Hope of Earth (33 page)

“Do we? I am not her friend, but am bound to her until I find a suitable man. She will be very glad to see me placed, so she is free. So the relationship between the two of us is understood. But you—why are you being so generous to us?”

“I am generous to those I feel are deserving.”

“By that you mean Jes.”

“Well, I mean no offense to you. You are a beautiful woman, and you have done your part.”

“I offered my body to you, in payment for our debt to you. Why did you refuse?”

“It would not be right to take such advantage—”

“And you have not taken such advantage of any of the other women who work for you. Many are married, and many are not pretty, so maybe that is understandable. But I am another matter. I owe you, and I am unmarried, and beautiful. You could legitimately take me. Yet you do not.”

“You must remain chaste for the man you will marry.”

Wona spat in negation. “You know chastity is not a word that ever applied to me.”

“Still—”

“Do you hold my nature against me?”

“No, I understand it. You are as you are, and you use what skills you possess to forward your security, just as others do.”

“Why don’t you marry me? Then Jes will be immediately free.”

“But you don’t want an old trader, you want a citizen with status.”

“I am realistic. You are a good man. You would take good care of me.”

“This is not feasible. You must seek a man better suited to you.”

“Would you prefer Jes? She is slender where I am not. Some men like their women lean.”

“I value Jes as a friend and a fine person. I would not—”

“Because your true passion is not for girls at all,” Wona said. “It is for boys.”

There was a silence.

“And you took Jes for a boy, at first,” she continued relentlessly. “She passes for a stripling man, so that was understandable. But she needed no weapon to impress you.”

“It is a respectable association,” Crockson said defensively.

“Yes, in the cities. Less so, in the countryside. I am not condemning you, merely making sure I understand. You do for her what you would do for a young male lover.”

“Yes. I wish I could have had a relationship with her. But I can love no woman, and she is a woman, no matter how she garbs herself. But if you feel you owe me anything, repay me in this manner: do not speak of this to her. I love her in my own fashion, which is not hers, and my love can never be consummated. I would not for all the world cause her the kind of distress such a revelation would bring her.”

“As you wish. I make no claim to being any fine person, but I pay a price when it is fair. I will spare her this.”

“Thank you.”

“But if you married me, I would be tolerant and discreet. I have no more actual interest in sex with men than you do in sex with women. Except as an exercise in power over them. All I want is a secure, wealthy life.”

There was a pause, as Crockson considered. “In another culture, I think I would find your offer attractive. But here in Athens there is not such need for concealment. I can sponsor my lovers openly, so long as I do not pursue the relationship past the age of maturity, which is thirty. The only exception is when I do not wish to hurt one I respect like Jes. I think I am better off single.”

Wona sighed. “Surely so.”

Jes faded out. But now she had something to think about. What she had learned distressed her. She was more attractive as a boy than as a woman? But what could she do about it?

More time passed. Sometimes she was conscious of being picked up and moved, so that her soiled bedding could be changed, and she doubted that Wona had the strength to do that, so it must be Crockson. Someone was cleaning her body and putting her back down. She lacked the strength to protest, so kept her eyes closed and let it happen. She faded in and out.

Then she woke feeling not as bad. She still lacked the will to move, but thought she could do so if she tried. She heard the others talking.

“It is awful out there,” Crockson said. “I have heard the reports. Neither priest nor amulet retards the spread or mitigates the intensity of the malady. Physicians are helpless before it; they themselves are dying from it. All through the city, Athenians are abandoning themselves to despair. The space between the walls leading to Piraeus is a scene of desolation. Every man attacked with the malady loses his courage at once, and lies down and dies without any attempt to seek for preservatives. At first friends and relatives lent their aid to tend the sick, but so many of those attendants perished themselves that soon no man would thus expose himself. The most generous spirits, who persisted the longest in helping others, were carried off in the greatest numbers. So the sick ones are left to die alone and unheeded. Sometimes all the inmates of a house are swept away one after another, no man being willing to go near that house. Half-dead sufferers lie unattended around all the springs and reservoirs.”

