"We might have a better chance that way," Menedemos said. Then he saw just how furious Sostratos looked. He threw his hands in the air. "Oh, very well. If there is no grain fleet, we'll head for home. There! Are you satisfied now?"
"Satisfied? No," Sostratos said. "I won't be satisfied till we do sail for home. But that is a little better - a very little better - than nothing."
Menedemos didn't think it was anything of the sort. The more he thought of tiptoeing into Syracuse past the Carthaginian fleet, the better he liked it. A man could dine out on such stories for the rest of his life. But he'd gone and given his word, and he felt obliged to keep it.
I hope there's a fleet at Rhegion, he thought. There'd better be a fleet at Rhegion, because I want to do this. Sostratos was right, and Menedemos was honest enough with himself to admit it: he did lust after going to Syracuse the same way he lusted after some frisky young wife he'd chanced to see.
"Remember," Sostratos said, "whatever else you do, you're not supposed to risk the ship."
"I don't intend to risk the ship," Menedemos snapped, wishing Sostratos hadn't put it quite that way, "and I'm the one who judges when the ship's being risked and when it isn't. You aren't. Have you got that, O cousin of mine?"
"Yes, I have it." Sostratos looked as if he liked it about as much as a big mouthful of bad fish. He stormed down off the poop deck and up toward the bow. Daft, Menedemos thought. Daft as Aias after he didn't get Akhilleus' armor. Anybody who'd rather deal with peafowl chicks than stand around and talk has to be daft.
The peafowl chicks! Menedemos brightened. "Oë! Sostratos!" he called.
Reluctantly, Sostratos turned back toward him. "What is it?"
"How much do you think young peafowl will bring in Syracuse?"
"I don't know," Sostratos answered. "How much do you think they would bring in Carthage?" Having got the last word, he went on up to the little foredeck.
When Menedemos steered the Aphrodite into the harbor at Rhegion, he anxiously scanned the quays. If things looked no busier than usual, he would have to sail on toward Rhodes. He let out a whoop on seeing a couple of dozen large round ships all tied up together. If that wasn't a fleet in the making, he didn't know what was.
His cousin saw the ships, too, and also knew them for what they were. The look he gave Menedemos was baleful. Menedemos grinned back, which, by Sostratos' expression, only annoyed him more.
With a handful of men at the oars to put the merchant galley exactly where he wanted her, Menedemos guided her toward the quays alongside which the round ships floated. "Go somewhere else!" a man called from the stern of the nearest big, tubby merchantman. "We're all together here, loading up on grain for Agathokles."
"That's what I'm here for, too," Menedemos said as Diokles eased the Aphrodite up against the pier.
"You?" The fellow on the round ship laughed loud and long, displaying a couple of teeth gone black in the front of his mouth. "We can carry eight or ten times as much in the Leuke here as you can in that miserable little boat. Take your toy home and sail it in your hip-bath." He laughed again.
"Toy? Hip-bath?" Menedemos was tempted to yell, Back oars!, and then spurt forward to ram the round ship. How much grain would that sneering fellow carry then? But, unfortunately, no. It wouldn't do. Menedemos said, "However much or little we haul, Syracuse'll still get more with us than without us - and Agathokles'll pay us for it, too, same as he'll pay you."
"Well, all right. When you put it like that, I suppose you've got something," the other Hellene said. "And when the Carthaginians come after us, you can be the one who fights 'em off." He laughed again, louder than ever.
But he wasn't laughing by the time the Aphrodite's crew finished screaming abuse and the details of their battle with the Roman trireme at him. He was white with fury, his fists clenched, his lips skinned back from his teeth. He had to stand there and take it, as did the other sailors on his ship. Had they chosen to answer back, the men from the akatos would have made them regret it - for, while the round ship held more cargo, the merchant galley held more crewmen.
A fellow wearing an unusually fine, unusually white wool chiton bustled up the pier toward the Aphrodite. "Are you here to carry grain to Syracuse?" he asked.
"We certainly are," Menedemos answered - this chap, unlike the man aboard the round ship, looked to have some clout. "Who are you, sir?"
"My name is Onasimos," replied the fellow with the fancy tunic. He also, Menedemos saw, had buckles on his sandals that looked like real gold. With a bow, he continued, "I have the honor to be the Syracusan proxenos here in Rhegion, and I'm doing what I can to help the polis I represent."
