The Gryphon's Skull

by H. N. Turteltaub

  “Do they?” Menedemos asked.

  “I've never heard otherwise,” Sostratos said.

  “A demigod, from as late as the Persian Wars,” Menedemos mused. “That's strange all by itself. . . although people are saying Alexander was divine, too.”

  “They're saying it, all right,” Sostratos agreed. “What do you think of it?”

  “I don't know,” Menedemos answered. “He did things no ordinary mortal could do. Maybe that does make him divine. Who knows where humanity stops and divinity starts? It's not as though there were a neat line between gods and men.” He poked his cousin in the ribs. “What do you think?”

  “I don't know, either.” Sostratos sounded uncomfortable, even a little annoyed: he always hated not knowing. He went on, “He was just a man—Ptolemaios and Polemaios knew him. I'm not comfortable with calling anyone a god—but, as you say, he did things you wouldn't think a mere man could do. I wish I had a better answer, but I don't. I wonder what Ptolemaios would say if we asked him.”

  “Well, we're only a couple of days from Kos,” Menedemos said. “You can do that, if you've got the nerve.”

  “Oh, I'm sure he'd talk about Alexander—Alexander's dead, divine or not,” Sostratos said. “Now, if I were to start talking about Antigonos ... I don't think I'd want to do that.” He glanced toward Dionysios son of Herakleitos, who'd dropped a fishing line over the side to see if he could catch some opson to go with his sitos. In a low voice, he added, “You never can tell who might be listening.”

  Just then, Dionysios tugged on the line and hauled a plump mackerel up into the ship. It wasn't a mullet or a dogfish—no opsophagos' delight—but it was a lot better than nothing. He gutted it, threw the offal into the sea, and took out a little charcoal brazier to cook his catch.

  “He's got good luck,” Menedemos remarked.

  “So he does,” Sostratos said, still quietly. “I wonder where he stole it.” To that, Menedemos had no answer.

  The run from Astypalaia to Kos the next day proved harder work and slower than he'd hoped, for the wind died away to next to nothing and the rowers had to go to their benches. Even with a good following wind, though, Menedemos would have been amazed to make the polis of Kos before nightfall. The Aphrodite did reach the western end of the island, where he grounded her on a broad, fair beach on the north coast. “She'll be easy to get into the water again tomorrow,” he told Sostratos. “We're not carrying enough to weigh her down.”

  “True,” his cousin said. “And we ought to be safe from pirates, with so much of Ptolemaios' fleet in the neighborhood.”

  “If we're not safe here, we're not safe anywhere outside the great harbor at Rhodes,” Menedemos said.

  A couple of peasants came up with honey and olives to sell. As Sostratos did when buying anything, he clicked his tongue between his teeth and gave other signs of distress, but after they left he said, “If people here know it's likely to be safe to come up to a beached ship, that's the best sign pirates don't come sniffing around very often.”

  Menedemos dipped his head. “And tomorrow we'll put Dionysios ashore, and then we can head for home ourselves.”

  “I wonder whether Halikarnassos has fallen,” Sostratos said.

  “Me, I hope Ptolemaios' men sacked it,” Menedemos said.

  His cousin laughed. “Of course you do. That would mean what's-his-name, the fellow with the friendly wife there, was likely dead. And then we could trade there again without worrying about your getting murdered.”

  Ears hot, Menedemos said, “Well, that's not the only reason.” Sostratos laughed again, sure he was lying through his teeth. Since he was, he changed the subject in a hurry.

  As the Aphrodite came into the harbor at Kos, Sostratos shaded his eyes from the sun with the palm of his hand and peered northeast across the narrow channel separating the island from Halikarnassos on the mainland. “No smoke,” he said. “No sea battles. Either the place fell a while ago or it hasn't fallen at all.” Menedemos didn't answer. “Did you hear me?” Sostratos asked. “I said—”

  “I heard you,” Menedemos answered. “I'm just not listening to you.”

  “Oh,” Sostratos said. “All right.” The anger lying under Menedemos' quiet words warned him he'd pushed things about as far as they would go, or perhaps a little further. Now if only Menedemos were as good at noticing when he goes too far with me, he thought, and then laughed. Wish for the moon, while you're at it.

  “Harbor's crowded,” Diokles remarked. “Ships stuffed tight as olives in a jar.”

