"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.