – with a single gesture – exterminate countless men, grant them hop
e or administer anguish, torture and death.

  His men called him ‘the Cripple’, but without mockery, without derision. That word expressed all the fear that men feel towards someone who has been stricken by the gods, but not broken. Strange stories circulated about him; after all, no one had ever seen him train in the gymnasiums of Sparta or bathe in the Eurotas river like the rest of them. What were his limbs, that not even the wolves of Taygetus had dared to sink their fangs into them? He was so quick on his feet, his legs were untiring, grey as iron, soiled with blood and sweat. And his hand, always numbly clenching the hilt of his sword. His eyes were so cold. Who was Kleidemos, really?

  The dragon displayed on his shield meant that he was of Kleomenid stock, but he seemed more a son of the grey cliffs of the great mountain . . . or had he been raised by the wolves, its denizens? No one had ever seen him weep, or laugh. Only the soldiers guarding his tent had heard him shout and cry out in his sleep. The women who were brought to him left his tent in tears, stunned, as if they had lain with a monster. The primitive, barbarian lands where he had battled for so long, sowing destruction, had made his soul hard as stone.

  He was ready in the eyes of the king. Ready to move on his own in the immensity that was Asia. Pausanias needed a man who would enforce his will as victor over the Great King, and implement his plan. A plan that would change the destiny of Sparta, as well as the destiny of all Greeks and barbarians.

  There was only one man in the world who could carry it out: Kleidemos. And Pausanias knew how to tie the youth to him indissolubly.

  He had plunged Kleidemos for four years into the hell of a horrifying war, turning him into a death machine. It was time to bring him back to life; to offer him the chance to become human again, to feel those emotions which must still be alive at the bottom of his heart. That was all it would take. He’d have him forever.

  *

  One cold dawn at the end of the winter, Kleidemos was sitting wrapped in his cloak under a solitary oak tree which raised its bare branches towards the grey sky of Thrace. All around him, the damp, deserted countryside sounded with cocks’ crows, although he could see no farmhouses for as far as his gaze would carry.

  He had death on his mind. He had believed that he would fulfil his destiny by resuming his rightful place in the house of the Kleomenids, taking on the legacy of his father Aristarkhos and his brother Brithos. But he had found no glory in what he did: killing, plundering, fornicating – this was the life that Sparta offered him. He had never seen nobility, nor greatness, nor strength of mind in any of those who surrounded him. Perhaps the age of heroes had finished at the Thermopylae with King Leonidas. His life no longer had any meaning.

  Turn back? Where? He thought of the woman he had believed to be his mother for so many years . . . he thought of Antinea . . . he wanted to die. Immediately.

  A damp cold wind blew from the north, lashing at the few dry leaves left on the oak tree. He watched the iron sky blacken, gazed at the putrid countryside around him, the grey, muddy trail. An infinite anguish invaded his soul. He felt profoundly alone in that desolate land: he wished he had a friend with him, someone who could help him die. He drew his sword, slowly, and thought of Kritolaos, the wisest of men. He thought of Antinea’s warm breasts, her deep eyes . . . so many hopes, so many dreams, at the high pasture, on the mountain, on those autumn evenings when the wind rustled the red leaves of the beech trees and the swallows flew off into the distance . . . But was the earth shaking? or was it some distant noise? . . . He knelt, pointing the weapon against his chest . . . But there was something on the horizon, a black spot, moving – and why had the cocks stopped crowing? – He was terrified of the realm of the shadows from which no one returns; he saw Thanatos’ grinning skull . . . A gallop, that’s what the sound was . . . Thanatos Thanatos Thanatos . . . Suddenly, a bolt of lightning twisted free, viper-fast, from the horizon, followed by a clap of thunder. He lifted his sweat-beaded forehead: a horseman. A horseman was drawing closer, spurring on his mount furiously.

  Like a rotting wineskin that suddenly spills its contents, the sky released a downpour of rain, but the horseman kept urging his animal on, belly to the ground. He was waving a hand, shouting, ‘Two-Names!’ He yanked short the bridle, practically downing his horse, and leapt to the ground. Kleidemos had let his sword fall into the mud.

  ‘Two-Names! I’ve found you . . . I’ve found you!’ he shouted, embracing him hard under the rain.

  Kleidemos raised his dripping face. ‘Lahgal, it’s you . . . I can’t believe it! Where have you come from? How did you find me, why are you here?’

  ‘I’ll tell you everything. Listen, I have important news for you; we need to talk. That’s why I was headed towards your camp. But what are you doing here, at this early hour? And so far away from camp?’

  Kleidemos took a deep breath. ‘Nothing. I couldn’t sleep, and I thought I’d take a walk.’

