The Sweet Girl (2 page)

“Why?” I say. Daddy and Herpyllis laugh.

At the door, he hesitates. “What we did today,” he says. “Even if you were allowed, the sanctuary isn’t the place for that. You understand?”

“Why?”

His lips quirk. “Why do you think?”

I close my eyes and see the temple, the hush and the gloom and the long shafts of light with the dust motes turning in
them, the piles of sacred offerings, the guttering flame, the smell of spice, the priest so cool and glorious in his robe. And outside, in the sanctuary, the stone face of the god, and the gangly-legged lamb led so simply to the feet of the statue.

“Herpyllis will always let you use the kitchen,” comes my father’s voice from far away. I don’t open my eyes. In the sanctuary, the lamb’s death is an ecstasy. The bones and the blood aren’t specimens there; they’re a mystery that doesn’t need solving. I think of the sadness Daddy talked about, feel it rinse through me, but it’s not for the lamb. It’s the gods I feel sorry for. What must they think, that we opened an animal without them today? That we didn’t invite them at all? I imagine their big, beautiful faces, suffused with pain. That little girl, that one right there: doesn’t she love us? What are we going to do with her?

“She’s crying,” I hear Herpyllis say. “You horrible man. What have you done to her?”

Someone comes close with a lamp.

“Open your eyes, Pytho,” Daddy says, but I keep them shut. I’m looking at the insides of my own eyelids now, all red and spidery. “Are you crying?”

“I’m sleeping.”

I get a kiss on each cheek, Daddy’s whiskers and Herpyllis’s sweet scent. She stays after he leaves, sitting beside me on my bed. “You don’t have to help him if it upsets you,” she says.

“I want to.”

“I know,” she says.

I open my eyes.

“Who loves you, anyway?” she says.

“You do,” I say.

She snuffs the lamp but doesn’t move. We sit in the dark.

“The poor gods,” I say, and then I bury my face in her lap and sob.

H
ERPYLLIS SCOFFS AT DADDY
’
S WORK
, Daddy’s students and the monthly symposium he hosts in our big room. His colleagues attend, plum students, politicians, artists, diplomats, magistrates, priests; Daddy’s symposia are famous throughout the city.

The subject for this month is virtue. “Oh,
virtue
,” she sniffs. “Freeloaders, the lot of them. Take this, will you, baby? I’m going to drop it.”

We’re in the kitchen, just back from the market. I take the package of honeycomb from her and set it on the table so she can unload the rest of our purchases. I’ve had a growth spurt and am a hair taller than her now, though still unripe, my chest almost as flat as a boy’s. We’ll spend the day in the kitchen with the slaves. In the evening we’ll put on our finery and sit in Herpyllis’s room, eating smaller dishes of what the men are having, and afterwards weaving. Their voices will drone through the walls, muffled, occasionally bubbling up in argument or laughter. Herpyllis will try to gossip, and I’ll shush her so I can listen. Eventually she’ll put her finger to her lips and lead me into the hall so I can hear properly. She’ll stand there examining her nails and smoothing her eyebrows while I try to understand. When we hear them rise to leave we’ll run, giggling, back to her room.

“I wonder if dogs are virtuous.” I spill lentils out on a clean cloth and start picking them over before I put them back in the pot on the shelf. Herpyllis likes her kitchen just so. “A hunting dog, say. You could have one that’s too angry and bites everything, and one that’s too shy and won’t chase, and then—”

“Soak some of those, will you? Enough for ten.” She pushes a strand of hair back from her forehead. “And then one in the middle that’s everything a dog should be. Yes, yes, I know. And a bean that’s too wrinkled, and a bean that’s still moist, and a bean in the middle that exemplifies everything a bean should be. Most noble, gracious, perfect bean. A virtuous bean.”

“What!” Daddy stands in the kitchen doorway. “Are you laughing at me?”

“Yes,” Herpyllis and I say together.

Daddy grabs Herpyllis by the hips from behind, and nuzzles the back of her neck. “Who said you could laugh at me?”