In normal times, a proxenos looked out for the interests of citizens of the polis he represented in the polis in which he dwelt. He was, necessarily, a man of some wealth and importance in his home town. He might aid in lawsuits. He might, at need, lend money. He got no pay for his services, only prestige and business connections. When the polis he represented was in danger, he might do extraordinary things, as Onasimos looked to be doing now.
"How do we get the grain?" Menedemos asked him.
"It's in the warehouses," Onasimos said. "Gods be praised, Great Hellas had a good harvest this past spring. I have plenty of slaves and free men ready to bring it aboard for you."
"Good." Menedemos dipped his head. "Now - about arrangements for payment."
"You've probably heard Agathokles is offering four times the going rate for grain delivered to Syracuse," Onasimos said.
Menedemos tossed his head. "I hadn't heard exactly how much he offered, as a matter of fact. But I have heard a lot of Agathokles himself - including the way he got rid of the Syracusans who weren't of his faction earlier this year. Anyone who could come up with that little scheme wouldn't think twice about going back on a promise to pay a merchant skipper."
The Syracusan proxenos looked pained. "I assure you, my dear fellow - "
But Menedemos tossed his head again. "Don't assure me, O best one. Let me ask some of the other captains and see what I find out."
Had Onasimos called his bluff and told him to go ahead, he might have believed the proxenos' protests. As things were, Onasimos sighed and said, "Oh, very well. I'll pay you the going rate now, and you can collect the rest on delivery."
"I'm sorry." Menedemos tossed his head for a third time. "The going rate isn't enough to make me want to risk the Carthaginian fleet. I know the Carthaginians are supposed to be splendid torturers, but I don't want to find out how they do what they do for myself."
He waited to see what Onasimos would say to that. The proxenos glared at him. He smiled his sweetest smile in return. Onasimos sighed again. "You're one of the canny ones, I see. All right, then - one and a half times the going rate in advance, but not an obolos more. If I give you everything promised ahead of time, you might just sail off with the grain and never go near Syracuse."
Menedemos thought about squeezing the proxenos some more. He glanced toward Sostratos. His cousin ignored him - Sostratos wanted no part of the Syracusan venture. Menedemos sent him a covert dirty look. He wanted to know what Sostratos thought, for his cousin was often better at haggling with these fancy types then he was himself. But Sostratos seemed determined to sulk.
That left it up to Menedemos. Onasimos had a point. Some men, with silver in their hands, would sail away from Syracuse. Not me, of course, Menedemos thought. But Onasimos didn't, couldn't, know that. "All right," Menedemos said. "One and a half times the going rate it is. Sostratos!"
His cousin jumped. "What?"
"You'll keep count of how many sacks of grain Onasimos' men bring aboard the Aphrodite here," Menedemos said. "As soon as we get paid our first installment for hauling them, we're off with the rest of the fleet."
"I'll have a man of my own doing the counting," Onasimos said.
"Good." Menedemos smiled that sweet smile at him. "I'm sure his count and Sostratos' will match very closely, then." The Syracusan proxenos' answering
smile looked distinctly forced. He was going to try to cheat me, Menedemos thought. Why am I not surprised?
Muttering under his breath, Onasimos tramped back down the pier. About half an hour later, a line of men carrying leather sacks, each with a talent of grain, came out from the interior of Rhegion. "Where do you want these?" asked the man heading up the line. He carried no sack himself; he was obviously the fellow who would do the counting for Onasimos.
"Sostratos!" Menedemos called, and Sostratos, still seeming just this side of mutinous, went up onto the pier and stood beside Onasimos' man. For that worthy's benefit, Menedemos continued, "Now - I'll want you to start at the stern, just forward of the poop deck, and work toward the bow, one row of sacks at a time, till she holds as much grain as she can."
"Right," Onasimos' man said, and shouted orders at the men he was in charge of. They came down the gangplank and started loading the grain.
By the time they finished, the Aphrodite rode a great deal lower in the water. That worried Menedemos. Not only the extra weight but also the extra amount of hull now in the sea would slow the merchant galley. She didn't need to be slow, not when she might have to flee from Carthaginian warships. But he couldn't blame Onasimos for wanting to put as much grain into her as he could: the proxenos was doing his best to feed the people of the city he served.
