If Athens has, from her patron goddess's bounty, yielded one piece of wisdom to Avishag of Gilit, it is the meaning of a party.
This is a modest home. It is a low stone affair that shares a courtyard with some half dozen other families, but it was built for a family. The family has deserted it. The head of the Moshe determined, long after subjecting his two boys and three girls to a tormented childhood of uncertainty whether he'd settle in Greece or Judea, that he was happiest with his third wife in Egypt. The two Judean girls had gone with him. If nothing else, he was a shrewd and bounteous merchant, and they knew their brothers could never scrape together good dowries for them. The Moshe's made it a dubious point of honor, almost an afterthought, to leave each of his remaining children something. Gilit of Moshe inherited his wagons and supplies. The Greek brother, Lander of Moshe, inherited this house to keep his mother and sister in until his mother remarried. She had, so normally the home was empty. Blankets dangled forlornly in the windows to keep out the dust and any light that might wash out the furniture inside. Clutter built up in the corners steadily as Lander dropped by with a guard's cat-like carelessness to sleep and eat there for an odd night. The gloom of that abandoned house didn't stick to Lander-- he was warmly welcomed by half the guard whenever he desired to stay, and more civilians still called him friend when he roved by on his rounds. That did not, however, prevent Visha from deciding that while she stayed there with Gilit it was her solemn duty to make sure that Lander's home was clean and that he repaid all his dear friends' hospitality seven times over.
Visha spent hours hauling buckets to the house, pouring the water out over the floors and working her hands raw rubbing either lye or a clean rag into them as Gilit and Lander flitted in and out on their business in the capital. Lander would often creep behind her, so close the hair on the back of her neck stood on end as he lifted the handle of each bucket she toiled with, and she would stubbornly try to go back to carry more until he beseeched her that he needed company while he walked. On a bad day Gilit would kvetch about how Lander didn't know how to make any friends of consequence, how childish these parties were, how expensive all the wine was. He would watch her sullenly at work he couldn't make her quit, limping around as his clenched muscles and jaws and fists ached. Visha felt that aching and his desire to pull her away to lick his wounds. Her cheeks burned because she knew he feared how she would embarrass him with her stupid shyness or her gauche Judean mannerisms. His stare seared her down to the marrow. But she would grit her teeth against the urge to coddle him and snap that she was more desolate with him than on her lonesome. On a good day he might laboriously drag water to the house or join her on the floor with a rag until he had spilled her over in a bedroom and his hands had smoothed open her thighs. He might surprise her by bringing meats and other treats from market that she would never dare splurge on. The rituals were all too quotidian, but when she finally filled Lander's ovens, pots, and fireplaces with the substance of her hands and the scent rolled up to fill the house with warmth and life Visha felt at home, the mistress of something holy the way she always had when she tended her father's tent.
That pride swells her veins to bursting now, as the moon leers through the night's fabric, the festivities draw to a close, and drunken guardsmen support one another merrily home.
She stands in front of those lavishly adorned platters she had hidden behind in the first half of the evening. The meats no longer salivate on their beds of herbs, having long ago congealed. The bread no longer steams, and it has gone stale at the crusts. The low wall between kitchen and foyer is littered with grape stems and crumbs. But Visha isn't pacing back and forth, heart clenching as she watches men put spoonfuls of stew to their lips and tries to read their expressions. She isn't monitoring the wine casks as each man ladles from them, fretting that she didn't fetch enough from the market and tending Gilit when he maunders nervously to her side to murmur in her ear about how strong willed Greek militants are these days and he envies Lander's easeful manners. No, by now she has pushed Gil back into the thick of it. By now Lander has taken her wrist and guided out to introduce her: 'You all remember Gil's wife. You can mock Yahweh all you like, but to make from the rib of a creature like we men of the Moshe a woman who could plan all this is a miracle like raising a city.'
She can hear Gilit's low voice honeyed with enthusiasm, an indistinguishable but pleasant hum wafting through the open windows from the courtyard. If she glances out, she can catch the harsh angles of his face illumed by a lantern between himself and an elder guardsman as they bend their heads together and commiserate with each other about the dying morals of their cultures and how they are exemplified by a recent hitch in the olive trade. Both men were long ago wearied by the festivities within the house. But she is cranes over Lander's shoulder. Her teeth flash as she surveys the squares he carved into his low table, and she moves a few of the pebbles he has scattered over the board. The painted stones pinch two other colors between them.
