The Princess and the Pirates s-9

by John Maddox Roberts

  “Where are we?” I asked. “I think you took the wrong-” I was stopped short by the dagger that appeared beneath my chin. A hand plucked my own dagger from beneath my belt.

  “He’s got a caestus under his tunic,” Alpheus said.

  No, I definitely shouldn’t have sent Hermes away. “Alpheus! I was suspicious of everybody else, but I thought you, at least, were my friend.”

  “You mean I wasn’t important enough to be involved in any of the great matters of international concern, don’t you? Well, that was the idea. But please don’t take this personally. I truly have enjoyed your company, and I regret that your stubborn persistence has led you to this dismal fate.”

  “Well, what now? I take it you plan to kill me.” I didn’t plan to go without a fight, not that there was much I could do in my predicament, but I suspected he had something else in mind for me. People who intend to cut your throat usually do it before you know they have a knife.

  “No, I was told to keep you here until someone joins us. Please don’t get your hopes up though.”

  “So I am going to get to meet your employer?”

  “One of them. You see, a traveling poet makes an ideal agent, spy, and broker. No one is suspicious of our wanderings because our art takes us wherever there is a demand for us. There is always a festival someplace that needs a new hymn, a funeral someone wants to make memorable with an elegiac ode, and so forth. My employer needed a base on Cyprus, and so he sent me ahead to scout the place out and pass the requisite bribes. It is an added bonus that I am always in demand in the houses of the rich, so nobody thinks it unusual to see me in the company of the highest authorities. Poets are very fashionable guests.”

  “My compliments. You’ve achieved an elegant balance in your double career. I take it the poet’s art does not pay well?”

  “Alas, no. But that’s no matter. One practices art at the bidding of the muse, not for gain. But I do like to live well, and for that a supplemental income is necessary. The old fleets used to use actors for this purpose, but they were not welcome in respectable households except as entertainers, so a poet is a better choice.”

  “I am getting dense in my old age,” I said bitterly. “It was you who suggested giving Ariston the oath at the Temple of Poseidon, then you excused yourself while I was distracted by Flavia disporting herself with her sailors. That was when you arranged the ambush, wasn’t it? Then you led us there at a deliberate pace with your poem about Orpheus and Eurydice-it was not at all a bad poem, by the way-and you held your torch high when the attack began to make sure nobody mistook you for one of the intended victims.”

  My eyes were adjusting to the dimness, and I could see we were in a large cellar that was used for storage, with bales and jars stacked all around. I could see no way out except for the way we had come in. The Greeks whose names I had already forgotten bound my hands behind me and thrust me against a bale, forcing me to sit.

  “Now stay there and don’t try to stand, Decius,” Alpheus said, “or I’ll be forced to nail one of your feet to the floor with a dagger.”

  “I’m not going anywhere just yet. I truly want to meet your master.” A brave show harms nothing when you are helpless.

  “Employer,” he corrected. “I have no master.”

  At that moment a large form blocked the light from the door. Then a man entered with more men at his back. He wore a toga and blinked in the dimness for a moment. It was the pale-faced man from the public garden. Mentally I cursed myself.

  “I should have known the second I saw your pasty face! But you were with other Romans, so I assumed you’d arrived with the grain fleet. But you should have been deeply tanned after such a voyage, and I didn’t catch it. When did you cut your hair and shave off your beard? This morning?”

  “Yesterday. Actually, I’ve been arranging passage away from here on the flagship.” The rumbling voice was unmistakable. If he’d just spoken a few more words in the garden, I would have caught the Ostian accent. By such small chances are great opportunities lost.

  “I knew Spurius couldn’t be your real name. Are you really the extribune Marcinus?”

  “I am indeed.”

  “And I suppose you were one of Gabinius’s officers in Syria and Egypt?”

  “That, too. What are we to do with you, Decius Caecilius?”

  “We kill him and get away from here,” said another voice I recognized. A pudgy man pushed forward and glared at me with his fists planted on his hips, Sergius Nobilior. “Why couldn’t you have kept chasing after the pirates as the Senate told you to? Did you have to poke your big Metellan nose into everything that was happening on this island? Some of us were doing very well here until you began stirring things up!”

