Persian Rose (White Lotus Book 2)

by Libbie Hawker

  Rhodopis could hear the dinner party well before she arrived at the host’s estate. Music and laughter reached drifted on the still evening air, raising an unexpected storm of nostalgia in her breast. Her heart seemed to expand, pressing hard against her ribs; she was filled with a sudden, eager confidence. Rhodopis had not expected to miss anything about a hetaera’s life. But now she discovered that there was a certain comfort in venturing back into a world she already knew. A well-trod path always seemed safer and friendlier than a trek through unexplored wilderness. Since entering the Pharaoh’s harem, Rhodopis’ life had degenerated into one unpleasant surprise after another, a seemingly endless sojourn through unknown and unknowable realms. But a Memphian party, attended by wealthy, influential men—ah, that was firm ground, where she might expect to stand at ease, without the least fear of falling.

  When the litter landed in the host’s courtyard, a gray-haired steward with a ready bow and a soft voice offered his hand, helping her rise. “Lady Eulalia,” he said, “I am Solon, steward to Good Man Praxiteles, who owns this estate.”

  Rhodopis stood and bowed her neck in graceful acknowledgment.

  “I am most honored to make your acquaintance,” Solon said. “All Memphis hums with talk of you; we are delighted that a hetaera of your standing has come to grace our city.”

  “You are too kind,” Rhodopis said, shepherding her tongue with care. Now more than ever, she must not lapse into her country habits; such an unfortunate mistake would give her away at once. She must maintain the perfect guise of an elite Greek woman. “The honor is all mine; the fame of Memphis and its great men extends to every corner of the world.”

  “Please, my lady, join Praxiteles and his guests inside. They have already served the wine and fruits. Shall I send for a cup?”

  “That would be well,” Rhodopis said. She walked with Solon through the halls of the estate, moving ever closer to the music and laughter, the party beckoning and calling. “And would you be so kind as to point out Good Man Drakon? I have not had the pleasure of meeting him yet, but I am here at his special request.”

  “Of course.” Solon ushered her into Praxiteles’ andron, an exceptionally large and fine room, spacious and welcoming, hung with dozens of lamps. Praxiteles had clearly built his estate with grand parties in mind. He seemed a popular host, too—at least thirty men lounged on couches or gathered near the garden door, while more than a dozen hetaerae were already engaged in their night’s work. “Drakon is there,” Solon said, “on the red-covered couch, just to the right of the garden door. Directly across from where we stand—do you see him? The young man with the auburn hair.”

  There was Drakon indeed, looking exactly as Rhodopis recalled, with his reddish hair falling in an unruly wave over a freckled forehead. She felt a shiver of fear, and gave in to the briefest moment of panic. Was she so recognizable, too? Then she quelled her anxiety with determined effort. She must trust in Amtes’ work, and in the mercy of the gods. No one would know her. She would fool them all.

  “Thank you, good man,” she said to the steward. “I will join Drakon now. Please send my wine over when the pourers arrive.”

  Rhodopis set off across the andron, moving straight through its heart, head up and dignified as if she had nothing to fear in all the world. Below the gentle refrain of harp and flute, she could hear murmurs rippling, following in her wake. It seemed Solon’s greeting in the courtyard had been more than polite flattery: the newcomer from Lesvos truly was an item of interest. Eulalia had only just arrived at her first engagement, but already she trailed mystery wherever she walked. Rhodopis must take care to use that fortuitous renown to her advantage.

  But whatever will I do if Drakon knows me at first sight? No—I can’t afford to fret now. She set her jaw, rehearsing the deflections and excuses she had planned for just such an occasion. She would not be caught off guard by anyone who recognized her… or anyone who thought they did. This evening would work to her advantage; she was fiercely determined that it would. Two servants chanced to carry a great silver platter past Rhodopis as they wove through the andron toward the kitchen. The platter was empty, unused and clean; the servants tilted it to maneuver between two groups of couches, and Rhodopis caught a glimpse of her reflection in its well-polished surface. What she saw there inspired a smile of relief. Her dark hair and brows were entirely unlike the pale, honey-red coloring that had marked out Doricha, the little white lotus of Iadmon’s house, or Rhodopis, the blushing country girl from Xanthes’ Stable. She looked so unlike herself that had she not been prepared for the sight of her own reflection, she might have started with surprise to find a very different woman looking back at her from the silvery surface.

