Truth and Sparta (4 page)

He pulled her
knee out and she felt him push into her. His face was right above
hers and she tried to keep her gaze on his chest, on his white
tunic. He moved slowly in and out of her. He took much more care
with this than her husband had, who had pounded into her like he
was running a race to the end. The Spartan seemed to take more
pleasure out of the process.

It wasn’t an
entirely unpleasant sensation. Again, it felt like there was
something there under the surface that was hidden from her. She had
heard that some women liked it immensely. He leaned down to kiss
her again and that was an odd sensation, and a bit superfluous she
though, as he was already inside her.

She tried to
relax and to remain detached, knowing he was coming to the end and
that this would be over soon. His movements were more erratic along
with his breath, then a last push and a guttural groan. He was very
heavy on her and she had trouble keeping her breath when the full
weight of him pressed down on her.

While there
were some differences between how they approached the act, the
process was roughly the same. On some level, she had seen Spartans
as very alien compared to her own kind, but perhaps they were more
alike than she’d realized.

She felt his
weight come off her as he sat back, then stood up. Chara sat up as
well, again not clearly knowing what was expected of her. It hadn’t
been so bad; she was neither injured nor bruised. She still didn’t
want to look at him, but she knew he was straightening his tunic.
He would walk away soon.

“
Come to my house tomorrow evening,” he said. Chara looked up
at him then. There was no derision in his features, just calm
certainty. She hadn’t expected him to say that; she’d thought this
was over and she had come away unharmed, but he seemingly had other
plans. He wanted her to come to him tomorrow and she knew he would
want to do this again. She tried to find some way to protest.
“Don’t make me come find you,” he said and Chara’s protest died in
her throat.

She recognized
the threat. He would come find her, and her family would have to
pay for her defiance as well as her. There was nothing she could
do, she had to comply. She nodded while moving to sit on her lower
legs. She neatly pushed her tunic down to cover her thighs and
waited there until he left. He stood still for a while and she
wondered if there was something else he wanted, but then he turned
and walked away. Chara only looked up at him when his back was
turned—the powerful man with broad shoulders. There was something
very surreal in what had just happened.

She wasn’t
sure of the implications of it, or what the impact would be on her
future. The Spartan had an interest in her, and for more than just
this time it seemed.

Chara didn’t
know how to feel, she actually felt a bit numb as she walked back
to her father’s small house. She knew she had been imposed upon.
She also knew that such things happened—it was the reality of how
things were and had been for centuries.

Knowing that
her father and brother were aware of it made it much worse. If it
had happened when she was alone, she would probably never tell
anyone. She feared her father’s opinion now more than any distress
she felt with the actual act itself.

Her position
was even more precarious now. Her father could reject her and no
one would blame him if he did. Chastity was expected from girls who
lived in their father’s house and he could choose to be done with
her, throw her out. She hated the uncertainty of her own situation.
This was twice now in a very short time period that she had to
confront her father and the verdict that he would bestow on her.
She had no control over it, just like she had no control over the
Spartan and what he did to her. Such an act, which was short in
actual duration, could have very long and permanent consequences
for her.

She didn’t
know what she would do if her father threw her out. Actually, she
had some idea; she would have to turn to the Spartan for support,
or to find some other Spartan to serve. She would much rather stay
with her family than have to serve someone. Working the fields was
desperately hard, but it was better than being a servant; although
the servants obviously felt they had the better bargain than the
slaves in the fields. They were all slaves in the end, better to
not have to face them every day.

She took a
deep breath and walked the path that led home. She could see her
father outside, tending to the ox. He didn’t turn to face her, just
kept working. She knew he was aware of her presence, she could see
tension in his shoulders.

“
Bring some water for the beast,” he finally said. Chara nodded
and turned to find a bucket for the stream. She went immediately to
do as he bid. He wasn’t going to reject her it seemed, which was
good. She reached the stream and tossed the bucket into the clear
flowing water. She wanted to stay there for a while, away from the
unpleasantness at home, but she couldn’t; she had to face the
consequences at home. Now was not the time to be
cowardly.

Her father was
still there when she returned with the full bucket. She poured it
into the water trough and the ox sniffed it before taking a
drink.

“
I’m sure your mother requires help,” he said after a while. He
still wasn’t looking at her and she wondered if he felt ashamed of
her or whether he was ashamed of himself for not being able to
prevent it. Either way, she wished he didn’t feel bad about it.
Chara realized he wasn’t going to say anything more and he was
going to act like it never happened. Perhaps a strategy she
preferred as well.

Chara went to
seek out her mother at the back of the house where she tended the
fire for cooking. She could tell that her mother had been crying—a
sight she hated. It was clear that her mother had been told about
what had happened.

“
I’m so sorry, my girl,” her mother said.

“
I am fine, mother. I am not injured.” Her mother started
crying again. Chara stroked her back trying to make her stop. She
wished there was some way she could make her mother understand that
it wasn’t that bad and she didn’t need to cry. “It’s alright,” she
soothed her mother. She wanted to say that their subjugation to the
Spartans would end one day, and that they could be vindicated, but
she wasn’t sure that was true. It might just sound like a weak lie
if she came out with such a statement. She was also not going to
tell her mother that she had been ordered back to the Spartan’s
house the next evening. She had to find a way of hiding that from
her mother, but she had no idea how.

Eventually her
mother calmed down and Chara helped her grind and bake some barley
bread. She loved bread from fresh barley, it tasted of summer. With
some oil and some salt, it was possibly the best thing in the
world.

