The Sweet Girl (9 page)

A particularly emphatic clanging of cook-pots just outside our tent wakens me. I wish I could swim back under. Herpyllis, beside me, snuffles gently on. I imagine insomniac Daddy already off on one of his walks, and Nico rabbit-eyed in the tent in the next cart, waiting for one of us to get him.

There is scrabbling at our tent door. I whip Herpyllis’s dress—the nearest thing to hand—over my face. Through the muslin I see Myrmex’s unshaven face poke through the opening. “Boo.”

I take the dress back off. “How’s your head?”

He makes a face, then crawls in on his elbows. “Mommy still sleeping?”

“Yes,” Herpyllis says, without opening her eyes.

“I found us a house.”

How I love his bleary, blood-shot eyes, his awful stubbly cheeks, his dirty fingernails, his feral smell. Nico can wait a little longer. I stretch, tousle my hair to try and fluff it up a little, wonder about the propriety of sitting up with just a blanket covering my little chest. He’s my brother, too, after all, just like Nico. Somewhat like Nico.

Something metal raps on the side of our cart. Herpyllis’s eyes pop open and Myrmex wriggles backwards, disappearing. “You need to move this,” a voice says.

Then we are working fast—dressing in our smelly travel-stained clothes for the third day, throwing everything into the carts, while Myrmex helps Tycho hitch the horses. Herpyllis goes straight to Nico, who lets her hug him. Daddy and
Pyrrhaios, as I’d guessed, are gone. Around us, soldiers wait impatiently. They arrived in the night and have been assigned our place in the camp; they want us out, now. I get busy reloading the sacks and crates we piled on the ground to make room for sleeping, and trip over a tent peg already staked by a soldier who’s tired of waiting for us. “Move that,” he says to Myrmex, meaning me.

Once we’re back in the carts and rolling, Herpyllis leans over to Myrmex. “Where are we going?” she whispers. He pretends he doesn’t hear.

Soldiers open the gates for us and suddenly we’re out of the garrison and on the dirt track that leads down the hill. It’s early still, the sun fingering almost horizontally through the pine and cypress. All around us songbirds are bubbling. I repeat Herpyllis’s question aloud.

“I told you, I got us a house,” Myrmex says.

“But how will Daddy know where we’re—”

“Daddy,” Myrmex says. “Daddy, daddy, daddy.”

At the bottom of the hill, we bear left. The houses here are a mishmash of huts and villas crowded around the base of the hill. Above them is a tonsured strip where the trees were removed beneath the garrison walls. Myrmex looks deadly pleased with himself. We pull to a stop in front of a villa slightly more secluded than the others, set vertiginously beneath the garrison walls and veiled by a stand of cypress as tall as a man on another’s shoulders. A poised, expectant silence.

“What have you done?” Herpyllis says. “We can’t afford this.”

Myrmex’s face registers surprise like pain.

Daddy appears in the doorway, stooping beneath the trailing ivy that’s encroaching on the front of the house. “We’ll need to cut this back,” he calls. “What do you think?”

Herpyllis eases down off the cart. “Whose is this?”

“Ours,” Daddy says.

“We can’t afford this.” She looks angry.

“Whose is it really?” I murmur.

“Don’t think about it,” Myrmex says.

Nico launches from the cart like a Myrmidon storming the beach at Troy. A puppy, a fuzzy golden thing, peers out from behind Daddy’s ankles. Recognizing one of his own, he muddles forward to greet Nico, tongue flopping amiably.

“Comes with the house,” Myrmex says, and in his pride I see a boy like Nico and a puppy, too. I shouldn’t be able to see these things, but I do. That’s what Herpyllis means when she says I’m not attractive.

“Thank you,” I say to Myrmex, since no one else will.

“I won it at dice.”

“Oh, you did not.”

“I sort of did.” Myrmex thinks for a minute, frowning. “I can’t really remember, actually. It’s ours, though.”

I want to ask where the person he won it from will live now, and about the money Herpyllis and I gave him, but he holds his hand out to ease me down from the cart and his touch wipes my mind clean.

