“Got you!” he said, picking up the last white dog. “Try again?”
“Yes, let’s,” Menedemos answered. “You’re a better player than I am, but I can put up more of a fight than that.” They rearranged the dogs. Menedemos went first again. He did give Sostratos a tougher game the second time, but lost again.
Sostratos set up the dogs to show a crucial position late in the game. “If you’d gone here instead of here, you would have had me in trouble,” he said, moving a piece different from the one Menedemos had chosen. “Do you see?”
“Afraid I do,” Menedemos said ruefully. “And I see you’re going to bring that polluted board along when we sail next season, aren’t you, so you can thump me like a drum every night?”
“It won’t be so bad,” said Sostratos, who plainly intended to do just that. “You win some of the time when we play, and you get better when we play regularly. I’ve seen that. And watching is fun, too. It’ll help keep the whole crew happy.”
“Maybe.” Menedemos sounded unconvinced. “I’ll tell you, though, when somebody who’s watching a game says, ‘You thick-skinned idiot, you should have moved there,’ I don’t think it’s fun. I want to clout the whipworthy villain.”
“Mm, that’s true. So do I,” Sostratos said. “Most people know better, but one bigmouth is plenty to ruin things.” He paused and muttered, then spoke aloud: “Teleutas would do something like that, and laugh afterwards.”
“He probably would. But many goodbyes to him. He’s sailed with us four years in a row, and this’ll be the last,” Menedemos said.
“About time.” His cousin reached for the dogs, which sat on the table by the board. “One more game? After that, I think I’ll turn in.”
“All right. Why not?” Menedemos set up the pieces with him. He made the first move. Again, he gave Sostratos a hard fight. Again, Sostratos beat him. Sighing, Menedemos helped his cousin put the dogs back in the drawer built into the game board. “Almost,” he said. “Almost, but not quite. Do you terrorize Uncle Lysistratos, too?”
“Father and I are pretty even, as a matter of fact,” Sostratos replied. “I haven’t played your father lately. From what I remember, though, and from what my father says, he’s the dangerous one in the family.”
“He would be,” Menedemos said darkly. He hadn’t played diagrammismos with his father since he was a youth. He’d lost then, but marked it down to youthful inexperience. He didn’t want to try it again now. Knowing his father, he’d get trounced again, and would get sardonic lessons on the game along with the trouncing. That he could do without.
Sostratos ignored his comment, which was probably just as well. “Come on. I’ll walk you to the door,” he said. “Do you want a torch-bearer to light your way back to your house? I can wake a slave.”
“If I were going across town, I would,” Menedemos answered. “Across the street? Not likely, my dear, though I thank you for the thought. Farewell.” He went out through the door. Sostratos closed it after him.
Menedemos looked toward his own house. No lights showed at any of the windows he could see. His father’s room faced toward Uncle Lysistratos ’ house. It was as dark as the rest, so presumably the older man had already gone to bed. Bare feet silent on the hard-packed dirt of the street, Menedemos went around till he could see all the windows. No, not a lamp lit anywhere.
The sky was dark, too. The moon wouldn’t rise till midnight; the festival of Hera took place on the night of the third-quarter moon. Zeus’ wandering star had blazed low in the west when the evening began, but it was setting now; buildings kept Menedemos from being sure whether it had already slipped below the horizon. Kronos’ wandering star, dimmer and yellower, still glowed in the southwestern sky. It was the only wanderer Menedemos could see. Only starlight and a few lamps shining through shutter slats in other houses gave his eyes something to work with.
Someone hurried down the street not far away. Menedemos’ hand fell to the knife he wore on his belt. Maybe I should have had a torch-bearer after all, he thought. As in any Hellenic city, night was the time when the thieves and robbers came out. Rhodes had fewer than most, or so Menedemos had always thought. But meeting even one could prove disastrous.
This fellow, though, ignored Menedemos. He hurried south, toward the center of town. Menedemos brought a hand up to his mouth to muffle a chuckle. The other man was no thief, except perhaps of love. He was probably off to grab a woman-maybe one woman in particular, maybe any woman he could-when the celebrants came back from Hera ’s temple. Menedemos had done the same thing himself in years gone by. Sometimes he’d had good luck, sometimes none.
Another man, and then another, also slipped south. Menedemos stayed where he was. Only one woman mattered to him right now. He knew Baukis would be coming back to this part of town, to this very street. He didn’t have to go looking for her. She would be here.
And then what? he asked himself. She’s still your father’s wife. If you do anything like what you’re thinking of doing… He tossed his head. He hadn’t done anything yet, or hadn’t done anything much, anyhow. One kiss in three years-what was that? It couldn’t be anything.
You shouldn’t be out here. You should be in bed. You should be asleep. Relentless as the Furies, relentless as storm waves, his conscience battered him. At last, to his surprise, it beat him back inside the house. Maybe I really will curl up and go to sleep. I’ll feel good about it in the morning. For him, feeling virtuous was a pleasant novelty.
He lay down, but sleep, no matter how coaxed, would not come. He stared up at the ceiling, his thoughts full of trouble. He knew what he should do, and he knew what he wanted to do, and the one had nothing to do with the other. Presently, the darkness in his room grew a little less absolute. A strip of moonlight came through the window. Menedemos muttered a curse.
Not too long after the moon came up, he heard in the distance hundreds-no, thousands-of women’s voices raised in song. As they returned to the polis from the shrine, the women of Rhodes were praising the majesty of white-armed Hera. The chorus grew louder and sweeter as they drew nearer.
“ ‘Of Hera I sing, she of the golden throne, to whom Rheia gave birth,’ “ the women chanted.
“ ‘Queen of the immortals, who is outstanding for her beauty, And the wife and sister of loud-thundering Zeus. The glorious one, of whom all the blessed on lofty Olympos Stand in awe and honor like Zeus who delights in thunder.’ “
“ Zeus!” Menedemos said. It wasn’t a prayer. He sprang to his feet and threw on his chiton. When he left his room, he closed the door behind him. Anyone walking by would think he remained inside. Quiet as an owl gliding on soft-feathered wings, he went downstairs and left the house.
The women’s song filled the city as one group after another left the main procession and went off toward their homes. Here and there, Menedemos also heard squeals and giggles and a couple of shrieks as Rhodian men paid calls of one sort or another on the returning women.
Voices raised in song came up the street toward Menedemos’ house and the one where Sostratos lived. Menedemos ducked into a moon shadow blacker than the ink he and his cousin had sold in Athens. “Farewell!” he heard again and again, as women left the group, left the festival, and returned to their homes and their everyday lives.
And there came Baukis, arm in arm with Aunt Timokrate, both of them still hymning the praises of Zeus ’ consort. They stopped in front of Sostratos’ mother’s house. “Good night, dear,” Timokrate said.
“Farewell,” Baukis said. “Wasn’t that wonderful?”
“It always is,” the older woman answered. “To be one with the goddess…”
“To be out in the city,” Baukis said. “To be out of the city!”