Over the Wine-Dark Sea

by Harry Turtledove

  "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?"