“I could say, ‘I told you so,’ “ Sostratos remarked. But then he surprised Menedemos by continuing, “But I won’t. I’ve been speaking it all day, and my head feels pounded flat.”
“I believe you.” Menedemos didn’t really want to speak Aramaic. He wanted all the barbarians he dealt with to speak Greek. Doing things the other way round was, in his mind, a poor second best.
A big round ship made her slow, stately way into Sidon’s harbor. Her entrance had to be slow and stately. The wind had brought her south past the promontory on which the Phoenician town sat, but that same wind blew dead against her when she tried to come about and sail in. That failing, the crew worked their sweeps and rowed the round ship into port. Her performance under oars was to the Aphrodite’s as a spavined ass’ was to that of a Persian stallion.
When at last she tied up at a quay perhaps a plethron from the Aphrodite, she started disgorging soldiers. Some of them wore their corselets and crested bronze helms; more carried them. In this warm weather, Menedemos reckoned that sensible. He wouldn’t have wanted to wear any more than he had to, either.
Sostratos’ lips were moving. After the last trooper came off the merchantman, he said, “I counted two hundred and eight men there. The next interesting question is whether they’ll stay here or go on to someplace else-someplace farther south, say.”
“If they stay here, Antigonos or his general probably intends to use them against Cyprus,” Menedemos said, and his cousin dipped his head in agreement. Menedemos went on, “If they move south, where will they be going? Against Egypt, do you think?”
“That seems likely,” Sostratos said. “The next question is, how long will Ptolemaios or his brother Menelaos need to hear those men are here and they’ve done whatever they end up doing?”
“Only a few days’ sail from here to Cyprus,” Menedemos observed. “Not much more to Alexandria-maybe no more, because you’re likely to have the wind with you all the way down to the Nile. If someone doesn’t leave with the news before the sun sets tomorrow, I’d be astonished.”
“So would I.” Sostratos dipped his head once more. He went on, “I can hardly wait to start down toward the land of the Ioudaioi. I wonder how many Hellenes have ever gone there. Not many, unless I miss my guess.”
“You could write a book,” Menedemos said.
He didn’t like the glow that lit his cousin’s eyes. “You’re right,” Sostratos murmured. “I could, couldn’t I? Every Hellene who ever set foot in India seems to have written down what he saw and heard there. Maybe I could do the same for this place.”
“That’s fine,” Menedemos told him. “Or it’s fine as long as you remember you’re there first to buy balsam and whatever else you find. If you take care of that, whatever else you do is your own affair. If you don’t, though, you’ll have to explain to me and to your father-and to mine-why you didn’t.”
“Yes, my dear. I do understand that, I really do,” Sostratos said patiently.
Menedemos wondered whether to believe him.
Having bought his mule, Sostratos wished he could leave Sidon without an escort. The more he thought about having several sailors with him, the less he liked it. But he’d made the bargain with Menedemos, and he had a merchant’s horror of broken bargains. Then, after the first two men he asked to come with him to the land of the Ioudaioi turned him down flat, he began to wonder if he could keep this one.
What will I do if they all say no? he wondered nervously. I’ll have to hire guards here in Sidon, I suppose. His mouth twisted. He didn’t like that. Trusting himself to the company of strangers seemed more dangerous than going alone. He wondered whether his cousin would agree. He doubted it.
He walked up to Aristeidas. The sharp-eyed young sailor smiled and said, “Hail.”
“Hail,” Sostratos answered. “How would you like to come to Engedi with me, to serve as a bodyguard along the way?”
“That depends,” Aristeidas answered. “How much extra will you pay me if I do?”
“A drakhma a day, on top of the drakhma and a half you already make,” Sostratos said. The other two sailors had asked the same question. The extra money hadn’t been enough to interest them. They were happier staying in Sidon and spending their silver on wine and women.
But Aristeidas, after a momentary hesitation, dipped his head. “I’ll come,” he said, and smiled again. Like most though not all men of his generation, he shaved his face, which made him look even younger than he was. He’d probably made a striking youth, though that might have gone unnoticed in someone growing up without wealth.
In any case, a youth’s beauty did less for Sostratos than did a woman’s. “Oh, very good!” he said. “I’ll be glad to have you along.” He meant it, and explained why. “It’s not just that you’ve got good eyes. You’ve got good sense, too.”
“Thank you very much,” Aristeidas said. “I don’t exactly know that that’s true, but I like to hear you say it.”
The next sailor Sostratos asked was Moskhion. He wasn’t particularly young or particularly smart, but he had been smart enough to see that while pulling an oar wasn’t an easy life, it beat the whey out of his former career of sponge diving. And he was big enough and strong enough to be worth more than a little in case of a brawl.
“Sure, I’ll come,” he said when Sostratos put the question to him. “Why not? With a little luck, all we’ll have to do is go there and come back, right?”
“Yes, with a little luck,” Sostratos answered. “But what will you do if our luck isn’t so good? What will you do if we have to fight?”
“I expect I’ll fight. What else?” Moskhion didn’t sound worried.
Sostratos supposed that if you’d got used to jumping out of a boat with a trident in one hand and with a rock held against your chest in the other to make you sink faster, nothing that might happen on dry land was likely to faze you. He said, “I’m glad to have you along. You’re a host all by yourself.”
“Maybe. Maybe not, too,” Moskhion said. “But people think so when they look at me. Every once in a while, that gets me into fights. More often, though, it keeps me out of them.”
“That’s what I want it to do here,” Sostratos said. “I’m not looking to get into fights with the barbarians.”
“Good,” Moskhion said. “Some people fight for sport, but I’m not one of them.”
“I wouldn’t want you along if you were,” Sostratos said. The next three men he asked all told him no. Annoyed at them, annoyed at the need to bring guards along, he went to Menedemos and asked if two would do.
His cousin annoyed him all over again by tossing his head. “Get somebody else,” Menedemos said. “The idea is to have enough men along to keep from giving bandits nasty ideas.”
“I might take the whole crew and not manage that,” Sostratos protested.
“I’m not asking you to take the whole crew,” Menedemos said. “I am asking you to take one more man.”
Since he was the captain, Sostratos had to pay attention to him. Sostratos liked getting orders no more than any other free Hellene. Indeed, he liked it less than a lot of other Hellenes might have. Here, though, he had to obey.
As he came down from the Aphrodite’s poop deck with a storm cloud on his face, one of the sailors said, “Excuse me, but if you’re looking for somebody to go with you when you head inland, I’ll do it.”
“You, Teleutas?” Sostratos said in surprise-and not necessarily pleased surprise, either. “Why do you want to come?”
“Well, I’d be lying if I said I couldn’t use the extra silver. A drakhma a day over and above the usual? That’s not bad. Not half bad, matter of fact. And it ought to be pretty easy money, so long as everything goes well.”
“Yes, but what if it doesn’t?” Sostratos asked.
Teleutas took his time thinking about that. He was perhaps ten years older than Sostratos-in his mid- to late thirties. Rowing under the fierce summer sun had made his lean face dark and leathery, with lines like gullies, so that at first glance he seemed older than he was. His eyes, though, retained what was either a childlike innocence or a chameleon-like gift for hiding his true nature. He always did enough to get by, but only just, and had a habit of grumbling even about that. More than two years after first bringing him aboard the Aphrodite, Sostratos kept wondering if he’d made a mistake.