  “There's the likely answer,” Sostratos said. “If Ptolemaios' fleet is back here, Halikarnassos probably still belongs to Antigonos.”

  “Too bad,” Menedemos said. Then, suddenly, he took his right hand from the steering-oar tiller and pointed. His voice rose to a shout: “There's a spot we can squeeze into! Row, you bastards, before somebody steals it from us.”

  “Rhyppapai! Rhyppapai!” the oarmaster called, giving the rowers the stroke. The merchant galley slid into the wharf space. “Back oars!” Diokles commanded, and then, as she came to a halt, “Oöp!” The men rested at the oars.

  Dionysios son of Herakleitos, leather duffel on his shoulder, hurried back to the poop deck as longshoremen caught lines from the Aphrodite and made her fast to the quay. “Put up the gangplank,” he barked at Menedemos. “I have to be on my way.”

  Menedemos tilted his head back and looked down his nose at the passenger. “You talk to a skipper like that aboard his ship and he'll throw you overboard. You won't need to worry about the gangplank then, by Zeus.”

  “And you don't go anywhere till you pay us the twenty-five drakhmai you still owe us,” Sostratos added.

  Fuming, the dapper man gave him the second half of his fare— again, in Ptolemaios' light drakhmai. Even after that, Menedemos took his own sweet time about running the gangplank over to the pier. When he finally did, Dionysios sprang onto it and went down the pier and into the polis of Kos at a dead run.

  “What's chasing him?” one of the longshoremen asked.

  Sostratos shrugged. “Who knows? Some people are just glad to get off a ship.” The longshoreman laughed. Sostratos asked a question of his own: “What went wrong with the siege of Halikarnassos?”

  “Oh, you were here when that started?” the longshoreman asked. Sostratos dipped his head. The Koan, a disgusted look on his face, spat into the sea. “Ptolemaios' army was on the point of taking the place when who should show up but Demetrios son of Antigonos, with the army he'd brought back from fighting somebody or other way off in the east.”

  “Seleukos?” Sostratos suggested.

  “I think so,” the longshoreman answered. “Anyway, he relieved the place and put a big new garrison into it, so there's no point going after it anymore.”

  Menedemos made a horrible face. “Too bad,” he said.

  “I think so, too,” the Koan agreed; Halikarnassos was his polis' longtime trading rival.

  “Demetrios came back to Anatolia from fighting Seleukos, you said?” Sostratos asked, and the longshoreman dipped his head. As was his way, Sostratos found another question: “How did he do out in the east?”

  “Well, I don't know all the battles and such, but I don't think he won the war,” the Koan replied.

  Demetrios beat Ptolemaios' army here, but he couldn't beat Seleukos' army there, Sostratos thought. Isn't that interesting? Ptolemaios had let Seleukos go off to the east to cause trouble for Antigonos in a new quarter. By all appearances, Seleukos was giving the lord of Egypt everything he wanted and then some.

  “What other news besides Halikarnassos?” Menedemos asked.

  “You should have got here half a month ago,” the longshoreman told him. “The festival Ptolemaios gave when his lady had a boy ...” He grinned reminiscently. “I drank so much wine, my head ached for two days afterwards.”

  “What did he name the baby?” Sostratos asked: he wanted to know all the details.

  “Why, Ptolemaios,”
the Koan said.

  Sostratos frowned. “Doesn't he already have a son named Ptolemaios? His wife bore the other one, not his mistress.”

  “I think you're right,” Menedemos said.

  The longshoreman shrugged. “I don't know anything about that. He's the richest fellow in the world. Who's going to tell him he can't have two boys with the same name, if that's what he wants? Not me, by Zeus.”

  “Nor me,” Sostratos agreed. “But I wonder how happy his wife will be, knowing his mistress has a little Ptolemaios, too.”

  “You're too young to have a wife of your own, aren't you, best one?” asked the longshoreman, whose hair was thinning on top and gray at the temples. He didn't wait for Sostratos to answer, but continued, “You must be—you're nowhere near thirty. But I'll tell you something: you've got that right, whether you learned it from your own wife or not. She'll be steaming, sure as sure.”

  “Of course, Eurydike is back in Alexandria, and Berenike's here along with Ptolemaios—the grown-up Ptolemaios, I mean,” Sostratos said.

