The Sweet Girl (15 page)

Movement through the trees; someone walking.

We come out onto the road in silence, my wet feet chafing in my sandals. I know Tycho wants to throw me over his shoulder and carry me, like he used to when I was little. Whoever’s got the lamp cut through the trees to come out ahead of us; we see the chip of light, still now, waiting. Tycho makes himself bigger—a trick he has, like a bear—and puts himself between me and the light.

“Is it Pythias?” a familiar voice calls, before we can make out the speaker.

“Stop,” Tycho orders the voice.

The lamp is held up to a face: Euphranor. “I’ll walk you home,” he says.

He goes in front and Tycho walks behind. At our door, Euphranor says, “I heard about your father.”

I nod.

“Anything at all you need.”

“Nothing,” I say.

He bows and vanishes back into the trees, lamp extinguished now.

I give Tycho back his smelly wool, damp now, and he settles down in his sleeping spot. In my room I strip off my wet clothes and get into bed, where I sleep dreamlessly and wake clear-headed, my hair stiff with salt water. In the kitchen, Ambracis is serving Nico while Thale feeds the
baby. Nico will leave as soon as he’s finished breakfast.

I ask Ambracis to prepare me a bath.

“To prepare for your journey, Lady?” Thale says.

I give Nico some coins and tell him not to spend them all on cake.

“Come with me, Pytho,” he pleads. “You can’t stay here without money.”

And weave in my room for the rest of my life, obeying Theophrastos? I indicate the coins. “I have money.”

“You’ll go to your mother, then?” Thale says. “In Stageira?”

The rustic life, far from books or even the possibility of books. I shake my head. “And what about Myrmex?” I ask. “If—
when
he comes back, where else will he come back to?”

“And if he doesn’t?” Nico says.

“He will.”

I walk Nico up to the garrison, where the leader is waiting for us. Nico is pale but contained; I’m proud of him. I tell him so, quietly, and he nods.

“Theophrastos loves you,” I say.

“I know.”

I kiss him, and he squeezes my hand. He won’t hug me, not in front of all these soldiers. I expect them to show him to a cart, but Thaulos asks him if he’d like to ride. A horse is brought out, a lively, pretty thing. The men’s faces soften when Nico’s lights up.

He’ll be fine.

I walk back to the house. Tycho goes in ahead of me while
I linger outside in the garden, picking a few flowers for a vase for my room. Blue, purple, white. Athens, Stageira, Chalcis.

My husband will return, and then we’ll see.

I go in and close the gate behind me. First, I’ll have my bath.

I’m in bed. When did that happen? Thale is sitting by me with her sweet old worried face, waiting to cluck and coo and spoon broth into me.

Sometimes I sleep.

It occurs to me that I’m alone.

I get up to use the pot and stagger, dizzy; arms catch mine on either side. I’m back in bed and there is a plate of fruit slices, a cup of milk. I would rather like a tonic, but there is no one to authorize that. I lie back and feel like a jellyfish, spreading and sinking into the bed. I cry very, very quietly but they catch me anyway. Gentle wiping of my face, a cool cloth for my forehead. My nose blown for me.
Blow, Lady
, like I’m three. Someone changes the sheets; someone changes me. I keep my eyes closed. Then I’m asleep for real.

Sometimes I forget. I forget the loss of them all for minutes at a time. The mouth in my stomach opens wide and yawns and I eat the fruit slices, take the spoonfuls of broth, sip at the milk. I’m surprised that no one is surprised by me, but then I remember they’ve spent years caring for Daddy, and must think I’ve fallen to his illness.

I start to think.
There is the rational mind and the animal body. The animal body forces the thoughts away, does the forgetting; I’m ashamed how often the animal asserts itself. Food! Sleep! Rubbing the parts when Thale has gone to the kitchen for a minute! I understand, finally, that Daddy suffered so because he was practically all mind and no animal; he could never forget. I am lesser. Is it because I’m a girl? Daddy would say so. But that theory doesn’t account for the animal natures of Nico, of Myrmex.

O Myrmex.

I get angry. How dare he betray us? How dare he leave me?

Then I’m up. I’m up and bathing and dressed and eating a fish on the stone terrace. I’m terribly thin; I hear Thale tell Simon. The baby smiles at me in big surprise and holds her arms up to me. Uppies, uppies! I pick her up. She kicks and squirms in the air for a moment, unsure, and then I bring her in to my chest for a hug. She touches my hair solemnly, touches my cheek. She looks into my eyes. Hers are brown, clean and clear. “Who’s pretty?” I ask, and she says, “Me!”

Daddy’s study is neat and tidy, and I’m not sure where to begin. I call Simon to help me. He shows me where Daddy kept the household accounts, and explains Herpyllis’s system of the bowl on the high shelf with the money for marketing. I know that bowl. He suggests I write to Theophrastos about Myrmex’s betrayal. He tells me today is a market day, and I give him money from my little purse. He hesitates.

“No meat,” I tell him. He nods.

That is my first command as lady of the house.

I’m taking an inventory of the storeroom with Thale and
Ambracis when Tycho comes to say we have a visitor.
I
have a visitor: Thaulos. Tycho says he called twice while I was sick, but they sent him away.

