The Golden Mean - Annabel Lyon [54]
“The family got sick, or died?” I ask.
“She says her training was as a midwife. They never should have brought the child to her in the first place, it needed a doctor, but there was no doctor. She had no idea what to do for it. She says she told the rich man’s wife the meat was no good and the woman beat her. She says I should eat more fruit, and you shouldn’t take any hot baths, and we should pay attention to the cycles of the moon.”
“She told you a lot for the first day. Do you want to eat more fruit?”
Night now, and I waved the lamps away some time ago. We’re sitting in darkness while the slaves wait for us to finish so they can clean up after us and get to bed themselves.
“I like fruit,” she says.
I can’t see her face.
I send her to bed and sit a while longer on my own. It’s Athea herself who comes over to clear our last dishes and wine cups. I wonder if she’s been listening, though we’ve kept our voices low. A witch, so.
“All right?” I ask.
“Go to bed.”
I tell her to take a lamp to my library. I want to sit up and work for a while.
“Go to bed, you.”
I tell her to take a lamp to my library.
“What you work on?”
“Tragedy,” I say.
“Hey fuck you. You don’t want tell me, I’m nothing, don’t tell me. Your wife tell me other day, maybe. She like to talk.”
My wife likes to talk? “Goodness. The good life. What it means to live a good life, and the ways in which that goodness can be lost.”
I wait for her to laugh, or say something sarcastic, or tell me to fuck myself again, but she is only silent. Then she says, “I give garlic your wife, okay?”
“I don’t know. Is it okay? What does she need garlic for?”
“You are not doctor?” She looks proud of herself, like she’s trumped me with this piece of information she thinks she’s ferreted out from somewhere. “You know what for. I am surprise you not try this yourself. Shy, maybe. Is okay. I explain to her.”
“Explain it to me.”
She studies me, assessing whether I’m being disingenuous or genuinely don’t know what she’s talking about. Apparently I pass. “Some doctor,” she says, not displeased. “Your wife she stick the garlic up. In the morning, smell her breath.”
This is what I thought. “Up where?”
“Up.” She shoves a hand at her crotch. “Where you fuck. Put the garlic there. One clove only, is enough. If her breath smell, passages are open. If not, no baby for you.”
“I’ve heard of this. With onion, though.”
She waves this away. “No, no, no. Garlic. Stronger. Fit better also.”
“And if the passages are closed?” I feel like my father. “I suppose you have a charm to open them?”
“I don’t know charm. We try this first, then we see.”
“Athea,” I say. “Listen to me. My wife is right: we are kind to one another in this house. But you have only been here one day. There is no ‘we.’ We have not retained your services. We do not have any kind of problem that concerns you. You will not mention this or anything like this to my wife. No garlic. No charms. If you speak of this again, I will take you back to the market. My wife was right about that also.”
“Is stupid.” She shrugs.
“Probably. Now go and do what you’re told.”
She does indeed cook like how you say. Supper this night was a bean soup, bread, cheese, olives, fish, a spread of colourful little saucers we emptied and stacked in a teetering pile, licking our fingers as we went.
“These are ours?” I asked Pythias, of the saucers.
“Athea found them in one of the crates. She asked if she could use them.”
The soup was thick with greenery, herbs and some kind of tender, deep green leaf that withered in the liquid but kept its jewelled colour. She’d found a marrow bone for it too. The bread was gritless and still warm, the round white cheese pressed with walnuts in a flower pattern, the sardines intact but magically boneless.