The Gryphon's Skull

10

Menedemos brought the Aphrodite into the little harbor of the village of Sounion, which lay just to the east of the southernmost tip of the cape. He pointed inland, towards a small but handsome temple, asking, “Who is worshiped there?”

“That's one of Poseidon's shrines, I think,” Sostratos answered. “Athena's is the bigger one farther up the isthmus.”

“Ah. Thanks,” Menedemos said. “I haven't stopped here before, so I didn't remember, if I ever knew. Sounion ...” He snapped his fingers, then dipped his head, recalling some lines from the Odyssey:

“Not storm winds now, gods be praised,” his cousin said. “You did a good job steering the Aphrodite, though, to get us here before nightfall.”

“Thanks,” Menedemos said. “Do you suppose we could get a priest to purify the ship now, or will we have to wait here till morning?” He answered his own question: “Morning, of course, so we can get Dorimakhos' body off the ship and set him in his grave.” He lowered his voice: “And you were right, worse luck—Rhodippos has a fever I don't like, enough to put him half out of his head.”

“I know.” Sostratos sorrowfully clicked his tongue between his teeth. “I wish such things didn't happen with belly wounds, but they do.” He ground out, “I wish I'd shot the bastard who stole the gryphon's skull right in the belly. I want him dead.”

He was usually among the most gentle of men. Menedemos regarded him with more than a little curiosity. “I don't think you'd sound so savage if someone stole half our silver.”

“Maybe I wouldn't,” Sostratos said. “We can always get more silver, one way or another. Where will we come by another gryphon's skull?”

“For all you know, there'll be another one in the marketplace at Kaunos next year,” Menedemos answered. “Who knows what will come out of the trackless east these days?”

“Maybe.” But Sostratos didn't sound as if he believed it. On reflection, Menedemos couldn't blame his cousin. The gryphon's skull wasn't obviously valuable, and was large and heavy and bulky. How many merchants would carry such a thing across ten thousand stadia and more on the off chance someone in the west might want it? Not many—that one had still surprised Menedemos.

He said, “Now that we haven't got it any more, do you still want to go on to Athens?”

“I don't know,” Sostratos answered. “Right now, I'm so tired and so angry and so disgusted, I know I can't think straight. Ask me again in the morning, and maybe I'll be able to tell you something that makes sense.”

“Fair enough,” Menedemos said. “Let's have some more wine now. It's been a long time since the fight.”

They were on their second cup when someone on shore pushed a boat into the water and rowed out toward the merchant galley; no one had bothered to build quays here, and the Aphrodite lay at anchor a couple of plethra from the beach. “What ship are you?” a man called from the boat.

“The Aphrodite, out of Rhodes,” Menedemos answered. “We were bound for Athens, but pirates came after us between Euboia and Andros. We fought them off, and here we are.”

“Fought 'em off, you say?” The fellow in the boat sounded dubious. “What's your cargo?”

He thinks we're pirates, Menedemos realized. When a galley came into an out-of-the-way harbor like this one, the locals often started jumping to conclusions. “We've got Koan silk aboard, and crimson dye from Byblos,” Menedemos said, “and perfume from Rhodes, and fine ink, and some papyrus from Egypt—though we're almost sold out of that—and a splendid lion skin from Kaunos on the Anatolian mainland, and the world's best balsam from Phoenicia.”

“World's best, eh?” The man in the boat laughed. “You sound like a tradesman, all right.”

“And we've got news,” Sostratos added.

“News?” With the one word, Menedemos' cousin had done a better job of snaring the man in the rowboat than he had himself with his whole long list of what the Aphrodite carried. “Tell it, man!” the local exclaimed.

“Polemaios Polemaios' son is dead,” Sostratos said. “When he went to Kos, he tried to raise a rebellion against Ptolemaios, and the lord of Egypt made him drink hemlock. We were there when it happened.” As usual, he said nothing about taking Polemaios to Kos, or about watching Antigonos' nephew die.

What he did say was plenty. “Polemaios dead?” the Sounian echoed. “You're sure?” Menedemos and Sostratos solemnly dipped their heads. “That is news!” the man said, and started rowing back to shore as fast as he could go.

“We could have just told him that, and he wouldn't have worried about anything else,” Menedemos said. He yawned. After the desperate day, those two cups of wine were hitting him hard. As the stars shone down on the merchant galley, he stretched out on the poop deck and dove into sleep like a dolphin diving into the sea.

However worn he was, he did not pass a restful night. Rhodippos woke him—woke the whole crew—two or three times with cries of rage and dread as the wounded, feverish sailor battled demons only he could see. By the time the sun followed rosy-fingered dawn up out of the sea to the east, the man was moaning almost continuously.

Menedemos pulled the stopper from a fresh amphora of wine. “Last night this made me sleepy,” he said as he dipped some out. “Now I hope it'll wake me up.” He added water to the wine and drank.

“Get me some, too, please,” Sostratos said. “Poor fellow,” he added around a yawn. “It's not his fault.”

“Fault doesn't matter.” Menedemos was yawning, too. His head felt filled with sand. Most of the sailors were awake, too, though a couple snored on despite Rhodippos' ravings. Menedemos envied them their exhaustion.

Sostratos said, “We need to see about one burial—two soon—and about getting the ship cleansed of pollution.” Menedemos envied him, too, for being able to concentrate on what they had to do when he was as weary as everyone else.

Despite Dorimakhos' corpse, they used the akatos' boat to go ashore. For an obolos, an old man pointed them toward the burial ground outside Sounion, and toward the gravedigger's house. “You'll be the Rhodians,” that worthy said when they knocked on his door. Gossip, as usual, had wasted no time. “You lost someone in your fight with the pirates?”

“We lost one man, and we're losing another,” Menedemos answered.

“Will you stay here till he dies?” the gravedigger asked. Menedemos and Sostratos looked at each other. Sostratos sighed and shrugged. Menedemos dipped his head. So did the gravedigger. “Three drakhmai, then, for two graves,” he said.

Sostratos gave him three Rhodian coins. He took them without a murmur, though they were lighter than Athenian owls. Menedemos asked, “Who's the chief priest at Poseidon's temple here? We'd like him to purify our ship.”

“That would be Theagenes,” the gravedigger replied.

As the two Rhodians walked toward the temple, Menedemos asked, “Where do we go from here?”

His cousin looked at him. “Why, back to the ship, I would think.”

Menedemos made an exasperated noise. “No. What I mean is, where does the Aphrodite go from here?—and you know it, too.”

“Well, what if I do?” Sostratos walked along for several paces, his bare feet kicking up dust from a dirt path that hadn't seen rain since spring. Then, suddenly he stopped and sighed and shrugged. “I'd hoped I would change my mind with some sleep, but I haven't. Without the gryphon's skull, I don't much care where we go. What difference does it make now?”

“It makes a lot of difference,” Menedemos answered. “It makes a difference in what we end up selling, and for how much.”

Sostratos shrugged again. “We'll show some profit this sailing season. We won't show a really big one, the way we did coming back from Great Hellas after the peafowl and that mad dash down to Syracuse loaded with grain.”

“That wasn't mad. That was brilliant,” Menedemos said. It had been his idea.

