In all my travels from the Pillars of Hercules to Babylon, I have never met a more responsive woman. She let out a breath, something between a coo and a sigh. I snuggled against Bethesda, who had turned her back on the disturbance. "Someone at the door?" I mumbled, clearing my throat and keeping my eyes shut for a moment longer.Įco gave my shoulder a little slap of assent, his way of saying "yes" in the dark. I could even understand what he was saying. I recognized his touch then, as surely as one knows a familiar voice. He gripped my shoulder harder and shook it just a bit more firmly. He preferred to remain austerely silent, like the Sphinx, and to let his hands speak for him.
How was it possible, I wondered, that she could reach all the way over and around me to tug at my shoulder from behind?Įco never liked to make those grunting, half-animal noises eked out by the speechless, finding such measures degrading and embarrassing. I reached for her, making my lips into a kiss, running my hands over her body. The odor of her perfumed henna sent a quiver of erotic tingling below my waist. The shifting strands tickled my nose and lips. A mass of black hair had somehow settled across my face and neck. Rapping having failed to rouse me-generous helpings of Bethesda's fish and barley soup washed down with white wine had sent me fast asleep-Eco gingerly opened the door, tiptoed into the room, and shook my shoulder.īeside me Bethesda stirred and sighed. So Eco did what he had to do he made a sign for my visitor to wait in the doorway and came rapping gently at my door.
Hulking and reeking of garlic and stupidly rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Belbo might have intimidated my visitor, but I doubt that he could have gotten rid of him the stranger was persistent and twice as clever as Belbo is strong. Therefore, what else could Eco have done? He might have roused Belbo, my strongarmer. It was Eco who greeted my nocturnal visitor, but was unable to send him away, short of shooing at him the way a farmer shoos an errant goose from his doorway. Not surprisingly, it was Eco who heard the knock at the door in the second hour after nightfall, when everyone in the household had gone to bed. He is also a light sleeper, a habit held over from the wretched, watchful days of his childhood, before his mother abandoned him and I took him in from the street and finally adopted him. He has, in fact, the sharpest ears of anyone I've ever known. Eco was mute.īut he was not and has never been deaf. For all his fine qualities-his honesty and devotion, his cleverness, his uncanny agility-Eco was not well suited for answering the door.
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