The Sacred Land sam-3

by Harry Turtledove

  “All right, most noble one. Fair enough. A chance to show how good my oil is is all I ask.” As usual, Menedemos spoke boldly. He did his best to hide the alarm he felt inside. Just how good was the oil Sostratos’ new brother-in-law had foisted on the Aphrodite ’? Good enough to let men tell the difference at a single taste? He didn’t know. He was about to find out. He did say, “Since you’ll be buying the oil mostly for officers, some of the men who try it should be officers, too.”

  Andronikos considered, then dipped his head. “Agreed,” he said. “Go fetch your oil. I’ll get the men together, and some bread, and some of our local oil. And then, Rhodian, we shall see what we shall see.”

  “So we shall,” Menedemos said, in what he hoped wasn’t too hollow a voice. He hurried back to the harbor and freed a jar of olive oil from the rope harness and dunnage of twigs and branches that kept it from fetching up against other amphorai and smashing.

  “What’s going on, skipper?” Diokles asked. Menedemos explained. The keleustes whistled and said, “That’s a roll of the dice, isn’t it? Any which way, though, you can’t lug that jar back to the barracks yourself. How would it look, a captain doing stevedore’s work? Lapheides!”

  “What is it?” said the sailor, who’d been paying no attention to the conversation between oarmaster and captain.

  “Come get this amphora and carry it for the skipper,” Diokles answered.

  Lapheides looked no more delighted at that prospect than anyone else would have, but he came up and grabbed the jar by its handles. “Where to?” he asked Menedemos.

  “Barracks,” Menedemos told him. “Just follow me. You’ll do fine.” He hoped Lapheides would do fine. The sailor was a scrawny little man, and the full amphora probably weighed half as much as he did.

  By the time they got back to the barracks, Lapheides was bathed in sweat, but he’d done a good game job of carrying the amphora. Menedemos gave him three oboloi as a reward for his hard work. “Thanks, skipper,” he said, and stuck the coins in his mouth.

  One of the sentries, plainly forewarned, escorted Menedemos and Lapheides up to Andronikos’ office. In the next room, the quartermaster had set up a table that held a loaf of bread and half a dozen shallow bowls. He-or, more likely, a slave-had poured yellow oil into three of the bowls. The other three waited, empty.

  Menedemos used his belt knife to chip away at the pitch around the clay stopped to the amphora he’d had Lapheides bring. Once the stopper was out, he poured Damonax’s oil into the empty bowls. It was greener than the oil Andronikos had got locally; Menedemos’ nostrils quivered at its odor-fresh, fruity, almost spicy. The Rhodian breathed a silent sigh of relief. By all the signs, this was good oil.

  He nodded to Andronikos. “Bring in your men, O best one.”

  “I intend to.” The quartermaster walked down the hall, returning a moment later with what looked like a mix of ordinary soldiers and officers. To them, he said, “Here, my friends, we have one oil in these bowls and another in these. Taste them both, and tell me which is better.”

  “Please wait till you’ve all tasted both before speaking,” Menedemos added. “We don’t want one man’s words coloring another man’s thoughts.”

  A couple of soldiers scratched their heads. But the men wasted no time in tearing the bread into chunks and dipping those chunks first into one olive oil, then into the other. They chewed solemnly and thoughtfully, looking from one to another to see when they’d all sampled both oils. By then, only a few crumbs of the loaf were left.

  A scarred veteran who wore a fat gold hoop in his right ear pointed to one of the bowls Menedemos had filled. “That oil there is better,” he said. “Tastes like it’s squeezed from the very first olives of the season. When I was a lad, I spent plenty of autumns whacking the olive trees with sticks to bring down the fruit, I did. Reckon I know a first-rate early oil when I taste one.”

  Another man dipped his head. “Hippokles is right, by Zeus. I haven’t tasted oil like that since I left my old man’s farm to go soldier. Tastes like it came out of the press yesterday, to the crows with me if it doesn’t.” He smacked his lips.

  Then all the soldiers were talking at once, and all of them praising Menedemos’ oil. No, all of them but one. The stubborn holdout said, “I’m used to this stuff here”-he pointed to a bowl of the local oil. “This other oil tastes different.”

