Harry Turtledove - Salamis

Boats from the Anatolian mainland or from Cyprus might also visit here. Those from the mainland could be full of fishermen, or they could be full of spies: Antigonos ruled Asia Minor, after all. Sostratos realized the same also held true for Cyprus now that Demetrios had brought it under his father’s sway.

But even spies would have fish in their boat’s hold to disguise their real business. And even spies, however anxious they were to pick up local news, would also carry some from their home port. So Sostratos drifted over to the new-come boat.

As soon as he heard the fishermen talking, he knew they were Cypriots. Hardly anyone from anywhere else in the Hellenic world spoke that kind of Greek. He remembered thinking how listening to them made him feel as if he’d fallen back through time to Homer’s day when Ptolemaios’ ill-fated fleet anchored in the harbor at Paphos.

“In good sooth, a king is risen once more in the land,” one of the men in the boat was telling the Rhodians who’d already gathered on the pier by the boat.

“Nay, a pair of kings,” said another man, older than the first. Only a Cypriot was likely to come out with the dual form of a word like basileus , which came from an uncommon class of nouns. This fellow sounded as if he trotted it out every day. For all Sostratos knew, he did. The older man continued, “The Demetrios dispatched to his father a lackey, to tell him of the victories he’d won, on account of which the Antigonos was proclaimed king. And he forthwith sent his victorious son a matching diadem, so they may conjointly rule their realm.”

That was as much as Sostratos needed to hear. It was, in fact, what he’d been waiting to hear, that or something very much like it. As the Cypriot had said, there were kings in the land once again.

Sostratos suspected there would soon be more of them, too. If Antigonos and Demetrios wore crowns, how could Ptolemaios not match them? Off in the east, Seleukos would surely do the same; he already behaved in a nearly royal fashion. The lesser players in Europe, Lysimakhos and Kassandros, likely wouldn’t be far behind.

Full of such musings, Sostratos got almost to his house on instinct: he certainly didn’t pay much attention to where he was going. In fact, he nearly ran into Menedemos, who was coming down the street while he was going up.

“Good thing you weren’t driving a cart, my dear,” Menedemos said. “You would have run me down and killed me—and then, once you noticed you’d done it, you would have been surprised.” Sostratos stammered apologies. His cousin waved them aside. “Never mind that. What did you hear that made you forget the outside world?”

“You know me too well,” Sostratos said. “There’s a boat from Cyprus in the harbor. We can bow before King Antigonos and King Demetrios.”

“Can we, now?” Menedemos said. Sostratos dipped his head. Menedemos went on, “I only wish I were more surprised.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Sostratos said. “I wanted to tell my father the news first, but you’ve got it ahead of him.”

“I’ll go back to the house and tell my father.” Menedemos made a face. “I will unless you pretend you haven’t seen me after all. Then you or Uncle Lysistratos can do it. I’ll act properly amazed when he lets me know, I promise.”

“Whatever you want, of course. But are you quarreling with your father again?” Since Sostratos rarely quarreled with his father, he saw no reason for anyone else to do anything so foolish.

Menedemos looked at him—looked through him, really—with eyes so perfectly opaque, they might have been made from Egyptian glass. “If you’ll do me the favor, I’ll thank you for it. But past that …. Past that, my dear, it’s really no business of yours how I run my life.”

“I’ll do it,” Sostratos said, and not another word. Ears burning, he went into his own house to give his father the news.

As Menedemos had said he would, he artfully acted astonished when his father told him Antigonos and Demetrios were now crowned kings. The affairs of princes worried him because those princes cast hungry glances at his polis. If they hadn’t, he wouldn’t have given a fig for them.

The affairs of his own household counted a great deal more, as such affairs are apt to. That Baukis had come through childbirth safe and that the midwife had delivered her of a son (of his son?) delighted him. That he couldn’t speak to her in private for even a moment threatened to drive him mad.

Talking with her in private had always been a risky business. You never could tell when a slave might overhear whatever you were about to say that could least bear overhearing. It was no coincidence that slaves who snooped and slaves who accidentally heard things they shouldn’t were staples of comic drama. In comedy, they made the audience guffaw. In real life ….

In real life, Menedemos found himself even more frustrated than he had been before Baukis learned she was with child. Before, at least she’d walked through the whole house. She’d had some memorable squabbles with Sikon when the cook spent more on opson than she thought he should have.

Now, with Diodoros to look after, Baukis hardly left the women’s quarters at all. When she did, she always had a slave woman or two fluttering around here. They were even worse in the quarters, as Menedemos saw whenever he went in with his father. He couldn’t visit by himself, not in propriety.

Days were often hottest when the sun was sliding down the ecliptic toward the autumnal equinox. One of those days was hot enough to drive Baukis and Diodoros out of the rooms where they spent so much time and to the shady part of the courtyard.

“If we spend another minute up there, we’ll bake, and Sikon can pour melted cheese over us and serve us up for opson tonight,” she said.

“It’s hot, sure enough,” Menedemos agreed. He had to stick to commonplaces—a slave woman stood behind Baukis, fanning her mistress and the baby and now and then herself with a fan made from woven straw.

“This gives Diodoros something different to look at, too,” Baukis went on. She glanced at the herbs and flowers in the small garden at the center of the courtyard and clucked sadly. “This heat is killing most of the plants. The slaves don’t see to watering them the way I did.”

“Well, what can you expect from slaves?” Like Baukis, Menedemos spoke as if the woman with the fan weren’t there. Unless they were talking about something their animate property shouldn’t hear (what they felt for each other, for instance), they, like any Hellenes rich enough to own slaves, took them largely for granted.

Sure enough, Baukis answered, “I wish they weren’t so lazy.” This time, Menedemos did briefly wonder how energetic he’d be if he had to work for someone else all the time without ever getting paid. He didn’t worry about slavery as an institution; he worried about getting sold into it if Demetrios and Antigonos conquered Rhodes.

To keep from thinking about that, he eyed Diodoros. His half-brother or his son? He’d wonder for the rest of his life. Undeniably, the baby looked like him. But he also took after his father, so that proved nothing.

He noted the way the baby was studying the courtyard. “He seems more alert—no, that’s not right: more connected to the rest of the world—than he did the last time I saw him,” he remarked. Talking about Diodoros was safe.

And, of course, at the moment Baukis’ son was her favorite subject. She dipped her head. “He does!” she said. “Every day, he turns more and more into … into a person. I think he’ll be smart, like you.”

If I’m so smart, why did I fall in love with my stepmother? Menedemos knew that had no good answer, unless you thought Because Aphrodite willed you should was one. He was pious enough, in a conventional way, but he didn’t think that. As far as he could see, love like his was a kind of madness. If it struck you, you couldn’t hope to fight it. The most you could hope for was that it wouldn’t harm you too badly.