Sacred Land Page 2

  “I believe that,” Sostratos said in Greek. He’d dealt with Phoenician traders in a good many towns by the Aegean Sea. They were single-minded in the pursuit of profit. Since he was, too, he had less trouble with them than some Hellenes were wont to do. Sticking to Greek, he asked, “But what about the loudaioi?”

  “Oh. Them.” Himilkon’s shrug was expressive. In gutturally accented Greek of his own, he continued, “I still think you’re daft to want anything to do with them.”

  “Why?” Sostratos said. “The best balsam comes from Engedi, and you say Engedi is in their land, I’m sure I can get a better price from them than I’d get from Phoenician middlemen.”

  “You’ll likely pay less money,” Himilkon admitted. “But you’ll have more aggravation—I promise you that.”

  Sostratos shrugged. “That’s one of the things a merchant does—turns aggravation into silver, I mean.”

  “All right. Fair enough,” Himilkon said. “I’ll remember that and remind myself of it when I run into a Hellene who’s particularly annoying—and there are plenty of them, by the gods.”

  “Are there?” Sostratos said, and the Phoenician nodded. Isn’t that interesting? Sostratos thought. We find barbarians annoying, but who would have imagined they might feel the same about us? Truly custom is king of all. Herodotos had quoted Pindaros to that effect.

  Himilkon said, “The gods keep you safe on your journey. May the winds be good, may the seas be calm, and may the Macedonian marshals not go to war anywhere too close to you and your ship.”

  “May it be so,” Sostratos agreed. “By all the signs, Antigonos has a pretty solid grip on Phoenicia and its hinterland. I don’t think Ptolemaios can hope to take it away from him. No matter what they do to each other elsewhere along the shores of the Inner Sea, that seems a good bet,”

  “For your sake, my master, I hope you are right,” Himilkon said, falling back into Aramaic. “Whether the elephant tramples the lion or the lion pulls down the elephant, the mouse who gets caught in their battle always loses. Shall we go on with the lesson, or have you had enough?”

  “May it please you, my master, I have had enough,” Sostratos answered, also in Aramaic.

  Himilkon smiled and clapped his hands. “That is perfect—pronunciation, accent, everything. If I had another half a year to work with you, I could turn you into a veritable man of Byblos, may a pestilence take me if I lie.”

  “I thank you,” Sostratos said, knowing he meant it as a compliment. The Hellene tried to imagine himself a member of a folk that knew not philosophy. What would I do? How would I keep from going mad? Or would I see what I was missing? A man blind from birth doesn’t miss the beauty of a sunset.

  He got to his feet and left the Phoenician’s ramshackle warehouse. Hyssaldomos, Himilkon’s Karian slave, stood just outside, chewing on some brown bread. “Hail, O best one,” he said in Greek.

  “Hail,” Sostratos answered. He switched to Aramaic: “Do you understand this language, Hyssaldomos?”

  “Little bit,” the slave said, also in Aramaic. “Himilkon use sometimes. Greek easier.”

  That probably meant Greek was more like Hyssaldomos’ native Karian. Sostratos didn’t know for certain, though. Rhodes lay off the coast of Karia, and Rhodians had been dealing with Karians for centuries. Even so, only a handful of Karian words had entered the local Greek dialect. Few Rhodians spoke the tongue of their nearest barbarian neighbors, and he wasn’t one of them. But more and more Karians used Greek these days, either alongside their own language or instead of it.

  Now that Alexander’s conquered the Persian Empire, the whole world will have to learn Greek, Sostratos thought. In a few generations, wouldn’t his language replace not only local tongues like Karian and Lykian but also more widely spoken ones like Aramaic and Persian? He couldn’t see why not.

  The Aphrodite lay drawn up on the beach perhaps a plethron from Himilkon’s warehouse. The merchant galley’s planking would be good and dry when she put to sea. Till it got waterlogged again, that would give her a better turn of speed.

  A gull swooped down by the Aphrodite and flew away with a mouse struggling in its beak. One little pest that won’t make it on to the ship, Sostratos thought as he walked toward the merchant galley. He was a neat man and didn’t like dealing with vermin at sea. A couple of years before, he’d sailed with peafowl aboard the akatos. They’d done a fine job of eating roaches and centipedes and scorpions and mice—but they’d also proved that large pests aboard ship were worse than small ones.

