Cheers rang out, and more shouts of praise for Demetrios. Out of the side of his mouth, Sostratos said, “He may not come into Athens himself till then, but you notice he didn’t say anything about his soldiers.”
“Oh, yes,” Menedemos replied. “I’m just glad you were selling ink to some fellow who fancies himself a poet, and not wine or truffles to Kassandros’ officers over at their fortress. You’d be trapped there if you were.”
“Oimoi!” Sostratos exclaimed. “I hadn’t thought of that, but you’re right.”
Demetrios shouted, “Let word go into the city-in fact, I will send it-that I would speak with whatever representative Demetrios of Phaleron will send to me. For he must surely see that his time in Athens is past, that the polis now lies in my hands, and that I will liberate it in accordance with my father’s orders.”
“Let’s take care of our business here and then get back up to Athens as fast as we can,” Sostratos said. “I don’t know if we’ll have the chance much longer.”
“That makes more sense than I wish it did,” Menedemos said. “I hope Demetrios’ men don’t take it into their heads to plunder the Aphrodite.”
“How do you propose to stop them if they do?” Sostratos asked bleakly.
“We can’t,” his cousin replied, which was exactly what Sostratos thought. “That’s why I hope they don’t.”
The two Rhodians hurried to the merchant galley. When they got there, they found the normally unflappable Diokles in a fragile state. “By the gods, young sirs, when I saw those soldiers on the quays, I thought we were going to be somebody’s opson. Maybe I’m wrong, I hope I am. But…” He shuddered. “Those were a bad few minutes there till Demetrios started talking. The Athenians ate that up, didn’t they? He can charm the birds right out of the trees.”
“Sooner or later, though, we’ll find out whether he’s telling the truth,” Sostratos said.
“There is that,” the oarmaster agreed. “What do we do now? Sit tight and hope he is?”
That was Menedemos’ decision, not Sostratos’. “Yes, I think we do,” Menedemos answered. “We’d have to leave more than half the crew behind if we try to sneak out now, and who knows if Demetrios’ fleet will let anybody leave? If he was telling even part of the truth, we’ll be all right.”
“If anybody does give us trouble, we should shout out at the top of our lungs that we’re Rhodians,” Sostratos said. “Plundering Athenians is one thing for Demetrios’ men-up till now, Athens has been on Kassandros’ side, and Kassandros and Antigonos are enemies. But Rhodes is a neutral. Demetrios has to be-well, he’d better be, if he’s smart-leery about offending her.”
Menedemos dipped his head. “Right you are, best one! That makes good sense, and I’m not sure I would have thought of it myself.”
“We’ve got a toikharkhos with a good head on his shoulders,” Diokles said. Sostratos grinned; Diokles’ good opinion mattered to him. Then he remembered that Theophrastos had said the same thing. The philosopher’s good opinion mattered to him, too. Did it matter much more than the keleustes’? Sostratos tossed his head. If that didn’t show how much he’d changed since his student days, he couldn’t imagine what would.
He got the ink, and helped Menedemos carry the jars of crimson dye to Adrastos’ shop. Menedemos took the dyer’s money without counting it. Showing silver now could be dangerous.
“Let’s head back up to the city,” Sostratos said. “The farther away from all these soldiers we get, the better I’ll like it.” His cousin was in many ways a daredevil. Sostratos wanted to throttle Menedemos for taking up with their host’s wife. He seemed to have got away with it, but what if Xenokleia had gone straight to Protomakhos after his first advances toward her? Trouble, that was what. And what if her baby ended up looking like Menedemos? Trouble again, perhaps, though not till the next visit to Athens. But Menedemos showed no desire to play dangerous games with Demetrios’ soldiers. For that, at least, Sostratos was grateful.
Back toward Athens they went. The way up to the city was more crowded than Sostratos had ever seen it. He wasn’t surprised. He and Menedemos couldn’t have been the only ones who wanted to get away from the newly arrived Macedonians. Demetrios’ name was on everyone’s lips. Somewhere up in front of them was the dividing line between people who knew Antigonos’ son was seizing control of the harbors of Athens and those who didn’t. As traders traveling from city to city, Sostratos and Menedemos had often been news-b ringers, on the very edge between those who knew and those who wanted to find out. Not today; their stop at Adrastos’ had let others get ahead.
They hadn’t gone far before hoofbeats thundered behind them. Raucous voices shouted, “Make way! Make way for the envoys of Demetrios son of Antigonos!” The cavalrymen raced past at a fast trot. At that rate, they might get to Athens before any of the people on foot.
Menedemos sighed as the horses went by. “I wish I’d done more riding,” he said.
“Not me.” As far as Sostratos was concerned, that was as much daredeviltry as his cousin’s taste for sleeping with other men’s wives. “I may admire a man who can stay on a horse’s back, but that doesn’t mean I want to imitate him very often. It’s a long way down, the ground is hard, and what have you got to hold on with? Your knees. No, thanks.”
“You were the one who hired a donkey to go exploring when we were in Italy,” Menedemos pointed out.
“That was a donkey,” Sostratos said, nobly resisting the temptation to add, And you’re another one. “It was small, and I’m pretty large. My feet were almost dragging in the dust when I got astride it. It walked. It didn’t trot or gallop.”
“And besides, you were curious then,” Menedemos said. Sostratos didn’t dignify that with a reply, especially since it was true.
On they went. Sweat poured off Sostratos; he wished he’d drunk some wine, or even water, before setting out from Peiraieus. Who could guess what Demetrios’ men were doing back there, though? He looked over his shoulder. No great cloud of black smoke rose into the sky. They hadn’t started burning for the sport of it, anyhow. Demetrios had said he’d come to liberate Athens. Of course, the difference between what a general said and what he did was all too often enormous.
Sostratos and Menedemos had almost got back to Athens when they saw Demetrios’ horsemen again, this time coming the other way. Along with the soldiers rode a worried-looking civilian who looked none too happy on horseback, Sostratos caught a snatch of conversation: a cavalryman said, “Don’t worry, O best one. I’m sure we’ll work something out.”
“I wonder what that means,” Menedemos said.
“Maybe Demetrios son of Antigonos hasn’t got a Persian torturer waiting for Demetrios of Phaleron after all,” Sostratos replied.
“Maybe.” Menedemos laughed a nasty laugh. “Or maybe he wants Demetrios of Phaleron to think he hasn’t got a torturer waiting for him.”
“It could be,” Sostratos admitted. “The Macedonians play the game for keeps, Kassandros has had it all his own way here in Athens for a long time, and so has Demetrios of Phaleron. If the other Demetrios has trouble finding reasons to give him a hard time, I’m sure plenty of Athenians could suggest some.”
Once the Rhodians got into the city, Sostratos found out how right he was. Athens bubbled like grape juice fermenting into wine. For ten years, people had had to keep quiet about what they thought. That was what tyranny did. It had been a genteel tyranny, but tyranny it was nonetheless. Now…,
Now, going through the city toward Protomakhos’ house, Sostratos heard a lot of what people must have been thinking and not saying. “Furies take Demetrios!” was popular. So was, “To the crows with Demetrios!” Someone said, “One of Demetrios’ pals cheated me on a house. I couldn’t do anything about it for a long time, but I’ll get even now.” Somebody else added, “There’s a lot of polluted villains who’d better run before we catch ‘em and hamstring ‘em!” Maybe he was speaking metaphorically. On the other hand, maybe he wasn’t. Had Sostratos been a man who’d enriched himself during Demetrios of Phaleron’s years in power, he didn’t believe he would have cared to linger in Athens to find out.