“Then why are you going back to Athens?”
He was going back, it transpired, because of the manuscript he had shown me – Spurinna’s memoirs. It was too expensive to pay copyists to write out new copies of the book in the City, Homer said, or at least too expensive for the wide circulation that Homer had in mind. He would get the copying done in Athens, he thought. Maybe he would even buy some good copyist slaves there and bring them back to Rome.
“Have you finished reading it, sir?” he inquired. “I noticed it lying in the hammock in your cabin.”
As a matter of fact, I was rather enjoying the story. It was remarkable how many clever things Homer had done, as Spurinna’s secretary, in helping to stop Catiline’s conspiracy. No doubt that was why Homer was publishing the book. Spurinna himself was less insufferable than I had expected: rather naive, of course, but he always meant well. In fact, if it hadn’t been for Paulla’s constant crooning over the absent young man, I might have taken to the fellow.
“We are separated as only star-crossed lovers can be!” she exclaimed one evening, as we ate our ship’s biscuits together in the cramped cabin.
“You’re not lovers,” I pointed out. “There’s only one lover involved here.”
“But I am star-crossed,” she insisted. “I have to share a cabin with you, don’t I?”
“I’m the one who’s star-crossed,” I corrected her. “Your clan probably thinks you ran off with me, and they’ll want to murder me!”
She smiled indulgently. “They may be very upset, Marcus, but they’re not crazy: what girl would do that?” Then she sighed again. “Where do you think Aulus is right now? Do you think he is on his warship, slicing through the purple-crested sea?”
I thought of Spurinna’s swift trireme, already countless miles ahead of the slow-moving Star of Carthage.
“Well, it’s still February,” I mused, “so he can’t have saved Admiral Pompey’s life more than once yet. But then again, he’s probably met some nice Greek girl by now and –”
“Oh, Marcus, you’re impossible!” she yelped, biting into her biscuit.
Here I made a serious mistake. I suppose I felt bad about teasing her, so I offered her a trade: she could read the Spurinna memoirs if she lent me her Greek novels. It was only adding fuel to the fire, of course, but I was desperate for something to do. A ship can be a tiny place.
Thus, as we rounded the toe of Italy and began our trip across the Ionian Sea to Greece, I started on The Sicilian Story. To my surprise, I found it quite original. The gallant young hero is forced to leave his homeland of Syracuse on the day before he is supposed to marry a princess, but he gets shipwrecked on a barren shore and then enslaved by an evil landowner. Meanwhile, the princess – our heroine -pretends to kill herself from grief at the departure of the hero. Helped by a fatherly ship’s captain, she sails in pursuit of our hero and, unfortunately, gets captured by pirates. The Pirate King takes pity on her, how ever, and she disguises herself as the evil landowner’s uncle and escapes. The Pirate King vows to destroy our hero’s homeland in revenge, but after a terrific battle the hero saves the city of Syracuse and marries the heroine. Quite satisfying, I decided.
The next one I borrowed was Hippias and Melite. In this one, when the heroine, Melite, is traveling to Rhodes to marry the gallant young hero Hippias, she unfortunately gets shipwrecked on the barren shore of Egypt, where she is captured by bandits. Hippias, however, disguises himself as a Pirate King (who also happens to be the bandit chieftain’s uncle), and travels in pursuit of the bandits. Using a sleeping potion, the heroine tries to escape from the bandit chieftain, but unfortunately the hero (still in disguise) drinks the potion by accident. The bandit chieftain is unfortunately captured by pirates, however, and attempts to kill himself from grief when he cannot understand how his uncle can be in two places at the same time. They all end up on a ship together, and after the most unfortunate shipwreck they travel to Rhodes where Hippias and Melite get married. In the end, the bandit chieftain takes pity on his uncle and everyone lives happily ever after.