“It turned out to be brilliant, because we got away with it. That doesn't mean it wasn't mad,” Sostratos said, relentlessly precise as usual. A fly lit on Menedemos' hand. He brushed it away. Back among the trees, a cuckoo called. Sostratos continued, “Without the gryphon's skull, whether we go to Athens or not doesn't matter to me. It's just another polis now, as far as I'm concerned.”

“You really do mean that,” Menedemos said. His cousin dipped his head. He looked as sad as a man whose child had just died. Trying to cheer him up, Menedemos asked, “Couldn't you—I don't know— tell your philosopher friends about the gryphon's skull?”

He didn't know whether he'd cheered Sostratos, but saw he had amused him. “Kind of you to think of such things, my dear, but it wouldn't do,” Sostratos said. “It would be like. . .” He paused a moment in thought, then grinned and pointed at Menedemos. “Like you bragging about some woman you've had, where nobody else has seen her or knows whether you're telling the truth.”

“Don't you listen to the sailors?” Menedemos said. “Men talk like that all the time.”

“Of course they do. I'm not saying they don't,” Sostratos answered. “But the point is, half the time the people who listen to them think, By the gods, what a liar he is! If I can't hold up the skull to show the men of the Lykeion and the Academy, why should they believe me?”

“Because they know you?” Menedemos suggested. “I'd be likelier to believe you bragging about a woman than I would most people I can think of. I'm still jealous about that hetaira back in Miletos, and you didn't even brag about her.”

“Men know about women. They know what they're like—as much as men can hope to, anyhow,” Sostratos said, and Menedemos laughed. His cousin went on, “But suppose men had only known boys up till now. Think about that.”

“I like women better,” Menedemos said. “They enjoy it, too, and boys usually don't.”

“Never mind that,” Sostratos said impatiently. “Suppose all we'd known were boys, and somebody started talking about what a woman was like. Would you believe him if he didn't have a woman there with him to prove what he was saying?”

Menedemos thought about it. “No, I don't suppose I would,” he admitted.

“All right, then. That's what I'd be up against, talking about the gryphon's skull without being able to show it.” Sostratos let out another sigh, a lover pining for a lost love. “It's over now. Nothing to be done about it. Let's find this Theagenes and get the ship purified.”

The priest was pruning a fig tree in a little orchard by the temple when the Rhodians came up to him. “Hail,” Menedemos called.

“Hail,” Theagenes answered over his shoulder. “Just a moment, and I'll be right with you.” A smooth-barked branch thudded to the ground. Theagenes grunted in satisfaction and lowered his saw. He turned toward Menedemos and Sostratos. He was a short man, shorter than Menedemos, but with wiry muscles shifting under his skin as he moved. “There. That's better. Now, what can I do for the two of you? You'll be from the ship that got in last night?”

“That's right.” Menedemos gave his name and Sostratos'. “If you heard that, you probably heard we fought off pirates, too. We had a man killed, and another who looks sure to die of his wounds.”

Theagenes dipped his head. “I did hear that, yes. You'll want me to purify the vessel?”

“If you please,” Menedemos said. “And we'd like to sacrifice here as a thanks offering for driving those whoresons away.” Sostratos stirred at that. Menedemos had been sure he would; he hated expense. But it needed doing.

“Good enough.” The priest hesitated, then went on, “This wounded man, if he dies after I finish the job ...”

“You'd have to do it over again,” Sostratos said.

“That's what I meant, yes,” Theagenes agreed. “A death is a death. As far as the ritual goes, how it happens doesn't matter.”

“We'll move him to the boat,” Menedemos said. He'd done that with the dying sailor after the clash with the Roman trireme the year before. “Purifying that will be less work for you—and if you can't come for some reason, well, we can buy another boat.”

“I understand,” Theagenes said. “Let me get my lustration bowl, and then I'll come to the harbor with you.” He went into the temple.

When he came out again, Sostratos stirred. “How long has this temple had that bowl?” he whispered to Menedemos.

“What do you—? Oh.” Menedemos saw what his cousin meant. The bowl had an image of Poseidon in it. The god was done in black against a red background. That style had been replaced by red figures on a black background about the time of the Persian Wars. How many black-figure bowls still survived? Menedemos said, “They're very careful of it.”

“I should think so,” his cousin answered.

The two Rhodians and the priest walked back toward the seashore. When Theagenes got a good look at the Aphrodite, he said, “Your ship is too beamy to make a proper pirate, but I can see how people might think at first glance she was one.”

“We've had it happen, yes,” Menedemos said. “As far as I'm concerned, Poseidon or someone ought to sweep all pirates off the sea.”

“I wish that might happen myself,” Theagenes said. “The world would be a better place.”

Menedemos waved to the rowers waiting for his return. The men waved back. They took him and Sostratos and Theagenes out to the Aphrodite. Dorimakhos' body lay, wrapped in bloodstained sailcloth, at the stern of the boat. As Theagenes neared the akatos, he filled that ancient bowl with seawater. He handed it to Menedemos before scrambling from the boat to the ship.

What would he do if I dropped it? Menedemos wondered. But he didn't: he just gave it back to Theagenes. The priest looked at the dark stains on the Aphrodite's planking. “You did have a hard fight here,” he remarked.

“It would have been harder still if we'd lost it,” Sostratos said.

“Of course,” Theagenes said. He went up and down the ship, sprinkling the water from the bowl over the planks and murmuring prayers in a low voice. As he came up onto the poop deck, he remarked, “The sea purifies anything it touches.”

“I suppose that's why, in the Iliad, Talthybios the herald threw the boar Agamemnon sacrificed when he finally apologized to Akhilleus into the sea,” Menedemos said.

“Just so.” Theagenes sounded pleased. “The carcass of the boar carried the burden of Agamemnon's oath. It should not have been eaten by men. The sea was the path of its travel to earth, sun, and the Furies.” The priest beamed at Menedemos. “I see you are a man who thinks on such things.”

“Well...” Menedemos was no more modest than he had to be, but he couldn't take that kind of praise with Sostratos standing beside him. He said, “My cousin leans more toward philosophy than I do.”

“I don't particularly lean toward philosophy myself,” Theagenes said. “I think we ought to do as the gods want us to do, not make up fine-sounding excuses to do as we please.”

Sostratos raised an eyebrow at that. Before he could start the sort of argument that had made Sokrates a candidate for hemlock, Menedemos said, “We do thank you for purifying the ship.” He gave Sostratos a look that said, Please don't.

To his relief, Sostratos didn't. Theagenes said, “I am pleased to hear such words from you, young man. A man who loves the gods will be loved by them.” He went down into the waist of the ship and splashed a little seawater on Rhodippos. The wounded man, lost in a fever dream, moaned and muttered to himself. Theagenes sighed. “I fear you're right about him. Death reaches toward him even as we watch.”

“I wish something could be done about wounds like his, whether by gods or healers,” Sostratos said—no, he wouldn't casually let it drop after all.

“Asklepios has been known to work miracles,” the priest said.

“So he has,” Sostratos agreed. “If he did it more often, though, they wouldn't be miracles, and a lot more men would have longer lives.”

The priest sent him a sour stare. Menedemos felt like a man standing between two armies just before they shouted the paean and charged each other. Doing his best to change the subject, he said, “Come on boys, let's get Rhodippos into the boat. We'll give him the best care we can there.”

