Spartan (38 page)

He reined in his horse as if taken by fright and was about to turn back, when his curiosity overcame his fear and he decided to continue up. The dying sun still cast a slight glow at the
mountain’s peak. The circle of walls must be incredibly ancient; he could tell by the huge, barely squared-off boulders that formed their base. When he finally made it to the top, it was
pitch black. He entered the city, passing through one of the gates, of which only the jambs remained: the architrave lay on the ground, broken in two. He moved forward amidst the ruins and
strangely felt no fear, despite the terrifying tales he’d often heard told as a boy about this cursed and sacred place. Under those stones, in some dank underground chamber, slept King
Aristodemus: he who had once gripped the great horn bow.

He returned to the wall and tried to find a niche where he could shelter for the night along with his horse. He would have liked to light a fire as the Thracians had taught him, by rubbing
together two very dry pieces of wood, but he could find nothing but a few damp twigs. ‘This is how superstitions are born,’ he thought to himself. ‘If I had managed to light a
fire, who knows what story a shepherd down at the bottom of the valley would invent, seeing a flickering light amidst the ruins of the dead city!’

He took his blanket from the horse and covered himself as best he could. The moon was rising and he could see the stretch of ruins well; it must have once been a large, thriving city. It had
surely been abandoned since time immemorial and no one had ever dared to rebuild it after its destruction. He thought of Kritolaos, of Karas, of all those who had always hoped for the liberation of
the mountain people. The massacre at Cape Taenarum filled him with despair. What an answer to such great hopes! The only true possibility of a great change had died along with Pausanias; the
king’s plan would have had a chance, had he managed to overthrow the city institutions with the backing of the equals, and perhaps with the outside support of the Athenians. But now it was
completely doomed; Themistocles had been exiled and the conservative Athenian government was friendly with the ephors who exercised strong influence over King Pleistarchus, the son of Leonidas, and
his young colleague Archidamus. Both were valorous but had no experience, and would have great trouble freeing themselves from the grip of the elders and ephors. And yet the memory of how the city
of Ithome had fallen had kept alive the pride of the Helots and the hope of Kritolaos.

Kleidemos curled under the blanket to sleep, but other thoughts began to throng into his mind. Distant words, phrases that echoed within him, faded images that seemed to come to life. That
tremendous dream he’d had as a boy when he fell asleep clutching the bow of the King to his chest. The oracle of the Pythia Perialla; Karas’ reminder of her revelation as they stood on
the battlefield of Plataea with his exhortation: ‘Remember these words, Talos, son of Sparta and son of your people, the day that you shall see me again.’ And that day couldn’t be
so far off now. The words of Kritolaos as he lay dying: ‘A man blind in one eye will come to you; he can remove the curse from the sword of the King.’ What could he have meant by
that?

And the inscription on Ismene’s tomb . . . who had added those lines? What could they mean? What was the precious gift they referred to? Perhaps the life of Brithos, that King Leonidas,
the Lion of Sparta, had wanted to save? But the king had died in combat at the Thermopylae. There were no survivors among the Spartans. No one, save Brithos and Aghias, returned alive from the
Thermopylae . . . No one could have known the will of the king.

Weariness began to weigh on Kleidemos’ eyelids, and he abandoned himself to sleep within the walls of Ithome, the dead city. He seemed to see – or maybe he was just dreaming –
a small camp fire . . . Brithos asleep . . . Aghias nodding off, a shadow approaching . . . bending over Brithos as if to take something from him, then slinking off. O most powerful gods! The
message of the king! The message of the king had been stolen!

He started to a sitting position. Everything seemed suddenly clear: the gift of King Leonidas that Ismene’s funerary inscription alluded to must have been the life of Brithos (and perhaps
his own as well?). The king had wanted to save Brithos’ life. He had given him a companion, Aghias, as his escort, a Helot (just what had the king truly known about that Helot, Talos the
cripple?), and a message. A message to be delivered to the ephors and elders. Just what had that message said? No one had ever told him. When they were fighting together in Phocis and Boeotia,
Brithos himself had admitted that the message had always remained shrouded in mystery. And Brithos had always wondered why the rumour had spread that he and Aghias had intrigued to save their own
lives, abandoning their comrades at the Thermopylae. Why hadn’t the ephors ever done anything to deny those rumours? It was even said that the scroll was blank, but this made no sense at all:
King Leonidas would have had no reason to send an empty message to Sparta.

