'At Misenum?' queried Brunnus for some reason.
'No, I'm at Ravenna-' Brunnus, who had previously told us Caninus was from the fleet at Misenum, looked annoyed.
'Tell me,' I begged. 'Before I pass out beneath this tasteful lamp holder-' A hairy bronze satyr with a large willy. Privatus, who owned it, had pitiful taste. 'Tell me about Cilicia.' Caninus gave me a deep, suspicious stare. Once again he possessed an empty goblet yet this time he refrained from filling it. Petronius supplied wine for him. I waved Petro to stop, but he refilled my cup too. I noticed that he left his own empty.
'What's your interest in Cilicia, Falco?' I forced a smile.
'If I knew, I would not be asking for clues.'
'Ever been there?' Caninus demanded.
'No.'
'Unusual for Falco,' Petronius inserted loyally. 'This is a much-travelled man. Didius Falco is a name that makes barmaids blush in wineries as far apart as Londinium and Palmyra. Say this man's name in burning Leptis Magna and, I have heard, twenty landlords will rush forwards, expecting a very large tip for hay and oats.'
'I think you've confused me with my brother, Petro.'
'Sounds like I'd like to meet your brother,' said Caninus. Thank the gods he could not have an introduction; my brother, who loved deadbeats, was long dead.
'I never tip for oats.' I cut across the nonsense. 'Cilicia,' I reminded Caninus.
'Cilicia,' he replied. Then there was a long silence, in which he did not even drink.
'Cilicia, Pamphylia, Lycia. The three mobsters of the eastern seas.' Caninus let an awestruck note feed into his voice. 'Rock-bottom countries. They are neighbours; they give shelter to each other. You will find harbours in Pamphylia which have been set up specifically for Cilician pirates' use as selling posts, and whole Lycian villages which are occupied by Cilician sailors. Cilicia itself has been for a long time the most notorious of all these hideouts. Between the mountains and the sea. The people up in the mountains claim to be entirely agricultural. Maybe they are. But there are endless small harbours on a rocky coast, ideal bases and markets, – the two things pirates need.'
'And in these rocky docks,' I suggested, 'live people whose ships Pompey the Great did not burn, for some reason. People who say they have turned to farming and who claim they keep ships for occasional fishing and a little light yachting in summer?'
'Ships which just happen to be very fast, very light, often undecked vessels with a lot of zip,' Caninus agreed drily. 'Every single one with a big beaked ramming prow.'
'Just something to hold on to as they lean out with shrimp nets!'
'You're a character, Falco.'
'What's the word on Pompey then?' I pressed him. Caninus helped himself to one of the apples Brunnus had placed on his side table. I could not remember if it representedthrills' or death.'
'Pompey,' he mused, chewing. We immediately knew his take on the Great One.'Ambition with flippers.'
'I like the new definition,' I murmured.
'Pretty!' smirked Petronius. He shared my views on famous men.
'Want my opinion of the Forty-Nine Days?'
'Better define that first.' I had no idea what the Forty-Nine Days were, though I was beginning to think we would be trapped here that long. Caninus sighed.
'Let's go back, then. It's the dying days of the old Republic and Rome is beleaguered. Pirates are skidding about all over Mare Nostrum. Our sea is their sea. Pirates are ravaging the coasts of Italy – Attacking our cities, coming right into Ostia. Anywhere low-lying and prosperous was an attraction.' He had suddenly changed tense, but this was not the moment for editing.
'The corn supply was seriously threatened. With the Rome mob raging because they were hungry, the coasts were bloody dangerous. Enough rape and death to fill a novel, – and what was worse -this was their big mistake, in fact- whenever the pirates captured a notable man, they subjected him to insults.'
'Ouch!' cried Petronius, laughing.
'So after enough high-born victims have suffered humiliation, Pompey goes out to rid the seas of the pirates,' I said. 'And it takes him forty-nine days?'
'I'll come to that.' Caninus refused to be rushed. Iwas right about the forty-nine damned days, though. 'First Pompey secures the corn supply, he garrisons legates in Sardinia, Sicily and North Africa. Funnily enough…' Our mentor ran off at a tangent.
'Young Sextus Ponipeius, when he later fell out with the triumvirate, used exactly the same tactics as his great papa, but in reverse. He joined up with some pirates, then put a stop to trade from the east, the west, the south. How did he do it?'
'He settled himself in Sardinia, Sicily and North Africa!' Petro and I chorused, still trying to hurry him.
'But how did Pompey senior manage his spectacular coup?' I insisted.
'It was spectacular.' Caninus sounded serious. 'From what I know, he had not more than a hundred ships. To police the whole Mediterranean it was pissing in the wind. Only half the contingent would have been decent. Some were bound to be barnacled hulks dragged out of retirement. It was a rush job. A classic. But somehow Pompey drove the flotilla of pirates all the way to Cilicia. There was a bit of a battle, though nothing for the annals. Then he dealt with them by that special Roman miracle. Clemency!'
'You are joking?' Even Brunnus woke up.
