“No wonder we’re losing soldiers to desertion,” somebody said: probably an officer, by his educated Attic accent. “If we give them only what they need and Ptolemaios gives them what they want, which would they rather have? Which would any man with an obolos’ weight of brains in his head rather have?”
“A soldier who has to have luxuries to fight isn’t a soldier worth keeping,” Andronikos insisted.
“What soldier doesn’t want a little comfort now and then?” the other officer returned.
“Antigonos doesn’t care to see his money thrown away,” the quartermaster said. From everything Menedemos had heard, that was true.
‘“Antigonos doesn’t care to see his men tempted to desertion, either,” the other officer answered. “A soldier who’s unhappy isn’t a soldier who’ll fight well.”
Menedemos finished his wine and waved to the man behind the bar for another cup. Another soldier, this one plainly a Macedonian by his speech, started laying into Andronikos, and then another, and then another. Before long, half the men in the tavern were shouting at the quartermaster.
Andronikos got angrier and angrier. “You people don’t know what you’re talking about!” he shouted. His pinched features turned red.
“We know we get the leavings that nobody else would want to eat,” a soldier said. “How much money do you salt away buying us cheap garbage and sending out receipts that say we eat better than we really do?”
“Not a hemiobolos, by Zeus! That’s a lie!” Andronikos said.
“Furies take me if it is,” the soldier answered. “Who ever heard of a quartermaster who didn’t feather his own nest every chance he got?”
“How much silver would Andronikos cough up if we held him upside down and shook him?” somebody else said. “Plenty, I bet.”
“Don’t you try that!” Antigonos’ quartermaster said shrilly. “Don’t you dare try that! If you fool with me, I’ll have you crucified upside down, by the gods! Do you think I won’t? Do you think I can’t? You’d better not think anything like that, or it’s the worst mistake you’ll ever make in all your days.”
Menedemos raised his cup to his mouth. He quickly drained it. Then he slid off his stool and slipped out of the wineshop. He knew a brewing fight when he saw one. Sostratos might consider him imperfectly civilized, but at least he’d never made tavern brawling one of his favorite amusements, as so many sailors from the Aphrodite did.
He hadn’t got ten paces from the door before a crescendo of shouts, the thuds of breaking furniture, and the higher crashes of shattering pottery announced the start of the brawl. Whistling gleefully at his narrow escape, he strolled back to the harbor and the merchant galley. He did hope Andronikos got everything that was coming to him, and a little more besides.
This time, Sostratos and his traveling companions approached Jerusalem from the south. “Are we going back to Ithran’s inn, young sir?” Moskhion asked.
“I’d intended to stay there for a day or two, yes,” Sostratos answered. “Having an innkeeper who speaks some Greek is very handy, for me and especially for you men, since you haven’t learned any Aramaic.”
“Who hasn’t?” Moskhion said, and let loose with a guttural obscenity that sounded much fouler than anything a man might say in Greek.
Sostratos winced. “If that’s all you can say in the local language, you’d do better to keep your mouth shut,” he said. Moskhion guffawed at the effect he’d had.
“I can ask for bread. I can ask for wine. I can ask for a woman,” Aristeidas said. “Past that, what more do I need?” His attitude was practical if limited. He’d learned a few phrases that came in handy and didn’t worry about anything more.
“How about you, Teleutas?” Sostratos asked. “Have you picked up any Aramaic at all?”
“Not me. I’m not going to sound like I’m choking to death,” Teleutas said. Then he asked a question of his own: “When we get back to old Ithran’s inn, you going to try laying Zilpah again? Think you’ll get it in this time?”
Sostratos tried to stand on his dignity, saying, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He hoped he wasn’t turning red, or, if he was, that his beard would hide his flush. How had the sailors known?
Teleutas’ laugh was so raucous, so lewd, as to make Moskhion’s Aramaic obscenity seem clean beside it. “No offense, but sure you don’t. You think we didn’t see you mooning over her? Come on! I think you’ll do it this time, too. She likes you plenty, you bet. Sometimes they’re shy, that’s all. You’ve just got to push a little-and then you’ll push all you want.” He rocked his hips forward and back.
Moskhion and Aristeidas solemnly dipped their heads. Sostratos wondered if that meant his chances were pretty good, or simply that all three sailors were misreading the signs the same way.
I’m going to find out, he thought. I have to find out. The game seemed worth the risk. All of a sudden, he understood Menedemos much better than he’d ever wanted to. How can I rail at him when I know why he does it? he wondered unhappily.
He did his best to tell himself that, unlike his cousin, he wasn’t risking anything or anyone by trying to learn whether Zilpah would go to bed with him. But, also unlike Menedemos, he’d been to the Lykeion. He’d learned how to root out self-deception. He knew perfectly well that he was telling himself lies. They were soothing lies, pleasant lies, but lies nonetheless.
What if, for instance, Zilpah had gone to Ithran and told him Sostratos had tried to seduce her? What would the innkeeper do when the Rhodian showed up at his door again? Wouldn’t he be likely to try to smash in Sostratos’ skull with a jar of wine or perhaps to stab him or spear him with whatever weapons he kept around the inn? Suppose things were reversed. Suppose Ithran, in Rhodes, had paid undue attention to Sostratos’ wife {assuming I had a wife, Sostratos thought). What would I have done if he fell into my hands after that? Something he would remember to the end of his days, whether that was near at hand or far away.
And yet, knowing what Ithran might do on setting eyes on him, Sostratos led the sailors from the Aphrodite back toward the inn they’d quitted only a few days before. This is madness, he told himself, picking his way through the narrow, winding, rocky streets of Jerusalem. Every so often, he had to spend a few tiny silver coins on a passerby to get steered in the right direction. No one grabbed him by the front of the tunic and exclaimed, “Don’t go back there! You must be the woman-mad Ionian Ithran swore he’d kill!” Sostratos chose to take that as a good sign, though he recognized he might be deceiving himself again.
“This is the street,” Aristeidas said when they turned on to it. “We just passed the brothel-and there’s Ithran’s inn up ahead.”
“So it is,” Sostratos said in a hollow voice. Now that he was here, his heart pounded and his bowels felt loose. He was sure he’d made a dreadful mistake in returning. He started to say they ought to go somewhere else after all.
Too late for that-Ithran himself came out the front door of the inn with a basket full of rubbish, which he dumped in the street not far from the entrance. He started to go back inside, but then he caught sight of the four Rhodians heading his way. Sostratos tensed. He wondered if he should reach for Menedemos’ bow, not that he could have strung it, let alone shot, before Ithran charged.
But then the innkeeper… waved. “Hail, friends,” he called in his bad Greek. “You does good by Lake of Asphalt?”
“Pretty well, thanks,” Sostratos answered, breathing a silent sigh of relief. Whatever else had happened, Zilpah hadn’t said anything.
“You to stay a few day?” Ithran asked hopefully. “I have my old rooms back.” Sostratos realized he was trying to say, You have your old rooms back. “Thank you,” he said, and nodded, as people did in this part of the world. Switching from Greek to Aramaic, he added, “I thank you very much indeed, my master.”