“Perfume!” Menedemos called again. As the sun lit up the market square, more and more people came in. “Fine perfume from Rhodes, the island of roses! Sweet perfume no sweet woman should be without!”
Another woman who’d plainly lived a hardscrabble life-and, after all, what other sort would be out shopping for herself?-asked him what he wanted for his wares. He gave her the same answer he’d given the laundress. She squalled louder than if he’d hiked up his chiton and waggled his private parts in her face. There were men who did that sort of thing to amuse themselves. Menedemos thought it was in poor taste, but what could you do?
Yet another woman came up to him, this one dressed in a long tunic of fine white wool. “Hail,” she said. “May I smell your perfume?” Her Greek held a faint accent.
“Of course,” he answered politely. She looked and sounded like the slave of someone prosperous-exactly the sort of person he was looking for. He pulled out the stopper and held the jar out to her.
She leaned forward. Her nostrils flared as she inhaled. “Oh, yes,” she said softly. “That is very fine. What price do you ask?” When he told her, she didn’t flinch. “Let me speak to my owner. She may well buy. Stay here. I will return.”
“Who is your owner, sweetheart?” Menedemos asked.
“Her name is Potheine, Rhodian,” the slave woman said. “If you came from Athens, you would know the rich and famous men who have had her as their companion.” Companion was what hetaira had first meant; the masculine form of the word, hetairos, still did mean that and nothing more. In the feminine, there were companions… and then there were companions.
Menedemos asked, “And who are you?” Showing he cared about a slave might make her urge his case more strongly to her mistress.
“Me?” She seemed surprised at the question. “They call me Threitta here.” That was Attic for Thracian. She wasn’t redheaded like the slave in Sostratos’ household, but, with light brown hair and hazel eyes, she was fairer than most Hellenes.
“Well, Threitta, I hope you hurry to your famous mistress for me,” Menedemos said. To make sure she did hurry, he gave her three oboloi. He asked for nothing in return-not a kiss, not a promise that the girl would urge the hetaira to buy the perfume. He’d found a free gift usually worked better than one where the dangling strings were obvious.
The slave girl took the little silver coins and hesitated, waiting for him to tell her what he wanted. When he said nothing more, she stuck the coins in her mouth. “You have an interesting way of doing business,” she remarked.
“Thank you,” Menedemos said, though he wasn’t sure that was praise. Threitta nodded-which would have proved she wasn’t a Hellene born, had he had any doubts-and vanished into the still-swelling crowd in the agora. Menedemos tried to keep track of her, but it was like trying to keep track of one raindrop in a storm. He blinked, and then he couldn’t find her any more.
He went back to calling about the perfume and its virtues. Threitta might not be-probably wasn’t-the only hetaira’s slave in the market square this morning. Menedemos didn’t much care to whom he sold perfume. He cared only about selling it and getting his price.
By the time Threitta came back, he had sold a jar to a plump man who insisted so loudly that he was buying it for his wife, he convinced Menedemos he was lying through his teeth. Some people never did figure out that the best way to lie was not to trumpet the untruth all over the landscape but to pass it off lightly or, indeed, to keep quiet about it. Why should I care who gets the perfume? Menedemos thought. It’s not my business, or it wouldn’t have been unless that fool made it so.
When Threitta returned to the agora, Menedemos didn’t notice her till she’d got within a few paces of him. He had an excuse: her companion drew all eyes his way. The blond, long-mustached Kelt was taller than Sostratos, handsome, wide-shouldered, narrow-waisted: he looked like a pankratiast, or perhaps more like a demigod. His eyes were the color of Egyptian emeralds. He stared through Menedemos as if the Rhodian didn’t exist.
“Hail,” Menedemos said to Threitta. “Who’s your… friend?”
“Bolgios is Potheine’s body-servant,” she answered.
I’ll bet he is. That’s quite a body. Menedemos didn’t say it, though it quivered on the tip of his tongue. “I see,” was all that came out.
Threitta went on, “He has the money for you. My mistress wants five jars of perfume.”
Sure enough, Bolgios thrust out a fat leather sack that clinked when Menedemos took it. The Kelt’s hand, the back of it thatched with little hairs like wires of finest gold, was as enormous as every other part of him. It could have swallowed Menedemos’, as a father’s swallows that of his toddler son when they go walking together. No one would have dreamt of robbing such a brute.
“Let me count the silver,” Menedemos said. The bag felt as if it held about the right amount of silver-just under two minai.
Bolgios’ eyes flashed green fire. “Are you after calling my mistress a cheat, now?” he asked: a musically accented snarl.
Menedemos quailed before few men. If he said yes to that, though, he knew the barbarian would tear him limb from limb. “By no means,” he answered, as politely as he could. “But anyone can make a mistake. There might even be an owl or two too many in here. I don’t want anything that shouldn’t be mine, but I do want everything that should.”
Bolgios stood there, considering. At last, grudgingly, he nodded. Yes, he’d wanted to wreak a little havoc. Now he had to accept the idea that he wouldn’t get the chance. “You speak as a proper man might,” he allowed. “Count the silver.”
Menedemos did, making piles of coins, ten drakhmai to the pile. “It is as it should be,” he said at last, and hoped he didn’t sound too relieved.
“He gets nothing above what he should?” Bolgios asked Threitta. Maybe the Kelt didn’t know how much Potheine was supposed to pay. Maybe he just had trouble counting.
“No.” The Thracian woman shook her head. “All’s well.” Bolgios grunted. That all was well plainly disappointed him.
“Here is the perfume.” Menedemos handed Threitta the little jars. “I hope your mistress has pleasure from them.” He smiled his most charming smile. “If I could, I would like to meet her and thank her for her business.”
“She is not looking for clients now,” Threitta said. “She has all she needs.”
And she had Bolgios. When Menedemos made his request, the barbarian stiffened. Menedemos could almost see the hair rise at the back of his neck, as it might have on a dog just before the beast bit. Was Bolgios sleeping with Potheine? Menedemos couldn’t tell. Was he jealous of any other man who did? Of that the Rhodian had not the slightest doubt. He didn’t try to sweeten Threitta and get her to change her mind, as he might have done if she’d come back to the agora by herself.
She and the enormous Kelt went off side by side. Thanks to Bolgios’ height and bright blond head, Menedemos had no trouble tracking them as they wandered through the market square. Again, he wasn’t the only one following Bolgios with his eyes. An elephant parading through the agora might have drawn more attention. Then again, it might not.
Gathering himself, Menedemos took up his call again: “Fine perfume from Rhodes, the island of roses! Perfume fit for Athens’ finest hetairai!” He didn’t know Potheine was one of those, but anybody who’d been able to buy Bolgios couldn’t be poor. He sold several more jars before the day was done. Maybe that extra line he’d tacked on to the pitch helped.
7
Sostratos had been to a fair number of symposia in his day. Nothing, though, prepared him for this one down in Mounykhia. He’d heard things about the kinds of parties Macedonians threw. Now he was seeing them at first hand. If he wanted to sell wine to the men from the north who held Athens for Kassandros, he’d discovered, he also had to drink wine with them. If, once he got back to Protomakhos’ house, he remembered a quarter of what was going on around him, he would have stories to dine out on for years to come.