A Peerless Peer

by Helena P. Schrader

  So on the surface, everything had settled into a comfortable routine. After morning drill he stripped off his panoply, bathed, lunched, did paperwork, and then generally rode to one or another of his properties to check on things, followed by dinner at the syssitia, before going home to his kleros for the night. At thirty-two, he was exempt from sleeping in barracks, and took full advantage of the privilege. The company had two helot runners who in an emergency could reach him in less than half an hour.

  Beggar, stiff-legged and gray at the muzzle, had finally caught up with them, and Leonidas bent to stroke her head and scratch her behind the ears, ignoring Oliantus’ impatience.

  “How old is that bitch?” his deputy asked.

  “I don’t know. I thought she was only a year or two old when she adopted me, but I now suspect she was older. She was probably the runt of a litter, or else the years living wild stunted her growth.”

  “One way or another, she’s stiff and obviously in pain. She certainly slows you down.”

  “I’m not in a hurry.”

  “You have one of the best kennels in Lacedaemon. People from all over the world come here to buy whelps from them—and you go around with a mutt! It doesn’t make sense. Why don’t you select one of your own fine Kastorians?”

  “Because they were born in slavery and know nothing else, but Beggar was born free and gave up her freedom to serve me.”

  They reached the HQ building, and the meleirene guards presented arms as they passed. In the long corridor, the sound of their footsteps echoed until they turned in to the company office. The room was lit by a single window through which light poured, showing the dust swirling in the air. Here they kept the duty rosters and disciplinary records, the inventories of equipment and supplies, and the lists of beasts of burden, vehicles, and everything else that was needed for the operation of the pentekostus. They even had two full-time clerks, perioikoi employees, one for accounting and the other for correspondence and record-keeping. These men were hard at work when the two Spartiate officers arrived.

  The clerks muttered greetings and kept working, while Leonidas and Oliantus propped their spears against the wall and hung their training shields up beside their battle aspis. Leonidas’ aspis, designed by the Thespian craftsman who had taken over his bronzeworks, showed the head of a roaring lion from the front. The relief was exceptionally high, and Leonidas knew the lion’s snarling snout would get badly damaged in any real engagement, but the image had been so beautiful and lifelike he hadn’t had the heart to tell the artist it was unsuitable.

  Leonidas pulled his baldric off over his head and propped up his sword by the door beside the spears. He ran his hand through his long hair. It was almost shoulder length, and he would soon start braiding it like the older men did.

  Oliantus was looking over the documents the clerks had waiting for him. “There is one section that consistently consumes much more wine than the others.”

  “How much more?” Leonidas asked politely, as he bent to untie his sandals.

  “Roughly 20 per cent. Either they are very careless or they drink it almost unmixed—or some of them do.”

  “Hmm. Do you want to talk to them about it?”

  Oliantus looked over at his commander, who kicked his sandals out of the way and started to loosen the cords of his corselet. “You know perfectly well that my talking to them will have little to no effect,” Oliantus said patiently. He was perfectly aware that the bulk of the men in the pentekostus—like his comrades when he was a ranker and his classmates in the agoge—did not pay him much attention. He was not beautiful, in a society that associated beauty with virtue. He was not even particularly brilliant at philosophy or rhetoric or gifted at music, the other skills Spartans admired. And his only attempt at glory had ended in the dust at Olympia a decade earlier. His talents were more pedestrian, and he was glad that Leonidas valued them, but he had no illusions about being respected or admired by the population generally.

  The conversation got no further, because Crius burst into the chamber. “Master! You better come quick!” Crius was one of the company runners, and entitled to burst in on them like this, but Leonidas had never seen him look this agitated. He was glistening with sweat and gasping for breath as if he had just run a long distance.

  “What’s happened?” Leonidas reached immediately for his sword.

  “Dad caught Chryse with an eirene and Mantiklos beat him up—”

  Oliantus burst out laughing and Leonidas put his sword back as they realized this had nothing to do with the company, but was merely a domestic crisis on Leonidas’ kleros. Crius frowned and insisted, “Mom’s afraid we’ll all get in trouble for what Mantiklos has done, and Chryse’s going to raise the dead with her screaming.”

