Over the Wine-Dark Sea

7

Menedemos probably would have gone to Gylippos' house even without a good excuse. He knew that much about himself, from experience: that was how he'd got in trouble with the merchant he'd cuckolded in Halikarnassos. But he had a perfectly good excuse here - two perfectly good excuses, in fact, which he carried in a canvas sack.

When he knocked on Gylippos' door, the dried-fish merchant's majordomo, a stonefaced Italian of some sort named Titus Manlius, said, "Hail, sir. My master is waiting for you." He did speak Greek with an an accent different from Herennius Egnatius', so maybe Sostratos was right in guessing him a Roman.

As Menedemos walked across the courtyard toward the andron, his eye naturally went to the dark corner near the stairs where Phyllis had bent herself forward for him. The corner wasn't dark now, of course, not with the warm sun of southern Italy shining down on it. Menedemos had hoped for a glimpse of Gylippos' wife, but he was disappointed in that. He shrugged as he walked into the andron. He wasn't sure he could have told her from a slave woman, anyhow. All he really knew was that she was short and young - and friendly, very friendly.

"Hail," Gylippos said. "Have some wine. Have some olives." He pointed to a bowl on the round three-legged table in front of him.

"Thank you." Menedemos popped one into his mouth, worked off the pulp with his teeth and tongue, and spat the pit onto the pebbles of the floor mosaic.

Gylippos pointed to the canvas sack. "So those are the chicks, eh?"

"Either that or I've caught a kakodaimon in there," Menedemos replied with a grin.

The purveyor of dried fish chuckled. "Let's see 'em."

"Right." Menedemos upended the sack on the floor. Out spilled the two peafowl chicks. "Here - I brought some barley for them." Menedemos scattered the grain over the mosaic. The chicks started contentedly pecking away. They were a good deal bigger than newly hatched chickens, brownish above and buff below. The little noises they made were louder and sharper than ordinary chicks', too, though not nearly so raucous as those of adult peafowl.

"I see they can take care of themselves," Gylippos said, and Menedemos dipped his head. "Figures that they would - most birds of that sort can," the fish dealer went on; he was no fool. "Still, it's good to see with your own eyes. Now - d'you know how to tell the peacocks from the peahens when they're this little?"

"I'm sorry, but I don't," Menedemos replied. "These are the first chicks I've seen, too, you'll remember. Either way, though, you'll have something unique in Great Hellas."

"The fellow who got something unique in Great Hellas will be heading out of Great Hellas pretty soon: the gods-detested Samnite you sold the grown peacock to," Gylippos grumbled.

"He paid for it, too," Menedemos answered. "I'm not asking nearly so much for the little ones." He ate another olive and spat out the pit. One of the chicks gulped it down. Menedemos wondered whether it could get nourishment from the pit or would use it as a gizzard stone.

"Well, how much are you asking?" Gylippos asked.

"A mina and a half apiece," Menedemos said lightly.

"A hundred and fifty drakhmai?" Gylippos howled. "By the dog of Egypt, Rhodian, either you're mad or you think I am."

Dickers always began with such cries. Menedemos sold the two birds for two Tarentine minai, just about the price he'd wanted to get. "My cousin will curse me when I get back to the house where we're staying," he complained, not wanting Gylippos to know how pleased he was.

Gylippos laughed. "He's probably off spending the money you make, screwing that barbarian with the ugly whey-colored skin and the hair like copper. He's welcome to her, you ask me."

"I'm with you." Menedemos laughed, too. He was far more likely to be accused of squandering silver on women than was his cousin.

"Speaking of which," Gylippos went on, "which of the house slaves did you have at the symposion? None of them owns up to it, and they usually brag about such things."

Alarm shot through Menedemos, though he did his best not to show it. One of the chicks wandered over and pecked experimentally at his toe. He thought fast while shooing it away. "I didn't ask her name," he said when he straightened. "It was dark - I can't even tell you what she looks like. But I will tell you this: I gave her three oboloi."

"Ah. That could be it." The dried-fish merchant looked wise. "I suppose she thinks I'd take it away from her. She ought to know better - I'm no skinflint, not like some people I could name - but you never can tell with slaves."

"True." Menedemos let out a sigh of relief. Gylippos didn't suspect him. Gylippos didn't suspect his own wife, either. Maybe Phyllis was good at keeping her affairs secret, or maybe she hadn't strayed till she met Menedemos. He preferred the latter explanation.

"Do you know," Gylippos said, "I offered Herennius Egnatius ten minai for the peacock, and he wouldn't take it. I still say it's not right to let him go off with a prize like that instead of selling it to a Hellene."

"Well, O best one, if you'd offered me ten minai, you'd have a peacock in your courtyard right now. Since you didn't . . ." Menedemos shrugged.

Gylippos gave him a sour look. Before Herennius Egnatius bought the peacock, he hadn't thought it was worth ten minai, or even five. He wanted it more because somebody else had it. Menedemos thought he was entitled to look sour himself, too. He would have loved to get ten minai for the bird. Because of her many rowers, sailing in the Aphrodite cost a lot more than a regular merchantman would have. The two chicks he'd just sold Gylippos were worth about three days of wages for the crew. Sostratos was the one who did most of the mumbling over a counting board, but Menedemos worried about turning a profit, too.

Instead of scowling, though, he gave Gylippos a broad, friendly smile, one so charming that the Tarentine couldn't help smiling back. Gylippos wouldn't have smiled had he known what Menedemos was thinking: I will lay your wife again, by the gods. Do I want her more because you've got her? What if I do?

Gylippos called to Titus Manlius. His majordomo went off, soon to return with a leather sack pleasantly full of silver. Menedemos opened the sack and began to count the coins. "Don't you trust me?" Gylippos inquired in injured tones.

"Of course I trust you," Menedemos lied politely. "But accidents can happen to anyone. With the money out in the open between us, there's no room for doubt." Before long, he was saying, "A hundred ninety-three . . . ninety-five . . . This nice fat tetradrakhm makes a hundred ninety-nine . . . and a last drakhma for two hundred. Everything's just as it should be."

"I told you so." Gylippos still sounded huffy.

"So you did." Menedemos started scooping the coins back into the sack. "When you sell your fish, best one, do you always take your customers' payments on trust?"

"Those thieves? Not likely!" But Gylippos didn't, wouldn't, see that anyone could reckon him anything less than a paragon of virtue. Menedemos sighed and shrugged and said his farewells.

Titus Manlius closed the door behind him as if glad to see him go. The Italian slave didn't seem to approve of him. Menedemos chuckled. From what he'd seen, the majordomo didn't seem to approve of anyone, save possibly his master. Some slaves got to be that way: more partisan for the families they served than half the members of those families.

Menedemos didn't go straight back to the house he shared with Sostratos. Instead, he walked around the corner so he could look up to the second-story windows. The women's quarters would be up there. Phyllis and the house slaves were doing whatever women did when shut away from the prying eyes of men: spinning, weaving, drinking wine, gossiping, who could say what all else?

The shutters were thrown back to let some air into the women's rooms. Looking up from the dusty street, Menedemos could see only ceiling beams stained with smoke from the braziers that would fight the cold in wintertime. Experimentally, he whistled one of the tunes the flutegirls had played the night of the symposion.

