The Gryphon's Skull

by H. N. Turteltaub

  As in most poleis, the houses of the rich and poor lay side by side, and it wasn't easy to tell which was which from the outside: the rich hid their wealth behind their walls. When the slave stopped and said, “ 'Ere we are,” Sostratos saw that the house was whitewashed and had a very solid-looking door. Both suggested money; neither proved it.

  Another slave opened the door when the fellow with Sostratos knocked. “Come with me, sir,” he told Sostratos, and led him to the andron. Again, Sostratos held in amusement, thinking, In a hetaira's house, is this still the men's chamber? And if it is, what exactly does that mean?

  The chairs and tables in the andron were well made. The courtyard at which Sostratos looked out also suggested quiet prosperity, with a colonnade around its outer edge, a neat flower garden surrounding a fountain, and a nearly life-sized statue of a goddess likelier to be Artemis than Aphrodite. Sostratos would have expected something gaudier and bawdier.

  One of the slaves brought him wine and olives. The first taste of the wine made his eyebrows shoot up. He knew Ariousian, the finest vintage from Khios; the Aphrodite had carried it to Great Hellas the year before. If Metrikhe could afford it, she was more than prosperous. The tangy green olives were also very fine, plainly from the first picking.

  Metrikhe gave Sostratos just long enough to refresh himself before coming to the andron. Maybe she had a slave keeping an eye on him; maybe she simply knew how long a man would need. At any rate, he'd just set down his empty cup when she paused in the doorway and said, “ 'Ail. You are the silk-seller?”

  “Hail. Yes, that's right.” As Sostratos gave his name, he eyed Metrikhe. No one could have proved her a hetaira by the way she dressed. Indeed, she seemed the height of respectability. Over her long chiton, she wore a wrap of fine, soft wool; Miletos was famous for the quality of its khlaneis. She even veiled herself against his eyes. How disappointing, he thought.

  What was in his mind must have shown on his face, for she chuckled. “Were you expecting to see me in something where you could see all of me?” she asked as she walked in and sat down. She moved with a dancer's grace.

  Sostratos' ears heated. “I did . . . wonder,” he mumbled, that seeming a safer word than hope.

  “I can't say I'm surprised.” Metrikhe tossed her head, a startlingly emphatic gesture. “But no. I don't show myself unless it's time to show myself. That makes it mean more when I do.”

  “Ah.” Sostratos took the point at once, “I see. Each craft has its own mysteries. Plainly, you know yours.”

  “I 'ad better,” she answered, and cocked his head to one side, studying him for a few heartbeats. “You're not a fool, are you?”

  “I do try not to be.” Sostratos smiled. “Of course, I understand that you want men to be fools around you, and I'm sure you know how to get just what you want.” His cousin was far fonder of quoting Homer than he was, but a few lines from theOdyssey seemed to fit:

  “ 'They stood in the bright-tressed goddess' doorway

  And listened to Kirke inside singing with her beautiful voice

  While working at a great loom fit for a divinity, such as goddesses have

  And turning out delicately woven work, pleasing and fine.' “

  Metrikhe studied him again, this time, he thought, more sharply. An edge in her voice, she said, “I don't turn men into swine.”

  He didn't want to antagonize her. That might cost him a sale even before they started haggling. He picked his words with care; “I wouldn't think you'd need to. Isn't it true that a lot of men are swine before they stand in your doorway?”

  “You are a man. 'Ow do you know these things?” She sounded half astonished, half suspicious.

  How do I know? Sostratos wondered. He knew what happened to women when cities fell. In his student days in Athens, he'd gone to the theater for several revivals of Euripides, including The Trojan Women. And he worried about Menedemos whenever the Aphrodite came into a new port. How much of that could he tell a stranger? None, he decided. And so he simply shrugged and said, “Am I wrong?”

  “No, by Zeus,” the hetaira answered. “Be thankful you don't know 'ow right you are.” Perhaps still taken aback by what he'd said, she dipped up a cup of wine for herself. She had to push aside the veils to drink. Sostratos didn't know what he'd expected—hard, dazzling beauty, most likely. He didn't find that; she was pretty, but not ravishing, and younger than he would have guessed from her voice: about his own age. She knew he was looking, of course. She smiled as she let the veiling drop back into place, “What do you think?”

