“Hail,” Sostratos replied. Hekataios waved back to the soldier. To Hekataios, Sostratos remarked, “Always good to hear Greek.”

“Oh, my dear, I should say so,” Hekataios replied. “And you, at least, speak some of this ghastly local language. For me, it might as well be the grunting of animals. I shall be so very glad to return to Alexandria, where Greek prevails-though there are Ioudaioi settling there, too, if you can believe it.” He rolled his eyes, but then resumed: “I shall also be glad to have the spare time to gather all my notes and memories together, and then to sit down and write.”

Sostratos did not bend down, pry a cobblestone out of the ground, and brain Hekataios with it. Why he didn’t, he never knew, then or afterwards. The scholar walked on, still breathing, still talking intelligently, still unaware of how much he took for granted and Sostratos craved with a deep, hopeless, desperate yearning.

One of these days. One of these years, Sostratos thought. I’ll do as Thales did, and get so rich I can afford to do as I please. I can gather all my notes and memories together, and then sit down and write. I can. And I will.

Back at the inn, they found chaos. Teleutas, for once, hadn’t caused it: he was off at a brothel down the block. The innkeeper was shouting at Moskhion in bad Greek, and the former sponge diver was shouting right back.

Moskhion turned to Sostratos in obvious relief. “Gods be praised you’re here, young sir. This fellow reckons I’ve done something really dreadful, and I never meant no harm, not to nobody.”

“Outrage! Insult!” Ithran shouted. “He profanes the one god!”

“Calm, O best one. Calm, please,” Sostratos said in Greek. He switched to Aramaic: “Peace be unto you. Peace be unto us all. Tell your slave. I will make it right, if I can.”

“He profanes the one god,” the innkeeper repeated, this time in Aramaic. But he didn’t seem quite so ready to burst into flames as he had a moment before.

“What happened?” Sostratos asked Moskhion, trying to take advantage of the relative peace and quiet.

“I got hungry, young sir,” Moskhion answered. “I craved a bit of meat-haven’t had any for a long time. Wanted some pork, but I couldn’t make this silly barbarian here understand the word for it.”

“Oh, dear.” Now Sostratos knew what sort of trouble he was in. “What did you do then?”

“I asked the abandoned rogue for a potsherd, sir, so I could draw him a picture,” Moskhion said. “He understood ‘potsherd’ well enough, Furies take him. Why couldn’t he understand ‘pork’? He gave me the sherd, and I drew-this.”

He showed Sostratos the piece of broken pot. On it he’d scraped with the tip of a sharp knife a commendable picture of a pig. Sostratos had had no idea he could draw so well. Maybe Moskhion himself hadn’t even known. But the gift, plainly, was there. Sostratos said, “What happened next?”

“I gave it to him, and he pitched a fit,” the sailor replied. “That’s where we were when you walked in just now, young sir.”

“They don’t eat pork, you know,” Sostratos said. “They think a pig’s a polluted animal. We haven’t seen any more pigs than statues in Ioudaia, remember? That’s why he got angry. He thought you were outraging him and his god both.”

“Well, calm the silly fool down,” Moskhion said. “I didn’t want any trouble. All I wanted was some spare ribs, or something like that.”

“I’ll try.” Sostratos turned toward the innkeeper and switched to Aramaic: “My master, your slave’s man meant no offense. He does not know your laws. He only wanted food. We eat pork. It is not against our laws.”

“It’s against ours,” Ithran fumed. “Pigs make everything ritually unclean. That is why no pigs and no swine’s flesh are allowed in Jerusalem. Even that image of a pig is liable to be a pollution.”

The Ioudaioi forbade graven images of men because men were made in the image of their god, whose image was forbidden them. By such reasoning, Sostratos could see how the picture of a beast reckoned unclean might itself be unclean. But he said, “It is only an image. And you fought for Antigonos. You know Ionians eat pork. Moskhion meant no offense. He will apologize.” In Greek, he hissed, “Tell him you’re sorry.”

“I’m hungry, is what I am,” the sailor grumbled. But he dipped his head to Ithran. “Sorry, buddy. I didn’t mean to get you all upset. Zeus knows that’s so.”

“All right.” Ithran took a deep breath. “All right. Let it go. No. Wait. Give me that image, one of you.” Sostratos handed him the potsherd. He set it on the floor, then stomped it with all his strength. Under his sandal, it shattered into tiny pieces. “There. Gone for good.”

Sostratos hated to see such a fine sketch destroyed. For the sake of peace, though, he kept quiet. Hekataios of Abdera hadn’t wanted him to cause a riot, and he didn’t want Moskhion to cause one. “What was all that?” Hekataios asked now. “Parts of it were in Aramaic, so I couldn’t follow.” Sostratos explained. When he was done, Hekataios said, “Euge! You were lucky there-lucky and clever. The Ioudaioi can go mad when it comes to pigs.”

“Yes, I figured as much,” Sostratos said. “But it was just a misunderstanding.”

“Most of the time, misunderstandings here don’t get straightened out,” Hekataios said. “They end up in blood. A good thing Master Ithran knows at least something of Hellenic customs, or it would have been worse.”

Zilpah had come in while Hekataios was talking. As Hekataios and Sostratos went back and forth in Greek, Ithran explained to his wife in Aramaic what had been going on. Sostratos listened to them with perhaps a quarter of an ear. The mere sound of Aramaic reminded him of the truth of what Hekataios had said. This was not his country. These were not his people. Disaster could so easily overwhelm him, disaster springing from something as trivial as a sailor getting a yen for meat after going a long time without. And if disaster did overwhelm him here, on whom could he call for help?

No one. No one at all.

“We did get through it,” he told Hekataios. “In the end, that’s all that really matters.”

The other Hellene said something in reply. Now Sostratos hardly heard him. He was watching Zilpah listening to her husband’s account of the affair-which was, for all Sostratos knew, quite different from the way it had looked to Moskhion and him and Hekataios of Abdera.

She’s as foreign as any of the other loudaioi, Sostratos told himself: another undoubted truth. But she was, to his eyes, a great deal more decorative than any of the others. That shouldn’t have made so much difference. It shouldn’t have, but it did.

She happened to look his way at the same time as he was looking at her. He knew he should have turned his gaze in a different direction. Staring at another man’s wife could easily bring trouble down on his head. If he hadn’t been able to see that for himself, traveling with Menedemos should have pounded it home.

And yet… He looked, and could not look away. The longer he stayed in Jerusalem, the more he understood Menedemos’ madness, the madness that had only infuriated him before. The line of Zilpah’s jaw, the way her lips opened just a little when she breathed, the shine of her eyes, her wavy midnight hair…

He knew what he was thinking as he looked at her. But what was going through her mind while she looked back at him? He was sure she could read his face as readily as he would have read an inscription in the agora at Rhodes. And if she could, she had but to say a word to scarred and dangerous Ithran there, and hovering danger would hover no longer, but strike.

She did not say the word. Sostratos wondered why. Moskhion stalked out of the inn, muttering about getting mutton if he couldn’t have pork. Hekataios of Abdera said, “I am going to write up what I saw today, so that I don’t forget it. Hail.” Off he went.