Eodan lifted his cup. “Be not afraid,” he said. “I cannot leave this chair before they bring me a staff.”
Phryne received his bluntness with relief. Some of the educated household men simpered about so she could vomit. She could give no better reason, in all honesty, for not taking a lover or even a husband. Cordelia had not forbidden her, and the memory of a certain boy was chilly comfort.
“I should think,” she whispered, leaning close lest it be overheard, “that if you treated Flavius kindly ― and he did not look much abused when he came back ― he could have found something better for you than field labor. That destroys―” She stopped, appalled.
Eodan said bleakly, “Destroys men. Of course. Do you think I have not seen what a few years of it do to a man? He could have done worse, I suppose ― resold me to the games I hear tell of, or as a rower on a ship. But he could never trust me running about a house, even another man’s house, as freely as you do.”
“Why not? You can have no more dreams of escape. You have seen crucified men along the roads.”
“Some things might be worth a crucifixion,” said Eodan. He made no great point of it; his tone was almost matter-of-fact, wherefore Phryne shuddered.
“Hercules help me, why?” she breathed.
Eodan said from a white face, “He took my wife.” He drained his cup.
Phryne sat very still for a while. The wind mourned about the house, wailed in the portico and rubbed leafless branches together. Another rain-burst pelted the roof.
“Well!” said Eodan at last, “Enough of that, little Greek. I should not have said anything, but for the wine, eh, and this leg feels as if there were wolves at it.” The arrogance slipped from him and she looked into eyes hurt and helpless, which begged her to leave him his last rags of pride. “You will not speak of what I said?’
“I swear so,” she answered.
He regarded her for a very long while. Finally he nodded. “I think I can believe that,” he said.
Steps sounded on the brick floor. Phryne stood up, folding her hands before her and casting duly meek eyes downward. Eodan remained as he was, his gaze challenging those who entered. They were the major-domo and Mistress Cordelia.
The major-domo, an Illyrian grown fat and bald in his own self-importance till he could imagine nothing more than accounts and ordering other slaves about, said: “Here the Cimbrian is, I am told, my mistress. I shall call porters and have him carried back down to his barracks.”
Cordelia said: “Wait. I told you I would like to speak with this bull wrestler.”
Phryne raised her eyes, suddenly afraid for Eodan. He was so proud, too much so for his own good. Slaves whom the dealer failed to break inwardly, so that they let him chain their spirits as well as their hands, might sometimes rise high and even regain freedom; but they were more likely to end on a cross or in the arena. And Eodan was drunk and ― O sea-born Cyprian ― he was looking at his owner’s wife as he had looked at her!
“You are a bold man,” said Cordelia.
Eodan nodded.
She laughed. “And not overburdened with modesty,” she went on. “Do not tell me we have another of these barbarian kings!”
Eodan replied: “If you are Flavius’ wife, then we have your husband’s one-time owner.”
Phryne’s heart seemed to crash to a halt. She stood for a brief space feeling blood drain from her. Now the gods would have their revenge, when a man bore his head so high.
Cordelia stepped back. For a moment she flushed.
She was a tall woman of Etruscan stock, perhaps descended from Tarquin himself and some jewel of Tarquin’s harem. Thirty years old, she had the fullness of body that would turn to fat in another decade but was as yet only superb. A silken dress violated every sumptuary law the Republic had ever passed to emphasize hip and bosom, insolently. Her hair was thick, its black copper-tinged, her face curve-nosed and heavy-lipped, her eyes like southern nights. She had the taste to wear only one ornament, a massive silver bracelet.
The major-domo turned red and gobbled his indignation. Cordelia glanced at him, back at Eodan, then suddenly she laughed aloud.
“So this is what he looks like! And my husband, who has wearied Roman dinners this half a year with his stories of the Cimbri, did not bring you to show off!”
She paused, looked closely into Eodan’s face ― their eyes met like swords ― and murmured, “But I see why.”
Phryne leaned against the wall; she did not think her knees would hold her unaided. Now they were on a well-marked path; she knew what came next. The final fate of Eodan was hidden ― it could be gay or gruesome, but this part of the way was mapped.
Young Perseus had entered the Gorgon’s lair and come back alive.
She wondered why she felt like weeping.
IV
He has deserved well us,” Cordelia said. “Let him be kept in the household, at least till he is properly healed. Give him good raiment and light work. And first of all a bath!”
Thereafter she did not hurry matters. Eodan limped about with a crutch, ate and drank and slept enormously, scoured pots or helped old Mopsus the gardener. He spent much time down at the stables, where he soon had the friendship of the head groom, a dour Cappadocian who was believed to have been hatched rather than born since not even a mother could have loved him. Phryne did not understand how a man of intelligence ― and Eodan had a good mind in his rough way ― could sit hour after hour talking about currycombs and fetlocks and spavins and whatever else there was; but so it went and, after all, divine Homer dwelt lovingly on horses.
Washed, shaved, his hair cut and combed, a white tunic and sandals on him, Eodan might almost have been a Homeric warrior himself ― Diomedes, perhaps, or Ajax the haughty. As he grew rested and fleshed out, his manners became milder, he snarled or cuffed at men less often, his smiles were sometimes nearly warm instead of a mere wolfish baring of teeth. But he dropped his green eyes for no one, and the house slaves who shared their room with him were kept at a frosty distance.
The major-domo was afraid of him. “I would not trust that barbarian, not one inch,” he told Phryne. “My dear, you should have seen his back when he first bathed. I would not even try to count all the whip scars. And many slashes were new ― he got them here, in the months we have had him, the last of them perhaps only yesterday! Mark my words, it is the sign of an unruly heart. It is such men who lead slave revolts. If he were mine, I would geld him and sell him to the lead mines.”
“Some men were born gelded,” said Phryne coldly, and left. She could almost see the crisscrossing of thin white lines on Eodan’s shoulderblades. She avoided him for a while, uncertain why she did so.
And the springtime waxed. Each day the sun stood higher; each day a new bird-song sounded in the orchard. One morning fields and trees showed the finest transparent green, as if the goddess had only breathed on them in the night. And then at once, unable to wait, the leaves themselves burst out and the orchard exploded in pale fire.
It happened Cordelia was complaining of a headache again; she must lie in a dark room and make everyone creep by. Phryne, who considered her mistress as strong as a cow, an excuse to leave the villa. She would gather apple blossoms and arrange them for Cordelia’s delight.
The morning was still wet, after a short rain. Where the sun struck the grass, it flashed white. A thrush sat on a bough and chanted of all bright hopes; a milk cow grazed in a meadow, impossibly red. When Phryne went among the gnarled little trees, they shook down raindrops upon her. She took a low branch in her arms and buried her face in its flowers.