The Queen of Sparta (33 page)

CHAPTER 43

TO KILL A KING

Outside Sparta

Late summer, 477
BC

Sherzada’s words hit Gorgo like a bolt of lightning. “This smell,” he said, “this almondy smell. I have smelt it before on poison victims after they died. I am only surprised that he is not dead already.”

Gorgo gently touched her son’s face as he lay on his bed. “That is probably because I have been giving Pleistarchus potions to build his body’s resistance against poisons,” she replied.

“You knew he was being poisoned?”

“I knew he was in danger of it,” said Gorgo, sitting down beside Pleistarchus. “Father started using these when he sensed he might be assassinated. The potions I have come from a healer in Arcadia, but his knowledge and skills are limited.”

As Sherzada continued to examine Pleistarchus, he said, “you did well, but there are many different types of poisons. They may have used more than one type. What you did may have slowed down the poison’s effect, but he is still dying. We need to find a cure, and fast.”

Gorgo called to the servants to bring strips of wet cloth. And then she asked Sherzada what he could do to help.

“I know of one antidote,” he replied, “which might neutralize the poison. But even that may only keep him alive a little longer. We still have to take him to a healer with greater skills than you or I.”

“Where will we find such a person? The skills of Spartan physicians are limited to combat injuries and I do not know of any healer who can treat poisons.”

He had an answer. “Rán’s injuries were treated by a number of expert physicians. One among them is an expert on poisons. He teaches at a school for physicians on the island of Cos. We must take Pleistarchus to him.”

“Then this is what we shall do.”

When Agathe and the other servant girls arrived with the wet strips to cool Pleistarchus’ fever, Sherzada asked them to fetch the ingredients for his potion. While Gorgo tried to keep down the young king’s fever with wet strips of cloth, Sherzada went with them to prepare the antidote. A little later, Sherzada returned with a jug full of the potion. Gorgo helped Pleistarchus sit up as he drank it. In a few hours, Pleistarchus gained some consciousness. He vomited a lot but Sherzada told her that it was some of the poison coming out. Soon afterwards, the heat in his body started to cool off and then he went back to sleep, breathing normally. Sherzada was confident that he would be much better by morning and would be fit to travel then. As her son’s health improved, so did Gorgo’s spirits.

Sherzada, meanwhile, thought he saw something outside. He lifted the blinds to get a better look but could not see anything in the darkness. He went to another window to check if Gorgo’s guards were outside her apartment. They were. Perhaps Pleistarchus’ predicament was making him imagine things that were simply not there.

As Sherzada sat down on the floor outside Pleistarchus’ bedroom, Gorgo came and joined him. Sitting down beside him, she reminded him of the encounter at dawn when they had met five men outside the Temple of Athena taking down the bodies of the executed traitors. “Those men,” she said, “and those behind them are gaining power. They even have Archidamus under their influence and his jealousy against the Agiadae plays directly into their hands.

“These people, these reactionaries, want to take Sparta back to the past. A Sparta uncontaminated with dangerous new ideas. They say I have gone soft on the Helots.

“I found what you had written about the struggle between the Patricians and the Plebs in your letters from Rome very interesting. If Sparta is to become truly great, we have to find a political compromise like the Romans are trying to. Just imagine! If we can get more Helots and the Perioiki to join our forces in return for concessions, we will not have to rely on our small army. It makes perfect military sense. But not just military. We shall have all those living within Spartan domains having a stake in the strength and welfare of Sparta. It makes political sense; and human sense.”

She got up, and let out a deep sigh. “To do this I need my cousins beside me.” She turned to Sherzada. “Thanks to you, Pausanias is safe, at least for now. But I am not sure … whether Euro is alive or dead?”

Sherzada smiled, but Gorgo hushed him by bending over and putting her index finger on his lips. “That is all I need to know,” she whispered.

Sherzada whispered back, “How did your father die?”

In hushed tones, Gorgo began to explain, starting with the last days of King Cleomenes’ controversial life.

I remember Menander bringing my father the news. Father said that he could use the cover of patriotism to escape the charges with regard to the Sepeia massacre or the killing of the Persian but not that of bribing the Oracle of Delphi. His enemies had ensured that case against him was air-tight. He also knew what would follow. The trial would be used to impeach and dethrone him. He told me all of this before suddenly riding away in a hurry.

Soon, news arrived that Father was in Messene, raising an army of Helots to march on Sparta. For the Spartans it was unthinkable; not only because a Spartan king was marching on his own capital, but he was doing so at the head of an army of Helots. The Gerousia immediately dropped all charges against the King and invited him back.

Many began to fear Father and what he might do next. Some were convinced he was bent upon emancipating the Helots and ending the supremacy of Spartans within their own domains. Soon rumours started circulating that he was going mad. It was not long after that that he was declared insane and incarcerated. A day later, he was found dead. A Helot was swiftly executed for allegedly giving him the knife with which my father supposedly killed himself

I did not believe the story. I had visited him only a couple of days before his death and had never seen him saner. Someone had ordered my father’s murder. Only sixteen and newly wed to Cleomenes’ half-brother Leonidas, I had no choice but turn to my husband. Leonidas promised he would look into the matter, but soon he, and all of Sparta, got embroiled in the Carneia incident around the time of Marathon.

