Egypt was a land rich in gold, where most Hellenes used silver as their main monetary metal. “What rate of exchange would you give?” Sostratos asked. “That makes a difference, you know.”
“Ten to one, no more,” Menelaos said. “This isn’t Philip of Macedon’s day, when a gold drakhma would buy you twelve silver ones.”
He wasn’t wrong; ten to one was the most common exchange rate nowadays. A century before, the ratio had been thirteen or even fourteen to one. “If you’ll wait till we can bring a couple of men here, I think I’d sooner have it in silver,” Sostratos answered. “As you say, gold’s fallen over this past generation, and it may fall further.”
“However you please,” Ptolemaios’ brother said with a shrug. “I’ve got the silver.” Sostratos was sure he had it. How big was his army on Cyprus? He probably spent more than a couple of talents every day on his soldiers’ pay.
Menedemos said, “I’ll go over to the Aphrodite to get the sailors. Can you give us some guards when we’re taking the money back to the ship, most noble one?”
“Certainly,” Menelaos answered. “Worried about getting knocked over the head between here and the harbor, are you? Don’t blame you a bit. Salamis can be a tough town.”
“Thank you, sir,” Menedemos said. “If you’d told me no, I’d’ve come back with a lot more than just two men, I’ll tell you that.” He waved and hurried away.
That left Sostratos alone with Menelaos and Simias. He usually hated such situations, as he was a man of little small talk. Now, though, he asked, “Sir, did you hunt tigers in distant India, as Ptolemaios did?”
“Did I? I should say I did!” Menelaos exclaimed, and he was off on a hunting story that not only fascinated Sostratos and told him two or three things about tigers that he hadn’t known but also relieved him of the obligation to say much more till his cousin got back with the sailors. Not bad, he thought, for a double handful of words.
11
Menedemos pulled in on one 5teering-oar tiller and pushed the other one out. The Aphrodite rounded Cape Pedalion, the highland that marked the southeastern corner of Cyprus. Diokles said, “That headland is supposed to be sacred to Aphrodite, so there’s a good omen for our ship, if you like.”
“I like good omens just fine, thanks very much,” Menedemos answered. “I’ll take ‘em wherever I can find ‘em, too.”
“Why is this part of Cyprus sacred to the love goddess?” Sostratos asked. “Didn’t she rise from the sea at Paphos? Paphos isn’t near here, is it?”
“No, young sir, Paphos is way off to the west,” the oarmaster said. “I don’t know why Cape Pedalion’s sacred to her. I just know that it is.”
Sostratos still looked discontented. Menedemos shot him a glance that said, Shut up. For a wonder, his cousin got the message. Menedemos wanted the sailors to think the omens were good. The happier they were, the better they’d work. If Diokles hadn’t given him a real one, he might have invented a good omen to keep them cheerful.
The beaches west of Cape Pedalion were of fine white sand, the soil inland from them a red that promised great fertility, though fields lay fallow under the hot sun, waiting for fall and the rains that would bring them back to life. But the promontory did strange things to the wind, which went fitful and shifting, now with the merchant galley, now dead against her.
“By the gods, I’m glad I’m in an akatos,” Menedemos said. “I wouldn’t care to sail this coast in a round ship. You could spend days going nowhere at all. And if the wind did blow in one direction, like as not it’d drive you aground instead of taking you where you wanted to go.”
“You don’t want that,” Sostratos said. “You don’t want that anywhere. You especially don’t want it on a shore where nobody knows you.”
Diokles dipped his head. “No, indeed. And you really especially don’t want it on this shore, where most of the people are Phoenicians, not Hellenes at all. Kition, the next city up ahead, is a Phoenician town.”
“From what we saw in Sidon, Phoenicians aren’t any worse than Hellenes,” Sostratos said.
“I’m not saying they’re worse. I’m saying they’re foreign,” the keleustes replied. “If I were a Phoenician skipper, I’d sooner go aground here than up by Salamis, where the people are mostly Hellenes.”
“I’d sooner not go aground anywhere,” Menedemos said. “I’d sooner not, and I don’t intend to.”
He did put in at Kition the next day to buy fresh bread. It looked like a Phoenician town, with tall buildings crowding close together and with men in caps and long robes. The gutturals of Aramaic dominated over Greek’s smooth rising and falling cadences.
“I can understand what they’re saying,” Sostratos exclaimed. “When we first set out, I wouldn’t have followed even half of it, but I can understand almost all of it now.”
“You’ve been speaking the language yourself,” Menedemos said. “That’s why. I can even understand a little myself. But I expect I’ll forget it as soon as we get back to Rhodes. I won’t need to know it anymore.”
“I don’t want to forget!” Sostratos said. “I never want to forget anything.”
“I can think of a few things I’d just as soon forget,” Menedemos said, “starting with Emashtart.” He laughed and tossed his head. “I didn’t have any trouble keeping my oath on account of her. How about you, O best one? Outrage any husbands in Ioudaia? You never swore you wouldn’t.”
To his surprise-indeed, to his amazement-his cousin coughed and shuffled his feet and generally acted flustered. “How did you know?” Sostratos asked. “Were you talking with Moskhion or Teleutas? Did they blab?”
“They never said a word, my dear, and I never thought to ask them about that,” Menedemos answered. “But now I’m asking you. Who was she? Was she pretty? You wouldn’t have done it if you hadn’t thought she was pretty, would you?”
“Her husband ran the inn where we stayed in Jerusalem,” Sostratos said slowly. “Her name was Zilpah.” He bared his teeth in what wasn’t quite, or wasn’t just, a smile. “While I was going after her, I thought she was the most wonderful thing in the world.”
Menedemos laughed out loud. “Oh, yes. I know all about that. I kept trying to tell you, but you didn’t want to listen.”
“I understand better now.” By the way Sostratos said it, he wished he didn’t.
Laughing still, Menedemos said, “So you finally got her, did you?”
“Yes, on the way back from Engedi.” Sostratos didn’t sound particularly proud of himself. “If she hadn’t been angry at her husband, I never would have.”
“They all say that,” Menedemos told him. “Maybe they even believe it. It gives them an excuse for doing what they want to do anyhow. Well? How was it?”
“Better than with a whore, certainly-you’re right about that,” Sostratos admitted.
“Told you so,” Menedemos said.
“You tell me all sorts of things,” Sostratos said. “Some of them turn out to be true, and some of them don’t. She started crying afterwards, though, and wished she’d never done it. Everything was fine-better than fine-up till then. As soon as we’d finished, though…” He tossed his head.
“Oh. One of those. Just your luck to run into one like that the first time you play the game,” Menedemos said sympathetically, and put his hand on his cousin’s shoulder. “It happens, I’m afraid.”
“Obviously, since it happened to me,” Sostratos said. “And it did feel like a game. I didn’t like that.”
“Why not? What else is it?” Menedemos asked in honest puzzlement. “Best game in the world, if you ask me, but still, only a game.”
Sostratos groped for an answer: “It shouldn’t be only a game. It’s too important to be only a game. For a little while there, I was… in love, I suppose. I don’t know what else to call it.”
“That can happen,” Menedemos agreed. Sostratos hadn’t sounded happy about it. Menedemos didn’t blame him. Love was as dangerous a passion as the gods had inflicted on mankind. Menedemos went on, “I don’t suppose you can do anything halfway, can you?”