  She reached the red-covered couch and Drakon, who lay easily across it. He was in the act of recounting a humorous story to his companions—it involved an ass in a market square, and a very fat man with a short tunic—but he broke off abruptly as Rhodopis approached. She smiled at him in an artfully constrained way; Drakon blinked up at her for a moment, awe and pride evident in his expression—but no recognition, thank the gods.

  Drakon sprang to his feet. He lifted Rhodopis’ hand, placed a delicate kiss on the backs of her fingers. “My friends,” he said to the other men, “I have the great honor to present Eulalia of Lesvos. You have no doubt heard of her by now. My lady, these are Zosimos and Nikias, my friends and associates.”

  “How glad I am to meet you all,” Rhodopis said. “And to make your acquaintance, Good Man Drakon.” She gave her companion a brief yet suggestive look, a coy bat of her kohl-darkened lashes that, to her surprise, set him to blushing. Red hair like my own, she thought rather mischievously. Means he’s likely to go just as red in the face at the drop of a hairpin. What fun I can have tonight, toying and jesting with him.

  “Please, join me,” Drakon said, gesturing to his couch.

  Rhodopis obliged, stretching comfortably along the couch, fitting her body against Drakon’s. Surreptitiously, she pressed her backside against his groin, which made the poor fellow choke and splutter as he tried to resume the humorous tale of the fat man in the marketplace. Strange, how quickly it’s all coming back, Rhodopis mused as the men laughed at Drakon’s story. Almost as if I’d been born for this sort of work.

  She wondered—had the gods indeed made her for this very work? Not a hetaera’s tasks—those were easy enough for any woman to master, if she chose. No, perhaps it was her secret work she’d been fitted for: infiltrating Egypt’s inner workings, colluding with the might of a foreign empire to bring it all tumbling down, to set to rights what Amasis, in his hubris and carelessness, had overturned. The next moment she cast the absurd idea away with a little laugh—which fortunately coincided with one of Nikias’ jests. Surely Rhodopis was not that important.

  “Tell me,” Rhodopis said when she found a natural lull in the conversation, “what is your line of work, Drakon? No doubt all the other women in the city already know, but as I am new here…”

  “Our boy Drakon inherited a dye business from his father,” Nikias said.

  “And expanded it, much farther than Dear Old Abba ever dreamed,” Zosimos added.

  “He’s too refined and humble to brag, so we’ll do it for him,” said Nikias. “Drakon is now the top dye merchant from here to the Delta. We’re all in the same guild, you see, and Drakon has put us all to shame. In another year or two, he’ll be the headman of our guild, and will push us all about like the pinched old bastard the gods always meant him to become.”

  “That’s why we’re here, flattering him and praising him now, so we’ll be in his good graces when he comes to rule us all.”

  The two men raised their cups, laughing good-naturedly.

  “I’ve done well enough for myself,” said Drakon modestly. “I won’t deny that.”

  Rhodopis turned to smile at him over her shoulder, a suggestive and alluring grin. “Fortune has been kind to me; I’ve found a companion with a reputation to match my own.”r />
  “Tell us about Lesvos,” Drakon suggested. “How go affairs in the islands?”

  “Ah.” Rhodopis managed to keep her voice smooth and calm, despite the sudden, panicked leap of her heart. “Have you good men gone often to Lesvos? I know the dye trade is quite popular there.”

  “Often,” Zosimos agreed. “If old Amasis hadn’t given Greek merchants such favorable terms here in Memphis, I’d have set up in Lesvos years ago. You can’t beat it for beauty.”

  “Clearly,” Nikias said, raising his cup in salute to Rhodopis.

  “You are too kind.” She lowered her lashes demurely, stalling for time. She had never been to Lesvos in all her life—and had had no need to maintain her knowledge of world events, first sequestered in Amasis’ harem and then carted off to Babylon. She must find some way to answer the question without saying anything of real substance—anything that might give her ruse away.

