“No,” Menedemos said. “You would be the one to care more for learning about bats than for learning about women, wouldn’t you?”
Sostratos winced. “I didn’t say that.”
And so he hadn’t, but Menedemos, having been embarrassed over the bats, was delighted to take a little revenge. If he ruffled his cousin’s feathers (or, seeing that those creatures were bats, his fur), too bad.
The trouble with being angry at someone aboard an akatos, as Sostratos had long since discovered, was that you couldn’t get away from him. The ship wasn’t big enough. And so, even though he thought the crack Menedemos had made was grossly unfair, he couldn’t go off by himself and sulk. The only possible place for him to go off by himself was up on the tiny foredeck, but he didn’t have the luxury of sulking there. If he stood on the foredeck, he had to do lookout duty.
That he did, staring out at the water of the Inner Sea in lieu of looking back at his cousin. But the first thing that crossed his mind then was how, had everything gone well, Aristeidas would have stood here instead. He blamed himself because the sharp-eyed sailor wasn’t. Blaming himself, he forgot all about blaming Menedemos.
More big bats flew overhead the next evening, as the Aphrodite neared the town of Kourion. Sostratos pretended not to notice them. Menedemos didn’t say anything about them, either: a strange sort of truce, but a truce even so.
Menedemos even made an effort to be friendly, asking, “What do you know about Kourion? You know something about almost every place where we stop.”
“Not much about this one, I’m afraid,” Sostratos answered. “ King Stasanor of Kourion went over to the Persians during the Cypriot rebellion almost two hundred years ago. Thanks to his treachery, the Persians won the battle on the plains near Salamis, and the rebellion failed.”
“Sounds like something a town’d rather not be remembered for,” Menedemos remarked. “What else do you know?”
Sostratos frowned, trying to flog more bits from his memory. “Kourion is a colony sent out from Argos,” he said, “and they worship an odd Apollo here.”
Diokles dipped his head. “That’s right, young sir: Apollo Hylates.”
“Apollo of the Wood-yes! Thanks,” Sostratos said. “I couldn’t recall the details. You know more than I do here, Diokles. Go on, if you would.”
“I don’t know much more,” the oarmaster said, suddenly shy. “I’ve only been here a couple of times myself. But I do know the god has strange rites, and anyone who dares touch his altar gets thrown off those cliffs yonder.” He pointed to bluffs west of the town. As cliffs went, they weren’t very impressive; Sostratos had seen far higher and steeper ones in Lykia and in Ioudaia. Still, a man flung from the top was bound to die when he hit the bottom, which made them high enough to punish sacrilege.
Menedemos asked what struck Sostratos as a couple of eminently reasonable questions: “Why would anybody want to touch that altar, if people know what happens to those who do? And how often is anybody going to be mad enough to do it?”
“I couldn’t begin to tell you, skipper,” Diokles replied. “All I know is what I remember-or what I think I remember-from when I did put in here. That was years ago now, so I may have it wrong.”
No war galleys patrolled outside Kourion, or none Sostratos saw. He hadn’t spied any around Kition, either. Ptolemaios seemed to be keeping his whole fleet at Salamis, that being the port closest to the Phoenician coastline from which Antigonos might launch an attack against Cyprus. And if the ruler of Egypt had garrisoned Kourion, as Sostratos assumed he had, the local commander was most incurious. No one asked any questions of the Aphrodite’s crew except the longshoremen who moored the merchant galley to a quay.
“Whence come ye?” a naked man inquired in the old-fashioned Cypriot dialect as he made a line fast. “Whither be ye bound?”
As usual, Menedemos told him, “We’re the Aphrodite, out of Rhodes. We’re heading home from Sidon.” The Doric drawl Sostratos’ cousin spoke seemed all the stronger after the longshoreman’s archaic speech.
“ Rhodes, say you, good sir? And Sidon? In sooth, you’ve traveled far, and seen many things passing strange. What think you the most curious amongst ‘em?”
“I’ll answer that, if I may,” Sostratos said, and Menedemos waved for him to go on. He did: “In loudaia, inland from the Phoenician coast, there’s a lake full of water so salty, a man can’t drown in it. He’ll float on the surface with head and shoulders and feet sticking out into the air.”
“Tush! Go to!” the Cypriot exclaimed. “Think you to gull me so? You rank cozener! Why, water’s water, be it salt or fresh. An you throw a man in’t, if he swim not, he’ll sink down and drown. ‘Tis but natural that it be so. Who told you such lies?”
“No one told me,” Sostratos said. “I saw this with my own eyes, felt it with my own body. I went into this lake, I tell you, and it bore me up from the great amount of salt in it.”
Try as he would, though, he couldn’t make the longshoreman believe him. “By Apollo Hylates, I’ve met folk like you aforetimes,” the fellow said. “Always ready with a tall tale, the which no man hereabouts may check. Go to, I say again! You’ll not catch me crediting such nonsense and moonshine.”
Sostratos wanted to insist he was telling the truth. He wanted to, but he didn’t bother. He knew he would only waste his time and end up out of temper. People who often clung to the most absurd local superstitions wouldn’t trust a foreigner to tell them the truth about a distant land. The Cypriot had asked him for a strange story and then refused to believe it once he got it.
Moskhion came up onto the poop deck. “Don’t worry about it, young sir,” he said. “Some people are just natural-born fools, and you can’t do a thing about it.”
“I know,” Sostratos said. “Arguing with somebody like that is nothing but a waste of breath. He wouldn’t have believed you and Teleutas, either.”
“That’s why I kept quiet,” Moskhion said, dipping his head. “I didn’t see any point in quarreling, that’s all. It wasn’t on account of I wouldn’t back you.”
“Of course not,” Sostratos said. “I’d never think such a thing, not when we fought side by side there in the rocks north of Gamzo. We owe each other our lives. We’re not going to split apart over a foolish argument with somebody who’s probably never gone fifty stadia from Kourion in his life.”
Menedemos said, “We still have a little while before sunset. Shall we go into the agora and see what they’re selling there?”
“Well, why not?” Sostratos answered. “You never can tell. I wouldn’t bet on finding anything worth buying, but I might be wrong. And walking around in any market square will remind me I’m back among Hellenes.”
His cousin dipped his head. “Yes, I had the same thought.” He ran the gangplank from the poop deck to the quay. “Let’s go.”
Kourion wasn’t a big city, but it was an old one. Even its larger streets meandered in every direction. One of these days, Sostratos supposed, someone might rebuild the place with a neat Hippodamian grid of avenues, such as Rhodes and Kos and other newer foundations enjoyed. Meanwhile, the locals knew their way around, while strangers had to do their best. Eventually, he and Menedemos did find the agora.
Men wandered from stall to stall, examining produce and pots and leather goods and nets and carved wood and cloth and a hundred other things. Sellers praised their goods; buyers sneered. Men with trays ambled through the square, selling figs and wine and fried prawns and pastries sweetened with honey. Knots of men gathered here and there, arguing and gesticulating. It was the most ordinary scene imaginable, in any town full of Hellenes along the Inner Sea.