Rhodippos howled piteously as several sailors lowered him into the boat. He kept on howling even after they rigged an awning of sailcloth to keep the sun off him. “The kindest thing we could do for him would be to cut his throat,” Sostratos said.

“He doesn't know what's happening to him,” Menedemos said. “It's a small mercy, but a mercy.”

“And the gods may yet choose to preserve his life,” Theagenes added.

Menedemos didn't believe that, not for a moment. And, in his zeal to keep his cousin and the priest from squabbling, he'd been too clever for his own good. With Rhodippos in the boat, how was Theagenes to get back to Sounion? Menedemos hadn't the heart to take the wounded man out of there again. The sailors hailed a rowboat from the shore. He gave the fellow in it a couple of oboloi to row the priest home.

Once Theagenes was out of earshot—or nearly so—Sostratos sniffed and said, “He may be holy, but he isn't what you'd call bright.”

Theagenes' back got very straight. No, he hadn't been quite out of earshot; Menedemos hadn't thought so. “He probably thinks you're bright, but not very holy.”

“I don't care what he thinks,” Sostratos said. “And if you think—”

“I think the ship is ritually clean again,” Menedemos broke in. “And I think that's good. Don't you?” He gave Sostratos a hard look, as if to say he'd better.

“Oh, yes,” his cousin admitted. “I try not to be superstitious, but I don't succeed so well as I'd like. I don't think you can be a sailor without being superstitious.”

“I believe in luck and the gods. If you want to say that makes me superstitious, go ahead,” Menedemos said, and wondered how big an argument he'd get. To his surprise, he got none at all. Sostratos hadn't heard him; his cousin was watching a flock of seabirds flapping past. Menedemos laughed. “And how do the omens look?”

Sostratos did hear that. “I wasn't watching them for the sake of omens,” he said. “I just don't think I've ever seen those particular petrels before.”

“Oh,” Menedemos said, crestfallen. Many another man might have been lying when he made such a claim. Sostratos? Menedemos tossed his head. He believed his cousin implicitly.

Rhodippos died three days later. The crew of the Aphrodite, acting for his family, buried him in the grave the local gravedigger had excavated. Theagenes came out to the merchant galley once more, this time to cleanse the boat. He gave Sostratos a sour look. Sostratos pretended not to see it.

In the meanwhile, a round ship from the island of Aigina put in at Sounion. After talking with its captain, Menedemos declared, “Now I know where we're bound next.”

“What? To Aigina?” Sostratos asked. His cousin dipped his head. Sostratos threw his hands in the air. “Why? Everything they make there is cheap junk. Aiginetan goods are a joke all over the Aegean. What have they got that would be worth our while to carry?”

“They've got silver,” Menedemos said. “Lots and lots of lovely turtles. And they have a temple to Artemis they're talking about prettying up. Artemis is a huntress. Wouldn't her image look fine in a lion skin?”

“Ah.” After some thought, Sostratos said, “You might convince them of that. You might even have a better chance than at Athens, I suppose. More hides come in to Athens than to Aigina, I'm sure.”

Menedemos kissed him on the cheek. “Exactly what I was thinking, my dear. And it's only a day's journey from here.” He pointed west. “You can see the island, poking its nose up over the horizon.”

“Islands have noses?” Sostratos said. “I don't think any philosopher ever suspected that.” Menedemos made a face at him. But his own whimsy didn't last long. With a sigh, he went on, “I wish we were heading to Peiraieus instead. Without the gryphon's skull, though, what's the point?”

“Not much.” No, Menedemos wasn't heartbroken at the loss of the ancient bones. “We'll see how we do somewhere else.”

Winds in the Saronic Gulf were fitful the next day; the rowers spent a good deal of time at the oars. But they seemed glad enough to row. Maybe they were eager to escape Sounion, where two of their comrades would lie forever. That wasn't anything Sostratos could ask, but it wouldn't have surprised him.

With a circumference of perhaps 180 stadia, Aigina wasn't a big island. These days, it also wasn't an important island, though that hadn't always been true. When the Aphrodite made for the polis, which lay on the western side of the island, Sostratos said, “This place would be a lot better off if it hadn't gone over to Dareios before Marathon.”

“It got what it deserved afterwards, eh?” Menedemos said.

“If you want to call it that,” Sostratos replied. “The Athenians dispossessed the Aiginetans and planted their own colonists here. Then, after the Peloponnesian War, the Spartans threw those people out and brought back the original Aiginetans and their descendants.”

“So who's left nowadays?” Menedemos asked.

“Aiginetans,” Sostratos said. “They're a mongrel lot, I suppose, but that's true of a lot of Hellenes these days. If a polis loses a war ...” He clicked his tongue between his teeth; he didn't like to think of such things. But he refused to shy away from them: “Remember, Rhodes had a Macedonian garrison when we were youths.”

His cousin looked as if he would have been happier forgetting. “It's our job to make sure that never happens again.”

“So it is,” Sostratos said. If we can, he added, but only to himself. He might think words of evil omen, but he would do his best not to speak them aloud.

Whatever their ultimate origins, the modern Aiginetans spoke a dialect halfway between Attic and Doric. It sounded odd to Sostratos. Menedemos, though, said, “They talk almost the same way you do.”

“They do not!” Sostratos said indignantly.

“They do so,” Menedemos said. “They sound like people who started out speaking Doric but went to school in Athens.”

“Most of them sound as though they've never been to school at all,” Sostratos retorted. He was proud of the Atticisms in his own speech; they showed him to be a man of culture. To his ear, the Aiginetans didn't sound cultured at all. He and his cousin might have been the asses in Aisop's fable, except that they were dithering over dialects rather than bales of hay.

“All right. All right. Let it go.” Menedemos, having planted his barb, was content to ease up. “We made it past the rocks. Now that we're in the harbor, we'll sell the lion skin and make the trip worthwhile.”

“Rocks?” Sostratos said.

Before Menedemos could answer, Diokles spoke up: “Didn't you notice how careful-like your cousin was steering, young sir? The approach to this harbor's as nasty as any in Hellas, but he handled it pretty as you please.”

Menedemos looked smug. Praise from a seaman as accomplished as the oarmaster would have left anyone feeling smug. And I didn't even pay attention to what he was doing, Sostratos thought ruefully.

The next morning, the two cousins took their tawny hide up to the temple of Artemis, which stood close by those of Apollo and Aphrodite. Menedemos peered into the one dedicated to Apollo. “We might try here if we have bad luck with Artemis' priest,” he said. “The Apollo is naked—carved from wood, looks like, and old as the hills.”

That made Sostratos look, too. “I wonder just how old that statue is,” he said. “People have been making images of marble or bronze for a long time now.” Menedemos only shrugged, and with reason. They had no better way of learning the statue's age than they'd had of finding out how old the gryphon's skull was. Sostratos grimaced, wishing he hadn't thought of that comparison. He couldn't see Attica from here; the higher ground of the north of Aigina shielded the mainland from his eye, which was more than a small relief.

The marble statue of Artemis was draped, but only in a carved tunic that didn't even reach the goddess' knees. “Why, she'd catch her death of cold if she didn't don our skin for a cloak,” Menedemos said.

Sostratos looked around. “Where's the priest?” he asked, seeing no one in the sacred precinct. He got no answer, either.

