Harry Turtledove - Salamis

Menedemos enjoyed seeing Baukis out and about, even if she did have Lyke or another slave woman with her. He enjoyed the little boy more than he’d dreamt he would, too. When he scooped Diodoros off the blanket and into the crook of his elbow, the baby would laugh. Or, looking up at Menedemos, he’d smile a wide, almost toothless smile, recognizing him as a familiar, acceptable person.

“He likes you!” Baukis exclaimed whenever she saw him do it.

“No accounting for taste,” Menedemos answered the first time she said that. A few paces away, Lyke snorted softly. Baukis didn’t even notice what he said. When Diodoros found something he liked, that made her happy.

How much attention she gave the baby left Menedemos frustrated. He wanted her to notice other things—him, for instance. He had wondered if she would go again to the women’s religious festival after which they might have started Diodoros the year before. He’d hoped she would: it was the only chance he was likely to get to see her alone. But she’d stayed in. Even with the slaves to help her, taking care of the baby left her exhausted all the time.

And Diodoros was a healthy baby, for which Menedemos joined his father and stepmother in praising the gods. One of Xanthos’ kinswomen—Menedemos wasn’t sure if she was a niece or a grand-niece—had had a boy about the time Baukis gave birth. She called him Xanthiades, perhaps to curry favor with her rich relative.

But he never thrived. He was skinny and sickly and often shat green, which even Menedemos knew to be a bad sign. And, just about the time when word of Antigonos and Demetrios’ failure at the edge of Egypt got back to Rhodes, little Xanthiades died.

Xanthos sadly went on about it at great length, the way he went on about everything. Menedemos’ father didn’t tell him to shove a stopper in it. They’d been friends for years, and even Menedemos understood that talking grief out helped lessen it. But after a while, his father’s patience started to show. Sooner or later, Xanthos always went off to inflict himself on someone else. Menedemos did wonder why it couldn’t have been sooner that time.

His thoughts snapped back to the courtyard when the slave woman stepped away for something she needed or wanted to do. Alone with Baukis! Alone in public, and with him holding her son, but alone. He opened his mouth to say something witty and charming, something that would make her remember why she’d given herself to him the year before.

Before he could speak, she stepped toward him. In a low, urgent voice, she demanded, “How bad will it be come spring?”

He started to give her some reassuring lie. A look at her blazing eyes and set mouth told him that would be a mistake. “Well, I don’t think it will be good,” he said, and waited to see what happened next.

“How bad will it be?” she persisted. “Men never want to tell women anything, curse them. All I know is bits and scraps I’ve overheard. But women and babies pay the price when the men who run things are stupid, don’t they?”

“We’re as ready as we can be to defend Rhodes,” Menedemos said slowly. “Demetrios is a good general, though. We may not win.”

“Can’t we just give him whatever he wants?”

“He wants us to ally with his father and him against the Ptolemaios. Egypt trades through Rhodes, and we get a lot of our grain there, too. Besides, it would cost us our freedom. He’d surely put a garrison in the polis to make sure we didn’t go back on our promises.”

She tossed her head. “That’s not losing your freedom. Losing your freedom is being sold for a slave. Losing your freedom is watching them do to your son what they did to Astyanax in The Trojan Women .”

A man wouldn’t think that way. A man would think being forced into an alliance with a stronger power was the same as slavery. Men took care of themselves no matter what. Women, especially women with small children, couldn’t. “You feel we ought to yield, then?” he asked.

“Of course, if the only other choice is standing siege till we’re overrun.”

“That isn’t of course . If Demetrios attacks us, we do have a chance to hold him out of the polis.”

“How good a chance?”

“Good enough that it may be worth trying, anyhow.” Menedemos hesitated, then asked, “Why does my father say to you about it?”

Baukis’ nostrils flared angrily. “Nothing much. He thinks I’m a child who doesn’t understand anything, the same way most men think about women.” She eyed him. “You don’t think of me like that, do you?” You’d better not! was written all over her face.

“Not for a moment,” Menedemos assured her. Whether or not he was telling the truth … he could worry about some other time, when it might matter. As long as she was his father’s wife, it wouldn’t, or not very much.

Diodoros started to fuss. “Give him to me,” Baukis said. He did. They touched for a moment. It felt like fire to him. She didn’t seem to notice at all. She jogged him up and down and patted him on the back. He went right on fussing.

“Let me try,” Menedemos said. He wanted to feel her touch again, and he did, though again she paid the brief, accidental contact no mind. He hoisted his half-brother (his son?) onto his shoulder and patted the baby’s back the way she had.

“Don’t do it so hard!” Baukis said.

At almost the same instant, Diodoros let out a belch so loud, a fat old opsophagos would have been proud of it at a feast. As soon as he did, he went back to being happy. “There you go!” Menedemos told him. “You had that in there all the time, didn’t you?” He lowered the baby to the crook of his elbow. Diodoros stared up at him and started to laugh. Yes, they had a family look, all right. Well, they were family, one way or the other.

“He likes you,” Baukis said.

“I told you before, he’s too little to know better,” Menedemos said. She made a face at him. She liked him in that moment, if only because her son did, too. You take what you can get , he thought.

“I want him to grow up to see the kind of man you are,” she said. “He’ll learn from you, the same as he’ll learn from your father.” She didn’t talk about which of them had sired Diodoros. She would have been madly foolish to do that where anyone might overhear. And she wouldn’t know for certain, either, any more than Menedemos did.

“I want him to grow up free and safe. As long as he does that, everything will be fine,” Menedemos said. I just want him to grow up , went through his mind. Along with all the sicknesses that could cut short the thread of a child’s life, the Fates also had to steer it past war and famine … if they meant to, of course.

“Tell me it will be all right,” Baukis whispered.

“It will be all right.” Menedemos sounded as sincere as he did when he was seducing other men’s wives in far-off poleis. But Baukis was here not just in Rhodes but in his house. And Demetrios and Antigonos, while not here yet, were bound to be on their way. Spring …. Spring might be very bad.

The slave woman came back. She knew all about what Menedemos and Baukis and the rest of the free folk of Rhodes only feared. Day by day, she got through. All Menedemos could do was pray he’d never have to.

Salamis is set in 306 BC. As the story notes, this sea battle was by the Salamis in eastern Cyprus, not by the one near Athens. It was the second sea-fight off the Cypriot city, the earlier one having taken place almost fifty years before. All the people of Rhodes could do in this year was nervously watch the thunderous war on land and sea between Antigonos and Demetrios on the one hand and Ptolemaios on the other.