The Sweet Girl (14 page)

We sit in the public room in the home of Thaulos, a high-ceilinged reception room with severe furniture and only a single
small brazier in one corner. Herpyllis is in the middle of a couch with Nico on one side and me on the other, a wing around each of us. My hair is cropped short, like a boy’s; Nico’s will be allowed to grow shaggy.

“The children have been ill,” she says, when neither of us answers his greeting.

She still wears her darkest dress, sweat-smelling after so many days without washing, and no make-up; her eyes are a mess. Nico drones softly to himself, a wordless keening. He’s been doing this for days. I find it important not to speak. Each word feels precious, suddenly, and so many words are so utterly unnecessary.

“Your father named Antipater as executor of his will,” Thaulos begins. Antipater, regent of Macedon, my father’s old friend. “I stand here today as his proxy.”

“I thank you,” Herpyllis says.

Thaulos takes a breath to speak, then changes his mind. He rubs his forehead, reading over the paper in front of him. Finally he looks up. “It’s a pickle, isn’t it?” he says kindly.

We can only breathe.

“I’ve sent word to your father’s school in Athens, to”—he squints at the paper—“Theophrastos, and to the nephew, in dispatches. His unit is still in Babylon. Nicanor, yes? Your intended?” He’s looking at me.

“He’s dead,” I say.

“Shh.” Herpyllis kisses my hair.

“Nicanor is dead.”

Thaulos looks surprised.

“He’s dead,” I say again.

“Then you have better intelligence than I do.” He smiles gently at his own joke. “I’ve received no such report. The army prides itself on accuracy in such matters. I wish I’d known you had such worries. I could have eased your mind.”

“Is he coming home?” Herpyllis asks.

Now Thaulos frowns.

“They’ve been coming home ever since they left,” I say. “Years ago. That’s what Daddy always said. All we can do is wait.”

“Your father had a unique insight into the mind of our king,” Thaulos says. “I think his great wisdom guides us even now.”

“She has the spark of him in her,” Herpyllis says. “She always did.”

I go blank for a few seconds, and when I come back they’re discussing Herpyllis’s future.

“Of course,” she’s saying, bowing her head obediently. “Of course.”

“You have people there still?”

“A sister,” Herpyllis says. “Cousins.”

“And the boy will go to Theophrastos.”

“Myrmex, you mean.” Herpyllis nods.

Thaulos looks at the papers again.

“Mummy?” Nico says.

“Nicanor shall take charge of the boy Myrmex, that he be taken to his own friends in a manner worthy of me with the property of his which we received,”
Thaulos reads. “Orphan, is he? No, I mean the other boy. This fine fellow here. Would you like to go to school? Nicomachos, is it? I’m sure it’s what your father would have wanted for you.”

Nico screams, a high thin sound like a hawk. Herpyllis
lets go of me to put both her arms around him. Her shoulders are shaking.

Thaulos, obviously startled, stands. I stand, too, while Herpyllis and Nico hold each other, weeping. With a look, he bids me follow him over to the window, where they won’t hear us. We look out on a drill team going through manoeuvres. “And you?” he says.

I wait.

“You can go to Athens with your brother.” Watching his soldiers, Thaulos stands taller with unconscious pride. “I’m familiar with your father’s concerns, but I can reassure you that they were—overstated, shall we say. Macedon controls Athens. You will be safe there.”

I thank him.

“I suppose you could go with the woman, alternatively,” he muses. “Like a mother to you, is she? A girl needs a mother. You could wait with her in Stageira for your intended. Confidentially, I suspect the army will move quickly now to return home. Now that the king’s ambitions are no longer—”

“Now that there is no longer a god to lead them,” I say.

Thaulos looks at his feet.

“How long?” I ask.

“Months. A year at most, I’d guess, for all of them to return. Think about it. I have a daughter myself, though younger than you. I understand there are preparations for a marriage? Certain information to be passed on? Household management and so on? And then learning how to care for all the little ones to come?”

I think he is a kind daddy.

“I’ll leave your decision to the wisdom you’ve inherited from your father.” He gives me the paper and holds a hand towards the door, conducting us out. Nico is quiet now, and he and Herpyllis have both risen. Our interview is done. “He will guide you.”

“Always,” I say.

Outside, Pyrrhaios leans down to murmur something in Nico’s ear. Nico stands a little straighter, wiping his face, and Pyrrhaios briefly puts a hand on his shoulder. He must have heard everything. Herpyllis walks slowly, already trying to delay the inevitable.

At home, I find Myrmex and give him the paper. He reads it slowly, then once more, even more slowly. I realize he’s drunk.

“ ‘Taken to his own friends in a manner worthy of me with the property of his which we received.’ ” Myrmex spits at my feet. “What property? What friends?”

“I don’t know,” I whisper.

He reads a third time. “There was a bag,” he says slowly. “They gave me a bag to give to your father, when I left home, when I came to Athens. It was sewn closed. I bet it was money. My money.”

I want to kiss him.

“Your brother’ll give it to me, if you won’t.”

“I’ve been in the storeroom,” I say, stupidly. “I’ve never seen such a bag.” I stand up so he can press himself against me if he wants to.