I slip to the doorway, trying not to look at them. The slaves have already fled. We all know they like it in the kitchen.

“Beans, eh?” Daddy says.

Herpyllis’s eyes are closed; she’s already melting against him. Daddy’s eyes are open. He smiles at me, and I know he’s thinking about beans.

The guests start arriving after sundown. Tycho greets them and sees to the horses. Nico and I stand just inside the door with Herpyllis and Daddy. Nico, at eight summers, isn’t really old enough to sit with the men, but Daddy lets him so long as he doesn’t try to speak. Usually he eats too many cakes and falls asleep on the floor.

“Shall we play tiles?” Herpyllis murmurs to me.

“I want to play tiles,” Nico says.

“And miss Daddy’s party?” Herpyllis says. “Silly boy. We can play tiles tomorrow.”

Nico groans.

“I don’t want to play, anyway,” I say, trying to help. “I want to read.”

Another guest arrives, a colleague of Daddy’s from the other school, the Academy. Daddy went to that school himself, when he was a young man, and is always gracious to his rivals there, though afterwards he will shake his head and tell Herpyllis their best teachers are all dead and the place won’t last long.

“It’s going to be boring!” Nico says. The rival, Akakios, grins at Daddy.

“Very, very boring,” Daddy says.

“I only came for the food,” Akakios says.

“No!” Nico realizes they’re laughing at him, and stomps off.

“He’s just a lad still,” Akakios says kindly, once Herpyllis has gone after him. “At his age, all I wanted to do was fish and climb trees.”

“For me, it was swimming,” Daddy says.

“And what about you, sweet?” Akakios says to me. “Puppies, is it? Kittens?”

“All kinds of animals, really,” I say.

Daddy’s lips twitch, as I intended. “And she’s a great help around the house,” he offers.

Akakios waves this away. “You should hear him brag about you,” he tells me. “A better mind than many of his students, he says. Always got her nose in a book. Should have been a boy.”

I look at Daddy, who nods, smiling, flushing a little.
Yes, I said that
. I flush a little myself, with pleasure.

“Bactria, eh?” Akakios says to Daddy, changing the subject. I know that this is the latest news to arrive from the army: the king is in Bactria, at the end of the known world, calling himself Shahanshah, King of Kings, and founding city after city named after himself. Iskenderun, Iskandariya, and now Kandahar, the latest. These days, people announce the king’s exploits to Daddy as though he’s responsible. Daddy was his tutor, long ago, when I was a baby. It’s their way of reminding us we’re Macedonian and they’re not.

“Indeed,” Daddy says. “He’s become quite the geographer.”

“But maybe not such a cartographer,” Akakios says. “He seems to have lost his way home.”

Herpyllis returns, mock-grim, shaking her head. “We’ll have to have a tile marathon tonight,” she tells me. “But only after Nico practises his reading. I told him you’d help him.”

I don’t stamp my foot, groan, roll my eyes or spit, but all three adults laugh anyway. “She shoots sparks, doesn’t she?” Akakios says.

“She gets bored,” Daddy says. “It’s the female aspect of the mind, I think. I was never bored.”

“No, no.” Akakios taps his temple with his finger. “She’s got a flame in there, but it needs fuel. I get bored all the time. With lazy students, especially. That’s why I so look forward to these evenings. They feed me for days.”

Daddy bows; he bows back. Herpyllis manages not to snort; I hear it distinctly. These evenings are the biggest expense the household has. “The brain needs food just like the tummy.” Akakios addresses me. “Your father feeds us, body and soul.”

“Pompous prick,” Herpyllis says after we’re in Nico’s room. “He brings a bag so he can squirrel food away to take home with him.”

“That’s a compliment to your cooking.” I’m pressing my ear to the wall.

“I’m bored,” Nico says, pushing his tablet away. “I’m hungry.”

“You could have eaten with the men.”

“Shut up.”

“You shut up,” I say. Mimicking him, drawing out the whine: “I’m
hungry
.”

“Well, I am!”

“You’re defective,” I say. “Why can’t you read yet?”

