The End of Sparta: A Novel (53 page)

Erinna kept silent at the idea of anything rising from these dry scrub pines and ancient oaks but she did not laugh since they were the days of flux when everything was not as it was and would be. She was at a loss as to how to free Nêto once they reached the fort of Kuniskos. Poets like herself, she thought, are no saner than this wild Nikôn. Who knows what twenty myriads might do if organized and inspired by her Epaminondas? “We both see things as we hope rather than as they are. I call out to the Muses, you to the dead helots of the past. But enough. Hurry, Nikôn, if Nêto still has her own head, hurry.”

It was not far to the compound of Kuniskos below, and Erinna led Nikôn and his four helots, running down the gentle slope. Soon they were at the lowlying saddle and reached the edge of the scrub pine. The fort was in clear view, and they stopped their talk. Yet there was no way to storm the double wall and get to Nêto, unless Erinna might be let in alone. But she had no ransom money, only the power of her voice. So Nikôn and his guards trailed off into the brush as Erinna approached the path toward the Spartan guardhouses. The helots had no chance against a hundred Spartan hoplites and waited in a gully above the camp and would stay there until they heard the sound from the wooden whistle around Erinna’s neck. She first went into a small clump of bushes by the timber gate. There, despite the winter morning cold, the poetess pulled off her leather jerkin, leaving the soft linen that barely covered her arms and thighs. She left behind her quiver and pack. But Erinna pulled over a long wool cloak with a hood, rough and full of burrs and stickers, as if she had been on the road for days. Then she approached the guard up on the rampart.

“Hoa. You. Red-cape. Come here. Leônidas or Lykos may be your name? Or are you Lysander back from the dead? At least you have the look of a Spartan warrior man. I’m an Athenian bard, a
rhapsôdos
. You see that, hear that. Yes? An Athenian. I’m a traveling rhapsode and music girl who can read out loud block letters. I entertain to the lyre. Let me in and out of the cold. I want a talk with your Antikrates or at least his henchman Kuniskos. I want help.” Now she shouted even louder to the man on the rampart, “Did you hear? Who’s in charge? I’m cold and numb and lost. I fear these mad helots and their damn cries of freedom.” Then Erinna threw off her outer hood and put her hands on her hips, and louder still cried, “And I can sing in the high strain for you and more still.”

The gate opened. Two Spartans approached. One was a young toothless sort, Klôpis, who had hacked down three Thebans at Leuktra and reminded Kuniskos nightly of his tally. Now this Klôpis grabbed Erinna and took her through the gateway and inside the double walls of the stockade and then all the way to the stone courtyard of Antikrates’s house.

The camp was an elaborate maze. Two parallel walls, both topped with sharp stakes, made a square. It ran about half a stade in each direction, with towers and a gate on each side. In the middle inside was another square, four wooden halls joined together, separated by an arch entry into the courtyard. These were the barracks of the young
kryptes
, at least of the few who were alive and served Kuniskos or who had not fled back over Taygetos. A fire pit was in the middle and hoplites came out of the stoas on all sides to cook their dinner and warm themselves from the icy blasts. There were guards at the gates of the outside walls and more still at the entry to the courtyard—everything built from massive spruce logs hauled down from the mountains above. Erinna quickly saw that the stockade was far too big for the garrison and that it would not last a day should the army of Epaminondas storm down from Tagyetos.

Kuniskos himself sat beside a brazier, with spits of lamb on the grill. His chair stood near the fire and a nearby table on the largest porch. Six spearmen, shivering in the cold, sat on cots and straw mattresses. He’d lost half his guard to helot killers and carried a spiked club wherever he walked. Klôpis pushed Erinna forward. “Hey, Master, there’s a woman here. No helot. I brought her in, a stitcher of tales who walked over the mountain, or so she claims. No worry—she’s no Messenian from her speech. You can see that well enough. I think she’s a softie from Athens, and beneath that wool cloak of hers I smell rose petals and linen. She will sing and more for us—if we feed her and keep her safe from the murderers of the brigands under Nikôn.”

“A singer, is it, woman—or maybe one of these rebels with a false sound to her speech?” Then Kuniskos stood up, leaned on his club, and laughed. “I am the leader, the harmost. Antikrates is over the mountain dealing with Epaminondas and his Theban pigs. Before I throw this saucy Athenian in the cage with the other one, let me hear her out.”