  “All right, I’ll come straight away. Oliantus, if there’s anything urgent, you know where to find me. Crius, when you catch your breath, bring Beggar home with you.” Leonidas re-donned his sandals, then went out to the HQ stables, collected one of his stallions, and set off for his kleros at a good pace.

  Laodice was waiting for him at the head of the drive. He jumped down and led his horse, so she had time to tell him what had happened as they walked together to the house. “It’s Chryse, master. I always suspected it, but I never could quite catch her—she’s been sleeping with an eirene. Pelopidas found them together when he and Mantiklos were behind the mirabelle orchard, checking the fencing.”

  Mantiklos had married the elder of Laodice’s daughters this past summer, and he spent much of his time on the kleros when they were not on maneuvers. Meander had rapidly learned his duties, and Leonidas preferred the young Spartiate as a companion because of his more cheerful temperament.

  “Pelopidas grabbed Chryse and brought her home,” Laodice continued, “but Mantiklos went mad and started beating the eirene, master!” Laodice was clearly horrified by this. “We know he shouldn’t have done it, but Pelopidas didn’t realize what he’d done till Mantiklos dragged the youth home—hogtied, bloody, and vomiting. They’ll kill us, sir. They’ll never believe Pelopidas had nothing to do with it! I’ve never seen Mantiklos like this before, either! He’s gone completely mad.”

  Leonidas nodded. He remembered that a couple of years earlier Mantiklos had courted a girl who preferred a meleirene, and he was bitterly resentful of the liberties young Spartiates took with helots. Furthermore, while Pelopidas and Laodice had come to think of themselves as Lacedaemonian, even Laconian, Mantiklos still clung to his identity as a Messenian and saw Pelopidas’ family as Messenian, too. For Mantiklos, this was a matter of national as well as family pride.

  As they approached the house they heard Chryse’s high-pitched screaming. Although it was somewhat muffled, the pitch was hair-raising. “I’ve locked her in the workshed, master; otherwise I don’t know what she would have done. Pelopidas will take a horsewhip to her, I promise you, sir. We’ll make sure she knows she’s done wrong, but we have to get the eirene out of here first—only Mantiklos won’t let us! If the magistrates find out—”

  “I’ll take care of the magistrates,” Leonidas assured her. “Don’t worry about that.”

  They entered the kitchen courtyard, where the sound of Chryse’s screaming was louder and Pelopidas and Polychares were both arguing with Mantiklos—who stood over a naked youth stretched out on the ground with his hands and feet tied together behind him, while Kleon gaped at them all.

  “Mantiklos!”

  “This bastard was misusing Chryse! It’s against the law, master! I want to see him in the stocks! I want to see you enforce the law!”

  “So that’s what this is all about.” Leonidas met the Messenian’s eye. They stared at one another. They both knew that the law against misuse of helots was a fine Lycurgan tradition—one that few Spartiates nowadays had any particular interest in enforcing.

  “You’re always preaching the law,” Mantiklos told him with narrowed eyes. “Telling me that Sparta wouldn’t treat Messenians badly if we didn’t gi
ve you cause. I want more than words this time! I want to see you stand up for the law—your own law.”

  “First I have to establish the facts. Stand back and set the eirene free.”

  Mantiklos did this readily, because he no longer had any fear that the youth would escape. The eirene might have fled from helots, but he could not run from a Spartan Peer, much less a company commander.

  As soon as the bonds came loose, the youth struggled to right himself. He was bleeding from his nose and mouth, and one of his eyes was starting to swell up. He had bruises on his stomach, too, and streaks of vomit and other fluids over his thighs. Leonidas nodded toward the horse trough: “Clean yourself up, eirene.” Then he called Kleon over to take his horse around to the stables and sent Laodice to get a chiton for the youth to put on. While the eirene washed himself off, Leonidas went to the door of the workshed and called out: “Chryse! This is Leonidas. The longer you scream, the longer your lover will stand in the pits. Do you understand me?”

