Kristen LePine

Gorgo Chapter One NOW: 490 B.C. Only the stench of rotten fruit greets me when I enter the house of King Cleomenes of Sparta. Cloying and sweet, it is not figs spoiled in the summer sun. It is death. “Hello?” I let myself through the atrium and into the open-air courtyard. Crows, beckoned by the scent, circle in the blue sky above. “Hello? Is anyone here?” In response, one plucky crow with black, oily wings swoops down and lands heavily on a citron tree. It lets out a great “caw,” pointing me toward the closed door on the other end of the courtyard. I approach the door and open it to enter the king’s favorite chamber for work and relaxation, the andrōn. The window is shuttered to keep out the scavengers, but there is enough light to see the outline of the room’s sole occupant. Cleomenes lies on the table that had served during his life and reign as his worktable. Then, he kept it covered in scrolls, reed pens, wax tablets, and dirty cups stacked on each other with dried bits of wine pasted at the bottom. Now, the table only holds his wasted body wrapped in a filthy cloth. He lies on his side, curled into a ball like a sleeping baby. I struggle to imagine him as a babe in my grandmother Cassia’s arms. With a mewling mouth and ten tiny fingers and toes, he grew into a mighty king beloved by all. So different than the wreckage before me now. My throat issues a strangled cry that surprises me, and I quickly pull myself together. I am grateful and puzzled that no one is here to witness my outburst. The king is dead. No matter how or where he died, the women of his family and the high-ranking women of Sparta have an obligation and should be present. When Cassia passed, legions of women and their helots bustled about. They worked in concert to cleanse and anoint her body, and then they beat their breasts and pulled their hair in lamentation. The house vibrated with weeping and shrieking. After we buried her body in the yard behind the house, we feasted in her honor. The whole affair lasted three days. Where is everyone now? Korinne should be here with me at the very least, but she is never around when I need her most. I am being maudlin, which I detest. I grind my teeth to staunch my emotions. I have work to do. If only I knew where to start. What was I supposed to do first? I should have paid better attention to Cassia’s funeral. The events of the day have unmoored me. The king’s youngest brother, Brotus, arrived at my door before breakfast to bring me the grim news. Before he could speak, I asked him, “Uncle, how does Sparta fare?” “Niece,” he said, his voice strained and without his usual sunny warmth. “Our King Cleomenes is dead—” “The crows told me already,” I snapped. Their noisy caw-caws began as dawn lifted the sun into the sky, but that didn’t explain my aggression. I wanted to remain in denial. The king couldn’t be dead. “Answer my question.” “Sparta is resilient.” “Sparta is resilient,” I agreed, though I didn’t believe my words. How would our people overcome this loss after so many other losses? Would the people come to love King Leonidas as much as King Cleomenes? And what about me? Could I be the leader of our women? They first would need to forgive us for arresting the king. Would they? Would I if I had been born in their sandals and our stations reversed? I had so many questions flooding my mind, making the bridge of my nose ache. As we stood in the courtyard, I lifted my face to the sky. A sliver of the moon looked down at me, a porthole to the world of the gods. I imagined the goddess Artemis observing me with keen eyes and sharp judgment. I pulled my chin down to Brotus. I wanted to appear strong even if my insides felt spongy and soft, like the earth after the winter rains. I invited him to break bread with me and share hero stories of our king. I called for a helot to bring us black soup and barley bread, but she brought a wide-eyed stranger. Sweat dripped down the stranger’s long, sinewy legs. “I come with a message for King Cleomenes. Is this his palace?” The man spoke with a husky northern accent and directed his words only to Brotus. “There are no palaces in Sparta,” Brotus snorted. “You stand in the king’s childhood home,” I said, trying to catch the foreigner’s eye. “He lived here with his mother until his own coronation day. Please, stranger, we are members of the king’s family. Give us your message, and we will relay it to the king.” “My message is for men. Send her away.” he said to Brotus.” “I do not have that authority. If you want your message to reach the king, you need to address her,” Brotus advised. “But she’s a woman,” the courier wrinkled his nose. “Why would she be interested in the business of men?” I pinched my eyes together. The foreigner's words called to mind another accented stranger who had come to Sparta many years before and issued those exact words. Why would she be