  He chose another line from the Odyssey. “ 'Nausikaa, having loveliness from the gods . . .' “ and then finished with his own invention, improvising the end of a hexameter: “... chose to look at silk.”

  Metrikhe clapped her hands. “Euge!”

  “Not really,” Sostratos said. “It's an anachronism, for they didn't know of silk in the days of the Trojan War. Homer never mentions it. But if you choose to look at silk, I'll be happy to show you what I have here.”

  “Please do,” she said, and then, “You're an unusual man.”

  “I don't know what you're talking about,” Sostratos answered. He didn't particularly expect her to notice the quiet irony in his voice, but she did, and dipped her head. He started opening leather sacks and taking out bolts of cloth. “Your slave said you wanted the thinnest I have.”

  “Yes,” Metrikhe said. “Mysteries of the craft again—not that that's much of a mystery.. . , Can we go out into the courtyard? Seeing these in the sunlight's the best way to judge 'ow thin they are.”

  “Certainly,” Sostratos said. “I wish most of the men I do business with had as good an idea of what they wanted,”

  “Thank you,” Metrikhe replied. “And I wish most of the men !oo come 'ere to do business—not that kind of business, but other sorts, the way you are—would do business with me, and not act as if all they care about is my little piggy.” She used the obscenity as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

  Out in the courtyard, Sostratos held up bolt after bolt of silk. Metrikhe waved for him to put some aside for later haggling; at others she simply tossed her head. After a while, he said, “That's the last one I have.”

  “All right,” the hetaira answered. “What do you want for all the ones I can use?”

  “For all those bolts together?” Sostratos looked up into the sky while numbers danced in his head. Before long, he named a price.

  Metrikhe looked from the silk to him and back again. “I thought you would give me some round figure. You reckoned that to the very drakhma, didn't you?”

  “Of course,” he answered, honestly surprised. “Isn't that what you wanted me to do?”

  “What you want and what you get often 'ave nothing to do with each other,” she said, “If it weren't for what men want, I would have to be a washerwoman or a tavern-keeper or something of the sort. But what do they get from me they couldn't have from a three-obolos 'ore?” She snapped her fingers, “Illusion, that's all.”

  Sostratos smiled, “Should you tell me such things?”

  “I wouldn't tell them to most men, but I think you can see them for yourself,” Metrikhe said. “And I'll tell you something else: no matter 'ow carefully you figured your price, you're still a thief.” She named one of her own, less than half as high.

  “If I'm a thief, you're a joker,” Sostratos replied. “I can't possibly make a profit on that, or anything close to it. You say you don't want to wash clothes or sell wine? That cuts both ways. I don't want to tan hides or make pots.”

  She stepped forward and set a hand on his arm. Till then, she'd acted like a well-bred woman and spoken like a well-educated man. Now, suddenly, she chose to remind him of what she really was, what she really did. Her flesh was warm and soft. Her voice was warm and soft, too: “Suppose I give you that very same price, and the rest of the afternoon in my bed? If you want illusion, I can give you the best.”

  “If my cousin were here, he migh
t take you up on that,” Sostratos said. “Please believe me, it's not that I'm not interested.”That was true; her touch had startled him and stirred him at the same time. Even so, he went on, “You're lucky: you can make a living from illusion. I can't; I have to have silver.”

  “It's not always luck, believe me. Some of the men who visit here have illusions of their own,” Metrikhe said. She went from wanton back to businesslike in the space of a sentence. “All right, then— silver and nothing but silver.” She came up a little.

  “You're speaking of Milesian drakhmai?” Sostratos asked.

  Metrikhe dipped her head. “They're a little heavier than your Rhodian coins.”

  He'd known that. Somehow, he wasn't surprised she did, too. “Even so, you're still too low,” he said, thinking, When we do make a bargain, I won't find any heavy drakhmai here, the way I did at the temple in Kos.

  She said, “Let's go back into the andron and hash it out over more wine.”

