“Perhaps just for the sake of fame,” Sostratos replied. “You know, like that madman who burned down the temple back before the He did it just so he'd be remembered forever. Herodotos found out what his name was—and then didn't put it in his history,”
“Euge!” Menedemos exclaimed. The more he thought about it, the more elegant he reckoned that revenge.
Several small islands lay south of Naxos, on the way to Amorgos. They were like Telos, over by ; they had villages, not poleis, and a few people scratched out a living in their hinterland. They drew steadily nearer as the glided east. So did the clouds the rising breeze brought down from the north.
Those clouds covered the sun. The day went from bright to gloomy. Before long, rain started pattering down, light at first but then increasing. A little rain made a sail perform better, holding more of the wind than the weave of the linen could by itself. More than a little, and the sail got heavy and saggy. Menedemos could only try to wring as much advantage from what was going on as he could.
He'd known visibility would shrink in case of rain. The islands ahead disappeared in the veils of masking water falling from the sky. So did Kos, to the south of them, and so did Naxos itself. Menedemos sent sharp-eyed Aristeidas up onto the foredeck to look out for unexpected trouble. In a while, I'll send a leadsman up there with him to take soundings, too, he thought.
He hadn't got round to giving the order for that before he found himself in unexpected trouble of his own. Polemaios made his ponderous way back to the poop deck and stomped up to Menedemos. “How dare you place a man up there to spy on my wife?” he demanded.
“What?” For a moment, Menedemos had no idea what the Macedonian was talking about. Then he did, and wished he hadn't. “Best one, I sent Aristeidas up there to look for rocks and islands, not for women. Visibility's gone to the crows, what with this rain. I want to see something before I run into it, thank you very much.”
“You should have spoken of this to me,” Polemaios said, looking down his long, bent nose at Menedemos. “One of my guards could do the job perfectly well.”
Menedemos tossed his head. “No. For one thing, Aristeidas has some of the sharpest eyes I've ever found in anyone. For another, he's a sailor. He knows what he's supposed to see on the water and what he's not. Your bodyguards are hoplites. They'd do fine on land, but not here. This isn't their place.”
A slow flush rose from Polemaios' neck all the way to his hairline. Menedemos wondered how long it had been since anyone told him no. Antigonos' nephew set a hand on the hilt of his sword. “Little man, you'll do as I say,” he growled. “Either that, or you'll feed the fish.”
Before Menedemos could lose his temper, Sostratos spoke in calm, reasonable tones: “Consider, best one. By rejecting the best lookout in dirty weather, you endanger the ship, your wife, and yourself. Is that a choice a man who loves wisdom would make?”
Polemaios turned red all over again. He said, “I'm going to tell that sharp-eyed son of a whore to keep his eyes on the sea and not on other men's wives,” and stormed back toward the foredeck.
“Thank you,” Menedemos said quietly.
“You're welcome,” his cousin replied. “If Polemaios endangers the ship, he endangers me, too, you know.” His shoulders shook; Menedemos realized he was fighting not to laugh out loud. “And if he's going to tell somebody not to look at another man's wife, he could do worse than to start with you.”
Menedemos glowered at him in mock—well, mostly mock—rage. “Furies take you, I knew you were going to say that.”
“Will you tell me I'm wrong?”
“I'll do worse than that. I'll tell you you're boring,” Menedemos said. But Sostratos hadn't been wrong, and he knew it. He couldn't help looking at Polemaios' wife, not when he faced forward from the steering oars all day. And she hadn't thought to bring along a pot; she had to hang her bare backside over the rail when she needed to relieve herself, the same as any sailor. Menedemos hadn't stared. That would have been rude, and might well have brought Polemaios' wrath down on his head. Polemaios was the worst sort of jealous husband: the large, violent, dangerous sort. Menedemos had no trouble seeing as much. But he hadn't looked away. You never could tell.
Sostratos did know him pretty well, for he said, “Do you recognize the notion of more trouble than it's worth?”
“Occasionally,” Menedemos said. “When I feel like it.” He grinned. Sostratos spluttered. That made his grin wider.
