“You’re being a bit hard on her, don’t you think? There’s nothing malicious about Aemelia.”
“No indeed. She’s a sweet little thing. But she does get things tangled. I make it a practice not to discuss anything but fluff in front of her.”
Correus chuckled. Maybe Lucius was right. The emperor certainly wouldn’t like it if Aemelia brightly asked him one day who it was that Lucius was spying on this week. “Now that we have adjourned to your private office” – Correus indicated the hayrick grandly – “maybe you will tell me what your long ears have picked up about these pirates.”
Lucius looked worried. “There’s the trouble. Nothing. Or at any rate nothing more than moon dust. I’m almost certain that someone in the City is feeding them information, which is bad enough, but frankly that’s only one man’s treason, and one man can be eliminated. What worries me is that he seems to be so hard to nose out. If he has very high protection, it could be embarrassing.”
“Do you mean Domitian?” Correus asked bluntly.
Lucius winced. “That’s treason, too. Domitian is the heir. For the gods’ sakes, shut up. But yes, since you ask, I do smell a connection. Maybe not a direct one. I haven’t got any evidence, mind you, just a feeling.”
It wasn’t much to go on, but Correus was inclined to give Lucius’s “feelings” a good deal of credibility. “What’s your feeling about trouble brewing in Germany? On top of the City connection?”
Lucius sighed. “Titus will have told you everything I know. That’s the army’s province. But frankly, yes, if you’ve been wondering where these pirates’ loot has been disappearing to, so have I. And the thought ‘into a German war chest’ does come to mind. You’ve been wanting to get back to active duty, friend. I think you’ve got it.”
* * *
We are always saying good-bye to someone, Lady Antonia thought. In the early years it had been her husband, Appius, midway through a career that had taken him from birth in a respectable but obscure equestrian family with a tradition of legionary service to a post as legate of a legion of his own and finally to a military governorship. Now that he had retired, the children seemed always to be scattered to the four winds – even her daughter, Julia, whose husband, Lucius Paulinus, was writing a modern history of Rome’s provincial wars and believed in looking at them firsthand – or so he said. Privately, Lady Antonia suspected that most of what Paulinus saw went into a report to the emperor and not into his History. They probably would be off again soon. And Flavius, her son, the child of her heart. The emperor was a soldier, too. There would be a campaign somewhere, and Flavius would go with him.
Today it was Correus. He was leading the big gold gelding his father had given him the day he went into the Centuriate, with the new slave behind him on a spotted horse from the cavalry stock. As always, the whole house had turned out to bid him farewell, not just out of respect to the master but for love of Correus.
Forst and Emer – she had been a kitchen maid before Forst had requested her freedom when his own had been granted – were there; Forst still had black circles under his eyes, but he was there nonetheless. Old Thais, who had been nurse to both boys; Sabinus and Alan, who was almost as old now as Thais, and Diulius – men who had taught the brothers to fight and ride and drive a chariot; Philippos, the steward of the house; and Helva, of course, hanging onto Correus’s arm, and, at forty-three, still looking beautiful enough to stop traffic, in a sky-blue silk gown that was highly unsuitable for a morning at home. She gave Correus a proud maternal smile. Helva had never been much use as a mother (it was Antonia or Thais who had bandaged skinned knees and banished nightmares), but she did have her priorities firmly in mind – the more successful Correus’s career, the more comfortably Helva would live when Appius died and freed her. Helva occupied a privileged position in a wealthy household. She didn’t want to be freed at the cost of that.
Antonia sighed. The older she got, the less she wished that it wouldn’t be such a scandal if she had Helva beaten within an inch of her life. But there were still times… Antonia’s marriage to Appius had been an arranged one, as alliances among the privileged generally were. She didn’t begrudge Helva the nights that Appius had spent in her bed. But Helva could be such a nuisance…
Julia and Lucius were there to say good-bye, and Flavius and Aemelia, and of course Correus’s British wife on his other side, her thin arm through his, her dark eyes upturned to him. She still didn’t look much more than fourteen, but Antonia suspected that Ygerna had been a forceful personality from birth. She had Felix by one hand, scrubbed, his thick, corn-colored hair brushed down flat, and wearing a tunic as yet unstained.
