Menedemos silently slipped the bar from the brackets that held it in place. He opened the door. It scraped a little as it swung on the dowels that held it to the lintel and to a flat stone with a mounting hole set into the rammed-earth floor beneath it. Menedemos stepped out into the courtyard, closing the door behind him. He looked around. Everything was quiet and still. After the absolute darkness inside his bedchamber, starlight seemed full-moon bright.
Heart thudding in the mix of anticipation and fear he always found so intoxicating, he tiptoed toward the stairs. Up he went. One, two, three, four, five… The sixth step creaked. He’d almost frightened himself to death discovering that the first time he sneaked up to Xenokleia’s bedroom. Now he took a long step up from the fifth stair to the seventh and went on his way, silent as a lion stalking its prey. No lions on Rhodes, of course, but they still prowled the Anatolian mainland not far away.
The upper landing. To the right around the corner. His heart pounded harder than ever. If anyone discovered him here, no excuse could be good enough. His prokton puckered. How big were those radishes with which Athenians were allowed to punish adulterers?
But then he forgot about radishes, forgot about fear, forgot about everything. For faint, flickering yellow lamplight spilled out from under Xenokleia’s door. She had been waiting for him! He hurried forward and tapped on the door, ever so lightly, with the nail of his forefinger.
Footsteps inside. Xenokleia opened the door. Menedemos’ jaw dropped. She stood there naked and smiling, holding the lamp. “Come in,” she whispered. “Hurry.”
As soon as he did, she blew out the little flame. Darkness descended like a thick blanket. “I wanted to see more of you,” Menedemos murmured.
“Too dangerous,” Xenokleia answered. He muttered, but she was doubtless right. She reached out, found his hand, and set it on the soft, firm flesh of her breast. “Here l am.”
“Oh, yes, darling,” He squeezed.
She hissed and took an involuntary step back. “Be careful,” she said. “They’re sore. I remember they were the other times I got pregnant, too.”
“Sorry.” Menedemos pulled his chiton off over his head. “I’ll be very careful. I promise.”
Xenokleia laughed, but only for two or three heartbeats. Then she said, “We’d better hurry. We can’t know for sure when he’ll come home.”
“I know.” Menedemos remembered jumping out a window in Taras when a husband who’d quarreled with his brother returned from a symposion hours before he should have. The Rhodian found the way to Xenokleia’s bed even in the dark. Why not? He’d been there before.
He kissed her. He caressed her. He teased her breasts, and didn’t do much more than tease them. His hand glided down between her legs. When they joined, she rode him like a racehorse. That kept his weight from coming down where she was tender. He went right on stroking her secret place after they joined. Some women found that too much; others thought it was just enough. By the way Xenokleia arched her back and growled deep in her throat, she was one of the latter.
Her final moan of delight was almost loud enough to make
Menedemos clap a hand over her mouth. He was glad he’d roused her. He didn’t want her rousing the household slaves. But then his own pleasure burst over him, and he stopped worrying about that or anything else.
She sprawled down onto him, careless of her sore breasts. He ran a hand along the sweat-slick curve of her back. After a kiss, he asked, “Is the baby mine?”
“I don’t know for certain,” Xenokleia answered. “I did what you said-that was clever, and I can’t say it wasn’t. So I can’t know-but I can tell you which way I’d bet.”
“Ah.” So far as Menedemos knew, he hadn’t left any cuckoo’s eggs in other nests before. He still didn’t know, not for sure. But if his seed wasn’t stronger than that of a man more than twenty years older… Then it wasn’t, and Protomakhos would have himself a legitimate child.
Xenokleia kissed him again. Then she said, “You’d better go downstairs.”
“What I’d rather do is-”
She tossed her head. “That would take a while now, and we may not have the time.” She was right-right that it would be risky, and right that his lance would need a bit to stiffen from boiled asparagus to iron. If we’d met five years earlier… But then, how long did Protomakhos need between rounds? Days, certainly. Poor old fellow, Menedemos thought with a young man’s heartlessness.
The Rhodian found his chiton by the door and slipped it on. He opened the door. “I hope we find more chances,” he whispered as he stepped out.
“So do I,” Xenokleia called after him. He shut the door. She barred it after him. As he tiptoed downstairs-again skipping the creaky one-he thought, Good. At least I kept her sweet. She won’t tell tales to her husband. Her being pregnant will help keep her quiet, too. She won’t want him wondering whether the baby’s his.
He looked out across the courtyard from the darkness at the bottom of the stairs. All quiet. Quick as a lizard, he scurried to his room and closed the door behind him. A long sigh of relief. No Sostratos here now. No Protomakhos lying in wait, either. I got away with it again.
He lay down on the bed. He hadn’t fallen asleep before someone- no, not someone; Protomakhos-pounded on the front door. “Let me in! Let me in!” he shouted-no, sang. How drunk was he? Drunk enough, evidently. How lucky am I? Menedemos wondered. Lucky enough, evidently. And Xenokleia had been right-a second round would have been a disaster. It would have been fun anyhow, Menedemos thought as a slave padded across the courtyard to open the door for Protomakhos. In came the proxenos, still singing loudly, if not very well. Despite the racket, Menedemos yawned, twisted, stretched… slept.
A cloth merchant tossed his head. “Sorry, friend,” he said, and his regret seemed genuine. “That’s very pretty work you’ve got there, and very fine work, too. I don’t say anything different, so don’t you get me wrong. But to the crows with me if I know who would want it, and I don’t care to buy what I’m not sure I can sell. I don’t want to get stuck with it. I’d have thrown my silver away.”
“Thank you for looking at it,” Sostratos said, carefully refolding the embroidered linen he’d bought on his way to Jerusalem. He’d heard the same response from several other cloth dealers. He’d bought the linen because the embroidery work-a hunting scene with hares crouching beneath thornbushes and red-tongued hounds trying to get them out-was astonishingly vivid and colorful, far better than anything of the sort he’d seen in Hellas. The Phoenician who’d sold it to him told him it came from the east, from Mesopotamia. Because it was so beautiful, he hadn’t imagined he would have any trouble selling It. But it was also unusual, which made some people leery of it. Sostratos asked, “Do you know of someone in your business who might be more inclined to take a chance?”
“Sorry,” the cloth merchant repeated, and tossed his head again. “You know what I would do if I were you, though?”
“Tell me.”
“I’d try to sell it to some rich man who likes hunting. He’d have the money to buy it, and he might figure out something to do with it- hang it on the wall of his andron, maybe, so his friends could admire it at his symposia.”
That was a good idea-or it would have been a good idea for an Athenian merchant. A local man would have dealt here for years. He would have customers in mind when he saw something like the cloth.
Sostratos didn’t. He was a stranger here, and the Athenians were strangers to him. “Strangers…” he murmured.
“What’s that?” the cloth merchant asked.