  Sostratos laid a more or less affectionate hand on the Aphrodite’s flank. Thin lead sheets nailed to the timbers below the waterline helped shield the vessel from shipworms and kept barnacles and seaweed from fouling her bottom. Rhodian carpenters had been over the repairs they’d had done in Kos the summer before, after a collision with a round ship that came wallowing out of a rainstorm. The workmen on Kos had also been repairing Ptolemaios’ naval vessels at the time, so they should have known their business. Even so, Sostratos was glad the work met Rhodians’ approval. His own polis, in his biased opinion, held the best and boldest sailors among the Hellenes these days.

  One of the harborside loungers—a fellow who would do a little work now and then, when he needed a few oboloi for wine, or perhaps for bread—came up to Sostratos and said, “Hail. You sail aboard this one, don’t you?”

  “I’ve been known to, every now and again,” Sostratos said dryly. “Why?”

  “Oh, nothing,” the other man replied. “I was just wondering what she might be carrying when she goes into the sea, that’s all.”

  “She might be carrying almost anything. She’s taken everything from peafowl and lion skins and a gryphon’s skull”—Sostratos’ heart still ached when he thought about losing the gryphon’s skull to pirates the summer before, when he was on his way to show it off in Athens—”to something as ordinary as sacks of wheat.”

  The lounger clucked reproachfully. He tried again: “What will she have in her when she goes to sea?”

  “This and that,” Sostratos said, his voice bland. The lounger gave him an exasperated look. His answering smile said as little as he had. His father and uncle’s trading firm was far from the only one in the city of Rhodes. Some of their rivals might have paid a drakhma or two to find out what they’d be up to this sailing season. Men who hung around the harbor could make their money without getting calluses on their hands. They could—with a little help from others. Sostratos had no intention of giving that kind of help.

  This fellow, if nothing else, was persistent. “You know where you’ll be sailing?” he asked,

  “Oh, yes,” Sostratos said. The lounger waited. Sostratos said no more. The other man took longer than he should have to realize he wasn’t going to say any more. Muttering unpleasant ties under his breath, he turned away.

  I should have answered him in Aramaic, Sostratos thought. I’d have got rid of him quicker. Then he shrugged. He’d done what needed doing.

  Another man called out to him: “Hail, Sostratos! How are you?”

  “Hail, Khremes.” Sostratos had known the carpenter for years and liked him. He wouldn’t have to play games with him, as he had with the lounger. “I’m fine, thanks. How are you?”

  “Couldn’t be better,” Khremes told him. “Your cousin, he’s a pretty clever chap, isn’t he?”

  “Menedemos? I’m sure he’d be the first to agree with you,” Sostratos said, a little more sharply than he’d intended.

  A good-natured soul, Khremes missed the edge to Sostratos’ voice. He was also in the grip of enthusiasm: “That notion he had for the war galley made special to be a pirate hunter—that was wonderful,” he burbled. “A trihemiolia—a ship that can fight like an ordinary trireme and stay up with a pirate crew’s hemiolia. Fabulous! Why didn’t somebody think of it years ago?”

  Sostratos had hated pirates with a clear, cold loathing even before they attacked the Aphrodite and stole the gryphon’s skull. Now. . Now h
e wanted to see every sea robber ever born nailed to a cross and dying slowly and horribly. If someone praised Menedemos for coming up with a ship type that would make life harder for those whoresons, he wouldn’t complain.

  He said, “When something matters to my cousin, he goes after it.” As often as not, Menedemos’ ingenuity was aimed at other men’s wives. But he did hate pirates as much as Sostratos said. Sostratos had never heard of an honest sailor who didn’t hate them.

  “Good for him,” said Khremes, who didn’t have to worry about the results of some of Menedemos’ escapades.

  “Well, yes,” said Sostratos, who did. He went on, “We’re really going to start building trihemioliai, are we?”

  The carpenter dipped his head. “We sure are. The admirals spent all winter talking about it”—he opened and closed his thumb against his four bunched fingers to simulate a gabbling mouth—”and now it’s really going to happen. They’ll make three to begin with, and more if they turn out to be as good as everybody hopes.”

