The Gryphon's Skull

by H. N. Turteltaub

  “I certainly didn't,” Menedemos said. “He would have wasted an hour of our time asking questions, and we haven't got an hour to spare, not if we want to make Miletos by sundown. You're not the only one who can be in a hurry to get where we're going, you know.”

  Not long after the war galley came out from the mainland, the Aphrodite passed a sponge boat most likely from Kalymnos, which had a lot of sponge divers. A trident in his right hand to free sponges from the ocean floor and a large stone clutched to his chest to make him sink quickly, a diver leaped off the stern of the boat and splashed into the blue water. He came up again a couple of minutes later, hanging on to black sponges of varying sizes. The other men on the boat took the sponges from him and hauled him aboard again. Naked and dripping, he waved to the Aphrodite.

  From his station at an oar, Moskhion said, “This is what I was talking about when we fothered the sailcloth over the planks. Gods know I'd rather be here than over there doing that.”

  “I believe you,” Menedemos said. As he had to the men on Ptolemaios' five, he did wave back. “He doesn't think we're pirates, anyhow. Either that or he knows there's nothing worth stealing on his boat.”

  “I wouldn't want his sponges, that's certain,” Sostratos said. “They don't look like the ones you'd use in a fine bathhouse.”

  “Of course they don't,” Moskhion said. “They haven't been cleaned and dried yet.”

  “Sponge diving is as hard a way to make a living as any other kind of fishing,” Menedemos said.

  “Harder,” Moskhion said with conviction. “Believe me—harder.”

  ''When you get right down to it, there's no easy way to make a living,” Sostratos said.

  “I'd rather be doing this than that,” Menedemos said. Sostratos and Moskhion both dipped their heads in agreement, Menedemos went on, “Easy work, now—wouldn't you like to be a sophist and make speeches in the market square for money?”

  “By the dog of Egypt, I would,” Moskhion said.

  “It can't be that easy,” Sostratos said. “If it were, more men would be able to make a living at it. Most of the ones who try fail, you know. You need to be able to think on your feet, and people have to want to listen to you. Otherwise, you go hungry.”

  Menedemos hadn't thought about that. Sostratos had a way of reminding him of things he hadn't thought of. “Maybe you're right,” Menedemos allowed. “It must be something like being an actor.”

  “Not so easy as acting, I'd say,” his cousin answered. “A sophist hasn't got a mask to hide behind, the way an actor does.”

  A good-sized wave slapped the merchant galley's bow, and then another and another, making her pitch up and down. “And we're coming out into the Ikarian Sea,” Menedemos said, “which means we haven't got any more islands to hide behind. We'll be bouncing like a toy boat in a little boy's hip bath all the way up to Miletos. This is one of the roughest stretches of the Aegean,”

  “I know.” Sostratos gulped and looked faintly green. “I had my sea legs, but I may have lost them in the layover at Kos.”

  He wasn't the only one. A couple of sailors leaned out over the rail and heaved up their guts, too. Maybe they wouldn't have done it if they hadn't drunk deep in Kos the night before. But maybe, like Sostratos, they'd just spent too much time ashore.

  To Menedemos' relief, the Aphrodite did make Miletos by nightfall. He wouldn't have cared to spend a night at sea in such rough waters, and a wind might have blown up to make things worse still. Tying up at a quay as the sun went down made him much happier about the world.

  The Milesians who made the ship fast to the quay chattered away amongst themselves in the town's Ionic dialect. When one of Antigonos' officers strutted up to ask his questions, the harbor workers fell silent and flinched away like beaten children. A generation before, Miletos had tried to hold out Alexander's soldiers and been sacked for its effort. These days, the locals gave their occupiers no trouble.

  “From Kos, eh?” the officer said, Menedemos hadn't dared lie about that, not when the akatos carried so much silk. Bristles rasped under the officer's fingers as he rubbed his chin in thought. At last, he asked, “While you were there, did you . .. hear anything about Antigonos' nephew joining forces with that ugly toad of a Ptolemaios?”

  Oh, good, Menedemos thought. He has no idea we're the ones who brought Polemaios to Kos. That makes things a lot easier. Aloud, he answered, “Yes, Polemaios was there while we were. But your master doesn't have to worry about him anymore.”