A woman came to the closest window and looked out at him. She was small and dark and young - not any great beauty, not to Menedemos' eyes, but not ugly, either. Was she the one who'd leaned forward against the wall for him? He started to call her name, but checked himself. He silently mouthed it: Phyllis?

She dipped her head. Her own lips moved without a sound: Menedemos? He bowed low, as he might have to Ptolemaios or Antigonos or another of Alexander's generals. She smiled. Her teeth were very white, as if she took special pains to keep them that way. She mouthed something else. Menedemos couldn't make out what it was. He did his best to look comically confused. It must have worked, for Phyllis raised a hand to her mouth to keep from laughing. Then she repeated herself, moving her lips more exaggeratedly.

Tomorrow night. This time, Menedemos understood what she was saying. He blew her a kiss, waved, and hurried off. When he looked back over his shoulder as he rounded the corner, she was gone.

You're mad. He could hear Sostratos' voice inside his head. You're a stupid little cockproud billy goat, and you deserve whatever happens to you. That wasn't Sostratos' voice; it was his father's, and it held more than a little gloating anticipation.

He didn't care. For years, he'd made a point of not listening to Sostratos, and his father was back in Rhodes. If I can sneak over here and get it in, I'll do it, by Aphrodite's tits. That was his own voice, and he heard it louder and stronger than either of the other two.

Maibia looked over at Sostratos from a distance of perhaps a palm and a half; the bed they shared in Lamakhos' establishment was none too wide. "Sure and you're so rich and all," she said, "so why don't you buy me for your very own self?"

Sostratos had heard ideas he liked much, much less. He enjoyed himself with the Keltic girl even more than he'd expected. If she didn't enjoy herself with him, she was artful at concealing it.

Of course, she might well have been artful at concealing it. What girl in a brothel didn't hope to escape it by becoming a rich man's plaything? He ran a hand along her smooth, pale curves. She purred and snuggled against him. "I have something for you," he said.

"Do you, now?" Maibia didn't speak Greek according to any rules of grammar Sostratos recognized, but her odd turns of phrase only made the language more interesting. "And what might that be?"

"It might be anything," Sostratos replied, precise as usual. "It is . . ." He reached down and picked up a small bundle of woolen cloth closed with twine that lay on the rammed-earth floor with his tunic and sandals. "This, or rather, these." He handed Maibia the bundle.

She fumbled at it. With her long, pointed fingernails, she made short work of the knot he'd tied to keep it closed. "Ahh!" she said when she saw the earrings inside. "Are they gold, now, or nobbut brass?" Before Sostratos could answer, she bit one. She squeaked in delight. "Sure and they are gold! What a sweet man y'are! How can I be after thanking you?"

"Oh, you might think of something," Sostratos answered lightly, though his heart pounded in anticipation.

And she did. By the time they finished, he was ready to stagger back to the rented house and sleep for a long, long time. As he put on his chiton, Maibia said, "You could be doing this every day if you were to buy me, now."

"If I did this every day, I'd fall over dead before long," Sostratos said.

"Not a big, strong man like your honor," she said with a shake of the head that sent coppery locks flying.

"I meant it as praise for you," he said, which made her eye him from under lowered lids and tempted him not to leave no matter how sated he was. But, though his body might have been satisfied, his curiosity never was. He asked, "How did you come to be a slave? Why aren't you up in the north of Italy married to a Keltic solder?"

"Indeed and I might have been, were it not for three Roman traders, bad cess to 'em forevermore," she answered. "I was out in the fields minding the cows - 'tis a young man's job, but my father had no sons left alive - when they came along the road. They saw me and decided I was worth more nor whatever they had to sell. They lured me close by asking where they might be after finding water, then laid hold of me and carried me off. It wasna far to take me out of the Keltic country, and they got me away without a man of my village the wiser. They raped me and they sold me and" - she shrugged - "here I am."

Sostratos dipped his head. Most slaves not born to servitude had some such tale of horror to tell.

Maibia went on, "I look at that Titus Manlius, the which is majordomo to Gylippos, and I laugh to know it can happen to a Roman, too - though likely them as caught him didna hike up his tunic, with him so ugly and all."

"So he is a Roman, then?" Sostratos said. "I have to tell you, I can't keep all these different Italian tribes straight. It's not likely that any of them will ever amount to much."

When he kissed Maibia good-bye, she clung to him and murmured, "Would you not like to be after taking me along thee now?"

One of his eyebrows rose. He said, "My dear, you are very sweet, and great fun in bed. I am going to tell you something that will help us get along better: don't nag me. The more you tell me to do something, the more likely you are to make me want not to do it. Have you got that?"

"Aye," she said softly. A spark of anger flashed in her green eyes, but she did her best to hide it, adding only, "You're a cool one, aren't you?"

"So people keep telling me," Sostratos said, and went on his way.

She wants me to fall in love with her, he thought as he walked back to the house. Men who fall in love spend a lot of money and do all sorts of other foolish things. Menedemos seemed to fall in love with at least one woman in every city he visited. The life of a trader, never staying very long in any one place, probably kept him from landing in even worse trouble with some of them than he found.

Menedemos was beaming when Sostratos returned to the house. He was also singing one of the songs from the symposion at Gylippos' house. Sostratos pointed an accusing finger at him. "You're after another go with the fish merchant's wife!"

"I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about, my dear fellow." Menedemos could be most annoying when he tried to seem most innocent.

"Not much, you haven't," Sostratos said.

"Oh, keep quiet," his cousin said, and then, turning the tables on him, "While you've been out buying trinkets for your mistress and screwing yourself silly, I've been doing business. Krates finally paid our price for a peahen."

"That is good," Sostratos said. "We're down to two of the miserable things now, and all these chicks." The little birds ran all over the courtyard, peeping and squawking and pecking at grain and at bugs and lizards and, every now and then, at one another.

"I bought a goose to help the peahens sit on the eggs that haven't hatched yet," Menedemos said. "From all I've seen, they don't make the best of mothers."

"No, they don't," Sostratos agreed. "It's a good thing the chicks can take care of themselves almost as soon as they hatch, because they need to." He glanced over to the goose, which indeed showed more interest in sitting on a nest than did either of the two remaining peahens. With a sigh, he went on, "I am sorry that one stupid bird jumped into the sea."

"So am I," Menedemos replied, "but neither one of us can do anything about it now." He raised an eyebrow. "Are you going to buy that little Kelt - no, by the gods, she's not little: that big Kelt, I mean - and take her along with you?"

"She wants me to," Sostratos said.

"Of course she does," Menedemos said. "If you were stuck in a brothel, wouldn't you want to get out?"

"It'd be a pretty desperate brothelkeeper who put me in amongst his pretty boys," Sostratos observed, and startled a laugh out of his cousin. He went on in more serious tones. "She's very pretty - "

"If you say so," Menedemos broke in.

"I think she is, which makes it true for me," Sostratos said. "She's pretty, and she has plenty of reason to treat me well, and - "

Menedemos interrupted again: "What more do you want?"

"Someone who treats me that way even though she doesn't have any special reason to," Sostratos answered. "But we weren't talking about me. We were talking about you, at least till you changed the subject. You and this Phyllis . . ."

"Yes?" Menedemos said when he paused.

