it.' The dried-fish merchant looked wise. 'I suppose she thinks I'd take it away from her. She ought to know better - I'm no skinflint, not like some people I could name - but you never can tell with slaves.' 'True.' Menedemos let out a sigh of relief. Gylippos didn't suspect him. Gylippos didn't suspect his own wife, either. Maybe Phyllis was good at keeping her affairs secret, or maybe she hadn't strayed till she met Menedemos. He preferred the latter explanation. 'Do you know,' Gylippos said, 'I offered Herennius Egnatius ten minai for the peacock, and he wouldn't take it. I still say it's not right to let him go off with a prize like that instead of selling it to a Hellene.' 'Well, O best one, if you'd offered me ten minai, you'd have a peacock in your courtyard right now. Since you didn't . . .' Menedemos shrugged. Gylippos gave him a sour look. Before Herennius Egnatius bought the peacock, he hadn't thought it was worth ten minai, or even five. He wanted it more because somebody else had it. Menedemos thought he was entitled to look sour himself, too. He would have loved to get ten minai for the bird. Because of her many rowers, sailing in the Aphrodite cost a lot more than a regular merchantman would have. The two chicks he'd just sold Gylippos were worth about three days of wages for the crew. Sostratos was the one who did most of the mumbling over a counting board, but Menedemos worried about turning a profit, too. Instead of scowling, though, he gave Gylippos a broad, friendly smile, one so charming that the Tarentine couldn't help smiling back. Gylippos wouldn't have smiled had he known what Menedemos was thinking: I will lay your wife again, by the gods. Do I want her more because you've got her? What if I do? Gylippos called to Titus Manlius. His majordomo went off, soon to return with a leather sack pleasantly full of silver. Menedemos opened the sack and began to count the coins. 'Don't you trust me?' Gylippos inquired in injured tones. 'Of course I trust you,' Menedemos lied politely. 'But accidents can happen to anyone. With the money out in the open between us, there's no room for doubt.' Before long, he was saying, 'A hundred ninety-three . . . ninety-five . . . This nice fat tetradrakhm makes a hundred ninety-nine . . . and a last drakhma for two hundred. Everything's just as it should be.' 'I told you so.' Gylippos still sounded huffy. 'So you did.' Menedemos started scooping the coins back into the sack. 'When you sell your fish, best one, do you always take your customers' payments on trust?' 'Those thieves? Not likely!' But Gylippos didn't, wouldn't, see that anyone could reckon him anything less than a paragon of virtue. Menedemos sighed and shrugged and said his farewells. Titus Manlius closed the door behind him as if glad to see him go. The Italian slave didn't seem to approve of him. Menedemos chuckled. From what he'd seen, the majordomo didn't seem to approve of anyone, save possibly his master. Some slaves got to be that way: more partisan for the families they served than half the members of those families. Menedemos didn't go straight back to the house he shared with Sostratos. Instead, he walked around the corner so he could look up to the second-story windows. The women's quarters would be up there. Phyllis and the house slaves were doing whatever women did when shut away from the prying eyes of men: spinning, weaving, drinking wine, gossiping, who could say what all else?
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