The Sweet Girl (7 page)

He puts down the little clay lion and deer and bear he’s had since he was a baby.
Splotch
falls the first tear, darkening the lion’s back.

“You’re too old for toys, anyway,” I say, ruffling his hair.

“They’re not toys,” he says. “They’re keepsakes.”

Next I visit the servants, starting with Simon and his wife, Thale. I find them in the storeroom, arguing. They stop when they see me. Simon of the yellow teeth and grey grizzlature around the muzzle; Thale the barren with her mouse-coloured eyes and greasy grey curls pinned tight to her scalp.

“Don’t be frightened,” I tell them. “It won’t be for long.” Speechless, they look at me, then at each other. I’m pleased at the effect of my words and drift away, running a finger along a shelf as I go.

Pyrrhaios is in the stables, mucking out. I’ve had reason to watch him lately and I lean in the doorway for a while now, silently. I’ve seen Herpyllis do the same. His torso is as articulated as a beetle’s, I’ll give her that.

“Missed some,” I say finally, pointing at the straw.

He starts. “You, is it? How long have you been there?”

I say my bit about the move to Chalcis being only temporary.

“That’s not what your father says.”

“My father is a great man with many worries.”

He laughs.

Next the other slaves: Tycho, Philo, Olympios, his toddler, and Ambracis. I find black-eyed Ambracis first, in the kitchen, chopping vegetables. She’s not much older than me. She listens staring at her hands and when I’m finished says, “Yes, Lady.”

“You may look at me, girl,” I say.

She looks at my chin.

“Have you been crying?”

“Onions, Lady.”

I look at her chopping board and see the clutter of onions. I feel a bit silly then. I find I can’t ask about Myrmex while I’m feeling silly.

Olympios and Philo are in the courtyard with the toddler: clever Olympios is mending a leather harness with an enormous needle and a length of sinew; thick-witted Philo is turning carrot scrapings into the compost. The child, tethered by the waist to a column, is whining after a ball that’s rolled just out of its reach. When I nudge it back with my toe the child squints up at me, little crab-hands pinching for my dress. I step back out of reach.

“Lady,” the men say.

“Her face is dirty,” I say. “She needs a wipe.” Before either of them react I go to the barrel and dip the hem of my dress. Holding it bunched into an ear, I approach the child, who coos. I squat in front of it and wipe at the dirt and food and nose-pick on its face. It plucks at my hands, trying to get my rings.

“You must keep her clean,” I tell Olympios. “She will have better health if you keep her clean. My father teaches this to his students.”

Olympios bows. “Most gracious lady.”

Olympios got the child on another of our slaves, who died during the birth the spring before last. My father said we were not to be angry. They did as animals do, he said, experiencing coolness and heat according to the seasons, and should not be punished for the demands of their animal natures, which were utterly involuntary. The girl was a loss, certainly, but the baby would have value one day.

How cold that sounds! In fact Herpyllis and I both wept for the girl, and Herpyllis took it on herself to find a wet nurse. The house was sombre until the baby learned to smile, at about forty days. Nowadays the toddler is mostly Ambracis’s charge, though Olympios is unusually attached to it and likes to work near it when he can. We all find this endearing. My father is not a cold man, and we all take pride in the reputation of our house for indulgence to the slaves. We’re known for it, for many streets around.

“Do you have questions about the trip to Chalcis?” I ask now.

His eyes stray to the child.

“Of course,” I say. “We wouldn’t leave her.”

“Thank you, Lady.”

“That’s very good work, Philo,” I say, and he beams. He smacks the compost a few more times with the fork, patting it down. “Ambracis probably has some more scraps for you in the kitchen.” He trots off, happily. He’s cheerful and good for
heavy work, even if he doesn’t talk much. He likes to keep near Olympios and the child.

“Where is, where is—Tycho?” I ask.
Tycho
, I think to myself.
Who cares where Tycho is?

“Master sent him on errands. Arranging for carts, I think.”

I stop myself from thanking him. I do yank a ring I’ve grown tired of from my finger, a cockleshell on a plain gold band, and drop it in the child’s lap on my way out of the yard. It shrieks with pleasure.

I detour through the men’s quarters on the way to my own room just to breathe the air, the hot leather smell.

“No,” my father says, seeing the veil I’ve put on as he passes from his study to his bedroom, where the pot is. A trip he makes a couple of times an hour, every hour.

“Please,” I say.

“No.”

I take the veil off, ball it up, and throw it on the ground. Housebound, then, I must wait for Tycho, pacing up and down the yard where everyone can see me.

“Do you need something to do?” Herpyllis calls from her room.

“No!”

Nico passes by me and walks straight out of the gate. An hour later he’s back with a sack of burnet. He shows it to me for approval.

“Bring everything out here,” I say.

We’re rolling and tying the last of his toys in the springy dried bushes, which leave long fine scratches on our hands,
when Tycho returns. “I’ll bring you a crate, young master,” he says to Nico.

I follow him inside, to the pantry. “Why isn’t Myrmex home yet?” I ask, when everyone else is out of earshot.

He shakes his head.

“Has Daddy not told him we’re going?”

He looks at my face. “I’ll see to it he knows.”

“I could write a letter for you to take to Akakios. This afternoon?”

He removes some jars of oil from a small crate and shakes his head. “Master has jobs for me this afternoon. Let me give this to the young master and I’ll go do it now.”

“A very quick letter.”

He bows. I follow him back to the courtyard, intending to run to my room for paper and ink, but he gives Nico the crate and is gone through the gate before I can stop him.
Oh
.