And anyway, like most Spartans, Leonidas had seen only the madness, and never the method, in Father’s policies. He did not understand any of it until we received Demaratus’ message about the Persian invasion. It was only then Leonidas realized, almost a decade too late, what my father had been trying to do all along.

One night Leonidas came to me drunk and weeping bitterly, the first and last time I saw him in that state. He begged my forgiveness, saying he not only knew that my father would be killed, he was also a part of the conspiracy that had led to his death. When I refused him forgiveness, he left. Before he went, I told him that I had no intention of sharing his bed anymore.

Much later, after Thermopylae and just a few weeks before he himself took his own life, Cleombrotus, Pausanias’ father, told me the whole story. Apparently, the two brothers saw Father as a dangerous man who wanted to ruin Spartan society and their laws. Their views were shared by the Ephors and a conspiracy was hatched to get rid of Father. Cleombrotus said in the beginning both he and Leonidas were reluctant to go along with the plan, but they finally agreed. Leotychidas was not involved in the plot because Leonidas neither liked him nor trusted him. So the Ephors went ahead and declared Father insane and later the murder was arranged in a way that would make it appear a suicide.

Around the time Leonidas first confessed his involvement in the death of my father, the Persian threat had begun to loom. Even though I hated Leonidas at the time, as a Spartan queen I continued to support him publicly. It was I who suggested to him the need to create a formal Greek alliance – the Hellenic League – which my father had always dreamed of. Leonidas took my advice and consolidated our alliance with Athens which Father had negotiated before his death, and brought others too within the fold. Those were heady days; exciting days. For once, the Greeks were acting the way my father had wanted them to.

After our abortive attempt to block the Persian advance at Tempe, Leonidas allowed me to work with the generals to find other ways to resist the Persians. My father had told me that it might be better to sacrifice a smaller part of an army in order to preserve the greater part of it, to buy time, to build up the defences and to wear the enemy down before a decisive confrontation. I had a plan, and I needed it to work.

Two things helped me. The first was the Carneia, which came soon after the Persian army entered Greece. I went to the Gerousia to remind the Spartans, in person, of the sacred duty to keep our army inactive for this period. The second was the one thing, other than the army, that my father had advised me to use sparingly and with great care.

I made a secret journey to Delphi on the beautiful slopes of Mt. Parnassus, where I met with Gorgus, my father’s friend. My father had told me that he was one of the few men in Greece whom I could trust. His strength was his discretion. Gorgus described himself as a broker in the business of influence and nothing was more influential in Greek politics than the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi. During that meeting, I gave him instructions along with a generous portion of my father’s inheritance. He noted down word for word what I expected to hear from the Oracle.

Less than a week later, the Pythioi, our ambassadors to the Delphic Oracle, brought back a chilling message from the god Apollo as conveyed through his priestess in Delphi. And it was clear – either a Spartan king must die or Sparta would be destroyed. I watched Leonidas as the “prophecy” was read aloud. I could see from his face that its significance had not been missed. As a religious man he realized the time for reckoning was at hand. He would have to die for Sparta to survive. His guilt would not have allowed him to reach any other conclusion.

And so Leonidas began to prepare for war. He had taken to heart everything I had told him about preserving the army, and decided to take a relatively small force to block the Persian advance. Our Greek allies were also asked to send troops. He justified the sending of this small force on the grounds that though the Carneia forbade general military activity, this prohibition would not apply to a tiny Spartan contingent already committed to its own destruction. Those who were already doomed could not invite a greater wrath from the gods, or so he rationalized. I could not help thinking at the time of the irony that Leonidas’ suicide had been so meticulously planned, just like my father’s.

Leonidas dismissed his bodyguard the
Hippeis
– three hundred of our best young warriors – and, instead, chose a force of three hundred veterans, all of whom had one thing in common. Each had a son who was about to complete the Upbringing. If the fathers perished, the sons could replace them in a matter of weeks. The army would be preserved and in principle the prohibition of the Carneia would not be violated.

When I saw the energy Leonidas was putting into the effort of training his small force, the way he was approaching his own death with so much courage and enthusiasm, as a Spartan wife I could not have been more proud of my husband. It was then I allowed him to share my bed once again. That was the closest I ever came to truly loving him. A part of me wanted to tell him all and save him, but somehow another part of me wanted my plan to work; to save Sparta and also to have my revenge. Perhaps too there was a feeling that Leonidas wanted to atone for his crime, and was looking forward to his death.

There arrived the day Leonidas came to say goodbye to Pleistarchus and me. Normally, custom dictated a mother or a wife would give the Spartan warrior his shield and tell him to
come back either with it or on it.
I wanted to say that to him as I gave him his shield. But what came out was something very different and very selfish. ‘What am I expected to do if you don’t come back?’ I asked.

He smiled and said: ‘marry a good man who will treat you well, bear him strong children, and live a good life.’ And he then went off to Thermopylae to die.