In the third novel, The Romance of the Happy Strangers, the hero, traveling to Alexandria, is unfortunately shipwrecked on a barren shore in Thrace, where he becomes a shepherd. (Here I sat up, expecting some gripping realism.) The heroine, however, hoping the hero has not killed himself from grief, hires a fatherly ship’s captain to go in search of him. After they are captured by pirates, however, it turns out that he is actually the uncle of the Pirate King, who is himself a landowner in Thrace. Disguising themselves as sheep, the Pirate King, heroine, and fatherly ship’s captain give the hero (who is their shepherd) a sleeping potion. He discovers it in time, however, and takes pity on them, and in the end the hero and heroine sail to Alexandria to get married.
In the fourth one… but my mind was beginning to blur. By the time I finished the fifth novel, the world around me – the Star of Carthage on its slow, steady course, the voice of Homer quoting poets at the prow – seemed more and more like a Greek romance. After the sixth, I asked the first mate directly if he had ever been a bandit chieftain. After the ninth, I even grabbed Homer by the hair one afternoon and shouted, “You’re a shepherd in disguise, admit it!” before they ushered me down to the cabin with a cup of hot wine.
After that, in the last part of our journey, I gave up reading and spent more time with the Captain. He was, as I said, a man of few words, and romance was not in his limited vocabulary. He had steered us flawlessly so far; but of course he came from a long line of merchants. His great-great-grandfather had been a captain in the Carthaginian navy, when they battled the Roman fleet in the Punic Wars. Now the family was less glorious but more prosperous. His sons, he said, would make fine ship captains.
“How old are they?”
“Twelve, ten, nine, seven, five, and two,” he answered proudly. “But the two year old will make the best sailor of them all. You should see him with his toy boat in the bath!” Here, the Captain, who was also a man of few laughs, chortled heartily and stroked his great black beard. He couldn’t wait for his sons to get tattooed. He told me of his house in Carthage, and his dear wife, and of the large statues of Baal and Tanit (Baal’s wife) that they had helped build in the great temple there.
“Baal is the same as the one you Romans call Saturn, the father of Jupiter,” he explained. “You know, of course, that the first human beings ‘lived in those days when Saturn reigned supreme,’ as Hesiod says.”
I looked at the Captain with concern. Obviously, during our voyage, someone had been having a bad influence on him. I changed the subject at once.
“How long will it take us to reach Athens?” “From here?” he said. “Well, that is the headland of Messenia that you see there, off the port bow. Soon we will round the coast of Laconia, and from there it is three days sailing to Athens. Of course, much depends on the wind. Here, my Roman friend, why don’t you take the steering oar for a while and tell me of your family?”
That night the storm hit us.
I was asleep in my hammock when I felt the ship’s motion change. Usually it was a gentle sway, like the rocking of a cradle, and quite pleasant when you got used to it; but this was different, a violent lurching. I woke up to the sound of feet stamping along the deck and the first mate shouting orders. Paulla stuck her head past the cabin door.
“Sleeping again, Marcus?” she called. “Come out, you won’t want to miss this!”
Grumbling, I followed her out and found all hands heaving to shorten the sail; the Captain was roping the steering oar in place. The air was much warmer than it had been. At the rail, Homer and Paulla were staring at the southern sky. I saw why. Great piles of red cloud had gathered there, and even as we watched they seemed to be flowing across the sunset toward us. The Captain looked at us and shook his head.
“It is the African Wind,” he said.
Hour by hour, the breeze grew more intense. The sea turned dark blue and split into larger and larger swells. At sundown
, a sprinkling of dust came falling from the red clouds: it was sand, carried by the wind from the distant desert of Libya.
“By Pollux,” muttered Homer, subdued for once. “This will be a night indeed -
Now keep no ships upon the wine-dark sea
But surely stick to land, as I decree.”
“More like the dark black sea,” I commented, glancing at the rising hills of water that encircled us. The Star of Carthage was no longer sailing through them. Rather, we felt that the ocean’s hand was raising us up on their backs and then lowering us into their depths. Every swell seemed taller and deeper than the last.
Paulla was quite calm. “Sailing in winter, what do you expect? Don’t panic, Marcus, you’ve seen the Captain: he won’t drown in a hurry.”
