He’d drunk enough wine at his cousin’s wedding feast to want to get rid of it and paused to piss against the blank, whitewashed wall of a housefront. Then he hurried on. Daylight hours were short at this season of the year, while those of the nighttime stretched like tar on a hot day. He wouldn’t have cared to be on the streets after sunset, not without the torch he’d carried in the wedding procession, and not without some friends along, too. Even in a peaceful, orderly polis like Rhodes, footpads prowled under cover of darkness.
He hoped Damonax would make a worthwhile addition to the family. He’d liked Erinna’s first husband well enough, but the man had seemed old to him. That’s because I wasn’t much more than a youth myself when she was wed then, he realized in some surprise. Her first husband would have been about thirty, the same age as Damonax is now. Time did strange things. Half a dozen years had got behind him when he wasn’t looking.
His father’s house and Uncle Lysistratos ’ stood side by side, not far from the temple to Demeter at the north end of town. When he knocked on the door, one of the house slaves inside called, “Who is it?”
“ Me-Menedemos.”
The door opened almost at once. “Did the feast break up so soon, young master?” the slave asked in surprise. “We didn’t expect you back for awhile yet.”
That almost certainly meant the slaves had grabbed the chance to sit around on their backsides and do as little as they could. Nothing was what slaves did whenever they got the chance. Menedemos answered, “I decided to come home a little early, that’s all.”
“You, sir? From a feast, sir?” The expression on the slave’s face said everything that needed saying. “Where’s your father, sir?”
“He’s still back there,” Menedemos said. The slave looked more astonished yet. Usually Menedemos’ father was the one who came home early and he was the one who stayed out late.
He walked through the entry hall and into the courtyard. Angry shouts came from the kitchen. Menedemos sighed. His stepmother and Sikon the cook were wrangling again. Baukis, who wanted to be a good household manager, was convinced Sikon spent too much. The cook was equally convinced she wanted him to pass the rest of his life fixing nothing but barley porridge and salted fish.
Baukis stalked out of the kitchen with a thoroughly grim expression on her face. It crumbled into surprise when she saw Menedemos. “Oh. Hail,” she said, and then, as the slave had, “I didn’t expect you home so soon.”
“Hail,” he replied, and shrugged. When he looked at her, he had trouble thinking of his father’s second wife as his stepmother. Baukis was ten or eleven years younger than he. She wasn’t a striking beauty, but she had a very nice shape: a much nicer one now than she’d had when she came into the house a couple of years before at the age of fourteen. Menedemos went on, “I didn’t feel like staying around, so I came back by myself while it was still light.”
“All right,” Baukis said. “Do you have any idea when Philodemos will be along?”
Menedemos tossed his head to show he didn’t. “If I had to guess, though, I’d say he and Uncle Lysistratos and Sostratos will all come home together, with some linkbearers to light the way for them.”
“That sounds sensible,” Baukis agreed. “I really do want to talk to him about Sikon. The insolence that fellow has! You’d think he owned this place instead of being a slave here.” She frowned so hard, a vertical line appeared between her eyebrows.
The expression fascinated Menedemos. All her expressions fascinated him. They were part of the same household, so she didn’t veil herself against his eyes as respectable women usually did around men. Watching her bare face was almost as exciting as seeing her naked.
He had to remind himself to pay attention to what she was saying, too.
He’d given his father plenty of reasons to quarrel with him-and had also got plenty of reasons to quarrel with his father. He didn’t want to put adultery with his father’s wife on the list. That might be a killing matter, and he knew it very well.
Most of him, at any rate, didn’t want to put adultery with Baukis on the list. One part did. That part stirred. He sternly willed it back to quiescence. He didn’t want Baukis noticing such stirrings under his tunic.
“Sikon has his pride,” he said. Talking about quarrels in the kitchen might help keep his mind off other things. “Maybe you would have done better right from the start if you’d asked him to be more careful what he spent than marching in there and giving him orders. That puts his back up, you know.”
“He’s a slave,” Baukis repeated. “When his master’s wife tells him what to do, he’d better pay attention, or he’ll be sorry.”
In theory, she was right. In practice, slaves with special skills and special talents-and Sikon had both-were almost as free to do as they pleased as were citizens. If Baukis didn’t know that, she’d lived a sheltered life before she was married. Or maybe her parents were among the folk who treated slaves like beasts of burden that happened to be able to talk. There were some.
He said, “Sikon’s been here a long time. We’re still prosperous, and we eat as well as a lot of people who have more silver.”
Baukis’ frown got deeper. “That’s not the point. The point is, if I tell him to do it the way I want, he should do it.”
A philosophical discussion-that’s what this is, Menedemos realized. I might as well be Sostratos. I’m having a philosophical discussion with my father’s wife, when what I want to do is bend her forward and. ..
He tossed his head. Baukis glared, thinking he disagreed with her. In fact, he did, but at that moment he’d been disagreeing with himself. He said, “You ought to see you haven’t got anywhere by charging straight at him. If you compromise, maybe he will, too.”
“Maybe.” But Philodemos’ wife didn’t sound as if she believed it. “I think he just thinks I’m some fool of a girl trying to give him orders, and he doesn’t like that at all. Well, too bad for him.”
She might well have a point. No Hellene would have wanted to obey a woman’s commands. Sikon wasn’t a Hellene, but he was a man-and Hellenes and barbarians agreed on some things.
“I’ve talked with him before,” Menedemos said. “Would you like me to do it again? With a little luck, I’ll get him to see reason. Or, if I can’t do that, maybe I can frighten him.”
“I haven’t had much luck with that, but then I’m only a woman,” Baukis said sourly. After a moment, though, her face lit up with hope, “Would you please try? I’d be ever so grateful.”
“Of course I will,” Menedemos promised. “Nobody wants to listen to quarrels all the time. I’ll do the best I can.” Maybe I can slip Sikon silver on the side, so we’ll eat as well as always but Baukis won’t see the money coming out of the household accounts. That might work.
“Thank you so much, Menedemos!” Baukis exclaimed. Her eyes glowing, she impulsively stepped forward and gave him a hug.
For a moment, his arras tightened around her. He held her just long enough for him to feel how sweet and ripe she was-and, perhaps, for her to feel him stirring to life. Then they sprang apart, as if each found the other too hot to bear. They weren’t alone. In a prosperous household like Philodemos’, no one could count on being alone. Slaves saw, or might see, everything that went on. A brief, friendly embrace could be innocent. Anything more? Menedemos tossed his head again.
Baukis said, “Do speak to him soon, please.” Was that all she’d had in mind when she hugged him? Or was she too making sure the slaves would have nothing to tell Philodemos? Menedemos could hardly ask.
He said, “I will,” and then deliberately turned away. Baukis’ footsteps went off toward the stairs that led up to the women’s quarters. Her sandals clacked on the planks of the stairway. Menedemos didn’t watch her go. Instead, he walked off to the kitchen for what he knew would be one more futile talk with Sikon.