“Come on,” Menedemos said out of the side of his mouth. “Let’s look at something else for a little while.”
“Right you are,” Sostratos agreed. If they started bidding for a ham, too, the bearded Lykian could use them and the soldier against each other and bump up the price.
“Here.” Menedemos took a Lykian-style hat and set it on his own head. “How do I look?”
“Like an idiot,” Sostratos told him.
His cousin bowed, “Thank you so very much, my dear. The Lykians who wear our clothes don’t look idiotic.”
“That’s because we don’t wear such funny-looking things,” Sostratos said.
“I should hope not.” Menedemos put back the hat. “And all those goatskin cloaks look like they’ve got the mange.”
“They sure do.” But then, instead of going on and mocking the Lykians even more, Sostratos checked himself, feeling foolish. “It’s only custom that makes our clothes seem right to us and theirs seem strange. But custom is king of all.”
“That last bit sounds like poetry,” Menedemos said. “Who said it first?”
“What, you don’t think I could have?” Sostratos said. His cousin impatiently tossed his head. Sostratos laughed. “Well, you’re right. It’s from Pindaros, quoted by Herodotos in his history.”
“I might have known you would have found it in a history—and I did know it was too good for you.” Menedemos peered around the agora. “Do you see anything else you want around here?”
“One of the women who was buying dried figs, but I don’t suppose she’d be for sale,” Sostratos answered.
Menedemos snorted. “That’s the sort of thing I’m supposed to say, and you’re supposed to roll your eyes and look at me as if I were a comic actor who’s just shit himself on stage. My only question is, how do you know she’s not for sale unless you try to find out?”
“I’m not going to worry about it,” Sostratos said. “Unlike some people I could name, I know there are other things in the world.”
“Oh, I know that, too,” Menedemos replied. “But none of the others is half as much fun,” He checked himself. “Well, I suppose boys are half as much fun. They’d be just as much fun if they enjoyed it the way women do.”
“I won’t quarrel with you,” Sostratos said. “A lot of men don’t care whether boys enjoy it or not, though.”
“They’re the same sort of men who don’t care if their women take pleasure, either.” Menedemos’ lip curled in contempt. “And, when a man like that beds a woman, she doesn’t take pleasure. You wonder why they even bother.”
“That soldier’s gone,” Sostratos said. “Let’s go find out what the Lykian wants for his hams.”
The merchant’s price for one ham didn’t seem too high. Menedemos asked him, “How many have you got?”
“Twenty-eight. No, twenty-seven. I just sell one.”
In a low voice, Menedemos asked, “How much is twenty times his price, my dear?” Sostratos stood there in a lip-moving trance of concentration. Part of him resented being used as an animate abacus. Much more of him, though, enjoyed showing off. He gave Menedemos the answer. Menedemos gave it back to the Lykian, saying, “We’ll give you that for all of them together.”
“All?” The fellow stared.
“Yes, all. We’ll take them east. For that. Not an obolos more. Yes? No?”
“All,” the Lykian said dazedly. He wasn’t used to doing business on that scale. He made mental calculations of his own, wondering whether a low price for one ham was worth getting a big sack of silver for the lot of them and not having to worry about when or whether they’d sell. Suddenly, he thrust out a hand. “All!”
Menedemos clasped it. Sostratos said, “Let’s head back to the ship. We’ll see how lost we get.”
He didn’t expect to; he’d made it from the Aphrodite to the agora, and, with his good head for directions, thought he’d be able to retrace his steps without much trouble. But he’d reckoned without Patara’s streets, which doubled back on each other even more enthusiastically than those of a Hellenic polis built before Hippodamos popularized the idea of a rectangular grid.
He came upon a carved stone column, inscribed in Lykian, planted in front of a potter’s shop. “Give the potter an obolos,” Menedemos said. “He’ll tell us how to get out of this maze.”
“Wait,” Sostratos said. He found a word on the column he recognized. “Mithradata put this up, I think.”
“Who’s Mithradata?” Menedemos asked.
“He was satrap here about the time our grandfather was born,” Sostratos replied. “He was one of the very first people to use his own portrait on his coins.”