  Lahgal stared at him. ‘You are lying, Two-Names. Your eyes are full of despair . . . and fear. I don’t even know how I recognized you. You’ve changed.’ Kleidemos lowered his gaze. His sword glittered, clean now, under the pouring rain.

  ‘Pick that up,’ said Lahgal, ‘and put it back in its sheath. I really don’t know how I recognized you . . . from so far off, in the rain. Get on behind me, we’ll go to camp together.’

  They started off at a lope down the muddy path. Neither said a word as they rode, until Lahgal broke the silence. ‘I can’t say why, but I feel as though I reached you just in time. I feel like I’ve prevented something terrible from happening. Am I right, Two-Names?’ Kleidemos didn’t answer. ‘Well?’ Lahgal insisted.

  ‘You’re right, Lahgal . . . Thank you for coming.’

  Lahgal turned around. ‘Nice welcome for a friend you haven’t seen in such a long time!’ he teased, smiling. ‘And here I was expecting to be greeted by a fully drawn-up phalanx, with you sparkling in your parade armour!’

  ‘Just wait until we get to camp, and you’ll see that I’ll give you a fine welcome. Right here and now I’m afraid I don’t have much to hand.’ They looked around them and burst out laughing. The rain was abating and a few pale rays pierced the clouds on the horizon. Then the light of the rising sun flooded the earth, enflaming the scattered puddles and covering the sparse bushes in silvery pearls. It saturated the great solitary oak, marking out the figure of a despairing giant, arms bowed, dripping with moss. Kleidemos recalled the day in which Lahgal, just a boy then, sat in front of him as he did now. On the bony back of an ass riding on the hills of Paphos. He was a young man now, in the prime of his years.

  ‘Who sent you here, Lahgal?’ he asked abruptly.

  Lahgal looked at the Spartan camp which was coming into view at the foot of a low hill past a curve in the trail. He said, without turning, ‘Pausanias – the king.’ And he spurred the horse into a gallop.

  *

  ‘The last time I saw you, you were a child. How old are you now, Lahgal?’

  ‘Sixteen, more or less,’ replied the youth.

  ‘From a slave in a public bath to the courier of the King of Sparta in just four years . . . not bad,’ observed Kleidemos. ‘How did you manage it?’

  Lahgal smiled. ‘You are asking me this question, Two-Names? Weren’t you just an unknown Helot shepherd a few years back? You who command a Spartan army and sow terror among the fierce Thracians? The destiny of men is in the hands of the gods . . . But let’s speak of other things. I’ve been in the personal service of Pausanias for two years, and I can tell you that he has followed your every move with great attention. Not a single one of your endeavours has escaped him. He greatly admires your strength and your intelligence, and he needs you by his side for a very important secret mission.’

  ‘What do you know about this?’

  ‘The king does not confide so much in me! But I can tell you that when you’ve accomplished the mission, you’ll be free to return to Sparta and to be reunited with the woman you call mother.’


  Kleidemos was startled. ‘Are you sure of this? It’s not just another trick? What do you know about my mother?’

  ‘She’s alive and enjoys good health, although she is distressed by your absence. She still lives in the mountain cottage. She’s visited by a man at times, a giant of a man, with a beard.’

  Kleidemos was shaken. ‘Karas!’ he thought, trying hard not to betray any emotion.

  ‘Do you know who he is?’ asked Lahgal, watching him closely.

  ‘I may have seen him once or twice, a big man with a beard. I think he’s one of the mountain shepherds. But tell me more about my mother, please!’

  ‘I don’t know anything besides what I’ve already told you. But you will be allowed to take her into your service – in the house of the Kleomenids.’

  Kleidemos grabbed the young man’s hand. ‘Are these truly the words of the king?’

  ‘They are,’ replied Lahgal. ‘You can believe me. I haven’t come all this way to tell you lies.’ He fell silent, looking deep into Kleidemos’ eyes. The glacial light shining there had suddenly caught fire. ‘What must I tell my king?’

  ‘I accept,’ he said without hesitation. ‘I’ll do whatever he wants. Leave immediately, and tell the king—’

  ‘Leave immediately? Is this the hospitality you promised me?’ said Lahgal, laughing. ‘I shouldn’t have hurried!’

  ‘You’re right, I’m behaving terribly but there’s something you must understand: nothing is more terrible than solitude, and these have been the loneliest days of my life. But you haven’t told me, how did all this come to be? How did you enter into the service of the king?’

  ‘Pausanias bought me from my master when the fleet left Cyprus. I’ve always served him as best I could. I learned your dialect and I mastered the language of the Persians. I realized that there was no one the king could trust; he was spied on by his own allies, his own government. So he needed someone who would be absolutely faithful to him. This was my fortune. Little by little, the king assigned me increasingly important tasks, and now he trusts me with even the most sensitive missions. Like coming here to talk to you.’