Of Merchants & Heros Read Online Free PDF Page B

hare in the forest, or a fat dove on a tree bough. And when I returned home with my prey strung over my shoulders, that prey had a name: Dikaiarchos.
    I grew taciturn, and solitary in my pursuits. When I came across my old friends in the town I thought them soft and aimless; and they, no doubt, found me strange and withdrawn. But I served the god. We had made a pact. When they asked me why I was so much alone, I gave them vague excuses about work on the farm. They did not believe me, and soon ceased to ask. But I knew they would not understand.
    One late afternoon, I was sitting on the grass terrace outside the house, sharpening my hunting knife on a whetstone, when my mother came to me.
    ‘You were singing,’ she said with a smile.
    I shrugged and smiled back. ‘I had a good day. I caught a hare.’
    She sat down on the stone bench and asked about the work on the farm. I answered, sharpening my knife blade as I talked, telling her how the corn in the lower fields was growing good and strong, and the livestock was thriving, and how I was pleased with the new draining ditches I had dug in the vineyard. I had been laughing, recounting some nonsense of how our old bad-tempered goat in the yard had butted the swineherd into the water-trough; but now, all of a sudden, like an unexpected chill on a warm day, it came to me that there was something she had not yet come to, something she was waiting to say. I called to mind that she never came looking for me just to make conversation, and breaking off I looked up at her and said, ‘Mother, tell me what has happened.’
    I had guessed right. At this the brightness faded from her face and she made a small sad dismissive gesture. Immediately I cast aside the sharpening-stone and leapt up. Only then, when I was standing, did I see she was clutching a letter in her hand.
    ‘Your uncle Caecilius has written,’ she said, raising up the letter with its broken seal. ‘Let us go inside, Marcus. There are things we need to speak of.’
    We went to my father’s old study. I had scarcely entered here since my return, and now I glanced round in surprise. His book- scrolls with their carefully written labels were stacked neatly on the shelves, just as he had left them, but on the desk, among the coloured stone paperweights he liked to collect, his papers lay open and strewn about. It looked as if someone had been going over the accounts.
    But that could wait. My mother had closed the door, something she seldom did.
    I said, ‘What does he want?’ I spoke more sharply than I intended. I was remembering Kerkyra. I had not given a thought to my uncle Caecilius until now.
    She crossed the floor and sat down in the old cross-backed pearwood chair beside the window before she answered. The letter was still in her hand. For a moment, before she stilled it on her lap, I thought I saw it shaking. She sighed and looked at me. It was not like her to put off what needed to be said.
    ‘You may as well hear it now as any time. Your uncle Caecilius intends to marry me.’
    I jumped back as if something had bitten me. ‘ Marry you?’ I cried. ‘What is he talking about? Has he lost his mind?’
    ‘Listen to me, Marcus, and stop gaping like some peasant at market—’
    ‘But Mother, you know nothing of him, nor he you . . . You would not like him . . . I know you wouldn’t.’
    ‘Liking does not come into it,’ she said flatly.
    ‘But Mother!’ I cried, pleading now. ‘You do not know what you do. What madness is this? What has he told you?’
    As I was speaking she had crossed to my father’s desk. She pushed at the papers there. ‘Did your father tell you why he was going to Kerkyra?’
    This caught me by surprise and I broke off. ‘No,’ I said, narrowing my eyes. ‘What of it?’
    ‘No. Well he would not have troubled you with such things; that was his way. Your father was a good man, Marcus; but he was not a man of business. He was content to let the farm run just as it always had.