After we waved off our visitors and peace descended on the street, the others went on up. I stood alone for a few moments breathing in the night air. Helena and Albia would be indoors, washing the children and putting them to bed. I would be needed soon for my tucking-in duties.
I stood in the darkness and felt aching sympathy for Posidonius, who had lost his only daughter to an adventurer.
XXXIV
Next morning we all trooped out to Portus with Aelianus and saw him board the Spes. The last time the Camillus brothers went abroad, they had come with us on a trip to Britain. Helena and I, always keen to travel, felt a shared pang now as we braced up to seeing one of her brothers venturing abroad without us.
“Try and find a mystery for Marcus!” Helena quipped. Her mother shook her head, but her father sighed as if he would quite like to come too. Quintus looked on with special yearning, as he thought of his sibling loose among the wine, women, and cultural riches of Greece. At least, I knew the first two were on his mind.
If there is one certainty when you have been given a sailing time, it’s that the boat will never go when you expect. If it is not sailing out of the harbor without you as you turn up on the quayside, it will sit there at anchor for several more hours. Or days, maybe. The Spes had a second mate whose duties included passenger management. That meant he ordered them to arrive early and stowed them at his leisure while nothing else was going on; at sea, his role was to hear their complaints and keep them calm in a storm. He inspected their baggage keenly when they first came aboard because in a bad storm, while the mariners struggled to control the ship’s wild movements, it would be his task to decide what to chuck overboard to lighten it. There are rules, hated but fair, about how to divide any losses between owners if actual cargo is thrown off in an emergency—but casual passengers have few rights. I could see Aulus was extremely popular with the second mate. Aulus was a lad; his “essential” luggage was extremely heavy. If a tempest should blow up, he was on the list to surrender all his treasures first.
We put Aulus on the ship. Then we had to wait so long that he became restless and came off again. He and I sauntered around the port. He wanted to make his parents worry that he would miss the boat, while I had the excuse of trying to find drinks for the children.
Yes, we had brought the children. Julia and Favonia both loved a chance to run very fast toward the edge of a wharf above a crowded harbor full of deep water.
Nux had actually been in the harbor. Water called to Nux like Circe at her most sirenous. Before I could stop her, Nux had leapt off the wall and paddled around crazily until she realized there was no way out. At that point, I thought I might have to jump in myself to save her; the children were shrieking at the thought of losing their doggie and even Helena was agitated by the imminent drowning. Since I could not swim, it was a relief when a sailor fished Nux into his bumboat and returned the bedraggled lump to us—in return for the customary bribe, or price of a drink as it is ridiculously called. No drink ever cost that much.
“Now I’m all wet from the damned dog. That bumboat swine lured her in on purpose … We may have to abandon you, Aulus.”
“I never asked anyone to come,” grumbled Aulus. That was true, but of course he was touchy at the thought that we might dump him. Now he felt lonely—and he had not even left the country.
“Oh, Julia Justa will make us stay. Your mother still loves you.”
“Well, thanks, Falco.”
I was surprised to find that the customs desk on the arrivals wharf was manned by Gaius Baebius.
“What happened to permanent sick leave after your beating?”
The clerks he supervised all stared curiously. Gaius looked shifty. “I’m still in agony, Marcus. Some days I can hardly move for the pain …”
“Skip it, Gaius.”
“You have no idea what my suffering is like—” I could imagine the diatribe if he got started.
I said if Gaius really wanted to make a complaint, he could find Cratidas at the Aquarius—though I warned him not to go alone. Hearing my short sharp tale of knives and uplifted benches, Gaius thought he might instead hire a lawyer and sue for damages. A good move, I thought. It would be very neat if a vicious ransom gang was broken up because their leading man had to flee legal action from a malingering civil servant.
“And how is darling Junia?”
“Back home in Rome. I was not aware you were so fond of her, Marcus.”
Nor was I. I had slipped up by even mentioning her.
On the quay nothing much was happening.
The first officer sauntered aboard. We took that for a good sign.