'I am not joking. He could have, -you may say he should have- crucified them all. They knew what was due, and yet he put no one to death if they surrendered. They fled home, scared of his reputation. Then, as you said earlier, Falco, Pompey did not burn their ships. He let it be known that he saw many had been driven to evil by poverty, and he offered the best deal to those who turned themselves in.'
'Penitent pirates flocked to submit?'
'Pirates are sentimental bastards. Pirates will slice your bowels out – but they all love their mothers. Pompey set them up with little farms. All within sight of a river or the coast, that must have been in case the pirates felt homesick for salt water. Adanos, Mallos, Epiphania. A large contingent at Dyme in Achaea. Then of course there was Pompeiopolis – just in case anyone ever forgot who deserved all the credit.'
'New town?'
'No time to build new. Just an old one renamed, Falco.'
'I've been talking to a man from Pompeiopolis,' I told him. 'A curiosity called Damagoras.'
'Never heard of him. He's a pirate?'
'Oh no, he claims he never has been.'
'He's lying!' Caninus scoffed.
'Seems likely. He has a huge house, stuffed with rich loot from all over the Mare Nostrum, and no visible explanation for his acquisitions. So despite the little farms, they still plunder the seas?'
'Rome needs her slaves, Falco.'
'You mean, we want pirates to operate?' Caninus feigned shock.
'I didn't say that. It is treason to suggest Pompey failed. He solved the problem. It's a Roman triumph. The seas are clear of pirates. That is official.'
It's official bollocks, then.'
'Ah well, Falco, now you're being political!' We all laughed. Mind you, since some of us were strangers to each other we did it cautiously.
XIX
None of this was helping me find Diocles. My restlessnesscommunicated itself toPetro. He rolled suddenly, and stared at Caninus. 'Brunnus said you were a pirate specialist. If they don't exist officially, how come?'
'That's the navy,' said the sea biscuit, looking coy.
'What are you doing here in Ostia?' I made the query as light as possible. He was a long way from Cilicia, if Cilicia was the pirates' heartland.
'Goodwill mission.'
'With three triremes?' Caninus looked surprised. I let him wonder how I knew. It was hardly a secret. Anyone who wandered around Portus could have seen them and counted them.
'Never a warship when you want one, then a whole bunch turn up,' he grinned.
'For a shore exercise?' Petronius, a typical vigiles man, wanted to know what was being arranged by other units in the patch he currently occup
ied.
'We just flit about from port to port and shout the Emperor's name. When the high-ups decide we deserve shore leave, they let us come here and join the squash docking at Portus. We're showing the standard to foreign traders.'
'You haven't chased some pirate ship ashore?' Petro demanded.
'Jupiter no. We don't want ugly scenes on the Emperor's doorstep.' Until the conversation became political, Caninus had spoken with heat and passion. Now he was blustering in cliches. I did not believe the change was caused by drink; he had shown himself impervious to wine. He was hiding something.
'I'll be straight,' I said. I was too tipsy for anything complicated. 'I was hoping you could explain why a scribe who writes notorious sections of the Daily Gazette would have contacted a man who is reckoned to have been a pirate.'
'Why don't you ask him?'
'Sorry; I thought I had explained that. The scribe has disappeared.' Perhaps a change darkened Caninus' face.
'You think he's been captured? Well, you know how they used to work it in the old days. if pirates had taken a prisoner who was worth something, a note would be brought to people who knew him, by an intermediary, naming a very large ransom.'
'You think that's possible?' It had never occurred to me that Diocles might have been taken by pirates. In fact, I disbelieved it.
'Of course not,' said Caninus drily. Ransoming captives is history. We have the Pax Romana now. Lawlessness only exists outside the boundaries of the Empire. Anyway,' he added, almost sneering, 'a scribe would not be worth much, would he?' It was what he knew that might have been important, though I did not trust Caninus enough to say it.
'So someone must have bopped my scribe on the head and buried him under a floor after a tavern brawl.'
'All you have to do is find out where he used to drink,' Caninus agreed, as if to an amateur. Then bring a chisel to lift the floorboards. He won't have been writing about pirates,' Caninus assured me; he sounded far too bland. 'Your scribe can contact as many Cilicians as he likes, but now they are loyal Roman citizens. The scribe is bound to say that. The Daily Gazette is a government mouthpiece. He is supposed to enhance the glint of the Pax Romana.'
True. Infamia would be allowed to publish, however, if he was reporting that the glorious Pax Romana had come under threat. Had it? Did that explain Caninus? Was that why this expert, working in what he implied was a defunct area, had berthed at Portus with his three triremes? There was no point in me asking. Caninus would waffle all night about what had happened a hundred years ago. He had no intention of telling us what was happening this week. I glanced at Petronius. We had our own situation to contend with. If we descended any further into tonight's debauchery, Petro and I would both be under threat, -from Maia and Helena. Somehow we had to encourage our tedious guests to go home. Tomorrow would be soon enough to think up excuses for Privatus about the depletion in his wine supplies, which was far more than the laws of hospitality would support. Tonight we had to get rid of the men who drank it. Believe me, the rest of the party was laborious.
