“Wine,” Sostratos agreed. “Wine, and you. You are lovely. I would make you happy, if I could. If you let me.”
“Foolishness,” Zilpah said. But was she talking to him or to herself? Sostratos couldn’t tell, not till she set the pitcher on the table and sat down on his lap.
His arms went round her in glad surprise. He lifted his face as she lowered hers. Their lips met. Her mouth tasted of wine and of her own sweetness. She sighed, back deep in his throat.
The kiss went on and on. Sostratos had thought the wine was making him drunk. This… Next to this, the wine was as nothing. He slipped one hand under her robes. It slid up past her knee, up the smooth flesh of her inner thigh, toward the joining of her legs.
But that hand, hurrying toward her secret place, must have reminded her just what game they’d started playing. With a little, frightened moan, she jerked away and sprang to her feet again. “No,” she said. “I told you, I would not take you to my bed.”
Had she been a slave, he might have pulled her down to the floor and had her by force. Such things even happened to free Hellenic women of good family every now and again, as when they were coming back at night from a religious procession. Comic poets wrote plays about the complications that rose from mischances like that. But Sostratos had never been one to think of force first. And using it on a foreign woman in a town full of barbarians… He tossed his head.
He couldn’t help letting out a long, angry breath. “If you did not mean to finish, I wish you had not started,” he said. The throbbing in his own crotch told him how much he wished that.
“I am sorry,” Zilpah replied. “I wanted a little sweetness-not too much, but a little. I didn’t think you…” She let that trail away. “I didn’t think.”
“No. You did not. Neither did I.” Sostratos sighed. He gulped down the rest of the wine in the cup. “Maybe I should go down the block after all.”
“Maybe you should,” Zilpah said. “But now, Ionian, now what am I supposed to do?” And for that, no matter how much Sostratos prided himself on his cleverness, he had no answer at all.
Menedemos had taken his time going over to the dyeworks on the outskirts of Sidon. He kept finding excuses for staying away. The real reason was simple: the dyeworks that made the Phoenician cities famous stank too badly for him to want to get close to them.
That stench came into the city when the wind blew the wrong way. But Sidon, like any town around the Inner Sea, had plenty of other foul odors to dilute that one. Out by the dyeworks, the smell of rotting shellfish was both overpowering and unalloyed.
How did anyone ever find out that murexes, once crushed, yielded a liquor which, after it was properly treated, became the marvelous Phoenician crimson dye? he wondered. Some inventions seemed natural to him. Anyone could see that sticks floated, and all sorts of things caught the wind and were pushed along by it. From there to rafts and boats could only be a small step. But purple dye? Menedemos tossed his head. It struck him as very unlikely.
He wished he had Sostratos along. Seeing a Phoenician smashing shells with a mallet, he called out, “Hail! Do you speak Greek?”
The fellow shook his head. But he knew what Menedemos was trying to ask, for he said something in Aramaic in which the Rhodian caught the word Ionian. The Phoenician pointed to a shack not far away. He gave forth with another sentence full of coughing and hissing noises. Again, Menedemos heard the local word for a Hellene. Maybe that meant someone who spoke his language was in there. He hoped so, anyhow.
“Thanks,” he said. The Phoenician waved and went back to smashing seashells. After a moment, he paused, picked up a morsel of meat, and popped it into his mouth. Can’t get your op son any fresher than that, Menedemos thought.
When he opened the door to the shack, a couple of Phoenicians, one stout, the other lean, looked up at him. The stout one began to speak before he could say a word: “You must be the Rhodian. Wondered when you were going to show up around here.” His Greek was fluent, colloquial, and sounded as if he’d learned it from someone right on the edge of the law.
“Yes, that’s right. I’m Menedemos son of Philodemos,” Menedemos said. “Hail. And you gentlemen are…?”
“I’m Tenashtart son of Metena,” the stout Phoenician answered. “This is my brother, Ithobaal. Miserable son of a whore doesn’t speak any Greek. Pleased to meet you. You want to buy some dye, right?”
“Yes,” Menedemos said. “Uh-where did you learn Greek so… well?”
“Here and there, pal, here and there,” Tenashtart answered. “I’ve done some knocking around in my time, you bet I have. There are towns in Hellas… But you didn’t come here to listen to me bang my gums.”
“It’s all right,” Menedemos told him, more fascinated than anything else. “Do you mind if I ask you a question?”
“Sure,” Tenashtart said expansively. “Go right ahead.”
“In the name of the gods, O best one, how do you stand the stink?” Menedemos blurted.
Before answering, Tenashtart said something in Aramaic to Ithobaal. Both brothers laughed. Tenashtart went back to Greek: “Everybody asks us that. Doesn’t matter who: Phoenicians, Hellenes-even Persians, back when I was a kid. They all say the same thing.”
“And do you give them the same answer?” Menedemos asked. Tenashtart had spent a lot of time among Hellenes; he dipped his head instead of nodding, as almost all barbarians would have done. Menedemos said, “Well, what is the answer?”
“You want to know the truth?” the dyemaker said. “The truth is, we both spend so much time with the shells, we don’t even notice it any more. Only time I know it’s there is when I’ve been away for a bit. Then I smell it for a while when I get back. But except for that, it’s not even there for me, any more than air is there for me, you know what I mean?”
“I suppose so,” Menedemos answered. “It seems hard to believe, though.”
Tenashtart said something else in Aramaic. His brother nodded. Ithobaal pointed out toward the workman crushing murexes, touched his formidable nose, and shrugged. He might have been saying he didn’t notice the reek of rotting shellfish, either.
Even to Menedemos, it didn’t seem quite so appalling as it had when he first got to the dyeworks. All the same, he remained a long way from not noticing it. He wished he were as oblivious as the two Phoenician brothers.
Tenashtart said, “You come all this way to talk about nasty smells, or do you want to do some business?”
“Let’s do business,” Menedemos said agreeably. “What do you charge for a jar of your best dye?” When the Sidonian told him, he let out a yip. “That’s outrageous!”
Tenashtart spread his hands. “That’s the way it goes, buddy. I’ve got to make a living, same as everybody else.”
But Menedemos wagged a finger at him. “Oh, no, you don’t, my dear. You’re not going to get away with that, not for a minute you won’t, and I’ll tell you why not. I’ve seen Phoenicians over in Hellas selling crimson dye for the very same price, and that’s after their middleman’s markup. What do they pay you?”
“You must be talking about men from Byblos or from Arados,” Tenashtart said easily. “They’ve got lower quality dye, so naturally they can charge less.”
Menedemos tossed his head. “Oh, no, you don’t,” he said again. “For one thing, they’d say Byblian or Aradian dye’s as good as Sidonian. W’ith Tyre wrecked, nobody has a sure best any more. And, for another, I’ve seen Sidonians selling for the very same price.”
Tenashtart’s engagingly ugly grin showed a missing bottom front tooth. “I like you, Rhodian, to the crows with me if I don’t. You’ve got balls. But tell me this-why should I give a Hellene the same rate I give my own people?” He translated his words for Ithobaal, who nodded again.