“The grand tour,” Daddy says, ushering Herpyllis and me inside.

The house is confusing. It’s bigger than it looks from outside, and the rooms don’t seem to stay still; we pop in and
out of doors, finding and losing each other, laughing at closets that lead to rooms and private courtyards that seem utterly soundproof. I feel like Herpyllis has given me a tonic. I finally find the room I want for myself, the one with butterflies painted on the walls, but when I call out for them to come see, no one can hear me. I wonder again about who lived here before us, for what girl these butterflies were painted, and if she hates me now.

The grounds, too, are deceptively large and secluded; the whole property is walled, including the fruit trees and outbuildings, and by the large kitchen garden is a second dwelling, a liveable shed I intuit Myrmex will claim.

We settle in, which takes less time than the packing did. I find small, curious clues around the house: a wet wine-cup under a couch (but how is it still wet?); sweet green grapes, still dew-bejewelled, in a bowl on the kitchen table; a mattress still warm to the touch, as though someone just rose from it, on the bed that will be mine.

“I think you like it here,” Daddy says, startling me. I had lain down just for a minute on the warm mattress and drifted off.

“Do you?”

He looks straight at me, his eyes unexpectedly clear, the haze of worry and self-absorption momentarily lifted. “It’s not home.”

“It is if we decide it is.”

He leans down to press a kiss on my hair.

In the afternoon, Herpyllis says she wants a walk into town. “We’ll all go,” Daddy says. His clarity has persisted, translating into a rare good humour through lunch (fresh bread from the larder—
how
?—and a salad from the garden). He arm-wrestled Nico, patted the puppy, even put an arm around Myrmex’s shoulders and told him he’d done well. Myrmex blushed.

We walk away from the residences clustered at the base of the hill, while Daddy explains that the tonsured strip at the top is to prevent anyone from scaling the cliffs, and that the residents of our neighbourhood are largely Macedonian, and feel safer in the shadow of the army. The huts, he explains, were cobbled together by poor refugees, whom we should treat kindly should we encounter them. He says the word “refugees” as though it has nothing to do with us.

We stand for a while at the isthmus, watching the tide funnel through the narrowest point, then pay a man to raft us across. “Euboia,” Daddy announces grandly on the other side, as though he owns the whole island. In the town proper, we visit the market. Here Daddy is whimsical, buying fish and pomegranates and cumin seed and squash flowers, imagining the ridiculous dishes Herpyllis will make of them for our supper that evening. She rolls her eyes. He buys a fishing stick for Nico and promises to take him; a vial of scented oil for Herpyllis; and a woollen cloak for Myrmex, a reward for securing the house. “And what would Pythias like?” he asks.

I shake my head. It’s a happy day, but money remains a worry, surely, and Myrmex’s cloak cost more than a book.

“You’re a fortunate man.” A large hand descends on my shoulder, squeezing. “A girl who refuses gifts. I should be so lucky in my own daughters.”

“She is utterly modest,” Daddy says happily. “If only I could stop her eating, I could bring her upkeep down to nothing.”

The big man laughs. I take myself out from under his hand and duck under Daddy’s wing, pretending shyness, so I can get a look at him.

“I know who you are,” the big man says to Daddy. “Word of your coming preceded you. We’re honoured, honoured, to have you among us. This is your child?”

“My child,” Daddy agrees. Herpyllis and Nico hang back, far enough that the man probably doesn’t know we’re together. Daddy ignores them. Myrmex, browsing the stalls, hasn’t noticed.

“Plios.” The man claps Daddy on the shoulder. “I’m the magistrate. On my way to the courts as we speak. When did you arrive?”

“Last night.”

“Perfect timing.” The magistrate claps Daddy’s back again, making him stagger-step. “My eldest girl is getting married day after tomorrow. We’re having an informal supper before the wedding so the women can come, too. You’ll join us, yes? I’ll have you first that way. You’ll offend me if you say no.” He rubs his hands together. “A coup for me! And you’ll bring your lovely, modest daughter? You can meet everyone who matters.”

Daddy accepts. They exchange compliments, and the man pinches my cheek through my veil before he leaves.

