Philodemos came into the kitchen, too. Sikon immediately fell silent and started kneading as if his life depended on it. Menedemos would sooner have dealt with the cook than with his father. Philodemos wagged a finger under his nose. “When are you going to stop your nonsense and make a proper man of yourself?” he demanded.
“ Admiral Eudemos thinks I make a proper man now,” Menedemos answered.
“He worries about what you do at sea. I worry about what you do ashore. And what do you suppose he’d say to that if he knew about it?” his father snapped.
“From some of the stories he was telling when we celebrated after my patrol in the Dikaiosyne, he’s chased a woman or two-dozen- himself,” Menedemos said. Philodemos made a disgusted noise. Menedemos pointed at him. “And what about you, Father? I asked you before-when you were younger, didn’t you ever try your luck when the women were coming home from a festival?” As long as you think I had some other man’s wife, this is another verse of the same old song. I hate it, hut I can put up with it. But if you ever find out it was Baukis… He shivered and raised the cup of wine to his lips.
Philodemos turned a dull red. “Never mind me. We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you.”
Menedemos could guess what that probably meant. He kept quiet, though. So could Sikon, and the cook knew no such restraint. He let out a loud, rude snort, then attacked the bread dough more fiercely than ever, as if trying to pretend he’d done no such thing.
From dull red, Philodemos went the color of iron in a smith’s fire. His glare seared Sikon. “You mind your own business,” he snarled.
“Yes, master,” Sikon muttered: one of the few times Menedemos had ever heard him acknowledge he was a slave and not the lord of the household.
Philodemos also heard the submission, heard it and took it as no less than his due. His attention swung back to Menedemos. “We’re talking about you,” he repeated. “I want you to behave respectably from now on. Do you hear me?”
“Yes, Father.” All Menedemos wanted was escape. He told the truth: he did hear his father. As for behaving respectably… after last night, too late for that. Or was it? What was respectability but not getting caught? No one knew what had passed but Baukis and him. As long as that stayed true, he could go on living under the same roof with his father. He said, “I’ll do my best.”
Gruffly, Philodemos said, “You’d better.” But he sounded at least a little mollified. Maybe he hadn’t expected even so much. Fie turned on his heel and left the kitchen.
After Menedemos finished breakfast, he went back out to the courtyard. He hadn’t gone more than a couple of paces before stopping dead. Along with his father, Baukis stood there, looking at a plant in the garden. She went pale when she saw him. Natural. You have to act natural, he shouted to himself. “Good day,” he said, and hoped his voice didn’t shake too much.
“Hail,” she managed, in something like her usual tones.
To Menedemos’ vast relief, his father noticed nothing amiss. Philodemos said, “Now that we’ve had some rain, things are starting to sprout.”
“They certainly are,” Menedemos agreed. Baukis looked down at her feet. Menedemos remembered standing behind her and… He felt his face heating. Going on as if nothing had happened would be harder than he’d ever dreamt. If he didn’t betray himself, his father’s wife was liable to. She’s only seventeen, he reminded himself. She’s a woman, yes, but barely.
Perhaps fearing to give the game away, Baukis retreated to the house. Menedemos’ father rounded on him. “Now that you’ve slept half the day away like a lazy hound, what will you do with the rest of it?”
“I don’t know, Father. I was going to go out into the city,” Menedemos answered.
“And go looking for the house of the woman you debauched last night?” Philodemos said. “Wasn’t once enough to satisfy you? How much trouble will you find for yourself? “
Once wasn’t anywhere close to enough, Menedemos thought. Aloud, he said, “I know where she lives, but I don’t intend to go anywhere near there.” That was a truth, but a deceptive truth. It made his father roll his eyes. Menedemos went on, “By Zeus of the aegis, Father, I don’t.” The oath made Philodemos take him a little more seriously. He added, “My life would get more complicated than it’s worth if I did.”
“Well, at least you realize that much,” Philodemos said. “I thought you’d be blind to it, the way cockhounds usually are. Go on, then.”
Menedemos left, doing his best to saunter and not flee. Once out in the street, he sighed loud and long. No, he hadn’t begun to realize how hard this would be.
There had been years when seeing the Aphrodite drawn up out of the water at the Great Harbor in Rhodes left Sostratos sad. That seemed less true now than in times gone by. He had thought of the merchant galley as something almost magicaclass="underline" like Hermes ’ winged sandals, she could sweep him away to lands strange and mysterious, and what could be more marvelous than that? After going back to Athens, to the polis for which he’d pined like a man mourning a lost love, he thought he had an answer to that, which he hadn’t before. What could be more marvelous than going off to lands strange and mysterious? Coming back to a home you loved.
Khremes the carpenter waved to Sostratos. “Hail, son of Lysistratos. How are you today?”
“Well, thanks,” Sostratos answered. “And yourself?” “Pretty well,” Khremes said. “My son gave me a grandchild this summer, while you were at sea.”
“Congratulations!” Sostratos said. “You’re young to be a grandfather.” That was no idle compliment; he doubted Khremes was much above fifty, and most men among the Hellenes didn’t marry till they were thirty or so.
Sure enough, the carpenter chuckled in mingled embarrassment and pride. “I’ll tell you what it is: we’re a hot-pronged bunch, my family. I liked the thought of screwing without paying for it so well, I talked my father into letting me wed early. And Aristion, he’s the same way. I had to marry him off. I was afraid he’d get some respectable girl in trouble.”
“You don’t want that,” Sostratos agreed. “A feud between families doesn’t do anybody any good.”
They chatted a little while longer, then went their separate ways. Sostratos strolled south along the edge of the Great Harbor, eyeing the ships tied up at the quays or drawn up onto dry land. Most of them were as familiar to him as acquaintances he might meet in the agora. Every so often, he would note one that had had some major work done since the last time he saw her. He started with the same surprise he might have shown on seeing a bald man who came out sporting a wig.
He also saw a few ships that were new to him. One in particular gave him pause: a merchant galley bigger than the Aphrodite , and almost lean enough to make a pirate ship. Pointing to her, he asked a harborside lounger, “What ship is this, O best one?”
The man didn’t answer. He might have been afflicted with deafness, or perhaps with idiocy. He might have been, but he wasn’t. Sostratos knew exactly what his trouble was. An obolos effected a miraculous cure. Once the lounger had popped the little silver coin into his mouth, he said, “That’s the Thalia, friend.”
“Abundance, eh? A good name for a merchant ship,” Sostratos said. “Who owns her?”
He wondered if the other Rhodian would have the hubris to try to squeeze a second obolos from him. The fellow started to, then visibly thought better of it. He said, “She belongs to Rhodokles son of Simos.”
“Does she?” Sostratos said, and the lounger dipped his head. “He’s come into some silver, then.” Rhodokles was a competitor. Up till now, he’d never been a serious competitor. His ships had all been older and smaller than the Aphrodite and the other vessels Philodemos and Lysistratos owned. The Thalia, though, could go anywhere on the Inner Sea, and could get where she was going as fast as anything afloat.