Isobel

by Chloe Garner

  With an odd sense of distance, Andie realized that, for all the things she would dearly miss about her life, she would have been disappointed if this had been all there ever was. Sitting up with her mother one night, she said as much, and Elissa stopped brushing her grey-flecked hair.

  “I don’t think you’ve ever sounded more like my daughter,” she said. Andie had been worried that her mother would be offended, that she wanted so badly to escape the life that Elissa had built for herself. Her mother laughed.

  “I came a long way to be here, daughter. Your father won my father’s approval and asked for my hand, but it was my choice, too. I wanted to see more of the world than my city on the sea, and so I came.”

  “What was it like?” Andie asked. She’d never asked before. Elissa didn’t tell stories. That was for Lykos and Charis and Damien and Nesius. Elissa just sat and listened.

  That night, though, she told her eldest daughter stories of a bright, strange place, many days away, by sea, but that she had not seen since she was sixteen. Elissa’s eyes grew distant and glittering as she saw that place in her mind’s eye. Everyone else Elissa knew could trace their lineage back to the city’s founders. People from other cities within Greece were outsiders. She’d realized late in Andie’s childhood that that was one of the reasons she’d never found a home for herself within the community.

  “I brought a maid with me, but she died before you were born,” Elissa said. “It’s just been me and the Greeks ever since.”

  “And I will take no one,” Andie said.

  “I would offer you your pick, but you have no special love for any of them. But you will find a place in your new home. You are my daughter.”

  Elissa stood and went to a box above the fireplace, lifting out a necklace on a gold chain.

  “My mother gave me this when I left Tyre. I want you to take it with you when you go.”

  She lowered the chain over Andie’s head and pulled her hair through, then took a step back and nodded.

  “Yes, that’s where it should be.”

  Andie put her hand over it, then stood and hugged her mother.

  They left the house at dawn, Andie on Valerie and all of her belongings on a mule, Lykos on his horse. No one would be going into town with them to meet up with the merchant because saying goodbye at the house had been hard enough. Eos was off in the woods somewhere, and Talos and Rhesus were chasing each other through the barn, so only Elissa, Kalliope, and Charis actually stood in the front yard to see her off. Andie was sad, without question, but at the same time she felt like her life so far had all been one long sigh, waiting for this. For her real life to start. She looked back at her mother and waved before they took the last corner out of sight, and, because it was how she wanted her mother to remember her, she flashed a smile. Off to her adventure.

  She rode in silence with Lykos, eager to be off now that it was started. As they reached the outer extent of the village, her father turned to her.

  “I’m proud of your decision. You’ve grown into a fine woman and you’ve got a spirit within you, like your mother. Be a good wife and mother, and the gods bring you glory.”

  She wondered if the gods watched that far north.

  At the market, a dark-skinned man with a mustache shook hands with Lykos.

  “Is this the one, then?” he asked.

  “She is,” Lykos answered. The man scratched his chin and nodded.

  “I’ll compensate you for her protection and passage, of course,” Lykos said. The stranger shook his head.

  “No, her bills are all paid by the one who waits for her,” he said.

  “Then I will pay you an additional bonus when you bring back the letter written in her hand of her safe trip,” Lykos said. “I am a generous man, if you ask around.”

  The stranger laughed.

  “Do you think she would pay me for showing up empty-handed? No, more likely my life is forfeit if her horse stumbles once too often. But I’ll take your gold as well, sure enough.”

  Lykos turned to Andie.

  “This is Saul. He’s going to take you to Isobel. Once you get there, write us a letter to let us know you are safe and give it to him.”

  She nodded, wanting to remind him that she wasn’t dumb. Lykos and Saul shook hands and then Lykos was gone. Saul looked after him.

  “A good man, that one, but not a demonstrative one, is he?”

  She looked at him, and he laughed.

  “Old Saul speaks his mind. Too many things out there to keep it all in.” He gave her another critical look and nodded. “But we’re going to be friends, aren’t we? You aren’t one to hold your tongue, either, are you?”

  She stepped on a smile and he winked.

  “I’ll let Eb here get everything packed away,” he said, nodding to a darker-skinned man standing amid the goods in the stall behind him. “Let’s get you back to camp and see what you’re missing.”

  He helped her back up onto Valerie and took the mule’s lead.

  “Andromeda, they told me?” he asked.

  “Andie,” she answered. He nodded. “Missing?” she asked.

  “Your father’s a merchant, so I respect that he’s traveled, but you people have no clue about packing over land for eight weeks.”

  “Eight?” she asked. “Isobel told me it was four.”

  He nodded his head back and forth as he walked.

  “Riding like the two of them do, maybe, and in a straight line. But I wouldn’t be much of a merchant if I just went back and forth between the two, now would I?”

  “And if I were the kind of woman who refused to tolerate the stops?” she asked.

  He grinned up at her.

  “I’d tell you that you were the kind of woman who’s going to get used to them,” he said, then reached up and turned one of her hands over to look at her palm. “But you aren’t that kind of woman, are you?”

  She grinned and he rolled his jaw to the side, sucking on a tooth.

