The Isle of Stone

5.

The hunters bounded through the undergrowth in breechcloths and buskins, their eyes showing the same lethal fixity Lacedaemonians always brought to the killing business. The boar, which had been on the run for more than an hour, had tried to slip away into a thyme thicket. The scent raised by its movements betrayed its position to the other hunters standing downwind, their spears ready. Whooping and clapping slats of wood together, pulling their line together into a moving wedge that would further confine their prey, the helot beaters drove the animal downhill.

A gloom fell as a storm front rose over Taygetus, frowned, and loosed a steady rain on the foothills. The hunters waited visorless, drying their eyes with forearms spotted with blood drawn by brambles and the resinous bark of pines. Epitadas listened to the cacophony descending toward him, with the boar somewhere ahead. A willow nearby caught the edge of the unsettled air and seemed to sigh over the bloodletting to come.

“Epitadas, take my shield side,” commanded Ramphias, though he held no shield and Epitadas was not obliged to follow his commands. With his deep, stentorian voice and round-faced jollity, the old governor had the charm of everyone’s favorite uncle. Epitadas took position on his left.

“But where is my future son-in-law?” Ramphias asked.

“Antalcidas follows his own commands.”

The governor had organized the hunt to acquaint himself with the family of his daughter’s betrothal. With the patriarch an invalid, he paid his respects to the widow with mixed feelings: the lady Damatria controlled a vast estate, but there was also something not quite couth about her, with her unflinching gaze and her Asian embarrassment of jewels. Oddly, she confessed to know nothing of Antalcidas’ intentions, yet she was far from irate at her ignorance. She showed only the most perfunctory interest in the qualities of the woman who would share her son’s house. Her biggest concern, it seemed, was over whether Ramphias had any other daughters who might suit her youngest.

The brother struck him as exactly the kind of young man of which the city needed more. Good-looking, fearless by all accounts, and hungry for approval, Epitadas already understood all the code words of Spartan political discourse, such as “security” (domination), “piety” (license), and “patriotism” (when to shut up). He knew how to laugh at the right jokes, and wink at the wrong ones. Truth be told, he wished Andreia was worthy of a groom of his quality, but when it came to disposing of daughters, one couldn’t be particular.

His first impressions were not changed by their experience on the hunt. Epitadas knew how to flatter and how to accept the generosity of his betters. He knew to stay on the shield side of his host, and would certainly allow the older man the honor of the kill. Antalcidas, by contrast, was a cipher; at the campfire he said nothing, and on the trail he tended to wander off with no warning. Ramphias had heard that he had acquitted himself well in battle. If this was the best of the new generation, the governor thought, then Lacedaemon was in serious trouble.

He heard a commotion in the buckthorn above; something was charging, heavy-footed but fast, up the slope. In the instant before they charged after it, he met eyes with Epitadas: both knew that the boar was backtracking on the beaters, who had begun to scatter in fear. In another moment the animal would break through their line and escape.

Ramphias followed the younger man over a goat trail in the direction of the melee. The noise reached a climax just as Epitadas glimpsed a gathering of helots through the brush. Bushwhacking, it seemed to take an eternity as the action unfolded in obscurity ahead of them. “Stand fast, boys!” the governor cried as he tore his spear from vines that seemed to reach out to entangle the point. “Don’t let him through! We’re coming!”

They broke into a small clearing ringed with vertical cypress. Like the trees, the beaters were standing quietly in a circle. Epitadas stopped, allowing his host to take command of his servants; Ramphias plunged ahead, expecting to hear excuses about how the boar was allowed to slip away. But when the helots parted for him he saw the boar was not gone, but lying dead at Antalcidas’ feet.

“What happened?” the governor asked, his voice laced with more disappointment than he could help.

