Truth and Sparta Read Online Free PDF

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