  “He'll go home sooner or later, and so will his lady—and so will their brat,” the Koan said. “And how long he's been away won't matter a khalkos. What's-her-name back there will have plenty to say to him, no matter how long it is.” He spoke with a mixture of glum certainty and gloating anticipation; Sostratos wondered who ruled the roost at his house. No, actually he didn't wonder—he thought he could guess.

  Something else struck him: “Eurydike is Kassandros' sister, remember. He won't be happy if she loses her place.”

  “One more reason for a fight, maybe,” Menedemos said.

  “Don't the Macedonians have enough already?” Sostratos said. “It's not as if they need more.”

  “They're like a gang of pankratiasts fighting it out,” the longshoreman said. “They won't quit till only one's left standing.”

  Sostratos thought uneasily of Kleomedes of Astypalaia. He'd slain his foe, and been disqualified for it. Nobody disqualified a Macedonian marshal who killed a rival or a royal heir. Unlike athletes, the marshals advanced their positions through murder.

  Menedemos said, “Now that we've put Dionysios ashore here, to the crows with me if I'm not tempted to head straight for Rhodes and not spend even a night.”

  Diokles gave him a reproachful look. “Seeing how hard the men worked through the hot spell, skipper, and seeing all the miserable, good-for-nothing places we stopped at on our way across the Aegean, don't you think they deserve one night's fun in a real polis?”

  “Oh, I suppose so.” Menedemos donned a lopsided grin. “I may even deserve a night's fun in a real polis myself.”

  “Sounds fair,” the oarmaster said. “Except that once over in Aigina, you had yourself a pretty quiet run this year.”

  “We were talking about pankratiasts a minute ago,” Menedemos said. “I didn't realize everyone was keeping score onme.” Diokles and Sostratos solemnly dipped their heads at the same time. Menedemos made faces at both of them. Diokles laughed.

  And Sostratos said, “Well, my dear, even if you do go out drinking and wenching tonight, I'm glad you sound as though you want to go home. When we set out this past spring, you didn't seem to care if you ever saw Rhodes again.”

  Menedemos' face froze—and the expression on which it froze was one not far from hatred. Sostratos took a startled, altogether involuntary step away from him. After a moment, his cousin's bleak look faded ... a little. Menedemos said, “I'd almost forgotten about that, and you went and made me remember.” He sighed and shrugged. “I don't suppose I can blame you much. It would have come back to me when we got into the great harbor.”

  “What would have?” Sostratos had known something was bothering Menedemos, but he'd had no idea what. And he still didn't; Menedemos had been unusually close-mouthed—astoundingly so, for him—all through this season's sailing.

  He still was. He smiled at Sostratos and said, “However strange and sorrowful you may feel about it, O marvelous one, there are some things you aren't going to find out, no matter how much research you do.”

  “No, eh?” Sostratos almost made a crack about going on with his investigations, but the memory of the look his cousin had given him a moment before made him hold his tongue. Whatever reasons Menedemos had for wanting to stay away from Rhodes, he was serious about them.

  “No,” he said firmly. Maybe he'd expected a crack from Sostratos and was relieved not to get it, for his manner lightened again. He went on, “Why don't you come drinking and wenching tonight, too? It'd do you good.”

  “Me?” Sostratos tossed his head. “Going around with a thick head the next day isn't my idea of fun.” He held up a hand before Menedemos could say anything. “Oh, once in a while—in a symposion, say. But getting drunk in a tavern isn't my idea of fun.”

  “Well, don't get drunk in a tavern, then. Get laid in a brothel instead.” Menedemos smiled once more—or was that a leer? Whatever it was, his good humor seemed restored. “You can't tell me that's not your idea of fun, not after that girl in Taras last year, the one with hair like new copper.”

  “Every now and then,” Sostratos admitted, “but not tonight.”

  “Wet blanket.”

  “I am not,” Sostratos said irately. “No such thing, by Zeus! You can do whatever you want. Do I complain about it?”

  “Only when you talk,” Menedemos assured him.

  Since he was right, or at least partly right, Sostratos tried a different tack: “Did I tell you not to go drinking tonight? Did I tell you not to go to a brothel tonight?”

  “Not yet,” Menedemos said.

  “Funny man,” Sostratos grumbled.

  His cousin bowed, as if thinking he'd meant it. “Thank you very much.”