  “May it be so,” Sostratos said. Thinking of Menedemos as someone who’d done something important for Rhodes didn’t come easy. More than a little bemusedly, Sostratos continued, “To tell you the truth, I wouldn’t mind putting to sea in one of those new trihemioliai instead of our akatos here. We’re going east this year, so we’ll have to sail past the Lykian coast, and the Lykians are pirates at sea and bandits on land.”

  “Isn’t that the truth? Miserable barbarians.” Khremes paused. “Do you suppose you could use a trihemiolia for a merchant galley?”

  “No,” Sostratos answered without hesitation, and tossed his head to emphasize the word. “However much I’d like to, there’s not a chance it’d work,”

  “Why not?” the carpenter said. “You’d be the fastest trader on the sea.”

  “Yes, and also the most expensive,” Sostratos pointed out. “The Aphrodite sails with forty rowers, plus enough extra men to handle the sail with all the rowing benches filled. They all make at least a drakhma a day; most of them make a drakhma and a half. That’s two minai of silver every three days in wages, more or less. But a trihemiolia would carry more than three times as many men to pull the oars. That’d be—let me see—Zeus, that’d be about two minai every single day. We’d have to carry nothing but gold and rubies to have any chance of breaking even with expenses like that.”

  “Ah.” Khremes dipped his head. “No doubt you’re right, best one. I hadn’t thought about costs, only about the ship.”

  Sostratos was toikharkhos aboard the Aphrodite, Everything that had to do with the cargo fell to him. He thought of costs first, last, and always. But, because he liked Khremes, he let him down easy: “Well, my dear fellow, I wouldn’t know where to begin when it comes to putting a ship together.”

  “You begin at the beginning—where else?” the carpenter said. “You make your shell of planks, and you fasten them all together with mortises and tenons so the shell’s good and strong, and then you nail some ribs to the inside for a little extra stiffness.”

  “Well, everyone knows that much,” Sostratos agreed. “But knowing just how to do it—that’s your mystery.”

  “No mystery to it at all,” Khremes insisted. “Anybody who works around the harbor could make a proper job of it.”

  Sostratos didn’t want to argue with him. As far as the carpenter could see, the harbor was the whole world. Khremes never thought about tanners and potters and farmers, for whom the shipwright’s craft was altogether strange—and whose trades were as strange to him. His friends were other carpenters or men who worked in related trades. That all helped make him better at what he did, but did nothing to prove his judgment on matters unrelated to shipbuilding was particularly keen. Of course, he might not agree.

  “When you do sail off to Phoenicia, I expect you’ll slicker those barbarians right out of their sandals,” Khremes said.

  “I hope so,” Sostratos said, and his opinion of the carpenter’s judgment improved remarkably.

  Menedemos was furious and made only the slightest effort to hide it. “Olive oil?” He threw his hands in the air. “By the dog of Egypt, why are we taking olive oil to Phoenicia? They grow olives there, too, don’t they?”

  “Yes.” Sostratos sounded embarrassed, which didn’t happen very often. “We’re taking olive oil because—”

  “Don’t tell me,” Menedemos broke in. “Let me guess. We’re taking k because it’s what your new brother-in-law’s family makes. Am I right, or am I wrong?”

  “You’re right,” his cousin said unhappily. “Damonax used Erinna’s dowry to get some of the crop out of hock, and—”

  “And now he expects us to sell the oil and make him a nice profit,” Menedemos interrupted once more. “We might even do it if we were going to Alexandria, since they don’t grow olives there. But that’s not where we’re going. Did you tell him as much?”

  “Of course I did,” Sostratos said. “He doesn’t understand how these things work, though—not really, anyhow. He’s no trading man. And . . .plague take it, he is my new brother-in-law, so I can’t just tell him, ‘To the crows with you,’ the way I would with somebody who isn’t part of the family. So we have to do our best, that’s all.”

  “I’d like to do my best to boot him right into the harbor,” Menedemos growled, but then, reluctantly, he subsided. “Family ties.” He rolled his eyes. “My father’s disgusted, too, but he didn’t tell Damonax no, either. He has more trouble saying no to your brother-in-law than he ever did to me, I’ll tell you that.” The trouble his father had telling Damonax no rankled, like so many of the things his father did.

