“I’d intended to stay there for a day or two, yes,” Sostratos answered. “Having an innkeeper who speaks some Greek is very handy, for me and especially for you men, since you haven’t learned any Aramaic.”
“Who hasn’t?” Moskhion said, and let loose with a guttural obscenity that sounded much fouler than anything a man might say in Greek.
Sostratos winced. “If that’s all you can say in the local language, you’d do better to keep your mouth shut,” he said. Moskhion guffawed at the effect he’d had.
“I can ask for bread. I can ask for wine. I can ask for a woman,” Aristeidas said. “Past that, what more do I need?” His attitude was practical if limited. He’d learned a few phrases that came in handy and didn’t worry about anything more.
“How about you, Teleutas?” Sostratos asked. “Have you picked up any Aramaic at all?”
“Not me. I’m not going to sound like I’m choking to death,” Teleutas said. Then he asked a question of his own: “When we get back to old Ithran’s inn, you going to try laying Zilpah again? Think you’ll get it in this time?”
Sostratos tried to stand on his dignity, saying, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He hoped he wasn’t turning red, or, if he was, that his beard would hide his flush. How had the sailors known?
Teleutas’ laugh was so raucous, so lewd, as to make Moskhion’s Aramaic obscenity seem clean beside it. “No offense, but sure you don’t. You think we didn’t see you mooning over her? Come on! I think you’ll do it this time, too. She likes you plenty, you bet. Sometimes they’re shy, that’s all. You’ve just got to push a little-and then you’ll push all you want.” He rocked his hips forward and back.
Moskhion and Aristeidas solemnly dipped their heads. Sostratos wondered if that meant his chances were pretty good, or simply that all three sailors were misreading the signs the same way.
I’m going to find out, he thought. I have to find out. The game seemed worth the risk. All of a sudden, he understood Menedemos much better than he’d ever wanted to. How can I rail at him when I know why he does it? he wondered unhappily.
He did his best to tell himself that, unlike his cousin, he wasn’t risking anything or anyone by trying to learn whether Zilpah would go to bed with him. But, also unlike Menedemos, he’d been to the Lykeion. He’d learned how to root out self-deception. He knew perfectly well that he was telling himself lies. They were soothing lies, pleasant lies, but lies nonetheless.
What if, for instance, Zilpah had gone to Ithran and told him Sostratos had tried to seduce her? What would the innkeeper do when the Rhodian showed up at his door again? Wouldn’t he be likely to try to smash in Sostratos’ skull with a jar of wine or perhaps to stab him or spear him with whatever weapons he kept around the inn? Suppose things were reversed. Suppose Ithran, in Rhodes, had paid undue attention to Sostratos’ wife {assuming I had a wife, Sostratos thought). What would I have done if he fell into my hands after that? Something he would remember to the end of his days, whether that was near at hand or far away.
And yet, knowing what Ithran might do on setting eyes on him, Sostratos led the sailors from the Aphrodite back toward the inn they’d quitted only a few days before. This is madness, he told himself, picking his way through the narrow, winding, rocky streets of Jerusalem. Every so often, he had to spend a few tiny silver coins on a passerby to get steered in the right direction. No one grabbed him by the front of the tunic and exclaimed, “Don’t go back there! You must be the woman-mad Ionian Ithran swore he’d kill!” Sostratos chose to take that as a good sign, though he recognized he might be deceiving himself again.
“This is the street,” Aristeidas said when they turned on to it. “We just passed the brothel-and there’s Ithran’s inn up ahead.”
“So it is,” Sostratos said in a hollow voice. Now that he was here, his heart pounded and his bowels felt loose. He was sure he’d made a dreadful mistake in returning. He started to say they ought to go somewhere else after all.
Too late for that-Ithran himself came out the front door of the inn with a basket full of rubbish, which he dumped in the street not far from the entrance. He started to go back inside, but then he caught sight of the four Rhodians heading his way. Sostratos tensed. He wondered if he should reach for Menedemos’ bow, not that he could have strung it, let alone shot, before Ithran charged.
But then the innkeeper… waved. “Hail, friends,” he called in his bad Greek. “You does good by Lake of Asphalt?”
“Pretty well, thanks,” Sostratos answered, breathing a silent sigh of relief. Whatever else had happened, Zilpah hadn’t said anything.
“You to stay a few day?” Ithran asked hopefully. “I have my old rooms back.” Sostratos realized he was trying to say, You have your old rooms back. “Thank you,” he said, and nodded, as people did in this part of the world. Switching from Greek to Aramaic, he added, “I thank you very much indeed, my master.”
“I am your slave,” Ithran said, also in Aramaic. “Name any boon, and it shall be yours.” Aramaic was made for flowery promises no one would or intended to keep.
I wonder what would happen if I said, “Give me your wife to keep my bed warm till I go back to Sidon,” Sostratos thought, and then, No, I don’t wonder. That would show the differences between polite promises and real ones, and show it in a hurry.
While such musings filled the Rhodian’s head, Ithran turned and shouted into the inn: “Zilpah! Pour wine! The Ionians have returned from the Lake of Asphalt.”
“Have they?” The Ioudaian woman’s voice, a mellow contralto, floated out into the street. “They are very welcome, then.”
“Yes.” Ithran nodded vigorously. He returned to Greek so all the men from the Aphrodite could understand: “You is all very welcome. Go in, drink wine. Slave will see to your beasts.”
Teleutas, Aristeidas, and Moskhion looked eager to do just what he’d said. In a dry voice, Sostratos told the sailors, “Get the goods off the donkey before we start drinking. We’ve come a long way to get what we’ve got. If we let somebody steal it, we might as well have stayed in Rhodes.”
A little sulkily, the men obeyed. It was only a few minutes before they did sit down in the taproom to drink the wine Zilpah had poured. The room was dark and shadowed, light sneaking in only through the doorway and a couple of narrow windows. That gloom and the inn’s thick walls of mud brick left the taproom much cooler than the bake-oven air outside.
“Is Hekataios still here?” Sostratos asked Zilpah when she refilled his cup.
She shook her head. “No. He left the day after you did, bound for his home in Egypt.” Her shrug was dismissive. “He is a clever man, but not so clever as he thinks he is.”
“I think you are right,” Sostratos said. He wondered if she would say the same thing about him after he left for Sidon. He hoped not, anyhow. Because the sailors from the akatos had learned so little Aramaic, he could speak to her as freely as if they weren’t there. He took advantage of that, adding, “I think you are beautiful.”
“I think you should not say these things,” Zilpah answered quietly. Out in the courtyard, Ithran started hammering away at something-perhaps at a door for one of the rooms. A burst of guttural curses in Aramaic proclaimed that he might have hammered his own thumb, too.
Aristeidas gulped down his wine. “What do you say we pay a visit to the girls down the street?” he said in Greek. Moskhion and Teleutas both dipped their heads. All three men hurried out of the inn.
“Where are they going?” Zilpah asked.
“To the brothel,” Sostratos said. Ithran kept pounding in the courtyard. As long as he did that, no one could have any doubts of where he was. Sostratos went on, “I was sorry to go. I am glad to be back.”