  “Nobilior! And our wives have become such good friends!”

  “Yes, and a very good time they’re having today, if I know Flavia. And don’t worry, she’d never let me harm a Caesar. You, however, have to go.” He looked at one of the Greeks. “Cut his throat.” Nobody moved.

  “My men don’t take orders from you,” Marcinus said. “His wife is a Caesar?”

  “Niece to the great Caius Julius,” Nobilior affirmed. “But don’t let that concern you. He’ll be glad to have her a widow. He’ll be able to marry her off to someone far more important.”

  “If he’s murdered, there could be a lot of trouble for you,” Marcinus said. “His family is one of the greatest, even if he doesn’t amount to much. But don’t let me stop you. I won’t be here. I’ll be on a leisurely voyage to Alexandria, then home. But do your own throat cutting.”

  Nobilior stood there and fumed for a while, then Alpheus spoke up. “Must you Romans be so crude and brutal? He need not be murdered at all.”

  “My thought exactly,” I said.

  “This is festival time, a time when all the usual strictures on community behavior are relaxed. What more natural than a veteran tavern crawler like Decius Caecilius Metellus should have a bit too much to drink, topple into the harbor on his way back to the naval base, and drown? Let’s get some wine in him and on him, wait until nightfall, and carry him down to the water. The distance isn’t great, and nobody takes notice of men carrying a drunk at a time like this.”

  They were discussing my death, but I did not protest. Anything to keep breathing a while longer. Who could tell what might happen? I was working at my bonds. They had used leather straps, and they had a little give to them. I might be able to work them loose if I had long enough. A man was dispatched to search for some wine, which should prove no great quest on that day.

  “I am curious,” I said. “Which of you killed Silvanus? And why? You all seemed to have such a cozy arrangement here. Did he get a little too greedy? Or was he frightened of being found out and impeached in Rome? There have been some pretty savage prosecutions lately for unauthorized plundering.”

  “Don’t look at me,” Marcinus said. “I had nothing to do with that killing.”

  “Don’t tell me you scruple at murder,” I said. “You nearly wiped out an island just to frighten people so they wouldn’t cooperate with me.”

  He shrugged. “It isn’t like they were citizens. These islanders are little more than cattle. I didn’t know then I’d be quitting the business so soon, or I wouldn’t have bothered.”

  “Yes, rather hard on them, wasn’t it? Nobilior, a few days ago you mentioned your great and good friend Rabirius, financial adviser to King Ptolemy and the man in charge of collecting on those colossal loans. I recently learned that Rabirius had seized the grain revenues and ‘several others’ as partial payment on the debt. Might one of the others be the frankincense monopoly?”

  “So you figured that out,” Nobilior said, “Yes, that is right. But Rabirius discovered that the frankincense deliveries were being diverted elsewhere before they reached Alexandria. They were being taken up through Judea and Syria, then brought here to Cyprus, and Silvanus was transferring it to the Holy Society of Dionysus for shipment all over the world.” />
  No wonder, I thought, the merchant Demades, member in good standing of that society, had mentioned nothing about a cessation of shipment to Alexandria. “Judea and Syria?” I said. “That’s Gabinius’s old territory.

  “Yes,” Nobilior said. “He reopened the Great King’s old trade routes for frankincense and silk, as they were in the days before the Ptolemies. He and Silvanus conspired in this, and Rabirius was furious. He told me to put an end to it and even specified how Silvanus should die.”

  “So it was you? And Gabinius had nothing to do with it?”

  “I should hope not!” He said. “They were friends!”

  I was a little crestfallen that my favorite suspect was not the murderer after all. This did not let him off the hook though. There was no mistaking his hostility toward me.

  The man returned with a skin of wine. A hand grabbed the hair at the back of my head and tipped it upward. The reed nozzle of the skin was thrust into my mouth and the bag given a squeeze. I swallowed rapidly, then gagged and spit as the man jumped clear.

  “You fools!” I said, when I could speak. “Nobody will believe I was drinking that cheap stuff!”