Erinna was already walking up to the porch of Kuniskos, then paused, hands waving about and head tilted back. “What do you want, my lord? Is it to be war songs from your Tyrtaios? Or do you want me to play some Alkman maiden sounds? Or then again, maybe a chorus of Euripides in more of your harsh Doric? Maybe Medea with her snakes up in her sun chariot? Oh, yes. I can give you all that to music, even the slow beat of Aeschylus and his Klytemnestra with her gory hands.”

She stepped closer to Kuniskos. “I can do all three and more—even a girl song about the loom. But let me near that fire. Those damn helots came down the mountain and almost got me. I hid in the glen behind an icy rock till they passed. They killed all three of my
perioikoi
guards, paid in advance for six days of passage from Sparta, where I have sung Alkman and even some Tyrtaios as they ready to battle the incoming Boiotians. Yes, I sang for crippled Agesilaos himself. But, Master, I need this wool off to dry out. Let me inside your halls, my dear Spartan.”

“Oh yes, yes, come here, strange woman. Certainly you will go in. But first, sit near Kuniskos, near my little fire on the porch. No need for my spearmen. I’m well equipped as it is, even though this poetess I see has muscles enough. No danger. She’ll have to play for me and whatever else earns her a dry bed and a rabbit leg or two for dinner. But, woman, tell me, where is our Mêlon, our Chiôn in all this?” He laughed when Erinna blushed at that. “Where,” Kuniskos pressed on, “is that faker we hear about, this Alkidamas? Surely you know all three, my pretty poetess? They all have a bad, bad way of letting friends like you dangle. They flee when they find no more use for them—and the tab for the sacrifices of others comes due. As you learn. Or did you not say your guard ran away at the first sign of a fight?”

Erinna said nothing back as if he spoke Persian or was a Scythian whose grunts gave no meaning. So Kuniskos jumped up, grabbed Erinna, and pulled her inside. As she was forced into the chambers of Kuniskos, she blurted out some Tyrtaios in rough hexameters, while the guards outside on the signal of their master retreated to the outer stockade. “Sit down, woman, and sing louder and have some broth before we dine and drink. Dance as well, yes? I have no flute girls so you’ll have to be both guest and entertainer. We’ll have the barley pulp they serve here, but some special bowls with a bit of hare’s leg and a dried leek or two. Then more wine for us both. A
kratêr
or two just to keep us dry and warm and feisty. But keep singing. No one here now. Just us. Your name, woman? Did you give me your name? I hear there are lots of poets in these parts and on the hill up there as well. But perhaps I know it already?”

“Oh, I go by Attis. Yes, I claim to be Attis, daughter of the trader Athenaios from the Piraeus. My family owned ten long ships and we brought in grain and timber from Ionia. I speak a pure Attic, as you can hear, but know Ionic and Aeolic as well, as my father reminded all, and they say the same at the symposia among the longhairs with the gold grasshopper clasps.” Erinna did not sit, but walked slowly around Kuniskos and took in his anteroom. He let her explore his chambers but watched as she neared an interior door with an iron lock.

“I sing by the Ilissos at Athens. Yes, I am at home with men or women or so they also say of those who have seen Lesbos. But no one is here? The helots say the lord of the helots has a stable of women in his house, another poet, a rival that I can battle in verse. Let me wager with you that I have the best song, and you’ll send me along my way with an escort. But I bet you’re young where it counts, my Kuniskios.” With that Erinna finally took off her cloak and stretched. They went from the back further into the mess room. The front door was open and Erinna moved to the central hearth. She then edged slowly toward the kettle that was hanging over the flame. She had already caught a chill with her wool off. Kuniskos stared and grunted out some noises.

She had dark hair, short with a touch of lighter strands, maybe even some red; and firm large breasts that pointed up, and muscles on her arms and a pretty neck. Her lips were pink and eyes big. Already Kuniskos tired of his nightly play with tall Nêto—like having a doe that flitted around the room and, when caught, only bore her buck with fright and pain. She was not what his years of lust had imagined. Worse still, she was not even much of a helot rebel, not a worthy foe in his bed or in battle. And there was no money yet. Not even a sign of Mêlon or Chiôn, who had thought wiser of throwing good silver after dross, much less trying to burst into the fort of a Spartan lord. Yes, he was going to send her away, to trade her eastward on the next trip with Antikrates for a younger, rougher love—or pack her off with him to Taygetos if he could not find ransom from Helikon to free her. He now found her flesh hardly what he had thought it would be when he had eyed her on the farm in the past. Fool—as if a woman were a sow or heifer who had no care who mounted her.

