Menedemos didn’t intend to let Mattan know that was what he thought. He put on the most severe expression he could and said, “I’ll give you three and a half.”
Mattan said something pungent in Aramaic. Menedemos bowed to him. That made the Phoenician laugh. They haggled for a while, as much for the sake of the game as because either of them was very worried about the final price. At last, they settled on five sigloi the jar.
After they clasped hands to seal the bargain, Mattan son of Mago said, “You not tell. How much of jars you want?”
“How many have you got?” Menedemos asked.
“I look.” Mattan counted the amphorai of Byblian resting in their places on the wooden shelves that lined the walls of his shop. Then he went into a back room behind the counter. When he came out, he said, “Forty-six.” To make sure he had the number right, he opened and closed his hands four times, and showed one open hand and the upthrust index finger of the other.
“Have you got a counting board?” Menedemos asked. He had to eke out the question with gestures before Mattan nodded and took it out from under the counter. Menedemos flicked pebbles back and forth in the grooves. After a little while, he looked up at the Phoenician and said, “I owe you two hundred thirty sigloi, then.”
Mattan son of Mago had watched as he worked out the answer. The Phoenician nodded. “Yes, that right,” he said.
“Good, then,” Menedemos said. “I’ll bring you the money, and I’ll bring sailors from my ship to take away the wine.”
“Is good. I here,” Mattan said.
Had the full crew been aboard the Aphrodite, they could have done the job in one trip. With so many of them off roistering in Sidon, it took three. By the time they finished hauling the heavy amphorai to the merchant galley, the men were sweaty and exhausted. A couple of the ones who could swim jumped naked off the ship into the water of the harbor to cool down. Menedemos gave all the sailors who’d hauled wine jars an extra day’s pay-that wasn’t part of their regular work.
“Smart, skipper,” Diokles said approvingly. “They’ll like you better for it.”
“They earned it,” Menedemos replied. “They worked like slaves there.”
“We’ve got a good cargo for the trip home, though,” the keleustes said. “That fancy silk you found, the crimson dye, now this good wine-”
“We’re only missing one thing,” Menedemos said.
Diokles frowned. “What’s that? With all we’ve picked up here, I can’t think of anything.”
Menedemos answered in one word: “Sostratos.”
Sostratos peered back at Jerusalem from the ridge to the north from which he’d first got a good look at the chief town of the Ioudaioi. He sighed. Next to him, Teleutas laughed. “Was she as good in bed as all that?” he asked. Aristeidas and Moskhion both chuckled. They also crowded closer to hear Sostratos’ reply.
“I don’t know,” he said after a bit of thought. He didn’t see how he could keep quiet, not when the sailors already knew so much more than he might have wished. “I really don’t know. But it’s… different when you’re not buying it, isn’t it?”
Aristeidas dipped his head. “It’s sweetest when they give it to you for love.”
Menedemos had always felt that way, which was why he liked to chase other men’s wives instead of-or in addition to-going to brothels. Now, after bedding Zilpah, Sostratos understood. He sighed again. He wouldn’t forget her. But he feared she would spend the rest of her days trying to forget him. That wasn’t what he’d had in mind, but it was how things seemed to have worked out.
Teleutas laughed again, a coarse, altogether masculine laugh. “You ask me, it’s just fine whenever you manage to stick it in there.” The other two sailors laughed, too. Moskhion dipped his head in agreement.
In one sense, Sostratos supposed Teleutas had a point. The pleasure of the act itself wasn’t much different for a man regardless of whether he bedded a whore or his own wife or someone else’s. But what it meant, what he felt about himself and his partner afterwards-those could, and indeed almost had to, vary widely.
Had Menedemos been there, Sostratos would have taken the argument further. With Teleutas, he let it drop. The less he had to talk to the sailor, the better he liked it. He said, “Let’s keep moving, that’s all. The faster we go, the sooner we’ll get back to Sidon and the Aphrodite.”
Aristeidas, Moskhion, and Teleutas all murmured approvingly at that. Moskhion said, “By the gods, it’ll be nice to speak Greek again with more people than just us.”
“That’s right.” Aristeidas dipped his head. “By now, we’re all sick of listening to each other, anyhow.” He glanced over at Sostratos, then hastily added, “Uh, meaning no offense, young sir.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Sostratos said. “I know you’re sick of me.”
He didn’t mention the obvious corollary. Aristeidas did it for him: “You’re sick of us, too, eh?”
Once again, Sostratos faced the dilemma of choosing between an unpalatable truth and an obvious lie. In the end, he chose neither. With a wry smile, he asked, “How on earth could you dream of such a thing?” That made the sailors laugh, which was better than offending them or treating them like fools.
They tramped on. After a while, Teleutas said, “I think we ought to look to our weapons. We’ve come this far without any trouble. It’d be a shame if we got robbed when we were so close to getting back to Sidon.”
Sostratos wanted to tell him he was worrying over nothing. He wanted to, but knew he couldn’t. What he did say, regretfully, was, “That’s a good idea.”
He’d never let Menedemos’ bow get far from him while he was on the road. Now he took it out of its case and strung it. The case itself, which also held his arrows, he wore at his left side, slung over his right shoulder with a leather strap. “You look like a Skythian nomad,” Aristeidas said.
“The case looks like a Skythian nomad’s,” Sostratos said, tossing his head, “for we use the same style they do-I suppose we borrowed it from them. But tell me, my dear, when have you ever imagined a Skythian nomad aboard a plodding mule?” That made the sailors laugh again. Sostratos, a thoroughly indifferent rider even on a mule, thought it was pretty funny, too.
Toward noon, half a dozen Ioudaioi came down the road toward the Hellenes. The strangers were all young men, all on the ragged side, and all armed with spears or swords. They gave Sostratos and his companions long, thoughtful looks as the two parties drew near. The Rhodians looked back, not in a way suggesting they wanted a fight, but as if to say they could put up a good one if they had to.
Both little bands got halfway off the road as they edged past each other. Neither seemed to want to give the other any excuse for starting trouble. “Peace be unto you,” Sostratos called to the Ioudaioi in Aramaic.
“And to you also peace,” a man from the other band replied.
One of the other Ioudaioi muttered something else, something Sostratos was even gladder to hear: “More trouble than they’re worth.” A couple of the young man’s friends nodded.
Despite that, Sostratos looked back over his shoulder several times to make sure the Ioudaioi weren’t turning around to come after his companions and him. Once, he saw a Ioudaian looking back over his shoulder at him and the sailors. “We made them respect us,” he told the other Rhodians.
“A good thing, too,” Moskhion said, “for I always respect bastards who outnumber me-you’d best believe I do.”
“If we run into six bandits, or eight, or even ten, we’re probably fine,” Sostratos said, “because a little band like that can see we have teeth. They might beat us, but we’d cost them half their men. One of those fellows called us more trouble than we’re worth. That’s how most bands would feel about us.”
“What about a band with forty or fifty men in it, though?” Aristeidas asked worriedly. “A bandit troop that big could roll right over us and hardly even know we were there.”