"To the crows with that," Menedemos said, though he'd been thinking the same thing. "Taking jars and sacks off, putting them back aboard - we'd never make Knidos by nightfall. The hours aren't so long as they will be come summertime." In the winter, a day's twelve hours were cramped, while a night's twelve stretched. In summer, the reverse held true. At this season of the year, daylight hours and those of the nighttime roughly matched.
"Shall we give it another try, then?" the keleustes asked.
"Unless you feel like swimming home," Menedemos answered. Diokles tossed his head. Menedemos raised his voice to a shout: "Come on! Put your backs into it this time! One more good heave and we'll be off!"
He was anything but sure he was telling the truth, but it was what the sailors needed to hear. He heaved with them, his bare feet digging into the golden sand. At first, he thought this try would prove as fruitless as the last. But then the false keel grated as the ship lurched forward: not much, only a digit's worth or not even that, but some.
Everyone felt the tiny motion. "We can do it!" Menedemos cried. "At my count . . . one, two, three!"
Another scrape of timber on sand. The men grunted and cursed as they shoved. Out in the little bay, the rowers in the boat pulled as if they had a five full of Carthaginians on their tail. The Aphrodite moved a little more, and then a little more - and then, more than a little to Menedemos surprise, slid into the Aegean. The sailors raised a cheer.
"We'll spend the night tied up to a pier in Knidos," Sostratos said, "but the next time we have to go aground on a sandy shore, let's not beach ourselves so hard."
"Well, that isn't the worst idea I've ever heard," Menedemos answered. "Still and all, though, we do want to let the timbers dry whenever we get the chance. Rowing's harder work when you have to shove along the extra weight that goes into a waterlogged ship."
He waded out into the cool water of the bay and, agile as a monkey, swarmed up a rope and over the side of the Aphrodite. Rather less gracefully, Sostratos followed. Before long, all the men were in the Aphrodite and the akatos' boat tied to the sternpost once more for towing.
"Out of the inlet," Menedemos said, "then around the southern coast of Syme, and then west and a little north to Knidos." Still dripping, his hair wet and slick, he took his place at the steering oars and dipped his head to Diokles. "If you'd be so kind, keleustes."
"Right you are, skipper." The oarmaster clanged his mallet against the bronze square. "Rhyppapai! Rhyppapai!"
"Rhyppapai!" the rowers echoed, taking their beat from him. Menedemos had only ten men a side at the oars. He would work the men in shifts, the way any captain not in a desperate hurry did.
Sostratos asked, "May I let a couple of peahens out now?"
"Wait till we're well away from Syme and in more open water," Menedemos answered. "We don't want the miserable birds trying to fly to land and going into the sea instead."
"You're right. I hadn't thought of that," Sostratos said. Menedemos couldn't imagine himself making an admission like that, even if it was true. If he hadn't thought of something, he didn't want anybody but himself knowing it. His cousin went on, "Tell me when the time is right, then."
"I will," Menedemos said, somewhat abstractedly: the bulk of the island was shielding him from some of the wind he wanted to use. He ordered the big square mainsail lowered from the yard, but it flapped and fluttered and didn't want to fill. Even after the sailors used the brails to haul up most of the canvas on the leeward side, he wondered if he should have bothered using it at all; it hardly seemed to add anything to the Aphrodite's turn of speed. Then he shrugged. The men would think it helped, even if it didn't really do much. Keeping them happy counted for something, too.
After an hour or so, the Aphrodite glided between the narrow spit of land at Syme's southwestern corner and the closest of the three tiny islets that straggled out from the spit. Once the ship got free of Syme's wind shadow, the sail bellied out and went taut. "That's more like it," Menedemos exclaimed, and ordered more of the sail lowered to take advantage of the breeze.
"Now?" Sostratos asked: so much for waiting for Menedemos to give him the word.
Menedemos considered. Now that Syme no longer blocked his view, he could see the long, narrow Karian peninsula at whose end Knidos sat. But the peninsula lay perhaps forty stadia to the north: far enough away for it to seem a little misty, a little indistinct. He didn't suppose the peafowl would try to fly to it. "Go ahead," he said. "Let's see what happens. Pick your sailors first, though, and tell them what they're going to have to do."
