When I passed back by the pen, his friends would stare at me with pleading faces. They moaned and squealed, and pressed their snouts to the earth. We are sorry, we are sorry.
Sorry you were caught, I said. Sorry that you thought I was weak, but you were wrong.
On my bed, the lions rested their chins on my stomach. I pushed them off. I rose and walked again.
He asked me once, why pigs. We were seated before my hearth, in our usual chairs. He liked the one draped in cowhide, with silver inlaid in its carvings. Sometimes he would rub the scrolling absently beneath his thumb.
“Why not?” I said.
He gave me a bare smile. “I mean it, I would like to know.”
I knew he meant it. He was not a pious man, but the seeking out of things hidden, this was his highest worship.
There were answers in me. I felt them, buried deep as last year’s bulbs, growing fat. Their roots tangled with those moments I had spent against the wall, when my lions were gone, and my spells shut up inside me, and my pigs screamed in the yard.
After I changed a crew, I would watch them scrabbling and crying in the sty, falling over each other, stupid with their horror. They hated it all, their newly voluptuous flesh, their delicate split trotters, their swollen bellies dragging in the earth’s muck. It was a humiliation, a debasement. They were sick with longing for their hands, those appendages men use to mitigate the world.
Come, I would say to them, it’s not that bad. You should appreciate a pig’s advantages. Mud-slick and swift, they are hard to catch. Low to the ground, they cannot easily be knocked over. They are not like dogs, they do not need your love. They can thrive anywhere, on anything, scraps and trash. They look witless and dull, which lulls their enemies, but they are clever. They will remember your face.
They never listened. The truth is, men make terrible pigs.
In my chair by the hearth, I lifted my cup. “Sometimes,” I told him, “you must be content with ignorance.”
He did not like that answer, yet that was the perversity of him: in a way he liked it best of all. I had seen how he could shuck truths from men like oyster shells, how he could pry into a breast with a glance and a well-timed word. So little of the world did not yield to his sounding. In the end, I think the fact that I did not was his favorite thing about me.
But I am ahead of myself now.
A ship, the nymphs said. Very patched, with eyes upon the hull.
That caught my attention. Common pirates did not have the gold to waste on paint. But I did not go look. The anticipation was part of the pleasure. The moment when the knock came, and I would rise from my herbs, swing wide the door. There were no pious men anymore, there had not been for a long time. The spell was polished in my mouth as a river stone.
I added a handful of roots to the draught I was making. There was moly in it, and the liquid gleamed.
The afternoon passed, and the sailors did not appear. My nymphs reported they were camped on the beach with fires burning. Another day went by, and at last on the third day came the knock.
That painted ship of theirs was the finest thing about them. Their faces had lines like grandfathers. Their eyes were bloodshot and dead. They flinched from my animals.
“Let me guess,” I said. “You are lost? You are hungry and tired and sad?”
They ate well. They drank more. Their bodies were lumpish here and there with fat, though the muscles beneath were hard as trees. Their scars were long, ridged and slashing. They had had a good season, then met someone who did not like their thieving. They were plunderers, of that I had no doubt. Their eyes never stopped counting up my treasures, and they grinned at the tally they came to.
I did not wait anymore for them to stand and come at me. I raised my staff, I spoke the word. They went crying to their pen like all the rest.
The nymphs were helping me set right the toppled benches and scrub away the wine stains when one of them glanced at the window. “Mistress, another on the path.”
I had thought the crew too small to man a full ship. Some of them must have waited on the beach, and now one had been sent to scout after his fellows. The nymphs set out new wine and slipped away.
I opened the door at the man’s knock. The late sun fell on him, picking out the red in his neat beard, the faint silver in his hair. He wore a bronze sword at his waist. He was not so tall as some, but strong, I saw, his joints well seasoned.
“Lady,” he said, “my crew has taken shelter with you. I hope I may as well?”
I put all my father’s brightness into my smile. “You are as welcome as your friends.”
I watched him while I filled the cups. Another thief, I thought. But his eyes only grazed my rich trappings. They lingered instead on a stool, still upended on the floor. He bent down and set it upright.
“Thank you,” I said. “My cats. They are always tumbling something.”
“Of course,” he said.
I brought him food and wine, and led him to my hearth. He took the goblet and sat in the silver chair I indicated. I saw him wince a little as he bent, as if at the pull of recent wounds. A jagged scar ran up his muscled calf from heel to thigh, but it was old and faded. He gestured with his cup.
“I have never seen a loom like that,” he said. “Is it an Eastern design?”
A thousand of his kind had passed through this room. They had catalogued every inch of gold and silver, but not one had ever noticed the loom.
I hesitated for the briefest moment.
“Egyptian.”
“Ah. They make the best things, don’t they? Clever to use a second beam instead of loom weights. So much more efficient to draw the weft down. I would love to have a sketch.” His voice was resonant, warm, with a pull to it that reminded me of ocean tides. “My wife would be thrilled. Those weights used to drive her mad. She kept saying someone ought to invent something better. Alas, I have not found time to apply myself to it. One of my many husbandly failings.”
My wife. The words jarred me. If any of the men in all those crews had had a wife, they never mentioned her. He smiled at me, his dark eyes on mine. His goblet was lifted loosely in his hand, as if any moment he would drink.
“Though the truth is, her favorite thing about weaving is that while she works, everyone around her thinks she can’t hear what they’re saying. She gathers all the best news that way. She can tell you who’s getting married, who’s pregnant, and who’s about to start a feud.”
“Your wife sounds like a clever woman.”
“She is. I cannot account for the fact that she married me, but since it is to my benefit, I try not to bring it to her attention.”
It surprised me to a huff of laughter. What man spoke so? None that I had ever met. Yet at the same time there was something in him that felt nearly familiar.
“Where is your wife now? On your ship?”
“At home, thank the gods. I would not make her sail with such a ragged bunch. She runs the house better than any regent.”
My attention was sharp on him now. Common sailors did not talk of regents, nor look so at home next to silver inlay. He was leaning on the carved arm of the chair as if it were his bed.
“You call your crew ragged?” I said. “They seem no different from other men to me.”
“You are kind to say so, but half the time I’m afraid they behave like beasts.” He sighed. “It’s my fault. As their captain, I should keep them in better line. But we have been at war, and you know how that can tarnish even the best men. And these, though I love them well, will never be called best.”