“But if you are right,” Wona said, horrified, “aren’t they then giving the plague to the water others must drink?”

“That is my fear. But I found a clean supply, so that no bad water comes into this house.”

“That must be why I didn’t get it,” Wona said. “I know of no reason the gods would protect me.”

“The gods protected no one,” Crockson said. “I understand that bodies are piled up in the temples. I dare not go there to check myself, of course.”

“Why not?” Wona asked ironically.

But he answered her seriously. “You know why not! As if the physical suffering isn’t bad enough, those who survive the plague are filled with reckless despair. They have cast away the bonds of law and morality, amidst such uncertainty of every man both for his own life and that of others. Men care not to abstain from wrongdoing, because punishment is not likely to overtake them, and they fear that they will not live long enough to reap any further benefits of life. So they take advantage of that brief interval to snatch what joy they may, however ill-gotten, before the hand of destiny falls upon them. They steal, they kill, they rape—and the women are hardly less loath to participate, so many cannot be raped, being all too eager to experience what they might otherwise never feel. So, for some, it is a weird orgy of despairing pleasure. But I prefer to remain inside, my door barricaded.”

“And you shared your hoarded food and water with us,” Wona said.

He laughed, not unkindly. “Jes did not eat much.”

“If any deserve to live, she does. She hates me for what I did to her brothers, and she had a hundred chances to kill me or leave me to die, but she was true to her word.”

“That is another reason why she is so precious to me. I see so few truly honest and decent folk. They are like coins of gold.”

Perhaps the dialogue continued, but Jes faded out again. When she woke, it was another day and this time she felt strong enough to open her eyes.

Wona was there. “Are you feeling better?”

“Yes. Weak, but better.”

“Can you move your hands? Your feet?”

Jes understood her concern, and shared it. She moved her hands, then her feet, then her head. “I am whole.”

“May the gods be praised!”

Recovery was not swift, but as Jes ate and drank her strength seeped back. In due course she was able to stand and walk, and to attend to her own functions. She had recovered without permanent loss, thanks to the care and protection she had received.

It was just as well, because Crockson was running out of food. Soon they would have to go out to get more.

When Jes felt able to walk a distance, and to swing her club, they went out as a tight group. The city was desolate. A stench hung over it. Bodies littered the streets.

But there was some activity. Men were hauling the bodies away. Crockson recognized one. “He is an indifferent sort, never one to do a favor that promised no swift reward,” he remarked. “Yet not a criminal either. I wonder what he is up to?”

“Maybe he is being paid to bring in bodies,” Wona suggested.

“Hail!” Crockson called to the man. “How is it that you risk this grisly contact?”

“I am recovered from the plague,” the man replied. “When I felt the awful weakness, and knew I was dying, I begged Athene to spare me, and promised I would make a better thing of my future than I had of my past. Athene spared me, so now I am doing public service, knowing I will not get the plague again. Do you wish to help?”

Crockson looked at the others, then answered. “Yes, as soon as we have found food.”

“Go to the Temple of Athene. They will give you good food if you help them clean up.”

So it was that they found themselves, in the ensuing days, hauling bodies out of the temple. Wagons took them to funeral pyres, where the fires raged continuously. They still had to be watchful for maddened or indifferent ruffians, but a kind of macabre order was returning to the city.

“Where are the vultures?” Wona asked.

Jes looked around. Wona was right: there should be scavengers throughout the city, but there were none.

“I think I know,” Crockson said. “They preyed on contaminated bodies, and died themselves.”

Wona laughed. “Served them right!”

In a few days Jes’s strength had largely returned. She knew it would take time for her to achieve her former health, but she could manage well enough for now.

