Over the Wine-Dark Sea

"A bargain - " Lamakhos began.

Before he could launch into his sales pitch, the slave girl came back and told Menedemos, "She will see you." Her voice held faint contempt, too. Maibia was a slave in a brothel, but dictating terms to a free man. If that wasn't shameful, what was?

"Think about it," Lamakhos said as Sostratos hurried off toward the Kelt's room. "Maybe you could get your sailors to chip in if you don't want her for yourself. They could share her out on the sea."

"Bad for discipline," Sostratos said over his shoulder. The brothelkeeper, he thought, would make an excellent eunuch. If the fellow who did the cutting were to take his tongue, too . . .

He opened the door to Maibia's chamber. Such bloodthirsty thoughts flew from his head. She wore the tunic of Koan silk, in which she looked even more alluring than she did naked. "Is it true what Fabia told me, that you'll be leaving before long?" she asked.

"Yes, it's true." Sostratos closed the door behind him. "I'll miss you," he went on. "I'll miss you more than I thought I would."

"But not enough to be after taking me with you." Maibia sighed. Through the thin silk, the sigh was worth watching. "In spite of what you said and all, I did hope you might. I'd be good to you, Sostratos; you know I would."

She'd be good to him for as long as he kept her in the style she wanted, or until she found someone who'd keep her in higher style. He didn't blame her for wanting to escape from Lamakhos. Who wouldn't? But he tossed his head even so. "I'm sorry. I told you how things are. I didn't lie to you."

"Truth that," she said, and Sostratos felt the snugness one feels for playing the game by the rules and winning anyhow. Maibia promptly punctured it: "Sure and it is a truth, but not one that does me any good at all, at all. I'm still stuck here, still here to be stuck by any spalpeen with the silver to pay for it. And why should you be caring? You've had your fun."

How much did playing the game by the rules matter when those rules were stacked in your favor? She was only a woman, only a barbarian, only a slave; she had no business making him feel so guilty. But somehow she'd done it. "Here," he said roughly, and gave her his farewell gift: five heavy Tarentine tetradrakhms. "I hope this is better than nothing." He'd intended that for sarcasm; it come out sounding more like an apology.

Maibia took the silver coins and made them disappear. With luck, they'd disappear from Lamakhos, too. "Better nor nothing?" she said. "Sure and it is. What I'd hoped for?" She sighed and shook her head, then looked at him out of the corner of her eye. "And I suppose you'll be wanting it once more, for good-bye's sake?"

"Well . . ." Sostratos hadn't been able to keep his eyes from traveling along her sweetly curved body. I could deny myself, he thought. That would make me feel virtuous. Then he laughed at the absurdity of virtue in a brothel. And he did want her, virtue or no. He compromised with himself: "However you please. The silver is yours either way."

"What a strange man y'are, Sostratos," Maibia remarked. He couldn't tell whether that was meant for praise or curse. A moment later, she pulled the thin chiton off over her head, and he stopped caring one way or the other. "Why not?" she said as she stepped into his arms. "Better you nor plenty of others I can think of." Again, he wondered whether that was praise or something else. Again, he didn't worry about it for long.

He thought he pleased her when they lay down together. Afterwards, though, she started to cry. Awkwardly, he stroked her. "I'm sorry," he said. "I do have to go."

"I know," she wailed. "And I have to stay." Her tears splashed down on his bare shoulder. They felt hot as melted lead.

"There's no help for it," Sostratos said. "Maybe it will be better from now on. We've tried to do things so it would be." Yes, I'm trying to salve my own conscience, too, he thought.

"Maybe." But Maibia didn't sound as if she believed it, and Sostratos' conscience remained unsalved.

8

With the coast of Italy on his right hand, with the Aphrodite's steering oars firm in his grip, with the poop deck rolling gently beneath his bare feet, Menedemos felt at home once more. "By the gods, it's good to get back to sea."

"I suppose so." Sostratos didn't sound convinced.

"You've been sour ever since we left Taras yesterday morning." Menedemos eyed his cousin. "You're pining for that redhead girl. Foolish to get yourself in such an uproar over a slave."

"You're a fine one to speak of foolishness," Sostratos snapped: that had got his notice. "How's your ankle feeling these days?"

"It's doing pretty well," Menedemos answered blithely. "It hardly bothers me unless I turn just the wrong way." That exaggerated his improvement, but not by a great deal. He got in a jab of his own: "At least I never imagined I was in love with Phyllis."

"I wasn't in love with Maibia," Sostratos said. "She hoped I would be, but I wasn't. I'm not so silly as that."

"Well, what is your trouble, then? Was she that good in bed?"

"Never a dull moment -  I will say that," his cousin replied. "I do feel bad about leaving her back there to take on all comers again."

"All comers, indeed," Menedemos said, and Sostratos gave him a dirty look. Trying to get Sostratos to show a little common sense, Menedemos went on, "Do you think she thinks you were all that wonderful?"

His cousin turned red. Stammering a little, he answered, "I -  I like to think so, anyhow."

"Of course you do. But are you thinking straight? To a girl in a brothel, a man's just another man, a prick's just another prick." Menedemos leered at Sostratos. "Or are you another Ariphrades? He found a way to make the girls in the brothels happy with him." Grinning, he quoted from Aristophanes' Wasps:

"And so Ariphrades is the very cleverest fellow.
His father swore he learned from no one else,
But taught himself by his own wise nature
To work his tongue in the whorehouse, going in time after time."

Sostratos looked revolted. "I wouldn't do anything like that," he said.

"I did hope not, best one," Menedemos said. "But if this girl was really mooning over you, I wondered if you'd given her some strange sort of reason." He quoted Aristophanes again, this time from the Knights:

"Whoever isn't altogether disgusted with such a man
Will never drink from the same wine cup with us."

"Nor with me." Sostratos raised an eyebrow. "I read the historians, and try to remember things they say that will help us when we trade. You read Aristophanes, and what do you remember? The filthiest parts, that's what."

"If you're going to read Aristophanes, that's the stuff worth remembering," Menedemos said. "And I read Homer, too, and there's nothing filthy about him." He glared a challenge at Sostratos. His cousin was so infected with radical modern ideas, he might even try to argue about that.

But, to Menedemos' relief, Sostratos dipped his head. "Nothing wrong with Homer."

"And nothing wrong with Aristophanes, either," Menedemos said stoutly. "He's just different from the poet." Wherever Hellenes lived -  a vast stretch of ground indeed these days, after Alexander opened the whole of the east -  Homer was the poet.

"You're looking for a quarrel," Sostratos said. Menedemos didn't deny it. If a quarrel would shake Sostratos out of his funk, Menedemos was ready to give him one. But his cousin just laughed. "I don't really care to squabble today, if it's all the same to you."

"All right," Menedemos said. Whether Sostratos felt like squabbling or not, he sounded a little more like himself. And if he sounded more like himself, he could be used: "Go forward and see how the peafowl chicks are doing. They're still your babies, you know."