Herpyllis has closed her door, which is unusual. I can’t think why she would be changing her clothes before lunch. Though if she’s going out, maybe she’ll take me. I hesitate, wondering whether to knock.

“Come in, and close the door behind you, Pytho,” she calls. My baby name.

Her room is dark. The curtains are drawn and she’s lit just one single-wick lamp. She’s sitting cross-legged on the floor, her back to the door, busy with something in her lap.

“How did you know it was me?”

“Close the door,” she says again.

I close it.

“I always know when it’s you,” she says. “I feel the fuss in
the air, like a storm coming, and I smell the wild lavender that grows by the sea.”

She smiles at me over her shoulder and I stick my tongue out at her. “What are you doing?”

She pats the ground beside her and I sit. She’s braiding something.

“Don’t you want more light?”

She shakes her head. “Your father doesn’t like me doing this. It’s quickly done and then he doesn’t need to know. Want to help?”

I recognize it now: an iunx. She’s using various threads and hairs, probably sneaked from each of us, and cups of milk, honey, and water, and a little mound of spices in the charred saucer she uses for burning.

“To protect us on our journey,” she says.

I get up. “Of course I don’t want to help,” I say. “If my father disapproves, then so do I. That’s just superstition.”

“La, la, la,” Herpyllis says. “I can’t hear you. Shall we go out? I need some laurel to finish this. We can go to the grove near your father’s school.”

“Daddy won’t let us.”

Herpyllis draws a tiny knot tight and clips a loose end expertly with her teeth. “He can’t say no if we don’t ask him.” She filches something fine off her tongue, looks at it, and flicks it onto the floor. “Nico will chaperone us, and Pyrrhaios will come, too. We’ll be perfectly safe.”

“Don’t expect me to do any picking.”

“Of course not. You’d spoil it anyway with your unpleasantness. The leaves would shrivel in your hands.”

“That’s right,” I say.

“Shrivel and catch fire, probably,” Herpyllis says. “I could teach you so much, you know, but you’re a stubborn nut.”

“That’s right,” I say again, and skip back to my room to retrieve my veil, grateful as a dog for its walk.

On our too-brief walk this afternoon, I got my own sackful of burnet. Despite her show of nonchalance, Herpyllis took care to have us all back far too soon. I’ve laid out what I want to bring on my bed. Herpyllis, passing my open doorway, rolls her eyes. “Gods,” she says, but she’s too busy to interfere. She and Ambracis ripped the kitchen apart after we got back this afternoon, and they’re working on the linens now. We leave tomorrow morning.

First are Daddy’s old surgical tools, inherited from
his
father: pipes, probes, needles, knives, spoons, forceps, clamps, extraction hooks, and the enormous vaginal dilator I’ve always loved for its great complicated importance. Daddy gave me the whole lot to play with long ago, saying he had no use for them anymore. They take a whole crate to themselves. Next comes my mother. She’s resting at the moment, but when the time comes we’ll have her ashes exhumed to be mingled with Daddy’s. I keep ready an unusually small, beautiful funerary urn. Daddy said my mother loved small things, which was why he chose that particular urn. The image on it is of a mother and a little girl, who is me. I’ll carry the urn on my lap until it’s safely in my new room in Chalcis.

All that remains are my clothes and jewels, which I dump into the trunk at the end of my bed. I’ll strip the bed linens in the morning. My collections of shells and rocks and bird skeletons and pressed wildflowers can all wait here until we return. I remember to add the little pot of kohl Herpyllis gave me; she’ll notice if I leave it behind by-accident-on-purpose.

“Pytho, help!” she calls now.

I find her in the storeroom with Ambracis and Thale, all three of them sweating and dusty and struggling to hold up one end of a shelf that’s somehow ripped off the wall. They’re up to their ankles in shards of pottery and an explosion of dried beans. I unload the remaining pots so they can safely lower the shelf, and offer to fetch the broom and pan.

“Look in Myrmex’s room,” Herpyllis says. “I was sweeping there before this.”

Myrmex’s room smells of leather and horses and something else, something I don’t know. I wonder if I’ve left a thread of my wild lavender smell for him.

After the cleaning of the beans and the cramming of the carts, we sit in the courtyard drinking a tonic before bed to help us sleep. Nico and I don’t often get wine.

“Nicomachos and I will visit the school in the morning while you finish packing,” Daddy tells Herpyllis. “I have some last instructions for Theophrastos. You’ll have the carts ready in the street, please, so we can set off once we’ve returned.”

“Take Pythias, too.” Herpyllis leans forward to refill our glasses. “She’ll just mooch about and get under my feet.”

“Mooch,” Nico says, giggling.

Herpyllis takes his glass and pours his wine into her own.

“What about Myrmex?”

Daddy and Herpyllis look at me.

“We can’t just leave him,” I say.

Daddy and Herpyllis look at each other. “He’s been told,” she says.

“Pretty one.” Daddy moves to my couch to put his arm around my shoulders. “We all love him. But he’s grown now. Soon he’s going to start making his own decisions. Maybe even tomorrow.”

“Not tomorrow,” I say. Daddy holds me while I sob. When I lift my face from his shoulder, I see Herpyllis is pouring my wine into hers, too.

“Come with us tomorrow, then, pet,” Daddy says. “If it’ll make you feel better.”

I nod, and snuffle, and feel for the pouch I’ve hidden under my dress at my waist. It contains the black hairs I picked from Myrmex’s fur blanket before Herpyllis called to ask what was taking me so long with the broom.