Unless the scroll had been stolen and replaced . . . that night, near their campfire. Whoever inscribed those last lines on Ismene’s tomb seemed to be aware of the last will of King
Leonidas, surely set down in the true message that Brithos and Aghias were carrying to Sparta. And now, his testament – hinted at in the words carved into the tomb of his mother – cried
out to the last of the Kleomenids . . . or to Talos the Wolf. But who could have seen that message and carved those words into the stone? One of the elders? An ephor? It all seemed impossible.

All at once he no longer felt sure that he had seen someone stealing close to Brithos that night; perhaps he had just dreamt it. Could he no longer distinguish dream from reality?

He hoped that the night might still bring him a little rest, and he stopped racking his brains; he would have to wait until he returned to Sparta to seek an answer. The ground he was lying on
was dry and the big woollen blanket kept him warm. He drowsed again. The wind had eased and the place was immersed in deep silence. A sudden beating of wings: the birds of prey were rising from the
ruins in search of food, soaring through the darkness.

The neighing of his horse woke him abruptly shortly before dawn: the animal was nervous, as if something had spooked him. He was pawing the ground with his hooves and blowing hard out of his
nostrils. As Kleidemos was getting up to calm him, he reared and attempted to break free, clearly terrified. Kleidemos looked all around but saw nothing. He approached the horse, calling out to him
and slackening the reins he had tied to a bush. He tried to pet his muzzle but the bay showed no signs of calming down; if anything, he was increasingly upset. Kleidemos picked up his blanket while
holding tight to the reins, and dragged the horse away from the walls.

At that moment he heard a dull rumble, a suffocated roar coming from under the ground. He was afraid: all the stories he’d heard about that place as a little boy suddenly seemed credible,
and he was sorry he had ever set foot there. As he tried to pull his horse down the hill, he heard another roar and he felt the earth tremble. A light shock at first, then a strong, prolonged
tremor that made him sway. A much harder shock made him fall to the ground with his horse, who nearly crushed him. As he rolled down the muddy path he heard the crash of the ruins; raising his
head, he saw huge boulders tumbling to the ground from the top of the walls and the towers. The earth trembled again, shaking beneath him, and more stones gave way, raising great billows of dust;
the gods were destroying what was left of Ithome while huge leaden clouds, swollen with rain, gathered above.

A bolt of lightning darted among the livid cloudbanks, illuminating the mountain with a blinding light, chased by a thunderous roar. More bolts swiftly followed, flattening the ghostly shadows
of the bulwarks and bastions onto the ground. Peal upon peal of thunder cracked with such a din that it seemed that the earth would split open and swallow up the city.

Kleidemos stood petrified, contemplating the scene, certain that the undermined walls would tumble down on him and bury him. Just for a moment; then he turned and ran down the slope as fast as
he could, stumbling and falling again and again, filthy with mud, elbows and knees bleeding. He finally reached the base of the mountain and called his horse. The steed raced over with his reins
tangled between his legs and Kleidemos jumped into the saddle, spurring him on furiously. The animal galloped forward, whipping the air with his tail, blowing huge clouds of steam from his dilated
nostrils, his pupils widening with every bolt of lightning that flashed on the road. His horseman continued to urge him along the narrow trail at a mad pace as the rain began to fall. Gusts of wind
swept over the deserted road and the rain turned into a downpour, but Kleidemos drove him on as if out of his mind until he heard the horse’s breath coming in short pants and he began to pull
in the reins to slow him down.

Leaving the storm behind him, he slowed the drenched, sweaty animal to a walk. He crossed a village, and then another; everywhere he witnessed scenes of terrified people digging with their hands
through the ruins of their homes or chasing after the animals who had mown down their pens and were frantically running through the fields.