"How many sacks of grain did we take on?" Menedemos asked once the last sweating hauler left the akatos.
"By my count, 797 sacks," Sostratos answered.
Onasimos' man sneered. "I reckoned it as 785." Sostratos bristled. Anyone who accused him of inaccuracy was asking for trouble.
Menedemos had no time for that kind of trouble. He said, "We'll split the difference. What does that come to?"
Sostratos counted on his fingers, his lips moving. "It would be 791," he said. "But I still think this fellow - "
"Never mind," Menedemos broke in. He nodded to Onasimos' man. "Tell your master we've got 791 sacks of grain aboard. As soon as we get paid, we're ready to go. Agreed?"
"Agreed," the other said. "Some of these round ships hold more than ten times as many sacks as that, you know."
"Every bit helps," Menedemos replied. Onasimos' man dipped his head and went back into Rhegion as his master had before him: to get money, Menedemos hoped.
Diokles said, "I hope the wind stays with us. The men'll break their backs and their hearts rowing with us laden like this, and she'll handle like a raft - if we're lucky, that is."
"If the wind fails, we're not going anywhere, not with all these round ships," Menedemos said. "They have to sail."
"Mm, that's so," the oarmaster agreed. He flashed Menedemos a sassy grin. "In that case, skipper, maybe we ought to hope for south winds for the next three months, so if Syracuse falls, we don't have to come close to all those Carthaginian war galleys, and we pick up a nice pile of silver anyway."
"You sounds like Sostratos," Menedemos said, and Diokles' grin got wider and even more provocative. Menedemos mimed throwing something at him and went on, "I wouldn't mind getting paid for doing nothing, either - who would? But if we don't get to deliver the grain, they'll just take it off and make us cough up the money again."
"If we were proper pirates, we'd sneak out of the harbor if that looked like happening," the keleustes said. "We're a galley, after all. We could do it."
"We could, sure enough." Menedemos wished Diokles hadn't put the idea in his mind. It was tempting. But he had no trouble finding reasons it wouldn't work. "You said it yourself - we'll be slow as a cart-ox with all this grain aboard. And my bet is, Rhegion would send her navy after us if we made off with the grain and the money. This Onasimos fellow looks to pull a lot of weight here."
"Well, so he does," Diokles said. "All right, then. I'd sooner pray for fair winds than foul, anyway."
"So would I," Menedemos said.
Sostratos thought of himself as a modern, rational man. He'd been embarrassed to spend the past couple of days praying for contrary winds. And he'd been embarrassed all over again to have his prayer fail so ignominiously, for a fine breeze blew from the north this morning. So much for the gods, he thought, and a solid point for rationalism.
Menedemos was up before dawn, too, smiling at the sky. He'd probably been praying for fair winds, so his belief in the gods was bound to be vindicated, too. That thought made Sostratos grumpier than ever. But, instead of gloating, Menedemos just pointed to the thin crescent moon rising a little ahead of the sun. "Another month almost done," he said.
"Sure enough." Sostratos peered into the brightening twilight between that little cheese-paring of a moon and the horizon. "And there's Aphrodite's wandering star."
"Why, so it is," Menedemos said. "Sure enough, your eyes aren't so bad if you can pick it out against the bright sky. The sun's almost up."
"I knew where to look," Sostratos answered with a shrug. "It's been sliding down the morning sky toward the sun for weeks now. Before too long, we'll see it in the evening instead. People used to think the evening appearance was a different star from the morning one - the same with Hermes' wandering star."
"What do you mean, used to?" Menedemos said. "Half our sailors probably still believe that."
"I meant educated people," Sostratos said. "The sailors are fine men but . . .." Most of them thought of little save women (or, with a few, boys), wine, and tavern brawls. How does one talk with such people? he wondered.
"I like 'em fine," Menedemos said.
"I know." Sostratos did his best not to make that sound like a judgment. Still and all, what did it say about his cousin's taste?
Menedemos didn't seem to notice Sostratos' tone, which was just as well. He said, "We'll sail today."
"I know." Sostratos knew how unhappy he sounded, too, but he couldn't help it. "Do you think we'll make Syracuse by nightfall?"
