The Isle of Stone

3

Though she dreaded it, Andreia was prepared for word of her husband’s death. But what was she to do with news that he was a prisoner?

The helots were removed from her household the day after the Gerousia demoted Antalcidas. She was eight months pregnant and already quite large; being reluctant to leave Melitta alone in the house, she fretted over what to do with the child when she went to the springhouse or on market days. But the girl, who was perceptive beyond her few years, laid a small hand on her mother’s arm and begged, “Let me carry too!”

At the market, Andreia felt a sharp plunge in the social temperature. She overheard snatches of whispered conversation around her-phrases like “poor Thibron,” “he stole the credit from Praxitas,” and, of course, the epithet Antalcidas’ own mother had once used against him, “the shame of Sparta.” Some voices were less subtle: under-thirties felt license to murmur lewd insults as they passed, and her bread-seller made her burn with humiliation by proclaiming, loudly enough for all to hear, that he didn’t sell to the families of tremblers.

She wrote to her father for advice. Ramphias, who usually replied to her letters in rapid order, took a week to respond, and then only by sending her two of his own helots to keep her house. “Has he given you any message for me?” she asked them. The helots shook their heads.

Her consignment to oblivion took time to sink in, and had a curious effect when it did. For all her years she had looked with ambivalence at her membership in the community. To be a Spartan seemed something petty, parochial. Of her fellow Lacedaemonians, her feelings had always been divided between pity and contempt; when she learned of the civilized pursuits of Athens or Thebes, she was convinced that she was literally mislaid by Fortune-born into a tribe for which she was not intended. Antalcidas, who accepted her as she was, would listen to her opinions and look at her as if she had dropped out of the sky. Would it ever occur to him to feel so detached from his people? She thought not.

Yet, to be a true outsider was something for which she was completely unprepared. When she appeared in the street and was made to feel like nothing more than a ghost, she shed tears like a young girl shunned by her schoolmates. She conceived an irrational attachment to roads, buildings, and statues she had barely looked at before. Avoided by all those she respected, she found herself respecting everyone. She fell to such depths that she worried for the son within her, thinking that he might somehow partake of her sadness, and be tormented by low feelings for the rest of his life.

She knew only one person who might have influence over the powers that had condemned her husband. When she left to find Damatria, she considered leaving Melitta behind, but thought the girl’s presence could only help her suit. And so they went off together just after sunup, in overcloaks with heads wrapped, as an autumn haze lay over the fallow fields. It was a short walk to her mother-in-law’s house-just out to the wagon road, over a small hill, and right at the cobbled way. As she made her way slowly, rehearsing in her mind what she might say, she saw a group of six young women approach from the other direction.

They all seemed to be late teenagers, barefooted, dressed in short tunics and hair tied back with fillets, as if on their way to exercise in the gymnasium. As the distance closed between them, Andreia perceived the exact moment when they recognized her: she saw that look, that resentment of her existence on the public roads, that she had seen in the faces of a hundred others. Partly out of shame, partly to save herself the pain, she had learned to avert her eyes. Yet something made her keep staring back this time-something about Melitta’s presence, perhaps, that made Andreia slow to abase herself. She locked eyes with the evident leader of the group, the tall, long-faced, sharpkneed girl around whom the others seemed to orbit. The face-off continued until they were abreast of each other.

“What are you looking at, coward’s wife?” the leader asked.

Andreia, startled at such brazen disrespect, could say nothing at first. One of the other girls, whose features hinted that she might be the leader’s sister, put a hand on the other’s arm.

“Leonis, let’s go.”

“Shame on you, Gorgo!” said Leonis. “Don’t you want to know why a breeder of tremblers goes around with her head up?”

Andreia was so furious that she forgot her circumstances. “How dare you address your elder so impertinently!” she snapped. “What kind of mother raised you?”

“A mother of brave Spartiates raised me, whore.”

Without thinking, Andreia slapped the girl across the left cheek. “That’s for showing disrespect in front of my daughter,” she said.

Leonis turned to give her sister a single glance. Gorgo reacted with dread, as if having seen this look before.

The girl’s fist landed on Andreia’s temple, knocking her backward. Andreia fell hard, landing with a sharp rock square in her back. Through the pain, a memory flashed before her: an incident many years before, when she was beaten in the gymnasium by a girl one year her senior. Spartan schoolgirls were not encouraged to brawl by their elders-it was something they seemed to do because they wanted to. Just like in school, the other girls gathered around in a circle, their purpose as much to screen the fight from view as to watch it. Only Gorgo hung back.

Leonis was kicking Andreia indiscriminately around the neck and face. Melitta, frightened, let loose a scream. Between blows Andreia begged, “Hold my child! Don’t hurt my child!” Gorgo picked up Melitta and walked some distance away, holding the girl’s face away from the spectacle.

Leonis cried, “Bitch of a trembler, beg my pardon!”

Andreia uncovered her face, and fixing her eyes on Leonis again, made clear she would not beg. Meanwhile, the other girls shouted out encouragements to Leonis-“In the belly! Hit her in the belly!” Leonis reared back and kicked Andreia hard in her swollen abdomen. Having underestimated the toughness of it, her bare foot recoiled hard from the blow. She planted herself and tried again, striking just under the navel. The impact seemed to reverberate through Andreia’s insides; she soiled herself as her bladder gave way. Then Leonis hit her again, and again, until it felt as if her baby’s body was spinning within her, trying in his own way to avoid the blows. Melitta was still screaming in Gorgo’s arms as Gorgo begged her sister to stop; couldn’t she see that the woman was pregnant? Leonis shifted her wrath back at Andreia’s face, landing a kick that cut her cheek and broke her nose.

A pair of eyes stared at the melee through cracked shutters. The eyes withdrew into the darkness within; Damatria sat on the stairs to the women’s quarters, listening but not intervening. She thought about Andreia’s fair good looks when they first met, and her expertise with herbs. When, she asked herself, had she conceived such a hatred for the girl? Never, came the reply: she had no right to interfere in the beating, because it was the prerogative of decent citizens to discipline the families of tremblers. The fault was Antalcidas’, for putting his wife in that position. There were other considerations too-her newfound honor in the community as the mother of a hero, for one. Nor could she deny that Antalcidas’ disgrace had discouraged her charitable feelings toward him and his family. If not for Epitadas’s sacrifice, everything she had worked for would have been for nothing. The thought frightened her.

She stood up and ascended the stairs. The girl would survive, of course; someone would put a stop to it. Everyone knew that Sparta needed spears.

Sure enough, the pummeling stopped when a male voice rang out: “What is this shame? You children, leave her alone!”

An ancient Spartiate, happening by on his way to Limnae, stood there shaking his staff in admonishment. Leonis, who was as submissive before her male elders as she was domineering to low-class females, backed away from the prone Andreia.

“Put the brat down, Gorgo,” she said. “We don’t want to be late to the gymnasium!”