“That’s excellent,” Daddy says. He seems unsure. He touches his temple with his fingertips, like there’s a pain budding there. I exchange looks with Herpyllis, who’s stepped forward again.

“Daddy’s tired,” I whisper to Herpyllis. “We should head back.”

Herpyllis says nothing, but stalks off ahead of us, dragging Nico by the hand. Myrmex glances over, sees us leaving, and waves.

“Do you have anything to wear for a party?” Daddy asks.

“Anything to
wear
?” I look at him like he’s turned into a cuttlefish.

“Girls like new clothes for parties.” He says this like it’s a fundamental proposition.
All x is y. No a is b. Girls like new clothes for parties
. “I’ll send Herpyllis with you tomorrow to choose something.”

That’ll be fun
, I don’t say, reading jealousy in the fierce line of her spine.

At the isthmus, Daddy tugs my hand, bringing me to a stop. “Notice anything?”

I look down at the raft, up at the garrison, down at the water. I look again.

“Good girl,” Daddy says.

“But it’s backwards. An hour ago it flowed that way”—I point north—“and now it’s running that way.” I point south.

“A switchback tide.” Daddy looks like Nico with the puppy. “Chalcis is famous for it. The current changes direction at the turn of the tide.”

“I don’t understand.”

He hesitates. Then murmurs, “Neither do I.”

Puts his finger to his lips; winks.

A thousand lamps send golden tongues licking in all the secret places. The air smells minglingly of meat and flowers and a loosening perfume that makes my thinking vague and my free hand unable to make a fist. The house of Plios is dazzling by twilight, scented and flickering and pretty to the ears, even, with flute girls and a blind drummer and wind chimes made of cockleshells, and the voices of men and women drinking, affectionate, old friends at ease. Daddy holds my other hand tightly, and moves through the room like a ship, parting the company in stately splendour and leaving a froth of whispers in his wake. My famous daddy! My first party! A kindly woman, her hair spangled with hammered gold flowers, hands me a cup and folds my veil back for me so I won’t have to let go of Daddy’s hand. “You’re among friends, dear,” she says, eyes crinkling. She touches a fingertip to her tongue and smoothes my eyebrows, then turns away. I take tiny sips of the sweet drink and watch the women’s jewellery on the plates and shelves of their various bosoms: necklaces of gold flowers and seed pods, insects, shell-shapes, and spiral loopings of gold wire. I sip again—tiny, tiny sips—and smile shyly at Daddy. He is splendid tonight in snow-white wool, hair neatly trimmed, clean-shaven in the Macedonian style, ears and nostrils plucked hairless by Herpyllis.

She brought me home a dress from the market, thinking to
deprive me of the pleasure of choosing it, and dressed me herself. I’m wearing a girdle at my waist, my first, and my breasts are bound, and my hair is up. She yanked my hair hard, mumbling bitterly about the expense of new clothes through a mouthful of pins. But she took care that I should look perfect and expensive, as befitted our house, and kissed me before we left, carefully, because I had powder on my cheeks and the famous kohl on my eyes. I’d done that myself, to surprise her; she’d wiped it off with spit on a cloth and redone it to her own satisfaction.

“Daughter.”

I snap back from the contemplation of my odd-looking self in a bronze to smile at the introductions Daddy’s making. Plios pinches my cheek again and says I’m as pretty as he’d guessed. The woman who gave me the drink is back for formal introductions. Glycera is her name, and these are her daughters, three beauties in soft colours who don’t speak, but smile without malice at everyone and everything. Thaulos is here, and greets my father more warmly than he did on the hill; a priestess of Artemis—white-haired, with black brows—is presented to us; also a handsome officer. I can’t hear clearly over the tinkling music, and decide it’s time to stop sipping. Daddy is bragging about me. “Reads, writes, keeps the kitchen garden,” he’s saying to Glycera. “Knows her herbs. She healed one of our slaves last winter of an infection, all by herself, no fuss. Didn’t tell anybody. Lanced the abscess, cleaned it, applied a hot fennel poultice, checked the pus for—”