Sostratos shrugged. Most of the time, he would have taken that for a compliment. "I can only be as I am," he said. "Meanwhile, you didn't answer my question: is it not so?"
"Sure and it is," the redheaded Kelt said seriously. "Having to take any horny spalpeen who walks in . . ." She shuddered. "If you were in a boy brothel, would you care for that?"
As he had to Menedemos, he replied, "If I were in a boy brothel, I don't think I'd get much trade."
She laughed. "How many would say that?"
He shrugged once more. "What could be more important than the truth?"
That made Maibia laugh again. "Here in a brothel, what could be less important than the truth? If we told the men what we thought of 'em, if we told Lamakhos what we thought of him, how long would we last?" No sooner had she spoken than she looked worried. If Sostratos took her words to the brothelkeeper, what would he do to her?
He didn't intend to do that, but she couldn't know what he intended. He wondered what the girls who made symposia lively really thought of the men who used them. The question hadn't crossed his mind before; unless he badly missed his guess, it seldom crossed the mind of any Hellene. Probably better not to know, he thought. He didn't take advantage of such women very often - Maibia had been an exception. Would this keep him from doing it again if some other girl struck his fancy? The truth, he reminded himself. No, it probably won't.
Telling that to the Keltic girl struck him as less than wise. He did say, "Do we have a bargain, on the terms I put to you?" He might have been selling silk or papyrus.
"We do that," Maibia said at once. She held out her hand. He clasped it. Her skin was much fairer than his, but her hand was as large as many a man's and her grip firm. Yes, this did feel like commerce. But it was commerce of a particular sort, for she went on, "If I'm to hold up my end of the bargain, you need to hold up yours," and went back to what she'd been doing. This time, Sostratos didn't interrupt her. He set a hand on the back of her head, not quite holding her to him but urging her on.
He didn't need to pretend to seem sated when he left Lamakhos'. The brothelkeeper chuckled under his breath as Sostratos went by. He thought Sostratos was well and truly hooked. Sostratos chuckled, too. He knew he wasn't.
When he got back to the rented house, he was surprised - and a little alarmed - to find Gylippos and his Roman majordomo there. "Menedemos tells me you've made a pet of that redheaded wench," the dried-fish merchant said. "I think she's strange-looking, myself."
"I like things that are out of the ordinary," Sostratos said, and then, "What brings you here, sir?"
"I've decided to buy a couple of more peafowl chicks," Gylippos replied. "I want to have a better chance of having at least one peacock."
The little birds ran peeping and cheeping across the courtyard, stopping every now and then to peck at a bug or a bit of grain or another chick. Sostratos wondered how Gylippos would like having four full-grown peafowl in his own courtyard, but that was the Tarentine's worry, not his.
Menedemos had caught a couple of chicks. He limped back toward Gylippos, saying, "The choice is yours, of course, O best one, but I think these two are the biggest, strongest ones we have right now." As if to prove the point, one of them pecked him on the arm. He cursed.
Gylippos laughed. "They do seem lively," he said. "What did you do to your ankle?"
Sostratos started at the question, then tried to pretend he hadn't. Menedemos laughed easily. "Tripped over my own two feet - them and a pebble," he answered. "I feel like a fool. We rode out a nasty storm on the Ionian Sea coming over from Hellas, and I was steady on my legs no matter how the deck pitched and no matter how wet it got. Put me on dry land, and I go and do this."
"Bad luck," Gylippos agreed. Sostratos studied him from the corner of his eye. Was he disingenuous? He was a trader, too; Sostratos couldn't tell. Gylippos said, "I'll buy the one that pecked you, but go run down that mottled one over there for me, too."
The mottled chick didn't want to be run down. Menedemos had to chase after it. Gylippos eyed him as he limped around. The dried-fish dealer's face didn't show much, but Sostratos didn't like what he could see. Gylippos was paying altogether too much attention to his cousin's bad ankle. How much noise had Menedemos made when he left by that second-story window? Enough to raise Gylippos' suspicions when he saw an acquaintance with a limp? Evidently.
At last, after much bad language, Menedemos caught the little peafowl. He brought it over to Gylippos, saying, "Here you are, sir. As far as I'm concerned, now that you've got it, you can roast it."
"Not at these prices." Gylippos turned to Titus Manlius, who'd been standing there quietly, watching Menedemos with him. Sostratos couldn't read the slave's face at all. Did he know? If he did, had he told his master? Gylippos said, "Pay him the money."
"Yes, sir." The Roman might have been a talking statue. He handed Menedemos a leather sack. "Same price as for the last two chicks."
"I ought to charge more. These are bigger birds," Menedemos said.
Gylippos brusquely tossed his head. "Not likely."
Menedemos glanced toward Sostratos. Sostratos tossed his head, too, ever so slightly, as if to say he didn't think Menedemos could get away with it. With a small sigh, Menedemos said, "Well, never mind. Let me count the coins, and you can take your birds away."
Sostratos sat down on the ground beside him to make the counting go faster. The Tarentines minted handsome drakhmai, with an armored horseman holding a javelin on one side and with a man riding a dolphin on the other. Some people said that was Arion, others that it was the hero for whom the polis of Taras was named.
"All here," Sostratos told Gylippos when the counting was through. "We do thank you very much."
"You have things I can't get anywhere else," Gylippos answered. He dipped his head to Titus Manlius. "Let's go." Off they went, carrying one chick each.
Once the door closed behind them, Sostratos said, "I think he knows, or at least suspects. Did you see how he was watching you?"
"I doubt it," Menedemos said. "What kind of a man would do business with someone who'd been screwing his wife?"
"There are people of that sort," Sostratos said. "Back in Athens, Theophrastos called them ironical men: the sort who chat with people they despise, who are friendly to men who slander them, and praise to their faces men they insult behind their backs. They're dangerous, because they never admit to anything they're doing."
"Men like that aren't proper Hellenes, if you want to know what I think," Menedemos said.
"Well, I agree with you," Sostratos answered, "but that doesn't mean they don't exist. And it doesn't mean they aren't dangerous."
Menedemos waved his words away. "You worry too much."
"I hope so," Sostratos said, "but I'm afraid you don't worry enough."
Menedemos did stop going round to Gylippos' house, even though checking on the peafowl chicks would have given him a perfect excuse to visit. He thought Sostratos was mistaken - Gylippos didn't strike him as lacking self-respect to the point of staying polite to an adulterer - but he decided not to take any needless chances. And if Phyllis wants to try again, she knows where to find me, he thought.
He sold the last adult peahen, along with four chicks, to a rich farmer who lived just outside of Taras. "To the crows with me if I know what I'll do with 'em," the fellow said, "but I think it'd be kind of fun to have a peacock strutting around the barn. I seen the one that Samnite bought, and I decided I wanted one my own self. I figure my chances for getting one peacock out of all the chicks are pretty fair."