The Sacred Land

Teleutas didn’t want to bother with his chiton. “Why can’t I shed it and go naked?” he said. “This weather’s too stinking hot for clothes.”

“These people pitch fits if you run around bare, and it’s their country,” Sostratos said. “So no.”

“It’s not their country-it’s Antigonos’ country now,” Teleutas said. “Do you think old One-Eye cares a fart whether I wear my chiton or not?”

Sostratos wondered why he’d let Teleutas talk his way into coming along on this journey. Here they were, only a day out of Sidon, and the sailor was already starting to whine and fuss. Sostratos said, “What I think is, Antigonos is back in Anatolia, keeping an eye on Ptolemaios. The Phoenicians, though, the Phoenicians are here. They don’t like people going naked. I don’t want them throwing rocks at us or whatever else they decide to do.”

“How do you know they’d do that?” Teleutas demanded. “How do you-

“I don’t know they’d do that,” Sostratos said. “What I do know, O marvelous one, is that you’re about a digit’s breadth away from going back to Sidon and explaining to my cousin that I couldn’t use you here after all. If you’re going to come along, you’ll do what I tell you, the same as you do what Menedemos tells you when we’re at sea. Have you got that?” He was breathing hard by the time he finished. He didn’t like launching into a tirade like that. He’d hoped he wouldn’t have to. And maybe I wouldn‘t, he thought resentfully, if I’d picked somebody besides Teleutas.

But he had picked Teleutas, and so he was stuck with him. The sailor looked resentful, too. He plainly had not the faintest notion why Sostratos had come down on him so hard. Had he understood such things, he wouldn’t have a

“Delighted,” Sostratos answered. Aristeidas snickered. Even Moskhion smiled, and he was hardly a man to notice subtleties. But Teleutas just went on glaring. Either he couldn’t recognize sarcasm when he heard it or he was more comprehensively armored against it than anyone Sostratos had ever met.

Aristeidas pointed and asked, “What’s that up ahead?”

As usual, he’d seen something before anyone else did. After riding on for a little way, Sostratos said, “I think it’s a little roadside shrine, like a Herm at a crossroads back in Hellas.”

The sandstone stele stood about half as tall as a man. It had the image of a god, now much weathered, carved in low relief on each of its four sides. There had been letters beneath the god’s images, but they were too worn to make out, at least for someone as little familiar with Phoenician writing as Sostratos.

A couple of bundles of dried flowers and a loaf of bread, now half eaten by animals, lay by the base of the stele. “Let’s leave some bread of our own,” Moskhion said. “We ought to get the gods here on our side, if we can.”

Sostratos doubted an offering would do anything of the sort, but he didn’t suppose it could hurt. If it made Moskhion and the other sailors feel better, it might even do some good. “Go ahead,” he told the former sponge diver.

Moskhion took a barley roll from a leather sack on the pack donkey’s back. He set it by the old loaf. “I don’t know what prayers you’re used to,” he told the god whose image adorned the stele, “but I hope you’ll look kindly on the Hellenes passing through your land.” He bobbed his head up and down. “Uh, thank you.”

It wasn’t the worst prayer Sostratos had heard. “May it be so,” he added. “Shall we press on now?”

No one said no. Before long, a Phoenician leading a donkey came up the road toward the Hellenes. He stared at them. Plainly, he’d seldom seen men who looked like them or dressed like them. But they were four to his one, so he kept to himself whatever opinions he might have had.

“Peace be unto you,” Sostratos said in Aramaic-the phrase most often used as a greeting or farewell in that language.

The Phoenician blinked. He must not have expected a foreigner to use his tongue. “And to you also peace,” he replied. “What ma

“We are Hellenes,” Sostratos said. That was what it meant, anyway; as always in Aramaic, the literal meaning was, We are lonians. “Who are you, my master? What does your beast carry? Maybe we can trade.”

“Hellenes!” The Phoenician’s dark eyebrows rose. “I have seen soldiers who called themselves by that name, but never traders till now. I thought all Hellenes were soldiers and robbers. It does my heart good to learn I am wrong.” That told Sostratos more than he might have wanted to hear about the way his countrymen behaved hereabouts. The Phoenician bowed and went on, “Your servant is Bodashtart son of Tabnit. And you, sir?”

“I am called Sostratos son of Lysistratos,” Sostratos answered. “I come from the island of Rhodes.” He pointed westward.

“And you come here from this island to trade?” Bodashtart asked. Sostratos started to dip his head, then remembered to nod as a barbarian would have done. Bodashtart pointed to the pack donkey. “What do you carry there?”

“Among other things, fine perfume. Rhodes is famous for it,” Sostratos told him. “The name of the island-and the name of the city on the island-means ‘rose.’ “

“Ah. Perfume.” The Phoenician nodded again. “If it is not too expensive, I might want some for my concubine, and maybe for my wife, too.”

A man who could afford to keep both a concubine and a wife could probably afford perfume. Sostratos gave him another bow, asking, “Would you buy for silver, my master? Or would you trade?” Bodashtart hadn’t told him what his donkey was carrying.

“My lord, I have with me beeswax and fine embroidered linen from the east,” the man said now. He had to pause and explain what beeswax was; Sostratos hadn’t heard the word before. That done, he went on, “I was taking them to Sidon to sell them for what they might bring. Truly Shamash shines on the hour of our meeting.”

Shamash, Sostratos remembered, was the Phoenician name for Apollo, the god of the sun. “Truly,” he echoed. “I can use beeswax, I think. You buy perfume for yourself only? Or you want some to sell later?”

“I may want some to sell. Indeed, my master, I may,” Bodashtart replied. “But it depends on price and quality, eh?”

“And what does not?” That earned Sostratos the first smile he’d got from the Phoenician. He slid down off his mule. The muscles in his i

“What’s going on?” Aristeidas asked. “We can’t understand a word you’re saying, remember.”

“He has beeswax and embroidered linen,” Sostratos answered. “He’s interested in perfume. We’ll see what we can work out.”

“Ah, that’s fine, sir. That’s very fine,” the sharp-eyed young sailor said. “But remember that you’ll want to have some perfume left when we get to that Engedi place, so you can trade it for balsam.”

“I’ll remember,” Sostratos promised. He hesitated; Aristeidas deserved better than getting brushed off like that. “It’s good you remembered, too,” Sostratos said. “If you can keep such things in mind, maybe you’ll make a trader yourself one day.”

“Me?” Aristeidas looked surprised. Then he shrugged. “Don’t know that I’d want to. I like going to sea the way I do.”

“All right. I didn’t say you had to make a trader. I said you might.” Sostratos fumbled with the lengths of rope lashing the pack donkey’s burden to its back. Bodashtart watched with growing amusement, which only made Sostratos fumble worse. He was about to pull out his knife and solve the problem the way Alexander had solved the Gordian knot when Moskhion stepped up and helped undo the knots. “Thanks,” Sostratos muttered, half grateful, half mortified.

One large leather sack held the jars of perfume, which lay nestled in wool and straw to keep them from smashing together and breaking. Sostratos pulled out a jar and held it up. Bodashtart frowned. “It isn’t very big, is it?”