He kissed her. He caressed her. He teased her breasts, and didn’t do much more than tease them. His hand glided down between her legs. When they joined, she rode him like a racehorse. That kept his weight from coming down where she was tender. He went right on stroking her secret place after they joined. Some women found that too much; others thought it was just enough. By the way Xenokleia arched her back and growled deep in her throat, she was one of the latter.

Her final moan of delight was almost loud enough to make

Menedemos clap a hand over her mouth. He was glad he’d roused her. He didn’t want her rousing the household slaves. But then his own pleasure burst over him, and he stopped worrying about that or anything else.

She sprawled down onto him, careless of her sore breasts. He ran a hand along the sweat-slick curve of her back. After a kiss, he asked, “Is the baby mine?”

“I don’t know for certain,” Xenokleia answered. “I did what you said-that was clever, and I can’t say it wasn’t. So I can’t know-but I can tell you which way I’d bet.”

“Ah.” So far as Menedemos knew, he hadn’t left any cuckoo’s eggs in other nests before. He still didn’t know, not for sure. But if his seed wasn’t stronger than that of a man more than twenty years older… Then it wasn’t, and Protomakhos would have himself a legitimate child.

Xenokleia kissed him again. Then she said, “You’d better go downstairs.”

“What I’d rather do is-”

She tossed her head. “That would take a while now, and we may not have the time.” She was right-right that it would be risky, and right that his lance would need a bit to stiffen from boiled asparagus to iron. If we’d met five years earlier… But then, how long did Protomakhos need between rounds? Days, certainly. Poor old fellow, Menedemos thought with a young man’s heartlessness.

The Rhodian found his chiton by the door and slipped it on. He opened the door. “I hope we find more chances,” he whispered as he stepped out.

“So do I,” Xenokleia called after him. He shut the door. She barred it after him. As he tiptoed downstairs-again skipping the creaky one-he thought, Good. At least I kept her sweet. She won’t tell tales to her husband. Her being pregnant will help keep her quiet, too. She won’t want him wondering whether the baby’s his.

He looked out across the courtyard from the darkness at the bottom of the stairs. All quiet. Quick as a lizard, he scurried to his room and closed the door behind him. A long sigh of relief. No Sostratos here now. No Protomakhos lying in wait, either. I got away with it again.

He lay down on the bed. He hadn’t fallen asleep before someone- no, not someone; Protomakhos-pounded on the front door. “Let me in! Let me in!” he shouted-no, sang. How drunk was he? Drunk enough, evidently. How lucky am I? Menedemos wondered. Lucky enough, evidently. And Xenokleia had been right-a second round would have been a disaster. It would have been fun anyhow, Menedemos thought as a slave padded across the courtyard to open the door for Protomakhos. In came the proxenos, still singing loudly, if notvery well. Despite the racket, Menedemos yawned, twisted, stretched… slept.

A cloth merchant tossed his head. “Sorry, friend,” he said, and his regret seemed genuine. “That’s very pretty work you’ve got there, and very fine work, too. I don’t say anything different, so don’t you get me wrong. But to the crows with me if I know who would want it, and I don’t care to buy what I’m not sure I can sell. I don’t want to get stuck with it. I’d have thrown my silver away.”

“Thank you for looking at it,” Sostratos said, carefully refolding the embroidered linen he’d bought on his way to Jerusalem. He’d heard the same response from several other cloth dealers. He’d bought the linen because the embroidery work-a hunting scene with hares crouching beneath thornbushes and red-tongued hounds trying to get them out-was astonishingly vivid and colorful, far better than anything of the sort he’d seen in Hellas. The Phoenician who’d sold it to him told him it came from the east, from Mesopotamia. Because it was so beautiful, he hadn’t imagined he would have any trouble selling It. But it was also unusual, which made some people leery of it. Sostratos asked, “Do you know of someone in your business who might be more inclined to take a chance?”

“Sorry,” the cloth merchant repeated, and tossed his head again. “You know what I would do if I were you, though?”

“Tell me.”

“I’d try to sell it to some rich man who likes hunting. He’d have the money to buy it, and he might figure out something to do with it- hang it on the wall of his andron, maybe, so his friends could admire it at his symposia.”

That was a good idea-or it would have been a good idea for an Athenian merchant. A local man would have dealt here for years. He would have customers in mind when he saw something like the cloth.

Sostratos didn’t. He was a stranger here, and the Athenians were strangers to him. “Strangers…” he murmured.

“What’s that?” the cloth merchant asked.

“Nothing, O best one, nothing really,” Sostratos answered. “But I thank you very much for your suggestion.”

“I hope you can unload that. It’s very pretty, no doubt about it,” the Athenian said. “But it wouldn’t come cheap for me, and I don’t want to spend my owls on something where T might not get ‘em back.”

“All right. Hail.” Sostratos walked out of the fellow’s shop and into the brilliant sunlight of the very first days of summer. It would have been even hotter in Rhodes, but it was plenty warm enough here. Sostratos’ shadow was a black puddle around his feet. Down in Egypt, he’d heard, shadows got shorter still at solstice time, tillthey all but disappeared. If you measured the difference in the angle of a noontime shadow on the same day here and at Alexandria, and if you knew exactly how far it was from here to there, you could use geometry to figure out how big the world is.

You could,.. if you knew. But no one did, not with the needed precision. Sostratos sighed. So many things we don’t know.

One of the things he still didn’t know was where he would sell the embroidered cloth. But now, thanks to the dealer, he had an idea. He was glad he’d put on his petasos before visiting this fellow. Otherwise, he would have wanted to double back to Protomakhos’ house to get one. If he walked down to the seaside with his head uncovered, his brains might cook before he got there. He hadn’t cared to go to Peiraieus in the rain, squelching through mud. He didn’t much care for a long walk in baking heat, either.

He laughed at himself. You want it to be sunny but mild all the time. After a moment’s thought, he dipped his head. Yes, that is what I want. Nothing was wrong with wanting it, as long as he understood that wanting it didn’t mean he’d get it.

He wasn’t bound for Peiraieus today, but for Mounykhia, where the great fort housing Kassandros’ men dominated the skyline. “What do you want?” demanded a guard with a long spear. That was what Sostratos thought he said, anyhow; he used Macedonian dialect so broad as to be almost unintelligible to someone who spoke one of the more usual varieties of Greek.

“I want to see Alketas the tetrarkhos, if you please.” Sostratos answered as dearly as he could, and did his best to use Attic-the guard would be more used to that, and more likely to understand it, than Sostratos’ native Doric.

And the fellow dipped his head to show he did follow. “Who be you?” he asked.

“Sostratos son of Lysistratos, a Rhodian. I’ve sold Alketas wine. I have something else here he might care to see.”

“Wait. No go. No come. Wait.” The Macedonian tapped the ground with the iron-shod butt of his spear to make sure Sostratos got the message. Then he disappeared into the bowels of the fortress. Sostratos waited. Sweat dripped off him. A bee buzzed close. He took off his hat and whacked at it. It flew away. He put the hat back on, first carefully checking to make sure the bee wasn’t inside. Just as he was starting to grow impatient, the sentry returned. “Now you come,” he said.