“I wanted to give them money,” he says, returning to me. “Your money of course. But they wouldn’t take it. Instead they offer me some interesting pleasures in another part of the city.”
“They’re more sophisticated than you were at that age.”
His brow furrows. “How do you mean, Lord?”
“They were investing in your trust.”
“I know that trick,” Cutter says.
“I’m not so sure you do.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I’m playing it on you too.”
“How is that, Lord?”
I gesture toward the men loading sacks of gold coins onto the flagship.
“My part of our bargain is carried out. Wouldn’t you say that you trust me?”
“To the hilt, Lord.”
“Then my point is made.”
Now we hear the graceful notes of a flute and a soft, drumming beat. The door of a brothel swings open and some musicians file out, followed by several prostitutes. Dressed in gay silks and brass platelets, with head ornaments made from the mesh of delicately woven chains, the women stride boldly in our direction, gyrating their hips and calling merrily to the sailors and passers by. They cross the pier and ascend the gangplank onto Cutter’s galley. Some of the men take them below decks immediately.
The musicians play on board the galley while the joyful shrieks of the women emerge from below decks. “Mere boys,” says Cutter derisively, “Boys with no patience. But we will feast tonight, Lord, on partridge and young lambs, on great planks of flat bread and nothing but the best wine, Falernian! Grown in the province where you hid from Sulla, and stolen from your own traders!”
As the last of the bags full of coin are loaded, some of the pirates cry out, “Goodbye, Lord, and thank you for making us rich!” Others bow low or fold their hands in signs of mock prayer. “Pardon us, Lord. We were only following orders! Pardon us, Imperator!” Goras, at the tiller, looks at me and shrugs his shoulders to make me understand that he’s not part of it.
Cutter says, “Disregard the men, and forget the money. I’ve given you the story of my life in exchange, with the hope it will do some good. We’re on the same side anyway, Lord, against the Sullans, and for Sertorius! He’s a Popular, like you, to be sure. Now you know me and where I’ve been. You carry, so to speak, part of my spirit.”
He brings his left fist to his heart to emphasize the point. Then a looped rope swings over from the galley. He grasps it with one hand, then turns to me, tapping the ram’s head on the clasp holding my cloak.
“You’re not thinking about coming after me, are you?”
“Why would I do that?”
“Smart boy,” he says, hugging the rope. Then placing one foot in the loop, he swings away and aboard, his baggy pantaloons billowing in the breeze.
The pirates hoist their purple-trimmed sails, and under wind power the galley slips deftly around the other ships in the harbor. Once in open water its silver-tipped oars extend from port and starboard like arms, and begin their unified dipping and pulling to the rhythm-keeper’s drum. The men on deck call and wave to me, some of them holding up the gold sacks. I don’t return their goodbyes. Cutter stands on the stern deck and calls out something I can’t understand, but the tone is clear—he’s pleased with himself.
The galley shrinks in the distance, and with its diminution, my ascendance. Curio appears at my side, scratching his bristly beard. I feel his gaze.
“Are you ready, Lord?”
“You have the men?”
“Assorted wharf rats, local militia, and the retired military in command.”
“Are they hungry?”
“Starving.”
“Let’s wait until he’s out of sight.”
The fop’s clothing worn for the pirates has been shed like a player’s mask. Now, fitted out in leather and bronze, I stride the deck of a state war galley, inspecting my ranks of marines.
Not one hour out of Miletus the gods see fit to test me by blowing great storm clouds across the sky, and no sooner do the first whitecaps appear when my three ship captains, making gestures toward the western sky, where lightning-veined clouds loom before us, signal to turn back and fight another day. Not wanting to lose our advantage, I refuse the request and order them to follow into the whistling squalls which sweep the sky of our guiding stars. The wind digs up swells higher than the ships’ prows, so that we’re thrust into a world of towering, angry waves. We take them head-on. The swells are mountains whose peaks our diminutive warship climbs and tops. Then we descend, crashing into the iron-hard troughs, the sea flooding our deck. A prolonged thunderbolt lights a world in which sea and sky desire to mate, the air speckled with flying gobs of foam jetting into the vault and there disintegrating. Then total blackness again, and every man gropes for a hold on something, a rail, the mast, or any of the ropes tied on the deck. The next thunderbolt lights the world briefly. Three ships are gone, sunk or out of sight, and disordered ranks of sick and frightened men now hold on for their lives.
The gods now cry, “You’ve yet to see our power!” They hurl bolt after bolt. Thunder crashes like mountains split asunder, or great oaks instantly rent, and the men point to the teetering masts of our sister ships visible behind the walls of water, and whether the ships are sunk or afloat we can’t tell. The light is eerie but bright, flickering as the bolts make their way across great distances of sky like pathways of gold.
At the foredeck rail, Curio stands with his hair hanging down in wet strands, arms upraised to the storm. He cries out, “More, you winds! More, you thunderbolts! Give us more! Give us all your rage!”
As if his words were a perverse command, the storm soon subsides. Here is the power of the gods. The thundering gale reduces to a whistle, then a sweet breeze. The walls of angry waves lower to calmer swells, and we enter placid seas with cool, slow-moving air. The stars are a great smear of white, and the northern constellations glow like pearls.