interested in the business of men? “Courier, I do not know where in the north you hail from, but you are in Sparta where men and women are often interested in the same topics. Now speak to me, for I am Gorgo of Sparta, daughter to King Cleomenes, and descendant to the hero-god Hercules.” The courier raised his pointy chin to Brotus, who only leaned back on his heels, nodding. The man cleared his throat, considering his words before launching into his tale. He ran from Athens to bring us the terrible news. Persian forces have landed on the beach at Marathon. Athens urgently requests military aid from all her neighbors. His eyes finally landed on mine. “Will you send military aid to defeat the Persian menace? Of all our neighbors up and down the Peloponnese, we need the Spartan Army most. It is the strongest and most fearsome. We cannot win without your support.” His words hurtled toward me with the strength of a lightning bolt. I pulled my himation tight against my chest until the edges of the bronze fibula I wore dug into my skin, reminding me of its presence. “Thank you, I will deliver your message to the king. But Sparta cannot commit troops for at least three days.” He spat on the ground and cursed me. Athens could not hold off the Persians much longer. Athens and the surrounding territories would fall if we waited three days to muster our troops. Still, I could not do anything more. I turned away from the runner and let Brotus explain the situation. “There’s been a death.” Now, as I sit in the room with the dead king, hot tears spring to my eyes. They are not for the deceased, or they are not only for him. They are for the courier’s message—the Persians have invaded Athens—on the heels of the king’s death. One event alone is portentous, but together, these twin calamities are cataclysmic. I sit feeling heavy with the enormity of both situations while horror sweeps up my legs, torso, and arms, keeping me rooted to the stool. I am paralyzed with a thought: it is no coincidence that both catastrophes have joined. Why would she be interested in the business of men? It is no coincidence that the courier used the same phrasing as the Ionian ambassador, Aristagoras of Miletus. I do not like thinking of him or when he visited Sparta nine harvests ago. Over the years, I have developed tricks to cordon off my thoughts and memories of his time in Sparta, but now my breath catches, and I fear I cannot keep it caged any longer. A scuffling outside of the andrōn jolts me forward. The distraction helps me safely stuff my hot tears and the memory behind a rock. A goose slaps the tiled floor of the courtyard with its bright orange webbed feet. It honks and flaps its wings while rushing toward the citron tree, now weighed down by a murder of ravenous crows. The goose is a ruthless guardian, and one by one, the crows vault into the sky, where they continue to circle for a supper they are denied. When the goose spots me, it lunges forward with the same alacrity it showed the crows. Its speed and patterned feathers—a flurry of grey, brown, black, and white—are terrifying. “Back, back, back,” it screams, and I do as it commands. “Shoo,” I say, but it continues honking, flapping, and rushing until I am up against the courtyard wall. “No, Bertie, no!” Behind me, a girl jumps between the goose and me, stopping it in its tracks. She is maybe eight or nine years old, barefooted, and wears a leather helot’s cap. She is far too young to work without supervision, but her actions and assurance tell me she belongs. The slave girl begins tossing breadcrumbs down at Bertie’s feet, and the bird forgets my presence and pecks at the bread. “Pardon, ma’am,” the girl says, giving a little curtsy. “I know I shouldn’t have let her out of her pen, but I thought she could keep out the crows.” “She did a good job,” I said, peeling off the wall. “Is she your pet?” “Yes, ma’am, from an egg King Cleomenes gave me.” “King Cleomenes gave you this goose?” “Yes. He named her Bertie,” she says. A secretive smile slides across her lips. I let my mouth hang open, and I must remind myself to close it. The king never allowed me to have a pet. “And what does the king call you?” “Helene, ma’am.” “Where is everyone, Helene? Where is your mother—Elissa, right?” Though I have never met this girl, she resembles another house slave, Elissa. The girl’s cheeks redden, which brings out the freckles scattered across her nose, and I can see her father, a barn helot, come into focus. Her eyes plummet to the ground. “I don’t know where they’ve gone or when they’ll be back.” She is lying, of course, and I’m about to tell her so—do the king’s slaves think they can stage a coup? But she looks down her long nose, her mother’s nose, with earthy brown eyes that are hers alone, “I am here. I am here to serve you and our new king.” She reminds me of my younger self, and I feel a smile tug at the