"We would, if we weren't so overloaded," his cousin answered. "These fat scows we'll be keeping company with? Not a chance. We'll put in at one of the Sicilian towns tonight, or spend the night at sea, then go on in the morning."
"All right." Sostratos sighed. "One more night to spend worrying."
"Nothing to worry about," Menedemos said. "What could possibly go wrong?"
Sostratos started to answer. Then he started to splutter. And then he started to laugh. "Oh, no, you don't. You're not going to get me to turn purple and pitch a fit. I'm wise to you, Menedemos."
"A likely story," Menedemos said. They grinned at each other. For a moment, Sostratos forgot how much he wished the Aphrodite weren't sailing for Syracuse.
But he couldn't forget for long. All around the harbor, captains were waking up, tasting the breeze, and realizing it would be a good day to sail. They called orders to their crews and to the longshoremen who came down the wharves to cast off their mooring lines and bring them aboard once more. The sailors grunted and heaved at the sweeps even round ships carried, and slowly, a digit at a time, eased the ships away from their berths so they could make sail and head for Sicily.
Seeing their struggles to get started, Sostratos laughed again. "Our rowers may have to work hard, but not that hard."
"You're right." Menedemos waved to a couple of longshoremen. "Over here, too!"
"You're going to take this little thing to Syracuse?" one of the men said as he tossed a line down onto the sacks of grain in the Aphrodite's waist. "Good idea - you can be a boat for all the real ships." He laughed at his own wit.
That sort of remark was as calculated to make Menedemos furious as Menedemos' crack had been to infuriate Sostratos. But Sostratos' cousin only shrugged, saying, "Onasimos likes us well enough to pay us to haul grain." The longshoreman turned away, disappointment on his face. Menedemos raised his voice: "Come on, boys, let's show these round-ship sailors how to row."
Diokles set the stroke. The men - all of them at the oars - pulled as hard as they had in the fight with the Roman trireme. And the Aphrodite . . . moved as if she were traveling through mud, not seawater. Diokles
said, "I think this is about as much as we'll get from her, captain."
"Yes, I think you're right," Menedemos agreed. "I'd hoped for a little more, but . . .." He shrugged.
"She feels different in the water," Sostratos said. "More solid, more as if we were on dry land. She doesn't shift so much underfoot."
"I should hope she doesn't," Menedemos said. "She's carrying twice as much as usual, so the waves don't seem to hit her so hard."
"That's true. We've never really felt what she's like fully laden before, have we?" Sostratos said, and Menedemos tossed his head. The merchant galley didn't have to travel full up to hope for profit, as a round ship did. She carried luxury goods, valuable for their rarity, instead of being a bulk hauler. Now Sostratos got a glimpse of what the usual sailor did on a usual voyage, and found he didn't much care for it.
One by one, the round ships lowered their great sails from their yards. One by one, the sails bellied out and filled with wind. The tubby ships began their southward journey, but not at a pace above a walk. The Aphrodite's sail came down, too, and Menedemos called the rowers off the oars. Before very long, he had to order the men to brail up half the sail; otherwise, the akatos would have shot ahead of the other ships in the fleet despite her load.
When Sostratos let some peafowl chicks out of their cages to exercise, they ran around over the leather sacks of grain as happily as they had over the planking. They picked at spilled wheat as happily as they had at the cockroaches and other bugs that normally infested the Aphrodite - not that loading hundreds of sacks of grain onto the vermin had got rid of them.
Once the crew helped chivvy the chicks back into the cages, Sostratos could take a long look at the scenery. Indeed, he had little choice, unless he wanted to find a place to stand and brood. Considering where the Aphrodite was going and what she was liable to face when she got there, that didn't strike him as the worst idea in the world, but he refused to give in to it.
Because the merchant galley couldn't make anything close to her usual speed if she wanted to stay with the fleet of round ships, Sostratos had plenty of time to admire each bit of scenery as it passed. There was a great deal of Mount Aitne to admire. Now that Sostratos had seen both Aitne and Mount Ouesouion from fairly close range, he realized how much more massive the Sicilian volcano was than the one on the mainland of Italy. The soil on its slopes and around its base, though, had the same grayish, ashy look he'd seen near Pompaia. The Sicilian vineyards looked very rich, too, though the fields lay fallow under the hot summer sun.
Over the Wine-Dark Sea Page 33