Their meal was
a muted affair. Chara’s parents were both quiet and her brother was
absent all together. After their meal was completed, her father
said that he needed to return to the fields. He obviously didn’t
expect Chara to join him, which meant that she had to stay by the
house.

“
Don’t begrudge his silence,” her mother said. “Men are not
good at dealing with these things.”

Chara nodded.
She couldn’t think of anything to say. She felt bad because it
seemed that she was the least affected by the incident in the
field. She just wanted to forget about it, but it was hard when she
could see the sadness in her mother’s eyes.

“
Maybe the gods will avenge me and he will die of something
horrid,” Chara said to try to lighten the mood, but it was the
wrong thing to say. Her mother started crying again and Chara felt
awful.

There was a
noise outside and Chara welcomed the distraction as she went to see
what it was. She recognized that she could have been overcome by
fear and she was really proud of herself in that she was not
letting this affect her.

When she got
outside, her brother walked past her in sharp strides.

“
Where are you going?” she asked.

“
What does it matter to you?”

“
It doesn’t, but Mother is a little upset at the moment. Now is
not the time to make her worried about you by being
absent.”

“
It’s not me she is upset with,” her brother said curtly. “I
was not the one who opened my legs to be some Spartan’s whore.”
Chara gasped at his stinging words.

“
I didn’t have a choice and you know it.”

“
So that is alright then—the perfect excuse.” She could hear
the anger in her brother’s voice, there was a slight tremor in it
that he only had when he was really angry.

“
Excuse for what?” she challenged. He only shook his head and
stepped back from her. “Excuse for what?” she repeated. She did not
appreciate whatever it was her brother was insinuating.

“
You just didn’t fight very hard,” he finally said.

“
And exactly how was I supposed to fight?” There was no way she
could take on a Spartan.

“
You told us to leave so you could be alone with
him.”

“
I told you to leave so he wouldn’t murder you, there is a
fairly substantial difference.”

Her brother
turned his back on her and walked off. She picked up a stone and
threw it at him, hitting him in the back, but he didn’t stop. He
kept walking.

Chara couldn’t
believe that he was implying that she wanted this to happen, or
that she should have fought him off. What exactly would that have
served? Her experience would likely have been more violent and it
could also have jeopardized her whole family. Doros refused to see
her side of it, he only saw his own anger. It wasn’t like he put up
much of a fight when it came down to it, he’d just walked away. His
accusation was so very unfair. Anger coursed through her body
urging her to move so she could try to dissipate it.

She knew that
once the anger subsided she would be extremely hurt, more so by
Doros’ words than anything else that happened that day. Being
imposed upon by a Spartan was an unfortunate event that came upon
one like anything of bad luck—Doros reaction felt like downright
betrayal.

She spent the
next hours preparing the things she was going to say to him when he
returned, but he didn’t return that evening. It grew dark and still
he wasn’t back. She knew her parents were worried. Doros was a
hothead, but surely he wasn’t dumb enough to do something rash. He
knew that they would all be punished in the end if he did. He also
seemed to place the blame for the whole incident squarely with
her.

She lay on her
cot and tried to make sense of the day. On the whole it had been
one of the worse days of her life—right up there next to Peracili’s
death, when she had lost her husband and her home in one day. At
least she had a roof over her head. That might not be the case when
they realize that she has to return to the Spartan the following
evening.

Perhaps she
had to confront the idea that maybe it was better for all involved
if she didn’t return. Maybe she had upset the gods in some way and
they were handing out misfortune to her.

With all the
happenings of the day, she hadn’t even turned her thoughts to what
the Spartan wanted from her. Perhaps his intentions were for one
more time, then he would forget about her. She couldn’t really
imagine his interest turning into anything more, she wasn’t sure
she could be the lover of a Spartan, she wasn’t even sure if that
entailed more than what happened in the field today.

She wished she
could clear it all from her mind and think of nice things—lovely
spring days, ripe fruit and the scant days of leisure once the
harvest was done. Her life used to be very simple and she wasn’t
entirely sure when things got so complicated.

Chara was
extremely nervous as she walked up to the Menares house. She had no
idea how the evening would unfold, and as much as she didn’t want
to go, she equally didn’t like being at home at the moment either.
Her mother was still sad, her father was stubbornly ignoring the
issue and her brother refused to talk to her.

Her brother
had returned in the morning—he’d been drinking. She was still
incredibly angry with him for the way he’d acted.

She’d also
been trying to work out how she would deal with having to leave
that evening. In the end she just told them she needed to go for a
walk. Maybe it would happen sufficiently fast so they didn’t have
to know, but she wasn’t sure—it depended on how long it took.

She would also
have to walk home in the dark, which wasn’t ideal, but it was
unlikely anything would happen to her that was worse than what she
was facing right now. Fortune had not been on her side lately.

The gate at
the wall surrounding the villa was closed, the wall there to
protect the villa against attack from the Helots. They were right
to be concerned; they’d been attacked before from the stories she’d
been told. There had been an uprising quite a number of years ago
and there were always people referring back to that time, like her
brother, and she knew he wasn’t alone. It was always there in the
undertow.

She considered
turning around and walking home, but she was sure the door being
closed would not serve as an excuse when they came to punishment
for her family for her refusal to take an order. She knocked as
loudly as she could. It took a long time, but eventually someone
came. They opened the door and she could see them by the light of
their flame. It was one of the Helot servants. He’d grown up here
from the time he was a child, she knew. He wasn’t from this region
so no one in the village knew him particularly well. He didn’t
spend much time there in any capacity and didn’t seem to want to
establish relationships with the Helots in the area.