corners of my mouth. “Very well.” Her determination and courage buoy me. If she can do her job, I can do mine, even without the women of Sparta. “Bring me water, clean linens, herbs—rosemary and oregano—and oil. Can you manage that?” “I can.” She bows and is off. “And keep Bertie guarding the courtyard,” I call over my shoulder before returning to Cleomenes. The andrōn sings with memories. In this room, the king tutored me on geography, history, war principles, literature, and more. We sat for hours at the worktable he now lays upon, where he taught me to decipher scytales he received with cryptic messages from his generals or foreign leaders. The messages were meaningless on their own, but once the king wrapped the encoded leather around a cylinder, he revealed the message. The king had dozens of rods of varying widths, as each of his correspondents wrote their message for a specific cylinder. As I kept a mental catalog of which baton belonged to whom, the king would share with me the strengths and weaknesses of every message writer. This was of utmost importance to him—I needed to know how to size people up quickly and accurately. He extended this lesson to Petteia, his favorite strategy game, played at the limewood table by the window. If I became grumpy because I played poorly or not at his level, he drove me to move past the sensation quickly. ‘You have time to outwit me yet, but not if you stew over the past mistake. There is always the next game. Don’t let your weakness spoil your grand plan.’ he would say. ‘Instead, focus on my weaknesses—if you can discover them,’ he would add with a wink. He imbued his lessons with stories from the battlefield. King Cleomenes excelled on the front lines, and he always sought a way to return. I suppose that’s why most of the lyric poetry and epic tales he consumed dealt with war. We idled many winter nights by the hearth; the king would sit in the klismos while I curled like a cat at his feet as he read from my favorite story, Song of Illium. Like a rhapsode, he voiced all the parts. Sadness clutches my heart while guilt assails my mind. The dreaded memories from the past surge forward, much like Bertie did in the courtyard but amplified. My knees buckle under the pressure. I have battled against this echo from the past for nine harvests, but today, I am tired. I haven’t slept well since the king’s guards hauled him off to the jailhouse, and last night, I didn’t sleep a wink. Now, he is dead. My king, my tutor, my father is dead. And I am alone. Where is Korinne and Elissa? Where are the women of Sparta? Have they forsaken me—no, not me, but our family—have they abandoned the Agaid House? It is too late for speculation. The past has begun to assault my vision, and I feel dragged backward, though my feet never leave the ground.

Story Statement The daughter of a dead Spartan king probes the past for lessons, learns how to forgive, and secures the support of her people. Sketch the Antagonist/Antagonistic Force This novel features a dual timeline (Now: 490 B.C. and Then: 499 B.C). In 490 B.C. (Now), a Chorus of Spartan Women serves as the primary antagonistic force. In 499 B.C., King Cleomenes of Sparta is an antagonistic force. The Chorus: As Gorgo prepares her father, King Cleomenes, for burial, she finds herself alone, save for a young slave girl. The women of Sparta (the Chorus) are expected to be at Gorgo’s side during the preparations, but they have gathered on the altar of the goddess Artemis because they feel unsafe. They fear that Gorgo murdered her father, who wrought chaos in their community. The head priestess of the temple allows the women to hold a tribunal that will end at dawn. Several choral members hold deep resentment and fury towards Gorgo. Gorgo’s old nurse, Dirce, relates a tale where the girl acts like a tornado destroying her few possessions. Her archrival, Demetria, and shopkeeper, Agnes, tell a moving story of Gorgo catching an egg thief (Demetria’s brother). The near-starving boy was whipped within an inch of his life. His mother disavowed his existence, and Demetria nursed him back to health, only to have the boy ask his sister to forgive Gorgo. Eventually, Gorgo’s mother asks for stories about Gorgo’s virtue and ability to uphold Spartan values. When dawn arrives, the time for stories concludes, and the Chorus must vote on whether to forgive and support Gorgo, their new queen. King Cleomenes of Sparta: Though Gorgo idolized Cleomenes in her childhood, this changes when she is seventeen. An Ionian delegation from Miletus, a city in the Persian Empire, visits Sparta, seeking militaristic aid to stage a revolt from Persia, and Gorgo gets her first taste of real-world geopolitics and becomes aware of King Cleomenes’s flawed nature. He is not the model, virtuous Spartan she imagined him to be—he can be petty, suspicious, and jealous; he lacks prudence and can be bribed; he drinks too much and can make a fool of himself, and most significantly, he is willing to thrust Sparta into a war with the Persian Empire simply because his co-king is opposed. Gorgo convinces Cleomenes to see reason, and he does send the delegation away without Spartan support. However, this is just the beginning of his leadership misjudgments that eventually leads Gorgo to have her father arrested and put into the stockage. This is where he dies from a stab wound. Breakout title 1. Gorgo I like this title the best. Gorgo is the name of the central character, and it’s a great name – simple, punchy, and related to the monstrous and mythical gorgon (a mythical figure that my Gorgo embraces.) 