"Never mind," Sostratos mumbled. Menedemos again raised an eyebrow, this time in astonishment. But Sostratos realized he'd just undercut his own argument. Gylippos' wife had no special, selfinterested reason to bestow her favors on Menedemos. She'd done it anyway. No wonder he was eager to get back to her. With another sigh, Sostratos said, "For the gods' sake, be careful. I'm not the seaman you are; I don't want to have to take the Aphrodite back to Rhodes by myself."

"I'm so glad you care." Menedemos chuckled. "When have I not been careful?"

"Halikarnassos springs to mind," Sostratos said dryly.

"I got away," his cousin answered.

"So you did, but you can't go back there," Sostratos pointed out. "And we're not ready to leave Taras in a hurry, the way we were in Halikarnassos. You could put the ship in trouble, not just yourself." He hoped that would get through to Menedemos if nothing else did.

But Menedemos just reached up to pat him on the back and said, "Everything will be fine. You'll see."

Sostratos threw his hands in the air. He wasn't going to change his cousin's mind. "Be careful," he repeated. He wished he hadn't thought about the difference between a woman who gave herself because she wanted to and one who did it for money. Now he didn't feel right about urging Menedemos to slake his lust in a brothel, no matter how expedient that advice would have been.

Menedemos grinned at him. "I'll tell you all about it in the morning."

"I don't think I'll want to hear," Sostratos said, which made Menedemos' grin wider. But then Sostratos thought, I hope you'll have the chance to tell me in the morning. He spat into the bosom of his tunic to avert that omen, even if he hadn't said the words aloud. Menedemos looked puzzled. Sostratos did not explain.

The sun seemed to be taking forever to set. Menedemos was sure it had gone down much earlier the day before. Once twilight had finally faded from the western sky, he walked to the door of the rented house and said, "I'm going out for a while."

Aristeidas was standing watch at the door. "See you later, then, skipper," he said. "You're not going to hire a torchbearer or two?"

"No. I know where I'm going," Menedemos answered. Aristeidas laughed, having a pretty good idea of what that was likely to mean. Menedemos, however, wasn't joking. He'd spent part of the day going along the streets and alleys that lay between this house and Gylippos'. If something went wrong - Aphrodite, prevent it, he thought - and he had to flee, he wouldn't flee blindly.

I hope I won't. That was the first thought through his mind when he stepped out into the street. Nothing looked the same as it had in daylight. He had to look around to find Zeus' wandering star - now considerably lower in the southwest than it had been in the early evening when the Aphrodite first set out from Rhodes - to get his bearings and remember which way to go.

He counted street corners as he made his way toward Gylippos'. Can I do this if I'm running for my life? he wondered, and then angrily tossed his head. I'm getting as jumpy as Sostratos. He tried to imagine his cousin going off to make love to another man's wife. After a moment, he tossed his head again. The picture refused to take shape in his mind.

Nevertheless, he kept counting corners. He wasn't running for his life now. He was going quietly, cautiously, trying to attract no one's notice. Few men with good intentions walked about after dark in a polis. Fewer still went without a torchbearer or, sometimes, a party of torchbearers to light their way. When Menedemos heard footsteps coming up a street he was about to cross, he ducked into the deepest shadow he could find and waited. Two men went by, talking in low voices. He didn't think they were speaking Greek. He had no desire to make their acquaintance and find out for certain.

Was this Gylippos' house? He cocked his head to one side and studied it, stroking his chin the while. The skin felt smooth; he'd shaved that afternoon, using scented oil to soften his whiskers. After a bit, he decided it wasn't; the line of the roof didn't seem right. But he was getting close, unless he'd completely miscounted - in which case, Phyllis would be miffed and Sostratos relieved.

"There it is!" he hissed. And he'd even come to the street under the window to the women's quarters. Lamplight slipped through the slats of the shutter. If I could navigate this well by sea, I'd count myself lucky. He whistled the tune that had drawn Phyllis' notice before.

For some little while, nothing happened. Menedemos kept whistling. Then, around at the front of the house, the door came open with a scrape of the timbers against the rammed-earth floor of the front hall. Menedemos hurried inside. The door closed behind him. A woman - she had to be a house slave, for she spoke in accented Greek - said, "Go on upstairs. She will be waiting."

Menedemos was already hurrying across the courtyard toward the stairway: he knew well enough where it lay. He'd got more than halfway up before pausing in the darkness. What would surely have occurred to his cousin before entering Gylippos' house now struck him. What if this was a trap? What if, instead of Phyllis or along with Phyllis, Gylippos waited up there, and with him friends with knives or swords or spears? They'd have him where all his charm wouldn't do the least bit of good.

Of course, if they were waiting up there chuckling to themselves, they already had Menedemos where they wanted him. What was he to do now, turn around, dash down the stairs, and run for the door? He tossed his head. Would divine Akhilleus have done such a thing? Would resourceful Odysseus?

Resourceful Odysseus would have had too much sense to get himself into a spot like this in the first place, Menedemos thought. Resourceful Odysseus, unlike Gylippos, had also been lucky enough to marry a faithful wife.

The hesitation on the stairs lasted no more than a couple of heartbeats. Then, as if angry at himself for wasting time, Menedemos raced up to the women's quarter. One door stood slightly ajar. A lamp inside the room - if he had his bearings, the room from which Phyllis had looked out at him - spilled dim, flickering light into the hallway. He went to that doorway and whispered her name.

His own came back as softly: "Menedemos?"

He opened the door, slipped inside, and closed it after him. She lay waiting on the bed, a large himation covering her. His eyes flicked this way and that. No Gylippos. No armed friends. Everything was the way it was supposed to be. Even so, he couldn't help asking, "Where's your husband?"

"His brother is having a symposion," Phyllis answered. "Some little slave girl will be giving Gylippos what he wants tonight. And so - " She threw aside the mantle. She was naked beneath it, her body pale as milk in the lamplight. "You can give me what I want."

"I'll do my best." Menedemos pulled his chiton off over his head. As he lay down beside her, he asked, "The slaves won't blab?"

Phyllis tossed her head. "Not likely. I treat them better than Gylippos does. If he gets home early, they'll warn us." She reached for him. "But I don't want to think about Gylippos, not now."

Like any man among the Hellenes, Menedemos was in the habit of using women for his own pleasure. Here was a woman using him for hers. He smiled as his mouth came down on her breast. She might be using him for her pleasure, but he'd get some, too. She growled down deep in her throat and pressed his head to her.

Presently, she crouched on all fours at the edge of the bed. When Menedemos started to choose the way that would ensure she didn't need to worry about conceiving, she tossed her head. "That always hurts," she said. "And I'd sooner have your seed sprout in there than his."

"All right." Menedemos spread his legs a little wider and began anew. He went slowly, stretching out his own pleasure - and, incidentally, Phyllis'. Soon she was thrusting back against him as hard as he drove into her. She let out a little wailing cry like the one she'd made down in the courtyard the night of the symposion. A moment later, Menedemos spent himself, too.

Being a young man, he needed only a very little while to recover. When he began again, Phyllis looked over her shoulder at him in surprise. "Gylippos would already be snoring," she said.

"Who?" Menedemos answered. They both laughed.