  “Of course, Lesvos is beautiful as always,” she said. “I am quite homesick for it, to tell you the truth, though Memphis is a very nice city.”

  “Where does your family live?”

  “By the sea,” Rhodopis said quickly. She had no idea whether the island of Lesvos had mountains or lakes, plains or forests. But seashores, any island certainly had in abundance. “On the eastern side of the island.”

  “Near Mytilene?” Drakon asked.

  “Not too terribly near,” she said evasively, and sipped from her wine cup to hide her sudden anxiety. “My father is a merchant, too—in spices. He has caravans that go from Phocaea to Palmyra every year, and his cassia and cinnamon were the best in the whole region.” Those details, at least, she recalled from her childhood lessons with Aesop. She held her breath, praying the men found the story plausible, until they nodded, accepting her at her word.

  “If it’s not too forward to ask,” said Drakon, “how did you come to be a hetaera? A woman such as you, from a well-to-do family…”

  “It has been our family tradition for some time,” she said. “Two of my aunts were hetaerae, in their younger days. They went to Phocaea and Pyrassos to make their way—for you know, even in a place as grand as Lesvos, there are only so many men to go around. Islands, you know…. But before they left for their new homes, I admired how lovely and independent my aunts were. I aspired to be just like them, from quite a young age. My father and mother were pleased with my choice; they gave me the best schooling a girl could have. Why, I remember—”

  A commotion at the andron’s entrance spared Rhodopis from the agony of inventing likely memories of a childhood in Lesvos. Glad for the distraction, she turned with the rest of the men to see what had caused the sudden stir of shouts and uncomfortable laughter—and in an instant, her gladness turned to cold horror. A cat-like shadow had slunk into the room, already jostling and disrupting the natural flow of conversation, the pleasantries of a well-ordered event. Her deep-brown skin was oiled, glittering with golden mica dust; long black hair fell in unbound waves over tense shoulders. And from across the andron, those piercing, hard blue eyes seemed to stab deep into Rhodopis’ very spirit. There was no mistaking Archidike—and no way to avoid her.

  Rhodopis swallowed hard. She reached for the practiced litany of excuses and deflections, trying to call back every word she had rehearsed over the past several days in the privacy and comfort of her chamber. But nothing came. Like a flock of pigeons loosed from a cote, all her preparations fled from her mind, clattering and chaotic. She could do nothing but turn away from Archidike—casually, without drawing any suspicion by an abrupt or graceless movement. She hoped wildly that Archidike would find some distraction, some prey to toy with elsewhere in the andron—that those all-seeing, fierce blue eyes would not pick Rhodopis out of the crowd.

  “By the gods,” Rhodopis said casually, “who is that woman?”

  “Archidike,” Drakon said. He loaded that name with meaning, though Rhodopis could not quite decide whether she heard scorn or admiration in his voice.

  “She has made a stir just by walking in. Shouldn’t all women be so lucky?”

  “That’s Archidike for you,” said Nikias. “The gods never made a wilder woman. No one can predict what she’ll do from one moment to the next.”

  “That’s the allure of her, I suppose,” Drakon said. “I went with her a time or two, when she worked for old Xanthes, but she fairly scared me off. Adventure and surprise are all right in their proper places. A man doesn’t those things in his bed.”

  “Maybe you don’t,” Nikias said, laughing.

  Rhodopis risked another quick glance over her shoulder. Archidike was making her rounds of the andron, pausing now and then to sling a back-handed compliment or a flirtatious challenge at the men she passed. And she was edging ever closer to the garden door—where Rhodopis lay with Drakon.

  “Every good hetaera must have her style,” Rhodopis said. “I take it ‘surprise’ is what this specimen has adopted for her own.”

  “I don’t think she puts it on as any sort of affectation,” Drakon said rather darkly. “That’s why she has so many admirers—like Nikias here.”

  “Oh? Is she quite popular?” Rhodopis was appalled at the flush of envy that coursed through her. The gods know damnably well, Archidike would still be toiling away for Xanthes if she hadn’t stolen my fortune. And if Amasis had never taken me, I’d still be toiling away for Xanthes, too, trying to earn it all back while she traipses around the city, pleased as a cock with ten extra tail feathers.