  “You ever sell anything in your life?”

  She shook her head.

  “You ever buy anything?”

  “A few things,” she said.

  “Ever had to buy something that if you couldn’t afford it, you wouldn’t eat?”

  She shook her head. She had never thought about not eating.

  He nodded again as he walked, bobbing his head like the mule.

  “Bet you can’t read a map, either.”

  She shook her head. Home. Town. Those were the only two places her brain completely understood.

  “I can read,” she said. “And write. I do a little math.”

  “So you had teaching,” he said. She nodded again. He grinned. “We’ll make a Phoenician trader out of you yet.”

  “You’re Phoenician?” she asked.

  “That I am,” he said.

  “Do you know my mother?”

  “Elissa? I know of her. Mostly I know your granddad.”

  Her jaw dropped and he laughed.

  “He’s alive?” she asked.

  “Cranky old bugger,” Saul said, waving as they came in sight of a small encampment. A younger man, only a couple of years older than Andie, waved back, then stood tall when he saw Andie.

  “Don’t mind Ben,” Saul said. “His nose is so clean it squeaks.” Saul shook his head. “Earnest boy. Like his mama. Can’t sell a thing, but he keeps a tidy camp.”

  Andie frowned down at Saul with curiosity, then raised an eye at the boy.

  “You called her a girl,” Ben hissed as they got within range. “This is a woman.”

  Oh, dear.

  Andie swung her foot over the front of her saddle and slid to the ground in the least lady-like way she could manage, taking the reins from Saul and rubbing Valerie’s nose.

  “This is Andie,” Saul said. “Andie, this is Benjamin.”

  She nodded to the boy, and he made a strange motion, then stared at his hands as if they’d surprised him. She looked at Saul, whose shoulders were shaking with
silent laughter. Saul set in on unloading the mule and Andie went to put Valerie with the rest of the horses.

  “Anything I need to be gentle with?” Saul called as he hefted baskets. Andie considered.

  “Just the baskets themselves,” she said.

  “Good,” he grunted. “Because if there were, I’d make you go sell it. This isn’t going to be a trip for perishables.”

  “I thought the Phoenicians were sailors,” she said, returning. She pulled a basket away from him. “Those are all just clothes. Folded nicely, thank you.”

  He snorted, opening the next basket.

  “My brothers all run ships, like my father and his father. Make good money at it, have lovely wives. But I think that Phoenicians are just the guys who see the edge of the map and ask ‘what’s over there?’”

  Saul found the dried fruit and nodded.

  “Your cook has got the right idea.”

  He went through the rest of her belongings and grunted.

  “Nothing to sleep on or under. Your father is used to traveling, but clearly with the king’s porter.”

  “Do I need a tent?” she asked.

  “Unless you plan on bunking up with Ben,” Saul said. Ben coughed and feigned having something to do somewhere else.

  Saul looked at her for a long moment, then nodded and reached into his pocket. He produced a stack of coins and handed it to her.

  “Take your mule back to the market and buy yourself enough canvas for a tent and enough blankets for a bedroll. You live with what you get. I’ll spot you the structure for the tent; we’ve got enough spares to outfit an army.”

  Andie looked at the money.

  She’d spent that much on ribbons for Lily, once. Saul caught her expression and laughed.

  “Aye, it isn’t much. Show me what you can do.”

  Saul was as good as his word. Andie made a miserable showing for herself, that first day. The first days out of the village, she slept under a flapping length of brown fabric that was too short to peg down at the four corners and still make room for her. It also wasn’t woven tight enough or of the right materials to keep the wet off of it, so several mornings, or mid-nights, Andie woke to find the entire thing collapsed onto her, sodden with rain.

  Ben offered to trade her lodgings several times.

  “I don’t mind it,” he said. “Honest. I like sleeping under the stars.”

  The first times she demurred, rejecting him gently, her pride too strong to fail. The last time, she gave him a strong tongue-lashing, and he stopped offering. Saul watched her from where he sharpened a blade with a stone, amused approval in his eyes. Eb laughed and slapped his leg, startling the horses.

  At the next town, Andie sold the fabric as imported cotton and went to the shipyard where she found a sailing ship that had survived a storm at sea. Its sails were in tatters and when she asked the captain if he intended to repair them, he let her have them if she was willing to carry them away herself. She spent half an afternoon folding them and getting them tied to the mule, then spent the evening cutting the best parts of the fabric away from the rips. She slept under the sky one more night, then she procured a length of heavy twine for half of her money, and she spent a day sewing the canvas back together with fast, large stitches. Saul inspected the work that night, then pulled out a length of wood and helped her set up a proper tent. She couldn’t stand in it, but the corners were staked to the ground and it was water proof. She bought a handful of shells on a whim and stitched them to a remaining piece of canvas, making a sleeping mat with mollusk baubles at the corners. It made her smile. Eb snorted at it.

  By the third town, she had a sack full of little coins that jingled as she rode. Before they rode into Athens, Saul reached for her necklace and held it away from her throat in his palm.

