Amazon Moon (11 page)

"Our flotilla of young slaves floated slowly down the Great River, watched by armed guards on each raft and by occasional patrols along the shore. To drink, we dipped water from the wide stream. We had no latrine, but hung off the back of the raft. We slept on the logs, huddled together like foxes in a den. From time to time we passed small cities. After five days we came to an awesome sight: a large port city with a broad ocean stretching behind it, vanishing at the hazy horizon. Later we learned it was the Black Sea.

"Beside a river pier was a slave trading post built of upright logs. Women and girls were locked in one chamber and boys were sent to another. Our small brothers looked back to Mitha and me before they disappeared. We never saw them again. The next day, slave merchants examined us, poking and squeezing our bodies to assess our fitness. Mitha's breasts were checked with great relish. Finally a fat trader bought six of us and we were led to a small sailing ship in the harbor. Luckily, Mitha and I remained together in the lot.

"The ship spent two days crossing to the southern coast. Then we were marched inland to our destination: a quarry where creamy white marble was excavated for the temples and statues of Greece. Under guard, a hundred slave men hacked and split marble blocks in a dusty pit. Breezes swirled clouds of powder into their lungs. They tried to cover their noses, but they coughed painfully. On windy days the diggers were white like ghosts.

"Women didn't dig marble. We were assigned to a cooking shed where we prepared food to carry to the men. We dipped urns of water from a small stream and slaked their thirst. At night, women slaves slept in a small bunkhouse, while the men had large barracks. Older Slav men talked with us. They had learned to speak some Greek and taught us words. We learned that, to Greeks, the word Slav meant slave.

"We worked four years at the quarry. We learned the Greek language. My body bloomed like Mitha's, and I lost my virginity violently, as she did. Five quarry guards held me down on the creek bank and took turns with me. Slaves are mere possessions, like cattle or pigs, defenseless. Later the quarry superintendent ordered me into his bed a few nights. But he preferred experienced women among the cooks, instead of a frightened girl. Despite all this, I didn't feel like a sexual woman, because I never gave myself willingly to a lover—until now.

"Then the marble vein dwindled until only thin layers remained. The quarry owner sold half his slaves to traders. Mitha and I were among ten women bound in a string and marched south to a small market at Kavopolis. That's where we were sold to the Overseer of Aegolus. And you know the rest of my life."

I held Litha close. We pondered the strange cruelty of tribes endlessly warring upon each other and enslaving each other.

* * *

Late one night, sweaty from lovemaking, Litha said: "Let's swim."

"I can't enter the Amazon pool," I reminded her.

"Then I'll join you in the slave pool."

Naked, we walked through the dark village and quietly entered the warm water. She felt deliciously slippery against me. Soon, to our surprise, we made love a second time at water's edge. Then we made our stealthy return to her room. We felt like secret spies, undetected by people around us. It was a time of great happiness.

"I may become pregnant," she said. "If I bear you a son, I would want to keep him, not send him into slavery as the Amazons do with male babies."

The thought of losing our possible son disturbed me.

"But we might have no choice. The Amazons are strong women with strong rules. They wouldn't make an exception for a slave and a novice."

I felt unease: "If we were ordered to let our son be sent away, we might want to flee from the Amazons. But how could we go, with me hobbling on a cane? And where could we go? We couldn't live with my people, who treat women like livestock. You would be punished as a slave who stabbed her master. And I couldn't walk north to your Slavic homeland."

We lay in silence. Then I said: "We don't belong among the Amazons. We don't belong among the Greeks. We don't belong anywhere."

After a moment Litha answered: "We belong with each other. We belong together."

She was correct. Together we made our own private sanctuary, a haven from the world's ugliness. It was as if we occupied a snug lifeboat, while storms churned the sea around us. Litha's bed was our refuge. There is such a shelter in each other.

