The Isle of Stone

11.

The lady Damatria laid out Antalcidas on the same table where her youngest was honored a few short years before. Equals from all over Laconia came to marvel at her good fortune: to have a husband acquit himself well in battle was worthy enough, and to see him followed by a heroic son like Epitadas a true bounty. But to live to savor the glory of a second son was a rare thing indeed. With the victory at Mantinea, she became the most envied woman in Sparta. Instead of being known as “Damatria the Grasping” or “Damatria, Queen of Bitches,” she earned a new epithet among her peers in Kynosoura: “Damatria the Thrice-Blessed.”

She sat by the garlanded head of the corpse with a handkerchief to daub away the tears that could not come. No one could blame her, for what was there to cry about? She received her admirers all in turn-the two kings of Sparta, Agis and Pleistoanax, and Ramphias, the former governor of Cythera, and old Endius, the boy-herd, and the packmates Redhead, Cheese, and Rehash, and all the members of the Hill Wolves. She knew that all of them had shunned Antalcidas when he was alive, but had rushed to see him when they learned the manner of his death. She wondered, would he have forgiven them? Of course he would! The boy was such a fool-he lacked the wits even to keep a secret grudge. She kissed her fingers and laid them along her son’s cold temple. No one ever claimed he was sprung from good stock.

But he had served his mother well in another sense. She had been sitting there all morning, accepting the gifts of cake and good wishes from people she relished despising, when she realized she had not imagined the face of that helot all day. At some point she had not been aware, the rape had ceased to dominate her thoughts. It was a memory now-painful to be sure, which she loathed to dwell upon-but a memory nonetheless. Somehow repaired now, she loosed a tear for Antalcidas’ sake. She would invite Andreia and her little girl to live with her in her big house.

“Rejoice, for you have given your last child to Sparta!” old Isidas, the ex-ephor, told her. Wetting his ancient lips through their thicket of beard hairs, he asked, “So, do you still think him ‘the shame of Sparta?’ ”

Damatria smiled. “Not at all. Both of my sons were good boys. They have exceeded their fathers.”