The Gryphon's Skull

by H. N. Turteltaub

  Another customer came over to Sostratos and said, “If you don't fancy the way your meat's cooked, sir, I'll help you get rid of it.”

  That made Sostratos laugh. He said, “I'll bet you will,” But, as Menedemos had, he gave some to the man. They both ended up serving out about half the meat they'd brought into the tavern. At last, Menedemos got to eat some. He sighed at the luxurious taste and feel of hot fat in his mouth. If the warriors in front of Troy ate beef all the time, no wonder they were so strong, he thought.

  “More wine?” the tavern-keeper asked.

  “No, thanks,” Menedemos and Sostratos said together, in tones of such emphatic rejection that the tavern-keeper looked wounded. Menedemos only snorted. Either the fellow was playing for sympathy or he didn't know what slop he'd just served them. Neither possibility impressed the Rhodian, who turned to his cousin and pointed to the door. Sostratos dipped his head. They left.

  As they headed toward the harbor, Sostratos said, “You weren't sharing out drakhmai the way we shared out the meat, were you?”

  “No, by the gods.” Menedemos held up the leather sack Diome-don had given him. “Unopened, unslit, unplundered, still a maiden,”

  “Very good,” Sostratos made as if to applaud, then gestured for Menedemos to get the money out of sight. As Menedemos lowered the sack to his side once more, Sostratos went on, “I do wonder why Polemaios was sacrificing there.”

  “Of course you do, since he wouldn't say. It is an interesting question, isn't it?” Menedemos thought for a couple of paces, then suggested, “In thanks for getting here to Kos in one piece?”

  “No. He would have said if it were something simple like that.” Sostratos' reply was quick and certain. “And you saw him on the ship. You saw him when he met Ptolemaios, too. He wouldn't waste a bullock on anything like running away. He had that done to him. He's a man who wants to do things himself.”

  “Well. . . you're probably right,” Menedemos said. “Which leads to the next question: what does he want to do, and to whom?”

  “Sure enough,” Sostratos agreed. “I'll tell you one thing, though.”

  “Only one?” Menedemos said.

  His cousin ignored that, continuing, “Ptolemaios is a lot more interested in the answer than we are.” Precise as usual, he checked himself: “Perhaps he's not more interested in it, but he's more concerned about it.”

  “You're right,” Menedemos said. They went on down to the Aphrodite together.

  Sostratos sucked the flesh from the tail of a roasted prawn, then tossed the piece of shell on the floor of Kleiteles' andron. “Another lovely opson, best one,” he told the Rhodian proxenos.

  On the couch next to his, Menedemos dipped his head. “Your hospitality almost makes being stranded here worthwhile.”

  “You're very kind, my friends,” the olive-oil merchant said. In the cage in the corner of the men's chamber, his trained jackdaw hopped up and down its ladder, carrying the toy shield in its beak.

  Pointing to the gray-eyed bird, Sostratos said, “We feel caged ourselves. You're a Koan. You have connections here that we don't. Can you find us a ship's carpenter? He'd be well paid for his work, believe me.

  “I do believe you,” the proxenos said. “But I don't think it can be done, not till Ptolemaios takes Halikarnassos.”

  “You think the city will fall, then?” Sostratos said.

  Kleiteles dipped his head. “Don't you? Antigonos hasn't even tried to relieve it. From what I hear, most of his army is away in the east, fighting what's-his-name—you know, the fellow who set himself up in Babylon last year.”

  “Seleukos,” Sostratos said.

  “That's the name,” Kleiteles agreed.

  “You can count on Sostratos to remember such things,” Menedemos said. Sostratos couldn't tell whether his cousin meant that for a sneer or a compliment. He'd heard both from Menedemos' lips.

  Kleiteles said, “Good thing somebody can keep all these generals straight. They say Antigonos sent his son Demetrios off to fight, uh, Seleukos. I bet he wishes he still had Polemaios on his side now.”

  “I don't know,” Sostratos said. “You haven't met Polemaios, have you?” He waited for the proxenos to toss his head, then added, “I don't think he can be on anyone's side except his own.”

  Menedemos said, “Sostratos and I find all sorts of things to argue about, but he's dead right here. If Polemaios thinks you're in his way, he'll give you the fastest, hardest knee in the nuts you'd ever get from anybody.”