Again, he took his time. For the first round, he'd chosen to; for the second, he had to. Even after Phyllis' cat-wail of pleasure burst from her, he went on and on, building toward his own peak.

He was almost there when the front door to Gylippos' home opened. "Master!" a house slave exclaimed, louder than she needed to. "What are you doing back so soon?"

Phyllis' gasp, this time, had nothing to do with delight. As her husband growled, "My idiot brother and I had a quarrel, that's what," she jerked away from Menedemos. He hissed in protest, but then Gylippos' voice came from the very foot of the stairs: "I blacked his eye, the decayed, impotent monkey."

"Oimoi!" the house slave exclaimed. She went on, "Master, I think the mistress is asleep. She didn't expect to see you till tomorrow morning."

"She'll have a surprise, then," Gylippos said, and started up the stairs.

Menedemos grabbed his chiton. Phyllis pointed to the window as she blew out the lamp. Down below in the courtyard, the slave woman asked Gylippos something else, trying to delay him. Menedemos didn't hear what it was. He flung the tunic out the window, then scrambled out himself. Instead of just leaping, he hung from the sill by his hands for a moment before letting go and dropping to the street: that made the fall as short as possible.

Even so, he turned an ankle when he hit. Biting down hard against an exclamation of pain, he grabbed the chiton as Gylippos spoke from Phyllis' bedroom: "What was that? Is there a burglar trying to break in?"

As Menedemos limped around a corner as fast as he could go, he heard Phyllis answer, "I think it was just a dog, O husband of mine."

"Pretty big for a dog. Pretty clumsy for a dog, too," Gylippos said dubiously. He must have looked out the window, for a moment later he continued, "I don't see any dog. But I don't see any burglar, either, so I suppose it's all right." Maybe he turned away from the window and back toward his wife - his voice was harder for Menedemos to hear when he went on, "Come here."

"I obey," Phyllis said, as demurely as if no other thought had ever entered her mind, no other man had ever entered her body.

Gylippos didn't get what he wanted from a flutegirl or a dancer tonight, so he'll take take what he can get from his wife, Menedemos thought as he wriggled back into his chiton. He hadn't quite got everything he wanted from Phyllis himself. Inconsiderate of Gylippos, went through his mind. Why couldn't he have waited just a little longer to pick a fight with his brother?

He took his bearings. Gylippos' house lay in the central part of Taras, the part where a neat grid of streets superseded the jumble of lanes and alleys going every which way marking the rest of the town. That made things easier. As soon as Menedemos figured out which way was west, he started counting corners. His ankle hurt when he put weight on it, but it bore him.

He had one bad moment: three or four burly men, plainly bent on no good, padded up a north-south street just before he crossed it. But he'd stayed in the shadows and done his best to move quietly. They kept on going without so much as turning their heads his way. He let out a silent sigh of relief, waited till he was sure they'd passed, and headed on toward the rented house.

When he knocked on the door, he expected Aristeidas to be the one who made sure he was himself and not a robber too clever for his own good. But instead, he heard his cousin's voice: "Is that you, Menedemos?"

"Almonds!" Menedemos quavered in a high, thin falsetto. "Who wants to buy my salted almonds?"

Sostratos opened the door. "If I wanted almonds, I'd buy them in the shell and crack them on your hard head," he said. "You're back sooner than I thought you would be. No all-night debauch?"

"Afraid not," Menedemos said as he came in. Sostratos closed the door behind him. He went on, "I had a good time. You don't need to worry about that." He still wished Gylippos had waited a bit longer before coming home from his brother's, but leaping out of the window, landing badly, and having to limp away made not quite finishing his second round seem much less urgent than it had a little while before.

Altogether too observant for his own good, Sostratos noticed the limp even by the weak light of the single torch burning in the courtyard. "What happened to you?" he demanded. "Does Gylippos know who you are?"

"No, he doesn't," Menedemos answered. "He's not even sure I'm anybody, if you know what I mean. He got into a fight at his symposion, and left in a huff. That's why I had to go out the window."

"You're lucky you didn't break your leg, or maybe your neck," Sostratos said. "Is a woman really worth running that kind of risk?"

"If I hadn't thought so, I wouldn't have gone there, would I?" Menedemos said, a little testily. Looking back on it, he supposed it hadn't been worth the risk, but he would sooner have gone up before a Persian torturer than admit that to his priggish cousin. If Phyllis wanted him to pay her another visit, he knew he just might do it.

"Foolishness," Sostratos said.

"Yes, O best one." Menedemos used the honorific with intent to wound. By Sostratos' scowl, he succeeded. He said, "And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to sleep. It's been a busy night." Trying to walk as straight as he could, he headed for the bedchamber. His ankle complained. So did Sostratos. He ignored both of them.

A house slave at Lamakhos' brothel shook her head, as barbarians were wont to do. "Maibia does not want to see you today," she said.

"What?" Sostratos stared as blankly as if she'd spoken Oscan or Latin rather than pretty good Greek. "She can't do that!" With a shrug, the slave just repeated herself. Sostratos started to push past her. A couple of other slaves - men: toughs with the look of bouncers - appeared behind her. He checked himself. "Let me talk to Lamakhos, then." The woman nodded and went away.

"Hail, friend," the brothelkeeper said, his smile still broad and, Sostratos judged, still false.

"Hail," Sostratos replied. "We had a bargain, you know."

"Yes, I do know." Lamakhos shrugged. "Women are funny, that's all I can tell you."

"We had a bargain," Sostratos repeated: for him, that was sacred. Lamakhos shrugged again. Sostratos nervously cracked his knuckles. "Is she angry at me? If I did something to offend her, I'll apologize."

Lamakhos turned to the slave woman. "Go find out." She nodded again and hurried off in the direction of Maibia's chamber.

When she came back, she spoke to Sostratos: "She says it is not that. She says you should come back tomorrow. Maybe then."

Realization smote. She's playing at being a hetaira. A girl in a brothel had to take her customers as they came, do what they wanted when they wanted it. A high-class courtesan, on the other hand, had the looks and the charm and the wit to take men on her terms, not theirs. That made them more alluring, of course - if you had to persuade them, that showed, or seemed to show, they really wanted you.

Do I let her get away with it? Sostratos plucked at his beard. Maybe Maibia thought he really had fallen head over heels in love, in which case he would put up with anything from her. If she thought that, she was mistaken. What Menedemos thought of as foreign homeliness attracted him - but love? He tossed his head. He couldn't imagine falling in love with someone with whom he couldn't talk seriously . . . and Maibia's mental horizons were no wider than was to be expected of a girl kidnapped from a Keltic village and sold to a brothelkeeper.

That still didn't answer his question. He'd given Lamakhos a break on the price of the silk for free access to the girl. He supposed - no, he was certain - Lamakhos could make Maibia give herself to him now. But that would only make her sullen, and Sostratos wasn't one of those who enjoyed his girls resentful. Had he been, he would have bedded the Thracian slave back home more often.

Or he could ask Lamakhos for the five-drakhma discount back. He could - but the brothelkeeper would laugh in his face and tell him to go to law. The fuss and feathers would prove more trouble than the money was worth, and what were his chances of getting a fair judgment, even against a brothelkeeper, in a polis not his own?