Correus gave Helva a hug, and bent and kissed Ygerna, his eyes smiling into hers. Then he swung up onto the gold gelding’s back.
Ygerna, glowering, watched him go, leaving her abandoned among his family.
Flavius and Aemelia waved good-bye, and Aemelia leaned her head against Flavius’s shoulder for a moment. She had tried living on the frontier, and it had not been within her strength, although she had once sworn it was. But that had been when she wanted to marry Correus. Looking back on it, she had lately begun to think that it was as well that she hadn’t been allowed to. Correus had become a stranger in the last years. And he would have wanted her on the frontier with him. Flavius understood her. Flavius was… safe. And he loved her. Although this last week, she had begun to wonder if his brother’s wandering feet hadn’t been rubbing off on Flavius: There was a thoughtful, gone-away-over-the-hill look in his eye, and more often than not she would talk to him for a while and then realize that he hadn’t been listening at all. Was he wishing for a chance to chase pirates, too? Aemelia looked at her husband’s hands and gave a delicate shudder. Let Correus have the pirates.
“What will he do when he gets there?” she asked. “To the Rhenus, I mean?”
Flavius gave her a startled look, as if the answer was obvious, or as if her words had pulled him back out of some daydream. “Walk into their den, of course,” he said, watching his brother’s back disappear down the tree-lined road that ran from his father’s lands to Rome. “And hope he looks innocent.”
* * *
Marius Vettius flicked his fingers through the shipping schedules laid out before him on his desk, sliding them back and forth across the smooth black marble top, making patterns with them. The information in them was too valuable not to sell to the pirates, even with the emperor poking his stubborn nose into the matter. Vettius weighed the emperor’s interference against the profit when the Rhenus pirates paid him his percentage. Finally he stacked the wax tablets into a neat pile, corners aligned, pulled another tablet out of his desk, and began to write. When he had finished, he sent for Fulminatus, who was a junior clerk in the City Shipping Offices and not overly burdened with honesty.
Fulminatus held out his hand for the tablet and gave the prefect a cocky smile. “Same place, Chief?”
Vettius ignored him and left Fulminatus standing there until he got the idea. The clerk’s smile faded, and he stood up straight. “To be delivered as usual, sir?” he asked crisply, but his eyes shot Vettius a look of dislike. Fulminatus considered the prefect too fine in his ways for a man who was up to something shady. Still, Vettius paid well for service, and Fulminatus, like a great many other people in Rome, was too afraid of Vettius to push him very far.
“Yes, to the usual place,” Vettius said. “Just give it to the man who tells you his name is ‘Mercury,’ with no chat, please.”
Fulminatus nodded. He looked curiously at the sealed tablet. He’d unsealed one, very carefully, once, but he hadn’t been able to decipher what was written on it. Fulminatus thought Vettius had found out; he had been set on by robbers in an alley afterward. They hadn’t taken anything, but they beat him black and blue. Since then Fulminatus had kept his curiosity to himself.
When the clerk had gone, Vettius tapped his long fingers together idly, waiting for the incense that burned in a silver pot on t
he desk to clear the air of the dank river smell that had come in through the open door with Fulminatus. All the shipping offices occupied a row along the Tiber docks, and most had subsidiary offices at Ostia Harbor, twenty miles downriver.
All smelled vilely of rotting garbage – the City merchants burned more incense in their offices than they sold at a profit. Vettius poked with one finger at the silver burner so that a half-burned piece crumbled on the grate in a cloud of scent. Titus would probably send a fleet after the pirates, Vettius thought. Equally probably the fleet couldn’t catch them; they were hidden too well in the labyrinth of the Rhenus delta. But it would tie up the Rhenus Fleet for a while. If there were any anti-Roman elements at work in the Rhenus delta, as Vettius was beginning to suspect, that might be all to the good. A war gave an ambitious man a wider scope. A war had put Titus’s father, Vespasian, on the throne. The next war could put another man there. Vettius watched the red heart of the incense reflected in the silver burner, and smiled.
