Free The Golden Mean by Annabel Lyon

gnawed fiercely at it, snorting through his nose, his eyes rolling in his head.
    It took long, longer than I want to remember, even now. My father had time to tell me the name of the tool, a trepan, and to praise the antiquity of the procedure, practised even by the ancients. The blood was profuse, as with all scalp lacerations, and the man shat himself more than once.
    “You must tell me if you feel the sickness coming on,” my father told him, but the man was past talking at that point.
    I knew my father hoped to release the mucus in a dramatic stream, but by the time he withdrew the button of bone it was clear that would not happen. We both peered hopefully into the little black cavity, though my father was unwilling to bring a candle near so we might see better, and risk heating the brain. Heating and cooling in rapid succession were known to bring on the seizures, he explained. He seemed uncertain for a moment, still expecting that sudden gush, but then roused himself and pointed hopefully to the glossy quantity that had flowed from the man’s nose during the procedure. He instructed the slave who had sat on the man’s legs on the dressing of the wound, retrieved the bit, and patted the man’s shoulder affectionately before leaving the room.
    Downstairs we found the brother passed out on the kitchen table, a wine cup by his head. A woman stood nearby, her arms crossed over her chest. Her hair was hennaed orange and she wore a fine linen dress and a lot of jewellery. Her eyes were hard.
    “We are finished,” my father said, unnecessarily.
    “Did you see the demon?” I guessed she was the well brother’s wife.
    “We did not,” my father said.
    She gave him a small, clinking pouch: his payment.
    “Come,” he said to me. He had found his woman.
    “He won’t have died on my watch, anyway,” she said, seeing his dislike of her and needing to swat him back.
    My father didn’t answer her or look back, but put his arm around my shoulders and walked me out of the house. The sick man was still alive when we left the next morning.
    W E ARRIVED IN THE CITY on a late-summer afternoon three days later, the air swimming with heat and, we would learn, fever. My mother and Arimneste drew veils across their noses and mouths against the stench. My mother closed her eyes; Arimneste kept hers open. Arimnestus refused to sit with the women and rode with my father and me, annoying us with his constant burping. He was practising.
    The streets were empty; no one came out to see us rattling down the cobblestones in our few carts piled high with the stuff of home. I had never seen a settlement bigger than a village, let alone a city, let alone a royal capital, and felt like a country rube with my eyes popping out and my jaw hanging down. There were animals lying in the streets, rats mostly and some mangy dogs. I hopped off the cart to look closer.
    “Plague,” my father said, looking up from his book. I knew I had expressed an interest of which he approved. He caught my eye and I saw the encouragement there— look, look, tell me what you see . I picked up a rat by the tail and the flesh streamed from it, running with maggots. It had gone soft as a bad fruit on the side it lies on. I gave it a shake just to see the body drip from the little cage of rib bones.
    “Would you think that could happen to a man?” my father asked.
    I smiled despite myself, a smile he extraordinarily returned. We both shook our heads. The wonder of it!
    Our house turned out to be smaller than our home in Stageira, and poshly appointed. My father had bought it from the son of a government official who had recently died in the epidemic. I wondered in which room his body had dripped from his bones when they lifted him onto the plank to carry him out. My mother, grim-faced, withdrew with her women to the kitchen and emerged ten minutes later, smiling. Quality pots, she informed us. My father took the largest room for his dispensary and study and allotted