"Well?" Lamakhos said. "Shall I go shake this nonsense out of her?"

"No, never mind," Sostratos answered - the blunt question made up his mind for him. "I'll come back tomorrow."

As he turned to go, he saw contempt in Lamakhos' eyes. The brothelkeeper tried to hide it behind his friendly mask. His slaves didn't bother. "Pussy-whipped," one of them said to the other, not quite softly enough to keep Sostratos from hearing. His ears tingled, but he kept walking.

Back at the rented house, Menedemos said the same thing. "Complain all you want about me and Phyllis," he added, "but that's nothing beside letting a barbarian slave lead you around by the prick."

"No, no, no - you don't understand," Sostratos said. "She isn't. I'm not mad for her, the way men get when they're assotted of a woman. By the gods, I'm not."

"Then why didn't march right in there and screw her?" his cousin demanded. "You let yourself look like a fool in front of a whoremaster."

"Maybe a little," Sostratos admitted - though it was more than a little. "But I'm not going to buy the girl and take her with me. This way, her owner will start thinking of her as somebody who could be a hetaira: after all, didn't she have the merchant from Rhodes wrapped around her finger? She'll have an easier time of it after I'm gone. Maybe she'll even get the chance to buy herself free."

His cousin gave him a quizzical look. "You'd never catch me acting the fool for the sake of some slave girl."

"You probably wouldn't catch me doing it back in Rhodes," Sostratos said. "Here in Taras" - he shrugged - "who cares?"

Menedemos didn't seem altogether convinced. "I still think she's got you by the balls, and you're making up excuses."

"Think whatever you like," Sostratos answered. "You'll see."

But when he went to Lamakhos' the next day, he had all the earmarks of a worried lover. He sighed with relief when the house slave said Maibia would deign to see him. "I brought her a present," he said, and showed the slave a small vial of cloudy green glass.

"Maybe she will like that," the slave said, but her eyes showed her scorn.

Maibia waited inside the chamber where they'd joined before. Sostratos had expected her to be naked, but she wore a chiton of the Koan silk Lamakhos had bought from him. Her nipples pushed against the filmy fabric; he could see their rosy pinkness through it. Down below, the thin silk showed him the groove between her legs - like most women who lived among Hellenes, she singed away the hair that grew around it.

"You look - lovely." Sostratos' voice sounded hoarse even in his own ears. He might not be madly in love with the Keltic girl, but that didn't mean he didn't want her. Oh, no, it didn't mean that at all.

"Indeed and I'm glad you think so," she said, cocking her hip at a provocative angle. She pointed to the glass vial. "And what might you have for me there?"

Sostratos started to say, I might have anything, but he'd used that joke before. Some people repeated themselves endlessly, not even noticing they were doing it. He wasn't - he hoped he wasn't - that sort of fool. Other sorts? Possibly. He handed her the vial. "It's rose perfume from Rhodes," he answered.

Maibia opened, sniffed, and sighed. "Sweet it is - like you." She dabbed on a little, then closed the vial and cast her arms around his neck. He could feel her body through the silk chiton as if she were bare, too.

Before very long, she was. The next little while passed most enjoyably indeed, at least for Sostratos. Maibia kissed him on the end of the nose, then leaned down and bestowed another, similar, kiss. "There, you see?" she purred. "Was I not worth waiting for?"

That brought Sostratos around to what he'd come to the brothel for - to one of the reasons he'd come to the brothel - faster than he'd expected. He sat up in bed and stroked Maibia's hair, which was a distracting mistake. "There's something you need to understand," he said.

"And that is?" Maibia found a way of her own to be distracting. She glanced up at him, mischief in her eyes. "How soon your spear's ready to pierce my flesh, now?"

"No." Sostratos tossed his head. To prove he meant it, he sat up in bed and pulled away from her. "What you need to understand is, I'm not nearly so wild for you as Lamakhos and his slaves think, and you're not going to squeeze me dry no matter how hard you try. The harder you try, in fact, the more annoyed you'll make me."

His tone got through to her. She was mercenary - considering what life had given her, she had to be mercenary - but she wasn't stupid. Fear replaced mischief on her face. "Why didn't you just have 'em thump me, then?" she asked sullenly. "I know some who'd take their pleasure from it, sure and I do."

"I wouldn't," Sostratos said. "Here is the bargain: I will not buy you, no matter what. I've already told you that. But I will let you play the hetaira with me and have your little ways - so long as you don't do it often enough to make me angry. That will give you a better chance to go on playing the hetaira after I leave Taras, it is not so?"

Maibia studied him as if she'd never really seen him before. Maybe she hadn't. Maybe hope and greed had kept her from noticing the person inside the man who enjoyed her body. "Not just cool, but cold-blooded as a frog y'are!" she exclaimed.

Sostratos shrugged. Most of the time, he would have taken that for a compliment. "I can only be as I am," he said. "Meanwhile, you didn't answer my question: is it not so?"

"Sure and it is," the redheaded Kelt said seriously. "Having to take any horny spalpeen who walks in . . ." She shuddered. "If you were in a boy brothel, would you care for that?"

As he had to Menedemos, he replied, "If I were in a boy brothel, I don't think I'd get much trade."

She laughed. "How many would say that?"

He shrugged once more. "What could be more important than the truth?"

That made Maibia laugh again. "Here in a brothel, what could be less important than the truth? If we told the men what we thought of 'em, if we told Lamakhos what we thought of him, how long would we last?" No sooner had she spoken than she looked worried. If Sostratos took her words to the brothelkeeper, what would he do to her?

He didn't intend to do that, but she couldn't know what he intended. He wondered what the girls who made symposia lively really thought of the men who used them. The question hadn't crossed his mind before; unless he badly missed his guess, it seldom crossed the mind of any Hellene. Probably better not to know, he thought. He didn't take advantage of such women very often - Maibia had been an exception. Would this keep him from doing it again if some other girl struck his fancy? The truth, he reminded himself. No, it probably won't.

Telling that to the Keltic girl struck him as less than wise. He did say, "Do we have a bargain, on the terms I put to you?" He might have been selling silk or papyrus.

"We do that," Maibia said at once. She held out her hand. He clasped it. Her skin was much fairer than his, but her hand was as large as many a man's and her grip firm. Yes, this did feel like commerce. But it was commerce of a particular sort, for she went on, "If I'm to hold up my end of the bargain, you need to hold up yours," and went back to what she'd been doing. This time, Sostratos didn't interrupt her. He set a hand on the back of her head, not quite holding her to him but urging her on.

He didn't need to pretend to seem sated when he left Lamakhos'. The brothelkeeper chuckled under his breath as Sostratos went by. He thought Sostratos was well and truly hooked. Sostratos chuckled, too. He knew he wasn't.

When he got back to the rented house, he was surprised - and a little alarmed - to find Gylippos and his Roman majordomo there. "Menedemos tells me you've made a pet of that redheaded wench," the dried-fish merchant said. "I think she's strange-looking, myself."

"I like things that are out of the ordinary," Sostratos said, and then, "What brings you here, sir?"

"I've decided to buy a couple of more peafowl chicks," Gylippos replied. "I want to have a better chance of having at least one peacock."