Before long, an Aiginetan ambled in. “Are you the priest?” Menedemos asked him.

He tossed his head. “Not me. Nikodromos is probably still in town. He's a man who likes to sleep late, he is.”

“What shall we do till he gets here?” Sostratos asked in annoyance. “Grow moss?”

“You might as well, pal,” the local replied. “He isn't going to get here till he gets here, if you know what I mean.”

Sostratos grunted. The Aiginetan had a point. Another man came into the temple. He wasn't Nikodromos, either. He was somebody else looking for the priest. “Lazy, sour bastard's probably still home snoring,” he said. Nikodromos' habits were evidently well known. He would never have made a seaman—but then, he hadn't tried. As a priest, he could sleep late if he wanted to.

“Maybe we ought to find his house in town and throw rocks at the shutters,” Menedemos said a little later.

Just when Sostratos was starting to think that sounded like a pretty good idea, Nikodromos strolled into the temple with a self-satisfied expression on his face. Both Aiginetans promptly started dunning him for money they said he owed them. What followed wasn't quite a screaming row, but wasn't far from one, either.

In a low voice, Sostratos said, “If we do sell him the hide, let's make sure we see the silver before we hand it over.”

Menedemos dipped his head. “I've heard ideas I liked a lot less.”

After half an hour or so, Nikodromos' creditors threw their hands in the air and left. He hadn't promised them a thing. In an abstract way, Sostratos admired him. In the real world with which he had to deal, he wondered if this image of Artemis really needed to be draped with a lion skin after all.

“Hail,” the priest said, coming up to the two Rhodians. “And what do you want today? You've been patient as can be while those idiots spouted their lies.”

He didn't seem too sour to Sostratos, but then, Sostratos hadn't been trying to get money out of him. His foxy features did not inspire confidence, though. Neither did his squabbles with a pair of Aiginetans unconnected to each other. Nonetheless, after naming himself and Sostratos, Menedemos said, “We've got a splendid Karian lion skin here, with which you can adorn the statue of the Maiden.”

“Do you indeed?” Nikodromos' eyes widened slightly. Excitement or art? Sostratos wondered. He would have bet on art. Those eyes were a light brown that in certain lights seemed tinged with amber: as foxy as the rest of him, or maybe even more so. He went on, “Let me see it, best ones. By all means, let me see it.”

Menedemos and Sostratos spread out the skin on the temple floor. Then Sostratos, with a happy inspiration, picked it up and draped it over the marble Artemis' shoulders. “See how fine she'd look?” he said.

“Not bad,” Nikodromos said—small praise, but praise. “That skin might remind people of what a great huntress she is, true. But, of course, one question remains: how much do you want for it?”

“Five minai,” Menedemos said. Sostratos hid a smile behind his hand. If his cousin would get cheated, he aimed to get cheated out of a lot of money.

Nikodromos coughed. “My dear fellow, you can't be serious.”

Menedemos smiled his most charming smile. “I'll make it six if you like. Not so many lions left in Europe these days, you know.”

“And so you think you can charge whatever you please when you bring one here?” the priest said.

“Not quite,” Sostratos told him. “But no one ever said we had to sell our goods at a loss, either.”

“Five minai is out of the question,” Nikodromos said. “I might pay two.”

“You might indeed,” Menedemos said pleasantly. “But not to us. As my cousin said, we need to make money to stay in business.”

“Well, two minai and a half, then,” Nikodromos said.

“Come on, Menedemos,” Sostratos said. “Let's head back to the ship. Plenty of other temples, plenty of other poleis.”

They made as if to begin rolling up the lion skin and putting it back into its leather sack. Sostratos watched Nikodromos out of the corner of his eye. If the priest let them leave, then he did, that was all. But they hadn't got very far before Nikodromos said, “Wait. I might go to three.”

“We might talk a little more, in that case,” Menedemos said.

Nikodromos would have failed as a trader for more reasons than sleeping late. He kept coming up and up, and didn't draw the line till the price had gone to four minai, twenty drakhmai, though he grumbled and whined every step of the way. He did his best to make it seem as if he were doing the Rhodians a favor by dealing with them at all.

“Four minai, twenty.” Sostratos looked from him to Menedemos and back again. “Bargain?”

“Bargain.” His cousin and the priest spoke at the same time.

“Good enough.” As far as Sostratos was concerned, it was better than good enough. They hadn't got nearly such a fine price for the other hide back on Kos. Nice, solid profit, he thought.

And then Nikodromos said, “Let me take the hide back to town, and I'll bring you your money right away.”

A lot of people had made requests like that over the years. More often than not, Sostratos and Menedemos, like most traders, said yes. Most people were honest. Sostratos wasn't so sure about Nikodromos. He saw his cousin wasn't, either. Smiling, Menedemos tossed his head. “You can bring the money here and then we'll give you the hide, or else we'll come down to Aigina with you.”

Nikodromos sent him a sour stare. “You're afraid I'll cheat you. That is an insult.”

“Best one, we just stood here watching a couple of your own people trying to get money out of you,” Sostratos answered. “If they have trouble prying their silver loose, why wouldn't we? We're just a couple of foreigners to you. Better not to take chances.”

“I told you, the silver they want isn't theirs at all,” the priest said, making a fine show of indignation. “They're nothing but a couple of temple robbers.”

With a shrug, Sostratos said, “I don't know anything about your quarrels, any more than you know about the quarrels back on Rhodes. All I know is, you'll have the hide when we have the money.”

He wondered if that would queer the deal. If it does, too bad, he thought. That would mean this rogue never intended to pay us in the first place. The Aiginetans who'd tried to squeeze silver out of Nikodromos had certainly sounded as if they had a right to it.

“Those abandoned rascals blacken my name,” Nikodromos complained.

“Easiest way to prove that, sir, is to give us the price you agreed to,” Menedemos said. “As soon as we have the turtles, we'll sing your praises at every stop we make.”

“Of course, we won't do anything of the sort if you go back on the bargain,” Sostratos added. Sometimes—often, in fact—knaves acted like honest men if the choice was having their knavery published to the world.

Knave or not, Nikodromos let out a loud, exasperated sigh. “Come along, then, both of you,” he said. “You'll get your money. Bring the hide. Let there be no doubt that I am a man who keeps the agreements he makes.”

“Let's go,” Menedemos said.

When they got to Nikodromos' house, Sostratos wondered whether the priest would be able to pay them at all, for no slave opened the door to let them in: Nikodromos had to do it himself. Was a man without a slave likely to be a man who had more than four minai of silver in his home? It struck Sostratos as unlikely.

He relaxed a little when he saw a woman tending a flower garden in the courtyard. A maidservant might not answer the door, but at least Nikodromos had some help. Then the priest snapped, “Go back to the women's quarters, Asine. I have traders with me.”

“Yes, my husband,” the woman said, and hurried away, though she did look back over her shoulder at the Rhodians.

“She wasn't expecting company,” Nikodromos said apologetically.

“It's all right, best one,” Sostratos said, though what he was thinking was, Just you and your wife? How do you get anything done? You might as well be peasants, or even barbarians.

“Quite all right,” Menedemos echoed. His tone was all it should have been. Even so, Sostratos disliked the way his eyes slid toward the stairway to the second floor, the stairway up which Asine had gone.