They scudded on, under sail and oars together. The wind whipped up the surface of the sea. The rolled as wave after wave slapped the planks of her port side. Menedemos adjusted to the motion as automatically as he breathed, and with as little notice on his part. So did most of the merchant galley's crew. Sostratos looked a trifle pale under his seaman's tan, but even he shifted his weight as the ship shifted beneath him.
Polemaios' wife hung over the rail again, giving back whatever she'd eaten. Menedemos noticed that, too, but it didn't stir him— not even to much sympathy, for she'd shown herself a bad-tempered woman. Polemaios had the sense to get out of his corselet before leaning out beside her. Menedemos wouldn't have minded seeing him go straight into the sea, except that that would have meant forty minai going in with him.
Then Aristeidas sang out, “Land! Land dead ahead!”
Menedemos couldn't see it. The rain chose that moment to start coming down harder. But, as he'd told Polemaios, he had Aristeidas up on the foredeck precisely because the sailor's sight was keen. “Back oars!” he shouted to the rowers. “Brail up the sail!” he called to other sailors, who hauled on the lines with all their strength, bringing the great square sail up to the yard and spilling wind out of it. “Leadsman forward!” Menedemos added, kicking himself because he'd thought of doing that and then forgotten about it. He pulled one steering oar in and pushed the other out, swinging the ’s bow away from the danger Aristeidas had seen.
As the ship came around, he did spy the little island—or maybe it was nothing more than a big rock: perhaps a plethron's worth of jaggedness jutting up above the waves. It would have been plenty to do in the merchant galley. No fresh water on it, of course, and nowhere to beach . . .
“Twelve cubits!” the leadsman called out, bringing up his line and tossing it into the sea again with a splash. He hauled it in again. “Ten cubits and a half!”
“Regular stroke!” Diokles bawled as soon as the akatos' bow pointed away from the islet. “Pull hard, you bastards! Rhyppapai! Rhyppapai!”
“Nine and a half cubits!” the leadsman yelled.
“Full crew to the oars,” Menedemos ordered. The sailors scrambled to obey. More oars jutted from each side of the ship with every stroke, till all forty were manned. No one fouled anybody else. They'd been beaten in well enough to perform in smooth unison even in an emergency. A trierarch aboard a Rhodian war galley might have found something about which to complain. Menedemos couldn't.
“Eleven cubits!” the leadsman called, and then, “Fourteen cubits!”
“We're going to get away,” Diokles said as the danger receded.
“Yes, it looks that way,” Menedemos agreed. “By the dog of Egypt, though, I'm glad I'm in an akatos and not a wallowing round ship. I wouldn't want to try to claw away from there without oars.”
“No, indeed, skipper.” The keleustes' scowl mirrored Menedemos'. “That wouldn't be any fun at all. A round ship might have been able to swing away to southward if somebody spotted that polluted thing soon enough. Might, I say.”
“I know.” Menedemos dipped his head. But the other side of might was might not, as sure as the other side of the image of Apollo on a Rhodian drakhma was a rose.
Polemaios and the other passengers stayed up near the bow. Menedemos had hoped Antigonos' nephew might come back to the stern and apologize for complaining about Ansteidas' placement. The big Macedonian did no such thing. Well, to the crows with him, then, Menedemos thought as he brought the merchant galley back toward the west. I know what an ass
he made of himself, whether he does or not.
Two days after almost going aground in the Kyklades, the came back to Kos. Sostratos watched Polemaios staring north and east across the narrow channel that separated the island from Halikarnassos on the mainland of Anatolia. Had Antigonos' war galleys in Halikarnassos known who was aboard the , they surely would have swarmed out to try to seize the smaller ship. But, except for those on patrol in front of the city, they stayed quiet.
As Polemaios looked toward his uncle's stronghold, his great hands folded into fists. He growled something in Macedonian. Sostratos couldn't understand it, but didn't think it any sort of praise for Antigonos or his sons.
A couple of stadia outside the polis of Kos, a five flying banners with Ptolemaios' eagle on them came striding across the sea to challenge the . “What ship?” shouted an officer on the war galley's deck, cupping his hands in front of his mouth to make his voice carry farther.
“We're the , back from Khalkis on Euboia,” Sostratos yelled in return, hoping Ptolemaios' men had been told to expect the akatos.
