Leonis cried, “Bitch of a trembler, beg my pardon!”
Andreia uncovered her face, and fixing her eyes on Leonis again, made clear she would not beg. Meanwhile, the other girls shouted out encouragements to Leonis-“In the belly! Hit her in the belly!” Leonis reared back and kicked Andreia hard in her swollen abdomen. Having underestimated the toughness of it, her bare foot recoiled hard from the blow. She planted herself and tried again, striking just under the navel. The impact seemed to reverberate through Andreia’s insides; she soiled herself as her bladder gave way. Then Leonis hit her again, and again, until it felt as if her baby’s body was spinning within her, trying in his own way to avoid the blows. Melitta was still screaming in Gorgo’s arms as Gorgo begged her sister to stop; couldn’t she see that the woman was pregnant? Leonis shifted her wrath back at Andreia’s face, landing a kick that cut her cheek and broke her nose.
A pair of eyes stared at the melee through cracked shutters. The eyes withdrew into the darkness within; Damatria sat on the stairs to the women’s quarters, listening but not intervening. She thought about Andreia’s fair good looks when they first met, and her expertise with herbs. When, she asked herself, had she conceived such a hatred for the girl? Never, came the reply: she had no right to interfere in the beating, because it was the prerogative of decent citizens to discipline the families of tremblers. The fault was Antalcidas’, for putting his wife in that position. There were other considerations too-her newfound honor in the community as the mother of a hero, for one. Nor could she deny that Antalcidas’ disgrace had discouraged her charitable feelings toward him and his family. If not for Epitadas’s sacrifice, everything she had worked for would have been for nothing. The thought frightened her.
She stood up and ascended the stairs. The girl would survive, of course; someone would put a stop to it. Everyone knew that Sparta needed spears.
Sure enough, the pummeling stopped when a male voice rang out: “What is this shame? You children, leave her alone!”
An ancient Spartiate, happening by on his way to Limnae, stood there shaking his staff in admonishment. Leonis, who was as submissive before her male elders as she was domineering to low-class females, backed away from the prone Andreia.
“Put the brat down, Gorgo,” she said. “We don’t want to be late to the gymnasium!”
4.
When it was over, Damatria changed her mind. She sent out two of her helot field hands to collect Andreia from the road and carry her home. Then she realized that she probably needed care for her injuries, and that she was alone. In good conscience, Damatria could not tend her daughter-in-law herself after doing nothing to prevent the incident; someone else would have to do it. Then she remembered that Molobrus’ mother, Lampito, was living not far away in Mesoa, equally alone in her widowhood.
The old woman knocked on the farmhouse door and Melitta opened it. The child looked at her great- grandmother’s sparse, weedy pate, her milk-stained left eye, and her crumpled posture, and could say nothing except, “My mother is hurt.”
“I know that, my dear. Will you take me to her?”
She found Andreia lying on her bed, her chiton parted to reveal the bruises on her abdomen. The other removed the wet cloth from her face, showing a single blood-flecked eyeball as she squinted at Lampito. Her nose was so grotesquely shifted that it almost touched her enlarged, pendent eyelid.
“Who are you?” Andreia asked.
She was seized by a sudden, wavelike tightening in her womb, which had the effect of convulsing the flesh under her bruises, causing her even more pain. When the contractions ended she glared at Lampito again.
“What are you doing here, elder?”
Lampito stood silent until the next spasm, which came hardly a moment later.
“You are in labor. I will help you.”
Andreia shook her head in her pain, saying, “It can’t be… it’s too early…” but was in no position to refuse. The old woman took command of the campaign with an assurance that mother and daughter immediately trusted. The girl was kept busy running for cushions and cups of clean water. When she returned Lampito had reached inside her mother up to the third knuckle of her right hand.
“I can feel him,” she reported.
As her labor went on Lampito excoriated Andreia for waiting so long without calling for help. “Do you think you’d do this yourself? Don’t look at me, push now. The selfishness of girls today is a scandal; it’s a wonder you bother to make babies at all-PUSH!”
The rhythm of exertion and rest went on for hours, until night came and Lampito had Melitta fetch oil for the lamps. Sometime after midnight, with Andreia so spent that she was falling asleep between contractions, the old woman reached inside her again. As she pushed the birth canal down, blood and amniotic fluid shining on her leathery hands soaked into the earthen floor. Lampito peeped within with her good eye, then winked at Andreia.
“He has red hair.”
Melitta watched agape as her brother was delivered, flipped over, and liberated from his cord by a carving knife. After washing him, Lampito put the infant on his mother’s stomach. All watched in wonder as he crept toward the breast.
“Our little soldier finds his own mess,” the old woman said, pleased.
Andreia slept for thirty-six hours after the birth. Lampito stayed by her side, keeping her clean, guiding the newborn’s rooting mouth to her nipples. When she awoke, Andreia was confused by the presence of the stranger, but remembered her arrival when she felt the infant bundled at her side.
“Who are you?” she asked Lampito again.
“Sparta has become too big, when relatives don’t know each other.”
She explained that she was Antalcidas’ grandmother on his father’s side, and that Damatria had summoned her after the attack.
“Then the lady Damatria has done us a kindness,” said Andreia.
Lampito tossed her head. “Perhaps.”
The newborn began to cough; Andreia gathered him closer and rocked him. Then she noticed his color.
“Why is he so blue?”
“His lungs are weak. It is not unusual with children born so early. He may not survive.”
Andreia reflexively covered the baby’s ears. This prognosis, however justified, struck her as needlessly cruel to say aloud.
But in time it became clear that something was wrong with the child. In the following days his breathing became more labored, with his color never improving beyond a sickly plum purple. His breaths became so shallow at night that his mother had to put her ear to his chest to see if his heart still beat. The struggle to catch his breath would wake him up after no more than a few minutes of sleep at a time-a schedule that also gave Andreia no time to rest. Lampito watched them suffer, fully knowing the only end that could await the boy. But she kept her thoughts to herself.
Andreia would not raise a hand in surrender. With Antalcidas away, she took it upon herself to give his son a name she thought would please him: Molobrus, after the boy’s grandfather. And despite what had befallen her the last time she walked the streets of Sparta, she insisted on going out herself, with Melitta in tow, to register the name at the city magistrate’s. As a precaution, she hid the boy’s unhealthy color by wrapping him in blankets. This earned her an unexpected bonus: swaddled babies were such a rarity in Sparta that passersby gawked at the baby and hardly noticed the trembler’s wife.
Yet the day Andreia dreaded came on with pitiless speed. Over the weeks she and Lampito had exhausted the known remedies, both practical and divine. She hired a professional root-cutter to gather medicinal herbs under the light of the full moon. With Damatria’s word as credit, she spared no expense on ointments, including one made with truffles, silver rust, crushed black ants, and the gallbladder of a freshly killed brown bear. She sent expensive dedications to the Sanctuary of Asclepius at Epidauros, and inquired about bringing an adept of the healer-god to tend little Molobrus in Kynosoura. But when they turned to this last recourse it was too late for the priest to arrive