But for Gorgos it seemed far better to have an old wide-hipped matron who knew more than he himself. Still no ransom money here for her from Helikon as Nêto promised? No reward at all? So much for the great-souled Damô, wife of Chiôn, and the big silver chest of Mêlon. No money ransom for their wasp-waist helot girl, after all, even as his men had sent word of Nêto’s capture to the helots? But now, now, this other woman was different. For all her talk of song, she had a bit of the man-woman in her as well. Kuniskos liked this hard edge. She’d put up a better struggle, maybe a claw or two on his cheek before she was through—and then she would shriek in mad
erôs
—so unlike the victim Nêto, who was little more than a sacrificial carcass on his altar.

“Keep singing my Tyrtaios, woman, I’ll be right back, back yes with a surprise.” With that he left through the back interior door. The guards were strolling back and forth, three hundred paces distant outside. Erinna’s whistle was around her neck. So she slowly pulled out her dagger, and put the blade in the rock cleft above the pot. Then she pulled up her chiton high on one leg and rolled up her right sleeve and with that exposed the side of her breast, appearing as big now as she had usually wished it small. He might find her inviting, but she was now girded for battle, with her limbs free and shivering.

Kuniskos came back in, pulling and whispering to a battered woman in a cloak. “My Nêtikê, look, another poet. And an Athenian at that. What sport we’ll have the three of us, a real triangle even with your fetters on. She’s man enough for you, Nêtikê, and more than woman enough for me. Hail this Attis of the two faces who blew in with the northern breeze. I wager you know this little ranger, though perhaps by a different name.”

Erinna kept still. But her face was flushed as she saw Nêto shuffle in—at least what she thought was Nêto.

“Surprised? Or all along did you know our Nêtikê? Don’t recognize your partner these days with her little bruises and tiny cuts? Ah, don’t hide your own
erôs
, my stringy Attis. Why should you? My Nêto here is a bit scared as I can see.”

Erinna clenched her fist and eyed the corners of the room. Nêto looked down and avoided her eye. Her once long tresses were gone, with tufts here and there on her bloody scalp from the clumsy haircuts of Kuniskos’s blade. Long slashes and scratches oozed on her arms. Her right eye was swollen shut. She had a fresh brand—a gamma—burned right into her cheek, though it oozed pus and most of her right face was black. Was this her Nêto?

Kuniskos had tied a rough sack weave around her that left both legs from her knees down bare. A thick cord was tied to her right ankle and cut into the flesh, and was stretched about twenty palms distant to the hinge on the door, where it was tied. “Now we drink to the helots and their lord Epaminondas.” Kuniskos laughed. “Somewhere at home in Thebes that Pythagorean faker snores in his halls, deep in drink and vomit. Then the fools of the Peloponnesos run around with lies that the fraud is really up here, near the Orthia and pulling into Sellasia, as if he would ever dare to come into Sparta. Believe not a word. He hasn’t even left Thebes, the drunkard. Yes, I know that, a brothel woman in Thespiai sent word to me. Our Phrynê knows more of Boiotia than the drone Epaminondas himself. Poor Antikrates in his fear of a phantom fled back to Sparta.”

“Who are you, helot?” Erinna ignored Kuniskos and stared at Nêto to play out to the end their deadly charade. Now she turned back to him. “Lord Kuniskos. Please scrub down that woman. I can smell her from here and who knows what’s under those scabs. Lice too on her stubble,
phtheires
crawling everywhere, Master Kuniskos. She’s a tramp and dirtier than any helot. She has worms in her belly and crawlers under her arms. Look at the ooze on her face—is she a man or beast?”

“No, no—look over here, my Attis. I have a pot of warm water, and sponges from Kalymnos no less. You can scrub her down and use all the oil you want. Give yourself a rub as well. You look the road almost as much as Nêtikê does.”

“I am no Amazon, stranger,” Nêto flashed. “I am a freewoman of Helikon. Priestess of Artemis of the Messenians.”

“Perhaps once,” Kuniskos answered. “But no longer, no more the dainty little
parthenos
who thought she could tease her way on Helikon to an orchard or vineyard with your Gorgos as doorman to your new tower.” He had pulled on her rope. “No, no, no—soiled women. Those who serve my lusts make no priestesses and even worse wives. So drink up and soon we roll the dice for turns. All you have left are your long legs, and I mean to club one of those as well before I’m done. To slow down a bit those doe runs of yours leading lame Mêlon of the Malgidai in the high woods.”