  “What? Why not?” the man demanded.

  “Because he's dead,” Menedemos replied. “He tried to bring some of Ptolemaios' officers over to his own cause. Ptolemaios caught him at it and made him drink hemlock. I'm sure the news is true—it was all over Kos when we left this morning.” That seemed preferable to telling the officer Sostratos had watched Polemaios die. If the fellow believed him, he might—probably would—wonder how Sostratos had gained that privilege.

  As things were, the officer's jaw dropped. “That's wonderful news, if it's so. Are you certain of it?”

  “I didn't see his body,” Menedemos answered truthfully, “but I don't see why Ptolemaios would lie about something like that. A lie would only make the soldiers who came along with Antigonos' nephew want to riot, don't you think?”

  After a little thought, the officer dipped his head. When he grinned, a scar on one cheek that Menedemos hadn't noticed till then pulled the expression out of shape. “You're right, by the gods. This has to go straight to Antigonos. He's up by the Hellespont, setting things to rights there. You might want to stay in port here for a while; I wouldn't be surprised if he gave you a reward for the news.”

  Sostratos looked like a man who'd just taken a knife in the back. Menedemos spoke to the officer: “Best one, if I were sure of that, I would stay. But look at the size of my crew. I don't know that I can afford to linger just on the hope of a reward—I have to pay them any which way.”

  “That's a problem,” Antigonos' man admitted, “You'll have to do what you think best, then.”

  Menedemos was tempted to linger. Old One-Eye might be very glad indeed to learn that his unpleasant nephew wouldn't bother him anymore, with or without the help of Ptolemaios. But he'd meant what he said; the Aphrodite's crew was expensive. If he waited half a month, he'd go through half a talent of silver.

  Sounding like someone who'd just had a reprieve, Sostratos asked the officer, “What's the news here?”

  “Not much right here,” the fellow said, “though some from Hellas came in the other day.”

  “Tell us!” Menedemos spoke as quickly as his cousin,

  “Well,” the officer went on, with the smug smile of someone who knows something his listeners do not, “you may have heard tell of the youth called Herakles, Alexander's bastard son by Barsine.”

  “Oh, yes.” Menedemos dipped his head. “The one who got out of Pergamon last year, and went across to Polyperkhon to help him drive Kassandros mad in Macedonia.”

  “That's right,” Antigonos' officer said, at the same time as Sostratos spoke out of the side of his mouth: “This Herakles likely isn't Alexander's get at all, but a tool of Antigonos' against Kassandros.”

  “I know. Shut up,” Menedemos hissed to him, before asking the officer, “What about this youth?”

  “He's dead, that's what,” the officer answered. “Dead as Polemaios, if what you say about him is true. Kassandros persuaded Polyperkhon that Alexander's kin were too dangerous to leave running around loose, and so—” He drew a finger across his throat. “They say Polyperkhon got land in Macedonia for it, and soldiers to help him fight down in the Peloponnesos.”

  “Kassandros doesn't want any folk of Alexander's blood left alive, because they weaken his hold on Macedonia,” Sostratos said. “He's just a general; they could call themselves kings.”

  “That's true,” Menedemos said. “Look how he got rid of Alexander's legitimate son, Alexandras, winter before last—and Roxane, the boy's mother, t
oo.”

  “Sure enough, you can't trust Kassandros,” Antigonos' officer declared. He started hack up the quay. “I'm off to tell my superiors of your news. Like I say, you can be sure they'll be glad to hear it.” He hurried away.

  “ 'You can't trust Kassandros,' “ Sostratos echoed, irony in his voice. “You can't trust any of the Macedonian marshals, and they all want to see Alexander's kin dead.”

  “No doubt you're right,” Menedemos said, “but it's still news. It hadn't got to Kos yet.”

  “I don't think there's even a bastard pretender from Alexander's line left alive now,” Sostratos said.

  “His sister Kleopatra's still up in Sardis, isn't she?” Menedemos asked.

  “By the gods, you're right. I'd forgotten about Kleopatra.” Sostratos looked annoyed at himself, as he often did when he forgot something like that. The smile following his annoyed expression wasn't one Menedemos would have wanted aimed at him. “I wonder how long she'll last,” Sostratos added.