IV Julius Caesar
The marines on the galley’s upper deck were no more than scarlet splashes in the fog. It was a gray, clammy mist, blanketing everything and muffling sound. The dip and splash of the oars seemed to come from above as well as below and to the sides of the galley, and the cry of the sailor taking soundings in the bow had a thin sound behind the mist.
The marine commander looked dubiously into the whiteness.
“We’ll find ’em; don’t worry.” The captain’s voice beside him made him jump. The captain was a disembodied head above a gray wool cloak. He had taken off his helmet, and his hair hung dankly like seaweed in his eyes.
“The timing is extremely important,” the marine commander said. “There won’t be a second try at this.”
“We’ll find ’em,” the captain said again. “Or rather they’ll find us, which I thought was the idea.”
The marine commander compressed his lips into a tight line. The galley’s captain knew perfectly well how tricky it was going to be. He said he knew every inch of this coast with his eyes closed, and the marine commander hoped he did. He peered into the fog. “Can’t you signal her?” Somewhere out there was the second ship, a small, fat merchantman with the insignia of the Veii Exporters’ Guild, and beyond that somewhere, presumably, the pirates, their quarry.
The captain ignored him.
“Thirteen feet, sir, in the channel,” the seaman in the bow called out. “Twelve and a half.”
“She’ll run aground,” the marine commander said. “She draws more water than we do.”
“Aye, well, I expect her captain will be keeping that in mind,” the galley’s captain said.
The marine commander looked gloomily at the fog. The prefect of the entire Lower Rhenus Fleet was on that merchantman. If they lost him, they might as well jump overboard and save a naval court its trouble.
* * *
A liburnian loomed out of the thinning fog – long, low in the water, dangerous as a crocodile. There was another behind her, nearly invisible, painted the same seawater blue. Pirate craft.
“Ships to port, sir,” the captain of the merchantman said. There was a curious note of satisfaction in his voice.
“Right on time.” Correus, the merchantman’s passenger, pulled the folds of his toga around him. It was damp almost clear through. “This isn’t a mist; it’s a rain that doesn’t fall down. Have we picked up our escort again?”
The captain shook his head. “They should be behind us. Beyond that last headland, I’m hoping.”
Correus looked over his shoulder. The bank of dunes along the coast was only an amorphous splotch, a darker shade of gray. “Can they see us? I won’t risk the crew. We’ll run for it if we have to.”
“I’m afraid we’re committed now, sir,” the captain said. “Even with Poseidon pushing her, this wallowing sow couldn’t outdistance those liburnians. And if the mist burns off a little more, we’re going to glow like a campfire when the sun hits.” The merchantman was brightly painted red and yellow, with a gilded bird’s head on the stern and a bright stripe of purple along the oarlocks. “We’ll hug the coast. If we’ve missed them, they can pick us up from shore. These waters are cold enough to freeze you fast, even in midsummer. You’d better put on your show before they take it into their heads to heave you overboard.”
Something whistled over their heads, and the merchantman burst into life. Crewmen in civilian tunics scurried into the rigging as the captain shouted to put on more sail. Belowdecks, the purple-painted oars were run out, and the hortator’s hammer set a double-time stroke. Merchantmen relied mainly on sail to move their heavy ships, but they carried a slave crew of rowers, and in pirate-infested waters the oars could make the difference. This merchantman moved with more agility than most. Her hold held not a half-starved crew of slaves, chained to their benches, but seamen of the Rhenus Fleet, trained to the exhausting maneuvers that moved a war galley. Still, the merchantman’s weight and fat-bodied build made her an easy target, and she had no intention of fighting back.
An iron pike from a bolt-thrower crashed into the deck, and the captain yelled at Correus, “Get in your quarters!”