His cousin dipped his head. Menedemos gave him no more specific instructions; he wanted to see how Sostratos would handle the business. Most of the sailors Sostratos chose were men Menedemos would have picked, too, men he reckoned sensible and reliable. But his cousin also pointed to the two rowers Diokles had plucked off the wharf as the Aphrodite was about to sail. Maybe he wanted to work them in with the rest of the crew. Maybe he just reckoned them expendable. Either way, Menedemos didn't think he would have wanted them for this work.
"Just keep the birds away from people who are doing things that need doing," Sostratos said. "Except for that, let them run around and eat whatever they can catch. We'll have fewer lizards and mice and cockroaches aboard the Aphrodite after a while."
He was probably right. Menedemos hadn't looked at that side of things. No man born of woman could keep down the vermin that inevitably traveled with men and cargo. Vermin were part of life; Menedemos suspected mice and roaches ate scraps of ambrosia on Olympos. Some ship captains took along Egyptian cats to try to keep down the mice, though he'd never been convinced the nasty little yowlers caught enough to be worthwhile.
His cousin stooped on the little foredeck to unlatch a peahen's cage. A moment later, Sostratos hopped back with a yelp of "Oimoi!" He wrung his hand.
"Still have all your fingers?" Menedemos called from the steering oars at the poop.
By the way Sostratos looked down, Menedemos guessed he was checking to make sure of that himself. His cousin dipped his head. "I do," he said, "though no thanks to this monstrous fowl." He shook one of the fingers he still had at the peahen. "You hateful bird, don't you know I'm doing you a favor?"
Maybe the peahen heeded him. At any rate, it didn't try to peck him again. He swung the cage door open. The bird emerged. A heartbeat later, so did another one. Menedemos and Sostratos called that second peahen Helen, because the peacock mated with her more enthusiastically than with the other peahens. When she walked past his cage now, he started screeching loud enough to make Menedemos wince even though he stood at the Aphrodite's stern.
With a flutter of wings, the two peahens went down the wooden stairway and into the undecked bottom of the akatos. One of them pecked at something. "That was a centipede!" a sailor said. "Good riddance to the horrible thing."
The bird called Helen pecked at something else. A rower let out a howl: "That was my leg! You lefthanded idiot, you're supposed to keep the miserable creature away from me."
"I'm sorry, I'm sure," said the fellow called an idiot: one of Diokles' new men, a chap named Teleutas. He flapped the little net he was holding at the peahen, which didn't peck the rower twice. All the same, Menedemos didn't judge this the best way to blend the newcomers with the rest of the crew.
Another rower yelped. The sailor who hadn't kept the peahen from nipping at him had been rowing for Menedemos and Sostratos' families since they were both little boys. Maybe nobody could stop the peafowl from making nuisances of themselves. In that case, maybe Sostratos hadn't made such a bad choice with Teleutas and the other new sailor - whose name Menedemos kept forgetting - after all.
Helen the peahen hopped up onto an empty rower's bench and stretched her neck so she could peer over the gunwale at the Karian coastline in the distance. Would she know it lay in the distance? Or would she forget she had clipped wings and try to strike out for the land she saw?
Before anyone could find out, Sostratos threw a
net over her. He didn't want fifty drakhmai of silver splashing into the Aegean. It was a fit home for dolphins - Menedemos saw three or four leaping out of the water off to port - but not for expensive birds.
Helen gave a screech the peacock might have envied and lashed out with feet and beak through the mesh of the net. Sostratos cursed, but didn't let her escape till he got her down where she couldn't do herself mischief.
"This is supposed to keep the birds healthy?" Menedemos called. "Looks like you'll just run them ragged."
Sostratos shot him a harried look. "I'm doing my best," he answered. "If you've got any better ideas - if you've got any ideas at all, Menedemos - suppose you tell me about them."
Menedemos went back to steering the akatos. His cheeks felt on fire; he hoped the flush didn't show. His cousin looked down his nose at him for preferring Homer and bawdy Aristophanes to Herodotos and Thoukydides, and for preferring wine and flutegirls to philosophical discussion at a symposion. But Sostratos didn't usually come right out and call him a fool, especially not when the whole crew of the Aphrodite could hear him. Of course, Sostratos wasn't usually so harassed as he was while trying to shepherd bad-tempered birds that didn't feel like being herded.
