It was a shocking thing. She should not do it; of course she should not. But ever since the demonstration, her pretense that her interest in Archimedes was no more than that of a patroness in a potentially useful servant of the state had been vanishing like water into sand. She was chagrined at how completely she had been deluding herself. And yet, she was sure that at first she had not been pretending. When she first met the man she had simply been intrigued by him- but that had changed. It was ridiculous! She had seen him three times, spoken to him twice, played music with him once- and she felt that if she allowed him to slip away she would regret it all her life.
She had written him a note: I must speak with you. Meet me at the fountain of Arethusa tomorrow at the tenth hour. I wish you well. She had addressed it to "Archimedes, son of Phidias, at the catapult workshop," sealed it with one of Hieron's seals- he kept several about the house- and set it in a pile of the king's letters which were about to be distributed through the city. It had been fearfully easy. It was still easy: the end of a working day, the streets of the Ortygia as full as they ever were, and herself easing her way down the street, inconspicuous among the others, swathed in a voluminous cloak of linen with a fold pulled modestly over her head to conceal her face. Of course, nobody had been trying to prevent her leaving the house: nobody had ever imagined that she would do such a wanton, shameless, and disloyal thing as to arrange an assignation with a young man.
When the possibility of what she was doing had first occurred to her, she had striven to force it from her mind. It would be wickedly self-indulgent and disloyal to return all her brother's kindness to her with nothing but callous ingratitude and shame. The king's own sister went whoring after an engineer, the gossip would say. She promised herself that she would do no such thing. She did not love Archimedes- she barely knew him. She could certainly live without him!
And yet, and yet… in a way, not knowing him was the worst of it. It was as though she had been walking all her life along the same narrow streets and then, unexpectedly, at the top of a hill, glimpsed a unfamiliar and breathtaking vista. Perhaps the new prospect was as narrow and confined as the old streets when you were inside it- but if she never explored it, she would never know. That was the thing that gnawed at her: not to know, to marry some nobleman or king and have children and grow old, never knowing what she had missed.
In the end she told herself that if she did know him better, she would probably discover that she didn't much like him. Then she could go home and settle to her lot in life, not perhaps content, but at least untroubled by wild suppositions of how much better things could have been. This small, this easy, disobedience, wasn't much to pay for peace of mind, was it? And she would not do anything with the man. He wouldn't dare take liberties with her. They would talk a bit, and then she would see how silly she was being, and go home.
She had never been so frightened in her life. But she walked on resolutely toward the fountain of Arethusa.
She had chosen the fountain for three reasons: it wasn't far from her brother's house; it wasn't far from the catapult workshop; and it was enclosed by a small garden which could provide some cover for a private conversation, while remaining public enough to give her a sense of security. She did not at all believe that as soon as she was alone in private with Archimedes he would leap on her like a maddened satyr, but she had been warned of the wickedness of men and the dangers of impropriety so often that she wanted to feel that someone would hear her if she shouted. So she walked into the garden with one eye on the passersby she might have to call on: two guardsmen sharing a drink under a date palm; a couple of girls sitting on the ground by a myrtle bush; a pair of lovers kissing under a rose trellis. The girls would all be whores: respectable girls didn't sit about in public like that- like her. She tugged a fold of her cloak farther over her head, to hide herself from curious eyes.
The fountain itself was a large oblong basin of dark water, shaded by pines. The sweet water welled up silently from its depths. Tall, feathery-topped papyrus reeds grew in the shallows, a gift from Ptolemy of Egypt; in all Europe, the papyrus grew only here. Above one side of the basin towered the city wall, and at the far end, white and lovely, a statue of the nymph Arethusa gazed upon her fountain. Flowers garlanded the base of the statue, and coins gleamed in the water's depths: offerings to the protectress of Syracuse.
There were people here, too, but she noticed only one of them: a tall young man who crouched by the fountain's edge, intently regarding a collection of sticks which floated upon the surface. He was dressed in black, and his hair was cut short in mourning. She guessed that his cloak was quite a good one, since it looked heavy, but it was patched with dust and he was at that moment treading the hem into the mud. The water cast wavering reflections upon his long-boned face. He felt her gaze on him and looked up sharply. His eyes, she thought, catching her breath, were the color of honey.
Archimedes smiled delightedly and stood up. His cloak was at once pulled off by the trodden edge and collapsed about his feet, half in the water and half in the mud. "Oh, Zeus!" he exclaimed, and stood there gazing at it helplessly. His black tunic was even dustier than the cloak had been.
He had guessed that she was the one who sent that note, even though it was unsigned. I wish you welclass="underline" she had sent the same message through Marcus. All through that day, working in the catapult workshop on the hundred-pounder, he had contemplated this meeting with a thrill of excitement. He had brought the cloak along that morning out of a desire to look dignified; he had been astonished to find it so shabby and dusty-looking after a day spent on the workshop floor. Now it was utterly disreputable, he looked a fool, and the king's beautiful sister was watching him from under a white linen veil, her dark eyes astonished.
Then Delia laughed. He did not like being laughed at, but for a laugh like that he would have put on a mask and gone into comic mimes. He grinned ruefully, picked up the cloak, and wrung out the damp end. "Excuse me," he said. He thought of adding, "I didn't mean to undress in front of you," but this was both so highly inappropriate and so close to what he would like to do that it threw him into confusion and made his face hot.
"Good health to you," she said politely.
"Good health!" he replied. He tried to brush the crumpled cloak straight, then gave up and simply folded it up and put it over his shoulders: his gesture toward dignity had gone wrong, so there seemed no point in persisting with it. Too hot for a cloak, anyway. "I, umm…" he began.
"Shh!" she said urgently, glancing at the miscellaneous citizens who were relaxing beside the fountain. "Can we go somewhere quieter?"
She walked rapidly away from the fountain, and he followed her. There were people everywhere, and they ended up making a complete circuit of the small garden before settling for a comparatively quiet spot under a grapevine in the shadow of the city wall. There were no benches, but Archimedes spread out his cloak on the ground and sat on the damp end himself. It could hardly get any muddier, after all. Delia sat down beside him nervously, pulling her own cloak forward again, and looking at her hands upon her doubled knees. She had worked out her excuse for the meeting. She had sent him a warning through his slave, and she was certain that the slave must have delivered it even after she told him not to. "I… wanted to speak to you," she said breathlessly. "I needed to explain." She swallowed, and risked a sideways glance at him.
He nodded: he had assumed that that was what she wanted. She had warned him to be careful of his contract. The king had not, in fact, offered him a contract- but it was only four days since his father's death, and it wouldn't have been appropriate to enter into business with him in the period of deepest mourning. Hieron had put in an appearance at Phidias' funeral, but he had made no reference either to engineering posts or to the money Archimedes had refused. So Delia had come to follow her warning with some advice. Archimedes was happy to think that she was his supporter in her brother's house. He had played with the delightful possibility that her feelings might be warmer than that, but he had dismissed the notion as wildly implausible.