“Reading’s hard,” Herpyllis says immediately. “Please, no more fighting. Shall we go to the kitchen and see what’s there?”

We follow her into the courtyard. The men’s voices are clearer here, and I hang back. Daddy’s speaking. I look pleadingly at Herpyllis.

“We’ll be in the kitchen,” she whispers.

In the past, I’d stand in the courtyard, quietly listening; perhaps creep to the doorway of the big room and listen from behind the curtains; then run fleet as a little doe back to the kitchen at the first quiver of that curtain. But something about tonight, about Nico giving up his place, about Daddy saying I should have been a boy, about Akakios’s kindness, and I find myself tripping with quite a clatter over a little table just outside the big room. A moment later the curtain wings aside and Daddy helps me up off the floor. Beyond, I can see all the men on their couches craning to see who it is.

“Please, Daddy,” I whisper.

Then I’m sitting in the corner that should have been Nico’s, near Daddy, feet tucked up under me. The men are bemused.

“Getting eccentric in your dotage,” one of them calls to Daddy. “You want to watch that.”

“The lad is prettier,” one of them says.

“But the girl’s brighter,” Akakios says.

I keep my mouth shut, and am relieved when they return to their argument.

“You cannot possibly believe all that modern nonsense you spout,” an old man says to Daddy. I recognize him: Krios, a senior administrator for the city, one of Daddy’s most regular guests. “The virtues of oak trees and donkeys and the gods know what else. It’s all nonsense and you know it. The gods give us virtue.”

“They lead by their example?” Daddy says.

“Don’t blaspheme,” the old man says mildly, and I see that he is used to Daddy, and too smart to be goaded. That must be why Daddy likes him, despite his antiquated opinions. “They set a better example than you’d like to admit. They would understand the presence of little Athena over there better than most of our colleagues here tonight.”

He means me.

“The gods value women. They understand the power of women.” Krios nods, agreeing with himself. “In their world, the greatest women are a match for the greatest men. Thinkers, warriors, healers.”

“In
their
world,” someone says.

“Plato, my master, taught that this world is an echo or a shadow of the ideal,” Daddy says. “I’m afraid, in
this
world, our specimens are of a different quality.”

I give Daddy a look that makes the men laugh.

“Not you, pet,” Daddy says. “I wasn’t talking about you.”

“You were, though, surely,” Krios says. “No offence to you, little Athena. But if we follow your argument to its conclusion, where do we get? The greatest virtue consists in flourishing to the greatest of our capacities. If we’re an oak seed, we are virtuous in our vegetable growth. If we’re an ass, we are virtuous in the most flourishing performance of our asinine tasks.”

“Carrying saddlebags, and braying, and so on,” I say.

I’ve thrown a pebble in their pond. There’s a ripple of meaningful silence, and then Krios bows slightly, acknowledging me. “And if we are human, we are most virtuous when we are flourishing to the fullest of our capacities, the greatest of these being the intellect. That’s correct, isn’t it, little Athena? That’s what your father teaches?”

“It is.”

“You’ve read your father’s books, haven’t you?”

“I have.”

“Some of them,” Daddy says.

“Do you have a favourite?”

I let my mind run ahead through the conversation to come. I can see it laid out like tiles, this game of conversation the men play. I could play this tile, or that one. Daddy clears his throat, and I know he’s playing the same game. I glance at him and he winks.
Quickly, Pytho
.

“The
Metaphysics
,” I say. “I like the books about animals, too, and the dissection drawings, but I can read the
Metaphysics
again and again and learn something every time.” I could have named any number of his books, and sent the game in a different direction with each choice, but I know few of the men here tonight have made it to the end of the
Metaphysics
, because I’ve heard Daddy tell Theophrastos so.

“What sort of things do you learn from it?” Krios asks.

“I’ve learned about change,” I say. “Change in space, and time, and substance. I’ve learned about motion. I’ve learned about the perfect and eternal being, what Daddy calls the unmoved mover.”

“About god,” Krios says.

“About god as a metaphysical necessity,” I say. “Remote and oblivious and lost in contemplation.”