  “It all smells the same the next day,” Marcinus assured me. “Give him some more.” The skin was reapplied, then reapplied again. The last try was counterproductive, causing me to vomit spasmodically.

  “Now we’ll have to do it all over again,” said the Greek with the skin. He took a drink himself.

  “He doesn’t have to be really drunk,” said Alpheus. “He just needs to look and smell that way, and he does already.”

  “We’re wasting time,” Nobilior said. “Why not just knock him on the head? He’ll still look like he drowned after being in the water all night.”

  “That might leave a mark,” Alpheus pointed out. “But smothering would do the same thing and,” he held up a finger for emphasis, like the chorus master he was, “it will give him the bug-eyed, black-faced aspect of drowning.”

  “Excellent idea,” Nobilior said, nodding. “Who has strong hands?”

  The time had come for desperate action, and I couldn’t think of a thing to do. I had one possible move. They had not bound my feet. I could be up in a single bound, smash my head into Nobilior’s fat face, then sprint for the door. At least I would die knowing that Nobilior would regret ever having known me, every time he saw his own reflection. I began, carefully, to gather my feet beneath me, leaning forward slightly.

  “Careful, he’s planning something,” Alpheus said. They began to turn my way, then the doorway was crowded with people again. I could see armed, hard-faced men, Gabinius’s. Come to kill everybody in sight, I figured. They would be near blind coming in from daylight. Alpheus whirled and came for me with his dagger.

  I was off the bale in an instant, but not to butt anyone in the face. I dived and rolled, catching Alpheus just below the knees, toppling him and sending his wreath rolling across the floor to be trampled beneath the scuffling feet. There were shouts and muffled groans and the familiar, butcher-shop sound of blades plunging into bodies and chopping against bone. Light streaming through the doorway glittered on bared blades and glowed redly from the sprays of blood that saturated the air. Among the droplets, flowers and leaves from the festival wreaths drifted to the floor.

  Alpheus tried to rise, but I doubled up my legs and let him have both feet beneath the chin. His head snapped back and cracked into an amphora, breaking the heavy clay and spilling poor-quality olive oil onto the floor. If I couldn’t defeat a poet, even with my hands tied behind me, I deserved to die.

  “Metellus,” somebody bellowed, “where are you?” I recognized the voice of Aulus Gabinius, come to do me in just like a flamen killing a bull, although just then I felt more like a second-rate sheep, one not even worthy of sacrifice. I looked toward the door, measured the distance, scrambled to my feet, and leapt over a pair of struggling bodies. Even as I did, I saw more people crowding into the doorway. Just my luck.

  But one thing was certain: I did not want to linger another minute in that cellar. I ran for the crowd, hoping to bull my way through and keep running. A sword rose, lanced toward my belly, then several strong hands stopped me as solidly as if I had run into a wall.

  “A man could get killed rushing onto sharp steel like that,” said Ariston, grinning. One of his hands rested against my chest. The other held his big, curved knife. So he was with them, too? Then I saw who was holding the sword that just pierced the cloth of my tunic: Hermes, his face gone so white I could not help laughing.

  “Hermes, if you could see yourself!”

  “You’re something of a sight yourself,” Titus Milo said. His were the other hands that had stopped me so abruptly. Milo never carried weapons because he never needed them. Hermes resheathed his sword with a shaky hand.

  “What,” I asked, “is going on?”

  “You’ve led us a lively chase, Captain,” Ariston said. He spun me around and slashed my bonds with a single stroke. “Your boy came running to the base, said you’d been abducted, and we should all turn out and look for you.”

  “I knew something like this would happen,” Gabinius said, walking toward us. He was wiping blood from a sword that looked as natural in his fist as a finger. “That’s why I’ve had my men watching you all day. When they said they’d seen Furius Marcinus in town with his hair cut and his beard shaved, I suspected he’d want to take care of some unfinished business and sent them to bring you to me. They saw Alpheus make off with you, so I set them to combing the town. One of them spotted the man they sent out for wine and followed him back here, then ran to fetch me. Why didn’t you just bring your suspicions to me, Metellus? It might have simplified things.”

