Read an Excerpt
1
A NIGHTTIME JOURNEY
Hear me! My name is Gorgo. I am a Spartan queen. I come to tell you a story. A story unlike any that has been told before. It is the story of the greatest war ever fought. Years it lasted. Famous cities went up in flames. Mighty heroes, the pride of Greece and Asia, won undying glory for themselves. Some died before their time, and their shades fled down to the underworld. Others, when the war was done, met with equally unhappy fates. One, returning from the war, was murdered in his own palace. Another, a man of tricks and turns, the great schemer who did more than anyone else to secure victory for the Greeks, roams the world to this day. Who knows if he will ever make it home?
I too, in the years since the war, have roamed the world. I have spoken to those who fought and survived. I have toured the fields and sailed the waters where the battles were decided. I have sought to understand everything that happened. How it was that East and West came to go to war. I played my own small part; I will tell you how. But this is not just my story. It is the story of everyone who played a part—gods as well as men. A story unlike any you will ever have read.
Perhaps, though, if I had not woken up one night when I was a little girl and found a wolf staring down at me, I would never be telling you this. My story begins one afternoon when I went up the slopes of Taygetus, the savage, five-peaked mountain that separates Sparta from the land of the Messenians. My friends and I had never explored there before. We had always wanted to, and as my father, the king, was away at war, and my mother was sick in her bed, there was no one to stop us.
All afternoon we played. As the sun began to set, we realized that we were lost. Perhaps some of us wanted to cry. But none of us did. We had been raised never to show any sign of fear. So we curled up on the bare ground. We talked. We fell asleep.
Then, when I woke sud-denly and found the wolf staring down directly at me, his breath heavy on my face, I did let out a little scream. It is shameful to admit this, of course—but since it is my intention, as I write, always to tell the truth, I do not deny it. The wolf’s eyes were very yellow; they seemed to blaze. The creature himself was a monstrous size. His mouth was so huge and his jaws so sharp that I knew he could easily snap off my head with a single bite. I stared at him, and he stared at me. I felt the cool of the night against my skin and wondered if this would be the last thing I ever felt.
Then the wolf gave a soft yowl. He lay down on all fours and looked at me again. It seemed he was waiting. I reached out and touched him. The wolf did not move, save to gesture with his head. I stroked him; his fur was very thick. I rose to my feet. A second time the wolf gestured with his head. I laid my ear to his flank. I could hear his great heart pulsing. He shifted. He still seemed to be waiting for me to do something. Then suddenly I understood. I clambered onto his back and gripped the fur on his massive shoulders. The wolf rose to his feet. He sniffed the air. And then, with a soaring leap, we were away.
Like a dream it was, that ride. Down the slopes of Taygetus, through shadow and across moonlit glades, until at last we came to Sparta. Onward the wolf loped. Only when we came to the house where my mother lay ill did he finally stop. I slid off his back. He whined gently and licked my face. His tongue was very rough.
Then he was gone, and I wondered if I had imagined him. But there I was, outside my mother’s sickroom. That was real enough. Clearly the wolf must have brought me back home to Sparta for a reason. And so I went inside.
The women attending my mother were startled to see me. One of them put down the wet cloth with which she had been mopping her patient’s brow and tried to shoo me away. But my mother raised a hand.
“No,” she whispered, and gestured to the attendants to leave.
She stretched out her arms and I folded myself against her. How hot she felt! Hotter than she had ever felt before. Her breathing was ragged and labored.
“Mama,” I whispered. I snuggled myself up against her even more tightly.
For a long time we lay together in silence. Then, raising her head, my mother tried to speak.
“Gorgo.”
“Mama?”
She swallowed. I could feel her mustering all her energy. “In Athens . . .” she murmured. Her voice trailed away. She tried a second time. “In Athens . . . the girls, the Athenian girls . . .”
“Yes, Mama?”
“They turn into bears.”
I looked up at her. I had no idea why she had told me this. Where was Athens? Why did the girls turn into bears? What was it to me?
“Your father . . .” my mother whispered. “I . . . I have failed to give him a son. But you, Gorgo, you . . .” She squeezed my hand and looked into my eyes. They glittered with desperation. She beckoned me closer. I laid my ear against her mouth. Her lips felt as though they were on fire.
“Danger is coming,” she mumbled hoarsely. “Your father . . . Sparta . . .” She gasped. I could sense her summoning all her strength. When she finally spoke, it was an urgent, protracted wheeze. “The Persians—” She coughed violently, and blood spattered her chest. “The Persians are coming.” And then she slumped back onto her pillows. She was gasping for air.
I clung to her. “Mama,” I whispered. “I love you. Mama, do not go.”
But it was too late.
And I lay there, still hugging her tightly, until the attendants came back and realized what had happened and began to raise the cries of mourning.