'Sorceress!' Comes the outraged cry, and Lander rises to clasp her to him by the shoulders, crooning over the din: 'O bless your blood, sister!' She can smell the wine on his breath and wryly pushes his ribs as she palms her cheek to shield her face.
'It's because you are all soaked with wine it's so easy to surprise you!'
'Us? Look, you've had no wine at all and you're pink!' a cragged, scarred guardsman reclining on the divan chuckles as he fans himself.
She feels heat flash over her face.
'If they continue to test us with tactical games at the academies, do you think women will soon join us with spear and shield?' Drawls the loser of the contest, scratching the slick hair on his chest away from his shining white skin. His robes are little too loose, and Visha is so intoxicated by their mirth that she has to resist the urge to pull his loose robes up over his nipple. She shifts another step from Lander to shake her head.
'Our Lord only calls upon us when our men have fallen so far we are lost. Lander and Gilit's generation is not so lost.'
'And here I thought you'd stopped being so serious, little Jew!'
'She never quits, by the gods,' Lander chuckles. 'But you are deep in your cups, Erethai. You said you must quit us after this game, but can you even stand? Here. You are on duty tomorrow morning, you poor bastard.' He wrestles Erethal briefly and it takes Visha a moment to remember to avert her eyes as she tidies some of the mess from empty platters to occupy herself. She only just hears Lander groan as he drags Erethal up and pinch another of his fellow guardsmen's cheeks.
'Leo. You're a dutiful Greek. Might be you're serious enough Visha can stand you. Help her tidy up and keep our beastly company from harrying her too bad while I'm gone, will you? Gilit's out there on a tangent and he may never come back to check on my poor siste-- OW, YOU DOG!'
He wheels around on the guard who's pinched his ass, and Erethal goes stumbling into the doorframe, rattling the wood half off its pins. The general din doesn't die down for the several minutes it takes the sloppy guards to push each other into the cool night air.
Once, Visha would have grimaced at the antics. But now her lips curl a little at the edges of her stern frown and her eyes melt warmly over the cups she stacks together. She feels she should thank the guardsman, Leo, who stayed behind. But when she opens her mouth she can't think for how to thank him appropriately, so she only pauses, hesitating with a stack of cups in each hand. When she speaks it's too abrupt by half:
'I don't need your help, sir.'
This is a modest home. It is a low stone affair that shares a courtyard with some half dozen other families, but it was built for a family. The family has deserted it. The head of the Moshe determined, long after subjecting his two boys and three girls to a tormented childhood of uncertainty whether he'd settle in Greece or Judea, that he was happiest with his third wife in Egypt. The two Judean girls had gone with him. If nothing else, he was a shrewd and bounteous merchant, and they knew their brothers could never scrape together good dowries for them. The Moshe's made it a dubious point of honor, almost an afterthought, to leave each of his remaining children something. Gilit of Moshe inherited his wagons and supplies. The Greek brother, Lander of Moshe, inherited this house to keep his mother and sister in until his mother remarried. She had, so normally the home was empty. Blankets dangled forlornly in the windows to keep out the dust and any light that might wash out the furniture inside. Clutter built up in the corners steadily as Lander dropped by with a guard's cat-like carelessness to sleep and eat there for an odd night. The gloom of that abandoned house didn't stick to Lander-- he was warmly welcomed by half the guard whenever he desired to stay, and more civilians still called him friend when he roved by on his rounds. That did not, however, prevent Visha from deciding that while she stayed there with Gilit it was her solemn duty to make sure that Lander's home was clean and that he repaid all his dear friends' hospitality seven times over.
Visha spent hours hauling buckets to the house, pouring the water out over the floors and working her hands raw rubbing either lye or a clean rag into them as Gilit and Lander flitted in and out on their business in the capital. Lander would often creep behind her, so close the hair on the back of her neck stood on end as he lifted the handle of each bucket she toiled with, and she would stubbornly try to go back to carry more until he beseeched her that he needed company while he walked. On a bad day Gilit would kvetch about how Lander didn't know how to make any friends of consequence, how childish these parties were, how expensive all the wine was. He would watch her sullenly at work he couldn't make her quit, limping around as his clenched muscles and jaws and fists ached. Visha felt that aching and his desire to pull her away to lick his wounds. Her cheeks burned because she knew he feared how she would embarrass him with her stupid shyness or her gauche Judean mannerisms. His stare seared her down to the marrow. But she would grit her teeth against the urge to coddle him and snap that she was more desolate with him than on her lonesome. On a good day he might laboriously drag water to the house or join her on the floor with a rag until he had spilled her over in a bedroom and his hands had smoothed open her thighs. He might surprise her by bringing meats and other treats from market that she would never dare splurge on. The rituals were all too quotidian, but when she finally filled Lander's ovens, pots, and fireplaces with the substance of her hands and the scent rolled up to fill the house with warmth and life Visha felt at home, the mistress of something holy the way she always had when she tended her father's tent.
