Sostratos went back behind the steering oars, picked up the gangplank, and stretched it from the poop deck to the wharf. Normally, that was work for an ordinary seaman, not the merchant galley’s toikharkhos. Sostratos didn’t care. He was too eager to care. He gave Menedemos an inviting wave. “Come on, my dear. Let’s see what there is to see.”
“You’re not going to find another gryphon’s skull,” his cousin told him.
“If I don’t look for one, I certainly won’t,” Sostratos replied with dignity. “Are you coming?”
“Oh, yes,” Menedemos said. “If you think I’ll pass up a chance to see you act foolish, you can think again.”
“I don’t see how seeking something I want is foolish,” Sostratos said, more dignified than ever. “When you seek what you want, it usually wears a transparent chiton and perfume.”
“Well, I’d rather have a live girl than a dead gryphon. If that makes me a fool, I’ll answer to the name.”
Kaunos was an old town. Its streets ambled every which way instead of sticking to a neat rectangular grid like those of Rhodes. All the inscriptions used Greek letters, but not all were in Greek: a few were in the Karian tongue, for Kaunos had been a Karian town before Hellenes settled there, and it remained a place where folk of both bloods lived. Pointing to an inscription he couldn’t read, Sostratos said, “I wonder what that means.”
“Some barbarous blather or other,” Menedemos said indifferently. “If it were anything important, they’d’ve written it in Greek.”
“You say that, on your way to Phoenicia?” Sostratos said. “Hardly anyone knows Greek there. If more people did, would I have been wrestling with Aramaic all winter long?”
“If you want to wrestle, go to the palaistra,” Menedemos answered, misunderstanding him on purpose. “As for the Phoenicians, well, there haven’t been many Hellenes in their towns till lately. The Kaunians have no excuse.”
“Always ready to see things to your own advantage, aren’t you?” Sostratos said.
“To whose better?” his cousin returned.
Despite the town’s twisting roads, Sostratos led both of them to the agora. “Here we are!” he said as the street opened out onto the market square.
“Yes, here we are.” Menedemos scratched his head. “And how did you lead us here? Me, I’d’ve had to take an obolos out of my mouth and give it to somebody to get him to tell us the way.”
“Why?” Sostratos said in surprise. “We were here last year. Don’t you remember the way?”
“If I did, would I be saying I didn’t?” Menedemos replied. “My dear, there are times when you forget ordinary mortals haven’t got your memory, I’m not sure all-powerful Zeus has your memory.”
“Of course not-he has his own,” Sostratos said. Menedemos’ praise displeased him not at all. Pointing across the agora, he went on, “The fellow who sold us the gryphon’s skull had his stall there.”
“Well, so he did.” Menedemos started across the square, picking his way between a farmer hawking dried figs and a fellow who’d gathered a great basketload of mushrooms out in the meadows and woods in back of Kaunos. “Let’s get this over with.” He brightened a little. “Maybe he’ll have more hides to sell us, anyhow.”
Sostratos’ heart pounded with excitement as he hurried after his cousin. For a moment, hope outran reason. There was the stall, there was the fellow who’d sold them the gryphon’s skull, there was a lion skin on display… No gryphon’s skull. Sostratos sighed. He did his best to remind himself he really shouldn’t have expected to see another one, not when the first had come from far to the east, beyond the edge of the known world.
His best wasn’t good enough to mask disappointment.
“Why, it’s the Rhodians!” the local exclaimed. “Hail, O best ones! Can we do business again? I hope we can.”
“Of course he does,” Menedemos muttered behind his hand. “He played us for fools once, unloading that skull on us.”
“Oh, go howl,” Sostratos told him. He asked the Kaunian, “Have you by any chance seen another gryphon’s skull?”
“Sorry, my friend, but no.” The fellow tossed his head, dashing Sostratos’ hopes once and for all. Menedemos didn’t say, I told you so, which was just as well. Sostratos thought he might have picked up a rock and brained his cousin for a crack like that right then.
Then Menedemos asked the Kaunian, “Have you seen another tiger’s hide?”
The local tossed his head again. “No, not one of those, either. You fellows want all the strange things, don’t you? I’ve got this fine lion skin here, you see.” He pointed to it.
“Oh, yes,” Menedemos said, though he sounded anything but impressed. “I suppose we’ll buy it from you, but we’d make more money with the stranger things.”
“Especially in Phoenicia,” Sostratos added. “We’re sailing east this year, and they have lions of their own there. How much would they care about one more hide in, say, Byblos?”
“I don’t know about that, but if you’re going to Phoenicia, you’ll be going by way of Cyprus,” the local merchant said. “They may have lions in Phoenicia, but they don’t on the island. You could get a good price selling it there.”
He was right. Neither Sostratos nor Menedemos had any intention of admitting as much; that would only have driven the price higher. Grudgingly, Menedemos said, “I suppose I might give you as much for this hide as I paid for the ones last year.”
“Don’t do me any favors, by the gods!” the Kaunian exclaimed. “This is a bigger hide than either of the ones I sold you then. And look at that mane! Herakles didn’t fight a fiercer beast at Nemea.”
“It’s a lion skin,” Menedemos said in dismissive tones. “I won’t be able to charge any more for it, and you’re mad if you think I’m going to pay any more for it.”
“We wasted our time coming here,” Sostratos said. “Let’s go back to the ship.”
Words like those were part of every dicker. More often than not, they were insincere. More often than not, both sides knew as much, too. Here, Sostratos meant what he said. When he saw the merchant had no gryphon’s skull, he stopped caring about what the fellow did have. The sooner he got away from Kaunos and from the memory of what the local had had, the happier-or, at least, the less unhappy-he would be.
And the Kaunian heard that in his voice. “Don’t get yourselves in an uproar, best ones,” he said. “Don’t do anything hasty that you’d regret later. You made a good bargain last year, and it would still be a good bargain at the same price this year, is it not so?”
“It might be tolerable at the same price,” Sostratos said. “It might, mind you. But a moment ago you were talking about wanting more for this hide than you did for those. ‘Look at that mane!’ “ He mimicked the Kaunian to wicked effect.
“All right!” The fellow threw his hands in the air, “You haggle your way, I haggle mine. When you do it, you’re wonderful. When I do it, it’s a crime. That’s how you make it seem, anyhow.”
Menedemos grinned at him. “That’s our job, my friend, the same as your job is to sneer at every offer we make. But we do have a bargain here, don’t we?”
“Yes.” The Kaunian didn’t sound delighted, but he dipped his head and stuck out his hand. Sostratos and Menedemos clasped it in turn.
Menedemos went back to the ship to get the money-and to bring along a couple of sailors to make sure he wasn’t robbed of it before returning to the agora. Sostratos wandered through the market square till his cousin came back. He didn’t think, Maybe someone will have a gryphon’s skull. He knew how unlikely that was. Whenever the notion tried to climb up to the top part of his mind, he suppressed it. But he couldn’t help hoping, just a little.
Whatever he hoped, he was disappointed. The agora held fewer interesting things of any note than it had the year before. He spent an obolos for a handful of dried figs and ate them as he walked around. Had they been especially good, he might have thought about getting more to put aboard the Aphrodite . But they were ordinary- Rhodes grew far better. He finished the ones he’d bought and didn’t go back to the man who was selling them.