I receive him in the formal front room. Ambracis brings a tray of walnuts and hot tea.

“Feeling better?” Thaulos asks. It’s been a month since the reading of the will.

I bow my head, assenting in silence like a lady.
Silence garlands a woman and perfumes her
. I read that somewhere.

“I’m glad of it,” he says. “I was sorry to hear of your condition. Nerves, was it?”

I bow my head.

“Nerves.” He nods, pooching his lips judiciously, agreeing with his own diagnosis. “Well. You’re getting the pink back, though, and that’s what counts, eh?” He toasts me with his tea and winks.

Poor man. He must be terribly uncomfortable. I offer him a walnut.

“I’m afraid this isn’t just a social visit.” He inspects the walnut before he puts it in his mouth. Chews, swallows. Sips his tea. I’m doing very well so far. “I’m obliged to bring a financial concern to your attention. A rather pressing concern. Ah, gods.” He puts a walnut back on the plate. “This is awful. Only it’s about the house.”

“This house?” I ask politely.

“There was supposed to be—” He looks vaguely around the room, clearly wishing there was someone else he could talk to, some man.

“Money?” I say.

He looks like I’ve slapped him.

“Is that the concern?”

He puts his cup on the table and leans forward. “You shouldn’t have to deal with all this. You’re just a child.”

“There’s no one else.”

“The fellow in Athens, your father’s—”

“There’s no one else. How much do we owe?”

He doesn’t answer.

“Myrmex told us he won the house in a bet,” I say. “That must have been a lie. How much do I owe?”

He blinks, then tells me a sum.

“To you personally?”

He shakes his head. “To one of my officers. This was his house. I explained the situation to him and he was very—”

“Did Myrmex give him anything at all?”

He shows me his empty palms.

I look at my tea. Thinking thinking.

Thaulos says, “Perhaps I should be speaking with the boy himself, with—”

“Myrmex?”

“Does he have another name? ‘Little Ant.’ That’s a child’s nickname.”

“That’s what we’ve always called him,” I say.
Jason
was for me and no one else; he never even told it to Herpyllis. “He’s not here.”

“Where is he?”

I explain and Thaulos listens. Sometimes I can see the father in him, sometimes the soldier. He stands. Perhaps the pettiness of our domestic relationships has disgusted him. “You need
your father’s man in Athens to act for you,” he says. “And you need a husband. I’ll send another request in dispatches to find out where your fellow is. What is he, infantry?”

“Cavalry.”

He’s looking around the room, at the furnishings. I send my mind chasing his, and then with a rush I pass him. “How much for a first payment?”

He’s looking at a little ivory owl on a side table. He looks at me. I bow my head so I don’t have to see him take it.

When I look up again he’s on his feet. “You need to come up with the difference.” His voice is harsh. He doesn’t like taking owls from little girls. “If you don’t come up with the difference, you’ll have to leave. You understand it’s a legal matter. I have no influence.”

I bow my head.

“I want to help you, but I—”

Ambracis comes in with cheese.

“I’ll be off.” I stand to face him. “I’ll be in touch about your intended. A word of advice. If that young man comes back—”

“Myrmex?”

“Act happy to see him, then send for me.”

I thank him.

“And I’ll send a courier tomorrow.”

My face must be a question.

“For the next payment.”

I bow my head in a fragrant silence.

“And this is real Persian silk,” the widow says. “Touch, go on. All these beautiful things are for enjoying. Sight is the least of the senses, I often think. We have tongues and toes and fingertips for a reason, no?”

She’s already had me step out of my sandals so I can walk barefoot across a deep sheepskin rug. Now she’s showing me a painted rose-silk curtain that falls from ceiling to floor. She coaxes it into my hands so I can feel the coolness of it; the tiny imperfections in the skin of my fingertips catch on the sheer surface. She takes the fabric back to rub against her cheek, then twirls her whole body in it. She makes me try. I feel the sheer cool all down the length of me, everything looking pink.

The house of Glycera smells of quince and spice. We settle into a private room, one wall open to a flower garden, for our weaving. She has a large cloth half done, and a new frame for me.

“Where are your daughters?” I ask.

She offers me a basket with many spools of coloured threads. I choose a blue. “I thought, for today, just you and me.” She takes orange for herself and we begin. “How are you feeling?” she asks without looking up from her work.

It’s the doorway I’ve been waiting for, the reason for my visit today. I tell her about Myrmex, and Thaulos, and the little owl, followed by the perfume bottle shaped like an almond, and the gold wire bracelet, and the new vase with the wrestlers on it—the one without the chip.

Glycera sets down her thread and looks at me. “You should have come to me three days ago.” Cooler than I had expected, hoped.

“How do I find Myrmex?”

She does smile then, gently. “Sweetheart, you don’t. He and that money are gone.
Why
do you not tell your father’s man in Athens? Could he not pay?”

“He’d make me go live with him,” I say. I realize how stupid an objection that sounds. “He doesn’t like me. He thinks I talk too much. I’d have to spend all day indoors and eat with the women.”