Occupied with the peafowl, Sostratos didn't even seem to notice what he'd done. He let Helen out of the net and gave her and the other peahen some more time to run around loose. If either one of them presumed to climb up to the poop deck, Menedemos told himself he'd kick it off no matter how expensive it was. But his cousin and the sailors kept the peafowl away. That left Menedemos disappointed. He was so angry, he wanted to kick something.
After Sostratos got the peahens back in their cages, he let out the peacock. All the sailors exclaimed: they hadn't seen the male bird uncaged. "Be careful of those tail feathers," Sostratos warned. "They're what makes the bird worth what he's worth. If anything happens to them - if anything happens to him - it'll come out of your hides."
Menedemos wouldn't have put it that way. Putting it that way, he thought, meant the sailors wouldn't dare do anything much to or with the peacock. And he proved a good prophet. The peacock ran around staring and pecking and kicking and screeching, and Sostratos had to take care of it and recapture it almost completely by himself. Irked at his cousin, Menedemos gave no orders to make life easier for him, as he might have otherwise. Had Sostratos complained, Menedemos would have told him where to head in. But Sostratos didn't complain. He netted the peacock as neatly as a fisherman might have netted some anchovies, and returned him to his cage without taking any wounds. Even Menedemos had to admit to himself it was a job well done.
As the Aphrodite made her way toward Knidos, Sostratos gave the other three peafowl some exercise time in turn. One of them drew blood from a rower. His friends had to grab him to keep him from bringing the bird to an untimely end.
Once the last peahen was back in its cage, Sostratos mounted the steps to the poop deck. He looked haggard. "I hope that's done the peafowl some good," he said. "It's certainly kept me on my toes."
"This is what you asked for," Menedemos reminded him. "If the birds do look perkier, you'll be doing it every day."
"Gods," Sostratos muttered. Menedemos, still feeling heartless, affected not to notice. His cousin spoke a bit louder: "They're liable to be more trouble than they're worth."
"Not when they're worth at least three and a quarter minai," Menedemos said. Sostratos groaned, not loudly but unmistakably. Again, Menedemos pretended not to hear.
Knidos had a fine harbor. A little island sat just off the Karian coast. Part of the town was on the mainland, the rest on the island. Stone moles connected the two, dividing the harbor in twain. Sostratos breathed a sigh of relief as longshoremen tied the Aphrodite up to a pier. He looked forward to sleeping in a bed at an inn. It wouldn't match the bed he had at home, but it would have to be an improvement on wrapping himself in his himation and lying down on the sand.
A bald man with a gray-streaked bird pointed to the cages on the foredeck and asked, "What have you got in there?"
"Peafowl," Sostratos answered.
"Peafowl," Menedemos echoed, in an altogether brighter tone: he remembered Alexion's moneymaking scheme, which had slipped Sostratos' mind. He went on, "Peafowl from the steaming jungles of India. You can see them up close for only two khalkoi - the sixth part of an obolos." The man with the gray beard paid out the two little bronze coins without hesitation. He came aboard the Aphrodite and stared at the birds through the slats of the cages.
They gave him a good show. Two of them tried to peck him, and the peacock screeched loud enough to make him jam his fingers in his ears. "Nasty things, aren't they?" he said to Sostratos, who'd stayed by the birds. By worrying about the way they looked after staying in their cages all the time, he'd apparently appointed himself chief peafowl-keeper along with all his other duties.
Those screeches drew more people to the pier. With his usual eye for the main chance, Menedemos went up the gangplank and talked rapidly, fluently, and perhaps even truthfully about peafowl. His patter was plenty to send more curious Knidians down to the Aphrodite to take a look for themselves. He collected the khalkoi on the pier; nobody set foot on the galley without having paid. Sostratos remained by the peafowl to make sure nobody tried to poke them with a stick or yank out one of the peacock's tail feathers or do anything else he shouldn't have. He told what he knew about the birds and listened to the locals' news, not all of which he'd heard before.