That pride swells her veins to bursting now, as the moon leers through the night's fabric, the festivities draw to a close, and drunken guardsmen support one another merrily home.
She stands in front of those lavishly adorned platters she had hidden behind in the first half of the evening. The meats no longer salivate on their beds of herbs, having long ago congealed. The bread no longer steams, and it has gone stale at the crusts. The low wall between kitchen and foyer is littered with grape stems and crumbs. But Visha isn't pacing back and forth, heart clenching as she watches men put spoonfuls of stew to their lips and tries to read their expressions. She isn't monitoring the wine casks as each man ladles from them, fretting that she didn't fetch enough from the market and tending Gilit when he maunders nervously to her side to murmur in her ear about how strong willed Greek militants are these days and he envies Lander's easeful manners. No, by now she has pushed Gil back into the thick of it. By now Lander has taken her wrist and guided out to introduce her: 'You all remember Gil's wife. You can mock Yahweh all you like, but to make from the rib of a creature like we men of the Moshe a woman who could plan all this is a miracle like raising a city.'
She can hear Gilit's low voice honeyed with enthusiasm, an indistinguishable but pleasant hum wafting through the open windows from the courtyard. If she glances out, she can catch the harsh angles of his face illumed by a lantern between himself and an elder guardsman as they bend their heads together and commiserate with each other about the dying morals of their cultures and how they are exemplified by a recent hitch in the olive trade. Both men were long ago wearied by the festivities within the house. But she is cranes over Lander's shoulder. Her teeth flash as she surveys the squares he carved into his low table, and she moves a few of the pebbles he has scattered over the board. The painted stones pinch two other colors between them.
'Sorceress!' Comes the outraged cry, and Lander rises to clasp her to him by the shoulders, crooning over the din: 'O bless your blood, sister!' She can smell the wine on his breath and wryly pushes his ribs as she palms her cheek to shield her face.
'It's because you are all soaked with wine it's so easy to surprise you!'
'Us? Look, you've had no wine at all and you're pink!' a cragged, scarred guardsman reclining on the divan chuckles as he fans himself.
She feels heat flash over her face.
'If they continue to test us with tactical games at the academies, do you think women will soon join us with spear and shield?' Drawls the loser of the contest, scratching the slick hair on his chest away from his shining white skin. His robes are little too loose, and Visha is so intoxicated by their mirth that she has to resist the urge to pull his loose robes up over his nipple. She shifts another step from Lander to shake her head.
'Our Lord only calls upon us when our men have fallen so far we are lost. Lander and Gilit's generation is not so lost.'
'And here I thought you'd stopped being so serious, little Jew!'
'She never quits, by the gods,' Lander chuckles. 'But you are deep in your cups, Erethai. You said you must quit us after this game, but can you even stand? Here. You are on duty tomorrow morning, you poor bastard.' He wrestles Erethal briefly and it takes Visha a moment to remember to avert her eyes as she tidies some of the mess from empty platters to occupy herself. She only just hears Lander groan as he drags Erethal up and pinch another of his fellow guardsmen's cheeks.
'Leo. You're a dutiful Greek. Might be you're serious enough Visha can stand you. Help her tidy up and keep our beastly company from harrying her too bad while I'm gone, will you? Gilit's out there on a tangent and he may never come back to check on my poor siste-- OW, YOU DOG!'
He wheels around on the guard who's pinched his ass, and Erethal goes stumbling into the doorframe, rattling the wood half off its pins. The general din doesn't die down for the several minutes it takes the sloppy guards to push each other into the cool night air.
Once, Visha would have grimaced at the antics. But now her lips curl a little at the edges of her stern frown and her eyes melt warmly over the cups she stacks together. She feels she should thank the guardsman, Leo, who stayed behind. But when she opens her mouth she can't think for how to thank him appropriately, so she only pauses, hesitating with a stack of cups in each hand. When she speaks it's too abrupt by half:
'I don't need your help, sir.'
