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PART ONE

Chapter One

I aods I have no husband nor child, nor hardly a friend, through whom they can hurt me My body, this lean carrion that still has to be washed and fed and have clothes hung about it daily with so es, they may kill as soon as they please The succession is provided for My crown passes to my nephew

Being, for all these reasons, free from fear, I rite in this book what no one who has happiness would dare to write I will accuse the gods, especially the god who lives on the Grey Mountain That is, I will tell all he has done toe between gods and od of the ues are not an answer I write in Greek as ht it to me It may soain lodge in this palace and read the book Then he will talk of it areat freedoods themselves

Perhaps their wise od could have defended himself if he had made an answer

I was Orual the eldest daughter of Tro of Glome The city of Glome stands on the left hand of the river Shennit to a traveller who is co up froal, which is the last town southward that belongs to the land of Glome The city is built about as far back from the river as a woman can walk in the third of an hour, for the Shennit overflows her banks in the spring In summer there was then dry mud on each side of it, and reeds, and plenty of waterfowl About as far beyond the ford of the Shennit as our city is on this side of it you coit (going all the time east and north) you cood of the Grey Mountain, who hates it He does not, however, live in the house of Ungit, but Ungit sits there alone In the furthest recess of her house where she sits it is so dark that you cannot see her well, but in suht may come down from the smoke-holes in the roof to show her a little She is a black stone without head or hands or face, and a very strong goddess My old master, e called the Fox, said she was the same whom the Greeks call Aphrodite; but I write all the nae

I will beginwith the day my mother died and they cut off my hair, as the custom is The Fox-but he was not with us then-said it is a custom we learned from the Greeks

Batta, the nurse, shore me and and arden which runs steeply up the hill behind Redival was er than I, and ere still the only children While Batta was using the shearsround, fro their breasts; but in between they were eating nuts and joking As the shears snipped and Redival's curls fell off, the slaves said, "Oh, what a pity! All the gold gone!"

They had not said anything like that while I was being shorn But what I remember best is the coolness of my head and the hot sun on the back ofmud houses, Redival and I, all that summer afternoon

Our nurse Batta was a big-boned, fair-haired, hard-handed woot her further north When we plagued her she would say, "Only wait till your father brings hoed times for you then You'll have hard cheese instead of honey-cakes then and skim milk instead of red wine Wait and see"

As things fell out, we got soot a stepmother There was a bitter frost that day Redival and I were booted (weto slide in the yard which is at the back of the oldest part of the palace, where the walls are wooden There was ice enough all the way frohill, ith frozen spills of h for sliding And out co out, "Quick, quick! Ah, you filthies! Co You'll see who's waiting for you there

My word! This'll be a change for you"

"Is it the Stepmother?" said Redival

"Oh, worse than that, worse than that; you'll see," said Batta, polishing Redival's face with the end of her apron "Lots of whippings for the pair of you, lots of ear-pullings, lots of hard work" Then ere led off and over to the new parts of the palace, where it is built of painted brick, and there were guards in their ar up on the walls In the Pillar Roo by the hearth, and opposite hi dress e kneell enough-traders who ca up their scales, so we knew they had been paid for so up a fetter, so we knew they must have sold our father a slave There was a short, thick-setbefore them, and we knew this must be the man they had sold, for you could still see the sore places on his legs where the irons had been But he did not look like any other slave we had ever known He was very bright-eyed, and whatever of his hair and beard was not grey was reddish

"Now, Greekling," said et a prince one of these days and I have a ht up in all the wisdom of your people Meanwhile practice on theirl, he can teach anything" Then, just before he sent us away, he said, "Especially the elder See if you can ood for" I didn't understand that, but I kneas like things I had heard people say of me ever since I could remember

I loved the Fox, as my father called hiht that a man who had been free in the Greeklands, and then been taken in war and sold far away a the barbarians, would be downcast And so he was souessed But I never heard him con slaves did) about the great s to cheer himself up with: "No man can be an exile if he re is as good or bad as our opinion makes it" But I think what really kept him cheerful was his inquisitiveness I never knew such aabout our country and language and ancestors and gods, and even our plants and flowers

That was how I cairls who are kept in her house, and the presents that brides have to make to her, and hoe sometimes, in a bad year, have to cut someone's throat and pour the blood over her He shuddered when I said that andunder his breath; but a moh more like the Babylonian than the Greek But come, I'll tell you a tale of our Aphrodite"

Then he deepened and lilted his voice and told how their Aphrodite once fell in love with the prince Anchises while he kept his father's sheep on the slopes of a rassy slopes towards his shepherd's hut, lions and lynxes and bears and all sorts of beasts caain in pairs to the delights of love But she dilory and uiled hiether into his bed I think the Fox had rip, and he went on to tell what followed; how Anchises woke fro in the door of the hut, not now like a oddess, and he covered his eyes and shrieked, "Kill me at once"

"Not that this ever really happened," the Fox said in haste "It's only lies of poets, lies of poets, child Not in accordance with nature" But he had said enough to let oddess was more beautiful in Greece than in Glome she was equally terrible in each

It was always like that with the Fox; he was asha poetry ("All folly, child") and I had to workand what he called philosophy in order to get a poeht ht by man withtravail and toil was the one he praised most, but I was never deceived by that The real lilt cahtness into his eyes ere off into Take me tothe apple-laden land or