Chapter Eleven
The work should have been abhorrent. Slicing remnants of flesh and sinew from animal skins was very different from the tapestry weaving my parents had desired that I master.
But Eleni had been correct in assuming that Phile would provide me with a knife adequate for the task.
It was not, as I expected, some blunted blade that would struggle to cut through a ripe peach but newly sharpened, with a glimmering edge that sliced through meat as though it were fresh butter.
Still, I was slow, and Eleni was already on her fourth skin by the time I finished my first. It was a testament to her nature that not once did she make me feel inadequate or inept.
Instead, she offered only optimism and good-humored conversation.
“You have five brothers?” she asked when I told her of my childhood.
“The gods have blessed your parents greatly. Thalia has four brothers but six sisters too. I am one of eight girls. My poor father. He would have had a dowry good enough for one of us but not eight. That is why I was married to Lycurgus.” She shrugged.
“He would love for me to give him a son, and I am certain I will provide one soon enough.”
She cast her gaze over to the other side of the courtyard.
Instinctively, I followed. Much of the area was covered in canopies, with an indoor area reserved for the spinners and the women who worked with the greasy wool.
Perhaps, I thought, an opportunity would arise to move there from the tanning pits, though I suspected I was not alone in my desire.
Eleni’s attention was held by a small section of the courtyard where three women minded two dozen children, some babies, others old enough to be picking fights with one another.
If I had birthed a child back in Prousa, we would have had servants to take care of them.
Yet here, the children came to work with their mothers, almost, it appeared, from birth.
“How long have you been here? Working for Phile?” I asked, breaking Eleni’s daydream. “Do you know her well?”
“Not as well as many. I have been here for over a year now. She is a good woman.”
Across the bench, an elderly woman placed her knife down with a thud.
“Phile is not merely good,” the woman said. “She is a goddess in human form, sent as a gift to us all.”
These were strong words. I was unsure how to respond, given how the immortals could react to such comparisons, yet Eleni remained perfectly at ease.
“Dolos has been here longer than anyone else,” Eleni said, reminding me of the woman’s name. “She knows Phile well. Hirtus too.”
“Phile keeps us safe in life and death,” Dolos continued. “She has paid the passage to the underworld for every woman who has passed away in the village, has put aside greed for us, and offered us a safe haven. She does more for us than any person I have ever met.”
“But why?” I did not mean the question facetiously; it was genuine curiosity.
I could not believe one who ran such a large business as the tannery could be truly altruistic.
The women here stirred Phile’s pits, spun her wool, and hung her goatskins out to dry.
They earned her a livelihood. Was this the standard way people respected their employer?
Besides, how many women could have passed to the underworld in such a small village?
Before I could ask, Eleni was talking again.
“You will love the feast days. Phile gives us extra for the offerings so that we do not need to go without, and Hirtus brings wild game so that our offerings to the gods are bountiful.”
“And your husbands, do they join you?” I struggled to believe Morsimus would ever think himself low enough to mingle with tanning-house women, even if his wife was one.
“Yes, of course. All are welcome.”
As I listened to Eleni, I wondered if her constant optimism was a sign of innocence or ignorance or perhaps even stupidity. In time, I learned it was none of those. It was a gift from the gods.
Soon enough that day, Helios’s bold beams struck the earth with such force that sweat poured down my skin.
The heat was different here. There was no distant sea breeze to whip up a cold flurry, no wind or rain to abate the stifling oppression.
Never could I recall being so sweat-covered, and as midday approached, I feared I would faint or else be unable to work thanks to the cramps forming in my hands.
Then, at almost the same moment, a bell rang out.
All across the courtyard, women dropped their tools, moving to wash their hands or gather up the children.
Eleni wiped the sweat from her brow with her bloodstained arm, leaving a smear of red across her forehead. “Are you coming to join us at the river?” she said.
“The river. You’re taking a break for food?” I asked.
My stomach was growling fiercely. I could not recall the last time I had spent so many hours on my feet without either rest or sustenance. But Eleni was staring at me.
“We end now for the day. Phile believes we work better if we are well rested and have time for our families. While it is warm, we bathe and eat fruit, then we head back to her house to collect our wages. If Hirtus has hunted well, there may be other food too. Occasionally, he even brings his bow and arrow for us to practice with. Will you join us, please?”
While Eleni’s enthusiasm was infectious, I hesitated before replying.
Even before my own abuse began, I had seen women in similar states, shadows of fingerprints darkening the skin around their arms and necks.
More importantly, I had seen how the other women viewed them.
Their voices would fall to hushed whispers, their gazes darting between one another to confirm they had all seen the same telltale marks.
Later, once the woman left, she would inevitably become the center of the gossip.
I had no intention of becoming that person; I was ready to decline the offer.
I still cannot tell you what exactly changed my mind.
Perhaps it was something Phile had said the night before, about the unsavoriness of so many of the husbands here, or the realization that beyond his roughness the night before, Morsimus had not struck me since we’d arrived.
Any bruises I still had would have yellowed by now, and if asked, I could pass them off as an accident from my travels.
I would be unlikely to get that same chance again.
“Yes, I will come,” I said.
The words had barely left my lips when Eleni’s arms swept around me, a wide grin on her face.
“I knew you would. Come, it is time for you to meet the others.”
Her grin was almost wide enough to make my lips twitch, and I was about to respond when I turned around and saw another woman standing there.
My heart squeezed tight in my chest. The woman from the river was there. The woman from the horses.