Harry Turtledove - The Gryphon's Skull

The Rhodian proxenos' slave brought in the wine. Kleiteles ordered a stronger mix than he had the night before. After a couple of cups, he sang a bawdy song in a strong, true baritone. It wasn't a regular symposion, but it came close. Kleiteles looked expectantly toward Menedemos.

Thinking of Xenophanes crossing the Styx gave Menedemos his inspiration. He quoted Kharon, the ferryman of the dead, from Aristophanes' Frogs:

“ 'Who's off to a rest from evils and affairs? Who's off to the Plain of Oblivion, or to take the fleece

from a donkey, Or to Kerberos' crew, or to the crows, or to Tainaron?' “

He'd been to Cape Tainaron himself the year before. These days, instead of being nowhere to speak of, it was a hiring center for mercenaries. Menedemos rolled on with the Frogs, going through Dionysos' preposterous confrontation with the chorus of croakers.

Kleiteles laughed out loud. “That's good stuff,” he said, raising his cup in salute to Menedemos—and perhaps to Dionysos, too. “Koax,koax” He chuckled again, then swung his gaze toward Sostratos. “And what have you got for us, best one?”

Menedemos wondered if his cousin would lecture, as he often liked to do—perhaps about Lysandros the Spartan, who'd evidently-been an important fellow a hundred years before. But Sostratos had something else in mind. “Me?” he said. “I'm going to talk about gryphons.”

And he did, at some length: about the gold-guarding gryphons of the north and the one-eyed Arimaspioi who were supposed to steal their hoarded gold from them; about the way the nomadic Skythians and the Hellenic artists in their pay portrayed gryphons (he's listened more to Teleutas than I thought, went through Menedemos' mind); and about the way gryphons, if there were such things, really looked—all without mentioning that the Aphrodite carried a gryphon's skull along with its other cargo. Menedemos had heard the pieces of the talk before, but never all together. He was impressed almost in spite of himself. When Sostratos talked about something that interested him, he interested those hearing him, too.

He certainly interested Kleiteles. “Euge!” the proxenos exclaimed. “How do you go on about beasts you say are mythical as if you'd seen one just the other day?”

“Do I?” To Menedemos' ear, Sostratos sounded a little too bland to be convincing. But Kleiteles, who'd been drinking hard, wasn't a critical audience. He just dipped his head to show he thought Sostratos did. Menedemos' cousin smiled a small, secretive smile. “Homer was blind, they say. He never saw the things he sang about, but he's made others see them ever since.”

“That's twice lately you've had praise for the poet,” Menedemos said. Sostratos stuck out his tongue as far as it would go, as if he were a hideous Gorgon painted on a hoplite's shield. He and Menedemos both laughed.

So did Kleiteles, even if he didn't understand all of the joke the cousins shared. He'd drunk himself thoughtful, as he proved when he told Sostratos, “You have a gift for explaining things. Do you know your letters? You must, a clever fellow like you.” When Sostratos didn't deny it, the Rhodian proxenos went on, “You ought to write down what you just said, so it doesn't get lost.”

“Maybe I will, one day,” Sostratos replied. “I've thought about it.”

“You should.” Kleiteles swigged from his cup. “Shall we have another round of songs and such?”

“If you've got the girls waiting in our bedrooms, I wouldn't mind going back there now,” Menedemos said.

“I do.” The proxenos laughed. “You two can screw yourselves silly with them. If I brought a house slave to bed, though, my wife would never let me hear the end of it. Come on.” He picked up a lamp from a table. “I'll take you back there.”

When Menedemos went into his chamber, he nodded to the slave on the bed. “Hail, Eunoa.”

“Hail,” she said. “We didn't get a chance to do it this morning.” By that, she doubtless meant, You didn't get the chance to give me anything this morning. Menedemos dipped his head, thinking, If she were a man, she'd be at Cape Tainaron now. She's mercenary enough. She asked, “Did Ptolemaios really want to see you?”

“Yes,” Menedemos said, and Eunoa looked impressed, and also proud, as if giving herself to someone who'd met the great man somehow made her more important. Slaves often basked in their masters' reflected glory; this seemed more of the same. Menedemos stripped off his tunic and lay down on the bed beside her.

As she had the night before, Eunoa fought shy of simply letting him take her. “I don't want to have a baby,” she repeated.

Menedemos frowned. She was supposed to be there for his pleasure, not the other way round. But he humored her, sitting at the edge of the bed with his legs splayed wide. Eunoa scowled; she liked that less than giving him her backside. She finally squatted between his legs, though, and bent her head over his manhood. His fingers tangled in her hair, guiding her and urging her on.

Before long, she pulled back, coughing and choking a little. She found the chamber pot under the bed and spat into it. Sated and lazy, Menedemos gave her half a drakhma. He would have had to pay a good deal more for the same pleasure in a brothel. They stretched out on the bed side by side. Menedemos ran a hand along the sweet bare curve of her flank, then blew out the lamp. The room plunged into blackness. He fell asleep almost at once.

When the sharp knock woke Sostratos, he thought for a moment he was dreaming of what had happened the morning before. As he had then, he lay tangled with Kleiteles' slave, Thestylis. He and the woman both looked around in bleary surprise. Dawn was trickling in through the shutters.

Another knock sounded, this one next door. “Alypetos is here again,” KleiteJes said, which convinced Sostratos he really was awake. “Ptolemaios wants to see both of you gentlemen, at once.”

“But do I want to see Ptolemaios?” Sostratos muttered. He tossed his head in annoyance. That didn't matter. Even a free Hellene found limits to his freedom when he dealt with a Macedonian marshal. Sostratos patted Thestylis, saying, “Go back to sleep if you can. This has nothing to do with you.” He threw on his tunic and went out into Kleiteles' courtyard.

Menedemos came out of the adjacent room at the same time. He too looked unhappy. “What is it now?” he demanded of Alypetos.

Ptolemaios' henchman only shrugged. “Come with me,” he said.

Grumbling and yawning, Sostratos and Menedemos went. As they had the day before, they found Ptolemaios at breakfast. This morning, though, he offered them none, but fixed them with the sort of glare calculated to make them remember all their sins and fear punishment for everyone. Sostratos did his best to show no expression at all. Does he know about the emeralds? he wondered nervously. His eyes flicked to Menedemos. His cousin, fortunately, was not a man to show guilt even if he felt it.

Ptolemaios thrust out his boulder of a chin and growled, “Why didn't you two tell me you had one of that one-eyed bastard's officers aboard your ship when you sailed into Knidos?”

He doubtless meant to intimidate them. But, since it had nothing to do with the gems, his blunt question came more as a relief than anything else. “Why should we have?” Sostratos answered. “Rhodes is free and autonomous and neutral. We can carry whoever pays our fare.”

“He paid ten drakhmai, too,” Menedemos added.

“Ten drakhmai, for passage from Rhodes to Knidos? You cheated him right and proper,” Ptolemaios said. His anger seemed to evaporate; he might have donned it as a man dons a himation on a chilly morning and sheds it when the sun climbs higher. He eyed the two traders. “Free and neutral Rhodians, eh?”