You barely got a look at her, Sostratos thought. She barely got a look at you. Why do I think—why do I know—you want to lie with her if you can? Why? You're my cousin, that's why. I've seen you around women too many times by now. I've seen you land in trouble too many times by now, too.

Trying not to think about what might be—what all too likely was—going through Menedemos' mind, Sostratos asked Nikodromos, “Shall we wait here while you get the money?”

“Oh, I suppose you can step into the andron,” Nikodromos said grudgingly. “I won't be long.”

In a proper household, a slave would have offered them wine and olives or raisins. Here, they simply sat in the men's room and waited. “Well, what do you think?” Menedemos asked, almost without moving his lips. “Is he lying to us, or is he the greatest miser since Midas?”

“I don't know,” Sostratos answered. “But I'm guessing he's a cheapskate. Would he have had the gall to bring us here if he couldn't pay us?”

“We'll find out,” Menedemos said. “His wife's pretty. Did you notice?”

“No, and I wish you wouldn't have, either,” Sostratos said. His cousin made a face at him.

Before they could start arguing in earnest, Menedemos let out a sharp hiss. Sostratos fell silent; he'd seen Nikodromos coming, too. The priest carried a leather sack. When he set it down on a table in the andron, it clinked. “Here you are,” he said. “Four minai, twenty drakhmai. Go ahead and count it. You'll see all is as it should be.”

With some men, that invitation to count would have told Sostratos he didn't have to. With one so mean as Nikodromos, he did anyhow. When he'd finished, he looked up and told the priest, “I'm afraid you're still six drakhmai short, O marvelous one.”

He'd laid the silver coins in neat rows and stacks; Nikodromos could hardly challenge his assertion. In a low, furious voice, the Aiginetan said, “I'll get them,” and hurried away.

“Shameless,” Sostratos said.

“Are you surprised?” Menedemos kept looking toward those stairs. Sostratos noticed that with as much resignation as alarm: up till now, Menedemos hadn't eyed anyone else's wife with desire on this trading run. Sostratos had started to wonder if his cousin were off his feed.

Before he could warn Menedemos, Nikodromos and Asine started yelling at each other. Sostratos couldn't make out the words, but they both sounded furious. “Charming couple,” Sostratos murmured.

Menedemos grinned. “Aren't they just? Still, though . . . Oh, wait, here comes the priest back again.”

What had he been about to say? Maybe I don't want to know, Sostratos thought. Nikodromos stormed into the andron, his scowl black as moonless midnight. He slapped down half a dozen drakhmai. “There,” he snarled. “Are you satisfied now?”

“Perfectly so, best one,” Sostratos answered. “It is what we agreed to, after all.”

“To the crows with—” Nikodromos began, but he caught himself. Trying to sound civil, he said, “The Huntress will be glad to have the lion-skin cloak.”

“Of course she will.” Menedemos sounded as smooth—and as greasy—as olive oil. Sostratos' suspicions flared; he'd heard that particular conspiratorial tone before. Sure enough, Menedemos went on, “Would you be interested in some fine Rhodian perfume, sir? Or even”—he lowered his voice almost to a whisper—”in emeralds? I've got a couple of fine ones, straight from Egypt.”

“Now why would I want anything like that?” Nikodromos kept the growl in his voice, but leaned toward Menedemos even so.

“You never can tell what will sweeten up a woman,” Menedemos remarked, for all the world as if he hadn't heard—as if the neighbors hadn't heard—the priest and his wife quarreling a moment before.

Nikodromos grunted. “That's true, I suppose.”

“For that matter,” Menedemos added, as if just remembering, “I also have some Koan silk, which is not the sort of stuff every lady in Aigina would be wearing.”

“Do you?” Nikodromos said. Menedemos gravely dipped his head.

Sostratos sat there putting the coins back in their sack and doing his best not to laugh out loud. Nikodromos thought Menedemos was interested in helping him make up with his wife after their fight, and in making some money doing that. Sostratos knew better. Oh, his cousin wouldn't mind making money off Nikodromos. But what Menedemos really wanted was Asine. If he sold Nikodromos perfume or jewels or silk, he would use his visits here to make himself known to her—even if she stayed in the women's quarters while he was around—and to scout out the ground and see what his chances were.

“Maybe you should bring some of these things by, give me a chance to look at them,” Nikodromos said. “Not today: I should take the hide up to the temple now, and I'll be sacrificing through the afternoon. Tomorrow morning, not too early?”

“Tomorrow morning,” Nikodromos agreed. “I'll see you then.”

Nikodromos had hardly closed the door behind them when Sostratos wagged a forefinger under his cousin's nose. “I know what you've got in mind,” he said.

“My dear, I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about.” But Menedemos' eyes danced. He couldn't make that sound convincing no matter how hard he tried. “Why aren't you swelling up like a toad and telling me what a bad character I am?”

Sostratos had been wondering about that himself. He gave the most honest answer he could: “If anyone ever had it coming, that petty thief of a Nikodromos does.”

“Well, well,” Menedemos said, and then again, “Well, well.” He walked on for a few paces before adding, “There's no guarantee, you know.”

“Don't put yourself in danger,” Sostratos said. “Nikodromos isn't worth it.”

His cousin chuckled. “Of course he isn't. Asine, now, Asine just may be. I'll have to see how it goes, that's all.” He tapped Sostratos on the chest with his finger. “One thing, though.”

“What's that?” Sostratos asked with sinking heart.

“However the other turns out, I expect I'll make a profit from that polluted priest,” Menedemos said.

“Huzzah,” Sostratos said in hollow tones. Menedemos laughed out loud.

Menedemos rubbed his chin. He'd taken care to shave before coming up from the harbor to Nikodromos' house. He'd done a good job; his skin felt almost as smooth as it had when he was a beardless boy. He had on the cleaner of his tunics, too. Nikodromos would interpret all that as being no less than his own due—he had plenty of self-importance. How Asine would interpret it, if she would interpret it at all...

“I'll find out,” Menedemos murmured, and rapped on the priest's door.

Nikodromos opened it himself. With what he'd spent on the lion skin, he'd shown he had plenty of money, but he was too mean to buy a slave to make life easier for himself and his wife. “Hail,” he said now. “Where's your cousin?”

“In the market square, selling to whoever will buy,” Menedemos answered easily. “You, though, best one, you're a special customer, so I'm here to show you these goods with no one else's eyes on them.”

As he'd thought it would, that tickled Nikodromos' vanity. “Come in, come in,” the priest said. He even went so far as to add, “Go on into the andron, and I'll bring you some wine.”

That wasn't what Menedemos had in mind. “The courtyard might be better, most noble one,” he said. It would certainly be better for him, because Asine would be able to see and hear him. But he had a plausible explanation, and trotted it out: “You'll want to examine the silk and the jewels by sunlight.”

“So I will,” Nikodromos said. “I don't aim to let anyone cheat me.”

“Nor should you,” Menedemos said, ignoring the threat in the other man's words. As he came out into the courtyard, he paused to admire the garden: “What splendid plants! How wonderfully green they are, even in the middle of the dry season. They're perfectly pruned, too.”

With a shrug, Nikodromos said, “I haven't the time to worry about such trifles. Mv wife tends them.”