  Like Kaunos, Miletos was an old city, one with streets wandering wherever they would. Sostratos had to pay out not one obolos but two to find his way to the market square in the middle of town. He feared he would need to pay for directions back to the harbor, too. He'd got so turned around, he had to keep looking at the sun to know which direction was which.

  In the agora, hawkers cried the produce of the rich Anatolian countryside: onions and garlic and olives and raisins and wine. Potters and tinkers and leatherworkers and wool dealers added to the din. So did the fellow who walked through the square with a brazier shouting, “Fresh squid!”

  Sostratos bought a couple of them. He burned his fingers and his mouth on the hot oily flesh, but didn't care: they were delicious. After he'd gulped them down, he started doing some shouting of his own: “Fine silk from Kos!”

  Miletos being only a day's sail from the island, he hadn't expected too much in the way of business. He'd assumed most Milesians who wanted silk would have gone down to Kos and bought it for themselves. As soon as he opened his mouth, he saw he'd made a mistake, for he started selling the stuff as if it had never before appeared in this polis.

  And that, it seemed, was not so far from the truth. “Thank you so much for fetching some at last,” said a tailor who bought several bolts. “No one from Kos has been here for a while, and no one from our town wanted to go down there. You know how it is.”

  “Well, no, as a matter of fact,” Sostratos said.

  “Oh, but my dear fellow, you must,” the tailor said. When Sostratos still looked blank, the fellow let out an exasperated sigh and condescended to explain: “If we go down to Kos or men from there come hither, what's likely to happen? Antigonos' officers will say we're spying for Ptolemaios, or else the other way round, that's what. Silk's all very fine, but it's not worth a visit to the torturer.”

  “I... see,” Sostratos said in a small voice. And so he did, once the Milesian pointed it out to him. This is what I get for living in a free and autonomous polis that really is both, he thought. Such things don't occur to me. These lands are subject to the marshals who rule them and if the marshals become enemies, so do the lands, no matter what most of the people want. To someone from an independent democracy, the notion was absurd. But that made it no less real hereabouts.

  Silver came clinking in from one customer after another. When Sostratos saw how eager the locals were to buy, he raised the price. That didn't keep him from running low on silk before noon. He sent a couple of sailors back to the Aphrodite to bring more to the market square.

  Not long after they returned, Menedemos stopped by. He looked as happy and as sated as a fox in a henhouse. “You must have spent part of your morning in a brothel,” Sostratos said. When his cousin tossed his head, alarm shot through him. “Don't tell me you found a friendly wife so quick. Remember, friendly wives have unfriendly husbands.”

  “No whores, no wives—no women at all,” Menedemos answered. Seeing Sostratos' dubious expression, he went on, “I'll take oath by any god you care to name. No, I've been meeting. . . jewelers.” He leaned forward and spoke the last word in a conspiratorial whisper.

  “Jewelers?” Sostratos echoed. For a moment, he couldn't imagine why Menedemos might be interested in talking with them. Then he did, and felt foolish. “Oh. The emeralds.” He also dropped his voice for the last word.

  “That's right, Menedemos said. “This isn't Kos. I can sell them here without worrying about Ptolemaios. As a matter of fact, people here are all the more eager to buy just for the sake of giving Ptolemaios a black eye.”

  But if Ptolemaios ruled Miletos, they would—or some of them would—inform on you for smuggling, Sostratos thought—the other side of the coin to his earlier reflections. Thinking of coins made him ask, “How much are you getting?”

  “My dear, they're fighting with one another for the chance to get their hands on my little green stones,” Menedemos said. “I sold two medium-good ones—not the finest, mind you—for ten minai.”

  “By the dog of Egypt!” Sostratos exclaimed—the right oath for gems coming out of Ptolemaios' realm. “That's almost twice what we paid for the lot of them.”

  “I know,” Menedemos said happily. “And once the fellows who didn't buy take a look at the stones and decide they have to have some, too .. . We really may clear more than a talent from them.”

  “Who can buy from the jewelers at such prices, though?” Sostratos asked, “Are there that many rich Milesians?”

