“When will the fleet sail? Do you know?” Sostratos asked.
“Not to the day, but it won’t be long,” Menedemos said. “The Ptolemaios has been making ready since before you left for Memphis.” He paused as a different thought struck him. “I wonder if my father’s wife has had the baby yet.”
“We’ll find out when we get back.” Sostratos had only a dim interest in Baukis’ baby.
“I guess we will,” Menedemos agreed tonelessly. He couldn’t let on that his own interest was much greater than his cousin’s. As far as Sostratos knew—as far as anyone but he and Baukis knew—the child surely sprouted from his father’s seed. That was how things had to look to the outside world.
“Would you rather have a little boy or a little girl running around and getting into trouble?” his cousin asked.
“A boy,” Menedemos answered at once. A son! he thought. “I’m glad the gods made me a man. I could teach him what he needs to know to get along in the world.” But not who is father is, or may be, curse it!
“Well, I can see that. A sister isn’t so bad, though,” Sostratos said.
“If you say so. I played with Erinna a bit when we were all small, but I don’t know much about little girls.” Thinking a leer was called for, Menedemos duly produced one. “When they get bigger, though ….”
“Yes, my dear. You don’t have to remind me you’re cockproud,” Sostratos said. “I already know that. Maybe you should remind me which towns we can’t trade in because they have outraged husbands who want to kill you.”
Menedemos raised an eyebrow. “You must have eaten something sour on your way back to Alexandria.”
“The whole thing was sour,” Sostratos said. “I didn’t even know why I was ordered out of Memphis till I walked into the palace here. If Ptolemaios’ man did know why he had to fetch me, he didn’t let on, not even a little bit. Are you sure hiring the Aphrodite to Ptolemaios was smart? If Antigonos and Demetrios get wind of it—”
“I thought about all that. You said it yourself—I’m not as stupid as I look,” Menedemos replied. “I had two choices, O cousin of mine. I could take Ptolemaios’ silver and let him hire the akatos, or I could watch him confiscate it without giving me even a khalkos. He may not call himself a king, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t one.”
Sostratos opened his mouth, then closed it again. After a moment, he remarked, “Maybe I should just shut up.”
“Maybe you should,” Menedemos agreed. “When the lions fight, the mice get mauled by accident.”
“Or not by accident. We’re worth more to Ptolemaios the way we are, but Antigonos just itches to get his hands on our island and our polis and our people and our fleet,” Sostratos said.
“I’d sooner see every trireme we own burn in its shipshed than let the Cyclops get hold of it,” Menedemos said savagely.
“The really frightening thing is, he could be worse,” Sostratos said. “Up in Macedonia, Kassandros is just a soldier. Antigonos is clever—you have to give him that.”
“I’d like to give him a good swift kick, is what I’d like to give him.” Menedemos lowered his voice. “I’d like to give the Ptolemaios another one, too, even harder.”
“He’s made you do something you didn’t want to do, something that may prove bad for Rhodes,” Sostratos said, also not much above a whisper.
“Too cursed right, he has,” Menedemos said, sending Sostratos a grateful glance—his cousin knew what was gnawing at him, all right. “I’m a free Hellene, from a free and independent polis. He’s got no right to treat me like a barbarian or a slave.”
“Remember what the Alexander said on his deathbed when they asked him to whom his empire should go,” Sostratos said.
“ ‘To the strongest,’ ” Menedemos responded. Almost any Hellene from Sicily to the Indos could have done the same. “I don’t care if Alexander did study with what’s-his-name—”
“Aristoteles,” Sostratos supplied.
“Aristoteles. Thanks. I don’t care if Alexander studied with him or not. You know what veneer is?”
“Oh, yes.” Sostratos dipped his head. “They glue thin strips of good wood over cheap stuff so a table will look more expensive than it is. Or they hope it will. Most of the time, you can see what they’re up to.”
“There you go. That’s what I’m talking about, all right,” Menedemos said. “Well, Aristoteles may have given Alexander the veneer of a Hellene, but down under it he was still a Macedonian. And so are his generals. They’re used to having kings. Pretty soon, they’ll get used to being kings and they won’t care a fart about free and independent Hellenes.”
“It hasn’t happened yet,” Sostratos said.
“To the crows with that! It happened to me!” Menedemos exclaimed.
“It hasn’t happened to Rhodes, gods be thanked. If we stay lucky, it won’t,” his cousin said.
“That seems a bigger, harder if every day,” Menedemos replied, and then, after a moment, “Do you suppose the Athenians still imagine they live in a free and independent polis?”
Sostratos needed only a moment of his own to answer that: “The stupid ones do.”
Menedemos started laughing and discovered he didn’t want to stop. If he stopped laughing, he would either shriek or weep, and he feared he also wouldn’t be able to stop either one of those. So he laughed and laughed and laughed.
“Are you all right, my dear?” Sostratos asked after a while, real anxiety in his voice.
Wiping his eyes with the back of his arm, Menedemos tossed his head. “I’m afraid not, O marvelous one,” he said, gasping a little as the spasm passed. “But I daresay it’s for the best. In times like these, anyone who thinks he’s all right has to have something wrong with him, doesn’t he?” Sostratos didn’t answer, which was probably just as well.
Leskhaios didn’t look at Sostratos. The rower looked through him, at a point a couple of cubits behind his head. “No,” Leskhaios said.
“But—” Sostratos began.
“No,” Leskhaios said again, and by the way he said it he might have been Zeus pronouncing doom for some strong-greaved Akhaian in the Iliad. “I don’t care when the Aphrodite’s going back to Rhodes. I’m not going back there with her.”
“What will you do here?” Sostratos asked.
“I’ve been sniffing around, like,” Leskhaios said. “There’s a baker not far from this inn who needs himself a helper. He wants to take on a Hellene, not an Egyptian, so he’ll be able to talk with him. He doesn’t pay a whole lot, but it’s better work than pulling an oar, and if you’re in a bakery you’ll never starve.”
An angry flush heated Sostratos’ face. “You pulled an oar from Rhodes to here, and since then you’ve collected your pay for lying around and doing nothing most of the time.”
“That’s how it goes. I didn’t know we’d be stuck here so long when I climbed into your akatos,” Leskhaios said. “You’d put slaves at the oars if you could trust ’em far enough—they’d cost you less. And have you got any notion of what a rower’s life’s like in winter when the ships stay in port? If I came around to your house to beg some oil ’cause I was flat, you’d set the dogs on me.”
“To the crows with you if we would!” Sostratos snapped. “Sometimes men who’ve rowed on the Aphrodite do come in the wintertime, asking for money or food. My father and I always give—Menedemos’ family, too. We know rowing’s a trade for spring and summer.”
“Mm, maybe. Your family doesn’t have the bad name some shipowners do. I give you so much,” Leskhaios said. “But that’s not the point. The point is, if I stay in Alexandria, I won’t have to worry about getting thin after the cranes fly south.”