  The screaming stopped instantly.

  The youth pulled the chiton on over his wet body and, at a gesture from Leonidas, went through the colonnade into the main house. Leonidas led him to the hearth room, which looked out onto the inner courtyard but was darker and more sober. “First tell me who you are,” Leonidas ordered.

  “Temenos, son of Kephistodotos.”

  Leonidas had heard the name Kephistodotos, but it meant nothing to him. As for Temenos himself, Leonidas had no memory of ever encountering him before. He was not a particularly handsome young man—but not notably ugly, either. He was thin, as most eirenes were, and his hair, just starting to grow out, was fair, his eyes gray. “What do you have to say for yourself?” Leonidas asked next, expecting the usual excuses about the girl being just a “helot slut” who had been eager for the trinkets or food he brought her.

  “I love Chryse, sir.”

  “What?”

  “I would marry her if the laws allowed; but since they don’t, I will not marry anyone else.”

  Leonidas decided there was no point in arguing with such nonsense. So he went on to the next issue. “I don’t want you to press charges against my attendant. He had no right to do what he did, but public humiliation will only make him more sullen and resentful.”

  “All right, sir—if you promise me you won’t harm Chryse.”

  “You insolent puppy!” Leonidas snapped back. “I’ll do what I damn well please with my helots!”

  “Chryse always claimed that you were different, sir—that you didn’t treat her and her family like property. I’m sorry to learn she misjudged you.”

  The audacity of the answer took Leonidas’ breath away. He would never have dared talk to a Peer like this when he was an eirene! “I said I’ll do what I damn well please—that doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll harm anyone. But what her parents do to her is a different matter. Her mother is very angry.”

  “Her mother doesn’t understand. Sir.”

  “Her mother is the smartest one in the whole family,” Leonidas snapped back.

  “But she wants Chryse to marry some helot. Sir.”

  “Of course. As your parents want you to marry a Spartiate.”

  “My parents couldn’t care less what I do. Sir.” The bitterness of the answer shook Leonidas, and he looked more sharply at the youth.

  “I don’t believe you,” Leonidas told him, watching for the reaction.

  The youth shrugged. “Go ask them, sir. But you may have to repeat my name several times before they even remember who I am.”

  “Where are your boys, and how old are they?”

  “Thirteen-year-olds, sir. It’s the Phouxir.”

  “Ah, of course.” Leonidas had forgotten. That explained, however, how an eirene had time for “courting” in the middle of the day.

  “All right. Dismissed.”

  “Sir?”

  “Yes?”

  “I meant what I said.”

  “What?”

  “That I love Chryse, sir.”

  “Love is a dangerous emotion. Haven’t your instructors taught you to curb it?”

  “I won’t give her up, sir.”

  “She isn’t yours to give up.”

  “She is the mother of my child, sir.”

  “She doesn’t have a child.”

  “She is carrying mine, sir.”

  “Then you have much to fear.”

  “Sir!”

  “What?”

  “Don’t demean yourself with the blood of an infant!”

  “You would be wise to leave before you say something else to harm your case.”

  “Yes, sir.” The youth exited very promptly, but Leonidas followed him out, and before he could stop to say something through the window of the workshed, Leonidas called out after him: “Go now, Temenos! And don’t come back without my permission!”

  The eirene fled, and Leonidas told Pelopidas to unlock the shed and let him in. Chryse was sitting on the floor, clutching her knees and sobbing. Leonidas shut the door behind him and leaned against it with his arms crossed.

  Chryse looked up at him. “Please don’t punish him, master! What has he done wrong? The others do it all the time. Everyone does it! Why am I the only one who’s not supposed to do it? Why is everyone against us?” She had raised her voice to a wail again, and the tears gushed down her face.

