“Oк!” Apollodoros yowled as his wrist bent back and back. Menedemos needed only a very little more pressure to break it, and they both knew as much. Apollodoros spoke very fast: “You do but misperceive my intentions, friend, and-”

“I think I perceive them just fine, thanks.” Menedemos bent the mercenary’s wrist a tiny bit more. Something in there gave under his grip- not a bone but a tendon or something of the sort. Apollodoros gasped and went fishbelly pale. Menedemos said, “I can use a knife, too. If you come after me, you’ll be very, very sorry. Do you believe me? Eh?” Yet more pressure.

“Yes!” Apollodoros whispered. “Furies take you, yes!”

“Good.” Menedemos let go. He didn’t turn his back on the soldier, but Apollodoros only sank down onto a stool, cradling the injured wrist. “Farewell,” Menedemos said again, and left the tavern.

This place didn’t explode in a brawl behind him. He looked back over his shoulder after he walked out, to make sure Apollodoros hadn’t changed his mind and decided to come after him, and that the Paphian didn’t have any friends in the place who might want to do the job for him. No one emerged from the wineshop. Menedemos grinned. My bet is, Apollodoros hasn’t got any friends, he thought.

Around the corner from the tavern, he passed a wineshop of a different sort, one that sold wine by the amphora rather than by the cup. Remembering the fine wine Zakerbaal the cloth merchant had served him, he stuck his head into the place and called, “Does anybody here speak Greek?”

The proprietor was a man of about his father’s age, with a bushy white beard, even bushier black eyebrows, and an enormous hooked nose. “Speak little bit,” he said, and held his thumb and forefinger close together to show how little that was.

For what Menedemos had in mind, the man didn’t need to know much of his language. He asked, “Have you got wine from Byblosa here? Good wine from Byblos?”

“From Byblos? Wine?” The Phoenician seemed to want to make sure he’d heard correctly. Menedemos dipped his head. Then, remembering he was in foreign parts, he nodded instead. The Phoenician smiled at him. “Wine from Byblos. Yes. I having. You-?” He didn’t seem able to remember how to say taste or try. Instead, he mimed drinking from a cup.

“Yes. Thank you.” Menedemos nodded again.

“Good. I give. I Mattan son of Mago,” the wine merchant said. Menedemos gave his name and that of his father. He watched as Mattan opened an amphora, and noted its shape: each city had its own distinctive style of jar, some round, others elongated. When the Phoenician handed him the cup, he sniffed. Sure enough, the wine had the rich floral bouquet that had struck him at Zakerbaal’s home.

He drank. As before, the wine’s flavor wasn’t quite so fine as its aroma, but it wasn’t bad, either. He asked, “How much for an amphora?”

When Mattan said, “Six shekels-sigloi, you say,” Menedemos had to fight to keep his jaw from dropping. Twelve Rhodian drakhmai the jar for a wine of that quality was a bargain even without haggling.

Menedemos didn’t intend to let Mattan know that was what he thought. He put on the most severe expression he could and said, “I’ll give you three and a half.”

Mattan said something pungent in Aramaic. Menedemos bowed to him. That made the Phoenician laugh. They haggled for a while, as much for the sake of the game as because either of them was very worried about the final price. At last, they settled on five sigloi the jar.

After they clasped hands to seal the bargain, Mattan son of Mago said, “You not tell. How much of jars you want?”

“How many have you got?” Menedemos asked.

“I look.” Mattan counted the amphorai of Byblian resting in their places on the wooden shelves that lined the walls of his shop. Then he went into a back room behind the counter. When he came out, he said, “Forty-six.” To make sure he had the number right, he opened and closed his hands four times, and showed one open hand and the upthrust index finger of the other.

“Have you got a counting board?” Menedemos asked. He had to eke out the question with gestures before Mattan nodded and took it out from under the counter. Menedemos flicked pebbles back and forth in the grooves. After a little while, he looked up at the Phoenician and said, “I owe you two hundred thirty sigloi, then.”

Mattan son of Mago had watched as he worked out the answer. The Phoenician nodded. “Yes, that right,” he said.

“Good, then,” Menedemos said. “I’ll bring you the money, and I’ll bring sailors from my ship to take away the wine.”

“Is good. I here,” Mattan said.

Had the full crew been aboard the Aphrodite , they could have done the job in one trip. With so many of them off roistering in Sidon, it took three. By the time they finished hauling the heavy amphorai to the merchant galley, the men were sweaty and exhausted. A couple of the ones who could swim jumped naked off the ship into the water of the harbor to cool down. Menedemos gave all the sailors who’d hauled wine jars an extra day’s pay-that wasn’t part of their regular work.

“Smart, skipper,” Diokles said approvingly. “They’ll like you better for it.”

“They earned it,” Menedemos replied. “They worked like slaves there.”

“We’ve got a good cargo for the trip home, though,” the keleustes said. “That fancy silk you found, the crimson dye, now this good wine-”

“We’re only missing one thing,” Menedemos said.

Diokles frowned. “What’s that? With all we’ve picked up here, I can’t think of anything.”

Menedemos answered in one word: “Sostratos.”

Sostratos peered back at Jerusalem from the ridge to the north from which he’d first got a good look at the chief town of the Ioudaioi. He sighed. Next to him, Teleutas laughed. “Was she as good in bed as all that?” he asked. Aristeidas and Moskhion both chuckled. They also crowded closer to hear Sostratos’ reply.

“I don’t know,” he said after a bit of thought. He didn’t see how he could keep quiet, not when the sailors already knew so much more than he might have wished. “I really don’t know. But it’s… different when you’re not buying it, isn’t it?”

Aristeidas dipped his head. “It’s sweetest when they give it to you for love.”

Menedemos had always felt that way, which was why he liked to chase other men’s wives instead of-or in addition to-going to brothels. Now, after bedding Zilpah, Sostratos understood. He sighed again. He wouldn’t forget her. But he feared she would spend the rest of her days trying to forget him. That wasn’t what he’d had in mind, but it was how things seemed to have worked out.

Teleutas laughed again, a coarse, altogether masculine laugh. “You ask me, it’s just fine whenever you manage to stick it in there.” The other two sailors laughed, too. Moskhion dipped his head in agreement.

In one sense, Sostratos supposed Teleutas had a point. The pleasure of the act itself wasn’t much different for a man regardless of whether he bedded a whore or his own wife or someone else’s. But what it meant, what he felt about himself and his partner afterwards-those could, and indeed almost had to, vary widely.

Had Menedemos been there, Sostratos would have taken the argument further. With Teleutas, he let it drop. The less he had to talk to the sailor, the better he liked it. He said, “Let’s keep moving, that’s all. The faster we go, the sooner we’ll get back to Sidon and the Aphrodite .”

Aristeidas, Moskhion, and Teleutas all murmured approvingly at that. Moskhion said, “By the gods, it’ll be nice to speak Greek again with more people than just us.”

“That’s right.” Aristeidas dipped his head. “By now, we’re all sick of listening to each other, anyhow.” He glanced over at Sostratos, then hastily added, “Uh, meaning no offense, young sir.”