Harry Turtledove - Salamis

“Who’s gone and done what?” the second man asked, which saved Menedemos the trouble.

“The Ptolemaios. He’s gone and put a crown on his own noggin now that Antigonos and Demetrios have started wearing them.”

“How do you know that?” The news-bearer’s friend couldn’t have done a better job of asking Menedemos’ questions for him if he’d rehearsed for a month.

“I heard it from someone who heard it from a ship just in from Paphos.”

“Oh.” The friend considered that. After a moment, he said, “I suppose the Demetrios doesn’t have such a tight hold on the southwest of Cyprus, even after Salamis has fallen.” He might have been a stage magician, only he was picking thoughts out of Menedemos’ head instead of drakhmai from his ear.

Cutting short his own wanderings through the market square, Menedemos hurried home. When he walked in, his father was talking about a fine-looking piece of tuna with Sikon the cook. Menedemos said, “You’ll never guess what I just heard.”

“What? That Ptolemaios has named himself king, too?” his father said. “Pretty soon, the only Macedonian who isn’t wearing a crown will be some knacker who carves up dead farm animals in the hills back of Pella.”

“I just heard it now,” Menedemos said in annoyance. “How did the news get here ahead of me?”

“I heard it in the fish market, young master, and brought it back myself,” Sikon said smugly.

“Ah,” Menedemos said. The fish market, naturally, lay next to the harbor. Any news from the sea would get there before it reached the agora.

“Everyone knew it was coming—more a matter of when than of if,” his father said. “Ptolemaios wouldn’t let Antigonos and Demetrios outrank him for long. And I hear that out in the east, Seleukos has been calling himself a king for a while now when he deals with barbarians—though he hasn’t had the crust to do it with Hellenes.”

“He will from now on,” Menedemos predicted.

“No doubt you’re right. He wouldn’t want to seem a mere general among all those ancient monarchs. They might not let him sit at the same table with their glorious selves when they all gather for supper.” Philodemos could be as sardonic about the great and powerful as he could about his own son.

Menedemos sent him an odd look. “That’s almost the kind of thing I’d look to hear from Sostratos, not from you.”

“I could do worse. Your cousin’s a clever youngster. Even the Ptolemaios—I beg your pardon, even his Magnificent Majesty, King Ptolemaios—thinks so,” Philodemos replied, still in that dry mood. “I could do worse than imitate him. And so could you.”

“I doubt it. If I tried, I’d think myself to death inside a month. And now, sir, if you’ll excuse me—” Menedemos didn’t wait to learn whether his father would excuse him or not. He turned on his heel and strode out of the kitchen.

As he made for the front door, he heard Sikon say, “Do you have to twit him like that?”

“Bah!” his father said. “He takes everything the wrong way. Why, he—”

What mistakes he’d made now, Menedemos didn’t wait to hear. He opened the door, then quietly closed it behind him, cutting off the voices from inside the house. He wanted to slam the door. He’d done that often enough, after one run-in or another with his father. But he held back this time, for fear of frightening Diodoros.

No, he’d never know if the baby was his. Bound to be just as well , he told himself, not for the first time. If he did know, he might throw it in his father’s face in a fit of fury. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have them, gods knew. When the two men clashed, they struck sparks off each other, as stones sometimes did.

Even Baukis couldn’t name Diodoros’ sire. That bothered Menedemos, too, in a different way. He didn’t want to look at the tiny boy—or at her—and imagine his father caressing her, imagine his father penetrating her. Of course his father did just that; he was Baukis’ husband, after all. But imagining it made Menedemos want to behave like one of the characters in the tragedies that Sostratos admired more than he did.

When he was away at sea, none of that mattered, or not so much. Hundreds or thousands of stadia from Rhodes, he didn’t think about it … except when he did. Whether he thought about it or not, he couldn’t do anything about it then. Maybe he wasn’t so clever or rational as his clever, rational cousin, but he was smart enough to get that.

But when he was home again, under the same roof as his father and Baukis …. That had been bad every winter since he’d found himself drawn to his stepmother. It had been worse last winter, when he took her as she was coming home from her women’s festival and when she found she was going to have a baby. Now the baby was here. Menedemos wanted Baukis more than ever, and she had no time even to think of him.

He drank more than he’d been in the habit of doing. He didn’t drink as much as he wanted to. As he’d feared what Baukis might blurt out in the pangs of labor, he feared what he might say if Dionysos seized his tongue in an unguarded instant. He did his best not to leave himself open to unguarded instants.

When he headed for the door late in the afternoon a couple of days later, his father asked, “Where are you off to now?”

“To Simaristos,” he answered truthfully. Simaristos ran far and away the grandest brothel in Rhodes.

Philodemos frowned. “Do you think we’re made of silver, the way Talos was made of bronze in the myth?”

Menedemos had been sure his father would say something like that. He was ready for it. Dipping his head, he said, “By the gods, sir, I do. After everything Sostratos and I brought back from Egypt, we’ve got plenty to let me have a good time if I fancy one. And you know it as well as I do, too.”

He didn’t sound defiant: more like a man stating facts so obvious, they shouldn’t really need stating. His father opened his mouth, but closed it without saying anything. After a couple of heartbeats, he tried again. “Well, enjoy yourself, then,” he managed.

No matter how gruff and grudging he sounded, that was more than Menedemos had looked for from him. “Thank you, Father,” he answered, and left the house whistling.

“Philodemos’ son! This is an unexpected pleasure!” Simaristos said when Menedemos walked in. The brothelkeeper rubbed his hands together, anticipating profit.

“That’s what I’m after—unexpected pleasure,” Menedemos said. Simaristos laughed; anything a client said was funny.

Octopus stewed in garlic sauce wasn’t exactly an unexpected pleasure, but was a savory one. So was Thasian as sweet and smooth as any that had ever traveled on the Aphrodite . Simaristos showed Menedemos the amphora before broaching it (but after making sure he could pay the price). “You will know such things, and know I’m not playing tricks on you,” he said.

“That amphora’s from Thasos, sure enough,” Menedemos agreed.

When he drank a cup’s worth neat, Simaristos clapped his hands, either in admiration or, more likely, in the hope of getting many more coins out of him once he was drunk. “I didn’t know you were Macedonian!” the brothelkeeper exclaimed.

“Please!” Menedemos tossed his head. “Anything but that! I had a bellyful of Macedonians this last trip. A bellyful and a half.”

“However you please, O best one,” Simaristos replied. “Let’s say you’re drinking like a Kelt, then—one of those new barbarians coming down into the lands north of where the Thracians live. They have a name for pouring it down as though there’s no tomorrow.”

“I’ve heard of the Keltoi, yes,” Menedemos said with owlish seriousness; the potent Thasian was hitting him hard. He might make vows against getting sozzled, but Dionysos had a will of his own, and gods were always stronger than men when they wanted to be.