The Sweet Girl (10 page)

“Daddy.”

“The body is not disgusting,” Daddy says, too loudly, reproving. “As I was saying, the pus—”

“An accomplished young woman,” Glycera says. “A credit to you, my dear.” That stops Daddy. He’s not used to being anyone’s dear. “What else can she do?”

“Cauterize a cut, set a broken bone, apply leeches—”

“Weave,” I say. “Embroider, a little.”

“Does she sing?” the priestess wants to know.

“Like a hoopoe,” I say.

The room bursts into laughter; everyone is listening.

“Dance?” Glycera asks.

Daddy frowns; I look at the floor.

“I think she loves flowers,” the officer says. “I sense it. She fills the house with vases of wildflowers, beautifully arranged.” I look at him gratefully. “Blue,” he adds. His eyes crinkle too when he smiles, but not like Glycera’s. He’s young. “A bit of purple, but mostly blue.”

His name is Euphranor. I ask one of Glycera’s smiling daughters in the women’s room, where the pots are. She smiles at the question, without curiosity; I wonder if she’s drugged, though she checks her appearance carefully enough in the bronze, and corrects a smudge of colour on the lid of one eye with a steady finger. She smiles again when she sees me watching.

Back in the big room, Glycera takes my elbow. “I’ve offended your good father,” she says. “Only I do so love dancing. My friends know this eccentricity of mine and forgive me. I’m sorry if I’ve shocked you. There’s nothing so beautiful as a young girl dancing. So innocent. So healthy for the body. Do you enjoy exercise?”

“I swim,” I admit. She covers her mouth with her hand and
her eyes go big. “Is that terrible?” I say, maybe a bit wistfully. “Will I not be allowed to swim here?”

“Utterly charming,” Glycera says, which isn’t an answer. She lifts my chin with a single finger and adds, “There. That’s right. We wear our chins terribly high in Chalcis.”

I giggle.

“Oh, we’re going to be great friends.” Glycera beams again. “You’ll come weave with us, my daughters and me. We’re a house full of women now that my dear husband is gone. Five years ago, now. We love sweet company. Anything you need, you call on me. You have no mother, I think.”

“My mother died when I was three.”

“Precious.” Her eyes go bright and she pulls me to her, smothering me briefly in the front of her dress. “You come to us whenever you want.” She glances over at Daddy, who’s holding forth about something across the room. I see the men around him exchanging glances, amused at something Daddy isn’t aware of. “They shouldn’t laugh at him. He’s a greater man than any of them will ever be,” she says.

I feel surprise, and gratitude. “Will you excuse me?”

“You hold him up like a stake holds a vine. I see it. Go, go to him. You’re everything to him; those men are less than nothing.”

I go quickly to Daddy, slipping my hand in his.

“I was just explaining about the farm,” he says. “Richest land in the world. I plan to take a much larger role in the running of it, now we’re living here. I have some theories I intend to implement.”

“Quite so,” Plios says, loudly, patting his shoulder like he’s stupid
and
deaf. “May I tempt you with a quince cake, little one?”

Before I can do anything to spare Daddy, the magistrate has led me away to a low table of food surrounded by rich-fabricked couches. “So much food.” He shakes his head, gives me a plate, and takes one for himself. “You’ll help me make a dent in it, won’t you?”

I’m not used to eating in front of strangers. I take a few almonds, a few grapes. I expect Plios to make some joke, but he watches me gravely. I can see he’s deciding something.

I wonder what grown women say to grown men. “Your house is beautiful.” This sounds about right.

“It’s yours,” he says. “Open to you anytime, I mean. Is the villa terribly small, compared to what you had before? Are you comfortable there? I can send over whatever you need: servants, furniture. Say the word.”

I thank him, tell him we’re fine.

“Eat,” he says. “I’ve embarrassed you. Eat your grapes. We help each other here, you’ll see.”

“Here you are.” My father takes a couch and pats the spot next to him, bringing me close. I make a plate for him and he eats hungrily, cheese crumbling down his front, lips glistening with the oil he dipped his bread in. I catch his eye and touch my lips casually. He looks for a napkin.

Euphranor, the young officer, takes the couch next to ours. “I’ve been thinking about your farm.” He pours a cup of wine and pushes it towards Daddy, across the low, food-laden table. “I could take you out there, if you like. You and your family. We could make a day of it, take a picnic. I have a small property close to where you describe. I wouldn’t mind popping my head in on the way. In fact, I think we might even
be neighbours. I’m terribly interested in the theories you plan to implement. Animal husbandry, is it? Crop rotation? Fertilizers?” I have to squeeze my lips together despite myself to contain a smile.

Then they’re pouring the wine unwatered, and my eyes are closing, and the music is faster and louder, and it’s time to go. I am pressed to chest after chest, and offers of help, anything we might need, are repeated in my ear. My great daddy is puffed up with wine and food and respect, and doesn’t notice the crisscross web of curious glances that weave around his head. Tycho, waiting at a distance to escort us, is holding an enormous basket.

“So?” Herpyllis says. She must have heard our footsteps coming up the path, and is waiting in the doorway for us.

We follow Tycho to the kitchen, where he sets the basket on the table. Herpyllis unpacks eggs, cheese, cake, wine, cold pies, fruit. Daddy grunts, kisses her and then me, and wanders off—to bed, or to work. To his solitude, anyway. Herpyllis sorts grimly through the food, finally slamming a crock of soft cheese on the table and breathing deeply through her nose. “Charity,” she says. Her kohled eyes are bright with hatred. She looks beautiful.

“I want to get this off.” I wriggle inside my dress.

She follows me to the butterfly room and helps me with the unpinning, unwinding, unbinding, releasing of hair, washing of face, unlacing of tight sandals designed to emphasize the tininess of my not-so-tiny feet.