2. Gorgo of Sparta This title gives a setting as well as character name, inviting to readers who are unfamiliar with Gorgo and her place/time in history. 3. Songs of Sparta I like this the least, but it may be invitational to readers who enjoyed Song of Achilles or Silence of the Girls. Comparables: Circe by Madeline Miller (2018) (along with Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker, Ariadne by Jennifer Saint, and Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes. Miller’s popular book pulls a minor character from Homer’s The Odyssey to tell a fuller story of Circe’s life as a witch and goddess with a human voice. My narrative takes a minor character for Herodotus’s The Histories, which reads more like fantasy than history. I also selected Circe because is enjoyed by adults and young adults, and I believe Gorgo is a story that can also cross-over between these two categories of readers. The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd (2020) I selected this book because unlike Circe, Silence of the Girls, and Ariadne, Sue Monk Kidd’s book is a work of historical ancient fiction, and Gorgo is also a work of historical ancient fiction. Medea by Euripides and Eilish Quin (2024) I just learned that a novel about Medea is coming out in 2024. I love Euripides’s tragedy and his chorus of women has inspired mine. Other comparables worth considering: Whenever people learn that I set my book in ancient Sparta, they mention Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield (1998) and 300 by Frank Miller (1999). So, I feel like I must add them as possible comps. Both books feature Leonidas of Sparta, and Leonidas is present in my story as well, but I paint him very differently (younger, softer, not yet the king). I would love to encourage readers of these extremely popular stories to check out Gorgo too, but with an awareness that my story focuses on Gorgo and the women in Spartan society more than Leonidas and the men in Spartan society. Hook line: In 490 B.C., as the Persian Empire launches a war against Greek city-states, King Cleomenes of Sparta is stabbed to death in jail. The women of Sparta secretly meet, fearful that the king’s only daughter, Gorgo, murdered the king. They shift through their memories and stories to decide if they will support her. Meanwhile, Gorgo feels abandoned by the women of Sparta as she prepares her father’s body for burial. While she works, she is haunted by a memory of when she first became aware of her father’s corrupt nature. In 499 B.C., a foreign envoy from Ionia seeks militaristic aid from Sparta to secede from the Persian Empire. Gorgo intertwines past and present and stories from multiple perspectives to paint a picture of a complex heroine confronting her father’s failings, her own flaws, her duty to the community, and her destiny to lead in partnership with the new king. Conflict: 1. Central Conflict Gorgo wants power and to be important. Her father has tutored and prepared her for power, but she is a girl and will never be king herself. She can be a daughter, wife, and mother to king, but she will never rule directly. Gorgo doesn’t understand why her father spent so much time tutoring her if she will never sit on his throne. He tells her that it’s important that a king has a clever and well-educated wife to offer advice, but this isn’t enough for her. Throughout the story, Gorgo must come to terms with her desire and inability to achieve her goal. Scene: The king offers his heir Leonidas a task (traveling to another city to investigate a political situation), and he balks. Gorgo inserts herself into the conversation and says that she would happily go in his place, but this only encourages Leonidas to accept the task. After he leave, Gorgo asks her father if he has a task for her, and he tells her to take a bath and then complete a task her grandmother previous gave her to deliver a basket of sundries to a new mother and wife of a fallen soldier. Gorgo wants a more important task, but the king tells her that there is no more important task than that. They argue and Gorgo explains her desire to be important and do important things, like Leonidas. The king interprets her position as jealousy and he tells her that she and Leonidas are on the same team, working together to achieve the same goals. She disagrees, and he explains how vital his wife and mother are to him when he makes important decisions. This does not resolve her feelings of inadequacy either. The king gives in and offers Gorgo as a task—the next day, he invites her to join him for a meeting with a foreign dignitary. He wants her to observe only. She is not to speak. She hates the idea of sitting silently in a room, but the king convinces her that she may find it more exciting than delivering baskets. 