  “But Ptolemaios wanted him here, and wanted him here badly enough to send the two of you after him,” Kleiteles said. “And more of Polemaios' men keep coming in from Euboia: another two shiploads of them today, in fact. Ptolemaios usually knows what he's doing.”

  “Usually,” Sostratos agreed. “If he's not keeping an eye on what his new ally's up to, though, he's not as smart as everybody says he is. He—”

  He fell silent, for a couple of slaves came in to clear away the supper dishes and clean up the mess on the floor. You never could tell who paid slaves to listen. Their entrance also startled the jackdaw. The shield fell out of its beak and clanked against the ladder in the cage. “Chaka!” it cried, spreading its wings. “Chaka-chaka-chack!”

  “It's all right, you stupid bird,” Kleiteles said. The jackdaw calmed when the slaves went away, but screeched again when they came back with wine, water, a mixing bowl, and cups.

  Sostratos imagined Polemaios as a bird in a cage, too, only he wouldn't be a jackdaw. He'd be a hawk of some kind, all beak and talons and glaring eyes. If anyone tried to loose him, would he do anything but fly straight at the hawker's face?

  Kleiteles dipped out a little neat wine for his guests. Sostratos poured a libation to Dionysos and drank almost absently. Once the mixed wine—not too strong—started going around, he did his best to bring his mind back to the andron. He couldn't know what was going on inside Ptolemaios' residence and whatever house Antigonos' nephew was using. He couldn't know, but wished he could.

  He suddenly noticed the Rhodian proxenos eyeing him. “The last time we drank together, you talked about gryphons as though you'd seen one just the other day,” Kleiteles said. “What other strange things do you know?”

  Menedemos snickered. “Now you've gone and done it,” he said.

  “And to the crows with you, my dear cousin,” Sostratos said, which only made his dear cousin laugh out loud. He thought for a bit, then went on, “Herodotos says a Persian king sent some Phoenicians to sail all the way around Africa, He says they went so far south that, when they were sailing east around the bottom of it, they had the sun on their left hand.”

  “That's impossible,” the proxenos exclaimed.

  “I think so, too,” Menedemos said, taking a pull at his wine. He pointed an accusing finger at Sostratos. “I'll bet you believe it.”

  “I don't know,” Sostratos said. “If it happened at all, it happened a long time ago. And we all know how sailors like to make up stories. But that's such an odd thing to make up, you do have to wonder.”

  “Maybe you do,” Menedemos said.

  “It's impossible,” Kleiteies repeated. “How could it be?”

  “If the earth is a sphere, and not flat like most people say.. .” Sostratos tried to visualize it. He might have done better if he hadn't been drinking wine at the end of a long day. He shrugged and gave up. “I don't know.”

  Menedemos emptied his cup, set it on the table in front of him, and yawned. “Maybe it's that meat we ate,” he said. “It can make you feel heavy.”

  “I told my slave women to go to your bedrooms,” Kleiteles said. “If you're too sleepy to enjoy them, you can always send them back to the women's quarters.”

  “My dear fellow!” Menedemos exclaimed. “I didn't say we were dead.” He turned to Sostratos. “Isn't that right?”

  What Sostratos wanted to do was go to sleep. Admitting as much would make him look less virile than Menedemos. He didn't want Kleiteles thinking
that of him. Even more to the point, he didn't want Menedemos thinking that of him. His cousin would never let him live it down. “I should hope it is!” he said, while he really hoped he sounded hearty enough to be convincing.

  He must have, for the Rhodian proxenos chuckled indulgently and said, “Have fun, boys. When I was your age, I was that cockproud, too.” He sighed; he was feeling the wine, even if it was well watered. “Can't get it up as often as I used to, worse luck.”

  “Onions,” Menedemos said. “Eggs.”

  “Mussels and crab meat,” Sostratos added.

  “I've tried 'em.” Kleiteles' shrug said the sovereign remedies had done no good.

  “Pepper and nettle seed,” Sostratos suggested.

  The proxenos looked thoughtful. “That might be worth a go. It'd be bound to heat up my mouth and my stomach, so why not my vein, too?” He used a common nickname for the prong, Kleiteles glanced toward Sostratos and Menedemos. “Nettle seed is easy enough to come by, but pepper's foreign. I don't suppose you've got any in your akatos, do you?”