The first mate arrived, bringing some sailors. They were typical mariners. I saw Julia Justa stiffen as she noted their farmyard accents, their missing eyes and their limps, their rough tunics and bare feet. She wanted her boy to be safe in the hands of elegant master mariners with boots, cloaks, and Phrygian caps. Nothing less than Jason and all his Argonauts would be good enough to row Aelianus. We soothed her. Julia Justa knew we were being insincere.
The captain, Antemon, arrived. He turned up at the quay with the ship’s guard, carefully escorting his owners, Banno and Aline. The ransomed wife scuttled aboard, still ashen-faced. The husband remained at the end of the gangplank and stared back at the port for a moment, looking resentful.
I went up to him. “I’m sorry your trip ended so badly. Now you are safely leaving, is there anything you will tell me about what happened to your wife?” Above us on deck, Antemon was watching warily.
More furious than frightened now, this time Banno told the story. Most matched what other witnesses had said. Aline had been seized here at Portus, almost as soon as they landed. Banno was soon handed a letter which arranged a meeting in a bar. He had to go alone, and ask for the Illyrian.
“Can you describe him?” Banno looked vague. “Anything you remember about his height, his build, his coloring? Did he have hair or was he bald? Teeth? Ears? Scars? Clothing? What did he wear?”
I got nothing. Either the witness was shortsighted, or too cowed. He did tell me one thing: the location of the bar. It was on the river frontage at Ostia, quite near to the Aquarius. He had had to take the ransom money to the bar right next door.
“Does Aline remember anything?” She had been sure she was drugged, and was kept lying on a bed in a small room where she thought there was a woman, with children. “Or might it have been a single boy, Banno?”
Banno could not answer that. He was unwilling to ask the still-traumatized Aline, and there was no time anyway. He left me abruptly, almost in midsentence. The Spes was finally sailing.
We all stood on the quayside with that mournful feeling that afflicts people as they watch somebody else leave the country. We saw the gangplank pulled in and the mooring ropes cast off. Nux barked loudly. The ship was maneuvered by tugboats and its own oars, gradually prized out from its tight-packed berth, then towed slowly into the center of the great harbor. Sailors worked frantically to adjust the square sail. The vessel turned laboriously to face in the right direction. At the rail, Aelianus, who was wearing a dark red tunic, soon became a blurred dot; we had all long stopped waving to him.
We stayed until the Spes started to move independently. The tugs with their heavy towing masts fell back from her. She slipped free and made her way toward the harbor exit, sailing smoothly out through the passage on the south side of the lighthouse.
“He’s gone!”
Aulus had his good points. Even I would miss him.
XXXV
The senator had told his carriage driver to wait at our apartment. If the Camilli drove back to Rome straightaway, they would hit the wheeled vehicle ban and be stopped at the city gate, so we delayed their journey by having a very late lunch. Helena went to fetch Albia, who had chosen not to come with us to Portus. She was not a slave; she had the right to free time, and apparently Aulus was no great draw for her. Helena herself enjoyed time alone, so had always allowed the yo
ung girl moments with her own thoughts.
I settled everyone else in one of the courtyards at the Aquarius. Nowhere else was so convenient, and I would not be deterred by an antisocial Cilician. The place was big enough to cope with a large influx, and had a pleasant, respectable atmosphere. If you overlooked the fact that armed pirates accumulated there sometimes, it made an ideal family restaurant.
Anyway, there was no sign of Cratidas.
We had a good, if slightly subdued meal, which with rather slow service took most of the afternoon. However much we reassured ourselves that Aulus was doing the right thing, and that his ship was sound and well managed, a sea voyage is always dangerous. It would be several weeks before he landed and could send a letter to confirm his safe arrival, then weeks more before the letter found its way to Rome. If Aulus remembered to write. His mother said he had a bad record in that sphere.
When we finished, the senator and I wrangled over the bill, but in the end he paid it. I had things to do, but it was only polite to return to the apartment for farewells.
