“Your Excellency, this is impossible. We must verify this information. Someone is trying to stir up trouble between you and Rome. Haven’t you enjoyed most favorable relations with the Empire? Since your father’s time, we have shared ambassadors, and trade that has been highly favorable to both our countries.”
“Yes and now you want to make it more favorable to Rome and less favorable to me. But I will verify the information, indeed. This morning I dispatched an army of ten thousand men to Galle. If this is Roman treachery, I will feed the soldiers to the sharks, and post your head above my castle, after I have it torn from your body!”
The king swirled his royal robes about his brown body, rose and left. “Dismissed,” he said, without turning his head.
Julius Ferrus swallowed hard, and left, weak in the knees and feeling quite sick. Two soldiers escorted him to the royal prison.
CHAPTER 29: SEDUCTION
Back in Masira, Titus Cornelius was preparing his report on the incident with the Asia and Africa. He had written and rewritten it several times, shading the reason for releasing the obviously guilty officers to Aulus. Legally, he had no legal alternative but to imprison them as mutineers and conspirators to piracy, and send them back to Alexandria for trial and execution. But this placed the ships in a bad situation, and made impossible demands on his limited food and water; these dictated yielding to Aulus’s insistence. He had made a command decision, far removed from the advice and counsel of the commander of Classis Alexandrina. The commander might agree with his judgment; he might not.
Finally, he decided to just smudge the evidence a bit, outlining his suspicion, but denying any firm evidence to justify detaining them. This had to be done carefully; falsifying records could be dangerous. Finally, after a month, Titus felt that the report would hold together. The officers were done, anyway. He had enclosed their portraits, and conveyed his suspicions that they were involved in the mutiny, to the Shipping Board in Alexandria. That board would guarantee that they never went to sea again. So it all came down to whether the evidence was firm or soft, and that was a judgment call. He prepared one copy for the governor of Egypt, and another for the fleet commander.
Hasdrubal languished in the stifling prison. He was manacled with long chains to the wall of a cave carved into a rock wall, with an iron cage in front. The heat blasted in through the open mouth during the blazing July noon, and at night, the desert chill set his teeth chattering. He had only the now-filthy robe he had worn when captured, and a small blanket barely adequate to cover him. Food and water was just enough to survive, a piece of Arab flatbread for breakfast and a thin gruel with something that might have been meat for dinner, with more flatbread. A jug of water was provided in the morning, to last all day. Private functions were performed in a corner of the cell, which had become foul and fly-infested.
Guards were continuously posted outside the cell at four hour intervals. Most stood stiffly straight, their lances erect, and met his entreaties with stony silence. One young man, though, stood night watches over him. He leaned on his pilum, bored and distracted. The marine seemed willing to talk to him, to make the long night watch go by faster. His name was Francius, and he hailed from somewhere in southern Gaul, north of Marsala. He occasionally shared some water with the prisoner when Hasdrubal’s meager supply ran out after dinner.
One night, Hasdrubal tried a new tact.
“Have you ever seen someone crucified, Francius?” asked Hasdrubal.
“No, I haven’t. I understand it’s not a good way to die,” answered Francius. It didn’t sound like a duty that he was looking forward to perform.
“I have. It’s barbaric.” He paused, then burst into tears. “They’re going to take me to the cross, and I can’t face that. It’s all lies, lies, lies, but that Arab pirate set me up, and I’m going to die on that stinking cross. O Gods, I wish I could die, right now, rather than face that!”
Francius seemed genuinely moved. “Well, you’re going to trial. If there’s evidence for you, you’ll be given an absolvo, a not guilty verdict, and everything will be fine. Trust me. You’ll come off all right if you’re innocent.”
“Are you a citizen, Francius?” asked Hasdrubal, his eyes brimming with tears and his voice quavering.
“Yes. Since my grandfather’s time.”
“It’s different for you, Francius. Citizens can count on justice. But me, I’m just another dirty Phoenician trader. I made millions and millions of sesterces, and almost as many enemies who will want to put me under. They’ll all lie, just to get me out of the way, and I’ll die in disgrace!” Hasdrubal collapsed in tears again.