“And I,” Polemaios cried in a great voice, “am Polemaios son of Polemaios, come to join in equal alliance against my polluted, accursed, gods-detested uncle with Ptolemaios son of Lagos.”
Back on Khalkis, Polemaios had remembered he wouldn't be an equal partner in an alliance. Here, he traveled in a small merchant galley with a double handful of bodyguards along for protection. Ptolemaios had his whole great fleet and the army that went with it in and around Kos. The war galley approaching the could have smashed her to kindling with its great three-finned ram. The archers and catapult aboard the five could have plied the akatos with darts till she looked like a hedgehog. The marines from Ptolemaios' ship could have boarded and slaughtered every man on the merchant galley. All that being so, Sostratos doubted whether, in Polemaios' place, he would have dared claim equality with the ruler of Egypt.
But, for the time being, Antigonos' renegade nephew got away with it. “Welcome, welcome, thrice welcome, O best and most brilliant of men!” Ptolemaios' officer exclaimed, as if he were greeting the Great or a veritable demigod like Herakles. The fellow went on, “We had not looked for you for another few days.” He waved to Sostratos, who'd spoken up first. “Congratulations on your fine sailing.”
Sostratos, in turned, waved back to Menedemos at the steering oars. “My cousin's the captain. I'm just toikharkhos.”
“Euge!” Ptolemaios' man called to Menedemos, who lifted a hand to acknowledge the praise. “Pass on into the harbor. Ptolemaios will be very pleased you've brought his ally to Kos.” He said nothing about Polemaios' being an equal ally. Sostratos noticed that. He wondered whether Polemaios did.
The officer strode across the war galley's deck toward the stern. He spoke to another man, one who wore a crimson-dyed cloak fastened around his neck: the captain of the five, Sostratos judged. That worthy called out an order; Sostratos could hear his voice, but couldn't make out the words. Figuring out what it was didn't take long, though. The five's oarmaster began beating out the stroke. The warship's big oars bit into the sea. Two of its the banks had two men on each oar; only the thalamite rowers on the lowest level pulled alone. With so much muscle power propelling her, the five quickly built up speed and slid away from the .
“You boys heard him,” Menedemos called to his own crew. “Let's take her on in to port. Keleustes, give us a lively stroke.”
“Right you are, skipper,” Diokles replied.
As it had been before, Kos harbor was packed as tight with ships as an amphora might be with olives. Masts reared skyward like a leafless forest. “There!” Sostratos exclaimed, pointing as he spotted an opening. Menedemos steered the akatos towards it. Sailors on ships already tied up to that quay shouted warnings and stood by with poles and sweeps, ready to fend her off. But Menedemos made her fit without scraping against the vessel to either side.
“Thanks for spying the space,” he told Sostratos.
“You're the one who got us into it,” Sostratos replied.
His cousin grinned. “Oh, I can always find a way to get it in,” Sostratos made a face at him. Menedemos laughed.
An officer came hurrying up the pier toward the : the same one, Sostratos saw, who'd interrogated them on their previous arrival. The officer recognized them, too, saying, “You're back. And have you got Antigonos' nephew with you?”
“Zeus of the aegis!” Polemaios boomed. “Who d'you think I am, little man? Go tell your master I'm here.”
“Yes, go tell him, by the gods,” Menedemos echoed. Looking Sostratos' way, he spoke in a lower voice: “Tell him he owes us forty minai.”
“Here's hoping he doesn't need reminding,” Sostratos said.
“That's right. Here's hoping.” Menedemos sounded worried. His next words explained why: “What can we do if he stiffs us now that we've delivered the goods?”
“To Ptolemaios himself? Nothing at all. We can't even go to law against him. As far as Egypt's concerned, he is the law.” Sostratos had been thinking about that all the way back from Khalkis. “But we can make his name a stench in the nostrils of every Rhodian merchant we know, and everybody our fathers know. I don't think he'd like that. He needs friendly.”
Menedemos considered, then dipped his head. “Blackening a man's name isn't the worst weapon,”
“No, it isn't,” Sostratos agreed. “We go round and round about what did to Sokrates in the Clouds—and Sokrates didn't even deserve it.”
