Chapter Five
The first four days in Ninniya, Melitta and I cleaned tirelessly.
The place smelled of stagnation and decay, and each room was thick with grime, though some spaces fared far worse thanks to the rats and mice.
Yet despite our situation, there was still room for laughter, as little old Melitta wielded her broom to chase away a rat as big as a cat.
I could have helped her of course, but I was too busy struggling to breathe through the laughter as she stomped her feet, growled, and shooed it out the door.
Our joy was compounded by the fact that Morsimus had not yet risen from his bed.
The first day after our journey, he slept so soundly that even when I entered the room, called his name, and prodded his great belly, he remained asleep.
The next day, he woke and demanded food by yelling as loud as his lungs would allow, but it would be another two days before he would make an appearance outside.
Even with all the hours we worked, there were certain things Melitta and I could not manage ourselves.
The wooden front door had warped badly over time, swollen with rain and beaten by the wind.
It would have been a small job for a carpenter to straighten the crooked timber, but the chipped floor tiles would have still made the door difficult to open.
Tiles had fallen from the roof too, and I did not have the skills to replace them.
There were also several stains on both the walls and the floors whose origins I could not imagine.
However, there were a great many things we could do to improve our situation.
The kitchen cupboards, we discovered, were filled with crockery, which, after a quick wipe, were ready to hold more warm meals. Several tables and chairs needed little more than an adjustment to make them stable.
The most dramatic changes, however, happened in the courtyard.
“The light here is good,” Melitta said, staring up at the open roof. “We will be able to grow plenty of herbs in here. Perhaps some fruit too. We will need chickens for the eggs and meat.”
“Let us focus on cleaning first,” I responded.
Being open to the elements had allowed the air in the courtyard to circulate and avoid the stale scent of damp, but it had come with its own issues.
Mold grew in patches on the wall and on the rugs that had borne the brunt of years of rainfall. “Come, let us start here.”
Together, Melitta and I took up the tapestries and rugs.
“You should stay here and scrub the walls,” I said as we finished piling them on the floor. “I will carry these down to the river and wash them.”
“I should come with you. It is not right for you to travel on your own.”
“It is only down to the river. I will not see a soul.”
“No, I will come with you,” she insisted.
Knowing I would not win the argument, I relented. “Fine. The rugs that come clean we can hang or use again once they are dry. The rest we could use to plump up the stuffing in the couches, could we not?”
“I found some large bolts of fabric in a chest,” Melitta said, enjoying the transformation of the house as much as I was.
“They must have been left by Eriopis. The colors are the garish sort she would have chosen. But they are in good condition. I can use them to make new coverings for the couches.”
“That would be appreciated, thank you,” I said.
I should confess that my willingness to carry armfuls of fetid, mold-addled fabric was not solely from an urge to clean or to breathe a lungful of air beyond the walls of our new home.
I wished for something more. I wished for people, and if what Eriopis had told Melitta was true, then the river was where I would find them.
Laughter alerted me to their presence before I even saw the stream.
It was not children’s laughter but the laughter of grown women, chesty and deep yet free and frivolous.
I wished to follow the sound, to discover the source of the joy, except that Melitta was with me.
I knew she would object to me starting conversations with strangers.
“I do not wish to slip on a mudbank,” I said, the lie spilling from my lips quicker than it formed in my mind. “You head downstream, see if there is a suitable place there. I will try upriver.”
The old servant eyed me, deservedly suspicious. Still, she did as I asked, and as she left, I headed toward the sound.
When I rounded a corner of the riverbank, I found myself facing more than a dozen women.
Most were in the water. Some held small children, whom they tossed in the air, causing them to erupt into giggles.
Others were in the water up to their shoulders, scrubbing their bodies.
Yet it was one who sat beneath a tree who drew my attention.
I do not know what I intended, whether I would have approached her, but before I could make any decision, she looked directly at me and rose to her feet.
The woman was little taller than Melitta, but her figure was entirely curves and rolls.
A broad smile stretched over her lips, and her dark eyes shone all the brighter for the gray of her hair, which glimmered like silver.
She was dressed in a simple robe, and I felt garish in her presence, my tall gangliness at odds with her womanly shape.
As her eyes locked with mine, I was struck with the sudden urge to retreat to the house and send Melitta to do the washing, but before I could turn, the woman was making great strides toward me.
“Welcome. I was hoping I would see you soon.”
She took the foul bundle from my arms, not flinching at its filthy state, then dropped it on the ground by our feet. With her hands once again free, she took mine and grasped them just a fraction more tightly than was comfortable.
“Tell me, daughter, what is your name?”
The word daughter bristled across my skin. Since leaving my own mother, the only person to have called me that was Eriopis, and she had never said it with kindness. My throat cracked as I forced a reply.
“I am Otrera, wife of Morsimus.”
“Is that right? Bless you. You are a young thing to be a wife already.”
Calling me “daughter” had been irksome enough, but the sentence that followed caused the muscles in my jaw to clench tighter.
Her false smile. Her sweet words. I had seen it all in Prousa.
Plenty of women had been quick to call themselves my friends, to loop their arms through mine while we walked.
But where were those women now? Where had they been when I could no longer attend the baths thanks to the bruises that colored my ribs?
Where had they been when we were pushed out of our home?
“I have been married six years already.” I spoke with only a hint of the curtness I felt.
“And have you had a son for your husband yet?”
I should have anticipated that question would follow. I held back my ire the best I could.
“The gods have not yet blessed us with a child, but we have hope. As you said yourself, I am still young.” Regretting my decision to engage, I crouched and scooped up the heavy rugs. “If you will excuse me, I need to get these washed so they can dry before nightfall.”
“Of course you do, child. I will not bother you anymore. But we will meet again. My name is Phile. And you and I, Otrera, will become firm friends.”
Though I was standing upright, I felt the need to straighten my posture a fraction more. To tilt my head as I observed her.
“Why would you say that? You do not know me.”
This time, I made no attempt to hide my animosity, and still this woman smiled at me.
“Because it is true. All we women are friends here. We have to be. It is the only way we women survive.”