The Great King (27 page)

That wouldn’t happen in Athens.

‘Arimnestos of Plataea,’ I said.

‘I guess you like what you see,’ she said. She laughed. ‘At my age, it is always a pleasure to catch a worthy man’s eye.’

Indeed, my eye was caught. She turned away, but her eyes didn’t leave mine until her head was fully turned.

I almost followed her up the hill.

Men – Spartiates – mostly live in barracks like Cretan noblemen, and their wives keep house (with helot slaves) and mind the children (mostly done by slaves) and run the estates by which the men pay their mess bills. Odd as this arrangement might seem, it works as well as any other. To a Plataean, every Spartan woman seemed like the very epitome of athletic beauty, and Hector spoke for us all when he said (watching the old crone of thirty sway delightfully away from us), ‘If I were a Spartiate, I’d never spend a minute in those barracks.’

I suspect we all three of us sighed.

It was also impossible to guess whether any of these remarkable women were available. By the standards of Athens or Plataea, they were all so forward that they might have been porne. And I could remember Plataeans who had been to Sparta on pilgrimage making claims about their lusty infidelities – but none of the women I met seemed – somehow – the types. They were direct – it is true. And sensual and athletic. But not, more’s the pity, licentious.

Like upper-class Athenians, the men were more prone to run mad over a pretty boy than over their wives, but – just as in Athens – it was hard to tell how much of that was emulation and prowess, and how much was really . . . love. Or whatever passed for love in the hothouse world of barracks and Agoge.

At any rate, on my second day in Sparta, the king took me to meet his mess and dine with them, which was accounted one of the highest honours in the Greek world. It’s good that it is such an honour, because the food was terrible. I think they make a special effort whenever a foreigner comes. The black broth tasted as if pig excrement had been involved in making it. I
never
had such foul bread in all the years of my slavery. The Phoenicians give better food to their oarsmen.

But I digress.

I was also invited to the exercise field, a little less civilised than one of the better Athenian gymnasiums, but you have to realise that the Athenian upper class often emulates the Spartan aristocracy. So the gymnasiums are not so different. The sun is hotter, and you cannot smell the sea air.

I boxed a little with the king. That was a great honour, too – despite his bruises, he didn’t spar with everyone. And by boxing with me, he made me anyone’s equal, and so men virtually queued up to fight me. An older man – one of the king’s guard – slipped past me with a beautiful feint and broke my nose – this in the first minute – and then was most solicitous in fixing it. He said something, reached out and pulled hard, and reset it.

And then he expected to go back to our contest.

Spartans.

I took a dip in their cold water to clear the pain – I don’t think I impressed my opponent at all – and to get the pain-fatigue out of my muscles, and then I went back, towelled dry by helots, and chose a younger man for a bout of pankration. I knew I had to – there’s no avoiding pankration in Sparta, and if I ever planned to walk among these men with my head high, I had to endure it.

Spartans, of course, bite and gouge and do other things in a pankration match that are forbidden elsewhere. My young opponent was quite heavily built and fresh from the Agoge, and I’m pretty sure, given my swollen nose and the ease with which my first opponent had downed me, that he saw me as easy prey. He was very polite.

I let him catch my arms, gave a twist I’d learned from Polymarchos, and threw him.

He bounced to his feet. I got a nice cheer – a buzz – from the other men watching.

I backed up a couple of steps, and my opponent came at me.

Now that I’d taught him not to grab at my hands, I raised them, and when he refused the bait, I threw a flurry of punches. I caught him twice and stunned him, which allowed me to catch his right arm in my left and then pass my left hand under his elbow.

And down he went. He tried to resist, and got some muscles pulled for his pains. I could have dislocated his shoulder or dropped him on his head, but I was a guest.

And he tried to grab my testicles.

I had been warned – many times – and I had fought the helot at Olympia. I really should have known. He hit my testicles a glancing blow as I rolled my hips away, and kneed him – all the while wrenching his right shoulder, which must have been in agony.

So I rolled the arm down, hit him in the ear with my left hand – pretty viciously, I confess – and then put him in the sand face first, with a knee in the small of his back.

He tried to kick me – backwards.

I looked at the king. I had my opponent in the full hold – and his kicks were only ruining his own shoulder.