  “Believe me, it could have been worse,” Sostratos said. “When Damonax first came up with this scheme, he wanted to load the Aphrodite with oil to her gunwales, not leave a digit’s worth of space for any other cargo. He had the oil, so why shouldn’t we carry it?”

  “Why?” Menedemos exclaimed, “I’ll tell you-—”

  Now Sostratos cut him off: “My father and I have spent the past ten days arguing him down. We won’t be drowning in oil, anyhow. Even if we do have trouble unloading it, we’ll carry other things we know we can sell. Can’t go far wrong with good Rhodian perfume.”

  “Well, no,” Menedemos said. “And we still have some of the silk from Kos we got this past summer. All sorts of strange things come out of the east, but I think the Phoenicians will have a hard time matching that.”

  “I should say so.” Sostratos dipped his head. “And who knows what we’ll pick up along the way? We didn’t expect the gryphon’s skull last year, or the lion skins, or the tiger hide.”

  “And we got real money for the hides,” Menedemos said. “The skull...” He’d twitted Sostratos about it ever since he spotted it in the market square in Kaunos. “I’ll bet the pirate who stole it from the Aphrodite hasn’t lived it down with his pals yet,”

  “Too bad,” his cousin growled. “I still say we could have got something for it in Athens. After all, Damonax tried to buy it for six minai right here in Rhodes.”

  “And if that doesn’t prove he has no idea what to do with his money, gods only know what would,” Menedemos said.

  “Oh, go howl.” Sostratos eyed Menedemos, “Are you as eager to set sail as you were a year ago? You couldn’t wait to get out of Rhodes then.”

  “I won’t be sorry to see it drop below the horizon this sailing season, either,” Menedemos allowed. He had tried to make that less obvious this past winter. Evidently, he’d succeeded.

  His cousin frowned and scratched his head. “I never did understand why. You’ve got no outraged husbands sniffing after you here, or none I know of, anyway.” He studied Menedemos as if Menedemos were the same sort of interesting specimen as the gryphon’s skull. Sostratos had an itch to know, and he wouldn’t be satisfied till he scratched it.

  All Menedemos said was, “No, no outraged husbands here.”

  “What is it, then?” Sostratos picked at what puzzled him as if it were a sca
b.

  “My, aren’t we nosy today?” Menedemos murmured, and his cousin turned red. Menedemos brought the conversation back to the cargo the Aphrodite would be carrying. That was important to Sostratos, too, so he turned most of his formidable intelligence on the question. Most, but not all—Menedemos could see him casting about for a chance to start probing again.

  Well, my dear, I’m not going to give you one, Menedemos thought. Talk about outraged husbands—what would happen if I outraged my own father with my stepmother? I don’t want to find out, and so I won’t find out. But oh, by the gods, I fear she might want to go to bed with me, too.

  What would Philodemos do? No, Menedemos didn’t want to find out. His father had never stopped mocking him, hounding him, for his love affairs. If the older man were to discover himself the butt of one . . . Sure enough, it might not stop at words. Menedemos feared it wouldn’t. It was all too likely to end in blood.

  And so I won’t sleep with Baukis, no matter how much I want to—and no matter how much she might want me to. And, O cousin of mine, I don’t care how curious you are, either. Some secrets are going to stay secret, that’s all.

  “Can we get more papyrus before we set sail?” Sostratos asked.

  “Papyrus?” Menedemos echoed in some surprise. “I’m sure we can— the Egyptian grain ships that put in here often carry the stuff. But why should we bother? Phoenicia’s a lot closer to Egypt than we are.”

  His cousin didn’t say, You thick-skull! or anything of the sort. But the look he got made him wish Sostratos had come right out and called him an idiot. It wasn’t that Sostratos was right so often, though he was. In fact, that made him very useful. But when he stared at you with pity in his eyes because you were too stupid to see what was obvious to him ... I haven’t wrung his neck yet, Menedemos thought. I don’t know why I haven’t, but I haven’t.

  “Ptolemaios and Antigonos are at war again,” Sostratos said. “Ships from Egypt won’t be going up to the Phoenician ports these days, not when Antigonos is holding those ports. If we can bring papyrus there, it ought to fetch a good price.”