“I’m sorry,” Sostratos said. So many families had a lament like Zilpah’s. Infants died so readily, burying them inside city walls brought no religious pollution, as it did with the bodies of older people.

“Everything is as the one god wills,” Zilpah said. “The priests say this, and I believe them, but I cannot understand why he willed that my babies died.”

“We Ionians wonder about these same things,” Sostratos said. “We do not know. I do not think we can know.” He finished his wine and held out the cup to her. “May I have more, please?” He was usually very moderate with the unmixed stuff, knowing how strong it was, but nerves made him want a refill.

“Of course. You hardly drink at all,” Zilpah said. It didn’t seem that way to Sostratos, but he let it go. She poured his cup full and her own as well. He spilled out a little libation onto the floor, while she murmured the blessing the Ioudaioi used over wine. They both drank. Zilpah managed a small laugh. “Here we are, pouring down wine to drown our sorrow because neither of us got what we wanted.”

“That is funny, is it not? Or it could be,” Sostratos said. The wine, sweet and thick, went down very smoothly. Sostratos hooked another stool with his ankle and slid it over to the table where he sat. “Here. No need to stand. If you do nothing else, you can sit by me.”

“I suppose so.” When Zilpah did sit, she perched on the edge of the stool like a nervous bird. She gulped her wine, got up to pour herself another cup, and sat again. “I don’t know why I drink,” she remarked, looking down into the purple wine. “After I am done, everything will still be the same.”

“Yes,” said Sostratos, who felt the same way himself. “But while you drink…” He usually spoke as she did. Today, he found himself praising wine.

“For a little while, yes,” Zilpah said. “For a little while, even things you know are foolish seem… not so bad.”

In Greek, Sostratos would have answered, That’s why people use wine as an excuse for doing things they would never dream of doing sober. He knew he couldn’t say anything so complex-and so far removed from the world of trade and bargaining-in Aramaic. But a nod, once he remembered to use the local gesture and not the one he was used to, seemed to get his meaning across well enough.

“More wine?” Zilpah asked him. Her cup was already empty again.

His was still half full. He took another sip from it and nodded again. He would never have drunk so much neat wine in the morning back in Rhodes, but he wasn’t in Rhodes any more. If he had a thick head later in the day, then he did, that was all.

Zilpah got up and filled a pitcher with wine. She stood beside Sostratos to pour more into his cup. People use wine as an excuse for doing things they would never dream of doing sober, Sostratos thought again. Before he could tell it not to, his right arm slipped around Zilpah’s waist.

She could have screamed. She could have broken the pitcher over his head. She could have done any number of things that would have led to quick irrevocable catastrophe for him. She didn’t. She didn’t even try to twist free or to knock his hand away. She just shook her head a little and murmured, “Wine.”

“Wine,” Sostratos agreed. “Wine, and you. You are lovely. I would make you happy, if I could. If you let me.”

“Foolishness,” Zilpah said. But was she talking to him or to herself? Sostratos couldn’t tell, not till she set the pitcher on the table and sat down on his lap.

His arms went round her in glad surprise. He lifted his face as she lowered hers. Their lips met. Her mouth tasted of wine and of her own sweetness. She sighed, back deep in his throat.

The kiss went on and on. Sostratos had thought the wine was making him drunk. This… Next to this, the wine was as nothing. He slipped one hand under her robes. It slid up past her knee, up the smooth flesh of her inner thigh, toward the joining of her legs.

But that hand, hurrying toward her secret place, must have reminded her just what game they’d started playing. With a little, frightened moan, she jerked away and sprang to her feet again. “No,” she said. “I told you, I would not take you to my bed.”

Had she been a slave, he might have pulled her down to the floor and had her by force. Such things even happened to free Hellenic women of good family every now and again, as when they were coming back at night from a religious procession. Comic poets wrote plays about the complications that rose from mischances like that. But Sostratos had never been one to think of force first. And using it on a foreign woman in a town full of barbarians… He tossed his head.

He couldn’t help letting out a long, angry breath. “If you did not mean to finish, I wish you had not started,” he said. The throbbing in his own crotch told him how much he wished that.

“I am sorry,” Zilpah replied. “I wanted a little sweetness-not too much, but a little. I didn’t think you…” She let that trail away. “I didn’t think.”

“No. You did not. Neither did I.” Sostratos sighed. He gulped down the rest of the wine in the cup. “Maybe I should go down the block after all.”

“Maybe you should,” Zilpah said. “But now, Ionian, now what am I supposed to do?” And for that, no matter how much Sostratos prided himself on his cleverness, he had no answer at all.

Menedemos had taken his time going over to the dyeworks on the outskirts of Sidon. He kept finding excuses for staying away. The real reason was simple: the dyeworks that made the Phoenician cities famous stank too badly for him to want to get close to them.

That stench came into the city when the wind blew the wrong way. But Sidon, like any town around the Inner Sea, had plenty of other foul odors to dilute that one. Out by the dyeworks, the smell of rotting shellfish was both overpowering and unalloyed.

How did anyone ever find out that murexes, once crushed, yielded a liquor which, after it was properly treated, became the marvelous Phoenician crimson dye? he wondered. Some inventions seemed natural to him. Anyone could see that sticks floated, and all sorts of things caught the wind and were pushed along by it. From there to rafts and boats could only be a small step. But purple dye? Menedemos tossed his head. It struck him as very unlikely.

He wished he had Sostratos along. Seeing a Phoenician smashing shells with a mallet, he called out, “Hail! Do you speak Greek?”

The fellow shook his head. But he knew what Menedemos was trying to ask, for he said something in Aramaic in which the Rhodian caught the word Ionian. The Phoenician pointed to a shack not far away. He gave forth with another sentence full of coughing and hissing noises. Again, Menedemos heard the local word for a Hellene. Maybe that meant someone who spoke his language was in there. He hoped so, anyhow.

“Thanks,” he said. The Phoenician waved and went back to smashing seashells. After a moment, he paused, picked up a morsel of meat, and popped it into his mouth. Can’t get your op son any fresher than that, Menedemos thought.

When he opened the door to the shack, a couple of Phoenicians, one stout, the other lean, looked up at him. The stout one began to speak before he could say a word: “You must be the Rhodian. Wondered when you were going to show up around here.” His Greek was fluent, colloquial, and sounded as if he’d learned it from someone right on the edge of the law.

“Yes, that’s right. I’m Menedemos son of Philodemos,” Menedemos said. “Hail. And you gentlemen are…?”

“I’m Tenashtart son of Metena,” the stout Phoenician answered. “This is my brother, Ithobaal. Miserable son of a whore doesn’t speak any Greek. Pleased to meet you. You want to buy some dye, right?”

“Yes,” Menedemos said. “Uh-where did you learn Greek so… well?”

“Here and there, pal, here and there,” Tenashtart answered. “I’ve done some knocking around in my time, you bet I have. There are towns in Hellas… But you didn’t come here to listen to me bang my gums.”