“Now we are,” Baukis answered. “But how long will we stay that way if we make less and spend more? I'd better have a word with Sikon. Sooner or later, he'll have to listen to me.”
She strode off toward the kitchen. Menedemos' gaze followed her. She didn't have a boy's hips and backside, not at all. And, here inside the house, she didn't veil herself against the prying eyes of men. It was practically like seeing her naked all the time. Menedemos’ manhood stirred.
Baukis came out of the kitchen with bread, wine, and an indignant expression on her face. “He's not in there yet,” she complained. “He spends too much money, and he's lazy, too.” She sat down on the bench, hardly more than a cubit away from Menedemos, and began to eat her breakfast.
Does she know what I feel? Menedemos wondered, as he had ever since realizing it himself the autumn before. He didn't think so, but. .. Is she sitting there to tease me? Is she sitting there because she has something in mind, too?
He had more than a little practice seducing other men's wives. Here, he didn't want to use what he knew. He wished he were aboard the Aphrodite, a steering-oar tiller in each hand, wave and wind and the chance of pirates all he had to worry about. None of them seemed so dangerous as the woman beside him.
Gulping down the last of his wine, he got to his feet and said, “I'm off. As long as I'm back in Rhodes, I have a couple of men I need to see.”
“All right.” Baukis went on eating. Menedemos' withdrawal felt uncomfortably like headlong retreat.
One of the advantages of being a free Hellene was having slaves to do the work one didn't care to do oneself. Sostratos took that for granted. His slave, a Karian named Arlissos, did not. “Is it much farther, boss?” he whined in almost unaccented Greek. “This polluted thing gets heavier every step I take.”
Such illogical arguments were the wrong sort to use against Sostratos, who answered, “That's impossible,” and for good measure added, “And, since no place inside the walls of Rhodes is more than about ten stadia from anywhere else inside the walls, you're not walking all that far.”
“I bet it seems farther to me than it does to you,” Arlissos said darkly.
Sostratos didn't deign to reply to that. He was just glad he'd had Arlissos drape the gryphon's skull in a square of sailcloth before taking it through the streets of Rhodes. Otherwise, people would have stopped him every plethron—more likely, every few cubits— and pestered him with questions.
Arlissos seemed more inclined to pester him with complaints: “And then, once we get where we're going, I'll have to lug it all the way back.”
Not if I break it over your head, Sostratos thought. But he couldn't do that, no matter how tempting it might be. So far as he knew, this was the only gryphon's skull ever seen by Hellenes. He couldn't afford to have anything happen to it.
“You'll have plenty of time to rest and loaf when we get where we're going,” he said. “In fact, if you slide back to the kitchen, you can probably wheedle the cook out of some wine, and maybe some figs or some nuts while you're at it.”
The slave brightened, though he didn't seem to want to show Sostratos he was any happier. “My arms are going to come out of their sockets,” he grumbled.
“Oh, be quiet,” Sostratos said, and then, “There's that little temple to Hephaistos, so it's only another couple of blocks.”
They'd come into the western part of the city, most of the way from Sostratos' house to the gymnasion. But Sostratos didn't intend to strip off his clothes and run or wrestle. He exercised as little as he could get away with, not least because Menedemos easily outdid him when they went to the gymnasion together. Sostratos was larger than his cousin, but Menedemos was far quicker and more graceful.
“I... think this is the house,” Sostratos said. He had trouble being sure; one blank housefront looked very much like another. If I'm wrong, he thought as he knocked on the door, whoever answers can probably set me right.
Somewhere inside the house, a dog started barking. Arlissos set down the gryphon's skull so he could stretch and show how put-upon he was. He'd just picked up the skull again when somebody said, “Yes? What is it?” through the door.
“Is this the house of Damonax son of Polydoros?” Sostratos asked.
“Yes. Who wants to know?” The door still didn't open.
Sostratos gave his own name, adding, “I've brought something your master may be interested in seeing.”
“Wait,” said the man on the other side of the door. Sostratos duly waited. So did Arlissos, who exuded silent reproach. After a bit, the door did swing open on the lengths of doweling that turned in holes in the floor and the lintel. “He'll see you,” Damonax's slave reported. By his guttural accent and narrow, swarthy face, he was probably a Phoenician. “He's in the courtyard. Come with me.”
“Hail, Sostratos,' Damonax said when the doorman brought the newcomers into the courtyard. He was a handsome man about ten years older than Sostratos, his hairline beginning to recede at the temples. Pointing to the sailcloth-shrouded bundle Arlissos bore, he asked, “What have you got there?” Like Sostratos', his Doric Greek—the dialect spoken in Rhodes—had an Attic overlay; he'd studied at the Lykeion for several years, returning to his home polis the year after Sostratos arrived.
Like a conjurer performing at a symposion, Sostratos whipped away the square of sailcloth. “Behold!” he said. “A gryphon's skull!”
“Really? You're joking.” Damonax got up off the bench where he'd been sitting and came over for a closer look. He tapped the skull with his fingernail. “No, by the dog of Egypt, I see you're not. Where on earth did you find it?”
“Kaunos,” Sostratos answered, and explained how he and Menedemos had come by the skull. “I brought it here because you also studied under Theophrastos. What do you make of it?”
“I wish you could have brought that tiger skin you mentioned, too,” Damonax said wistfully. “If going out to trade can lead to such marvels as this, the Hellenes who look down their noses at it may have to think again.”
Most upper-class Hellenes looked down their noses at merchants. The life of a gentleman farmer was the ideal, with an overseer and slaves to do the actual work, giving the gentleman farmer himself the money and leisure he needed to live as he would, beholden to no one. Damonax wore two heavy gold rings; the clasps of his sandals were likewise golden, Roses scented the olive oil he rubbed into his skin. He lived the ideal.
Acknowledging that, envying it, Sostratos said, “Thank you, O best one.”
“Thank you for letting me see this.” Damonax pointed to the bench on which he'd been sitting, then spoke to Arlissos: “Why don't you put the skull down there, so your master and I can examine it as we please?”
“I'll gladly do that, sir.” The Karian sighed with relief as he set down the skull.
To his own slave, Damonax said, “Bring us some wine, Phelles, and some olives, or whatever else you find in the kitchen.” Nodding his head as barbarians often did to show agreement, the Phoenician hurried away. Damonax leaned close to the gryphon's skull and tapped it again. “It feels more like stone than bone,” he remarked.
“\ noticed the same thing,” Sostratos answered. “I don't know what it means, except that the skull is old and was buried for a long time.”
“Not just old,” Arlissos muttered. “Heavy.”
“Who was the philosopher,” Damonax asked, “who found petrified seashells on the mountainside and realized the ocean must have covered it long ago?”