  “Why not?” Sostratos said. “If you can afford to pay for the lovely Khian, you can afford to pay for my silk, too.”

  Metrikhe laughed. “You're as spiny as a hedgehog. Why didn't your cousin come here instead? He would have been easier to deal with.”

  “I'm sorry,” said Sostratos, who wasn't sorry at all. “You're stuck with me.”

  When they did agree on a price, it was about as low as Sostratos was willing to go without abandoning the deal altogether. That didn't surprise him, either. And, when he went through the money she gave him, he found a few coins—only a few—from Rhodes and other poleis that coined to a lighter standard than Miletos. “I'll get you lions to take their places,” Metrikhe said, and did replace them with Milesian money. As he'd expected, there were no owls or turtles or other heavy coins.

  The drakhmai jingled sweetly as Sostratos put them back into the leather sack Metrikhe had given him. He tied the sack shut with a strip of rawhide. “Thank you for your hospitality and for your business,” he told her, rising to go. “I hope to see you again one day.” It could happen. Ships from his father and uncle's firm came into Miletos every year or two.

  Metrikhe said, “Do you need to leave so soon?”

  Sostratos frowned. “We're done here, aren't we? Or have you changed your mind about some of the silk you said you didn't want?”

  “I wasn't talking about silk,” she said, a hint—more than a hint— of exasperation in her voice.

  His frown deepened. “Then what do you—?” He broke off because of one possibility that occurred to him. It would, he was sure, have occurred to Menedemos much sooner. “Do you mean that?” He was pleased his voice didn't rise to a startled squeak, as if he were still a youth.

  “Certainly, I mean that” she answered, now sounding amused. “Why did you think I might mean anything else?”

  Because those sorts of things happen to my cousin, not to me, Sostratos thought. Because women don't usually find me very interesting. He had just enough sense not to blurt that out to Metrikhe. Instead, he said, “Because you chose to dress like a woman of quality. Because you bargain like a man. Because I already turned you down when you, ah, didn't bargain like a man.”

  She laughed and waved that aside. “You didn't insult me. That was business on both sides, when I offered and when you said no. This wouldn't be business. I think this would be fun. You've treated me like a person, not like a slut. You don't know how unusual that is. And so ...” She shrugged. “If you want to, of course.”

  “You really mean it,” Sostratos said in slow wonder. Metrikhe dipped her head. He still had trouble believing it. In his youth, he'd had a couple of painful jokes played on him, painful enough to make him wince when he thought of them now, ten years later.

  “Come on,” Metrikhe said. “I'm doing this because I feel like it, not because I have to make one of my companions feel good. That's unusual, too, and I'm going to enjoy it.”

  Sostratos needed no more urging. He did bring along the silk she hadn't bought and the money she'd given him for what she had. If he left them here in the andron, he wasn't sure they would stay here till he got back.

  Metrikhe didn't urge him to leave them behind. All she said was, “You don't take chances, do you?”

  “I try not to,” he answered.

  “Well, good for you,” she said. “My room is upstairs—it's the women's quarters, after all.”

  Her bed was wider, her mattress thicker and softer, than those Sostratos had used at Kleiteles' house back in Kos. As soon as she closed the bedroom door behind them, she took off her veil and set it on the cabinet by the wall. Her letting him see her face after concealing it through nearly the whole afternoon was almost like letting him see her altogether naked.

  That soon followed. She neatly folded the khlanis and laid it beside the veil. Then, undoing her girdle, she got out of the long chiton and stood bare before him. “Praxiteles should have got a look at you,” he said. “He never would have bothered modeling his Aphrodite on Phryne.”

  She blushed. He was delighted to follow the surge of color from her breasts all the way to her hairline. “I wish more men talked so sweetly,” she said.

  “If they don't, they're either blind or missing a chance,” Sostratos told her, which made her flush all over again. And I'm not even exaggerating very much, he thought, pulling his own chiton off over his head. Metrikhe's shape was everything a man could ask for in a woman: slim waist, round hips, firm breasts of just the right size. A sculptor would have been pleased to use her for a model. Most sculptors would be pleased to do quite a lot of things with her, went throughSostratos’ mind as he stepped forward and took her in his arms.

