The Golden Mean - Annabel Lyon [9]
“Had a good time?” I say. “Out again tonight?” Jealousy pinches my sentences, but I can’t stop myself. The pendulum swings hard left today.
“Come with me,” he says. I tell him I have to work—the reality of numbers, I remind him—and he groans. “Come with me,” he says. “You can be my guide.”
“I can be your guide here,” I say.
“I thought I caught a glimpse of the number three last night, by the flower stall in the market,” he says. “It was hiding behind a sprig of orange blossom.”
“Known for shyness, the number three,” I say.
“Is Pella much bigger than you remember?”
“I wouldn’t remember a thing,” I say truthfully. “The city has probably tripled in size. I got lost this morning trying to find the baths just here in the palace.”
“Wouldn’t you like to find your father’s old house?”
“I think it’s part of the garrison now. Shall I show you the baths now that I know the way? We can work after that. You still have a headache, anyway.”
“Headache,” Callisthenes confirms. “Bad wine. Bad everything, really. Or not bad, but—vulgar. Have you seen the houses? They’re huge. And gaudy. Like these mosaics everywhere. The way they talk, the way they eat, the music, the dancing, the women. It’s like there’s all this money everywhere and they don’t know what to do with it.”
“I don’t remember it that way,” I say. “I remember the cold, and the snow. I’ll bet you’ve never seen snow. I remember the toughness of the people. The best lamb, mountain lamb.”
“I saw something last night,” Callisthenes says. “I saw a man kill another man over a drink. He held him by the shoulder and punched him in the gut over and over until the man bled out of his ears and his mouth and his eyes, weeping blood, and then he died. Everyone laughed. They just laughed and laughed. Men, boys. What kind of a people is that?”
“You tell me,” I say.
“Animals,” Callisthenes says. He’s looking me in the eye, not smiling. A rare passion from such a mild creature.
“And what separates man from the animals?”
“Reason. Work. The life of the mind.”
“Out again tonight?” I ask.
THE NEXT MORNING I return to Arrhidaeus in his room. His face is tear-stained and snot-crusted; his nurse gazes out a window and pretends not to hear me enter. The boy himself smiles, sweet and frail, when he sees me. I wish him good morning and he says, “Uh.”
“Any progress?” I ask the nurse.
“In one day?”
I help myself to a cloak hanging on the back of a chair, which I drape over the boy’s shoulders. “Where are your shoes?”
The nurse is watching now. He’s a prissy little shit, and sees his moment.
“He can’t walk far,” he says. “He doesn’t have winter shoes, just sandals. He never goes outdoors, really.”
“Then we’ll have to borrow yours,” I tell him.
Eyebrows up: “And what will I wear?”
“You can wear Arrhidaeus’s sandals since you won’t be coming.”
“I’m obliged to accompany him everywhere.”
I can’t tell if he’s angry with me or frightened of being caught away from his charge. He glances at Arrhidaeus and reaches automatically to wipe the hair from the boy’s face. Arrhidaeus flinches from his touch. So, they’ve had that kind of morning.
“Give me your fucking shoes,” I say.
Arrhidaeus wants to take my hand as we walk. “No, Arrhidaeus,” I tell him. “Children hold hands. Men walk by themselves, you see?”
He cries a little, but stops when he sees where I’m leading him. He gibbers something I can’t make out.
“That’s right,” I say. “We’ll take a walk into town, shall we?”
He laughs and points at everything: the soldiers, the gate, the grey swirl of the sky. The soldiers look interested, but no one stops us. I wonder how often he leaves his room, and if they even know who he is.
“Where is your favourite place to go?”
He doesn’t understand. But when he sees a horse, a big stallion led through the gate, he claps his hands and gibbers some more.
“Horses? You like horses?”
Through the gate I’ve caught a glimpse of the town—people, horses, the monstrous houses that so offended my nephew—and I realize