“They're lovely.” Menedemos left it at that; he knew better than to give a woman direct praise in her husband's hearing. His eyes couldn't help slipping to the stairway, and to the rooms above it. What would Asine be doing in there? Spinning? Weaving? No, probably not—he would have heard the loom. Surely, though, she would be listening to—maybe even watching—what went on down below. He said, “Here is the perfume. Smell it. It's from the very best Rhodian roses.”

“Fripperies,” Nikodromos muttered. But he drew out the stopper and sniffed. In spite of himself, one eyebrow rose. “That's very sweet.” He rallied. “I'd bet the price is enough to sour anybody, though.”

“Not at all.” Instead of naming it, Menedemos went on, “Let me show you the Koan silk. Any woman who wore a silk tunic would be the envy of all her neighbors. Wool? Linen?” He tossed his head. “They don't compare.”

“In price, either.” Yes, the priest had a one-track mind.

“Wool and linen are fine for everyday wear,” Menedemos said. “But your wife will want something special, won't she, when she goes out into the streets on a festival day? After all, women don't get out of the house much, so they like to make the most of it when they do. And she can wear this Rhodian scent and these emeralds and be the envy of every other woman in Aigina.”

“Let's see these so-called emeralds,” Nikodromos said. “I wouldn't be surprised if you were trying to sell me a couple of lumps of glass.”

“By the dog of Egypt, I am not,” Menedemos said indignantly, fishing them from the pouch he wore on his belt. “They come from Ptolemaios' land, as I said. People in Miletos were happy enough to buy them; I made more than a talent on the dozen or so I sold there. My father and my uncle have been traders since before I was born. Their ships go all around the Inner Sea. If I cheat, I ruin the firm's reputation, and we can't afford that. Here, O marvelous one—see for yourself.”

The two emeralds he had left were the ones he'd intended to take to Athens, including the largest and finest stone he'd bought from the Egyptian round-ship captain. No one, not even Nikodromos, could claim they were glass after seeing their deep, rich color and waxy luster. The priest sighed as he handed them back. “You'll want too much,” he predicted, tacitly admitting they were genuine.

“I want what they're worth.” Pitching his voice to carry up to the women's quarters, Menedemos asked, “Doesn't your wife deserve the best?”

Nikodromos waved his hands and shook his head like a man trying to drive away bees. “Let me see this silk you were gabbling about,” he said.

“Nothing like it for making a lovely woman lovelier,” Menedemos said, again—he hoped—as much to Asine as to her husband. “This is a particularly fine bolt here. Look.” He unrolled it and held it up in the sunlight. “You can practically see through it.”

“That's indecent,” Nikodromos exclaimed.

“Only if the woman who's wearing it isn't worth looking at,” Menedemos said with a wink, as one man of the world to another. “My dear fellow, you simply wouldn't believe how much silk my cousin sold to the fanciest hetaira in Miletos.”

“I don't want my woman looking like a hetaira,” Nikodromos said, but his voice lost force with each succeeding word. Why wouldn't a man want his wife to look as desirable as she could?

“You need another sniff of the perfume.” Menedemos pulled the stopper from the little jar again. “Here. Sweeter than honey, isn't it?”

By the way the priest screwed up his face, he wanted to deny it, but he couldn't. “What. . . what will you want for all this?” he asked at last, sounding almost fearful.

“For the emeralds, nine minai apiece,” Menedemos answered. “Two minai for the silk, and twenty drakhmai for the perfume.” All the prices were outrageously high. He knew that. With a little luck, Nikodromos wouldn't. He'd certainly overpaid for the lion skin.

He bawled like a branded calf now. “Outrageous,” he spluttered. “Absurd. Downright criminal, if you want to know the truth.”

Menedemos shrugged. “If you're not interested, I'm sure someone else will want to deck his wife out in style. Goods like these don't come to Aigina every day, you know, or every year, either.” That was true enough. Back in the old days that fascinated Sostratos so much, Aigina had been an important polis. Not anymore. It was a backwater now, completely overshadowed by Athens. The Aphrodite never would have put in here if not for the pirates.

The real question was, just how much silver did Nikodromos have?

Menedemos tossed his head. No, the real question was, how much would he spend? If he wouldn't lay out any on a slave, would he spend any for his wife? If he didn't intend to spend any, had he invited Menedemos back for no better reason than to waste his time? That might make Asine unhappy, and Menedemos had already heard she wasn't shy about letting her husband know how she felt.

Licking his lips, Nikodromos said, “I will give you five minai for one of the emeralds, one mina for the silk, and ten drakhmai for the perfume.”

“Only one emerald?” Menedemos said, using three words to imply the priest was surely the meanest man in the world.

“I can't afford them both,” Nikodromos said. Something in his voice told Menedemos he was lying about that. It will tell his wife the same thing, the Rhodian thought cheerfully. Nikodromos, meanwhile, gathered himself for a peevish outburst: “And I get to choose which stone, do you hear me?”

“Of course.” Menedemos spoke as if humoring a madman. Then his own voice hardened: “But you won't choose either unless you come closer to meeting my price.” He almost said, unless you meet my price, but that would have given Nikodromos no haggling room at all.

“You think you can sail into Aigina with your fancy goods and cheat people out of their shoes because we don't see such things very often,” the priest grumbled. Since that was exactly what Menedemos thought, he denied it with special vigor. He'd made his initial demands so high, even Nikodromos' first counteroffers guaranteed him no small profit. And he didn't intend to settle for those first counteroffers.

Once, during the dicker that followed, Menedemos wondered if he'd pushed too hard. Nikodromos stamped his foot and shouted, “No, by the gods! Not another drakhma! Take your trash and get out of my house!”

“As you wish, best one,” Menedemos said coldly. A moment later, a crash came from upstairs: someone had dropped—or hurled—a pot. Sure enough, we're playing to an audience, Menedemos thought. He pretended not to notice the noise or the way Nikodromos flinched, but gathered up the silk and the perfume and started for the door.

“Wait!” Nikodromos said unhappily. “Maybe we could talk a little more.”

“Maybe.” Menedemos did his best to sound as if he were doing the priest a favor. “If you're ready to be more reasonable.”

“You're the one who's not being reasonable.” But Nikodromos nervously looked up toward the women's quarters, as if expecting another pot to shatter at any moment. A proverb crossed Menedemos' mind: even Herakles can't fight two at once. Nikodromos might have held his own against Menedemos. Against Menedemos and his own wife, he had no chance.

“Are we agreed, then?” Menedemos asked not too much later.

“I suppose so.” The priest gnawed at a fingernail. “Seven minai, fifty drakhmai for the emerald. One mina, sixty drakhmai for the silk. And twelve drakhmai for the perfume.” He gave the Rhodian a triumphant smirk at that last price.

Menedemos smiled back, as if acknowledging that Nikodromos had beaten him down there. He didn't tell Nikodromos he'd purposely gone easy on the small haggle because he'd done so well on the larger ones. Let Nikodromos keep his tiny triumph, if it made him happy. Counting on his fingers, Menedemos said, “That makes ... let me see . . . nine minai, twenty-two drakhmai altogether. If you'll fetch the silver, you may choose whichever emerald you like.”

“Wait here,” Nikodromos said gloomily. “I'll be back.” A hunted look on his face, he scurried into the house. Menedemos cocked his head toward the women's quarters. To his disappointment, Asine kept quiet. But she'd already made her presence felt.