Day after day, as a secure couple, we enjoyed the quiet comfort of being together. Simple things—sitting on the creek bank, watching the water ripple over smooth stones, skipping flat rocks on the pools, washing garments and spreading them on bushes in the sun, seeing leaves rustle against the sky, watching dappled sunlight sprinkling through trees, smelling woodsmoke from the cooking fires, washing pots after dinner, watching long shadows of evening stretch across the valley, hearing little girls laugh as they ran barefoot around the village—all these daily trifles seemed deeply satisfying when we did them as a pair. Even so common a thing as looking at serene cloud streaks in the twilight sky gave us peace. It reminded me of an adage my grandfather recited: A pleasure shared is doubled, and a sorrow shared is halved.

The next time I met Octos at the slave quarters, he looked me over.

"You're glowing, boy. I think you've found paradise."

I grinned sheepishly, feeling foolish.

"Don't apologize," he said. "You've discovered a great truth. All the priests talk about heaven, but they're spieling mumbo-jumbo. You've found the only paradise that's real: the heaven that a good couple make for each other."

I asked how he knew about Litha and me.

"Hell, son, everyone knows everything in this beehive. And most feel glad for you two."

Henceforth, when I was ordered to the beds of various Amazons, it was different. I felt guilty, as if I was betraying Litha. But I enjoyed the other women too. So I was torn by mixed feelings that I suppose have pulled many men in contrary directions.

* * *

As Litha progressed in writing, wielding reed pens with increasing skill, she uncovered a talent. One day in class I noticed her staring intently at me and making long strokes with her pen. After the other pupils departed, she showed me her creation: a drawing of my face that was quite lifelike. I hugged her proudly.

The following day she watched her reflection on a polished bronze shield and drew a similar sketch of herself. She showed the two drawings to Hella and persuaded the Home Queen to sit quietly while she sketched her too. Next she drew her sister, then the War Queen, then my mentor Octos, and others in the village. Outside the door of my classroom, we pinned her drawings for the village to see.

14

Strangely, I took satisfaction from teaching the Amazons to read and write. It changed something inside me. During the years when I had been a free Greek male, I hardly questioned the ways of our land, which ranked men as the only thinking humans. Intelligent Greek boys were educated in skills of the mind while women and girls were consigned to a lower order, as housekeepers and sexual servants. It would have been unthinkable to put a girl in school to teach her words and ideas. But now I was doing it every day. And the females learned with surprising ease, as rapidly as my former male classmates had done. It troubled me to realize that my previous Greek world was based on a false assumption of female inferiority.

One evening, as I recorded proceedings of the Amazon council, I asked permission to speak. I told the assembly: "My ladies, I am struck by an odd fact. As you know, the vast majority of Greek women remain illiterate. Only a few daughters of rich families are taught. Remarkably, the largest number of literate Greek females is right here in this small colony."

The council applauded.

To prepare my classes, I searched for more papyrus and parchment in caravan loot stashed in chambers above my classroom. In a leather pouch, I found two parchment scrolls filled with writing. I brought them for my pupils to read and discuss.

The first scroll bore the name Heraclides of Pontus. It proposed a strange theory: that the sun and moon only seem to rise in the east, travel across the sky, and set in the west. In reality, it contended, our mighty Earth is not a fixed firmament, the bedrock of all existence, but is rolling in space, which makes the sun and moon appear to sweep across the sky repeatedly.

A young warrior named Elysia read the scroll aloud to my class. Afterward, the women and girls sat in silence pondering this remarkable new idea. Finally, Litha, who had become my most faithful student, blurted:

"That's fascinating! If it's true, it would explain why the sun and moon follow the same path, day after day after day."

But a thickset Amazon named Hulta seemed upset.

"It cannot be true. Everyone knows that the gods on Mount Olympus command the sun and moon as their divine objects, ordering them to pass across daily. Eila the priestess has declared it so."

Vaguely I sensed that I might be stepping into danger. But we proceeded. I should have heeded my apprehension, because the second scroll caused an uproar. It bore the name Protagoras of Abdera and was titled
On the Gods
. A ten-year-old girl began reading:

"As for the gods, I am unable to know whether they exist or do not exist, nor what they are like in form. The factors preventing knowledge are many: the obscurity of the subject, and the shortness of life. I suspect, however, that all gods are imaginary, like creatures in dreams. I propose that the learned Assembly of Athens send an expedition north to Mount Olympus, where the strongest young men can climb to the top to see with their own eyes whether a Pantheon dwells at the peak."

