He shuddered with the awe of it, his teeth clenched together. “I will leave in a few days, as soon as I can,” he said. “You will forget we ever spoke of this, will you not?”
Phryne rose again. She leaned against the wall, her cheek and palms to its rough brick, her eyes closed. It was as though she drew on her own roots of strength. At last, in a faraway voice, she answered him: “No, I shall help you.”
VI
Not till four days afterward did Phryne stop Eodan on the portico and breathe: “I have made ready. Meet me in my chamber ― do you know where it is? ― after sunset, and I will try to disguise you. Can you get horses?”
His heart raced within him. He thought for a moment, standing under fluted pillars with a green lawn and broad fields before him, standing among thunders and drawn swords. At last he nodded. “There are stableboys who sleep among the animals, but it will be simple enough to frighten them, if I have any weapon. No one else will know until morning.”
“Then the gates of Tartarus will be opened!” Her eyes were huge and her cheeks pale. “Let me see,” she murmured. “I will have a sword for you ― I know where such tools are kept ― and a couple of daggers as well. You can overawe the boys, so they let themselves be bound and gagged one by one. Drop a little word here or there, as if in carelessness, to make them think you plan to flee into the mountains. That would be the expected direction, anyhow, to reach Helvetia. Where did you think to go, in truth, after Rome, Eodan?”
“I do not know,” he said. “North, to some place where men are still free. I do not know what the best way is.”
“There is none,” she told him. “They are all beset.” Quickly, leaning close so he could feel her breath upon his breast, swift and frightened: “I am not so sure your best hope lies to the north. You would have to cross too much Roman country. In the east or the south, now. But we can speak of that later. We dare not be seen lingering like this. After dark, then ― do not fail! I have contrived that the two girls who sleep with me be out tonight. My supplies would be discovered before another such chance came. So tonight!”
She went from him, almost running, the breeze fluttering her light white gown about her. Eodan could not hold himself from staring. A slave with the soul of a chief’s daughter, he thought; surely some Power had sent her across his path. He would have promised sacrifices if he had known what Power it was, but the gods of this land were unknown to him, and Cimberland’s too far away to have heard about his trouble. Well ― tonight!
He went on into the villa. It was hours till sundown; how would he live through them without roaring his secret to the world? He would get Cordelia’s permission to go for a gallop. Yes, a good plan, thus he could spy out his road of escape….
He found her in the peristyle. Her maids twittered and giggled, a plump little scurrying bevy, wisps of cloth gay about a delicious roundedness fore and aft. They were laying out towels, clean garments, the mistress was pleased to swim in the pool. Cordelia stood aloof among them. As she saw Eodan come between the pillars, she drew her half-discarded stola about her. The dark Etruscan head lifted, and she said with an unwonted chill, “What would you? Did you not hear the household was forbidden to come here?”
“I beg pardon,” said Eodan. “I was out―”
“Out! You have been out far too much. This is the place you are supposed to guard. Where were you?”
Eodan thought back. On a certain morning he had made his vow to quit this kept life. The next night she had still been exhausted, and he slept in the guards’ chamber. Since she had said nothing about it, he had again slept with the guards the following darkness. The next morning he offered the cattle overseer to help bring several beasts of good stock from a neighboring plantation; they had not come back till well after sundown, and he was tired and went directly to his pallet…. Yes, by Fire itself, he had scarcely seen Cordelia in three days!
“I am sure you knew my whereabouts, Mistress,” he answered her. “If you do not summon me to ― to help you―” An uncontrollable giggling tinkled around the sunlit space; Cordelia frowned and thinned her lips―”I would not trouble you, Mistress,” he finished.
She said slowly, “Is gratitude, then, not a barbarian habit?”
“But how have I done wrong?” he asked. He knew very well, and he could not dissemble bewilderment he did not feel. Cordelia’s face darkened.
“Go, all you women!” she snapped. “Let no one in here.”
They fled, with squeaks of dismay; now Mistress was angry! Cordelia walked slowly toward Eodan across gleaming mosaic. Her knuckles, where she held up the loosened ungirdled stola, were bloodlessly taut.
“If you think so little of me that you will only come on command… that you will drive cows till midnight rather than even ask me if that is my wish―” She was close to him now, speaking through knotted jaws. “Don’t think I have not seen you in corners with that Phryne! If you find me dull, you may as well go back to the fields!”
I find you not dull but a foe, he wanted to say. There is too much blood between us.
Aloud: “Mistress, I did not understand. I thought you would summon me.”
Something eased within her. She laughed, low, and put her hands on his shoulders. The gown fell about her feet. It could have been one of the statues he had seen ― Venus, in her aspect of hot sleepless nights ― that stood before him, save that veins pulsed under this skin and sweat jeweled it in the sun. “Hercules, Hercules,” she cried, “can you not get it into your thick yellow head, I want to be the one commanded?”
He stepped back, stammering, feeling the will of Venus but remembering she was Hwicca’s enemy. “Mistress… I cannot… I am―”
“Tonight,” she said eagerly. “Just at day’s end. We will watch the sun go down and we shall not sleep before it rises again.”
O my weird which I invoked, help me now! he thought.
It came to him what he must do. And because the day was warm, and she stood clothed only in sunlight and her loosened dark hair, and he had slept alone for three nights, and he might be a flayed corpse in a few days… he trod forward with the Bull strong and exultant in his soul.
“Oh!” said Cornelia. “Hercules! No! Tonight, I told you!”
He grinned, pulled her to him, and held her one-handed with muscles that had wrestled horned kine to earth, while his lips bruised hers and his free hand roved up and down her body. “Well,” she sighed finally, “well, just once―”
When they had rested for a time, he stood up. “Come, into the pool!” he said. She hung back. Laughing, he sprang. Water spouted, drenching her. He swam to the edge where she crouched and hauled her after him. She came up sputtering. He kissed her. She gave in and paddled about, while he snorted and churned, porpoiselike, darting in again and again, until at last it was she who urged him back onto the tiles.
Thereafter she complained that her body was sore from the hardness, so they sought her bedroom. After a while she clapped her hands and had a girl bring refreshments. And so it went till sundown.
As the first darkness came out of the east and up from the lower valley, like smoke, Cordelia drew Eodan’s head down upon her bosom and held him there, with a grasp made gentle by weariness. “O Hercules,” she whispered, “I thought there were no more men in the world worth caring for.”
He lay with closed eyes, drained of strength, wishing he could sleep, wishing this were Hwicca.
“It is not only that you still my hunger,” she murmured. Her voice was trailing off, swallowed by sleep. “It is yourself. I am not lonely under your kisses…. Be with me always, Hercules! I ask you ― as a beggar ― I who love you…”