When the priest came back with a fresh leather sack, Menedemos said, “If you don't mind, I'm going to take this into the andron.”

“I made one small mistake, and now everyone thinks I'm a thief,” Nikodromos said, more glumly than ever.

Of course. What else would you expect? Menedemos thought. He didn't say that out loud, though he was tempted. What he did say, was, “Not at all. I'm like my cousin, though: I want to have things straight.”

When he'd counted up the coins and put them into glittering rows and stacks in the andron, he found that Nikodromos' payment was four drakhmai over. He picked up four turtles and handed them to the priest without a word: he was convinced the Aiginetan had put them there to test his honesty. “Er—thank you,” Nikodromos said, a faintly embarrassed expression on his face.

“You're welcome,” Menedemos answered. “I don't want more than my due, just what you said you'd pay.” That wasn't strictly true, but Nikodromos couldn't know it wasn't. A show of virtue made the best shield. “I'm sure your wife will enjoy everything you've bought for her.” He raised his voice a little to say that, hoping it would carry up to the women's quarters.

“I want her to,” Nikodromos said. “I want to get my money's worth. And now, if we have no more business ...”

That was barely polite enough to be a hint; in a moment, he'd be shouting, Get out of my house'. Menedemos scooped the coins back into the sack, captured a couple that fell on the floor and tried to roll away, and headed out the door in a hurry. Nikodromos all but slammed it behind him. As Menedemos went, he started whistling a Persian love song whose tune Alexander the Great's men had brought back to Hellas.

While he whistled, he looked up to the second floor, to what he thought were the windows of the women's quarters. If one of those shutters opened, he would see what happened next. If not, he would go back to the Aphrodite knowing he'd pried plenty of silver out of Nikodromos.

A shutter had to open pretty soon. He couldn't stand outside the house whistling for very long, or Nikodromos would figure out why he was doing it. Fleeing an angry husband after a seduction was part of the game. Fleeing before a seduction was nothing but an embarrassment.

Menedemos abruptly stopped whistling, for a shutter did open. The woman who looked down at him wasn't beautiful, but she was . . . prettier than Nikodromos deserves, Menedemos thought. “Hail, sweetheart,” he said in a low voice. “Your husband's bought you some very nice things.” If Asine was more faithful than the priest deserved, that remained safe enough.

When her eyes flashed, he knew he had a chance. “What if he did?” she answered, nothing but scorn in her voice. “I listened to you shaming him into doing it. What would it be like to be with a man who cared about what I wanted without having someone else remind him he ought to?”

Menedemos grinned. He'd hoped she would feel something like that. Had he been married to Nikodromos, he was sure he would have. He couldn't have asked for a better opening. He said, “Dear, if you want to find out, tell me when he won't be home.”

Asine couldn't very well misunderstand that. She couldn't, and she didn't. “He's going up to the temple tomorrow morning,” she said, “He'll be there most of the day.”

“Well, well. Isn't that interesting?” Menedemos said. “So if I were to knock on the front door, there'd be only a poor lone woman in the house?” He winked.

Asine didn't. She looked furious. “He's too stingy to buy me a slave,” she snapped. “It's a wonder you got him to do this. You must be able to talk anyone into doing anything.” Her expression changed: now she was paying attention to Menedemos, not raging at her husband. “Who knows what you'll be able to talk me into doing?”

“We'll find out tomor—” Menedemos broke off, for she closed the shutter in a hurry. Maybe Nikodromos was coming up the stairs to show her what he'd bought.

When Menedemos went back to the Aphrodite, Sostratos greeted him with, “How did it go?” By way of reply, Menedemos handed his cousin the leather sack. Sostratos hefted it and whistled softly. “There must be nine or ten minai of silver in here—and that's Aiginetan minai, too, which means they're heavier than ours.”

“Nine and a quarter,” Menedemos answered. He eyed Sostratos with reluctant respect. His cousin could be fussy as a broody hen, but he knew what he knew. “How did you figure that out so fast?”

“My first guess was in Rhodian weight, because that's what I'm most used to,” Sostratos said. “I know what part of an Aiginetan mina a Rhodian mina is, so I converted from one to the other in my head before I spoke.” He made it sound as if it were nothing out of the ordinary. And so it wasn't—for him. After a moment, he added, “You squeezed him pretty hard, then. Euge.”

“Thanks,” Menedemos said.

“The money isn't really what I meant, though,” Sostratos said. “How did the other go?”

Menedemos needed a moment to understand him. When he did, he blinked. Sostratos wasn't in the habit of asking about his pursuits of other men's wives, except to try to talk him out of them. “You really must dislike Nikodromos,” Menedemos murmured. His cousin dipped his head. Menedemos said, “He's going up to the temple to sacrifice tomorrow. I'm going back to his house.”

“Euge,” Sostratos said again. “Wear a sword, though.”

“A sword?” Menedemos tossed his head. “I intend to use my spear.”

Sostratos snorted. “I know what you intend. I don't know what Nikodromos and the woman have in mind. He may come back to the house when you don't expect him to—remember the window you jumped out of in Taras last summer? Or the woman may be playing a different game from the one you think she is. Wear a sword.”

When Menedemos saw Asine, he saw what he wanted. When Sostratos thought about her, he saw trouble. If that didn't sum up the differences between them, Menedemos didn't know what did. But he hadn't seen that trouble himself, and he couldn't deny it might be real. “All right,” he said. “I'll wear one. I'll swagger through the streets like a bandit or a barbarian.”

“Good,” his cousin said.

When morning came, Menedemos couldn't go into town as early as he would have liked. Nikodromos liked to sleep late, and knocking on the door before the priest left didn't strike him as a good idea. He made himself wait till the sun stood well above the eastern horizon before leaving the harbor and heading into Aigina. The bronze scabbard of his sword bumped against his left hipbone at every step. A couple of Aiginetans gave him odd looks, but no one seemed inclined to ask too many questions of an armed man.

He knocked on Nikodromos' door. As soon as he did, his hand fell to the hilt of the sword. If Asine was playing games of the sort Sostratos imagined . . .

She opened the door. “Come in,” she said. “Quick. Don't hang around for the neighbors to see.”

She sounded practiced at deceit. Maybe I'm not the first one who's come in while her husband's away, Menedemos thought. But if she was so practiced . . . “Should you be wearing that perfume?” he asked. “Nikodromos is liable to notice it.”

“He'll think I put it on for him. He thinks everything's for him.” Asine didn't try to hide her scorn.

“Ah,” Menedemos said politely; that fit what he'd seen of the priest. He smiled at Asine. “When he has such a pretty wife, I can understand why he feels that way.”

She studied him as he was studying her. “You're smooth, aren't you?” she said. “How many times have you done this?”

“Often enough to know that's a question better left unanswered.” Menedemos wagged a finger at her. “It's better left unasked, too.”

He watched her think it over. She dipped her head. “You're probably right. So ...” She took a step toward him.

He put his arms around her. She was only a couple of digits shorter than he was. She hardly needed to tilt her face up at all to let her mouth meet his. Her breath was sweet. She was somewhere not far from twenty: too young to have had much trouble with her teeth. The kiss went on for a long time.

