She smiled at me, waiting.

Well? she asked.

Well, what?

My wife, Thereia, was gossiping with the other farm women, out in the courtyard. I squirmed.

My cousin is a married woman, lady. As I am a married man.

The lady's eyes threw sparks of mischief. You would not be the first husband bound by love to someone other than his wife. Nor she the first wife.

At once all teasing gaiety fled from the lady's glance. Her features became grave and shadowed, it seemed, with sorrow.

The gods played the same trick on my husband and me. She rose, indicating the door and the courtyard beyond. Come, let us take a walk.

The lady led barefoot up the slope to a shady spot beneath the oaks. In what country other than Lakedaemon would a noblewoman's soles be so thick with callus that they may tread upon the spiky leaves of oak and not feel their spiny barbs? You know, Xeo, that I was wife to my husband's brother before I was married to him.

This I did know, having learned it, as I said, from Dienekes himself.

Iatrokles was his name, I know you have heard the story. He was killed at Pellene, a hero's death, at thirty-one. He was the noblest of his generation, a Knight and a victor at Olympia, gifted by the gods with virtue and beauty much like Polynikes in this generation. He pursued me passionately, with such impetuousness that he called me from my father's house when I was still a girl. All this the Spartans know. But I will tell you something now which no one, except my husband, knows, The lady had reached a low bole of oak, a natural bench within the shade of the grove. She sat and indicated that I should take the place beside her.

Down there, she said, gesturing to the open space between two outbuildings and the track that led to the threshing floor. Right there where the path turns was where I first saw Dienekes. It was on a county day just like this. The occasion was Iatrokles' first march-out. He was twenty.

My father had brought me and my brother and sisters over from our own kleros with gifts of fruit and a yearling goat. The boys of the farm were playing, right there, when I came, holding my father's hand, over this knoll where you and I now sit.

The lady drew up. For a moment she searched my eyes, as if to make certain of their attention and understanding.

I saw Dienekes first from behind. Just his bare shoulders and the back of his head. I knew in an instant that I would love him and only him all my life.

Her expression grew sober before this mystery, the summons of Eros and the unknowable workings of the heart.

I remember waiting for him to turn, so I could see him, see his face. It was so odd. In a way it was like an arranged match, where you wait with your heart fluttering to behold the face you will and must love.

At last he turned. He was wrestling another boy. Even then, Xeo, Dienekes was unhandsome.

You could hardly believe he was his brother's brother. But to my eyes he appeared eueidestatas, the soul of beauty. The gods could not have crafted a face more open or touching to my heart. He was thirteen then. I was nine.

The lady paused for a moment, gazing solemnly down at the spot of which she spoke. The occasion did not present itself, she declared, throughout her whole girlhood when she could speak in private with Dienekes. She observed him often on the running courses and in the exercises with his agoge platoon. But never did one share a moment with the other. She had no idea if he even knew who she was.

She knew, however, that his brother had chosen her and had been speaking with the elders of her family.

I wept when my father told me I had been given to Iatrokles. I cursed myself for the heartlessness of my ingratitude. What more could a girl ask than this noble, virtuous man? But I could not master my own heart. I loved the brother of this man, this fine brave man I was to marry.

When Iatrokles was killed, I grieved inconsolably. But the cause of my distress was not what people thought. I feared that the gods had answered by his death the self-interested prayer of my heart. I waited for Dienekes to choose a new husband for me as was his obligation under the laws, and when he didn't, I went to him, shamelessly, in the dust of the palaistra, and compelled him to take me himself as his bride.

My husband embraced this love and returned it in kind, both of us over the still-warm bones of his brother. The delight was so keen between us, our secret joy in the marriage bed, that this love itself became a curse to us. My own guilt I could requite; it is easy for a woman because she can feel the new life growing inside her, that her husband has planted.

But when each child was bom and each a female, four daughters, and then! lost the gift to conceive, I felt, and my husband did too, that this was a curse from the gods for our passion.

The lady paused and glanced again down the slope. The boys, including my son and little Idotychides, had dashed out from the courtyard and now played their carefree sport directly below the site where we sat.

Then came the summons of the Three Hundred to Thermopylae. At last, I thought, I perceive the true perversity of the gods' plan. Without a son, my husband cannot be called. He will be denied this greatest of honors. But in my heart I didn't care. All that mattered was that he would live.

Perhaps for only another week or month, until the next battle. But still he would live. I would still hold him. He would still be mine.

Now Dienekes himself, his farm business completed within, emerged onto the flat below. There he joined playfully with the roughhousing boys, already obeying in their blood the instincts of battle and of war.

The gods make us love whom we will not, the lady declared, and disrequite whom we will.

They slay those who should live and spare those who deserve to die. They give with one hand and take with the other, answerable only to their own unknowable laws.

Dienekes had now spotted Arete, watching him from above. He lifted the boy Idotychides playfully and made the lad's little arm wave up the slope. Arete compelled her own to answer.

Now, inspired by blind impulse, she spoke toward me, I have saved the life of this boy, my brother's bastard's son, and lost my husband's in the process.

She spoke these words so softly and with such sorrow that I felt my own throat catch and the burning begin in my eyes.

The wives of other cities marvel at the women of Lakedaemon, the lady said. How, they ask, can these Spartan wives stand erect and unblinking as their husbands' broken bodies are borne home to a grave or, worse, interred beneath some foreign dirt with nothing save cold memory to clutch to their hearts? These women think we are made of stauncher stuff than they. I will tell you, Xeo. We are not.

Do they think we of Lakedaemon love our husbands less than they? Are our hearts made of stone and steel? Do they imagine that our grief is less because we choke it down in our guts?

She blinked once, dry-eyed, then turned her glance to mine.

The gods have played a game with you too, Xeo. But it may not be too late to steal a roll of the dice. This is why I have given you this pouch of 'owls.'

Already I knew what her heart intended.

You are not Spartan. Why should you bind yourself by her cruel laws? Haven't the gods stolen enough from you already? I begged her to speak of this no more.

This girl you love, I can have her brought here. Just ask it.

No! Please.

Then run. Get out tonight. Go there.

I replied at once that I could not.

My husband will find another to serve him. Let another die instead of you.

Please, lady. This would be dishonor.

I felt my cheek sting and realized the lady had struck me. Dishonor? She spat the word with revulsion and contempt.