She reconsidered what she had heard during her illness, and found that it no longer bothered her. What did it matter that Crockson, like many Greek men, preferred to associate with boys rather than women? He was not forcing his way on anyone else. She had encountered such boys elsewhere, on occasion, and understood that they valued their associations with wealthy elder benefactors, and often remained friendly with them long after passing on into manhood and founding their own families. There was no force, only agreement. And Crockson had been extremely good to her despite knowing that there could never be the kind of association he had craved. If he had taken her at first for a boy—well, that was a misunderstanding she had invited by her masquerade. He had never reproved her for deceiving him. Thus he was indeed being generous in the manner of a friend, and she respected that.

Should she say anything to him? It would be easy to avoid the subject, but not entirely honest. So she broached it, when there was opportunity for a private dialogue. “I was extremely ill, and I know you cared for me, so that I survived instead of dying or becoming maimed.”

“I am glad you recovered.”

“I heard what you said to Wona. About boys. Now I understand why you offered me a permanent position.”

He looked as if expecting a blow. “I wish you had not.”

“I would consider it an honor to be your friend.”

He stared at her. “You are not revolted?”

“I was disturbed by the notion that I might be more attractive as a boy than as a woman. That you might have seen me as such. But I learned better, as I pondered your generosity to us. We all are as we are, and there is no fault in that. I thank you for increasing my understanding.”

“Oh, Jes, you have gladdened me immensely. I very much want to be your friend.”

“Then we are friends. There is no need to speak of this again.”

“No need,” he agreed, visibly relieved.

The next day Jes decided to go back to work at the looms. Wona had been working on them, when the burden of Jes’s care ameliorated. For the time being Crockson had no other workers; they had either succumbed to the plague, or were caring for sick relatives. There was a considerable backlog of weaving to be done.

The siege lifted. It was rumored that the Spartans were afraid that the plague would spread to them. It was now possible to leave Athens.

“You must go,” Crockson said before she could bring the matter up. “Wona has escaped so far, but the plague is not over; others fall prey to it daily, in no pattern I can ascertain. If she gets it—her constitution is not as robust as yours—”

“Yes,” Jes agreed. “We must go to a city that doesn’t have the plague. But we can’t leave yet. Neither of us has worked in a fortnight, and we owe you silver.”

“Consider it a loan. And take this.” He proffered the same little bag of coins he had before.

“But we couldn’t possibly—”

“When Wona marries a rich man, she can send you with repayment,” he said, pressing the bag into her hand.

“But I might not get the money, or might not survive to return it to you. You are likely to lose it despite my best intentions.”

“Please. It is a thing I need to do for you. For what might have been, had it been possible.”

She considered that, understanding. “With that understanding, I can accept your generosity. I think, considering what you have done for us, I owe you my life, and would have repaid you as you desire, had it been possible.”

“I very much appreciate the sentiment.”

“Do you have advice about our destination?”

“Calydon, on the Gulf of Corinth. It is a member of the Delian League, and far from Euboea.”

He understood her need perfectly. “And Athens is on the route back from there to my home.”

“I hope to see you again, before long,” he said.

“Would you take it amiss if I kissed you?”

He looked uneasy. “I prefer to remember you as I once thought you were.”

Jes nodded. The magic would be absent, because he knew she was not a boy. “Another time, perhaps.”

They made preparations for their renewed journey. Wona donned reasonably nonprovocative apparel, and Jes assumed her masculine form, complete with the two bows and their arrows, and a club and dagger that showed. They would be traveling through some hostile territory, and of course any territory could be dangerous for a woman alone.

But the morning of their start, Wona felt bad. She was blinking and rubbing her eyes. “Oh, no,” Jes muttered.

Crockson took one experienced look. “The plague,” he said, confirming it. “She did not escape it.”

“But I can’t get the plague,” Wona protested. “It will ruin my looks.”

“Not if you are well cared for,” Crockson said. “And you shall be. We’ll put you in the back room.”

“But you have already taken much trouble tô take care of me,” Jes protested. “I should care for her on my own.”