The very word was an anathema to all that was Spartan, all that she was. With his grim pronouncement, Lucius Balbus had stripped out the very essence of her being, making her an aberration in her own eyes.
To cry was to disgrace not only her Spartan heritage, but Athene herself. Yet now, freed from the shackles of her will, her anguish tore through her with savage claws. In silent desperation she clutched her arms about herself seeking, childlike, to soothe the pain. How long she stayed this way she could not tell, conscious only of her own black despair.
‘Here.’
Dimly, she became aware of a gentle touch on her shoulder.
She raised her head, her vision still blurred by tears, to look upon the most beautiful creature she had ever seen. Through her misted eyes, Lysandra could not make out if the woman were a mortal or a muse of Apollo come to spirit her away from this place.
Her hair was of the finest spun gold, straight and fair, her skin kissed to delicate bronze by the Carian sun. The flawless coun-tenance was perfection beyond that of any described in Homeric hymn; impossibly beautiful, she moved gracefully, as if she were the remnant of a dream. She knelt before Lysandra and daubed her face with a cool, damp cloth, wiping away the bitterness of her tears. She smiled then, and the light of the world shone in her peerless blue eyes.
‘It will go hard for you if they see you cry,’ she said. ‘Don’t give them the satisfaction.’
Lysandra nodded her thanks and was about to speak when a shadow fell across them.
‘Eirianwen!’ It was Stick. The wiry Parthian did not attempt to hide his leer as he looked down at the two women. ‘Is this new slave in tears already?’
‘No,’ Eirianwen stood. ‘She was hit in the face by my back-swing,’ she indicated a wooden practice sword lying nearby. ‘She’s dazed that’s all.’
‘Dazed is it?’ Stick leant over and grasped Lysandra’s chin, turning her face from left to right, as would a vet with a sick animal. She resisted the urge to slap his hand away, knowing she must play the part Eirianwen had set for her. ‘She looks alert enough to me,’ he said, releasing his grip with a disdainful push.
Lysandra found anger taking the edge from her grief. She rose to her feet.
Eirianwen shrugged. ‘Maybe I’m losing my touch.’
Stick gave his whinnying cackle. ‘I doubt that, Silurian,’ he said. ‘Get back to work.’
The blonde woman nodded, retrieved her sword and began a set drill. Her movements were swift and precise, her strikes executed with speed and power. Despite herself, Lysandra was shocked that her beautiful benefactor was, in fact, from a barbarian tribe of the most savage ilk. The Silurians dwelt in far off Britannia and had been only recently conquered by Sextus Julius Frontinus. Evidently, the current governor of Asia Minor had brought some captives with him to his latest post and sold them on.
‘What are you staring at?’ Stick interrupted her reverie. ‘Five laps of the ludus and then join me with the other chattel!’
It was an order and, though issued by the repugnant little Parthian, discipline and training responded. Without thought she took off at a steady run, threading her way through the crowded training area, her long legs eating up ground with easy rapidity.
The simple familiarity of running calmed her nerves somewhat, but she could not shake the emptiness that had overwhelmed her.
As she began her circuit of the ludus, its very perimeter defining her new imprisonment and new status, she struggled to come to terms with her misfortune: casting her mind back, she searched for some past deed that may have offended the gods and caused them to scourge her so.
It seemed a lifetime ago that she had left the sanctity of the temple, high on Sparta’s acropolis, to begin her Mission and yet fewer than two years had passed. It was rare for one as young as she had been to receive this honour yet, in the harsh environment of the temple she had excelled at all trials, both physical and mental. The High Priestess had deemed her worthy, and she was not one to make swift decisions. Calling the old woman’s face to mind brought a harsh stab of pain to Lysandra’s breast.
She wondered if she would ever see her again, or any of those Sisters with whom she had grown up.
She pushed the vision aside: it would do little good to think of what now was lost to her. Instead she recalled her pride and her certainty that the old woman had judged her well. She had been, after all, far ahead of any of the girls in her age group. In fact, Lysandra had considered that she was superior in both learning and physical prowess to most of the priestesses in the temple but this was a fact she felt would have been churlish to overstate. In the Spartan way, she had allowed her actions to elucidate.
Lysandra had left the temple with a definite plan in mind: most of her predecessors on the Mission had confined their duties to mainland Hellas and other centres of civilisation; she had thought this short sighted in the extreme. What use, she had asked herself, in spreading Athene’s Word to those that were already familiar with Hellenic religion or its inferior Roman derivative?
Yet, for all their lack of culture, the Romans had conquered much of the known world — save Sparta, a fact that she had to re-iterate ad nauseam to the uneducated — and Rome’s legions breasted far-flung frontiers. Away from the epicentre of civilisation, she could pass on her teachings to Gauls, Illyrians, Pannonians and the many other barbarian races that made up the imperial provinces.
As she ran, she recalled her first meeting with the Legate in command of the Fifth Macedonian Legion with fondness. It was, she knew, not unheard of for women to travel with Roman Legions. However, a woman working in an active capacity was a different matter entirely. At first, the Legate tried to dismiss her out of hand, just as she had expected. Nonetheless she cut a fine figure in her hard-earned scarlet war cloak and with a plumed Corinthian style helmet tucked under arm she clearly impressed him.
Though rhetoric was rarely practised in Sparta, her priestesses were usually schooled to convey religious oratory and Lysandra applied this learning to put her case to the Legate. Not only could she take the auguries and provide spiritual guidance to his soldiers, she told him, she was also skilled in rudimentary medicine.
It was this that had convinced him. A good commander’s first concern is for his soldiers, and any assistance in the hospital tent was not something to be dismissed out of hand. Admittedly, he had been somewhat grudging with his consent, but he had acquiesced.
Her small tent was billeted with the Sixth Century, First Cohort and their reaction to her presence was surly at best. To most soldiers a woman was good for one thing only, yet her position as a priestess of the Virgin Athene protected her from any amorous advances. A lusty bunch they may have been but soldiers were superstitious enough not to risk displeasing the fickle gods.
It had been a hard task to win them over but Lysandra, already used to the brutal life of the priestesses’ agoge, had not shirked her duties. She rose at dawn with the men, exercising when they did and even lending a hand to dig the palisades on occasion.
The willingness to get her hands dirty had initially been treated with derision by the tough, cynical legionaries and thereafter became a matter of amusement. One middle-aged soldier, Marcus Pavo by name, always seemed to take special care to tease her.
Once, she recalled, he had commented that her ‘tits were small enough to fool any recruiter into thinking she was a boy’.
Lysandra responded that she had seen him emerging from a swim in the Parapamis River and was sure that he too was still a boy, judging by his ‘equipment’. That she bore their jibes with good humour and responded with her own laconic wit in time caused men of the Legion to regard her as a sort of mascot. Their acceptance had meant more to her than she cared to admit; she had become one of them, a trusted augur and priestess and even friend to some, Pavo among them.
Then, on a routine voyage across the Hellespont, the storm came: Poseidon’s wrath had dragged the entire century to the bottom, choosing to spare only her. Pavo had tried to swim out to her — to save her before his own exhaustion overtook him.
His desperate gasps for help as his armour pulled him under still haunted her dreams. In this violent twist of fate, the Earth-Shaker had stripped a priestess of his hated sibling Athene of her friends, her freedom and her dignity. In saving her life, he spat in her eye; Lysandra would rather she had perished with the rest than have to live the life of a slave.
She began to slow her run, realising that she was almost at the end of her laps. Her reverie had turned as black as her circumstances. Lysandra cast a glance at the statue of Roman Athene once again, and wondered why