I join Curio on the foredeck, and he stretches out his hand as if to present this new world to me. Our sister ships now appear beside us, all three, regrouping, their oars reaching into the water, and we move like many-armed creatures. Curio orders lamps to be lit, and the decks of the ships appear like distinct, luminous worlds. We glow with long walls of brass-rimmed shields and stacked plate armor, javelins bristling along the rails. The sky illuminates Scorpions with piles of stones ready to throw, and boarding ramps hoisted high, each with a massive steel spike to make us fast to an enemy deck. From amid each galley the grinding wheels turn, and as the men line up to sharpen their weapons, the showers of sparks create a second glow on each deck. Then the lamps are extinguished and we become four black shapes, giant water beetles skimming the still sea, no sound but dipping oars and cutting prows hissing like snakes.
The dawn of quiet red embers bursts into a curtain of liquid fire, and behind this wall of blinding light Apollo mounts his car and takes the reins. His horses pull the great sphere high above the Asian forests to whisk away the world’s black garments. The sea is illumined like a great jewel, and Cutter’s island is born, a tiny iridescent kingdom in a glasslike sea, the sun’s hand flat on its rocky hills and rust-colored cliffs.
Of course he knew all along that I’d return in force. And were it not for the storm we would have surprised him on land, perhaps asleep. He didn’t think my force would be organized so soon, and luck would have it that when we neared the harbor mouth, all of Cutter’s fleet—four ships in single file, decks laden with their collected booty—were heading for the open sea.
There was no choice but to engage them in the harbor, so leaving two ships to prevent their escape, we attack with our remaining two, and our Scorpions’ stones rip through their sails crash to the decks, where they shatter the racks of amphorae the pirates hoped to salvage.
Our two ships having reached the end of Cutter’s line, we circle in opposite directions, continuing our missile barrage. Coming up on Cutter�
�s flagship from both sides, we drop our ramps. But while the contingent of marines on our partner ship has no difficulty boarding, our own ramp hangs up in the trireme’s rigging. I climb the ramp with several men and hack the rigging until the ropes give way and our weight brings us crashing to the deck.
Outnumbered, and taken by surprise, the pirates make for the rails, slipping on the oil, wine, and fish paste from the amphorae they’d loaded on board. A few lucky ones manage to slither overboard and swim for shore. Those remaining on deck cover their heads with their hands and beg for their lives. Many of these point below, where Cutter is found hiding in a compartment containing the ransom.
They bring him topside and he sits cross-legged on the deck, gripping the rain’s head with his good hand as if keeping it warm. His men file past him in leg irons and he turns his head to follow each one, muttering their names. When one of them spits on his head he rubs his scalp and smiles.
“Are you satisfied now?” I ask.
The words move him to lift his gaze, but not all the way. I walk around him, as he did to me so many times. He looks up, shrugs, and holds out an empty hand.
“What are you now?” I ask.
“Nothing, Lord.”
“And what do you think of me?”
“The better man, Lord, clearly the better man.”
“You’re thinking to bribe your way out of this, aren’t you.”
“No, Lord, I’m done. I surrender.”
“You’re trying to do the same thing now, aren’t you?”
“And what is that, Lord?”
“Invest in my trust.”
He looks away, through the ship’s rail to the settlement on shore where the last of his men are being rounded up. I remind him that playing the same game twice never works.
Forty days ago I would have been castrated and sold to some satrap with a penchant for western boys. But now, having recovered the ransom and returned it to the money lenders, having paid the men with the pirates’ treasure, and with a profit for myself, fortune, once repelled by the odor of my breath, now kisses me with open mouth.
There being no prison in Miletus, I deliver Cutter and his men to the nearby city of Pergamum. Here, below the towering acropolis lies the prison, a rough stone building without windows, an oven to bake its inmates. I supervise the jailing, making sure that the men remain shackled in their cells. Then I climb to the home of the gods.
The Pergamum Acropolis rises from the valley in a nearly sheer wall so towering that it evokes awe and fear. The citadel itself is higher than that of Athens. The temples are built of blue-and-ochre-dyed marble. Even from below, their gilded reliefs and edge-work blind the eye. The climb is long and steep, and every so often I stop to rest, looking west to the point where sea and sky are one, then down to the river valley, where the tree tops are tiny tufts of green. My destination is the Altar of Zeus, which lies on a plateau just below the summit.
The Altar is an immense marble frieze that could be the wall of a small city. Its top supports the allotted spaces for sacrifice and fire. The carved marble on the sides depicts the revolt of the giants against the Olympian gods, the former oozing from the earth as half-man, half-snake, to hurl boulders and burning oak trees at the sky. The gods attack with the help of a mortal bowman—Hercules —and the frieze presents the individual battles. Here are Zeus and Hercules killing Porphyrion with thunderbolt and arrow; Apollo and Hercules standing triumphantly over the dying Ephialtes who clutches the arrows in each of his eyes, Apollo’s in one and Hercules’ in the other. Ephialtes’ face twists in pain as blood spurts from his eye sockets. Next we see Athena crushing Encyclades with the island of Sicily, then flaying Pallas and using his skin for a shield. Nowhere, not in the poetry of any nation, do we see the gods in such fury. An inscription over the frieze tells us that the battle against the giants commemorates the victory of King Attalos over the marauding Gauls more than one hundred years ago, those same Gauls who sacked our city in the time of Servilia’s great-grandmother.