‘How do I make him stop?’ I asked.

Men laughed.

One of the older men stepped forward with a polite nod to me and tapped the young man with his staff. Instantly, the young man went limp.

I got up.

He tried to bounce to his feet, but his right arm wasn’t fully responding to his commands. Nonetheless, he stretched forth his hands as if ready for another bout.

I looked at the older man with the staff. I saw a slave with a water ewer, and held up my hand – walked to the edge of the sand and took a drink of water.

The king waved at the sky as if stating a pleasantry about the weather. ‘You have to go a third fall. It will humiliate him otherwise.’

I suppose brave and foolish young men are much the same everywhere. Just more so, in Lacedaemon.

I stepped back on to the sand, nodded to him, and we circled a few times. In fact, I was not going to rush him – both for his ego and because I had a suspicion that Spartans practised fighting hurt.

Sure enough, when I offered him an opening he raised his right hand, all but offering it to me, with all the prospect of pain that would go with it – and then stepped in deep with his left side, intending a fast throw and using his own injury as bait.

I snap-kicked his left knee. I hit his right bicep with my left fist, and turned, making him follow me. It had been an excellent move, for a wounded man, and he responded well, but he had almost no strength in his right side and now he was a little white around the nostrils.

I caught him on the turn – and pinned his right hand low with my left, a wrist grab. I meant to avoid further injury to his right. I can be a good man.

My right hand went for a lock on his left, but he was too quick, so I thrust it deep, so that my right hand clipped his jaw and went past, all but touching his left shoulder as my right foot went behind his feet, and then I threw him – backwards – with my out-thrust right hand. I followed him down, pinned his left under my knee, and put my right hand to his throat.

He tried to hit me with his right fist.

I think I shook my head. He had no strength in that fist at all. But he was still fighting.

I had just spent fifty days training with Polymarchos. I’d probably never been as good as I was just then.

At any rate, the ephor with the stick came and tapped him, and again he went limp, but he sprang up again, and took my hand. And I noted the way men looked at him when he strode – strode – away.

He’d made the grade. Spartans aren’t all about winning. It is more, for them, about the manner of the contest. When it became clear that he couldn’t beat me, then it was a different kind of contest, and in the eyes of all the Spartiates – all of us, really – he had triumphed. Over his own pain.

That was Sparta.

I wrestled a fall with old Calliteles. He stepped through the crowd and said, ‘So far you haven’t faced our best. I’m an old man, but I’d be pleased to fight a throw.’

He was big – he had two inches of reach on me, and few men can say that, and he outweighed me by several stone. I was careful while we circled, and I was in my fifth or sixth fight of the day and blessing Polymarchos and all the exercise I’d got building things in Plataea.

We circled for a long time.

Twice he grabbed for me, and twice I evaded him. This was wrestling, so I couldn’t keep him at a distance with kicks and punches, and at the third attack, I saw an opening and pounced.

Hah, hah! I was face down in the sand a moment later with his whole weight atop me. Some opening. But he forbore to break my arm, and he slapped me as I rose. I took up a guard and he shook his head.

‘One fall a day. That’s all my old knees can take,’ he said.

‘Mine too,’ I said, somewhat ruefully.

And then Bulis appeared. He came through the crowd quickly, and pushed into the space in front of the king.

‘I’d like a go,’ he said. ‘Unless you are too tired.’

His delivery was Laconian – flat. In fact, I was tired – the broken nose had taken a great deal out of me, and the young pankrationist had been very strong. And I thought Bulis meant me harm.

‘Of course,’ I said. It occurred to me, in a somewhat reptilian moment of which I’m not proud, that if Bulis broke my arm or injured me, I could save six months of my life and not take him to Sardis or Susa.

It was hard to read Bulis. He was not giving off the signals I’d have taken for violent aggression. His face registered very little emotion, and he merely inclined his head. He might have been cold, angry – or shy.

‘What would you like to do?’ he asked.

‘Pankration,’ I answered. I’m not a great boxer, witness the nose.

Bulis stepped straight in with a punch aimed at my nose.

I tried to trap his punch.

Neither one of us was successful. He rotated on the balls of his feet and threw his left, and I kicked at his left knee, and both of us half turned and returned to our guards – and backed away.

