Chapter Twenty-Eight
I did not rise before daybreak the next morning.
Even when the sun splintered across the horizon, I remained in bed, aware only of the pain.
Melitta had come to me in the night, brought compresses and tonics, and I had let her tend to my body because I had not had the strength to object.
By morning, my strength had dwindled further.
“Please, mistress, you must at least drink.”
With all the might she possessed, Melitta raised my head with one hand and lifted a cup to my lips with her other.
A trickle ran down my lips and onto my chest, but Melitta did not have a free hand to wipe it away.
A moment later, she left me, though for how long I cannot say. I drifted in and out of this world.
I did not hear the knock at the door. I did not hear as Melitta welcomed the guest nor the footsteps as they approached where I lay. But I saw the shadow of the figure, and I heard the scrape of the stool against the tiles. I did not need to hear her speak to know who she was.
“Otrera, I am so sorry. I thought we had managed to keep you safe.”
“This was not you, Phile,” I said, my voice catching.
“But if I hadn’t suggested you hunt at night—”
“He would have found another reason.”
I took her silence as agreement and wished that I could lift my head to see her.
Was this how she had sat next to Eleni when her husband had beaten her so severely she could barely walk?
Or Chrysothea when she had lost another of her children?
I had been at the tannery for a few months, and in that time, I had seen every woman arrive with bruises.
Black eyes. Swollen lips. This was how women lived in Ninniya, and this would be how we died unless something changed.
“I want them dead.” I did not mince my words. “I want them all dead.”
“What he did to you, he will never do again. I will make sure of it. Hirtus will make sure of it.”
I rolled over, gasping at the pain that shot through my side.
My eyes blurred with tears as I forced myself up onto my elbow.
Phile moved to help me, but I shook my head.
I did not want her help. I did not need it.
I was no longer a beaten wife. I was a huntress.
A poor one, yes, but I was a huntress, and I would prove it to them all.
“It is not good enough,” I said. “I want them all dead. They are evil. Every man in this place.”
“They are not all evil, Otrera. You have been unfortunate, that is all.”
“No, that is not true.” I shook my head. My words slurred and my motion swayed, as though I was drunk on the pain. “They are evil. Name me one. Name me one man in this place who deserves to live.”
“Hirtus. Hirtus is good,” she said.
“He alone. Tell me another.”
“The men who work for me. In my house. The boys who roam the land and tend my goats.”
I would not have it. She knew the truth, and I needed her to admit it.
“Tell me of a single husband who has brought his wife to this place and not injured her. Tell me the name of a man who does not drain his wife’s money on drink.
Tell me of one man here you think will be able to stand in front of the judges of the underworld and not be damned to the depths of Tartarus. ”
Silence bloomed, and with it, an acrid sense of pride burned within me.
Phile could not do it. She knew the truth as well as I did.
When these husbands stood trial before the judges and their eternal fates were cast, they would burn in Tartarus with the gods’ feared adversaries.
And I wanted to be the one to send them there.
“I understand how you feel,” Phile said, her hand still resting on mine. “I have had the same thought a thousand times over, every time one of my women comes to me in this state. Or worse, for we have lost so many.”
“Then why not act?” I could not keep my fury hidden. “We could do it. Slit their throats while they slept, every one of them.”
“And what of the sons? What would you do with them?”
“We can teach them to be better men. Men like Hirtus. They can stay on the hills, working as they always have done.”
“And at what age does a boy become a man? What of the ones there who have already reached an age to marry? And what if a woman does not have the strength to slit her husband’s throat?”
“Then I will do it for her!” I had no patience for endless questions when she knew I had no answers.
The only thing I knew was that the world would be better without these men in it.
I pushed myself up to standing, staggering, ignoring the searing agony that consumed me. I had reached a point of desperation.
“What of Althea?” I begged. “You killed him, did you not? You killed her husband. Why could you not do the same for me? For all the others?”
Althea and I had grown close, and guilt flickered within me at betraying her trust, but I needed Phile to see sense.
The older woman lifted her thumb to her lips and bit at the nail, silence stretching out between us.
As that silence expanded, I thought perhaps she would leave, that she would never be the one to speak.
Perhaps I had pushed her too far. My heart drummed unsteadily in my chest as I waited until Phile finally lowered her thumb and drew in a long breath.
“What I will tell you now is a show of trust, for the information is enough for the man I love to be killed. A man I believe you have grown fond of as well, you understand?”
“So Hirtus did do it?”
Unease dried my throat. I had come to know Hirtus as a gentle beast. Gargantuan in his stature, a fierce and formidable hunter, yet gentle.
To hear he was truly capable of such an act affected me more than I had expected.
Yet I had no time to mourn the loss of a man I believed I had known, for Phile was speaking.
“What I tell you now cannot leave this room, for there is only one other soul in the world who knows the truth.”
“Althea?” I asked.
Phile shook her head. “She has her suspicions, of course. But that is all. Her husband, Nireus, was not just a useless, lazy drunk like your Morsimus. He was conniving. Controlling. He beat her daily, and I still recall how she looked after the last one. Worse than you are today.”
She paused, and I waited, knowing more answers would come.
“I did as I have done countless times in such a situation, as I will do with you now, and offered her a place in my home to recover. I should have known Nireus would take unkindly to that. I had foolishly assumed he would react like every other man and come banging on the door. But he did not come the first two nights, and by then, we needed offerings for the gods for a festival. So on the third night, I insisted Hirtus go hunting. I thought we were safe. But like I said, Nireus was conniving.”
Silence lingered, then Phile continued.
“I heard the hammering on the gate, and I was foolish. You have seen how I talk to these men, but he was in no mood to listen. He had come for revenge. He did not violate me,” Phile said after a long pause. “But he tried. It took an amphora broken over his head before he stopped.”
She chuckled as if the memory amused her, yet even in my blurry state, I could see the pain.
“He ran, and I thought the matter was over. But when Hirtus came home and saw the marks on my body…there was nothing I could do to stop him. I would like you to know that. I did not want him to do it. I begged him not to. Not for Nireus’s sake, nor Althea’s, but for mine.
For moons afterward, I feared every knock at the door, feared that one of the men had alerted the polis and that he was going to be taken from me.
” She stood, though she continued to speak.
“I tell you this, Otrera, because there are consequences. The gods may have spared Hirtus once, but I will not test them a second time. And no, you do not have the freedom you deserve, but you have some. And that has to be enough. Please.”
My throat stung bitterly, not only from the pain but from the anger. Before she disappeared, Phile turned to face me.
“If you wish to stay with me, send Melitta to the house. I will send some servants to help you make the journey.” She paused. “But one last thing, Otrera. I will not offer sanctuary or employment to murderers. Think of that before you act irrationally.”
With that, she left.