When Asine at last drew back, amusement danced in her eyes. “I will say I haven't kissed a man who shaves before. It's . . . different.”

For a moment, Menedemos' mind worked as precisely as Sostratos' so often did. Just because you'll say it doesn't mean it's true. “Is it better or worse?” he asked, and then went on before she could answer: “Why don't we try it again, so you have a better idea?”

They did. Her body molded itself to his. Her breasts were soft and firm. He stroked her hair with one hand; the other cupped a buttock. Before long, he was firm himself, though far from soft. Asine rubbed herself against him. “Sweet,” she murmured.

He kissed the side of her neck and nibbled at her earlobe. His thumb and forefinger teased her nipple through the thin linen of her tunic. Her head fell back. She sighed softly. He took her hand and guided it to his manhood. Her fingers closed on him. She squeezed, not too hard. After a little while, he pulled away. He'd been at sea for a while. He didn't want to spend himself too soon.

“Come on, then,” she said. “Let's go up to my bedroom.”

They were walking through the courtyard when he said, “Wait.” Asine stopped, raising an eyebrow. Menedemos said, “Why not right here?”

“In the sunshine?” Both eyebrows rose this time. “You are shameless.”

“You make me that way.” Menedemos untied the girdle that bound her tunic at the waist, then pulled the tunic off over her head.

When she was naked, he bent his head to kiss her breasts. Her nipples were wider and darker than he'd expected; faint pale lines marked her belly. “You've borne a child,” he said in surprise.

Her face clouded. “I've borne two. Neither lived past its second birthday. Maybe your seed will be stronger than Nikodromos'.”

“I hope so, if that's what you want.” His hand slid down toward the joining of her legs. She spread them a little to make it easier for him to stroke her. After a while, he said, “Bend forward.” Asine did, resting the palms of her hands on a stone bench. She looked back over her shoulder as Menedemos took off his own chiton and poised himself behind her.

“Oh,” she said softly when he went into her. He held her by the waist—his skin sun-darkened, hers almost white—as he thrust home again and again, pausing every now and then to spin out the pleasure for him and for her. She shook her head. Her dark hair flew back and forth. She gasped and shuddered and let out a little muffled cry. At the same time, she squeezed him from within, so that he couldn't hold back another instant. He drove deep, the world utterly forgotten in his moment of joy.

He patted her backside. She started to pull away and straighten up. “Don't,” he said, beginning once more: he had been at sea for a while.

Asine looked back at him again. “Well, well,” she said. “No wonder you've been able to do this before.”

“No wonder at all,” he said, so smugly that she laughed. He kept on with what he was doing. He didn't have to pause this time to keep from spending too soon; despite his boast, he began to wonder if he would be able to spend at all. But, panting, he managed, and brought Asine with him, too. No sooner had he finished than he flopped out of her. A third round wouldn't come soon, which meant it likely wouldn't come at all.

He and Asine both dressed in a hurry. Now that they'd done what they'd set out to do, they were warier with each other than they had been. Maybe it's just that we aren't blind with lust any more, Menedemos thought as he put his sword belt on again. “You didn't need that,” Asine told him.

“Never can tell who might get home at the wrong time,” Menedemos answered. He didn't mention that he'd worried Asine might be helping her husband play a game of their own.

She tossed her head. “He'll be out there all day. He cares about that more than he cares about me. He cares about everything more than he cares about me. Maybe if my son had lived ...” Asine tossed her head again. “I don't think so. He would have cared about the boy, but not about me.”

“I'm sorry,” Menedemos said.

“Are you? Why?” Her laughter was barbed as an arrow point. “You got what you wanted. What do you care now?”

How many men had come through the door while Nikodromos went to the temple? Menedemos almost found himself sympathizing with the priest, the last thing he would have expected. Nettled, he said, “I wasn't the only one.”

“No,” Asine said. “You gave me what I needed. You couldn't possibly give me what I want.”

What would that be? Menedemos wondered. The answer took shape in his mind almost at once. A couple of slaves, a better place among the families of Aigina. Sure enough, these sweaty couplings couldn't give her that. She could get it only from her husband—and he didn't much care whether she had it or not.

Menedemos said, “The silk and the emerald will help some.”

“A little,” Asine said—she was one of those people who, no matter what they had, always wanted more. Menedemos understood that well enough; he was the same way himself. “You'd better go,” she told him.

“Yes, you're right.” He wondered if coming here in the first place had been worthwhile. He supposed so. He hadn't been looking for anything more than a morning's pleasure. It had never felt so empty afterwards, though.

Asine gave him a kiss as she unlatched the door. “Will you remember me after you sail away?” she asked.

“I'll never forget you,” he answered. It could have been a pretty compliment, a polite fib, but he heard the raw truth in his voice. Asine must have heard it, too, for she smiled, pleased with herself. She'd taken it for praise, then. As a last favor, Menedemos didn't tell her otherwise.

A couple of naked little boys, one perhaps eight, the other six, were playing with a toy oxcart in the dusty street. They looked up as Menedemos came out of Nikodromos' house—looked up and started to giggle. His ears burned. He hurried off toward the market square.

Sostratos waved to him as he came over to the little display the men of the Aphrodite had set up. “Glad you're back,” he called, and then, “Well?”

“Very well, thanks. And you?”

His cousin rolled his eyes. A couple of the sailors who'd fetched and carried for Sostratos guffawed. A third looked blank. One of the others leaned close to mutter something to him. Menedemos couldn't hear what it was, but saw the obscene gesture accompanying it. The third sailor laughed, getting it at last.

“All right,” Sostratos said. “You didn't get held for ransom, you didn't get murdered—”

“Not that I noticed, no,” Menedemos agreed.

“Interrupt all you please,” Sostratos told him. “I'm still going to ask the questions that need asking. For instance, can we stay in Aigina without worrying about getting knifed whenever we show our faces away from the Aphrodite?”

That was indeed a question worth asking. Menedemos thought about the two giggling little boys. They probably weren't the only neighbors to have noticed his coming to Nikodromos' house when the priest wasn't home. That meant. . . Menedemos tossed his head. “Maybe not.”

“Another place we can't visit again anytime soon,” Sostratos said with a sigh. “Seems as though there's one every voyage, doesn't it?”

“This isn't like Halikarnassos or Taras,” Menedemos said. “I think I'm just one in a long line of men Nikodromos hates.”

“Ah. Like that, is it?”

“Afraid so.” Menedemos didn't feel like dwelling on what he'd done, so he asked, “How are things going here?”

Sostratos shrugged. “I've sold some silk and some crimson dye with it and a few jars of perfume, but people aren't rushing up to buy. Probably about time to have Diokles start pulling sailors out of the taverns and whorehouses, wouldn't you say?”

“Time to leave Aigina, you mean,” Menedemos said, and Sostratos dipped his head.

Menedemos thought it over. After a moment, he did the same. He said, “We might not do badly to head back to Rhodes. It's a little early in the season, but only a little, and we've gone through most of what we set out with.”

“Do you know, my dear, I was thinking the very same thing not an hour ago,” Sostratos said. “Strikes me as a good idea. We'll show a solid profit if we do. But if we cruise around for another month without accomplishing much, maybe not. And I don't mind getting home early at all.”

“Neither do I,” Menedemos said. What a liar I am, he thought.