Harry Turtledove - Salamis

“Would you like to see one? Would you like to futter one?” Suddenly, Simaristos was greasy as pork fat. “We have a new girl here, one of those Keltoi. We call her Khryse.”

“ ‘The Golden One?’ All right,” Menedemos said. Slaves got names like that, and Keltoi were said to be fair.

“Her tribe is the Tolistobogioi—I think I’m saying that right,” Simaristos told him. “To the crows with me, though, if I want to try to call her Tolistobogia, or to make my customers have to say that. Shall I bring her out for you? She’s something special when it comes to women. Even Aphrodite might be jealous.”

“Well, you’ve interested me, anyhow. Why not? Let me see what you’re talking up.” Even with the Thasian dancing through his veins, Menedemos felt sure the brothelkeeper was stretching things.

But when Simaristos brought the girl out of a back room, Menedemos saw he’d told nothing but the truth. She was a couple of digits taller than he was, with wavy golden hair falling down past her shoulders, sky-blue eyes, and skin pale as milk. Even her nipples were only a delicate pink.

Women among the Hellenes were in the habit of shaving or plucking their pubic hair; Menedemos remembered being intrigued to learn Egyptian women did the same. Khryse didn’t. As her bush was only a shade darker than the hair on her head, it seemed more intriguing than barbarous.

“What do you think?” Simaristos asked.

“She’s quite something,” Menedemos asked. To Khryse, he added, “You’re beautiful.”

“I do thank you,” she said quietly. Her Greek had an odd, almost musical, accent.

“What do you want for as much of the night as I feel like spending with her?” Menedemos asked the brothelkeeper.

“Six drakhmai will do it—eight if you want her to ride you like a racehorse,” Simaristos replied. Putting the woman on top and making her do the work always cost more.

Menedemos gave the man two fat silver tetradrakhms. “I may ask for change, and I may not. We’ll just see what happens,” he said.

Simaristos bowed, slick and polite as a Phoenician. “You always were a kalos kagathos , son of Philodemos. Khryse, take him to the blue room. Nothing but the best for him, now.”

“This way, O best one, if you please.” Khryse started up the stairs. Menedemos followed. She was as lovely from behind as from in front.

Sure enough, the blue room’s walls were painted that color. The bed was large and comfortable. Menedemos closed the door. It latched, but had no bar. In case a brawl broke out, Simaristos or a bouncer might need to get in there in a hurry. He shrugged. He didn’t plan on brawling with Khryse.

He took off his chiton and lay down on the bed. He felt the wine, but not enough to keep from rising to the occasion. Khryse got down beside him. “And what might you want, now?” she asked.

He shrugged again. “I don’t know. We’ll do things, and then we’ll do some other things.” She wasn’t Baukis, but she was very beautiful.

After a while, he found it worked the other way round: she was very beautiful, but she wasn’t Baukis. She was also skilled; she gave him great pleasure. When it was over, though, he felt as if it might as well not have happened at all.

By then, it was getting dark. She looked at him in the gathering gloom. “Who did you wish I was, there?”

“I’m sorry,” he said, dully embarrassed. “I didn’t realize it showed.”

“Well, it did. You’re, after all, paying enough for me. Shouldn’t you get the joy you paid for? Will you try again?” Even slaves who were whores had their pride. Khryse was miffed he hadn’t enjoyed her more.

“Give me a bit,” he said; he didn’t rise to the occasion again so soon as he had a few years earlier. “Shall I get some wine for us in the meantime?”

“I won’t say no,” she answered.

If he was spending money, he’d spend money. He got a cup of Thasian for each of them. He knew he’d feel it in the morning, but the morning still lay most of a night away.

As he drank, he wondered why he hadn’t felt this way in Alexandria. He supposed it was that he hadn’t seen Baukis for a while then, and he was across the sea from her. Now she was only a few streets away, doing whatever she was doing with Diodoros … or with Menedemos’ father. Menedemos didn’t want to think about that, so he drank some more.

Khryse poured it down with an ease a tavern tosspot might have envied. Simaristos hadn’t lied when he said Keltoi drank like Macedonians. She reached for him with practiced fingers. “Let’s see if it’s better this time.”

It felt wonderful while it was going on. If you were a man, it always did. Afterwards, the only woman in Menedemos’ mind was Baukis.

Khryse’s sigh mingled resignation and annoyance. “If you cared for the girl you were with as much as you do for the one you haven’t got, you’d be a lover to remember.”

He’d been in the habit of doing that. He’d acquired a reputation for it, in towns around the Inner Sea. Now …. Now he wanted to burst into tears. Telling himself that was the wine, he made himself hold them in. He said, “Sometimes you just can’t get around what’s inside your head.”

She stayed silent some little while. Then, in a low voice, she answered, “Well, it’s plain you’ve never been a slave. Or a woman.”

“You shame me.”

“How can I be doing that? What am I, now? Only a chunk of meat with a pleasing shape. Ask the master if you doubt me.”

Menedemos had no doubt about what Simaristos would say. “I hope you find some way to get free and do whatever it is you want to do,” he said. He fumbled on the floor till he found his belt pouch, which he’d discarded with his tunic. By feel, he got out a didrakhm. “Here. You don’t have to tell the vulture I gave you this.”

“I thank you. He’ll likely find some way to steal it from me, but I thank you even so. A kind thought, it is,” Khryse said. “If I had my way, I’d go home to my own folk. But I’d only be enslaved again if I left Rhodes, and maybe in a place worse than this. I’ve seen some.” She sighed. “And even if I did come back to my clan, they’d hate me and scorn me me for giving myself to every passing man, as though I do it by choice.”

Try as he would, Menedemos found nothing to say to that. If he told her he’d swear off visiting brothels, she wouldn’t believe him. Even he would know he was lying. He’d always thanked the gods he was neither woman nor slave. Now he did it once more, with special fervor.

He picked up his tunic. “I’d better go.”

“Come again if you care to. I’d soon take you than a good many others,” Khryse said. With that faint praise in his ears, Menedemos went downstairs. For a couple of oboloi, Simaristos gave him a tough-looking torchbearer to light his way home and scare off robbers lurking in the darkness. He tipped that slave, too, and hoped the fellow got to keep his silver.

Though the season was drawing on, Sostratos kept regularly visiting the harbor in hopes of picking up news. The weather stayed good, but fewer and fewer ships came from Cyprus. The local rulers, having yielded to Demetrios in preference to being stormed or besieged and sacked, might have thought commerce with Rhodes seemed too disloyal to encourage.

In their sandals, Sostratos supposed he might have felt the same way. Few towns on Cyprus boasted works to match the ones Menelaos had defended at Salamis. Those hadn’t prevailed, so how could any others? And Demetrios and Antigonos, while implacable foes, didn’t make the worst overlords.

So he told himself, while continuing to practice with spear and shield. Rhodes was a nut with a shell tough to crack. Tough enough? All he could do was hope … and go on practicing.