  “That’s the idea, Diodoros,” Hippokles said. “The stuff we’ve been eating is tolerable, I guess, but if we can get this other oil, what we’ve been using ought to go into lamps instead, far as I’m concerned.” His comrades agreed, some of them more heatedly.

  Diodoros tossed his head. “I don’t think so. I like this oil fine.”

  Menedemos glanced toward Andronikos. The quartermaster didn’t seem to want to meet his eye. With his confidence restored, Menedemos didn’t let that stop him. He shooed the soldiers out of the testing room, saying, “Thank you, most wise ones. Thank you very much. I’m sure we can arrange for you to have some of this oil you like-and I’ve got smoked eels and hams to sell, too, back at my ship.” Once they were gone, he rounded on Andronikos. “Can’t we arrange that?”

  “Depends on what you want for it,” the quartermaster said coolly. “If you think I’m going to throw silver at you like a young fool in love with his first hetaira, you’d better think again.”

  “Do you suppose your men there will keep quiet about what they just did?” Menedemos asked. “Can you afford not to buy? Will you wake up with a scorpion in your bed if you don’t?”

  Andronikos said, “I’ve squashed scorpions before. And I’ll squash you, too, if you try to cheat me. What do you want for your fancy Rhodian oil?

  Just so you know, I’m paying seven sigloi the amphora for what I buy hereabouts.”

  Menedemos reminded himself that one Sidonian siglos held about twice as much silver as two Rhodian drakhmai. Sostratos was bound to know the exact conversion factor. When Menedemos tried to do anything but two for one, he felt as if his brains would start leaking out of his ears.

  “You’ve seen for yourself that what I sell is better than what you’re getting here,” he said. “And it comes from Rhodes.”

  “So what?” Andronikos retorted. “You can bring it all that way by sea as cheaply as I can get oil from a day’s journey away by land.”

  “That might be true on a round ship, best one, but I’m afraid it’s not on an akatos,” Menedemos said. “I have to pay my rowers, you know.”

  “Which gives you an excuse to gouge me,” the quartermaster growled.

  “No,” Menedemos said, thinking, Yes. He went on, “All in all, I think thirty-five drakhmai the amphora is reasonable.”

  “I wish this chamber were on a higher floor, so I could throw you out the window and be sure I was rid of you once for all,” Andronikos said. “You whipworthy rogue, do you think I’d give you more than twenty?” He had no trouble shifting from sigloi back to drakhmai.

  “I certainly do think so, because I’m not going to lose money by selling you my oil,” Menedemos answered. “What will your men-and especially your officers-say when they hear you’re too cheap to buy them anything good?”

  “My superiors will say I’m not wasting Antigonos’ money,” Andronikos told him. “That’s my job-not wasting his money.” He scowled at Menedemos. “What will your principal say when you go back to Rhodes with that olive oil still in the belly of your ship? How will you pay your rowers on no money at all? “

  Menedemos hoped his flinch didn’t show. Andronikos was a quartermaster, all right, and a ruthless specimen of the breed. Despite all of Menedemos’ persuasive powers, he refused to go higher than twenty-four drakhmai.

  “I can’t make any money on that,” Menedemos said.

  “Too bad. Here.” Andronikos gave him three sigloi. They showed the battlemented walls and towers of a city-presumably Sidon-on one side and a king slaying a lion on the other. “I’m not a thief. This more than pays for the oil you u
sed. Now close up your jar there and go.”

  “But-” Menedemos said.

  The quartermaster tossed his head. “Go, I told you, and I meant it. You don’t want my best price, and I won’t go higher. Good day.”

  Rage threatened to choke Menedemos. He wanted to choke Andronikos. He didn’t. Nor would he give the older man the satisfaction of seeing how badly he was wounded. He’d expected to sell the olive oil after his successful demonstration. The quartermaster’s shot had been all too shrewd. Taking it back to Rhodes was the last thing he wanted to do. But all he said was, “Seal up the jar, Lapheides. We’re leaving.”

  He kept hoping Andronikos would ask him to stop or call him back as he started out of the chamber. Andronikos didn’t. He stood silent as a stone. Menedemos slammed the door on the way out, hard enough to rattle it on the pivoting pegs set into the floor and the lintel. That made him feel better for a moment, but it did nothing to bring back the business he’d hoped to have.