  “I should say so,” Drakon said. “Archidike is a rising star in the Memphis sky, though the gods may damn me if I can explain it.”

  Nikias flexed his fingers into an imitation of a lioness’s claws. He raked the air savagely. “That’s why!”

  “Here she comes,” Drakon said.

  “Nikias! Hard to believe Praxiteles let a sod like you come to his grand party.” Archidike’s voice rang like a temple cymbal in Rhodopis’ ears. It had been almost two years since she’d heard the woman who had once been her friend; the sound sent a shiver of mingled recognition and revulsion up Rhodopis’ spine. She sipped from her wine cup and did not look at the newcomer, praying fervently that Archidike would wander through the garden door and leave her in peace. But just as Nikias was framing a sarcastic reply, Archidike blurted, “What are you doing here?”

  In that moment, Rhodopis knew she had been recognized. Curse my luck, she thought bitterly. I had hoped I might get by for a few parties at least before I had to dole out any excuses.

  She raised her face languidly to Archidike, but she did not allow her eyes to focus. She couldn’t bear to really see the other woman’s face. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Did the Pharaoh let you out of your golden cage?” Archidike said. Then she laughed cruelly. “Or did he throw you out?”

  The men looked at one another—and at Rhodopis—with uneasy, puzzled expressions. Rhodopis sat up on the couch; Drakon followed, and made as if to stand. Rhodopis knew he intended to usher Archidike away on her behalf. For a moment, she was tempted to let her companion handle the nuisance of Archidike on his own. But she stayed Drakon with a hand on his thigh. If she, Rhodopis, did not put Archidike in her place now—and do it of her own accord—she would certainly lose the war of rumors and gossip that would follow. She must act decisively, and make Archidike look the fool before word of their confrontation could leave the andron.

  In her most cultured speech, Rhodopis said, “I am very sorry; you must have mistaken me for another woman.”

  Archidike snorted. “I have not, and you know it.”

  “Archidike,” Drakon said coolly, “you have made a mistake. This is Eulalia, newly arrived from Lesvos.”

  “If she’s Eulalia—” Archidike pointed, one sharp, lacquered nail almost scratching Rhodopis’ face— “then I’m an untouched virgin. Even a blind man could see that this is Rhodopis. You all remember—Rhodopis of the rose-gold slippers, whisked away to the Pharaoh’s court. What are you playing at?”

>   Rhodopis laughed lightly. “Now I’m certain you do have me confused with another woman. Or you’re jesting with these good men, and with poor me. I’ve never been to the Pharaoh’s palace in my life, let alone his court. I should be so lucky!”

  “I’m not joking.” Archidike’s voice sank to a low, threatening growl. “Nor am I confused. You’re either lying, or you’ve gone mad, and truly believe your own tale.”

  Rhodopis brushed fluttering fingers against her chest, giving a good show of offense. “I certainly have no reason to lie. Such a thing would soil my reputation, and my family’s. Perhaps you have heard of my family; my father is a well-known spice merchant from Lesvos, by the name of—”

  “Your family is poor, and from Thrace. And your father is dead.”

  Rhodopis laughed. “Do I sound like a Thracian? Gods forbid!” The men joined her, though their laughter had taken on a distinctly uncertain note. She turned to Drakon. “Are all the hetaerae in Memphis as coarse as this one—and as credulous? This poor creature is convinced I’m someone else. The dear thing must have an addled mind. I have heard such things can happen.”

  “What do you mean?” Drakon said.

  “Well…” Rhodopis lowered her lashes. “Perhaps it’s unkind to speak of it in front of this dear girl, her situation being what it is. But I’ve heard that if a woman isn’t careful who she takes into her bed—if she’s not clean, you see—she makes herself susceptible to illnesses. Sooner or later, such afflictions have a devastating effect on the mind. It’s tragic, really, for how can it be avoided? One never knows which women are clean or unclean.”

  Archidike lurched toward Rhodopis; Nikias and Zosimos both reached out at once to restrain her. “You bitch,” Archidike spat. “You lying, vile, contemptible bitch!”