If the Captain would not, I wasn’t sure about the rest of us. With the sun gone, the enveloping night was utterly starless. The wind howled through the rigging and the ship lurched ever more violently. Crew and captain labored without rest: it took three of them to shift the steering oar, pointing the Star of Carthage into the wind so that no wave could strike us in the rear and smash the stern. Spray swept the length of the deck, drenching us all. We three passengers went below. I lay sprawled on the floor, feeling terribly ill. From across the corridor we overheard poor Homer being sick. Paulla lay in the hammock, reading by the light of a single swaying lamp attached to the deckhead above.
All night there was no end to the fury of the storm. If I had thought the wind intense before, it now revealed its true power. The creak of ship’s timbers was deafening, and the first mate’s voice, screaming orders through the gale, was the only human sound on that tormented stretch of sea. At length, we heard another: a rough music of voices. It was the crew singing to Baal, passionately begging the god to spare us. That was more terrifying than the storm itself. Homer rushed on deck to join them.
Then the mast broke. We heard the horrible sound of wood ripping, and the ship heaved over, nearly capsizing. The crew took axes and hacked it free from the hull, and we righted. But now, without her mast and sail, the ship was a helpless toy for the waves and the implacable wind.
“The land! By Baal, the land!” came a scream from the deck.
I could stand it no longer. I rushed out into the night once more. My eyes beheld a nightmare scene: before us loomed a blackness deeper than the sky, and the ship was being driven straight toward it; the sailors were calling aloud to each other and to heaven, in voices high pitched with terror; Homer was stuffing his manuscript into a watertight oilskin bladder; and, where the steering oar had been, the Captain was standing like a statue, glowering at the approaching headland as though defying the rocks to grind him and his ship to bits.
“Hold fast!” he cried at last.
A moment later we struck. Or rather, we sheered off one rock and bounced against another. There was a tremendous boom and the ship spun round, perpendicular to the swells. It rose on one last wave and seemed to be lifted across a battlement of rocks. Then it plunged and flew to pieces.
Everything rose into the air and you could no longer tell up from down. I was tossed into the seething sea. Suction drew me deep down and my ears felt like they would burst. Then I was up again, as if by magic, and I struggled frantically for air: I knew I must be sucked down again. My forearm smashed against something – a piece of wood – before I went under. My toga was like lead, and I kicked it off. This time I swallowed water and my lungs seemed to explode. As I came up, I flailed again, and again I felt the wood. I grabbed hold with both arms.
“Marcus!”
It was Paulla’s voice, as though from a long way off.
“Marcus, you idiot!”
A wave submerged me, but I held fast. A feeling of horror crushed me. How had I left her below in the cabin? Now she was dead! It must be her spirit crying out to me, castigating me, as it fled from a watery grave.
“Marcus! Make room, by Juno!”
A hand slapped my wrist. I looked to my right. There was Paulla – a very wet Paulla – clinging to my bit of timber.
“Get your own plank!”
“Paulla, I…”
Another wave engulfed us, though it receded more swiftly than the others. The wind was slackening.
“All right then, kick with your feet!” she shouted. “Come on now!”
With what strength I could muster, I kicked at the water behind me. Over and over again we were lifted high and then dropped, and still we kicked. At last, as we dropped once more, we landed, and I felt the timber bite into my chest. It was stuck on something. Paulla was pulling at my shirt, dragging me forward. I crawled. The waves still broke over us, while I dug my feet into the loose rocks, inch by inch. At last there were no more waves, and she collapsed beside me. And, by Hercules, she laughed.
“We’re alive!” she yelled.
“Alive!” I whispered as I shut my eyes. But then I remember nothing more.
The Barren Shore
was roused by the crying of seagulls. My body ached. I was lying on my side, dry, in the glittering sun.
“He’s awake!” called a voice in Latin, with a slight Greek accent.
I blinked hard, and when I opened my eyes I saw Homer squinting down at me. He had lost his toga and his hairline was fringed with salt. He was using a bit of driftwood as a crutch.
“I’m coming! Don’t let him get away, Homer!” Paulla called.
I sat up. She was jogging along the steep beach toward us. Homer gave me a hand up, but at once I doubled over, retching salt water.
“Still some of the wine-dark sea left in there, I see!” he exclaimed sympathetically.