The little birds ran peeping and cheeping across the courtyard, stopping every now and then to peck at a bug or a bit of grain or another chick. Sostratos wondered how Gylippos would like having four full-grown peafowl in his own courtyard, but that was the Tarentine's worry, not his.

Menedemos had caught a couple of chicks. He limped back toward Gylippos, saying, "The choice is yours, of course, O best one, but I think these two are the biggest, strongest ones we have right now." As if to prove the point, one of them pecked him on the arm. He cursed.

Gylippos laughed. "They do seem lively," he said. "What did you do to your ankle?"

Sostratos started at the question, then tried to pretend he hadn't. Menedemos laughed easily. "Tripped over my own two feet - them and a pebble," he answered. "I feel like a fool. We rode out a nasty storm on the Ionian Sea coming over from Hellas, and I was steady on my legs no matter how the deck pitched and no matter how wet it got. Put me on dry land, and I go and do this."

"Bad luck," Gylippos agreed. Sostratos studied him from the corner of his eye. Was he disingenuous? He was a trader, too; Sostratos couldn't tell. Gylippos said, "I'll buy the one that pecked you, but go run down that mottled one over there for me, too."

The mottled chick didn't want to be run down. Menedemos had to chase after it. Gylippos eyed him as he limped around. The dried-fish dealer's face didn't show much, but Sostratos didn't like what he could see. Gylippos was paying altogether too much attention to his cousin's bad ankle. How much noise had Menedemos made when he left by that second-story window? Enough to raise Gylippos' suspicions when he saw an acquaintance with a limp? Evidently.

At last, after much bad language, Menedemos caught the little peafowl. He brought it over to Gylippos, saying, "Here you are, sir. As far as I'm concerned, now that you've got it, you can roast it."

"Not at these prices." Gylippos turned to Titus Manlius, who'd been standing there quietly, watching Menedemos with him. Sostratos couldn't read the slave's face at all. Did he know? If he did, had he told his master? Gylippos said, "Pay him the money."

"Yes, sir." The Roman might have been a talking statue. He handed Menedemos a leather sack. "Same price as for the last two chicks."

"I ought to charge more. These are bigger birds," Menedemos said.

Gylippos brusquely tossed his head. "Not likely."

Menedemos glanced toward Sostratos. Sostratos tossed his head, too, ever so slightly, as if to say he didn't think Menedemos could get away with it. With a small sigh, Menedemos said, "Well, never mind. Let me count the coins, and you can take your birds away."

Sostratos sat down on the ground beside him to make the counting go faster. The Tarentines minted handsome drakhmai, with an armored horseman holding a javelin on one side and with a man riding a dolphin on the other. Some people said that was Arion, others that it was the hero for whom the polis of Taras was named.

"All here," Sostratos told Gylippos when the counting was through. "We do thank you very much."

"You have things I can't get anywhere else," Gylippos answered. He dipped his head to Titus Manlius. "Let's go." Off they went, carrying one chick each.

Once the door closed behind them, Sostratos said, "I think he knows, or at least suspects. Did you see how he was watching you?"

"I doubt it," Menedemos said. "What kind of a man would do business with someone who'd been screwing his wife?"

"There are people of that sort," Sostratos said. "Back in Athens, Theophrastos called them ironical men: the sort who chat with people they despise, who are friendly to men who slander them, and praise to their faces men they insult behind their backs. They're dangerous, because they never admit to anything they're doing."

"Men like that aren't proper Hellenes, if you want to know what I think," Menedemos said.

"Well, I agree with you," Sostratos answered, "but that doesn't mean they don't exist. And it doesn't mean they aren't dangerous."

Menedemos waved his words away. "You worry too much."

"I hope so," Sostratos said, "but I'm afraid you don't worry enough."

Menedemos did stop going round to Gylippos' house, even though checking on the peafowl chicks would have given him a perfect excuse to visit. He thought Sostratos was mistaken - Gylippos didn't strike him as lacking self-respect to the point of staying polite to an adulterer - but he decided not to take any needless chances. And if Phyllis wants to try again, she knows where to find me, he thought.

He sold the last adult peahen, along with four chicks, to a rich farmer who lived just outside of Taras. "To the crows with me if I know what I'll do with 'em," the fellow said, "but I think it'd be kind of fun to have a peacock strutting around the barn. I seen the one that Samnite bought, and I decided I wanted one my own self. I figure my chances for getting one peacock out of all the chicks are pretty fair."

"Of course." Menedemos wasn't about to argue with him, not when he was putting down good silver for the birds. "And you can breed them and sell birds yourself and make back what you're paying me and more besides."

"That's right. I sure can," the farmer said. Menedemos wasn't so sure he could. Once these chicks grew up, a lot of people in and around Taras would be breeding and selling peafowl. There would be a lot more birds for sale, too. Prices were bound to drop. But if the farmer couldn't see that for himself, Menedemos didn't feel obliged to point it out to him.

The Tarentine had brought an oxcart and a couple of cages with him. The one for the peahen was a little small, but he got her into it. Off he went, the creak of the cart's axle almost as raucous and annoying as the peahen's screeches.

Sostratos was flicking beads back and forth on a counting board. "How does it look?" Menedemos asked.

"Not too bad," his cousin answered. "We'll show a tidy profit when we get home." Sostratos looked up from the beads. "Now that you've sold the last of the grown peafowl, do you plan on sailing back toward Rhodes?"

"Not yet, by Zeus," Menedemos answered. "Doesn't look like we'll be able to get to Syracuse, not with the Carthaginians pressing it so hard, but I was thinking of taking the Aphrodite up the western coast of Italy toward Neapolis. How often do the cities there get the chance to buy Khian wine and papyrus and ink and Koan silk? They should pay through the nose."

"Plenty of pirates in those waters," Sostratos observed.

"Plenty of pirates everywhere these days," Menedemos said. "We've been over this before." But Sostratos wasn't really arguing, not as he'd argued against stopping at Cape Tainaron. His tone was more that of a man pointing out the risks of doing business. Menedemos added, "Since we'll be sailing north once we pass between Italy and Sicily, maybe we'll find more of these redheaded women you like."

As he'd thought it would, that made his cousin splutter. "Don't talk to me of women, considering what you've been up to," Sostratos said. "We'd better be ready to sail at a moment's notice, in case Gylippos finds out for certain."

"We are," Menedemos said complacently, always pleased to be one step ahead. "I've let Diokles know, so he always has men ready to pull the crew out of the dives. They can't do so much drinking and wenching on a drakhma and a half a day as they could when they had back pay coming to them, either."

"True," Sostratos said. "Probably just as well, too. Men who roister like that often die young."

"And men who don't roister like that also often die young, don't they?" Menedemos said with his most innocent smile. Sostratos gave him a sour look in return. Menedemos clapped his cousin on the back. "I'm going out for a while."

"Not to Gylippos', I hope," Sostratos exclaimed.

"No, no. I need to see a ropemaker. Diokles found some frayed lines on the ship, and I want to take care of that," Menedemos answered.

"He's a solid man, Diokles," Sostratos said. "He'd make a good captain, and I'd tell my father the same thing."

"We could do worse if we didn't have an owner aboard," Menedemos agreed. He headed for the door. "See you later. I shouldn't be too long."