“Everybody does that nowadays,” Menedemos said. “All the Macedonian marshals do, anyhow.”
“No, not all of them,” Sostratos said, precise as usual. “Antigonos’ silver still has Alexander’s head on it.”
“Fine.” Menedemos sounded exasperated. “So old One-Eye puts somebody else’s portrait on his money. It’s still a portrait.”
“I wonder how much the portraits on coins and statues really look like Alexander.” Sostratos remained relentlessly curious. “He’s fifteen years dead, after all. They aren’t images of him any more: they’re copies of copies of copies of images of him.”
“You could have asked that of Ptolemaios when we were in Kos last year,” his cousin said. “You could ask any Macedonian veteran, as a matter of fact, or any Hellene who went east with the Macedonians.”
“You’re right. I could. Thanks, best one. Next time I think of it, I will.” Sostratos beamed. “Nice to run across a question that has an answer.”
“Ah, but has it got one answer or many?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, if you ask one veteran, he’ll give you an answer. But if you ask ten veterans, will they all give you the same answer? Or will some say the coins look like Alexander while others tell you they don’t?”
“I don’t know.” Sostratos plucked at his beard. “Finding out would be interesting, though.”
Once past the potter’s, they turned a corner and saw blue water ahead. “There’s the gods-cursed harbor,” Menedemos said. He threw his arms wide. “Thalassa! Thalassa!” he called, and burst out laughing.
Sostratos laughed, too. “You didn’t march through all of Asia to find the sea, the way Xenophon’s men did.”
“No, but I came through all of Patara—through some of it two or three times, too—and that seems even farther,” Menedemos retorted. “And I tell you something else, too: after I go back with some men to get the hams and pay off that Lykian, I’ll be just about as glad to get on the sea again as Xenophon’s men were. Have you ever found a place that’s harder to get around in than this?”
“Not lately,” Sostratos said. “I hope some of the other Lykian towns will be better.”
“They could hardly be worse,” Menedemos said.
“OöP!” Diokles called, and the Aphrodite’s rowers rested at their oars. The keleustes went on, “Bring ‘em inboard, boys. We’re running nicely before the wind.”
The rowers did ship their oars and stow them. As the oarmaster had said, a brisk wind from out of the north filled the merchant galley’s sails. The Aphrodite sped southward, bounding over the waves as nimbly as a dolphin.
“No sailing better than this,” Menedemos said. Before long, he would swing the akatos east to follow the Lykian coastline. For now, though, he just stood at the steering oars and let her run.
Even Sostratos dipped his head. He was getting his sea legs faster this year than he had on the ship’s last couple of trading runs; its pitching didn’t seem to bother him at all. He said, “A pirate ship would have trouble catching us today.”
“Don’t count on it,” Menedemos said. “They sail at least as fast as we do, and when they sprint with all their rowers going flat out there’s nothing in anybody’s navy can keep up with ‘em.”
The wind continued to rise. It thrummed in the merchant galley’s r
igging. The akatos’ creamy white wake streamed out behind it. Menedemos turned to look back over his shoulder, trying to gauge just how fast they were going.
“Skipper, I think maybe you ought to—” Diokles began.
“Take in some canvas?” Menedemos finished, and the oarmaster dipped his head. Menedemos raised his voice to tall out to the sailors; “Come on, boys—brail it up a couple of squares’ worth. We don’t want anything to tear loose.”
Strengthening lines crossed the sail horizontally. The brails ran vertically, giving it a pattern of squares. Hauling on the brails, the sailors could, if they chose, shorten part of the sail and leave the rest fully lowered from the yard, so as to take best advantage of the wind. Now, with that wind blowing out of the north, at their backs, they shortened the whole sail evenly.
“That’s better,” Menedemos said, but it still wasn’t good enough to suit him. He ordered the yard lowered on the mast. Again, that helped. Again, it didn’t seem quite enough.
Quietly, Diokles said, “Don’t mean to bother you, skipper, but—” He pointed toward the north.