“Don’t worry, Mama darling—” Helena was feeling mischievous. “The Daily Gazette says that rumors of pirates operating again are untrue …” As Julia Justa stared in horror, I quickly signaled the driver to start off.
After we had watched the carriage disappear, a sense of anticlimax downed us. While the children scampered off, looking for toys they had abandoned the night before, Helena, Albia, and I all walked back slowly into the courtyard. It seemed forlorn after our great family banquet.
Helena wiped away a tear. I hugged her. “Aulus will be all right.”
“Of course.” She became more brisk. “Now we are alone, Albia and I have something to show you. While she was here this morning, we had a visitor.”
“Entertaining a follower?” I teased Albia. She looked hot.
“Don’t,” warned Helena. “It was just as well that I came home to fetch her; Albia found him a handful.”
Now I was a furious head of household. “I’ll sort him! Who was the bastard?”
“A slave called Titus.”
Titus? That chirpy extrovert who worked for the landlady at the Marine Gate rental—the slave who cleaned Diocles’ room. I could imagine how the pushy tyke would be too flirtatious with Albia if he found her alone. He would take her for a slave or freedwoman, for one thing.
I looked across at Albia, who was kicking her heels. Helena had interrupted the unwanted advances; there was no harm done. “He brought you some things, Marcus Didius.” Albia had already learned that I needed efficient reports: “First, his excuse was that there were two good tunics Diocles had left at the laundry. These have ‘come to light unexpectedly,’ so Titus says.”
“Wrong size for him!” I grinned.
“I said this was not enough to earn him a tip.”
“Excellent. The last girl I kept in the office to take messages was a soft touch.”
“Lies,” murmured Helena, to whom I had been referring. “Tell him the rest, Albia.”
“Notebooks.”
“Notebooks! I thought we had those—mostly empty.”
“These new ones are written in. There are quite a lot. I believe Titus had kept them, hoping they might be valuable. Now he is frightened he will get into trouble!” Albia spat. It was a habit we had yet to cure. “So he will. Sooner or later, and I think sooner …” Prophesying doom for men gave Albia much satisfaction. “Titus said—or he pretended—he had been asked to look after these tablets by your scribe. To put them in a safe place, and not tell anybody. That is why he kept them secret from you. But some men came to the house asking about them yesterday, and Titus is now very scared.”
“Who scared him?”
“He knew no names.”
“I had a quick look at the tablets,” said Helena. I imagined her speed-reading before she rushed back to the Aquarius for lunch. “Two different authors, I would say. Some look like old diaries—don’t get excited; it’s not love affairs of the famous. They are ships’ logs, or similar.”
“Boring! I can do without a load of notes saying ‘wind nor’ by nor-nor’ west, sea choppy; had beans for supper, farted hilariously.’”
Helena had been teaching Albia to read on quiet evenings. Albia must have scanned the tablets too and now piped up, “Marcus Didius, it is more like ‘Termessos: sold five from the Constantia; good price for the wine … Off Samos, met the Iris. Brisk but a result.’”
“Who wrote these logs?”
“It does not say. There are a lot of ‘meetings.’” Albia was a bright girl. She knew we had been talking about pirates. “Most are ‘brisk’ and end with a list of good prices.”
“Sold five what?” I met Helena’s eyes. Like me, she suspected the worst.
“The lists of sales are endless,” Albia told me unhappily. “Are they people, these numbers? These fives and tens and threes and even twenties? Are they people, being sold into slavery?”
“The tablets are old and battered,” Helena tried to reassure her. “I think we’ll find these events happened many years ago.”
Realistically, Albia knew that not all stricken people could be saved from their misfortunes as she had been. Eventually she said in a low voice, “Wrapped in one of the clean tunics was a sword, Marcus Didius.”
“Did Titus say anything about it?”
Albia saw Titus as one of life’s lowest characters. “No, he shrugged it off as unimportant—but he is keen to get rid of it to you now.”
I told her she had better show me, so we went indoors.