"All right," Sostratos replied in absent tones. He was already flicking beads up and down again. He paid as much attention to the counting board as he did to his precious books. When they engrossed him, Zeus might hurl a thunderbolt a cubit away without his noticing.

Amused at his cousin's foibles, Menedemos hurried off toward the ropemaker's shop. It lay close to the lagoon whose splendid harbor gave Taras its reason for being, not far from the shipsheds of the Tarentine navy - and not far from the Aphrodite herself.

And the haggle with the ropemaker turned out to be easier than Menedemos had expected. Cordage here cost only a little more than half as much as it did at Rhodes. The Tarentines made most of their rope from hemp rather than linen, but that didn't bother Menedemos; the two were of comparable strength and weight. He left the shop well pleased with himself.

He was so well pleased with himself, in fact, that he didn't notice the four men following him quite so soon as he should have. They weren't doing anything in particular to keep him from noticing them. They came down the street after him shoulder to shoulder, and people walking in the other direction got out of their way in a hurry.

It was, in fact, a squawk of protest from one of those people that made Menedemos look back and spot the four bruisers. When they saw he'd seen them, they walked faster, closing the gap between themselves and him and making it plain he was their target.

Two of them wore knives on their belts. One carried a stick that would make an excellent bludgeon. The fourth had no immediately visible weapon, but that did little to reassure Menedemos.

I'm only a stadion or so from the house, and I ran the sprint almost well enough to go to Olympos, he thought. If I can outrun them . . .

He was about to flee when three other ruffians of similar sort came round a corner in front of him. One of them pointed his way. He'd been worried before. Now he was afraid. They weren't just toughs who'd chosen him at random, and might as easily have picked someone else. They wanted him in particular, which meant they were bound to want to do something especially dreadful to him in particular. What ran through his mind was, Sostratos was right. That bothered him almost as much as the ruffians did.

He took a couple of quick steps toward the three in front of him. But even as they opened their arms to grab him, he whirled and dashed back at the four behind, shouting at the top of his lungs. They shouted, too, in surprise - whatever they'd looked for him to do, that wasn't it.

One of them sprang at him. He dodged and kicked at the same time. The fellow went down with a groan. The tough with a stick swung. It struck Menedemos a stinging blow across the back, but then he was through and running like a man possessed back toward the harbor.

"After him, you fools!" one of the bruisers said. "Don't let him get away!" another added. Their sandals flapped on their feet as they began to run. Then one of them proved he had wit as well as brawn, for he shouted, "Stop, thief!"

Menedemos didn't stop. He did wiggle past a bystander who tried to stop him. His bare feet kicked up dust at every stride. He was glad sailing men seldom wore shoes even ashore - he'd always run races without them, and was convinced he ran faster that way. Now he wasn't running for his own pride or the glory of his polis. He was running for his life. His ankle screamed at him. He took no notice of it.

"Stop, thief!" That shout rose again behind him. But people did more staring than grabbing. Menedemos ran on, breath sobbing in his throat. He couldn't look back to tell whether his pursuers were gaining. A heartbeat's inattention and he might run into somebody or stick his foot into a hole in the ground and sprawl headlong. If he did, it would be the end of him.

There was the Little Sea, and there were the piers sticking out into the green-blue water of Taras' lagoon. A forest of masts sprouted from the ships tied up along those quays. Now Menedemos had to slow. Where was the Aphrodite? Right or left? If he went in the wrong direction, he would never get another chance to make a mistake.

There! The shipsheds farther east gave him his bearings. And most of the craft in the harbor were either little fishing boats or tubby roundships. Not many had the merchant galley's size and sleek lines. It lay only a couple of quays over to the left. Menedemos started running again - and just in time, too, for the footsteps behind him were getting closer fast. Now he was limping, but he kept going as best he could.

How many men would be aboard the akatos? Enough to keep off robbers, no doubt; Diokles was meticulous about such things. And they would be - Menedemos hoped they'd be - enough to stand off the ruffians on his tail.

Roustabouts and the usual sprinkling of quayside loafers pointed and called out as Menedemos raced past them. They pointed and called out again a moment later when his pursuers pounded after him. Gulls screeched and flapped into the air. Starlings let out metallic cries of alarm and flew off straight as arrows, their wings beating rapidly, the sunlight glistening from their iridescent feathers.

Menedemos' feet thudded on the planks of the pier that led out to the Aphrodite. He dashed down the gangplank and onto the poop deck. "By the gods, captain!" Diokles said. The oarmaster had been splicing a couple of lines. He and the double handful of sailors on the ship all gaped at Menedemos.

Gasping to get air back into his lungs, Menedemos pointed toward the ruffians advancing on the merchant galley. "Those whipworthy rogues set on me in the street," he panted, not mentioning the most likely reason why they'd set on him. "I broke through 'em and made it here."

"Oh, they did, did they?" Diokles got to his feet. He wore a knife on his belt. So did most of the other sailors aboard the Aphrodite. The ones who didn't were quick to grab belaying pins and other implements of mayhem. Diokles gave the local toughs a scowl that would have melted any of the akatos' rowers like beeswax in a fire. "Whatever you boys want, you'd better go find it somewhere else."

The ruffians stopped eight or ten cubits from the Aphrodite's bow. They started arguing among themselves. "Well, to the crows with him!" one of them said loudly. "I didn't take this job to get my head broken. I took it to give the other guy some lumps. If he don't like it, he can go to Tartaros for all of me." He strode off.

A couple of the others turned toward the akatos. One of the sailors smacked the length of wood he was holding into the palm of his other hand. The sound seemed to make the toughs thoughtful. They put their heads together again. Two more walked away. That left four. Four were not enough to go up against the men on the Aphrodite. They left, too, looking back over their shoulders as they went.

"Somebody in Taras doesn't like you," Diokles remarked. Menedemos dipped his head. The oarmaster asked, "Any idea who?"

"I've got some ideas, but nothing I could prove," Menedemos said. Diokles grunted. Did he know? Some of the sailors who'd been at the house might have gossiped. For all Menedemos knew, the gossip might have got back to Gylippos. Or Gylippos might have drawn his own conclusions from Menedemos' limp, as Sostratos feared. It didn't really matter.

Now that he wasn't running any more, he had time to notice his ankle again. He wished he didn't. When he looked down at it, he saw how swollen it was. It felt as bad as it looked, too. How did I run on it? he wondered. But the answer to that was simple. You could do anything, as long as the alternative was worse.

Diokles asked, "You want a few of the boys to come along back to the house with you?"

"Now that you mention it, yes," Menedemos answered, and the oarmaster chuckled. Menedemos tried to laugh, too. It wasn't easy, not with the fire in his ankle - and his back hurt, too, where the ruffian had hit him with the stick.

He wished he had a stick of his own. On board ship, the sailors quickly found a length of wood that would do for one, at least long enough to let him get back to the rented house. He put as much weight as he could on it and as little as he could on his bad leg.

As he made his slow way up the pier, he managed a grin and said, "Look at me. I'm the last part of the answer to the Sphinx's riddle."

"Heh!" one of the sailors said. "That riddle's not so much. We see any of those scoundrels who set on you, skipper, we'll leave 'em on all fours even if they aren't babies." The other men with Menedemos dipped their heads. They all wore knives. They all had their right hands on their hilts - no, all but Didymos, who was lefthanded. He had a righthanded twin who was also a sailor, though not on the Aphrodite.