In the late afternoon, exhausted and starving, he reached Gathaei and then, towards evening, Belemina, both devastated by the earthquake. He realized that as he neared Laconia the effects of the
earthquake worsened. The wooden houses were still standing, but the stone structures had crumbled under the force of the shocks. Everywhere weeping women and bewildered men wandered among the
debris or dug through the rubble. Children screamed in despair, calling parents who were perhaps buried forever in the wreckage of their homes. Kleidemos slept a few hours in a hayloft, crushed by
fatigue and anguish, and then set off again in the direction of Macistus, stopping every now and then to let his horse rest. He was fearful of what might have happened to his house, to his mother.
It was clear that the earthquake had struck most of the Peloponnese and he couldn’t even be sure that Pelias and Antinea’s home had not been destroyed. Macistus appeared to be
devastated as well and he saw hundreds of corpses lined up along the roads, more being added constantly as the survivors succeeded in opening a passage between the demolished houses.

He stopped a couple of horsemen who were arriving at full gallop from the southern road. ‘Where are you from?’ he shouted at them.

‘From Tegea. Who are you?’

‘I am Kleidemos, son of Aristarkhos, Spartan. What news is there of my city?’

‘All bad,’ replied one of the men, shaking his head. ‘Most of the houses have collapsed or are precarious. There have been thousands of deaths. All able-bodied men have been
asked to help in the rescue efforts and ensure order in the city. Many of the elders are dead, as are several of the ephors. Confusion is rampant.’

‘The kings?’

‘King Archidamus is alive; one of my comrades saw him near the acropolis, where he has set up headquarters. I know nothing of King Pleistarchus.’

‘Where are you directed now?’

‘North to seek help, in Arcadia, even in Achaea if necessary. But we’ve found naught but death and ruin. We met two royal guards headed towards Sicyon and Corinth in search of aid.
Amyclae has been levelled to the ground; Gytheum is almost completely destroyed. Make haste if you have any of your family at Sparta, because the city is devastated.’ They galloped off
towards the north while Kleidemos spurred his mount in the opposite direction.

Along the road he encountered columns of refugees with carts and pack animals. Groups of horsemen raced by, covered with mud, whipping their horses and shouting in the attempt to make their way
among that homeless multitude. He left Sellasia behind him, ravaged by the disaster, and reached the banks of the Eurotas, in full flood; in just a few hours he would be in Sparta, if his horse
could only endure the strain. The generous animal devoured the road, his belly to the ground, stretching his head rhythmically forward and arching his powerful neck. Kleidemos had to slow him down
every so often so that his heart would not burst.

The marks of destruction lay all around him, terrible and dramatic; the closer he got to the city, the more he saw villages reduced to piles of debris, without a single wall in sight. Entire
populations must have been exterminated, if the shocks that he had felt at Ithome were but the distant reverberation of the frightful tremor that had shaken all of Laconia and flattened city after
city to the ground, surprising most of their inhabitants in their sleep.

He gradually began to note groups of hoplites in full battle gear guarding crossroads and patrolling the countryside, sinking into the ploughed, rain-soaked fields. What on earth could be
happening? As he proceeded, the patrols were increasingly frequent and included young boys and even wounded men with makeshift bandages, nonetheless carrying the shield with the red lambda.
Kleidemos did not stop to ask for explanations, worried as he was about his mother’s safety.

He finally came within sight of the Kleomenid home as night fell. All he could make out was a dark mass in the countryside and he could not tell whether the house was still standing or had been
reduced to a shapeless heap of ruins. As he reached the entrance to the courtyard he breathed a sigh of relief: there were cracks here and there, and the roof had partially caved in, but on the
whole, the robust stone structure with its jointed corners had held, while the stables and the peasants’ dwellings had all crumbled. There was no light inside, however, and he could hear no
sound. He pushed the door open, shoving aside the rubble that was partially blocking the entrance. Some embers still glowed faintly in the hearth; he managed to rekindle the fire and lit a
torch.

Many of the ceiling beams had been jarred out of place and several hung down. He called his mother and then Alesos, repeatedly, but there was no answer. He ran from one room to another but found
no one. The house was completely empty, although a fire had certainly been lit here the night before, and he could see no traces of blood anywhere. The bed in his mother’s room was full of
debris and dust, but it seemed that no one had slept there. He returned to the great atrium and sat near the fire, seized by anguish: what had happened during his absence? It seemed that his mother
had abandoned the house; or had she been dragged off by force while he was away? He couldn’t believe that she would have gone without leaving a message. He was so exhausted that he
didn’t have the strength to start searching for her in the dark countryside or, worse yet, in the devastated city.