At this great height the wind’s bleak, isolated whistle reminds one that the gods reside precisely in those places hostile to man. All the more stirring is this reach for the divine. I’m in the actual presence of the gods, and this carved marble panorama of their terrible ferocity overwhelms me to dizziness. I sit on the nearest steps, studying the altar figures in every aspect. To the west, to home, I look out to the glistening Ciacus River and the fertile valley with its orderly allotment of fruit and olive groves, and great smears of green wheat fields. Several worshippers come up the steps, all Greeks, merchants and ship owners, dignified, self-contained men who operate the machines of world commerce. Here they seek divine auguries, necessary in these days when savages control the seas and our state is threatened from all sides.
I’m with the gods, not the giants, and thus I have no choice. Cutter and his men must know this.
I eavesdrop on the Greeks speaking their sensuous language, then make my way higher up to the treasury near the Temple of Athena. A young priest with a spotless tunic takes my coins and gestures that the place is mine. I walk to the outer walls of the citadel and look down. Below me lies the upper town market with its braying animals and aggressive hawkers whose singsong weaves into the liquid notes of a flute. The music and this place joins man and god. And when I descend from these whistling heights to the world of work and pain, of choice and obligation, the world in which one must keep his promises or be nothing, I’ll need to remember this: that the gods don’t live in one place and man in another. In some form, the gods are within the thinking man, and the sense of justice one espouses must be divine-based. To sentence scores of men—exactly eighty-eight, a number with its own justice—to the ultimate punishment, is a promise that must be kept, and the only future for Cutter and his men is a half-life in the underworld. Killing men, I create souls, and nothing is taken from the balance of the earth. This is one rationale. The other is that I’m part of this world, having been born into a state of war—the Sullans oozing from the earth like rebellious giants—and what would be said of me if I denied my station, allowed Cutter and his crew to bribe their way out of the prison below and continue their former lives? I must be Caesar, for in this world, rebellion is constant.
I must be, but am I? In thinking moments the parts that I play peel from my mind like the layers of an onion: the poet, the man of taste, the personification of Roman Law, the outraged, the executioner. In my core I could be satisfied as a temple priest living on the money from supplicants … anywhere but in Rome, that city more ravaged than Sulla’s visage. Achievement, divine lineage, ambition, whether I’ll survive the Sullans, whether Servilia knows my future, she with the lips like knives, the nipples as red as blood, she who swims with me over the warm seas of lovemaking, all this is the purple cloth of vanity concealing the chains in which I’m shackled.
Just south of Miletus lies a small beach where the coarse, rust-colored sand filters the sea waves. The shoreline is steep here, and a string of small islands forms a natural harbor mole. The shipping lane runs between the shore and the islands, and there are no breakers. The sea rises and falls in foamy swells as the tide works in and out. Every ship entering Miletus from the west must pass this way. This is our place of justice.
Squads of police lead the prisoners here, their legs shackled, each man’s arms lashed to the crossbeam of his own crucifix. Other workers unload the timber posts from carts and plant them along the beach. This quiet, tide-lapping place soon becomes a small city, a place of curses and cries. Mounted, I ride up and down on the hard sand near the water, setting distances. I want the crosses planted far apart and close to the surf so the pirates’ can be seen by passing ships. Cutter will be in the center, and forward of the rest.
I order him brought before me, telling the guards to treat him gently. He trudges and half-stumbles over the sand, taking small steps under the restraints of his chains and the weight of his beam. He stops just short of my horse, his lowered head ev
en with my foot. His ram’s head stump was taken away at the prison, and the end of his severed arm is discolored and bulbous.
“Can you look at me?”
“No, Lord.”
“I’m not surprised. You made a fatal judgment.”
“I didn’t think you’d return so soon.”
“What did you think?”
“It doesn’t matter now.”
Now he turns up to me, forcing a smile his lips will not permit. They tremble. He looks past me and upwards, following a white sea bird gliding across the sky.
“Luck for you,” he says.
I follow his gaze. The bird is a swan, with an orange beak and black face. Its flight is slow and graceful. I look in its eye, the gull’s blue eye of forty days ago.
“Now consider the price,” I say, gesturing along the beach as men with crossbeams on their shoulders are hoisted onto the timber posts. Many scream as their feet are nailed into place. “Look at the misery you’ve created for those who served you. Look what you’ve forced me to do!”
“Forced you, Lord?”
“After you slaughtered Secondini and his crew, after you destroyed his ship and cargo, do you think I have a choice?”
“But I’m a war prisoner, not a criminal. And I could have killed you too.”
“Death would come either way.”
“But not like this, not whipped with rods and made to suffer all night.”
“You know the punishment because you’ve seen it. Our laws are ancient and consistent. Pirates are whipped before hanging.”
“And consideration for the mercy shown to you?”
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