Francius looked on sympathetically.
Hasdrubal looked up, his eyes red and rheumy from crying, his tears making watermarks in his filthy face. “Would you do me a special favor, Francius? I know you understand.”
“What’s that?”
“Would you give me your dagger? I can end my life right here, all over in a minute. No suffering, no humiliation, no listening to all those lies.” Hasdrubal’s eyes were bright and pleading in the moonlight.
“No way! I’d be flogged to an inch of my life!” answered Francius, shocked.
“Well, then, just do me with your dagger! Here,” he said, struggling to his feet, his chains clanking. He spread his dirty robe, bared his chest and pressed it against the bars. “Just stick it in, right here, third rib from the bottom. It’ll go straight into my heart! You can tell the centurion of the watch that I tried to grab you.”
“No, Hasdrubal, I can’t. Just trust the court. You’ll be freed if you’re innocent.”
Hasdrubal sighed and retired to the corner of his cage.
The next night, Francius was on watch again.
“Here, I brought something to cheer you up,” he said, pulling a chicken leg from his cloak. “Do you need some more water?”
Hasdrubal grabbed the chicken leg and devoured it hungrily, gnawing every scrap of meat and gristle off the bone. “Thanks!” he said, offering his jug through the bars for a refill.
He slurped the water thirstily, and said, “God, it’s hard to believe how good food like that can taste. And I feel as full if I had just finished a big banquet. You appreciate the small things when you’re in a place like this. You know, you should have seen the banquets I used to hold in Alexandria. Dozens of goats and pigs. Fine wines from all over the Mediterranean. Apples, pomegranates, figs, all the finest pastries. Have you ever had baklava?”
“No, I haven’t. What is it?”
“It’s made from philo pastry, fine and flaky. With nuts and cinnamons and honey. You have never tasted such a good desert in your life.” He sighed. “The parties I used to throw. Did you know the governor of Egypt and his wife used to come to all my parties? I spent a million sesterces on just one party one year. And it was nothing, nothing at all!”
And it was true. Hasdrubal was an extremely wealthy man, well-known among the Alexandrian party set.
“Well, with friends like that, you should have no trouble at your trial.” Francius stopped slouching and sat down, reclining against the bars. He reached inside his sagum and pulled out a flask of wine. “I’ll share some with you, if you help keep lookout for the centurion of the watch. He’ll beat the hell out of me if he catches me sitting down on watch. Never mind what he’ll do if he catches me drinking!” He took a healthy slug off the flask, and passed it through the bars. “You keep it inside there, and just toss it in the back where you shit, if he shows up. He won’t see it in there. Here, help yourself.”
Hasdrubal took a drink, and felt the warm glow spread through his body. “It reminds me of better days. But those party hounds aren’t my friends. They won’t do anything for me now that I’m in trouble. No, you know who my friends are?”
“Who?” asked Francius.
“Young men like you. I can’t tell you how many young men like you I took off the street. I gave them responsibility, their own ship or a market, or an account, whatever they
were good at, and in no time, they were making their own millions. I wish I’d gotten to you before you joined the navy, and before I got into this mess. You’d make a million sesterces the first year. I can tell. You’re the ambitious type. Too bad I’m in here, and you’re stuck in the navy. How much do you make?”
“Three thousand a year,” Francius lied. It was actually closer to two.
“Too bad. You’re worth much more than that.”
A clink of sword on armor betrayed the approach of the centurion of the watch. Francius struggled to his feet, his face red, and was almost in a military posture when the centurion rounded the corner.
“Not talking with the prisoner, are you, Francius?” The centurion asked coolly.
“No, sir!” said Francius, his eyes forward, little beads of sweat on his forehead cool in the chill night air.
“Better not be! If you are, you better hope that stinking pirate throttles you before I get to you. Got it?” He cuffed the sailor across the cheek with a blow that sent him reeling, a trickle of blood running down his chin.
Francius clambered back to his feet. “Yes, sir!” he quavered.
