Splashes that had nothing to do with rain greeted his ears when he went back out into the courtyard. At the direction of Philodemos’ second wife, a slave poured water from a hydria onto the flowers and herbs in the garden there. “Careful, now,” Baukis told him. “Don’t miss the marjoram.”
“I won’t, mistress.” The slave turned the stream from the big, heavy water jug where she pointed.
“That’s better,” she said, and dipped her head. When she looked up again, she saw Menedemos. She smiled. “Hail.”
“Hail,” he answered gravely. “How are you?”
“Well enough. Glad of this sunshine,” Baukis said.
“It is nice, isn’t it?” Menedemos agreed. Nothings, commonplaces… but he could look at her while they talked. Here inside her own household, she went unveiled, of course. She was no great beauty, but, except for front teeth that stuck out, pretty enough-and, at seventeen, any woman seemed fresh and glowing and ripe. Her figure had certainly ripened, these past few years. When she’d wed Philodemos, she’d been hardly more than a girl, with hardly more than a girl’s shape. No more.
“Will you be sailing soon?” she asked.
“Before long, anyhow,” Menedemos said. “Sostratos wants to get to Athens as fast as he can, and I don’t blame him. We’ll put to sea as soon as Father decides the weather’s likely to hold.”
“I hope you have good fortune.” Baukis watched his face, as he watched hers-as was only polite when two people talked. If her gaze traveled the length of him, as his now and then paused at her rounded bosom or at the sweet flare of her hips… If her gaze swung so, it was only in the most casual way, a way on which, for instance, the patient slave with the hydria could not remark.
“Thanks,” Menedemos replied. His glances were every bit as circumspect. Philodemos raved because he made adultery a game. But he knew adultery with his father’s young wife would be, could be, no game. He’d realized he might want her not long after his father wed her. Only since the autumn before had he known she might want him, too.
They’d kissed only once. They’d never done more than kiss. Whatever else Baukis wanted, she also wanted to make Menedemos’ father a good wife. Lying with Menedemos might not merely cause scandal. It might cause murder.
Since she couldn’t speak of love, she spoke of traveclass="underline" “Athens must be a wonderful place.”
“Sostratos knows it better than I do. It’s his second home,” Menedemos said.
The hydria gurgled dry. The slave sent Baukis a look of appeal. She tossed her head and tapped her sandaled foot on the ground. “Go fill it again, Lydos,” she said. “You can see some of the plants here still need more water. With the rains lately, the cistern’s nice and full.”
“With the rains lately, the plants shouldn’t need all that much water,” Lydos said.
“They’ll dry up if you don’t keep them moist,” Baukis said sharply. “And if you don’t dry up, I’ll find something for you to do that you’ll like a lot less than watering the garden.”
Muttering to himself in a language that wasn’t Greek, the slave shouldered the hydria and carried it back toward the cistern. Had it been late summer, with the cistern dry, Baukis would have sent a slave woman to the well a few blocks away. Menedemos laughed to himself. Who could guess when the woman would have come back from the well? Men talked in the market square. Women gossiped around the wellhead.
For that matter, who could guess when Lydos would come back from the cistern-and it was only at the rear of the house? By the way he dragged his feet going there, he was in no hurry to get on with his work. But then, what slave ever was in a hurry, except maybe to go out and get drunk on a festival day?
Menedemos wasn’t about to rush him, either. Now he could gaze his fill at Baukis… provided he didn’t do it too openly. They still weren’t alone. As if to prove that, Sikon the cook came into the house, his face a thundercloud-shopping for fish must not have gone well. He stormed into the kitchen and made a racket as he started on the day’s baking. Maybe he was working out his anger. Maybe he thought that the noisier he was, the busier everybody would think he was. That was another slave trick old as time. The doorman was puttering around, too, and the slave women upstairs. In a household full of slaves, you could never count on being alone for very long.
Baukis took not quite half a step toward Menedemos. Then she stopped, a rueful-and more than a little frightened-smile on her face. She knew the risks of living in a house full of slaves as well as he did. They were lucky they hadn’t been found out the one time their lips did touch.
We can’t, she mouthed silently. They’d been saying that to each other ever since discovering they both wanted to.
I know, Menedemos mouthed back. They’d been saying that, too, each trying to convince the other, both trying to convince themselves.
The past two springs, when Menedemos had known he longed for Baukis but hadn’t known they shared a longing, he’d wanted to flee Rhodes as soon as he could. Now… Now at least part of him wished he could stay and wait for a chance that might never come, a chance he might not take even if it did come. Hellenes agreed love was a mad, dangerous passion. What to do if one fell into it anyhow? On that, there was no agreement.
He started to mouth, I love you, but he couldn’t even do that. Here came Lydos back with the water jug. He was still grumbling. Baukis had had her problems with the house slaves, and especially with the cook, but she was wise enough to affect not to notice this. All she said was, “Oh, good-that didn’t take too long,” and showed him the plants that still needed watering. As he bent to moisten the dirt around them, Baukis shot Menedemos another glance full of harried amusement.
And Menedemos could only dip his head. Had he fallen in love with any other wife in all of Rhodes… For a long time, he’d tried to make himself believe this hadn’t happened. Life would have been much easier-much safer, too-if it hadn’t. But the world was what it was, not what he wished it would be.
Lydos’ second jar of water ran dry. He looked up at Baukis in mute appeal; the garden was almost done. She knew exactly what he was thinking. “Go get enough water to finish the job,” she said.
“Oh, by the gods!” Lydos turned to Menedemos in appeal. “Young master-”
Menedemos tossed his head. “I can see the corner that’s still dry,” he said before Lydos could go any further. “My father’s wife is right. If you’re going to do something, do it properly. That’s a lesson you learn at sea-or, if you don’t, you pay for it.”
Lydos let out a theatrical groan, as if Menedemos had just ordered him sold to the mines. When that failed to soften either Menedemos’ heart or Baukis’, he carried the hydria away again, moving like an old, old man whose joints pained him.
Baukis snorted. “It must be terrible for a man to be made into a slave.”
“Yes, it is.” Menedemos looked right at her, as if to say she had made him into hers.
She spent a lot of time indoors, which kept her skin fair. He watched, enchanted, the flush that rose from her neck to her cheeks to her forehead. Stop that, she mouthed.
She was right, of course. The more such foolish things he did, the likelier someone would notice: his father, which would be the worst disaster of all; or a slave, who might tell his father or extort who could guess what by threatening to tell; or even Sostratos, who’d puzzled over why Menedemos had been so eager to get away from Rhodes the past couple of sailing seasons.
As Baukis had, Menedemos snorted. His cousin, sometimes, thought too much for his own good. A more perceptive man, one who felt more and perhaps thought a little less, might well have realized what was wrong with Menedemos. Or maybe Sostratos needed to fall in love himself before he could recognize the symptoms in others. They weren’t-or Menedemos hoped they weren’t-something that could be known by reason alone.