This man who would marry his daughter was in the center, still out of breath, with the ashwood shaft of his spear-the one Zeuxippos had given him-broken in his right hand. The rest of the weapon was sunk into the neck of the boar, which lay in a slick of its own blood like a great ship aground on the rocks. Its mouth was open in midgasp; the tongue a wine-colored bulb, tusks gleaming, great ears spread wide like the wings of some bristle-haired bird. The boar’s legs, meanwhile, were bent in an almost delicate posture, as if he had just stooped to nuzzle some tender morsel in the dirt.

Ramphias regarded Antalcidas. The latter was still out of breath, his eyes flashing white as his excitement ebbed. The governor could see that he was clenching his left hand in a fist, and that it was bleeding-probably because the boy had gripped the spear too far up the shaft as the boar thrashed on the point. But such injuries were part of the reward for hunting boar on foot. It was a good kill, it seemed; one he would have been glad to witness.

They agreed that it would be best to send the boar to the table of the Eurypontid king as he prepared to lead the invasion of Attica. Ramphias’ servants had brought in enough other game to sustain them in camp: a dozen hares, a red deer fawn, and a stork. As the three of them sat around the fire, metalware chimed from the governor’s tent as the valet made the preparations, Antalcidas looked up and saw the glow of a half dozen Spartiate camps scattered across the lap of Taygetus. A constellation of five more twinkled on Parnes across the valley. A twelfth flame, a reflection of their own, danced in the eyes of the boar as it hung otherwise invisible in the gloom.

“Crowded up here tonight,” Ramphias remarked at the distant fires. Indeed, there seemed to be more citizens in the mountains than in the city, which looked dark by comparison. But Antalcidas knew that this was an illusion; the cressets on the ridge of the Acropolis were only obscured by trees, and the wives of Laconia were almost certainly not idle that hour. In all, the view comforted him-a Spartan cosmos to mirror the immortal one above.

They served the stork first, roasted with a sauce of rue, pepper, raisins, and honey. This was a finer sort of dining than he had ever known in the city-so good that, in other contexts, it would qualify as subversive. Yet it was not uncommon for Spartiates to eat better on the trail than at home. It was the guilty little secret behind their passion for hunting.

After stripping the bones Ramphias and Epitadas discussed another sort of gratification. The governor’s second wife, it seemed, was quite a bit younger than he, yet had failed to bless his house with a boy. Proceeding elliptically, as if he was stalking a large bear, Ramphias worked his way around to a proposition:

“… If you value your manhood you should avoid the trap of bureaucracy… With every dispatch I write I can feel my balls shrinking… The Cytherans are on the sea-lanes, so they are too close to the Asians… I’ve heard it on good authority that they prefer to chew their wives’ privates… climate most dispiriting. .. we need a little new blood in the house…”

As he took the governor’s meaning, Antalcidas felt an impulse to recede into the darkness. Ramphias, misreading him, raised a hand to reassure him. “Not that I wouldn’t ask you to stand in for me, dear son… though we feel you are already a part of the family, so you can understand, I think!”

“What is your wife called?” Epitadas asked.

“Arete-and I think you will find her quality befits the name. She came to me genuinely spotless.”

Epitadas looked into the fire, betraying no sense of surprise or anticipation, his perfect ease saving the moment from awkwardness. It was as if the governor had asked him to borrow his sharpening stone. In fact, his cocksmanship had become something of legend among the older Spartiates, many of whom turned to their younger countrymen as need arose. Epitadas’ looks and connections made him a popular choice.

“As for your elder brother here, I say we can expect great things. Don’t worry about losing that old spear, my boy-I’ll find you a better one from my own collection. One that has pierced the hides of a few helots over the years, you can be sure!”

He clapped a hand on Antalcidas’ shoulder, meaning to praise him honestly. Yet as Ramphias rhapsodized over the old-fashioned helot-hunting that was once so popular, a vault seemed to be sealed behind the young man’s eyes. It was too late-as the excitement of his kill receded, he faded beyond reach again. Ramphias then understood, as surely as he knew anything, that while he and Antalcidas might become aligned by marriage, it would never be as friends.