When the centurion left, he sat back down.
“Bastard. Give me some more wine, Hasdrubal!” he ordered, sullenly.
“Are you sure it’s safe? He might come back,” said Hasdrubal, withdrawing the flask from the folds of his robes where he had hidden it.
“He won’t come back. He never does. He just comes around to cuff some guard every night. It doesn’t matter whether you did anything wrong or not, it’s just your turn.” He sniffed and wiped the trickle of blood from his cheek. “He’s a stupid fucking bully!”
“I never tolerated bullies in my business, Francius. I believe if you treat a man with respect, he’ll respect you.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not in your fucking organization, I’m in the fucking navy.” He stood up and resumed leaning on his pilum. “Keep the wine, though. I’ve had enough trouble tonight.”
Francius showed up again the next night. Hasdrubal asked solicitously “Did you get in any more trouble over last night?”
“Oh, hell, yes. That fellator was waiting for me when I got off watch. He chewed my ass so loud that everybody could hear it in the whole camp, and then he beat the hell out of me. Look at this shiner!”
“I’m truly sorry. I don’t want you to get in trouble for me,” said Hasdrubal.
“Oh, I can see why your young men would stand by you. Here you are, getting ready to get crucified, and you’re worried about me getting roughed up a bit! I wish you and I had met before. I’ve had nothing but trouble since I joined the navy. Stuck in a hellhole like this, working for people with brains like turds!”
He sat down again, nursing his resentment.
The relationship between Francius and Hasdrubal deepened. He regularly brought food and wine, and once brought paper so that Hasdrubal could write his wife, and sneaked the letter out to mail for him. He posted it inside his own letter to his family to forward on to Hasdrubal’s family. Hasdrubal seemed like a genuinely decent man who had fallen on a hard time, and the idea of this decent fellow being crucified really bothered Francius. He wanted to do everything he could do ease the man’s misery. Their conversation turned to the fabulous places that Hasdrubal had been, India, even Parthia.
“You know, there are some people in Parthia that would clear me if I could get there,” said Hasdrubal one night.
“Well, just have the court summon them to Alexandria. They’ll come, of course.”
“No, you don’t understand, Francius. Roman courts won’t summon people from Parthia, and they can’t come. Relations between Rome and Parthia aren’t good. No, the only way I could clear myself would be to go to Parthia, and then bring them to Alexandria. But I can’t do that. Even though Parthia is just a few hundred miles by boat from here. There’s no hope.”
The next night, Francius showed up, looking smug. “Want to go to Parthia?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, while the centurion of the watch was whaling me around the camp again last night, I thought ‘What the hell am I doing here? Getting beat up every night, and not getting anything for it?’ So I found a small boat and a pilot. We can just go to Parthia, you can set me up somewhere to make that million sesterces, and you can find those people who can clear you. What kind of businesses do you need doing in Parthia?”
This is better than I thought. He’s volunteering to get me out, thought Hasdrubal. Play it carefully, but for Baal’s sake, don’t talk him out of it.
“Oh, Francius, bless you, but I can’t let you take the risk! You’d be executed. And what about your family?”
“No risk. I got it all figured out. We have about four hours to go a mile to the beach, grab the boat and be gone. I have clothes for you, food, water. Everything is planned. And when I make a fortune, well, a million sesterces buys a lot of forgiveness. Especially with all your high-placed friends.”
“Well, if you’re sure” Could this be a trap? Killed while trying to escape? No, this young man seemed too guileless to set that up.
“I’m sure,” he said, rattling the key in the rusty lock. He unlocked the manacles, and the two bolted out into the darkness.
They came to the beach where the boat lay waiting. The pilot was nowhere to be seen. “He’ll be along in a minute. Here, hold my wine!”
Francius passed the wine flask to Hasdrubal, who took a swig, while Francius stripped off his uniform and rummaged in the back of the boat for the Arab robes he had hidden there. Hasdrubal studied the back of his head, and thought, the young man’s got me out of here, but he will be trouble later on. Best to end it now.
