Harry Turtledove - The Gryphon's Skull

“It makes a lot of difference,” Menedemos answered. “It makes a difference in what we end up selling, and for how much.”

Sostratos shrugged again. “We'll show some profit this sailing season. We won't show a really big one, the way we did coming back from Great Hellas after the peafowl and that mad dash down to Syracuse loaded with grain.”

“That wasn't mad. That was brilliant,” Menedemos said. It had been his idea.

“It turned out to be brilliant, because we got away with it. That doesn't mean it wasn't mad,” Sostratos said, relentlessly precise as usual. A fly lit on Menedemos' hand. He brushed it away. Back among the trees, a cuckoo called. Sostratos continued, “Without the gryphon's skull, whether we go to Athens or not doesn't matter to me. It's just another polis now, as far as I'm concerned.”

“You really do mean that,” Menedemos said. His cousin dipped his head. He looked as sad as a man whose child had just died. Trying to cheer him up, Menedemos asked, “Couldn't you—I don't know— tell your philosopher friends about the gryphon's skull?”

He didn't know whether he'd cheered Sostratos, but saw he had amused him. “Kind of you to think of such things, my dear, but it wouldn't do,” Sostratos said. “It would be like. . .” He paused a moment in thought, then grinned and pointed at Menedemos. “Like you bragging about some woman you've had, where nobody else has seen her or knows whether you're telling the truth.”

“Don't you listen to the sailors?” Menedemos said. “Men talk like that all the time.”

“Of course they do. I'm not saying they don't,” Sostratos answered. “But the point is, half the time the people who listen to them think, By the gods, what a liar he is! If I can't hold up the skull to show the men of the Lykeion and the Academy, why should they believe me?”

“Because they know you?” Menedemos suggested. “I'd be likelier to believe you bragging about a woman than I would most people I can think of. I'm still jealous about that hetaira back in Miletos, and you didn't even brag about her.”

“Men know about women. They know what they're like—as much as men can hope to, anyhow,” Sostratos said, and Menedemos laughed. His cousin went on, “But suppose men had only known boys up till now. Think about that.”

“I like women better,” Menedemos said. “They enjoy it, too, and boys usually don't.”

“Never mind that,” Sostratos said impatiently. “Suppose all we'd known were boys, and somebody started talking about what a woman was like. Would you believe him if he didn't have a woman there with him to prove what he was saying?”

Menedemos thought about it. “No, I don't suppose I would,” he admitted.

“All right, then. That's what I'd be up against, talking about the gryphon's skull without being able to show it.” Sostratos let out another sigh, a lover pining for a lost love. “It's over now. Nothing to be done about it. Let's find this Theagenes and get the ship purified.”

The priest was pruning a fig tree in a little orchard by the temple when the Rhodians came up to him. “Hail,” Menedemos called.

“Hail,” Theagenes answered over his shoulder. “Just a moment, and I'll be right with you.” A smooth-barked branch thudded to the ground. Theagenes grunted in satisfaction and lowered his saw. He turned toward Menedemos and Sostratos. He was a short man, shorter than Menedemos, but with wiry muscles shifting under his skin as he moved. “There. That's better. Now, what can I do for the two of you? You'll be from the ship that got in last night?”

“That's right.” Menedemos gave his name and Sostratos'. “If you heard that, you probably heard we fought off pirates, too. We had a man killed, and another who looks sure to die of his wounds.”

Theagenes dipped his head. “I did hear that, yes. You'll want me to purify the vessel?”

“If you please,” Menedemos said. “And we'd like to sacrifice here as a thanks offering for driving those whoresons away.” Sostratos stirred at that. Menedemos had been sure he would; he hated expense. But it needed doing.

“Good enough.” The priest hesitated, then went on, “This wounded man, if he dies after I finish the job ...”

“You'd have to do it over again,” Sostratos said.

“That's what I meant, yes,” Theagenes agreed. “A death is a death. As far as the ritual goes, how it happens doesn't matter.”

“We'll move him to the boat,” Menedemos said. He'd done that with the dying sailor after the clash with the Roman trireme the year before. “Purifying that will be less work for you—and if you can't come for some reason, well, we can buy another boat.”

“I understand,” Theagenes said. “Let me get my lustration bowl, and then I'll come to the harbor with you.” He went into the temple.

When he came out again, Sostratos stirred. “How long has this temple had that bowl?” he whispered to Menedemos.

“What do you—? Oh.” Menedemos saw what his cousin meant. The bowl had an image of Poseidon in it. The god was done in black against a red background. That style had been replaced by red figures on a black background about the time of the Persian Wars. How many black-figure bowls still survived? Menedemos said, “They're very careful of it.”

“I should think so,” his cousin answered.

The two Rhodians and the priest walked back toward the seashore. When Theagenes got a good look at the Aphrodite , he said, “Your ship is too beamy to make a proper pirate, but I can see how people might think at first glance she was one.”

“We've had it happen, yes,” Menedemos said. “As far as I'm concerned, Poseidon or someone ought to sweep all pirates off the sea.”

“I wish that might happen myself,” Theagenes said. “The world would be a better place.”

Menedemos waved to the rowers waiting for his return. The men waved back. They took him and Sostratos and Theagenes out to the Aphrodite . Dorimakhos' body lay, wrapped in bloodstained sailcloth, at the stern of the boat. As Theagenes neared the akatos, he filled that ancient bowl with seawater. He handed it to Menedemos before scrambling from the boat to the ship.

What would he do if I dropped it? Menedemos wondered. But he didn't: he just gave it back to Theagenes. The priest looked at the dark stains on the Aphrodite 's planking. “You did have a hard fight here,” he remarked.

“It would have been harder still if we'd lost it,” Sostratos said.

“Of course,” Theagenes said. He went up and down the ship, sprinkling the water from the bowl over the planks and murmuring prayers in a low voice. As he came up onto the poop deck, he remarked, “The sea purifies anything it touches.”

“I suppose that's why, in the Iliad, Talthybios the herald threw the boar Agamemnon sacrificed when he finally apologized to Akhilleus into the sea,” Menedemos said.

“Just so.” Theagenes sounded pleased. “The carcass of the boar carried the burden of Agamemnon's oath. It should not have been eaten by men. The sea was the path of its travel to earth, sun, and the Furies.” The priest beamed at Menedemos. “I see you are a man who thinks on such things.”

“Well...” Menedemos was no more modest than he had to be, but he couldn't take that kind of praise with Sostratos standing beside him. He said, “My cousin leans more toward philosophy than I do.”

“I don't particularly lean toward philosophy myself,” Theagenes said. “I think we ought to do as the gods want us to do, not make up fine-sounding excuses to do as we please.”

Sostratos raised an eyebrow at that. Before he could start the sort of argument that had made Sokrates a candidate for hemlock, Menedemos said, “We do thank you for purifying the ship.” He gave Sostratos a look that said, Please don't.