Over the Wine-Dark Sea

Up at the bow, another carpenter was replacing a lost nail that helped hold the three-finned bronze ram to the bow timbers inside it. He must have heard Menedemos' remark, for he looked up and said, "And I'll bet you were glad you finally could do it year before last, too."

"He's got you there," Sostratos said.

"No, we finally got him and his pals back," Menedemos answered. "For a while there, ordinary Rhodians had a cursed hard time getting carpenters to work for them -  everybody was building ships for Antigonos to use against Ptolemaios."

"That was a mistake -  helping Antigonos, I mean," Sostratos said. "Rhodes does too much business with Egypt for us to get on Ptolemaios' wrong side."

"You can say that -  you were studying up in Athens. You don't know what things were like here." Menedemos scowled at the memory. "Nobody had the nerve to try crossing One-Eyed Antigonos, believe you me."

As terns screeched overhead, Sostratos made a placating gesture. "All right. I wouldn't want to try crossing him myself, since you put it that way." Another screech rang out, this one louder, more raucous, and much closer than the high-flying sea birds. Sostratos jumped. "By the dog of Egypt, what was that?"

"I don't know." Menedemos trotted away from the Aphrodite. "Come on. Let's go find out."

Sostratos flipped his hands in protest. "Our fathers sent us down here to see if the ship is ready to take out."

"We'll do that," Menedemos said over his shoulder. "But whatever's making that noise may be something the Hellenes in Italy haven't seen before. I know I've never heard it before."

The horrible screech rang out again. It sounded more like a bugle than anything else, but it didn't really sound like a bugle, either. "I hope I never hear it again," Sostratos said, but, as he did so often, he followed where Menedemos led.

Since the screeches, once begun, resounded at pretty regular intervals, tracking them didn't require dogs. They came from a ramshackle pierside warehouse about a plethron from the Aphrodite. The owner of the building, a fat Phoenician named Himilkon, came running out, hands clapped over his ears, just as Menedemos and Sostratos trotted up.

"Hail," Menedemos said. "Is that the noise a leopard makes?"

"Or has some Egyptian wizard summoned up a kakodaimon from the depths of Tartaros?" Sostratos added.

Himilkon shook his head from side to side, as Phoenicians did when they meant no. "Neither, my masters," he answered in gutturally accented Greek. Gold gleamed from hoops that pierced his ears. He plucked at his curled black beard, much longer and thicker than Sostratos', to show distress. "That accursed fowl is pretty, but it will drive me mad."

"Fowl?" Menedemos raised an eyebrow at yet another screech. "What kind of fowl? A pigeon with a brazen throat?"

"A fowl," Himilkon repeated. "I do not recall the name in Greek." He shouted back into the warehouse: "Hyssaldomos! Bring out the cage, to show the miserable creature to these fine gentlemen."

"He wants you to buy it, whatever it is," Sostratos whispered to Menedemos. The captain of the Aphrodite dipped his head in impatient agreement.

Hyssaldomos' voice came from within: "Be right there, boss." Grunting under the weight, the Karian slave carried out a large, heavy wooden cage and set it down on the ground by Himilkon. "Here you go."

Menedemos and Sostratos crouched to peer through the slats of the cage. A very large bird with shiny blue feathers and a curious crest or topknot stared back at them with beady black eyes. It opened its pale beak and gave forth with another screech, all the more appalling for coming from closer range.

Rubbing his ear, Menedemos looked up at Himilkon. "Whatever it is, I've never seen one before."

Hyssaldomos supplied the Greek word: "It's a peacock."

"That's right, a peacock," Himilkon said with pride that would have been greater if he hadn't had to talk around a screech.

"A peacock!" Menedemos and Sostratos exclaimed, in excitement and disbelief. Menedemos wagged a finger at the creature and quoted Aristophanes, his favorite playwright: " 'Which are you, bird or peacock?' "

"My slave and I told you it was a peacock," said the Phoenician merchant, who'd probably never heard of the Birds. "And be careful with your hands around it. It bites."

"Where does it come from?" Sostratos asked.

"India," Himilkon replied. "Since the divine Alexander went there with an army of you Hellenes, more of these birds have come back to the Inner Sea than ever before. I have the peacock here, and five peahens still caged in the warehouse. They're quieter than he is, Baal be praised."

"From India?" Sostratos scratched his head in bewilderment. "But Herodotos doesn't talk about peafowl in India in his history. He talks about the clothes made from tree-wool, and the enormous ants that mine gold, and the Indians themselves, with their black hides and their black semen. But not a word about peacocks. If they came from India, you'd think he'd say so."