Steven Saylor - The Seven Wonders

“Had Myron not fixed my hooves to this stone,

I would have gone to pasture and left you alone.”

Antipater tittered with delight and matched her with another of his epigrams:

“Calf, why nuzzle my flank and suckle my udder?

I am the cow of Myron, not your mother.”

I rolled my eyes and cleared my throat. Greeks and their epigrams! Given all the poems Antipater had written about that cow, such an exchange could go on indefinitely.

Bitto sighed. “Alas, I shall have to introduce you as Zoticus of Zeugma, and no one will be at all impressed. But you’re so good at making verses on the spot, I’m sure you’ll win them over. Well, I’m glad that’s all settled.”

Antipater blinked, suddenly realizing he had been outflanked. “Bitto, I never agreed that I would attend these parties of yours.”

She shrugged. “If you prefer, you can sequester yourself in the library while they’re going on. You’ll be glad to see that I managed to keep every scroll my husband collected. For a while I thought I’d have to sell them, before my parties proved successful. There’s a complete set of The Histories by Herodotus in there. He was born in Halicarnassus, you know.”

Antipater’s eyes lit up. “I suppose, on those evenings when you play hostess, Gordianus and I can use the time to better acquaint ourselves with Herodotus.”

Speak for yourself ! I wanted to say, but bit my tongue. Bitto saw the look on my face and laughed. “We shall see,” she said. “But look-we’ve lost the sunlight here in the garden. You can almost see Aphrodite shiver. Shall we move to the balcony?”

She led us to a terrace on the downhill, west-facing side of the house. The view was spectacular. To the left I could see the glittering harbor, to the right the hilltop crowned by the Temple of Ares, and looming directly before us, my mind still hardly able to accept its reality, was the vast Mausoleum. The lowering sun was directly behind the golden chariot atop the monument, framing it in silhouette like a flaming halo.

For a long moment we stood in silence at the balustrade and took in the view. Gradually, I realized I could hear someone talking. Some distance below us and to one side, I looked down on the balcony of a neighboring house, where two women dressed in black sat side by side, the older one reading quietly aloud to the younger. That the reader was older I could tell by flashes of silver amid her blond hair, most of which was contained in a netlike snood. The younger woman’s head was uncovered, and her unpinned hair seemed to float like a golden cloud about her face, catching the last rays of the sunlight. Her black gown covered her arms and legs, but she appeared to have a long, slender body. She listened to the older woman read with her head tilted back and her eyes closed, her expression as serene as if she slept. Her features were lovely. I judged her to be not much older than myself.

Bitto followed my gaze. “My neighbors,” she said, lowering her voice, “Tryphosa and her young daughter-in-law, Corinna.”

“Are they in mourning?” I asked.

“They wear black because of a death in the household, yes. Whether they mourn is another question. I’d advise you to keep your distance from those two.” She looked sidelong at Antipater. “And if you wish to fix your disapproval on a misbehaving widow, cousin, turn your attention from me and consider Corinna.”

“That harmless young creature?” said Antipater. “She’s lovely.”

“Quite,” agreed Bitto. “And possibly deadly.”

“What!”

Tryphosa must have heard his exclamation, for she stopped reading and looked up at us. Corinna opened her eyes at the interruption, glanced at her mother-in-law, then also looked in our direction. At once she reached for a black veil pinned to her gown and pulled it over the bottom half of her face. Her eyes, I saw, were a bright blue. Something in her gaze unsettled me-or was I only imagining it, because of what Bitto had just said about her?

“Greetings, Bitto,” the older woman called out.

“Greetings, Tryphosa.”

“Are you having a party?” Was there a note of sarcasm in the woman’s voice?

“These men are houseguests,” explained Bitto. “This young one is Gordianus, who’s come all the way from Rome, and this is his tutor and traveling companion, Zoticus of Zeugma. Zeugma-that’s in the part of the world you come from, isn’t it, Corinna?”

Above her veil, the younger woman’s blue eyes widened a bit. “Yes, Zeugma is in Commagene,” she said, in a voice almost too low to be heard. “But I’m sure your guest and I have never met.”

“I never suggested you had,” said Bitto, flashing a brittle smile that perhaps looked more genuine at a distance.

“We’ve lost the sunlight,” noted Tryphosa, and indeed, the sun had just vanished behind the Mausoleum. “Corinna and I shall go inside now. Come, daughter-in-law.”

Without another word the two women withdrew from their balcony and into their house.

* * *

That evening, while we reclined on plump couches and dined on delicacies from the sea, Bitto told us the story of the two women who lived next door.

“Tryphosa is about my age, but she was widowed long ago-not long after the birth of her son, in fact. Her husband left her very well provided for. By law, the baby boy was his heir, of course, but Tryphosa was able to take control of the estate. That’s seldom the case. Usually the husband’s male relatives take over and the widow is elbowed rather brusquely aside. But because of a dearth of adult male relatives on both sides of the family, Tryphosa was able to establish herself as head of her own household, in control of the inheritance and free to raise her little son as she saw fit-an unusual circumstance for a woman.”

“How is it that you control your own finances, Bitto?” I asked.

“Technically, I don’t. My affairs have to be overseen by my late husband’s younger brother. Fortunately, he’s very amenable.”

“You mean you have the fellow eating from the palm of your hand,” said Antipater wryly.

Bitto cleared her throat. “To continue the story: Tryphosa managed to become an independent woman, and from early on, there was talk about the way she raised little Timon-that was the boy’s name. I suppose he received an education from tutors who came to the house, but most boys of good family are also sent to the gymnasium, to meet one another and receive athletic training. Tryphosa kept him at home. He never made close friends among boys his own age, or took part in competitions.”

“Having lost her husband, perhaps the mother was overly protective of the boy,” said Antipater.

“Perhaps,” said Bitto, “but there was always something odd about that household. Was Tryphosa cautious, as you suggest, or uncaring and neglectful? One hardly ever saw little Timon; it was almost as if she kept him imprisoned in that house. And when he reached the age to marry, a few years ago, instead of meeting with local families who had an eligible daughter, Tryphosa took the young man off to Commagene to seek a bride there. Apparently that’s where her own family comes from, and she was able to marry Timon to a girl with a very handsome dowry-young Corinna, whom you saw on the balcony today.

“The three of them returned to Halicarnassus and settled down in that house. There was no party to introduce the new bride to the neighbors. Every now and again I’d see Timon and his mother out and about, but the bride from Commagene hardly ever stirred from the house. Of course, that’s not unusual; often a young bride is kept secluded until she’s given birth to her first child. I’m probably one of the few people ever to see her, because of my view overlooking their balcony. She likes to bask in the sun for bit in the afternoons. Occasionally I try to engage her in conversation, but it’s awkward, having to raise one’s voice, and the girl is about as talkative as a stone. It’s all I can do to pry a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ out of her before she scampers back into the house.”