  “I’ll give you twice whatever you’ve got in your bag for it,” he said. She shook her head. Money was a game. The necklace wasn’t for sale.

  “Then you’d best put it away. There are men ahead who would slit your throat for it.”

  She tucked the necklace away with her clothes, tipping a fair share of the coins in with it, as a hedge against thieves, then followed Saul, Eb, and their mulecart into the city. Thasos was a huge seaside town on an island. They’d taken a chartered ship across from the mainland the evening before. They settled down for the night on the west side of the island, then worked their way over to the city on the northeast side, where the deeper harbor was, at dawn. Saul said he wanted to keep the camp far enough from the city that it wasn’t likely bandits would stumble on it while they were out; apparently that kind of thing just happened here.

  White stone houses dotted the hillsides coming down to the port, and the sea swarmed with boats: fishermen, local traders, transport ships of various kinds, and the huge Phoenician trading ships. Saul identified a few of the flags as they walked down the slope leading the mule and the cart. The world around her buzzed, and people took open notice of Andie.

  “They aren’t used to seeing many women traveling,” Saul said as Eb grunted at a couple of young men who turned to follow the after they saw Andie. Andie didn’t think Eb was considerably frightening, but it was enough to send the men back on their way.

  There were Egyptians and Africans and Greeks that she could identify, and a host of types of men she couldn’t. Women yelled at children and each other, as they got to the town center, and men shouted in a host of languages. A boy bumped into her and Andie caught her purse and cuffed him. He gave her a dirty grin and ran on. She looked at Saul and he grinned into his shoulder.

  “You have good reflexes,” Eb said. She tightened her grip on her bag of coins, following Saul to a crowded, noisy, smelly marketplace. There were goats and sheep and pigs in small herds, staked to various booths, and a few horses and cows along the way, as well. The horses were of solid Greek builds, except one Arabian that hadn’t grown into his conformation yet. Andie wanted to go pick up his feet, but refrained as the man tending the stall didn’t appear to be the kind of man to tolerate idle curiosity.

  Some way down the length of the market, Saul stopped and shook hands with a man in a turban. Andie had never seen one before, and she stared.

  The two men talked for a few minutes as Eb unpacked the cart, then there was a quick exchange of cash, and the man turned to go through Saul’s things. Andie started looking up and down the row. The salt air was full of the smell of fish and men, and she wanted to see the place. Saul grabbed her wrist.

  “Don’t wander, girlie,” he said. “I brought you because there was no way you’d listen to Ben, but this is a dangerous place. My friend there just offered me last year’s profit for you.”

  Her eyes widened and he grinned.

  “He said you’re pretty. A lot of soldiers through this port looking for a wife to take home.”

  She glared darkly at the stall owner and the man raised an eyebrow at her, defiant.

  “He isn’t the only one,” Saul said. “You need to stay where we can see you.”

  “It’s only your neck on the line,” she observed and he grinned.

  “If you think she’d be that kind if I lost you in a market, you have an optimistic opinion of her,” he said. “If you want to go shopping, Eb can take you after lunch. We should have a quiet spell, then.”

  She found a crate in the stall and sat down, watching for the rest of the afternoon as people came and went, negotiating in multiple languages with Saul, Eb, and the other man. Often, they motioned to Andie, and Saul shook his head or laughed, depending on the context of the question.

  At lunchtime, Eb disappeared and came back with hot bread and fish. Andie ate with her fingers, surprised at how different the meals were from city to city. They were all Greek, but the food was surprisingly local. Some towns didn’t appear to bake bread at all. After she ate, and as the spring sun began to beat down on them with more intensity, Eb motioned to her and she followed, fishing her purse out of the folds of her clothing and clutching it ti
ghtly as they went from stall to stall. She found beaded things and things made of glass and stone. Eb looked at weapons and household goods, but Andie was attracted to the things that glittered. They were all too expensive, but she liked to look, anyway.

  On her way back to the stall, she found a vendor selling painted clay beads, and she bought a handful of them for Valerie. She also found a woman selling dried starfish, and she bought several of them, loving the tiny details of the little animals. Saul inspected her prizes when she returned and sniffed.

  “I bring you to one of the best ports in Greece and that’s what you find?”

  “You brought me to one of the best ports in Greece, but it’s also where everyone came to buy things. It all costs too much.”

  He grinned and Eb put a hand on her shoulder and winked.

  “That’s why we sell,” Saul said. “We’ll make a trader out of you yet.”

  And so it went.

  They turned north after Thasos, wandering through territories that Andie had never heard of and seeing people who had rarely before seen a Greek. There were mountains and forests and rivers, and everywhere there were people with money.

  There were fewer markets. Some of the towns were simple constructions of wood and mud, where they would be invited into the elder’s or the princetain’s or the warlord’s hut and they were treated as guests. There would be strange food and music, and often dancing, and then Saul and his contact would settle down to deal in a strange language and Ben and Andie would leave to go set up the camp some distance from the town.

  “Eb doesn’t talk much, does he?” Andie asked.

  “You noticed?” Ben asked.

  “I was hoping you’d tell me why,” Andie said. Ben shrugged.