He grabbed for my throat.

I grabbed for his, and we had several very intense heartbeats while our arms intertwined, looking for a hold.

He rolled – a feint, and I caught that it was a feint in time to raise my leg and block the kick to my crotch. I’d been shown a beautiful move by Polymarchos – a kick-lock – and since I had my left leg up, I flicked my own kick at his testicles and then tried to catch his left leg and encircle it with my right. But I hadn’t practised it enough, and I missed the hold. We passed each other, and he got a weak left into my gut, and my structure held.

In truth, we were well matched.

I knew a few tricks that I didn’t think were taught in Sparta, and it was time to dust them off. But I needed another clench or a flurry of boxing blows, and so, of course, I got neither. We circled, and then we exchanged kicks, and then circled.

I stepped in. It was the first time I’d initiated the action, and he was ready – but a little over-eager, and I deceived his right hand, and got my left in a smashing blow to his shoulder, and I tried my gambit, passing deeply with my left foot. I went for a left armlock which he easily evaded, and he caught me a fine left jab to the temple.

It was my turn to fight through pain. I got my instep around his right heel, passed my left arm behind his head, missed my jab as he ducked his head – and then I pivoted on the balls of my feet, so that my left knee came in behind his right knee, and I bore him down to the ground. Gaining control of his left arm as he struggled for his balance.

He tried to reverse the hold and to throw me left to right, but the grip is inexorable, and I had him face down in the sand.

He tapped. Like a normal person.

Later I learned that Spartiates – full Spartiates, who have seen battle – are allowed, even encouraged, to tap, while the young are forced to fight to full submission or unconsciousness. I suppose I see the point, although they must lose some good youngsters that way.

He got up and smiled at me.

I’ve seldom been so surprised. It wasn’t a ‘now I kill you’ smile, but merely a smile of appreciation.

Then he came at me hard.

We had a ten-heartbeat flurry – fists, kicks, and then a fast series of grabs – he got me over his hip, and I rolled rather than fight it, and he wasn’t – quite – fast enough to pin me as I rolled through his fall.

That drew applause, which was my downfall. I like applause, and I slowed –

bang.

Down I went. Of
course
he was right behind me as I rose from my roll, and he got my shoulders from behind as I hesitated in my turn and threw me – literally pulled me on my back and fell across me.

I laughed.

He laughed.

I dived at him, got a knee in my thigh, and then tried the same infighting technique I’d just used – but from the front – using my shin to force his shin back. He stumbled away – but he broke my attempt. I threw a strong right at his retreating face and caught him, and he threw a right – I grabbed his arm, we both missed holds and stumbled together and then – I can’t remember how – we were on the sand, grappling on the ground like boys.

The Spartans know all about ground fighting, but they disdain it, because on the battlefield it can get you killed, and combat sports, for Spartans, are about battle, not about games. I might have had an edge, but my opponent – sheer luck – caught my broken nose with his elbow, and I was fighting in a red haze and anger and pain.

I have no idea how long it went on.

But the ephors separated us. I was tapped on the shoulder, but I didn’t know the signal, so the next thing I felt was a blow to my calf.

I stopped struggling, realising that my opponent was not moving.

Luckily, the gods have graced me with good wits and some humour – so I got to my feet as best I could and embraced Bulis before he could say anything.

He smiled again. ‘Good fight,’ he said.

I didn’t fight in the king’s gymnasium again. It took me two days to recover from the first time, and my nose took weeks to recover fully. But after that day, men greeted me in the agora and in the streets, usually calling out, ‘Khairete, Xenos!’

And I received an offer to dine with Bulis and his mess.

Sparta is not devoid of small talk, gossip, song or good fellowship. I lay on a couch in this, a more ‘average’ mess, and was served food that was merely bad and entertained by Sparthius, who was Bulis’s partner and a very funny man. Sparthius was irreverent and sometimes nasty, mocking Gorgo’s mismatched eyes and my limp, suggesting in some fairly obvious ways that as I was Hephaestus, all my women would cheat on me. He told a story about a drunk buying a fine wine to pour as a libation on the grave of a friend, and then offering to pass it through his body once first – he mocked Sparta and he mocked Athens.