Correus took a look at the liburnian closing on them and ran. Most merchantmen were equipped to carry a passenger or two in better style than the common traveler would find in the hold. The cabin was built on the main deck, with the captain’s quarters on one side and the passenger’s to the other. Eumenes looked up as Correus dived through the door.
“I take it we’ve picked up some company.” He was thoughtfully polishing a dagger.
“We have.” Correus did a last check of the cabin and himself for any noncivilian gear. “And you’re not to use that knife, you fool.”
Eumenes put the dagger in his boot.
“They’ll search you,” Correus said.
“And be surprised if they don’t find a knife,” Eumenes said. “A fellow who doesn’t carry a dagger is going to keep a slave that does.”
“You take to this game in a hurry,” Correus said.
“I place a fair value on my hide, especially these days.” Eumenes looked a little embarrassed. “It occurs to me that I haven’t thanked you yet, not properly.”
“If we bring this off, you’ll have paid your selling price and more,” Correus said. He glanced at the open trunk with the good woolen togas and tunics folded inside, the tray of cheese and expensive wine, the carrying case full of scent and hand cream, and tongs and brushes for curling his hair. “I don’t like the arena,” he added. He gave the curling tongs a disgusted look. “People who use these go to it.”
Eumenes chuckled. “I didn’t think this was much in your line. Ever slipped this skin on before?”
“Once or twice,” Correus said. “And a few other skins as well. My brother-in-law taught me some of the trick of it. He says it’s a matter of who you think you are.”
* * *
The merchantman ran with oar and sail along the coast, with the liburnians like hunting wolves on her flanks. Behind them, veiled in the mist, the watchdog galley coursed along the dunes.
The liburnians closed in, and another bolt sang overhead into the sail, tattering the lower edge. Half the rigging came away with it, and the sailors scrambled to take in the sail before the ship heeled over.
The merchantman’s oars gave a last stroke and stopped, and the ship stood still in the water. In the lead liburnian, a black-haired man with a badger’s streak of gray in his beard gave a quick grin and waved a second man over.
“They take a warning, it seems. Board her, but keep your eyes open.”
“I doubt we’ll hit an ambush,” the second man said. “Look.” Three figures climbed the merchantman’s starboard rail and dived. More came running behind them, up from the rowing decks, and then they were pouring over the rail into the sea, the ship abandoned behind them. On deck a lone figure in a toga stood screaming curses at them.
The black-haired man started to laugh. “Stranded, by all the
gods! They’ve even unchained the rowing crew. Either this one can’t swim or he won’t. We’ll see what we’ve got, and then we’ll pick up the crew. They’ll be glad enough to see us by then if they haven’t drowned.”
The other, a red-haired man with a drooping mustache and a dirty tunic embellished with gold thread under the grime, gave an order, and the liburnians came up on either side of the merchantman, shipping the inside oars as they sidled close. Boarding planks were run out and secured, and the black-haired man strode across with his crew behind him. The captain of the second liburnian came aboard, also. The passenger in the toga had disappeared from the deck.
“Cerdic, go find our straggler,” the black-haired man said. “Ennius, check the hold.” The second captain nodded and started down the ladder to the rowing decks and the hold below. Cerdic was breaking down the door of the passenger’s cabin.
The mist had begun to burn off, and the black-haired man looked about him with satisfaction.
“Full of wine and cloth in the bolt,” Ennius said, appearing topside again. “Looks like silk. And three crates of gold pots and two of ingots.” His crew came up the ladder behind him, carrying tall clay amphorae and the brushwood in which they had been cushioned.
“Get it on board. Them too,” the pirate captain added as Cerdic returned, dragging a blond slave by the scruff of his neck. Two men came behind him with the man in the toga. His arms were pinned behind his back; his expression was furious.
“You’ll pay for this, you fools!” he sputtered. “There will be an investigation—”
“Pipe down or I’ll have you gagged,” the black-haired man said. He strode back across the boarding plank to his own ship and sat in a chair on the deck, to watch the cargo being transferred.
The Emperor's Games Page 7