“Maybe it’s a good thing you never got to Petra. What could you have done there? If the man’s rich, he’s powerful. You couldn’t have hurt him, and he could have hurt you. Got you locked up for being a nuisance if nothing else. As for her, she made her choice, didn’t she? She’d laugh to think of you trudging all those miles just to have a look at her. That’s all you’d have had, you know. Just a look.”
The room where he lay, with its thick mud roof, its thick, sun-defying walls, its vine-shrouded windows, was as cool as Eunice’s reasoning.
“You just lie and get better,” she said.
“I’ll look after you.” Getting better took a long time, and when he could stand, and had learned to walk again, the left leg still dragged and the left hand was not to be wholly trusted. He was in no shape to continue his journey and no longer felt the urge to do so. Nor could he ply his old trade again. What should he do?
He talked this over with Eunice, and she had the answer. For her it couldn’t have worked out better; she had always helped her father with the inn, and he had died only a short time before the good-hearted man had brought Ephorus to her door. She’d been waiting for a purchaser for the place, since innkeeping wasn’t a job for a woman alone. Why shouldn’t Ephorus stay and help her?
She did not, at that point, make any mention of what she had done for him or imply that he’d owed her anything. Ephorus, however, realised that he was in her debt and felt that now he was almost able-bodied he should stay and help her for a bit.
Eunice wove her net cunningly; she made him very comfortable, and Ephorus, who had never known a home, was susceptible to domestic order and ease. She coddled him and flattered him, listened, seemingly entranced, to his tales of his sea-faring days, forbade him to over-exert himself; it was his presence about the place that mattered, she said.
He drifted on; and when by little signs and hints she indicated that her objective was to get him into her bed, he drifted there, too. Grateful, not unflattered. She was surprisingly good in bed. He never asked, never even wondered, where she had learned such tricks. What he did tell himself was that in the ultimate act one woman in bed was very much like another. And out of it there was nothing, not a turn of the head, not a tone of the voice, to rouse an unwelcome memory or a hurtful comparison. When Eunice revealed her next objective, marriage, he drifted will-lessly into that, too.
There was no visible reason why they should not have become just another married couple, moderately happy, more than moderately comfortable; but almost immediately after the marriage their relationship deteriorated. Neither he nor she changed overnight, yet the changes came. Some obscure dissatisfaction in her turned her sour, she became a nagging scold; he sought refuge in the wine-jar and in dreams, which even as he entered them he knew would come to nothing, of making his escape. For several years there was the bond of bed, but that failed, at last. Under her nagging his indifference changed to active dislike, and that made him impotent; and that gave her something else to taunt him with.
The inn prospered, however. Eunice was a good manager, and Ephorus, though he worked slowly and only a little each day, had improved its appearance. It was known as a respectable place, and Vatinius, the centurion in charge of the small barracks not far away, always recommended to it the newly arrived legionaries, at the same, time tactfully avoiding it himself since men off duty are off duty and do not care to be overlooked.
It stood at the end of the street, set back in what, before Ephorus’ time, had been a yard, dusty, unshaded, uncared for. He’d planted trees around it, made stands for lanterns, set benches and tables under the trees. He’d sawn old casks in half, painted them green, and in Spring and Summer kept them filled with flowers.
Behind this pleasant courtyard stood the house; one big public room, the kitchen, and opening off the kitchen two small rooms, one where the two female slaves slept, one where Eunice and Ephorus fought their more private battles and Eunice, when she was not otherwise busy, made and mended clothes. Above there were five rooms, one the connubial chamber, the others for letting to travellers who could afford to pay
for privacy.At the back of the house, accessible from a side entry was a yard with a large water-trough in the centre of it. On two sides the yard was enclosed by a low platform, roofed over, and it was on this platform that most travellers slept. The third side was open to the orchard and garden; the fourth was occupied by a stable in which, in winter, the house cow and the ass, which was used for serious marketing, and for carrying firewood, lived. In summer they were turned into the orchard, often enough with a calf, a young pig, or a sheep, which Eunice, careful housekeeper that she was, was fattening up. The inn animals were never allowed to mingle with those of the travellers; transient animals had all kinds of diseases, from foot-rot to the itch; and many of them were so perpetually hungry, so accustomed to shouldering others aside in order to eat themselves, that any well-behaved animal in the enclosure would have starved. Eunice had explained that to the ignorant Ephorus years ago when he had suggested that their animals should share the yard and that the stable should be floored, opened on the side facing the yard and made into extra sleeping space. That was in the days when she still explained things; now she would merely have shouted and called him ignorant; but he’d stopped making suggestions long ago.
The snow, which he had sensed when he opened the shutters held off until almost sunset. By that time the animal enclosure and the platforms were almost full and Eunice was in a raging temper—and in her element. People who, had the weather been clement, would have hoarded their pennies and slept at small cost under the awning, came and asked for room in the house. Poorer people who, had the weather been clement, would have slept in the open, came and asked for room under the awning; the good manager, the bully who shared Eunice’s hide, had enjoyed themselves hugely, Ephorus thought to himself. She had anticipated this invasion at about this time; she had heard about the new tax rule some time before, and talking about it had betrayed her latent scorn and contempt of the people amongst whom she had spent her whole life.
“They’ll obey,” she said, ‘like sheep. Such a silly order, given to our people, would have led to rebellion.” She had laid in stores; enough to feed an army. She could feed all corners, and their beasts. But space she couldn’t make, though she did her best. She went to the edge of the platforms and cried, “Move along there! Move along, I said. You there, move along. You’re taking up room for three. It’s a bad night, shelter must be found. Take that child in your lap. Make room.”
She was having a wonderful time; she came back into the house, the snowflakes melting on her still-dark hair, and went into the room where supper was being served.
“Eat up I Others are waiting. I have many more to feed. Eat up, please.”
With swift competence, aided by the panting slaves, she served supper three times over, and then set about converting the big room into an extra sleeping space.
During all this haste and confusion and noise Ephorus stayed, as was his habit, inactive and apart. It was a curious thing, but never, even at her busiest, did Eunice make any demands upon him for help. She’d say, “Oh, get out of my way,” in an irritable tone if she happened to pass within a yard of him, but she did not suggest that he should carry a dish, full or empty, or go out into the yard and by shouting, pack one extra body on to the platform, or crowd one extra donkey into the enclosure. Her attitude towards his drinking was similarly negative; she would remark, nastily, that he was drunk again, would say that he had better lie down before he fell, but she never made any attempt to persuade him not to drink, seemed to ignore the frequency of his visits to the small, half-subterranean store where the wine was kept. A shrewd, impartial observer might have deduced ‘hat as he was, idle, drunken, will-less, she wanted him to be.
Tonight he had no place to sit; the house was crammed; his bed and Eunice’s and those of the two slaves would presently be spread in the kitchen. In every other place people, weary from travel, or, wishing to make sure of their sleeping space, were lying down. Because of the weather it was impossible to have any shutters but two on the leeward side of the house open, and soon the air was foetid, the stink of human