  Her body molded itself against his. Her skin was soft and smooth, he wondered if she oiled it. She tilted her face up to his. Seen from a distance of less than a palm, her eyes weren't brown, but dark, dark hazel, an intriguingly complex color.“I like tall men,” she whispered.

  “I like you,” Sostratos answered. Metrikhe laughed and squeezed him. Her breath was sweet. When he kissed her, she tasted of wine.

  They lay down on the bed. Sostratos' mouth went from hers to her cheeks, the lobes of her ears, her neck, her breasts. His hand wandered lower, down the curve of her belly to where her legs joined. They opened for him. He stroked her there while his tongue teased her nipples. She let out a soft sigh of pleasure. If it wasn't real, she was a better actor than any who went on the stage in Athens.

  Before long, she began to stroke him, too, and then twisted, limber as an eel, and took him in her mouth. He enjoyed it for a little while before pulling away. “You don't need to play the Lesbian for me,” he said: women from Lesbos were famous for giving men that particular pleasure.

  Her smile was saucy. “Well, what do you want to do, then?” she asked archly.

  “This,” he said, and did it. Metrikhe sighed when he went into her. Having lain with the Rhodian proxenos' slave woman back in Kos a couple of nights before, he didn't feel the need to spend himself as fast as he could. He spun it out, enjoying the journey as well as the eventual destination. Metrikhe bucked against him like an unbroken colt. Her breathing came quick and short, till she threw back her head and a gasping moan broke from her.

  Sostratos spent himself a few heartbeats later. In a throaty voice, Metrikhe said, “If we'd done that while we were bargaining, I'd 'ave paid you more for your silk, not less.”

  “Thank you,” he told her, and gave her a kiss. “I don't suppose I'll get too many finer compliments.”

  She dipped her head; she was a merchant, too, in her own way, and knew what her words had meant. “You're welcome,”she said, “And you're welcome 'ere any time, with silk or without.”

  That might have been a bigger compliment than the other. “Thank you,” Sostratos said again, “For now, though, I'd better get back to the agora. Do I remember the turns rightly? First left, second right, fourth left, second right?”

  She frowned. “That's not 'ow I keep track of the way. Let me think.” Afte
r a moment, she dipped her head once more. “Yes, that will get you there.”

  “Good.” Sostratos got off the bed and put his tunic back on. “Thank you for your business,” he said, “and for everything else.”

  Metrikhe lay there smiling up at him, naked still. “Thank you for everything else,” she said, “and for your business.”

  “We were—we are—bound for Athens,” Sostratos said. “Now I hope we stay here for a while.” Did he really mean that? Part of him did, at any rate, and he knew just which part. Which was more important in the general scheme of things, a woman or the gryphon's skull? I can find women anywhere, he thought. There's only one gryphon's skull. But the physical pleasure the hetaira had given him was less easy to surmount for the pleasures of the mind than Platon had made it out to be.

  Realizing that made Sostratos leave Metrikhe's house faster than he would have otherwise. He made his way back to the agora, where he found Menedemos dickering over silk with a plump man who had the look of someone knowing himself to be important. After his cousin made the bargain—a better one than he'd got from Metrikhe himself—and sent the fellow on his way; he turned to Sostratos and said, “Well, my dear, I stopped back here for what I thought would be only a moment. It was just long enough to hear where you'd gone and to talk with that chap. You had a rugged bit of duty there, didn't you? Is she pretty?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes,” Sostratos answered.

  “And did she give you half the price in trade?” Menedemos went on.

  “Of course not. We need the silver.” Sostratos held up the sack of coins. He told Menedemos what he'd sold and how much he'd got.

  “Not the best bargain in the world, but passable, passable,” his cousin said. “So you didn't get anything more from her than a smile and the money, eh?”

  “I didn't say that,” Sostratos replied, and had the satisfaction of seeing Menedemos look very jealous indeed.

  9

  “We're about ready to sail for Athens,” Menedemos told Sostratos as they stood on the Aphrodites poop deck after several profitable days in Miletos,