Read The Walled Orchard for Free Online Page A

his cloak still up around his ears; but I could see his face. He was about twenty-two, with a long thin nose and sandy hair just starting to recede from his temples.
    ‘What’s your name?’ I asked him.
    ‘Callicrates,’ he replied. ‘I’m looking for the house of a man called Euthydemus son of Euxis, of Pallene.’
    ‘The house is down there,’ I said, ‘just before you get to the corner; but if you’re looking for Euthydemus himself, you’ll find him right behind you.’ For of course Euthydemus was my grandfather’s name and Euxis was his father, and our village and deme was Pallene.
    Callicrates looked round but could see nobody; then he caught sight of the body floating in the trough and started violently.
    ‘For God’s sake,’ he said, ‘what do you want to go playing tricks like that for? You nearly gave me a fit.’
    ‘Honestly,’ I said solemnly, ‘that’s Euthydemus there. I should know, because I’m his grandson, Eupolis. All the rest of us who were in the house are dead, except me. The God cured me, like I said.’
    Callicrates stared at me, as if I had just told him that Babylon had fallen. ‘Is that true?’ he said, after a moment.
    ‘Of course it’s true,’ I said. ‘If you don’t believe me, you can go and have a look for yourself, but I wouldn’t advise it. They all had the plague, you see.’
    He was silent for a very long time, staring at the knots on the thongs of his sandals as if he expected them to burst into flower. Then he turned his head and looked at me gravely.
    ‘Eupolis,’ he said, ‘I am your cousin, the son of your mother’s elder brother Philodemus. My father and I have been away at the war and we’ve only just come home. As soon as they told us about the plague my father went off to see if our house was all right, and he sent me to look for his sister.
    ‘I’m afraid she’s dead,’ I said gently, for I could tell that the shock of seeing my grandfather had unnerved him and I wanted to spare him any further pain; he was only a mortal and might be upset. ‘But she died at her spinning-wheel and I’m sure the Ferryman will take her over for free, since she was Athenian on both sides. Have you got any water in your bottle? I’m really thirsty and I don’t want to drink the water in the trough.’
    He handed me the bottle and I’m afraid I drank it all, without thinking where we would get any more. But Callicrates didn’t say anything, although I expect he was thirsty too. Then he opened his knapsack and handed me a piece of wheat bread, white and still quite soft, as good as cake.
    Callicrates smiled when he saw how much I was enjoying it, and he said that where he had been they ate wheat bread as a matter of course and imported all their wine from Judaea.
    I hope I haven’t given you the impression that Callicrates was a coward, because he wasn’t. He had made up his mind to go into the house, which not many men would have done, and the only reason he did it was for my sake. You see, he knew that if there was a lawsuit about property someone would have to give evidence about how everyone had died, and I was too young to take the oath. So he screwed his face even more tightly into his cloak, took a deep breath, and plunged in. He wouldn’t let me come with him, and I was secretly relieved, since I no longer felt that the people in the house had anything to do with me. He was gone about five minutes and then came back, shivering all over as if he had been out in the snow in nothing but a tunic.
    ‘Right,’ he said, ‘I’ve seen everything I need to see. Let’s go to my father’s house.’
    That sounded like an excellent suggestion, since I liked Philodemus; you may remember that he was the one who arranged for me to meet Cratinus, and he knew a lot of people and was always quoting from plays. He was a small, jolly man and I thought it would be more fun living with him than with my grandfather, who had never really liked me very