“We’re home, by the gods!” Menedemos echoed to Sostratos.
His cousin dipped his head. “We are. We’re home with a handsome profit, too—if we can keep it.”
“If,” Menedemos agreed.
A couple of dockside loungers made the Aphrodite fast to bollards on the pier. Menedemos hoped she could get hauled up into a shipshed soon; she’d spent a long time at sea, and her timbers were bound to be waterlogged. But that would have to wait.
More men came down the pier to see what the merchant galley was carrying—and, again, to sweep up as much news as they could. That wasn’t much. Sailors ran the gangplank from the ship to the pier. Menedemos crossed it. After so much time asea, planking that didn’t shift under his feet felt strange, even unnatural, to him.
He pointed at three loungers he knew. “Two oboloi for each of you—one now, the second when you bring someone back here. Are you with me?” When none of them said no, he went on, “Karneades, go to my father’s house and fetch him here. Athanippos, do the same for Lysistratos, my uncle. He lives across the street from my father. And Simias, you bring Komanos.”
Every man collected a small silver coin and hurried away. One of the loungers Menedemos hadn’t hired was peering into the Aphrodite. He asked, “How come your ship’s all full of shields and arrows and things?”
“I’ll tell the whole story once,” Menedemos said. “Just once. You can wait and listen, or you can go play with it.”
To his disappointment, the man hung around. A small crowd, and then a crowd not so small, gathered on the pier and on the dry land at its base. Half of Rhodes would know the Aphrodite had gone to Egypt, and all of Rhodes would know Antigonos’ son was fighting Ptolemaios’ brother on Cyprus. If Menedemos had news about any of that, people wanted to hear it.
They wouldn’t want to hear what Menedemos told them. He knew that too well. One more reason to want to tell it just the once.
Someone on the pier made as if to go down into the akatos to see what all she carried. Menedemos said, “By the gods, friend, I’ll shove you into the drink if you take one more step.” He sounded as if he looked forward to it. He did.
“Who the daimon are you?” the fellow asked.
“The skipper.”
The man didn’t take the step. “I can’t swim,” he said.
Menedemos smiled, the way Medusa might have when she was turning someone to stone. “Good.”
All at once, the Rhodian decided he wasn’t so curious after all. He drew back, and nobody seemed eager to take his place. A commotion broke out at the back of the crowd. There was Karneades trying to push his way forward, with Philodemos doing his best to help.
“Let my father through!” Menedemos shouted in a voice that could have reached from the Aphrodite’s stern to bow in the middle of a roaring gale. Sailors would have done whatever he told them without even thinking about it. Landlubbers were less used to taking orders. That always annoyed Menedemos, never more than today.
At last, Philodemos and his guide stood in front of Menedemos. After giving Karneades the second obolos, he clasped his father’s hand. “Hail,” he said.
“Hail, son. It’s good to see you home,” Philodemos said.
“It’s good to be home,” Menedemos said, and meant it. “Things have been … lively.”
“They often are, where you’re involved.” Even at the moment of return, Philodemos couldn’t resist a gibe. He did add, “They’ve been lively here, too, I will say.”
“Ah?” Menedemos did his best not to seem too eager for news of Rhodes.
“That’s right. You have a new half-brother. I’ve named him Diodoros, for he is Zeus’ gift to the family,” Philodemos said.
“Congratulations, Father. I hope your wife came through the birth well.” Menedemos made himself sound calm and detached over something he cared about more than anything else in the world. If anything had happened to Baukis ….
She can’t be dead, Menedemos told himself. His father’s hair wasn’t cropped short, as it would have been if he were mourning. But birth was as hard on women as battle was on men. Baukis might be suffering from fever, might be … Menedemos didn’t know what all she might be. He’d never needed to worry about it, not in detail.
But Philodemos dipped his head. “She’s as well as can be expected, gods be praised. And the little fellow looks much the way you did when you were a baby. He looks a lot like me, in other words. I must have strong seed.” He sounded pleased with himself, even smug.
Menedemos wondered whether Diodoros looked like him because they both had the same father or because he was the baby’s father. Odds were Baukis wasn’t sure herself, in which case no one would ever know for certain. In law, Diodoros was Philodemos’ son.
Then Menedemos got distracted, perhaps mercifully: the escorts leading Lysistratos and Komanos came to the harbor at about the same time. They and the men they’d brought fought their way through the crowd. Menedemos paid off the other two loungers. He greeted his uncle and the powerful civic leader. Then he held both hands in the air to get the crowd’s attention.
Little by little, the men who’d been gabbling quieted down. “Hear me, O gentlemen of Rhodes,” Menedemos said, as if he were speaking before the Assembly. That started them chattering again. He’d known it would. “Hear me!” he repeated, louder this time. He finally got something close enough to silence to suit him.
“The Ptolemaios and the Demetrios fought a great battle on the sea off Cypriot Salamis,” he told the crowd. “I was there in the Aphrodite, which Ptolemaios had hired to help carry his military supplies.”
His father, his uncle, Komanos, and others in the crowd who understood how things worked looked startled and alarmed. Rhodes was supposed to stay neutral in the wars among Alexander’s generals. The political leader said, “Why did you go with Ptolemaios’ fleet?”
“Because, O most excellent one, my other choice was having my ship confiscated and getting interned in Alexandria,” Menedemos answered bleakly. “This way, at least we got some silver for having the Aphrodite used. The Demetrios won the battle, I’m afraid. Most of Ptolemaios’ fleet is lost. I don’t know if he lives, or whether he’s free if he does. Not many of his ships got away. We were one of the lucky ones.”
That set everyone exclaiming, as he’d once more known it would. Well, almost everyone. Komanos opened his mouth, then closed it again without saying anything. Menedemos’ father also held his peace. His expression went thoughtful rather than shocked. Menedemos dared take that for a good sign. Uncle Lysistratos said, “So all these tools for murder in the Aphrodite would have gone to Ptolemaios’ soldiers if they’d managed to land near Salamis?”
“That’s right, sir. I don’t think any of them managed to, or even to escape Demetrios’ fleet. We had to outrun a big war galley ourselves. Believe me, I thought about throwing all that stuff into the drink so we could go faster,” Menedemos said.
“Why didn’t you?” Komanos asked.
“Well, O best one, for one thing, we managed to stay ahead of that big beamy whoreson without doing it,” Menedemos replied. “And, for another, I thought Rhodes could use every sword, every arrow, every shield we were carrying. Just in case, if you know what I mean.”
Komanos somberly dipped his head. “I know much too well. The polis may be in your debt.”
“I live here, too, sir. I want to go on living in a free and independent polis if I can.” Belatedly, Menedemos realized he and Sostratos might have sold the warlike gear to the city for a good bit of silver. He shrugged. Sometimes profit came at too high a price. He hadn’t been joking. Rhodes could use every weapon she could lay her hands on. And she could use every drakhma in her coffers, for weapons or work on the walls or ships or grain or … anything.