  Lapheides was not a man he would have called particularly clever. The sailor did have the sense to wait till they’d left the barracks before asking, “What do we do now, skipper?”

  It was a good question. It was, in fact, an excellent question. Menedemos wished he had an excellent answer for it, or even a good one. Being without either, he shrugged and said, “We go back to the Aphrodite and see what happens next. Whatever it is, I don’t see how it can be much worse than this.”

  After a couple of heartbeats of thought, Lapheides dipped his head. “Neither do I,” he said. Menedemos would sooner have had consolation. Since he could find none himself, though, he didn’t see how he could blame Lapheides for also being unable to come up with any.

  Sheep grazed and bleated around the little village nestled between hills and flatlands. Dogs barked at Sostratos and his sailors as they walked into the place. As often happened, some of the bigger, fiercer dogs made rushes at them. Teleutas scooped up an egg-sized stone and flung it. It caught the biggest, meanest dog right in the nose. The beast’s snarls turned to yips of pain. It turned tail and ran. The rest of the dogs suddenly seemed to have second thoughts.

  “Euge!” Sostratos said. “Now we won’t have to beat them back with our spearshaft and swords. I hope we won’t, anyhow. People don’t like it when they see us laying into their animals.”

  “They don’t care when they see the gods-detested dogs trying to bite us, though,” Teleutas said. “They think that’s funny. Pestilence take ‘em, far as I’m concerned.”

  Aside from the dogs-some of which still barked and growled from a safe distance, which argued they’d had more than a few rocks thrown at them before-the hamlet was quiet. No sooner had that crossed Sostratos’ mind than he tossed his head. It didn’t just seem quiet. It seemed more nearly dead.

  But a dead village wouldn’t have had flocks grazing around it. Its buildings wouldn’t have been in such good repair. Smoke wouldn’t have risen from the vent holes in several roofs.

  On the other hand, when strangers came to most villages, the locals came tumbling out of their houses to stare and point and exclaim. Up till now, that had seemed as much a truth in these parts as it would have back in Hellas. Not here. Everything stayed quiet except for the dogs.

  Just before Sostratos and the sailors got to the center of the hamlet, an old man who wore a head scarf in place of a hat came out of one of the bigger houses and looked them over. “May the gods bless you and keep you, my master,” Sostratos said in his best Aramaic. “Please tell us the name of this place.”

  The old man stared back without a word for an unnervingly long time. Then he said, “Stranger, we do not speak of the gods here. We speak of the one god, the true god, the god of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. This village is called Hadid.”

  Excitement tingled through Sostratos. “The one god, you say?” he asked, and the old man nodded. Sostratos went on, “Then I have come to the land of Ioudaia?”

  “Yes, this is the land of Ioudaia,” the old man said. “Who are you, stranger, that you need to ask such a thing?”

  Bowing, Sostratos answered, “Peace be unto you, my master. I am Sostratos son of Lysistratos, of Rhodes. I have come to trade in this land.”

  “And to you also peace. Sostratos son of Lysistratos.” The local tasted the unfamiliar syllables. After another long pause, he said, “You would be one of those Ionians, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes,” Sostratos said, resigned to being an Ionian in these parts despite his Doric roots. “What is your name, my master, if your slave may ask?”

  “I am Ezer son of Shobal,” the old man replied.

  “Is all well here?” Sostratos asked. “No pestilence, nothing like that?”

  Ezer had formidable gray eyebrows and a beaky nose. When he frowned, he looked like a bird of prey. “No, there is no pestilence. May the one god forbid it. Why do you ask?”

  “Everything is very quiet here.” Sostratos waved his arms to help show what he meant. “No one works.”

  “Works?” Ezer son of Shobal frowned again, even more fiercely than before. He shook his head. “Of course no one works today. Today is the sabbath.”

  “Your slave prays pardon, but he does not know that word,” Sostratos said.

  “You did not learn this tongue from a man of Ioudaia, then,” Ezer said.

  Once more, Sostratos had to remember to nod instead of dipping his head. “No, I did not. I learned from a Phoenician. Truly you are very wise.” Yes, flattery seemed built into Aramaic.