  “I don't think so,” his cousin answered. “But Antigonos has plenty of rich officers.”

  “Ah,” Sostratos said. “That's true. And they'll have wives for whom they'll want rings or pendants—or else hetairai to whom they'll have to give presents.”

  Menedemos dipped his head. “You're beginning to understand.”

  At another time, his sarcastic tone would have irked Sostratos. His thoughts were elsewhere now. He wished he had a counting board, but managed well enough without one; along with his fine memory, he'd always had a knack for mental arithmetic. When he came out of his study, he found Menedemos looking at him oddly. He'd seen that particular expression on his cousin's face once or twice before. A little sheepishly, he asked, “How long was I away?”

  “Not very long,” Menedemos answered, “but I said something to you and you never heard me. What were you thinking about so hard?”

  “Money,” Sostratos said, a word that was enough to seize Menedemos' attention by itself. “If you can bring in a talent or so for those emeralds, and. if I keep getting the prices I've been getting for the silk, we'll turn a profit on this run yet.”

  “And you would have flung me into the sea for wanting to come here instead of making straight for Athens,” Menedemos said.

  “We might have done just as well for ourselves there,” Sostratos said. “We probably would have with the emeralds; Athenian jewelers have Kassandros' officers to sell to, as the Milesians have Antigonos'. And there's the gryphon's skull,”

  “So there is.” To Sostratos surprise, Menedemos chuckled and patted him on the back. “I'm all finished arguing about that with you. You want to take it over to a bunch of other men who'll stand around looking at it and thinking so hard, they can't even hear.”

  Sostratos kissed him on the cheek. “You do understand!” he exclaimed. Only later did he realize that his cousin's description of the philosophers of the Lykeion might have been imperfectly flattering.

  Menedemos said, “I can't stay, my dear. I'm going to the ship, and then back to talk to some more jewelers. And who knows? One of them may turn out to have a pretty wife.” He hurried off before Sostratos could even begin a gasp of horror.

  Swallowing a sigh, Sostratos went back to calling out the virtues of the silk he was selling. He did that on purpose, he thought. He wanted to make me jump, and he did. But he also knew that, if one of the jewelers did turn out to be married to a women whose looks Menedemos liked, he might try to seduce her. And if he does, we may have to head
for Athens sooner than he wants. Sostratos tossed his head. They were doing such good business here, they really needed to stay a while. And he wanted to be able to come back to Miletos next year or the year after.

  A plump man wearing a chiton of snowy linen and sandals with gold buckles came up and waited to be noticed. “Hail,” Sostratos said: the fellow looked prosperous enough to make him hope he was a customer. “Would you be interested in buying some silk?”

  “ 'Ail,” the man replied, his accent not just Ionian but something else, something that told Sostratos he wasn't a Hellene. “Not for myself, no. But I 'ave come to tell you that my mistress may well be, if you 'ave what she wants.”

  “Your. . , mistress?” Sostratos hoped his startlement didn't show.

  Few Milesians dressed as well as this fellow; Sostratos had assumed he had money of his own. If he was someone's slave, how much money did his owner have?

  “Yes, sir,” the plump man said. “My mistress is Metrikhe, who is well known in Miletos. She might be interested in your silk, if you 'ave any fine enough. For . . . professional purposes, you understand.”

  “Yes,” Sostratos said. A hetaira. She has to be, he thought. And one of the very rich ones, if she can afford a slave like this. “I'll be happy to show you what I've got here.”

  “Thank you, sir, but not to me.” The plump man shook his head, again proving himself no Hellene. “If you would bring it to my mistress' house, though ...”

  Sostratos almost burst out laughing, Menedemos will be sorry he's off talking to jewelers, he thought. If he were here, he'd do anything this side of bashing me with a rock to go himself. “Yes, I'll come,” he told the slave. “Let me find some bolts that might best suit her,” As he gathered them up, he told the couple of sailors with him, “If anyone comes looking to buy, let him know I'll be back before too long.”

  “Right you are,” one of them said. With a grin, he added, “Tough bit of work you've got ahead of you, sounds like.”

  “Doesn't it, though?” Sostratos answered, deadpan. He turned to the slave. “I'm ready. Take me to your mistress.”