Hulta leaped up and shouted:

"Sacrilege! Blasphemy! This insults all that is sacred and holy and divine. Such words never should be allowed. I will inform the priestess."

She stomped out. The rest of us stared at each other. At the pit of my stomach, an ominous feeling said I was in trouble. My stomach was correct. Within an hour, a warrior arrived and ordered me to follow her to an emergency meeting of the village council. Eila stood before the assembly, wearing her priestess robe and headdress. As I entered, she raged at me:

"He is teaching our young women that the gods are figments of the imagination, that all our holy sacrifices are pointless, wasted on nothing!"

"My lady—" I stammered.

"You were not given permission to speak," she snapped. But Hella, fond of me, interceded:

"Give him a chance to explain. Proceed, Melos."

I took a breath to steady my nerves.

"My ladies, I meant no harm. I merely let the pupils read a scroll obtained from a caravan, to improve their language skills. It is impressive that they now can read any writings, just like the most learned men in Greece."

I didn't mention my secret feeling that the Protagoras scroll was a ray of light amid the magic-filled darkness. But the priestess saw through me.

"Writing is dangerous, because it makes people doubt the truths we live by. Scribe, tell us clearly and directly: Do you contend that the many prayers we say to Hera, or the sacrifices we offer to Aphrodite, are meaningless?"

"No, my lady. I merely had my pupils read the scroll for practice."

"Do you believe that Artemis the huntress truly reigns on Mount Olympus, along with Zeus and the deities who guide the affairs of humanity?"

"My lady, I am just a slave. I defer to your greater wisdom about such knowledge."

"You didn't answer. Do you believe?"

"Yes, yes, my lady."

"He's lying to save his skin. He knows that the penalty for impiety in all lands is death."

The Home Queen interceded again: "He said he believes."

Eila wouldn't relent: "He must be flogged—if not for impiety, then for allowing such blasphemy to be read by our women. And the scroll must be burned."

The council murmured, then voted with the priestess. Two warriors led me to the shrine. I was forced to kneel before the Hera statue, where I received five stinging lashes from a slender branch. The punishment was repeated in front of the other two goddesses. Although each lash burned, I could tell that the warriors withheld their full fury. Perhaps they felt a tinge of sympathy for me.

Next the Protagoras scroll was ripped into three segments and a portion burned on the altar of each goddess. Afterward the priestess strode forward with the scroll about the sun and moon. It too was torn apart and burned.

In the following days, as my whip marks faded, I reached a conclusion about religion: If you must laugh at the magic tales, do it secretly inside yourself. Never let your doubts be known, because believers can be wrathful to anyone who questions their divine certainties.

15

After my temple flogging, I felt like an outcast in the colony for a few days. I kept my gaze downward and did my work in silence, avoiding top Amazons, especially Eila the priestess. But the strain passed. Several women spoke to me in friendly tones, almost as if they approved of my attempt to raise unorthodox ideas. Soon I again roamed the village as I wished, limping everywhere on my cane.

Once more I searched among caravan loot for writings for my students to read. Of course, I realized that any irreligious words would be forbidden.

One scroll recounted important findings about nature by Greek thinkers. The record of discoveries must have been compiled by a learned teacher. It fascinated my mind. Some of its entries:

Pythagoras discerned that the Evening Star and the Morning Star are the same body, the brightest planet.

Aristotle, the Athenian teacher admired by my late aristocrat friend Dalien, proved that the world is a sphere. Earth's shadow on the moon during an eclipse is circular, he noted, and ships seem to sink into the sea as they move far away, which is evidence of a curved surface.

Eratosthenes, master of the great Alexandria library, also declared that the world is a ball. He measured its size cleverly, as follows: In the southern city of Syene, it was known that an upright stick cast no shadow at noon on midsummer day, because the sun was precisely overhead. In Alexandria, however, upright objects cast shadows to their north sides at that hour, because they don't point squarely at the sun. Eratosthenes measured their shadows and found that they were tipped seven degrees, due to curvature of the earth's surface. He measured the distance between the two cities and calculated the circumference of the entire globe.