“That's what we go round and round about: whether he deserved it or not, I mean.” Menedemos held up a hand. “I don't want to start doing it now, thank you very much.”
Since Sostratos didn't feel like taking up the argument just then, either, he turned away from his cousin. Ptolemaios' officer still stood on the pier, but a fellow in a plain chiton was hurrying back onto solid ground and into the city. Ptolemaios himself would soon know the had returned.
“We'll get paid,” Sostratos murmured. “I really think we will. And then we can head back towards Athens and see what the philosophers there think of the gryphon's skull. We'll see what we get for it, too,” he added hastily, forestalling Menedemos.
“So we will,” Menedemos said. “And I'll be able to do some . .. other business in Athens, too.” His eyes flicked toward the officer. Only the slight pause showed he meant the smuggled emeralds, and only someone who already knew he had them would understand what it showed.
Polemaios' wife started complaining when she and her man weren't immediately taken off the akatos and brought before Ptolemaios—-or maybe she was complaining because Ptolemaios didn't come hotfooting down to the harbor to meet them. Antigonos' nephew did what he could to calm her down. Thinking, I doubt he's had much practice playing peacemaker, Sostratos hid a smile.
After half an hour, or perhaps a bit more, the officer's man returned in the company of a couple of dozen armed and armored hoplites. Sostratos and Menedemos exchanged a glance that said, Ptolemaios isn't going to take any chances with his new ally. The force—which looked like a guard of honor—was plenty to take care of Polemaios' bodyguards in case they proved troublesome. Now, Sostratos judged, they probably wouldn't.
The messenger said, “Ptolemaios is pleased to welcome another foe of the vicious tyrant, Antigonos, to Kos, and summons Polemaios son of Polemaios and his party to his residence. As a seeming afterthought, the fellow added, “Ptolemaios also summons the two Rho-dians who brought Polemaios here so very promptly.”
Oh, good, Sostratos thought. He is going to pay us. But that wasn't the only reason he was beaming. He would have paid a good deal to watch the meeting between the two Macedonians with similar names. Bribery, though, wouldn't have let him do it. Ptolemaios' generosity did. He and Menedemos went up the gangplank and onto the quay as Polemaios and his companions came back from the bow.
Once everyone had left the ship, Antigonos’ nephew took the lead behind the messenger and Ptolemaios' officer. Menedemos, a proud and touchy man in h
is own right, seemed inclined to dispute Polemaios' place. Catching his cousin's eye, Sostratos tossed his head. Polemaios was the tunny here; the captain and toikharkhos of the were just a couple of sprats. To Sostratos' relief, Menedemos didn't push it, but hung back with him.
They all went up to Ptolemaios' residence, the ruler of Egypt's soldiers surrounding Polemaios' bodyguards, who in turn formed up around their master and his wife. After watching all those nodding horsehair plumes and all that gleaming bronze for a while, Sostratos glanced from his ordinary chiton to Menedemos' and back again. “We're underdressed,” he murmured,
“I don't care,” Menedemos answered; even more than Sostratos, he had a seaman's indifference to fancy clothes and abhorrence of armor. “We're not baking like a couple of loaves in the oven, either.”
With the sun high and hot in the sky, Sostratos was sweating by the time the procession got to the house Ptolemaios was using as his own. The soldiers surely were baked by then. At the doorway, Polemaios got into an argument with Ptolemaios' officer, who refused to let any of his bodyguards into the house. The officer said, “If you think you need bodyguards when dealing with Ptolemaios, O best one, you shouldn't have come to Kos.”
Polemaios fumed, but had to yield. So much for that equal alliance, Sostratos thought. Antigonos' nephew shifted his ground: “ at least have a slave girl waiting to take my wife to the women's quarters? By the nature of things, she's been out among men and under their eyes more than she should have since I left Khalkis.”
“Certainly, sir. Let me go take care of that.” By yielding at once on the smaller point, Ptolemaios' officer emphasized how unyielding he was on the larger. He disappeared into the house, returning a moment later to say, “A girl will be there waiting for your wife. Just come along with me.” He started to turn back, then snapped his fingers, annoyed at himself. “And you Rhodians, you come along, too.”
The Gryphon's Skull Page 20