Daughter of the Sea

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  Boldly striding through the paved streets of Portus Tarrus with their scraggly hair and dusty clothes, neither Olympia nor Pyp were much noted. Even better, it appeared that Flora had not reported their disappearance yet. Each soldier who passed Olympia caused her heart to drop with worry, each soldier who glanced at her engendered the desire to vomit, but with Pyp looking so brave she centered herself. Reaching the tavern, a sturdy wooden building, Koisis led them in but the proprietor only had eyes for Olympia and Pyp.

  “Out, you ruffians, out!” exclaimed the man, a thin and weedy fellow with hair shorn short in the Caesarean style.

  All the eyes in the busy kitchen devolved upon the two visitors. Olympia feared that at any moment someone would recognize her face, Pyp’s face and raise the alarm. She studied her fingernails, noting the filth caked beneath formerly white crescents of fingernails. Measured breaths, calm, she thought. Nothing is amiss. She wished they would all look away—to escape from Avaritus‘ clutches and then to be brought back so quickly. She shuddered at the thought.

  Koisis approached the man with a laugh. “Come on now, brother. These are my guests. Don’t make a scene.”

  “Guests?” He studied them suspiciously. She feared the man would recognize her and was suddenly thankful for the changes imprisonment had wrought on her: white threads in her hair, a tightly drawn face. She knew she looked little like the happy wife she had been at Lucretius’ side.

  “I don’t hold with any kind of funny business in my tavern, you hear?” His words were belied by the sudden, high laughter of a woman, which filtered through the air and the strumming music of the kithara.

  Giving him a steady look that brooked no further discussion, Koisis slowly said, “Might I remind you of the favors I have…” He let the sentence hang tantalizingly in the air without finishing and his brother-in-law quickly turned the tide of his action. Ushering Olympia and Pyp into a private room, he admonished the workers to tend to their own matters.

  “Well, what is this about then? Who are these folk?”

  Koisis opened his mouth and for a moment Olympia feared he would divulge the whole tale to this fellow but what actually came from Koisis was even more shocking than Olympia expected. The base of her neck flushed pink as Koisis spoke.

  Bluntly, he explained, “She is my lover and he our son. She was a slave, newly escaped, and you must help me hide her. You must hide her and let no one know of us for her master would crucify me for this. Your own wife, my sister, was a slave once, whom you purchased out of love. Remember that love, brother. Look at the boy, Vercingetorix, your own nephew! Would you do that to him? Would you deprive him of his father? ”

  For a moment, Vercingetorix looked tempted to do just that, but he assented with a great sigh. “Very well, I will hide her, although you have acted quite rashly for a man of your age. I can’t keep them here forever, you know.”

  “As soon as the wind shifts,” promised Koisis.

  “Now settle them down in the door behind the cellar. No one has been there for years. I’ll send Potita down with a few blankets and food. Don’t become too comfortable,” he said with a knowing look at Olympia.

  Koisis guided them down the dark wooden stairs and Olympia shuddered at being put beneath the ground again after such a short time beneath the open sky. Still, there was something warmer and cleaner about this cellar. She realized it was the familiar aroma of olives, wine, honey, goat cheese, and flour. All those things she had enjoyed in the past, taken for granted, and had subsequently lost. It was the scent of home. Pyp was intrigued, not by the odor but by this new realm and was eager to explore the caverns of crates and climb the mountains of stacked barrels.

  “I have to return to the villa, but I’ll have my sister bring some water and soap down for a bath and new robes. And, when I have the chance, I’ll let her know who you really are. There’s a few empty barrels and if you come out smelling like olives,” Koisis added to Pyp, “so much the better.”

  Pyp chuckled and even Olympia cracked a smile. Olympia was happy to be rid of the scratching robe she had worn for weeks. She smiled at the prospect of washing her hair and body with soap.

  A portly, sharp-eyed woman, Potita arranged for water to be poured into the barrels, soap, clean robes were left and within an hour both Olympia and Pyp appeared with new faces, new bodies. Clean. It seemed strange that something so simple could have wrought such a difference but at the moment Olympia emerged from her bath she was filled with a confident determination, an arrow of purpose, the certainty that Avaritus would die. She would expect nothing less of herself.