“Are you going to tell me about it?” she says finally.

So I tell her about the food, the music, the perfume, the people we met, the quality. I don’t patronize her by pretending I didn’t enjoy it. She listens, and asks the occasional question. I see her struggling not to sneer or criticize.

“There was an officer named Euphranor. He offered to escort us to the farm, on a picnic.”

She flinches slightly and looks at her lap.

“All of us,” I say. “I told him all of us.”

She looks up. “How did you do that?”

“I told him my father’s companion was a mother to me, and I had a little brother who loves animals.”

Her face scrolls through a series of emotions. Her eyes go wet.

“Stop it,” I say.

“You don’t understand.” She wipes her eyes on her hem, leaving black streaks on the cloth. “I want all these things for you. Wine and perfume and gold and cavalry officers and—what—
cakes
.” She takes both my hands in both of hers. “You’re going to be gone so soon. They’re going to take you from me.”

“Never,” I say.

“They’ll take you into their world, and leave me behind in this one. Look at Myrmex.”

“I’m not Myrmex,” I say.

She falls asleep before I do, in my bed, curled on her side like a child, cheeks still wet, my arms around her like a mother’s.

“Of course I’m coming,” Myrmex says. “Why, wasn’t I invited? You didn’t mention me, maybe? The minor fact of my existence? Not worth mentioning?”

I open my mouth, but Myrmex is full of umbrage.

“You’re ashamed of me, all of you. Well I
am
coming, and I’m going to chew with my mouth open and piss in the river and—”

“Enough,” Daddy says.

“—ask how much everything costs,”
Myrmex hisses.

Daddy and Herpyllis and I burst out laughing.

“You can ride Pinch,” Daddy says.

Myrmex hesitates. He loves Pinch.

“What about me?” Nico says. “Can I ride, too?”

“It’s a long way for the pony,” Daddy says. “And we don’t know the ground.”

Nico looks stricken. “I already told him about the picnic. He wants to come.”

I shake my hair down around my face like a mane, and snort, and say in a deep snuffling horse-voice, “I want to come.”

Everyone laughs again, Myrmex too. “Go tell Tycho, then,” Daddy says. “He’ll get them ready.”

“Rather Pyrrhaios, don’t you think?” Herpyllis gets up and starts tidying the breakfast table. “He’s better with the horses.”

Soon we’re gathered in front of the house: Myrmex on Pinch, Nico on Spiffy, Daddy on Frost, Herpyllis and me standing, big Pyrrhaios adjusting Nico’s tack. The carts we hired to move are long gone, but Euphranor said he’d take care of everything; we weren’t to bring a thing.

“You look like you’re going to the theatre, not the farm!” Euphranor is suddenly just there, solidified from the shadows of the trees, with his eye-crinkling smile. “Beautiful family. Are you the one who likes animals?” This last to Nico, who’s sitting painfully tall. Euphranor slaps Spiffy’s neck affectionately. “You’ve got a fine friend here. We rarely get them this fine in the cavalry.” Nico beams. “And who’s this?” Euphranor smiles at Myrmex and scratches Pinch’s nose.

“That’s Pinch,” Nico says, before Myrmex can reply.

For the rest of the day, Euphranor calls Myrmex Pinch.

He has a cart for Herpyllis and me lined with furs and purple silk cushions. He himself rides a black stallion, high-strung and fiery and snorting and head-tossing, mane like the sea and so on. Well. It’s a very pretty animal, and Myrmex is very, very angry and can’t do anything about it. He longs for everything Euphranor has, from his commission to his clothes to his height to his arrogance, and after the first few tongue-tied moments he can’t go back and correct the mistake about his name without looking like a fool. He rides at the back of our caravan, fuming, on the horse he’s now forced to hate.

The plan is to visit Euphranor’s farm first—he’s arranged lunch for us there—and then Daddy’s property later in the afternoon. Euboia is farmland from a dream of farmland: green and golden, a long treed lane between endless fields, poppies in the ditches, birds in the branches, odd rambling houses made bigger generation after generation, each adding another room or two, all lovelied over with clematis and creeping grapevines. Chickens in the yards, dogs chasing us down the lane. We turn into Euphranor’s property, where an old
man steps from the shadow of a doorway to greet us. He has no teeth.

“Demetrios!” Euphranor greets him. “We thought we might swim.”

“The pond’s covered in scum.” The old man rubs his hands. “Pollen scum. I’ll give it a skim for you.”

“No, don’t bother.” Euphranor claps his shoulder, squeezes. “Pinch here will do the honours. One mighty splash should clear it for the ladies, eh, Pinch?”

Myrmex looks at me.

“I thought we’d eat in the grove.” Euphranor holds his hand out to assist Herpyllis from the cart, then me. The catch of his calluses. “Cooler there. A nap, a swim, whatever you like.”

“I’d like to see your farm.” Daddy’s got himself off Frost and picked a branch from the ground to lean on like a crutch. I’ve never seen him do this before. “Are all those fields yours?” He swings the branch across the horizon, pointing—oh. That’s going to get annoying.

“Right down to the river. I thought Demetrios here might escort you while I settle your family. He knows far more than I do about it all, isn’t that right, Demetrios? He’s been steward since I was a baby.”

The old man bares his gums again in his infant’s grin.

“Nico!” Euphranor has taken to barking at my little brother like a soldier, which has him giddy. He gets down from the pony and stands at attention, pale and peaky and as serious as possible, probably hoping to be asked to extinguish a forest fire or bear some great weight. Clever Euphranor slings a waterskin over his shoulder and hands him a bow and arrows. “Perhaps
a bit of hunting, later, when your mother’s not paying attention,” he stage-whispers.