  “I wish we did,” Sostratos said. He looked at Menedemos. “Pepper, balsam—all sorts of interesting things come out of the east. We ought to think about that. Not this sailing season, of course,” he added hastily. “Next one.”

  His cousin laughed. “You mean you don't want to sail off for Sidon and Byblos tomorrow morning? I can't imagine why.”

  “We are going to Athens,” Sostratos said firmly. “If we ever find a carpenter, that is.” He got to his feet. “And I am going to bed.”

  Kleiteles led Sostratos and Menedemos back to the guest rooms. “Good night,” he said. He doused one of the torches burning in the courtyard in the fountain and carried the other one upstairs. Darkness abruptly descended. Sostratos had to grope for the latch.

  To his relief, a lamp was burning inside. The proxenos' slave woman lay on the bed waiting for him. “Hail,” she said, yawning. “You spent so long in the andron, I almost fell asleep.”

  Sostratos didn't want to apologize to a slave, but he didn't want a quarrel, either. Trying to avoid both, he asked, “How are you tonight, Thestylis?”

  “Sleepy, like I told you,” she answered. But she added, “It's nice that you remember my name,” and smiled at him. The smile was probably mercenary. Still, he preferred it to a scowl,

  “I don't think I'll forget you,” he said. He remembered all the women he'd bedded. He remembered all sorts of things, but Thestylis didn't need to know that.

  Her smile softened. “What a sweet thing to say,” she told him. “Nobody ever told me anything like that before. Most men, it's just, 'Take off your clothes and bend over,' and they never even find out what your name is, let alone remember it.” The light from the lamp suddenly sparkled off tears in her eyes.

  “Don't cry,” Sostratos said.

  “I didn't think somebody being kind could hurt so much,” she mumbled, and buried her face in the cloth covering the mattress. A muffled sob rose.

  “Don't cry,” Sostratos repeated. He got down on the bed beside her and awkwardly patted her hair. Even as he did so, he wondered if her tears were a ploy to pry an extra obolos or two out of him. Anyone who dealt with slaves had to make such calculations. Slaves, he knew perfectly well, made calculations of their own about free men.

  She sobbed again, and made as if to push him away. “Now see what you made me do,” she said, as if her tears were his fault. Maybe, in a way, they were.

  “If you want to go back up to the women's quarters tonight, that's all right,” he said. Why not? He was tired, and she'd be there tomorrow. And so would he, because he still didn't know when a ship's carpenter would be able to work on the Aphrodite—or when Menedemos would get so fed up, he'd have some of the sailors make repairs that might at least carry the merchant galley to another, less crowded, polis.

  Thestylis twisted. Now he could see her face, and the alarm on it. She tossed her head. “I don't dare do that,” she said. “Who knows what Kleiteles would do to me?” More tears slid down her face, leaving bright tracks in the lamplight.

  He leaned over and kissed her. If she'd pushed him away then, he would have lain down beside her and gone to sleep. But her arms went around him. His hand closed on her breast through the wool of her long chiton. She sighed, deep in her throat, and squeezed him tighter. Again, he wondered if she really meant it. But with his own excitement rising, he didn't much care. He reached under the hem of her tunic, his hand sliding up the smooth flesh of her thigh to the secret place between her legs. The flesh there was smooth, too; she'd singed away the hair with a lamp.

  Before long, her tunic and his both lay on the floor. He kissed her breasts. She sighed again as her nipples grew stiff to his caresses. He grew stiff, too, and took her hand and set it on his manhood. She stroked him, easing his foreskin back.

  “Here,” he said. “Ride me like a racehorse.”

  “All right.” She straddled him. He held his erection as she impaled herself on him. As she began to move, he squeezed her breasts and leaned up to tease their tips with his tongue. “Ah,” she said softly, and moved faster.

  At the end, she threw back her head and made a little mewling cry. By the way she squeezed him inside herself, he thought her pleasure real. His hands clutched her meaty backside as his seed shot into her.

  She toppled down onto him, all warm and soft and sweaty, as he was sweaty, too. But then, even when he might have started a second round, she scrambled off, took the chamber pot out from under the bed, and squatted over it, her legs splayed wide apart. A wet plop and a muttered, “Well, that's most of it,” said what she was doing.