  “A Phoenician? I might have known.” By the way Ezer said it, he had as much scorn for Phoenicians as Himilkon had for Ioudaioi. “The one god commands us to rest one day in seven. That is the sabbath. Today is the seventh day, and so… we rest.”

  “I see.” What Sostratos saw was why these Ioudaioi had never amounted to anything in the wider world, and why they never would. If they wasted one day in seven, how could they keep up with their neighbors? He marveled that they hadn’t already been altogether swept away. “Where can my men and I buy food?” he asked. “We have come a long way today. We too are tired.”

  Ezer son of Shobal shook his head again. “You do not see, Ionian. Sostratos.” He carefully sounded out the name. “I told you, this is the sabbath. The one god decrees we may not work on this day. Selling food is work. Until the sun sets, we may not do it. I am sorry.” He sounded not the least bit sorry. He sounded proud.

  Himilkon had warned that the Ioudaioi had set ideas about their religion. Sostratos saw he’d known what he was talking about. “Will someone draw water from the well for us?” he asked. “You have a well, I hope?”

  “We have a well. No one will draw water for you, though, not till after sunset. That is also work.”

  “May we draw water ourselves?”

  Now Ezer nodded. “Yes, you may do that. You are no part of us.”

  No, and I wouldn’t want to be any part of you, either, Sostratos thought. He wondered how he would live in a land where religious law so closely hemmed in everything these people did. His first thought was that he would simply go mad.

  But then he wondered about that. If he’d been raised from childhood to find that law right and proper and necessary, wouldn’t he come to believe it was? Even in Hellas, thoughtless people blindly believed in the gods. Here in Ioudaia, it seemed, everyone believed in their strange, invisible deity. If I’d been born a loudaian, I suppose I would, too.

  The more Sostratos thought about that, the more it frightened him. He bowed to Ezer. “Thank you for your kindness, my master.”

  “You are welcome,” the old man replied. “You cannot help it that you are not one of us, and so cannot know and obey the sacred laws of the one god.”

  He means that, Sostratos realized in astonishment. Ezer son of Shobal was as proud to belong to his narrow little backwoods tribe as Sostratos was to be a Hellene. It would have been funny if it hadn’t been so sad. I wish I could show him how ignorant he is. Sostratos had had that same urge with Helle
nes, too. With his own folk, he could act on it. Sometimes he managed to convince them of the error of their ways. More often, though, even Hellenes chose to cling to their own ignorance rather than accepting someone else’s wisdom.

  “What are you and this big-nosed old geezer going on about?” Teleutas asked.

  Ezer didn’t change expression. No, of course he doesn’t speak Greek, Sostratos told himself. All the same… “You want to be careful how you talk about people here. You never can tell when one of them may understand some of our tongue.”

  “All right. All right.” Teleutas dipped his head with obvious impatience. “But what is going on?”

  “We can’t buy any food till after sundown,” Sostratos answered. “They have a day of rest every seventh day, and they take it seriously. We can get water from the well, though, as long as we do it ourselves.”

  “A day of rest? That’s pretty stupid,” Teleutas said, which was exactly Sostratos’ opinion. The sailor went on, “What happens if they’re in a war and they have to fight a battle on this special day of theirs? Do they let the enemy kill them because they’re not supposed to fight back?”

  “I don’t know.” That intrigued Sostratos, so he turned it into Aramaic, as best he could, for Ezer.

  “Yes, we would die,” the Ioudaian answered. “Better to die than to break the law of the one god.”

  Sostratos didn’t try to argue with him. Ezer sounded as passionate as a man who was busy wasting his inheritance on a hetaira and didn’t care if he ruined himself on her behalf. A man who wasted his inheritance on a hetaira at least had the pleasure of her embraces to recall. What did a man who wasted his life on devotion to a foolish god have left? Nothing Sostratos could see. Such mad devotion might even cost a worshiper life itself.

  He didn’t care to point that out to Ezer son of Shobal. The Ioudaian had made it plain he could see it for himself. He’d also made it plain he was willing to take the consequences. How could a man’s devotion to a god be greater than his devotion to life itself? Sostratos shrugged. No, it made no rational sense.