Menedemos looked back over his shoulder again. “Oh, a pestilence,” he said, also quietly. “Well, that spills the perfume into the soup, doesn’t it?” The line of dark, angry clouds hadn’t come over the horizon the last time he’d looked. They swelled rapidly. No matter how fast the Aphrodite was going, they outpaced her with ease.
“Squall,” Sostratos said.
Menedemos started to spit into the bosom of his tunic to turn aside the omen, but didn’t bother completing the gesture. Sostratos hadn’t really made a prediction. He’d simply stated a fact.
“Brail up the sail the rest of the way,” Menedemos ordered, and the men leaped to obey. He had to call louder than he had only a few minutes before: the wind was rising fast and starting to howl. “Rowers to the oars,” he added, and swung one steering-oar tiller in and the other away from him. “I’m going to put her into the wind. A storm like this one usually blows out as fast as it blows up. We can get through it quicker heading into It than running away.”
Oars bit into the sea. The Aphrodite’s steady pitching motion changed to a roll as she turned and presented her flank to the waves. Sostratos gulped and turned green as a leek; he didn’t like that so well. The rowers handled it with untroubled aplomb. In one ship or another, they’d done such things before.
Diokles began calling out the stroke as well as using his bronze square and little mallet. “Rhyppapai!” he boomed. “Rhyppapai! Steady boys. You can do it. “Rhyppapai!”
Pushed on by the wind blowing the squall line toward the ship, the waves got bigger. They crashed against the Aphrodite’s ram, throwing up plumes of spray. As the akatos turned into the wind, she began pitching again, but harder; Menedemos felt as if he were aboard a half-broken horse that was doing Its best to throw him off.
The ship groaned as she rode up over one of those waves. Being long and lean helped her slide swiftly across the sea. But, in a storm like this, it left her vulnerable. In heavy waves, part of her was supported by nothing but air for long heartbeats, till she rode down into the next trough. If she broke her back, everyone aboard would drown in short order.
One of those waves threw water into her bow. Everyone aboard her might drown even if she held together.
“Here comes the squall!” Sostratos shouted, as if Menedemos couldn’t see that only too well for himself.
Black, roiling clouds blotted out blue sky overhead. The sun vanished. Rain poured down in buckets. Zeus hurled a thunderbolt, not far away. The noise, even through the pounding of the rain and the wind’s shrill, furious shriek, seemed like the end of the world. If one of those thunderbolts struck the Aphrodite, that would take her down to the bottom of Poseidon’s watery realm, too, and all the men aboard her down to the house of Hades.
Howling like a bloodthirsty wild beast, the wind tore at Menedemos. He clung to the steering-oar tillers with all his strength, to keep from being picked up and flung into the Aegean. The steering oars fought in his hands, the ferocious sea giving them a life of their own.
A stay parted with a twang like that of an enormous lyre string. The mast sagged. If another stay went, the mast would likely go with it. In its fall, it might capsize the merchant galley. “Fix that line!” Menedemos screamed. He didn’t think the sailors could hear him. He could hardly hear himself. But they knew what needed doing without being told. They rushed to seize the flapping stay, to bind it to another line, and to secure it to a belaying pin. More men stood by with hatchets, ready to try to chop the mast and yard free if they did come down.
And then, as suddenly as the squall line had engulfed the Aphrodite, it was past. The wind eased. The rain slackened, then stopped. The sea remained high, but the waves became less furious without that gale to drive them, A few minutes later, as the clouds roared off toward the south, the sun came out again.
Water dripped from Sostratos’ beard. It was dripping from the end of Menedemos’ nose, too, and from the point of his chin. Now he wiped his face with his forearm; he’d seen no point in bothering before.
“Just another day,” Sostratos remarked, just as if that were true.
Menedemos tried on a grin. It felt good. Being alive felt good. Knowing he’d probably stay alive a while longer felt best of all. He dipped his head, admiring his cousin’s coolness and doing his best to match it. “Yes,” he said. “Just another day.”
A sailor at an oar near the stern grinned, too. He took a hand off the oar to wave to Menedemos. “One thing about a storm like that,” he said. “If you piss yourself, who’ll know?”
“Not a soul.” Menedemos laughed out loud. The harried little men who filled Aristophanes’ comedies might have said something like that.