  “I thought you were trying to kill me.” I looked over the room. There were bodies everywhere, lying among the leaves and petals, in a mixture of oil and blood. All of Alpheus’s men lay dead. Alpheus himself looked dead. Marcinus and Nobilior were certainly dead, their throats decorated with gaping wounds. “I see you’ve eliminated your partners.”

  “Metellus,” he said, “I am showing forbearance out of respect to Caesar and your family; but if you accuse me of complicity in the murder of my friend Silvanus, I may just make a clean job of it right here.”

  “Let’s not be hasty now,” Milo said, smiling his most dangerous smile. Hermes and Ariston let their hands fall to their sheathed weapons.

  “We have more than a hundred armed men just outside,” Hermes said.

  “So have I,” Gabinius answered.

  Suddenly I was very tired. “There’s been enough bloodletting today,” I said. “Let’s not have Romans fighting each other in a new territory. The civil wars ended twenty years ago. Come on, let’s get away from this slaughterhouse and talk somewhere where there’s clean air.”

  “Good,” Gabinius said, handing his sword to one of his men. “By preference, in a place where you can get a clean tunic.”

  An hour later, washed up and dressed in a clean tunic, I walked out to the terrace before my quarters. Gabinius was there, and Milo and Mallius, the new governor.

  “Hermes,” I’d asked as I bathed and dressed, “how did you know to summon help so quickly?”

  “I found Julia only two streets away from where I left you. I gave her your message, and Flavia said Paphos had no tavern named Hermaphroditus. I knew that woman would know what she was talking about.”

  “It’s a good thing you did. If you hadn’t been there, Gabinius might have gone ahead and killed me just to be rid of the annoyance. He could have claimed that he got there too late.”

  Now as I went out to talk with them, I was fairly certain I had most of the facts. Milo sat with some scrolls and tablets in front of him. Gabinius looked supremely confident. Mallius looked bemused. I took a seat.

  “This shouldn’t take long,” I said. “Then we can all get back to the festival. Aulus Gabinius, tell me why I should not charge you with murder and piracy and a number of other charges before a prae
tor’s court?”

  “Furius Marcinus was tribune in the same year I was. He supported me in passing the lex Gabinia that gave Pompey his command of the whole sea to sweep it clean of pirates. In return, when I had my propraetorian command in Syria, I took him along as legate. When I agreed to put Ptolemy back on his throne, it was Marcinus I used to recruit the bulk of the mercenary army I took to Egypt.”

  “That included recruiting among the aforementioned pirates, then settled in villages inland?”

  “Right. After the war, when we set about collecting the enormous debt Ptolemy had incurred, several merchant organizations came to protest Ptolemy’s extortions. He was trying to raise the money from foreigners so he could keep the Egyptian population docile. Among these was the Holy Society of Dionysus. Rabirius had seized control of the frankincense trade, the most lucrative of the Ptolemaic monopolies.”

  “Rabirius was trying to collect that debt, too,” I pointed out.

  “For himself and his own cronies. I wanted to be sure that my own part, and that of my supporters, got paid back. To foil Rabirius, Ptolemy sent word to Ethiopia and Arabia Felix not to deliver the stuff while he had no control of it. This was unthinkable. The Society of Dionysus agreed to advance me the money to buy the incense and get it to them secretly somewhere other than Alexandria. Marcinus told me he had two acquaintances from Ostia: Nobilior the banker and Silvanus, a prominent politician, on Cyprus. Silvanus was an old friend of mine, and Cyprus was a perfect location. I gave Marcinus the job of setting up the route. It was then that I was called back to Rome to stand trial. This petty little exile resulted. Naturally, I decided to spend my exile on Cyprus. By the time I got here, the business was going along nicely.”

  “I seized Harmodias’s books and clapped him into a storage shed under guard,” Milo reported. He picked up a scroll. “As I suspected, Pompey’s agents took only the triremes and the better equipment. They weren’t interested in the smaller ships. The first ships he turned over to Spurius, as he was called, were the penteconters. Then Spurius wanted the Liburnians as well. Nobilior brokered the deal, with Silvanus well-paid to look the other way.”