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daughter,” Augustine said softly.
    â€œYes,” I said. “Are you your father’s son?”
    He did not reply but leaning back picked up the water jar again and passed it to me, steadying its weight while I drank. I was thirsty after all that talk and drank again.
    When I finished he stoppered it and set it down. “My father drinks and whores,” he said. “And so, no, I sincerely hope I am not my father’s son.”
    â€œI’m sorry,” I said, touching his hand, which lay between us, palm up, in the sand. Briefly his fingers closed on mine and then let go.
    I thought of my uncle and the misery of my aunt’s life. “Your mother . . .?” I trailed off, uncertain if this was something I had a right to ask.
    â€œHe thinks my mother doesn’t know about his unfaithfulness,” he said.
    â€œPerhaps she loves him anyway?”
    â€œYes,” he said. “Perhaps she does.”

    The sun had long since passed its zenith and was sinking in the west when I realized with a start that I had promised my aunt to return before sunset.
    â€œI must go,” I said, fumbling with my sandal straps.
    We returned the water jar and Augustine walked me home through streets awakening to the coming evening, workmen returning to work in the last few hours of light, women throwing open shutters to catch the cooling air. At the fountain at the top of my street, I stopped. Augustine passed back the basket and I balanced it on the fountain’s rim. We stood there awkwardly; all our ease together on the beach utterly fled.
    â€œNebridius,” Augustine said. He was dabbling his fingers in the fountain and would not look at me. “I love him dearly and would not hurt him for the world.”
    â€œMe neither,” I said. “I love him too.”
    â€œYes,” he said. “Of course.” He gave a small bow. “Thank you for today.” Suddenly I was the girl with the cat’s eyes and he was the young nobleman borrowing an old jar, his faultless courtesy a gleaming armor that concealed the man beneath.
    â€œI love him like a brother,” I said.
    â€œA brother?” Augustine repeated.
    â€œYes,” I said and, laughing, splashed him with water from the fountain. I turned and ran up the street. At the door of my aunt’s house I looked back and he was standing there in the falling dusk looking after me, water running down his face.

CHAPTER 6
    W e’ve a guest for dinner tonight,” my aunt told me one morning. “I want you home.”
    I was surprised for it was seldom anyone visited. My aunt had friends in the neighborhood, I knew, Christian women skilled as midwives, but they never came to the house, for fear of my uncle. In the evenings, after work, he sat at home and drank. Only when he staggered to his bed did I feel safe enough to close my eyes.
    I was annoyed that my time with Augustine would be curtailed. I was already late. Every moment I did not spend in his company seemed lifeless, dull, as if all the color had leached out of the world.
    By this time, Nebridius had been away a month. He had sent us word that he had been summoned by a messenger from the farm he had been visiting with news of his mother’s grave illness. He had hurried to his family estate to be with her and we had not heard from him since.
    Since Augustine and I first met, the upturned boat became our place of refuge, our private place. Beneath its curved and salt-scarred hull, shielded from the gaze of prying eyes, we told each other stories, laid down in words the pictures of our lives, and marveled there had ever been a time when we had not known each other, for life without the other seemed a thing impossible. The word love we were careful not to speak with our lips as if to do so would be to take a step irrevocable along a road but dimly figured, yet our bodies spoke it by holding hands, our eyes spoke it by seeking out the other, and when they