Men and boys and even a few women kept coming aboard till the sun sank in the Aegean. By then, most of the sailors - everyone, in fact, except for six or eight guards Diokles chose - had gone into Knidos to sample the harborside taverns and brothels. Sostratos reluctantly resigned himself to spending the night on the Aphrodite: only a fool would wander through a strange town at night by himself with nothing but a torch to light his way.
Some of the akatos' crew brought back bread and oil and olives and wine for the men who stayed behind. It wasn't much of a supper, but better than nothing. Alexion happily counted the pile of small change Menedemos gave him. "Better than a drakhma here, sure enough," he said. "Thank you kindly, skipper."
"Thank you," Menedemos told him. "You earned it. The birds will make us money the rest of the trip."
"I heard a couple of interesting things," Sostratos said, dipping a chunk of bread into some oil as he sat on the timbers of the poop deck. "I think we can forget about the peace the four generals signed last summer."
"I don't suppose anyone expected it to last long." Menedemos spat an olive pit into the palm of his hand, then tossed it over the side. Sostratos heard the tiny splash as it went into the water. Colors faded out of the world as twilight deepened and more stars came out. Menedemos asked, "What happened?"
"They say here that Ptolemaios has sent an army up into Kilikia to attack Antigonos there," Sostratos answered. "The excuse he's using is that Antigonos broke the treaty by putting garrisons in free and independent Hellenic cities."
Menedemos snorted. Sostratos didn't blame him. Knidos, for instance, called itself a free and independent Hellenic city, but it did Antigonos' bidding, as did most Hellenic cities in Asia Minor - including those of Kilikia in the southeast. Rhodes, now, Rhodes truly was free and independent . . . since expelling Alexander's garrison. That didn't mean any of the squabbling Macedonian generals wouldn't be delighted to bring the city to heel again.
After another snort, Menedemos asked, "What else did you hear?"
"You know Polemaios, Antigonos' nephew?" Sostratos said.
"Not personally, no," his cousin answered, which made him snort in turn. Menedemos went on, "What about him?"
"A fisherman told me that a ship came into Knidos from Eretria on the island of Euboia," Sostratos said.
Menedemos impatiently dipped his head. "He's been holding the island - and Boiotia, too: all that country north of Athens - for Antigonos for the past couple of years."
"Not any more," Sostratos said. "He's go
ne over to Kassandros with his whole army."
"Has he?" Menedemos whistled softly. "I'll bet old One-Eye is fit to be tied. Why on earth would he do a thing like that?"
"Who can say?" Sostratos answered with a shrug. "But Antigonos' sons are grown men - Demetrios especially, though Philippos can't be more than a few years younger than we are. With two sons in the family, how much inheritance can a nephew hope for?"
"Something to that, I shouldn't wonder," Menedemos said. "If Antigonos gets his hands on Polemaios now, though, he'll give him his inheritance, all right: one funeral pyre's worth."
"I wouldn't want Antigonos holding that kind of grudge against me." Sostratos agreed. "And, of course, he'll be at war with Kassandros over this, because it really weakens him in Hellas. I wonder why the generals bothered making their treaty at all."
"It must have seemed like a good idea at the time," Menedemos said. "More often than not, that's why people do things."
There in the twilight - almost the dark, now - Sostratos eyed his cousin. Menedemos might well have been describing himself and his own reasons for doing this or that . . . which didn't mean he was wrong about the generals. Sostratos tried to take a longer view of things. He knew he often failed, but he did try.
"It shouldn't have anything to do with us, not directly," he said. "We won't be heading to the northern parts of Hellas or up to Macedonia, either."
"Not directly, no," Menedemos said. "But if Kassandros sends out a fleet and Antigonos sends out a fleet - they aren't pirates, but they'd both think we made tasty pickings. They aren't pirates, but they're liable to be worse than pirates. The Aphrodite's got some chance of beating a pentekonter, but we'd need a miracle against a trireme, let alone anything bigger."
"Maybe it's a good time to get out of the Aegean and head west," Sostratos said, and then, before Menedemos could answer. "Of course, it would be even better if Syracuse and Carthage weren't fighting over there."
Over the Wine-Dark Sea Page 7
