"What..." What are you going to do to me? he wanted to ask, but his lips felt clumsy and his tongue heavy, like an ox stood upon it and rendered him silent as Agamemnon's watchman.

But she wasn't going to poison him; at least there was that consolation. He reckoned that he shouldn't be surprised by it, or excessively reassured. Una Persson was more Penthesilea than Medea. If she wanted him dead it wouldn't be by poison.