The sword was a plain, short-bladed model in an ill-fitting, twisted leather scabbard. No soldier or ex-soldier would have given it a second glance, but an imperial palace freedman, brought up among bureaucrats, would not have known it had poor balance and blunt edges. There was rust on the blade, which had never been oiled and looked after, and a great deal more rust where the handle was attached with a crude weld. One sharp blow and I reckoned the ensemble would fall to pieces. I doubted if Diocles had ever used this weapon; he must have had it for reassurance only.
So when he went out the last time, Diocles had left the weapon in his room, because he thought he was going somewhere safe, either alone or among people who meant no harm to him. More importantly, he had believed that he would be coming back.
XXXVI
I left Helena with the new note-tablets. The children were contented, so she was ready to read and interpret this written work. There were enough tablets to cover a side table. Most looked ancient, their wooden boards bleached and dried up; these were filled with uneven scribbles of the kind Albia had described earlier. A few newer tablets matched those we had found before in Diocles’ room. Perhaps they would give a lead as to what had happened to him.
Helena assured me this task needed one person to review everything—that was, her. I went out instead to investigate the two bars where Banno had told me he went to negotiate his kidnapped wife’s release.
I found the bars fairly easily. One charmless nook was called the Clam, its neighbor was the Venus. Blurred pictograms advertised them. They were one-room holes of the type that occur in rows fringing every seafront or riverfront: smoky innards where food and drink were prepared, with crude tables outside squashing up against the next establishment in an unending line. The waiters—when customers could find one to take an interest—seemed interchangeable. These places prided themselves in serving excellent fish meals—which meant they overcharged mightily for a weak bowl of soup with shell in it, a very small piece of yesterday’s bread, plus red wine so acidic that if it was painted on your corns your whole toes would drop off.
I approached the bower of the love goddess first, on principle. Given its name I was not surprised to find a pale waitress with a weary expression, whose duties must include going up the back stairs with customers who wanted extra services.
“Something to eat, sir?”
No thanks. I was grown up now. I knew what would happen if I ate in a dump li
ke this. I could not spare the time to be that ill. “I’m looking for the Illyrian.”
“Not here. Get lost.”
“Has he ever been here?”
“If you say so. Everyone seems to think he has.”
“Who’s everyone?”
“A stupid stiff from the vigiles.” Brunnus. “Did you hear me?—Push off!”
Brunnus had messed up the scene just as well as he could for me. Then when I emerged from the Venus, cursing, what should I hear but his voice?
I ducked and hid. I realized what was going on: it must be the Ides of August today. The Fourth Cohort had just arrived to take post in Ostia, and their vexillation was being shown around by the departing Sixth, led by Brunnus, on the traditional familiarization walk. That is, identifying the enormous corn warehouses they were supposed to guard—as a prelude to trying out the local bars.
The Fourth had been in Ostia before. They must remember the place from two or three years ago, though to be fair, since the vigiles had a six-year turnover among their ranks, a proportion of the present detachment might be new. The warehouses had not moved position. But some of the bars might have changed hands or altered their wine suppliers, so old haunts might no longer feel the same. Men of action would need to re-connoiter urgently.
Before they could spot me, I dived into the Clam. Few customers ever bothered to venture indoors from the tables outside. There might be a latrine out at the back, but most men walked over and peed in the river; I could see one customer doing exactly that.
First, the chef and waiters thought I must be in here to complain. Once I reassured them, I was treated as a novelty. Forewarned at the Venus, here next door I straightaway moaned about Brunnus. It worked. Soon I was told that the Illyrian sometimes dropped in for business purposes. Of course they claimed to have no idea what business he was furthering. Many trades need to operate through their proprietors meeting people in bars—or so many proprietors would have you believe. Publishing. Racehorse owning. Pimping. Fencing stolen goods …
The Illyrian knew the ropes. He gave the waiters a tip in advance, so they would point him out to anyone who asked for him. He left another tip on the bill when he left. While that meant he could be sure of a welcome if he came here again, the lavish behavior also meant the staff very clearly remembered him.
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