“Came through pretty well,” Diokles said.
“Is everyone hale?” Sostratos asked.
One of the men at the oars was groaning and clutching his left shoulder. “Did you break it, Naukrates?” Menedemos called.
“I don’t know, skipper,” the man answered through clenched teeth. “When the sea started going crazy there, it gave my oar a wrench I wasn’t expecting, and I got yanked pretty good.”
“I’ll have a look at it, if you like.” Sostratos sounded eager. He wasn’t a physician, but he’d read something about the art of medicine. Sometimes that made him useful. Sometimes, as far as Menedemos was concerned, it made him a menace. But then, sometimes physicians were menaces, too.
Naukrates dipped his head. “Sure, come on. If you can do anything at all, I won’t be sorry.”
You hope you won’t be sorry, Menedemos thought as his cousin made his way forward. Sostratos felt of the rower’s shoulder. “It’s not broken,” he said. “It’s out of its socket. I can put it back in, I think, but it will hurt.”
“Go ahead,” Naukrates told him. “It hurts now.”
Before beginning, Sostratos had the sense to get a couple of other men to hold on to Naukrates. Then he took hold of the injured man’s arm and twisted it at an angle that made Menedemos queasy to see. Naukrates howled like a wolf. Menedemos started to ask his cousin if he was sure he knew what he was doing; it seemed more like torture than therapy. But then the joint went back into place with a click Menedemos heard all the way back at the poop.
Naukrates let out a sigh of relief. “Thank you kindly, young sir. It’s easier now.”
“Good.” Sostratos sounded relieved, too. How much confidence bad he had in what he was doing? Less than he’d shown, Menedemos suspected. “Here, leave it like this,” his cousin said to Naukrates, setting his left hand on his right shoulder. “I’m going to put it in a sling for a while, to make sure it stays where it belongs and heals.”
He haggled off some sailcloth with a knife and bound up the rower’s arm. Like everything else aboard the Aphrodite, the cloth was soaking wet. Naukrates didn’t seem to care. “That is better,” he said. “It still hurts, but I can bear it now.”
“I’ve g
ot some Egyptian poppy juice mixed into wine,” Sostratos said. “I’ll give you a draught of it. It will do you some good—I don’t know how much.”
“I’ll try it,” Naukrates said without hesitation. Now that Sostratos had helped him once, he seemed to think Menedemos’ cousin could do no wrong. Menedemos had a different opinion, but kept it to himself. When Naukrates drank the poppy juice, he made a horrible face. “By the gods, that’s nasty stuff!” he exclaimed. Before long, though, a dreamy smile spread across his face. He murmured, “It does help.”
“Good.” Sostratos started to slap him on the back, then visibly thought better of it. He came back up onto the poop deck.
“Nice job,” Menedemos said.
“Thanks.” Sostratos looked pleased with himself. “First time I ever actually tried that.”
“Well, don’t tell Naukrates. He thinks it was skill, not luck.”
“There was some skill involved, you know.”
“Oh, don’t get stuffy with me, my dear,” Menedemos said. “There was some luck involved, too, and you know that.” He looked a challenge at his cousin. “Or are you going to try to tell me otherwise?”
He was ready to call Sostratos a liar if his cousin tried any such thing. But Sostratos only gave him a sheepish smile. “By no means, O best one. And I suppose you’re right—I won’t tell Naukrates.”
“Won’t tell me what?” Naukrates had sharp ears.
But his voice was as blurry as if he’d drunk too much wine. “Never mind,” Menedemos and Sostratos said together. Normally, that would have made the sailor want to dig more, as it would have with anyone. Now, though, Naukrates just dipped his head and smiled that drugged smile. “How much poppy juice did you give him?” Menedemos asked.
“Enough to take away his pain, I hope,” Sostratos answered. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he goes to sleep in a while.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if he sleeps for the next ten days.” Menedemos paused to pull his soaked chiton off over his head and stand naked in the sunshine that had returned. After a moment, Sostratos followed his example. Most ordinary sailors went naked all the time at sea. The few who usually wore loincloths had already shed them.
Sacred Land Page 7