“Tight as your father,” he sneers. And off he goes to rant at poor terrified Nico, until Herpyllis flaps him away like she flaps the chickens with her skirts.

“I’ll get what’s mine,” Myrmex says. “I’ll find a way.”

He clangs out of the front gate, leaving it bouncing behind him.

Herpyllis begins packing. Nico sits in a corner, his gaze following her everywhere. Sometimes he rocks a little. Herpyllis’s eyes are now so raw and swollen I fear infection. She lets me examine her. I make her cold compresses with bruised mint, but, privately, I fear whatever prettiness she might once have had is gone forever.

The next morning, Myrmex still isn’t back.

“He needs to grieve,” Herpyllis says. “Not everyone can share grief.” She puts aside what she’s been doing, some last mending for Nico, and pats the couch beside her. “I’ve been wanting to speak to you, Pytho.”

I sit.

“What I said when you took him swimming that first time,” she begins. “About how it would be on your head.”

I shake my head to show I know she didn’t mean it that way.

“No, you listen,” she says. “You’re going to let me say it aloud. You didn’t do this. You didn’t make it, you didn’t wish it, you didn’t cause it in any way. You were not the cause. Neither material, formal, efficient, nor final.”

I look at her.

“That was a joke,” she says.

We embrace for a long time while Nico watches us silently from his corner. When Herpyllis finally releases me and I stand,
he comes to take my place. I sit back down, and she and I hold him from both sides.

Herpyllis leaves for Stageira the next morning, with Pyrrhaios and everything else accorded her in the will. Some very nice furniture. While she and Nico hug fiercely, I give them the gift I’ve been saving to make their parting possible.

“You’ll both come to my wedding,” I say. “It’ll only be a few months to wait, and then you’ll be together again.”

Herpyllis embraces me, and it’s only then I realize—stupidly—she’s actually leaving me, too. “Who loves you?” she whispers into my hair.

You do
.

“There, that’s not so bad, is it?” she says to Nico. He sniffles a smile. She kisses my cheek, crushes him to her one last time, and mounts the waiting cart. “Kiss Myrmex for me,” she calls.

Nico pulls me inside to find Daddy’s map of the East, to figure out exactly where his mother is going and how long until Nicanor might make it home from the wars. I play along, gravely calculating, trying to factor in rivers and seasons.

We eat a quiet supper together in the innermost courtyard, the one with the lavender. Nico will leave for Athens and Theophrastos in the morning; Thaulos has offered to convey him with some troops who are shifting there. He’ll be most utterly safe at school—Theophrastos loves him like a dog loves a ball. I tell him I’ll be back in Athens myself very
soon, once everything in Daddy’s will is wrapped up here. There are matters to be seen to, bills to be paid, loose ends to be tied.

“Where’s Myrmex?” Nico asks.

“I don’t know.”

Nico looks at me with his big, dark, clear eyes.

We go together to the storeroom and consider the iron bars holding the door.

“Nico, he wouldn’t,” I say. “He’d had too much to drink, that’s all. Everyone grieves differently.”

“Who’s got the key?” Nico says.

Thale, it turns out; Herpyllis gave it to her before she left, telling her to give it to me when I was ready.

The door swings open easily, silently; recent oiling. Bags of corn and beans and lentils and flour; seeds, dried herbs, squash; the first apples of the year. Wine, lamp oil, cooking oil, torches, wool.

“Lady,” Thale whispers.

Every last coin is gone.

Who am I to be making decisions? Who am I? An orphan, a pauper. A girl. Thinking thinking thinking smiling smiling smiling. Grace matters now.

“But how did he get in?” Nico says.

“Before Herpyllis left, probably. Sometimes she left the key lying around in the kitchen, on market days when she was in and out of there a lot.”

“It’s not her fault.”

“Of course not.” I reassure Nico, reassure the servants. “Silly boy,” I say, over and over, meaning Myrmex. “He’ll be back.”

“Lady,” they say. I read their doubts, but they’ll take the lead from me. There’s no one else. Late at night, I count the coins I keep in my own little purse, with my clothes in the trunk in my room. I can afford a week; two, at most.

Of course I forgive him.

Once the stars are up and the house is quiet, I go to wake Tycho, who sleeps by the front gate. “Come,” I say.

We walk down to the beach. I expected some objection—he’s been with us so long, Tycho, that occasionally he’ll risk some such—but he says nothing. Standing on the sand, we both stare into the black water.

“I should have followed him in,” Tycho says. “Lady, forgive me.”

I walk straight down to the water’s edge, then keep walking.

The water is cold and then colder; the plunge stops my heart. I surface gasping and look back. Tycho is watching me.

I dive again, eyes open. There’s a faint phosphorescence in the water that licks me greeny-gold. I sob under the surface, come up to breathe, go down again to let more tears go. I’m almost done when I hear Tycho’s deep call.

“Almost,” I call back. “Almost.”

I chose night on purpose; no one to see me, no one to shock. Girls don’t swim. But when I wade up onto the sand,
my dress plastered to me, cold past feeling, I see a light back in the trees.

“Quickly,” Tycho says, wrapping his wool around me. He’s seen it, too.