Menedemos saw none of the ruffians on the way back to the house where he and Sostratos were staying. Someone he didn't recognize was standing not far from the door when he and his escort came round the corner, but that fellow turned and walked off before Menedemos could find out what, if anything, he had in mind.

He brought the sailors in for a cup of wine. Sostratos, who was still muttering over the counting board, looked up in surprise. "What's all this in aid of?" he asked.

Trying to keep his tone light, Menedemos answered, "I had a little trouble coming back from the ropemaker's."

"Did you?" Sostratos raised an eyebrow, a characteristic gesture. He pointed to the sailors. "Looks as though you had more than a little."

"Well, maybe," Menedemos allowed. He told the story in a few bald words, leaving out any mention of either Gylippos or Phyllis.

"I'm glad you're all right," his cousin said when he finished. What Sostratos' eyes said was, I told you so. So he had, and he'd been right, too. That didn't make Menedemos any happier to be on the receiving end of his glare.

Menedemos took a cup of wine for himself, too, and mixed very little water with it. It didn't make his ankle feel much better - only time would do that - but it made him feel better. He gave the sailors a drakhma apiece (which made Sostratos mutter afresh) and sent them back to the Aphrodite.

Later, when he and Sostratos were both sitting in the house's cramped little andron, his cousin said, "You're lucky you're still breathing, you know."

"That thought did cross my mind, yes," Menedemos admitted.

"Then why did you do it?" Sostratos asked.

"Why did I do what? Run? Because I wanted to keep on breathing, that's why," Menedemos answered.

Sostratos let out an irritated snort. "Do you take me for a fool? You know perfectly well what I meant. Why did you go to Phyllis the second time? The first one doesn't count; you didn't know she wasn't a slave till afterwards."

"Thank you so much," Menedemos said. Sostratos snorted again, and glowered so fiercely that Menedemos felt he had to answer him. He did his best: "Why? Because I felt like it, and it was fun, and I thought I could get away with it."

"I'm sure you thought the same thing in Halikarnassos, too," Sostratos said. "How many lessons will you need before you realize that's a mistake? What will have to happen to you to get it through your head?"

"I don't know," Menedemos said sullenly. His father would have done a better job of raking him over the coals, but not much. Philodemos had a sharper temper - one closer to Menedemos' - but Sostratos sounded more self-righteous.

"One of these days, some husband will catch you in the act, and then . . ." Sostratos sliced a thumb across his throat. "Some would say you had it coming."

"If I'd already had it, if I were coming, he wouldn't catch me in the act." Menedemos managed a grin no matter how much his ankle hurt.

"You're impossible," Sostratos said, and Menedemos dipped his head, as if at a compliment. His cousin asked, "Are we ready to sail on short notice?"

That was a business question, whatever had spawned it. Menedemos dipped his head again. "Yes."

"Gods be praised," Sostratos said.

Lamakhos smirked as Sostratos walked into his establishment. "Shall I find out if Maibia wants to see you?" he asked.

"Yes, if you'd be so kind." Sostratos did his best to ignore the brothelkeeper's scorn. Lamakhos gestured to a slave. She started back toward the Keltic girl's chamber. Sostratos called after her: "Tell Maibia we're sailing soon." The slave, an Italian, nodded to show she'd heard.

Lamakhos set his hands on his hips. "I wondered if you might want to buy her to take with you," he said; by wondered he doubtless meant hoped. "Plainly, you're more than fond of her. I could give you a good price."

"No, thank you." Sostratos tossed his head. "Taking her on board a merchant galley - that's just more trouble than it's worth."

"A bargain - " Lamakhos began.

Before he could launch into his sales pitch, the slave girl came back and told Menedemos, "She will see you." Her voice held faint contempt, too. Maibia was a slave in a brothel, but dictating terms to a free man. If that wasn't shameful, what was?

"Think about it," Lamakhos said as Sostratos hurried off toward the Kelt's room. "Maybe you could get your sailors to chip in if you don't want her for yourself. They could share her out on the sea."

"Bad for discipline," Sostratos said over his shoulder. The brothelkeeper, he thought, would make an excellent eunuch. If the fellow who did the cutting were to take his tongue, too . . .

He opened the door to Maibia's chamber. Such bloodthirsty thoughts flew from his head. She wore the tunic of Koan silk, in which she looked even more alluring than she did naked. "Is it true what Fabia told me, that you'll be leaving before long?" she asked.

"Yes, it's true." Sostratos closed the door behind him. "I'll miss you," he went on. "I'll miss you more than I thought I would."

"But not enough to be after taking me with you." Maibia sighed. Through the thin silk, the sigh was worth watching. "In spite of what you said and all, I did hope you might. I'd be good to you, Sostratos; you know I would."

She'd be good to him for as long as he kept her in the style she wanted, or until she found someone who'd keep her in higher style. He didn't blame her for wanting to escape from Lamakhos. Who wouldn't? But he tossed his head even so. "I'm sorry. I told you how things are. I didn't lie to you."

"Truth that," she said, and Sostratos felt the snugness one feels for playing the game by the rules and winning anyhow. Maibia promptly punctured it: "Sure and it is a truth, but not one that does me any good at all, at all. I'm still stuck here, still here to be stuck by any spalpeen with the silver to pay for it. And why should you be caring? You've had your fun."

How much did playing the game by the rules matter when those rules were stacked in your favor? She was only a woman, only a barbarian, only a slave; she had no business making him feel so guilty. But somehow she'd done it. "Here," he said roughly, and gave her his farewell gift: five heavy Tarentine tetradrakhms. "I hope this is better than nothing." He'd intended that for sarcasm; it come out sounding more like an apology.

Maibia took the silver coins and made them disappear. With luck, they'd disappear from Lamakhos, too. "Better nor nothing?" she said. "Sure and it is. What I'd hoped for?" She sighed and shook her head, then looked at him out of the corner of her eye. "And I suppose you'll be wanting it once more, for good-bye's sake?"

"Well . . ." Sostratos hadn't been able to keep his eyes from traveling along her sweetly curved body. I could deny myself, he thought. That would make me feel virtuous. Then he laughed at the absurdity of virtue in a brothel. And he did want her, virtue or no. He compromised with himself: "However you please. The silver is yours either way."

"What a strange man y'are, Sostratos," Maibia remarked. He couldn't tell whether that was meant for praise or curse. A moment later, she pulled the thin chiton off over her head, and he stopped caring one way or the other. "Why not?" she said as she stepped into his arms. "Better you nor plenty of others I can think of." Again, he wondered whether that was praise or something else. Again, he didn't worry about it for long.

He thought he pleased her when they lay down together. Afterwards, though, she started to cry. Awkwardly, he stroked her. "I'm sorry," he said. "I do have to go."

"I know," she wailed. "And I have to stay." Her tears splashed down on his bare shoulder. They felt hot as melted lead.

"There's no help for it," Sostratos said. "Maybe it will be better from now on. We've tried to do things so it would be." Yes, I'm trying to salve my own conscience, too, he thought.

"Maybe." But Maibia didn't sound as if she believed it, and Sostratos' conscience remained unsalved.