2. Secondary conflicts: The power dynamics and struggles between King Cleomenes and his co-ruler King Demaratus highlight the primary conflict and serve as a backdrop to the narrative. This conflict comes to a head in a scene when Cleomenes learns that Demaratus does not support the envoy’s request for aid his “Ionian Revolution.” Cleomenes decides Sparta will support the foreigner, even though his reasoning is baseless. 3. Inner conflict: In addition to power, Gorga has a longing for connection. She once had a friend in Chrysanthe (who is part of the Chorus), but their friendship ended in childhood when Gorgo’s father didn’t elevate Chrysanthe’s father to a position of power. Gorgo gets another chance at friendship with Lycus, the nephew of the foreigner who wants Spartan aid for a war. However, near the end of the story, Lycus betrays Gorgo. Setting: This story is set in ancient Sparta between two perspectives: Gorgo and the Chorus of Spartan Women. Gorgo’s perspective: Gorgo’s story begins in 490 B.C. in the home of her father and King of Sparta. The king’s house in ancient Sparta would not have been identical to every other dwelling belonging to a Spartan citizen. Made simply with mud bricks, wood planked floors, and a red clay roof. The Spartans believed real treasure could never be found within the confines of bricks. Instead, treasure is experienced in the morning dew in the meadow at dawn, the smell of clean basil and pine in the air, and the song of river rambling over and around the rocks. Important locations within the house include: the courtyard and his andrōn (his favorite room, like an office or study). This would have been a space where the king worked and relaxed. There is a large worktable, limewood table and stools by a window with a view of the Taygetos mountains, and a hearth with a klismos. Gorgo has fond memories of time spent in this space. This was the room where her father tutored her, played strategy games with her, and read to her from his collection of treasured scrolls. During the king’s life, the cluttered table was covered in scrolls, wax tablets, and dirty bowls with dried bits of wine. However, now it holds the body of the dead king. Throughout the narrative, Gorgo remains in this hot room (she cannot open the shutters for fear of letting in the birds) preparing the king’s body for burial. Near the end of the story, Gorgo describes Cleomenes’s jail cell on the night he died. The king had drawn a game grid on the ground and he and Gorgo play three rounds of their favorite strategy game, using acorns and feathers for game pieces. Gorgo often reflects on the past, and she returns repeatedly to a three-day period in 499 BC when an envoy from Miletus comes to Sparta seeking militaristic support. In these memory sections, more of the king’s house and estate are described, including Gorgo’s bedroom, a dining room, a kitchen, an atrium, the olive orchards that surround the house and a barn. Outside of the house, Gorgo visits a meadow where she practices throwing the javelin; King Demaratus’s house where she spies him meeting with foreigner envoy; a barn where she helps deliver a foal; the wrestling ring outside of the agora (market) where she gets knocked unconscious; the agora; the acropolis; and up into the mountains where she looks down at the agora, acropolis, and the agoge (military school for men aged 7 through 60). She also visits the Sanctuary of Artemis Orthia. Also, through the character of Lycus of Miletus (part of the foreign envoy), the bustling seaport town of Miletus is described. Perspective of the Chorus: While Gorgo is at her father’s house in 490 BC, the Chorus of Spartan Women gather on an altar behind the Sanctuary of Artemis Orthia, where a fire has been lit. The Sanctuary sits in the marshy area near the Eurotas River where the smell of decayed plants and sound of marsh life (frogs, crickets, birds) are ever present. The Chorus describes a variety of places within Sparta including incidents that happen at the agora, the gymnasium, at the Sanctuary at Artemis Orthia, an aristocrat’s house, and in a meadow. The chorus leaves Sparta to describe a battle that happened in Argos in 494 B.C., and two choral members detail a journey they took to Argos to learn more about the battle.