  She wasn’t exactly pretty in her present state, with her hair in disarray, twigs and leaves still clinging to her chiton, and her eyes and nose red, swelling, and running. But she was pretty, Leonidas knew. She was pretty and she was bright, and she was usually full of laughter. It was hard to see her like this, and he suspected Pelopidas would soften, too—long before he whipped her. “Temenos can’t marry you. He will marry a Spartiate maiden, in ten to eleven years at the latest.”

  “But he can be mine until then!” Chryse insisted. “We can be happy until then! What’s so wrong with that? Why do you begrudge us even a little happiness?”

  That sounded more like Mantiklos than Pelopidas, and Leonidas wondered if it was wise to let the rebellious helot spend so much time here. Indeed, why keep him on at all, now that he had Meander? He was a bad influence. To Chryse he said: “I don’t begrudge you a little happiness. As long as you assure me that Temenos never used force against you, the matter is closed as far as I am concerned.”

  “Of course he didn’t use force! The other bastards would have, but he drove them off! He’s the kindest, gentlest young man in the world! Mom doesn’t understand anything! She thinks that only marriage is important—even if your husband treats you like dirt! I’d rather be Temenos’ whore than be married to some stinking helot! Most of them are stupid and brutal and cruel! Temenos isn’t like them at all!”

  “All right,” Leonidas said, opened the door, and walked out.

  Pelopidas and Laodice were waiting anxiously in the courtyard. “What do you want us to do with her, master?”

  “Nothing. At least not on my account. You must do as you see fit as her parents. But she has committed no crime. And nor has Temenos, Mantiklos,” he continued, raising his voice to reach the Messenian sulking around the trough. “I can’t enforce a law that hasn’t been broken. In fact, the only one who has broken any law here this afternoon is you—by attacking the eirene without cause, as it seems. Do you really want me to insist on the full enforcement of the law?”

  Mantiklos growled something and stalked out of the courtyard.

  “I don’t like him living here,” Pelopidas said as soon as Mantiklos was out of hearing. “Can’t you send him back to Messenia?”

  Laodice caught her breath, and Leonidas glanced at her. “If I send Mantiklos back to a job as overseer or the like in Messenia—which is what he’s been after for a long time—he’d take your elder daughter with him. Is that what you want?”

  Pelopidas frowned, and Laodice answered, “Let us talk about it among ourselves.”

  Leonidas nodded. “I’m overdue for a bath.” He went aroun
d to the back of the house, collected his stallion, and headed for the city.

  He was only halfway to the bridge when he ran into Alkander riding toward him. “I was coming to visit you,” Alkander announced.

  “Ah, the Phouxir’s just started.” Leonidas explained to himself how Alkander had time to come calling in the middle of the day.

  “Yes; I’ve been doing some spot checks on relatives and the like.”

  Leonidas added, “I’m in desperate need of a bath. Will you join me?”

  Without protest, Alkander turned around and fell in beside Leonidas, asking conversationally, “Does Laodice have everything secured this year?”

  Leonidas laughed. When the Messenian family had first arrived in Laconia, they had had no idea about the Spartan custom of making the thirteen-year-old boys live outside of society for forty days. She had been completely unprepared for night raids on her pantry by half-starving teenagers, and had lost almost the whole of her pantry stores before she contacted Leonidas in a desperate panic. Leonidas had explained the custom to her and provided wooden bolts for the pantry door and windows. “What she wants to protect, she does. But she leaves some things out for the boys.”

  Alkander laughed, and then concluded, “She’s a good woman.” Then he cleared his throat awkwardly, and Leonidas braced himself for another lecture on his bachelor status. “Have you ever thought of marrying your niece?” Alkander asked, not daring to look at Leonidas as he spoke.

  “My niece?” Leonidas gaped at his friend. Alkander and Hilaira had tried to draw his attention to one maiden after another over the years, but this was really getting ridiculous. “Of course I haven’t thought about marrying my niece! She’s barely out of girlhood, and I can just imagine what my brother Cleomenes would say!”

  “She’s seventeen, actually, and the problem is your brother.” Alkander still wasn’t looking at him; but he was so pointedly looking away that Leonidas drew up sharply, making Alkander stop, too, and look at him questioningly.