  “I'll give you half a drakhma,” Sostratos said. “You don't need to tell Kleiteles you got it from me.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Thestylis said, reaching for her tunic. “You are a kind man. Some people, you might as well be a piece of meat, for all they care about what you feel.” It wasn't a complaint about men's treatment of women worthy of those Euripides had put in the mouths of his female characters, but sounded heartfelt even so.

  “Don't put the chamber pot away,” Sostratos said. After using it, he put on his chiton, too. Thestylis would be lying beside him if he wanted that second round in the morning. Meanwhile .. . Meanwhile, he yawned and lay down. No need to wrap himself in his himation on a warm summer night. “Blow out the lamp.”

  She did, then got into bed in the dark. Sostratos patted her, yawned again, and fell asleep.

  Menedemos crouched under the Aphrodite's poop deck, mournfully eyeing the sprung planks, the sailcloth stuffed between them, the broken tenons, the mortises that had turned into actual breaks in the timbers. He cursed the blundering round ship that had run into the akatos in the rain. He cursed Ptolemaios, too, for his siege of Halikarnassos, and for good measure cursed every carpenter in Kos.

  When he came out from under the poop deck, he didn't duck far enough and, not for the first time, banged his head. That left him cursing life in general. With some sympathy, Sostratos said, “I've done that, too.”

  Well, of course you have, Menedemos thought sourly. You're taller than I am, and clumsier, too. He rubbed his head before speaking.

  That was probably just as well, for all that came out of his mouth was, “I know.”

  “What do you think?” Sostratos asked. “Have you changed your mind?”

  “I only wish I had,” Menedemos answered. “There's too much damage for me to want to risk the ship going anywhere very far, and too much for us to do the repairs ourselves. Resourceful Odysseus made a boat starting with nothing but logs, but we can't quite imitate him.” He stroked his chin. “Maybe we could get up to Myndos. Maybe...”

  Sostratos tossed his head. “I don't think that will do us any good. Halikarnassos is still holding out, but Ptoiemaios' men just took Myndos.”

  “Which means the carpenters there will be busy working for him, same as the ones here.” Menedemos rubbed his scalp again. The bump he'd got wasn't the only thing
making his head ache.

  “That's right,” Sostratos said.

  “When did you hear that about Myndos?” Menedemos asked. “It's news to me.”

  “Just now, as a matter of fact.” His cousin pointed to a couple of men walking along the quay. “They were talking about it. If you hadn't been all muffled down below, you would have heard them, too.”

  With a sigh, Menedemos said, “Well, let's gather up our perfumes and such and head for the market square. Maybe we'll do enough business to break even.”

  “Maybe.” Sostratos didn't sound as if he believed it. For that matter, Meneclemos didn't believe it, either. Sostratos put the best face on things he could: “The more we sell, the less we lose, even if we don't break even,”

  To Menedemos' surprise, they promptly sold four jars of perfume to a fellow with his right arm bandaged and in a sling. He had scarred shins, too, and a scar seaming his chin, and was missing the lobe of his left ear. “I've got to keep my hetaira sweet on me,” he said. “You've got to give 'em presents, or they forget all about you, and how was I supposed to give her presents when I was sitting in a tent in front of Halikarnassos?”

  “You weren't sitting in a tent all the time.” Menedemos pointed to the soldier's wounded arm.

  “No, and I'm almost not sorry I got hurt, you know what I mean?” the fellow said. Menedemos dipped his head, though he thought, Whether you know it or not, you mean that hetaira's got her hooks into you deep. He recognized the symptoms from experience. The soldier went on, “Now that I'm back here, at least she can't forget I'm alive.”

  Sostratos pointed to his arm, too. “How did it happen?”

  “One of those things,” the scarred man said with a shrug. “We tried scaling ladders. I was moving up towards one of 'em when I got shot. Might've been just as well, too, on account of I heard later they tipped that ladder over with a bunch of men on it. If I'd been near the top . . .” He grimaced. “It's a long fall.”

  “Have you got any idea how much longer the siege will take?” Menedemos asked.

  “Not me, best one.” The soldier tossed his head. “We're liable to still be at it by the time this heals”—he wiggled the fingers sticking out of the bandage—”and I've got to go back to work. That place has strong walls, and you might think old One-Eye's men in there were all citizens by the way they're fighting.”