“I’m glad to see you too, Homer,” I mumbled, as he helped me to a nearby rock. There I sat gasping. But the life was returning slowly to my battered limbs.
“Marcus! You look bad,” said Paulla, as she ran up. She brushed my sleeve. “Bruised, aren’t you? And your shirt is ripped. No thread, I’m afraid. Not much of anything, for that matter.”
She had tied her hair into a bun, and a bruise was darkening on her chin, but otherwise she looked just fine.
While I recovered, they filled me in. Homer, whose knee was badly twisted, had remained beside me; Paulla had begun to explore the area. From where we were sitting I could follow her description. We were on a narrow stretch of beach at the far end of a long, narrow bay. Behind us on every side rose steep cliffs. To our left stood a rocky promontory tipped with white, glaring in the sunlight. About halfway between, in the middle of the bay, there rose three jagged pillars of sea-worn stone: the Star of Carthage, she supposed, had ricocheted off the first two and then smashed on the third. It had been broken into a hundred pieces and then pummeled over and over again against the rocks.
Homer, it transpired, had jumped overboard just before the ship struck.
“It seemed the natural thing to do, sir,” he said casually. “How was I to know a person could be hurled through the air from the deck of a ship, like you and the lady here, and then gently washed ashore?”
“‘Gently’ isn’t how I would describe it,” I replied. “But, Homer, it was sheer madness to try swimming in that sea!”
“I’m afraid, sir, that I cannot swim. Instead, as a publisher, I naturally relied upon my manuscript. I sewed it up, you see, in this bladder, which I inflated.” He pointed with his driftwood crutch at the oiled bladder, evidently still containing Spurinna’s memoirs, which lay in the shade of our rock. Beside it lay what Paulla had managed to collect from the wreckage strewn along the beach.
She had not found much. There was the plank Paulla and I had used for swimming – it turned out to be half of the main cabin door, featuring the left side of Baal’s head. It made me think sadly of the Captain and his wife back in Carthage, so proud to contribute to the god’s great statue. There were several ropes, their ends rubbed to threads: the remains of rigging. There was the handle of the steering oar. And last, but certainly weirdest, there was Paulla’s blond barbarian wig, sopping w
et and full of seaweed.
“Still wearable,” she claimed. “It’s high quality, Marcus. You get what you pay for.” But she declined to try it on.
I looked at my companions. Were they in denial, giddy from having survived certain death? They seemed un naturally talkative. Upon what barren shore had we been shipwrecked? Was this the end of my mission for Gaius? Most of all, I wondered, what on earth could we hope to do now?
But Paulla and Homer had already discussed this point.
“Now that you’re better, Marcus,” said Paulla firmly, “we must at least walk around the bay. Perhaps there are other survivors.”
So, wearily, we began to walk the narrow beach, beyond the limit of Paulla’s first explorations. We hoped to find some of the ship’s cargo washed ashore, for at the moment we had nothing to eat or drink. Leaving Homer with our few possessions there on the beach – our “marching camp,” as Homer called it with satisfaction – Paulla and I started toward the rocky promontory, stumbling along the loose stones, shells, and driftwood. The cliffs rose on our left; to our right was the peaceful horizon. To my dismay, we could see no sign of my toga (or the ten gold pieces which I kept in its pouch). It must have been at the bottom of the bay.
Our first discovery was not a happy one. Two of the crew lay mangled at the water’s edge. They had perhaps tried to help each other in the sea, for their limbs were entangled. Baal had forsaken them.
Now we came to a little cove, unseen from a distance until we stumbled upon its mouth. It was filled with wooden planks: the water, swirling into it, sloshed the wreckage about. Much of the ship’s hull must be there, we decided, and then our hopes soared: bobbing inside it all were three amphoras, the great jugs which had made up the bulk of the ship’s cargo.
“I’ll go,” I announced, and with Paulla’s warnings echoing in the air I waded into the shallow water. Nail-studded beams and splinters blocked my path, but I waited for the rush of the waves that filled the cove and slowly made progress when they receded. I grabbed the handles – two in one hand – and found it was easier going back: free of the wreckage, the jugs would naturally drift out to sea.
The Ancient Ocean Blues Page 4