Thereafter she did not hurry matters. Eodan limped about with a crutch, ate and drank and slept enormously, scoured pots or helped old Mopsus the gardener. He spent much time down at the stables, where he soon had the friendship of the head groom, a dour Cappadocian who was believed to have been hatched rather than born since not even a mother could have loved him. Phryne did not understand how a man of intelligence—and Eodan had a good mind in his rough way—could sit hour after hour talking about currycombs and fetlocks and spavins and whatever else there was; but so it went and, after all, divine Homer dwelt lovingly on horses.
Washed, shaved, his hair cut and combed, a white tunic and sandals on him, Eodan might almost have been a Homeric warrior himself—Diomedes, perhaps, or Ajax the haughty. As he grew rested and fleshed out, his manners became milder, he snarled or cuffed at men less often, his smiles were sometimes nearly warm instead of a mere wolfish baring of teeth. But he dropped his green eyes for no one, and the house slaves who shared their room with him were kept at a frosty distance.
The major-domo was afraid of him. "I would not trust that barbarian, not one inch," he told Phryne. "My dear, you should have seen his back when he first bathed. I would not even try to count all the whip scars. And many slashes were new—he got them here, in the months we have had him, the last of them perhaps only yesterday! Mark my words, it is the sign of an unruly heart. It is such men who lead slave revolts. If he were mine, I would geld him and sell him to the lead mines."
"Some men were born gelded," said Phryne coldly, and left. She could almost see the crisscrossing of thin white lines on Eodan's shoulderblades. She avoided him for a while, uncertain why she did so.
And the springtime waxed. Each day the sun stood higher; each day a new bird-song sounded in the orchard. One morning fields and trees showed the finest transparent green, as if the goddess had only breathed on them in the night. And then at once, unable to wait, the leaves themselves burst out and the orchard exploded in pale fire.
It happened Cordelia was complaining of a headache again; she must lie in a dark room and make everyone creep by. Phryne, who considered her mistress as strong as a cow, found an excuse to leave the villa. She would gather apple blossoms and arrange them for Cordelia's delight.
The morning was still wet, after a short rain. Where the sun struck the grass, it flashed white. A thrush sat on a bough and chanted of all bright hopes; a milk cow grazed in a meadow, impossibly red. When Phryne went among the gnarled little trees, they shook down raindrops upon her. She took a low branch in her arms and buried her face in its flowers.
"Poor blooms," she whispered. "My poor babies. It is wrong to take away your springtime."
The knife bit at the twigs; she filled her arms with apple blossoms.
Eodan came from the villa. He crutched along as readily as a three-legged dog, bound for the stables carrying a mended bridle. The endlessly gossiping slaves had told Phryne the barbarian was clever with his hands.