Hasdrubal brought the wine flask down on the back of the young man’s head with all the force he could muster. The flask shattered, wine and blood spattering over the man’s back. The young man stumbled forward and rolled over. “Hasdrubal! What the hell...” his eyes were puzzled, as Hasdrubal brought the remains of the flask down again on the man’s forehead. It opened a huge gash, but rebounded from the man’s thick skull. Francius was stunned but unhurt.
Hasdrubal’s heart thudded. He had ordered many men killed, but he had never seen it done, much less killed them personally. He had no idea how hard it was. And the young man was strong, in a moment he would be fighting for his life, and Hasdrubal was no match for him. He picked up a rock, and raised it high as Francius groaned, “Hasdrubal, why?” His eyes were pleading, watching the rock descend till it struck his skull. Bone shattered like broken pottery and blood spurted. Hasdrubal raised the rock, bringing it down again and again on Francius’ bloody skull, until bone no longer splintered, and the stone sank into something soft.
Hasdrubal stood up, sick to his stomach, quivering, his heart racing. He felt something warm on his cheek and wiped it away. A gout of Francius’ blood, with a splinter of bone in it. Hasdrubal doubled over and retched violently. Think quick, the pilot is coming. He rummaged through Francius’ clothes for the sailor’s dagger, and hid behind a rock. Gods! What if he already came, and saw me killing him! Soldiers might be coming instead of the pilot. Waves of panic and indecision swept him. Why do I have to stay here? Why not just leave? No, the pilot knows where we’re going. The Navy will have me by noon tomorrow. While he was arguing with himself, the pilot showed up. Hasdrubal crouched lower behind the rock. Let him find the boy. He’ll bend over to see if he’s alive, and then I jump him. God, what if he’s young and tough? No matter. Just catch him in the back with the dagger. His heart hammered, his blood ringing in his ears. He was sure the pilot could hear his breathing.
The pilot walked up to the boat, and about fifty feet away, saw the body of Francius half-in, half-out, motionless as the boat bobbed in the beach swell. “Francius!” he called out, and broke into a run. As Hasdrubal expected, he went immediately to the boat and bent over the young man, aghast at his shattered head. Hasdrubal came up silently behind him, and slid the dagger in between the man�
��s ribs. He was surprised how easily it went in, through the robe, binding a bit as it stuck. Hasdrubal turned the knife a bit, and it slid in up to the hilt. The man, an old fisherman, straightened up, surprised. He tried to reach behind him to grab the knife, but Hasdrubal twisted it a bit. The man gasped, gagging and twitching spasmodically while Hasdrubal held him against the knife. He seemed to take a long time to die, but finally his breath rattled in his throat, and he collapsed in Hasdrubal’s arms. Hasdrubal lowered him to the ground and lugged him into the boat, where he grabbed Francius’ body and pulled it fully into the boat also. He clambered in and pushed off the sand with the oar. About a hundred feet off shore, he opened the sail to catch the night breeze. The boat leaned against the wind and the water began to gurgle past the rudder. Hasdrubal’s pulse slowed as he set a course north to Parthia and freedom. The pilot’s eyes stared sightlessly at the moonlight, and he tossed a rag over the bloody mess of Francius’ head. I have never killed a man before, and tonight I have killed two. A mile out to sea, he rolled the two bodies, Francius’ armor, and the bloody rags overboard. They bobbed lifelessly on the swell. Too bad, I really sort of liked Francius. But it’s better this way.
The centurion of the watch roused Titus Cornelius a little after midnight. “Bad news, sir. Hasdrubal’s escaped. The morning watch found the prison open, and the sentry missing!”
“What happened?” he said, sleepily, trying to focus his attention and chase the fog of sleep from his brain. He sat up and threw the thin blanket off. “What of the sentry?”
“No sign of him, sir. I caught him chatting with Hasdrubal the other night. Hasdrubal might have got him close enough to the bars to strangle. I don’t think Hasdrubal could have overpowered him, though. Francius was a pretty strong lad. Gallic farm boy.”
The Eagle and the Dragon, a Novel of Rome and China Page 21