  That evening, most of the sailors, and Menedemos with them, went into Kos to revel. “Try not to drink up all our profits, anyhow,” Sostratos said as Menedemos strode up the gangplank.

  “You sound like the pedagogue who took me to school every morning when I was a boy,” Menedemos said. “But you haven't got a switch, and he did.”

  Sostratos spent the night aboard. He ate bread and olives and cheese and a fish he bought from a little boy who'd caught it at the end of the pier, and washed the supper down with wine. If I wanted to get drunk, I could do it here, he thought. If he wanted a woman . . . He tossed his head. He wouldn't have cared to do that aboard a ship, even one called theAphrodite.

  He got little sleep. Drunken sailors kept reeling back to the merchant galley at all hours. At some point, Menedemos must have come back, too, though Sostratos didn't remember that. Morning twilight was beginning to make the eastern sky turn pale when he jerked awake yet again at a snatch of drunken song and found Menedemos snoring on the planks of the poop deck beside him.

  Sunrise woke Sostratos for good. It also woke his cousin, who looked none too happy about being awake. “If I jump into the sea, do you suppose I'll turn into a dolphin?” he asked. “I'm sure dolphins don't get hangovers.”

  “By the way your eyes look, I'd say you were more likely to turn into a jellyfish,” Sostratos answered. “Was the good time you had worth the sore head you've got now?”

  “From what I remember of it, yes,” Menedemos said, which wasn't the conclusion Sostratos had hoped he would draw. Menedemos peered through half shut eyes at a couple of well-dressed men coming up the quay toward the Aphrodite.“What do they want? Tell 'em to go away, Sostratos. I don't want anything to do with 'em, not this early in the morning.”

  “Maybe they're passengers,” Sostratos said.

  “Tell 'em to go away anyhow,” Menedemos answered, something Sostratos had no intention of doing.

  His intentions turned out not to matter. One of the men said, “Menedemos son of Philodemos and Sostratos son of Lysistratos? Come with us at once, if you please.”

  There was breathtaking arrogance. “Who says we should?” Sostratos demanded.

  “Ptolemaios, the lord of Egypt,” the man answered. “He assum
ed you would come peaceably. If not, we can make other arrangements.”

  “What does Ptolemaios want with us?” Sostratos asked in surprise.

  “That's for him to tell you, not me,” his man answered. “Are you coming?”

  Sostratos dipped his head. After a moment, so did Menedemos. He ran his fingers through his hair to try to make it a little less disheveled. “I'm ready,” he said, seeming anything but.

  By all the signs, the tramp through town did little to improve his spirits. He paused once to hike up his tunic and piss against a wall. City stinks—dung and unwashed bodies and tanneries and all the others—were nastier away from the breezes of the harbor. His squint got worse as the sun rose higher in the sky.

  When he came before Ptolemaios, he gave only a perfunctory bow, muttering, “My head wants to fall off.”

  “You should have thought of that last night,” Sostratos said out of the side of his mouth. Menedemos sent him a horrible look.

  “I hear you're thieves,” Ptolemaios said without preamble.

  “No, your Excellency,” Sostratos said. Menedemos said nothing, but cautiously dipped his head to show he agreed with Sostratos. I'm going to have to do this by myself, Sostratos thought, annoyed at his cousin for being useless here. But who would have thought Ptolemaios would want us? Be fair.

  “No, eh?” the Macedonian marshal rumbled. “That's not how Dionysios tells it, and I agree with him. Fifty drakhmai from Cape Sounion to here? That's piracy.”

  “Piracy? No, sir. By the dog of Egypt, no, sir!” Sostratos said.

  Ptolemaios raised a bushy eyebrow at his vehemence. “I tell you it is.”

  “And I tell you you're talking like a fool. . . sir,” Sostratos retorted. Both of Ptolemaios' eyebrows flew upwards. A couple of his bodyguards growled ominously. Sostratos didn't care. He was past caring. Rage almost choking him, he went on, “I'll tell you what piracy really is. Piracy's really a pack of howling whoresons swarming onto your ship and killing your men and stealing your goods, your . . . your most precious goods.” He'd thought some of the pain from the loss of the gryphon's skull had eased. Now it stabbed him again. “It happened to us between Andros and Euboia. So Furies take your precious Dionysios if he calls us pirates. Nobody held a knife to his throat and made him come along with us. He could have taken any other ship he chose.”