The Gryphon's Skull

“Everybody knows what cooks are like,” Menedemos said. Like any prosperous household's cook, Sikon was a slave. But, because he ruled the kitchen like a king, he often acted as if he were master of the whole house. Menedemos rose from his chair, “If you'll excuse me, Father, I think I'll go in there and find out what he's up to.”

“Good luck.” Even iron-willed Philodemos often lost his skirmishes with Sikon.

The cook was a middle-aged man, on the plump side—who would have wanted a man who didn't care for the meals he turned out? “Snooping, are you?” he said when Menedemos stuck his head in the door.

“I live here, every now and again,” Menedemos said mildly. He didn't want to quarrel with the cook, either. A man who did that often regretted it in short order.

“Oh. It's you, young master.” Sikon relaxed. “I thought it'd be your stepmother.” He snorted, sounding amazingly like a bad-tempered donkey. Philodemos' second wife was ten years younger than her stepson. The cook went on, “You won't pitch a fit if I spend a couple of oboloi so the house has something better than sprats or salt fish for opson.”

“Baukis takes the business of being a wife seriously.” Menedemos didn't want to criticize the girl. What he wanted to do ... Had she been another man's, any other man's, wife, he would have gone after her without hesitation. He knew himself well enough to be sure of that. But even he fought shy of adultery with his own father's new spouse.

“Seriously!” Sikon threw his hands in the air. “You'd think we'd all eat nothing but barley porridge for the next ten years if I buy something tasty. Can you talk some sense into her, young master? Your father doesn't want to do it; that's pretty plain. She just looks down her nose at me, the way free people do with slaves sometimes, but maybe she'd listen to you.”

“Maybe,” Menedemos said uncomfortably. He didn't want reasons to talk with Baukis; he wanted reasons to stay away from her. But Sikon had given him an opening to shift the subject, and he seized it: “What sort of tasty things did you find this afternoon?”

“Some nice shrimp—they were still wriggling when I got 'em,” Sikon answered. “I'm going to glaze them with honey and oregano, the way your father likes. And a fellow there in the market had the first good eels I've seen this spring. What do you say to eel pie, baked with cabbage and mushrooms and silphium from Kyrene? And a cheesecake, to use up the rest of the honey I got for the glaze.”

“What do I say? I say hurry up and cook, and quit wasting your time talking to me. Eels!” Menedemos had all he could do not to lick his chops like a hungry dog. He didn't ask what the seafood had cost. All he wanted to do was eat it.

And he did, along with his father in the andron. He supposed Sikon also sent some of the splendid supper to Baukis in the women's quarters. She would surely find out from Philodemos what the cook had bought; sharing the bounty might make her better inclined to him. If anything could, that would.

As he usually did, Menedemos woke before sunrise the next morning. He went to the kitchen for some barley rolls—leftovers from sitos at supper—and olive oil and wine for breakfast. Carrying them out to the courtyard, he sat down on a stone bench there and watched the sky get light. He would have done the same thing lying on the Aphrodite's poop deck after a night spent at sea.

A couple of slaves dipped their heads to him as they ducked into the kitchen for their morning meal. They ate the same sort of breakfast he did; Philodemos wasn't the sort of master who gave them a precisely measured ration of flour every day and made sure they didn't sneak into the kitchen to supplement it. To make up for that generosity, he worked them hard.

When a laughing dove fluttered down into the courtyard, Mene-demos tossed a small chunk of roll onto the ground in front of it. It walked over, head bobbing, examined the morsel, and ate it. They were very tame birds. Had Sikon tossed it crumbs, it would have been with a view toward netting it for a meal.

Someone came down the stairs and out into the courtyard. Tame or not, the dove took off, wings whirring. “Good day, Menedemos,” Baukis said.

“Good day,” Menedemos answered gravely.

“How are you?” his stepmother asked. The title, applied to a girl who couldn't have had more than sixteen years, was as absurd as Sikon's snort had made it. She was no great beauty, and even at sixteen had hardly more breasts than a boy.

“I'm well, thanks.” Menedemos kept his tone formal. He knew what his father saw in her: dowry, family connection, the chance for another son or two. He was much less sure what he saw in Baukis himself. Maybe nothing but the chance to outrage his father in the greatest possible way. But maybe something more, too. Doing his best not to think about that, he asked, “And you?”