In the end the sea biscuit left first. He departed with a fairly full amphora of Rhodian red on his shoulder. The steward, good fellow, had ensured that as the joy continued, the quality and cost of the drink diminished, to limit the damage. His last choice was appropriate. Rhodes had been one of the historic venues for the piracy Pompey stamped out. Rhodian red is a passable table wine which travels; that's because this tangy island vintage is traditionally cut with seawater.
Brunnus was harder to shift than Caninus. When his contact left, he slithered from his couch to the marble floor; Petro and I were beyond lifting him. Slaves appeared, however, which made me think they were used to clearing up after lengthy dinners. I also guessed they had been eavesdropping.
'Caninus-'slurred Brunnus, desperate to communicate. 'My contact.'
'Yes, he's excellent,' I assured him. I was sitting on the edge of my dining couch, unwilling to exert myself lest the results were volcanic.
'Man of few words…' Petronius was still capable of wit.
'Lot of misleading ones,' Brunnus spluttered, as a couple of large slaves gathered him together and made ready to remove him. 'I don't trust him, I've decided. Solo artist. Absolutely not sharing. Absolutely not liaising. Absolutely.' Brunnus fell silent at that point, absolutely drunk. I stayed with Petronius. We slept there in the dining room, unable to move.
XX
I shall omit what was said in my household next morning.
XXI
Let us pass swiftly to luncheon [which I did not eat,] then on into the turgid afternoon. I spent some of it lying down with my eyes closed, on the floor, out of sight behind a baggage chest. I struggled upright when Aulus returned from a trip to Portus with information that he had found a ship to take him to Athens, – and other news. As a member of Falco and Associates he was trained to keep his eyes and ears peeled. I had taught him to stay alert in commercial quarters, in case he was beaten up or robbed. I did not want his mother, a forceful woman, to blame me if anything ever happened while he was working for me.
'There was something going on, Falco.' Aulus could spot interesting situations; in his snooty way, he was a nosy swine. 'My ship's captain was having a real upset.'One of my daughters pushed by him, so she could stare at her unusually withdrawn papa.
'Don't bother him,' Helena admonished coolly [aiming the barb at me.] 'He is poorly today. Your father has been ridiculous.'
'Ridiculous!' Julia Junilla lisped her first multi-syllable ecstatically. She was three, and all woman.
'Ridiculous,' repeated Aulus, with awe.
'A hot night, Falco?'
'Even you would have thought so.'
'Oh, I wouldn't have dared join in. In case you wondered,' he grinned. 'I fetched Helena home.'
'Thanks,' I croaked.
'Junia offered to accompany me,' Helena remarked coolly. 'Ajax would have protected us. But Gaius Baebius needed her. Junia is nursing him full time. He has been badly laid up since your jaunt to the seaside.'
'He's feigning.'
'No, Gaius has had to take sick leave. He wants you to look out for the man who attacked him, so he can claim compensation for his injuries.'
'He won't get it. The thug was brutish, but if it goes to court I'll have to say that Gaius Baebius asked for everything he got.'
'Unfair, Marcus. You just hate him because he's a public servant.' I hated him because he was an idiot.
'His stupidity at the villa was dangerously real, my love. You're talking as if Gaius will never work again. Has the customs service lost its star?'
'If Gaius has been really hurt, this is not funny.'
'I am not laughing.' Whatever I thought of my sister Junia, no Roman woman wants a husband who can no longer work. If Gaius was ever laid off from tax collecting, the family would have only their savings – and they had always been spenders – plus a token income from the unpleasant snackshop on the Aventine which Junia ran as a hobby. Only part of the profits ever reached her. Apollonius, her put-upon general waiter, fiddled the figures; in better times he had been a geometry teacher and he could easily persuade my sister that an obtuse angle was acute. He had been my teacher, so I would never snitch on him. I forced my bleary brain back to the original subject. 'So what's this ship, Aulus?'
'Well, come and have a look, Falco. I want you to ask the captain about what was going on when I took him my payment.'
'You paid your fare before going aboard?' The lad knew nothing. Even I had failed to teach him common sense. Aulus Camillus Aelianus, son of Decimus, heir to a life of luxury, had been an army tribune somewhere or other and worked on the staff of the provincial governor in Baetica. Who knows how he managed to reach those overseas postings? When I took him to Britain, he had me to make all the arrangements.
'I am a senator's son,' he retorted. 'The master won't cheat me – not if he wants to return to this port. He makes a fortune from passengers; he has to keep his good name.'
'
It's your money!' It was his father's money. Still, Aulus was probably right about the captain. 'So what's the story?'
'Are you up to taking the ferry?'
'Only to pursue a really good story.'
'The best!' he assured me. I was too hungover to quibble. He clinched it, however. 'That blusterer Caninus who got you sozzled had his nose right in it. It sounded to me as if there had been a run-in with some pirates.' I agreed to go to Portus.
The vessel selected by our traveller to carry him in search of his legal education was a large transporter in which he had been promised speed, stability, the next best thing to a cabin and food prepared by the captain's own cook. If the weather blew up rough, there would be no food and little shelter, but Aelianus was his usual over-confident self. Well, he was going to Greece for education. Let him learn, I thought. I had assured Helena I would check over this transport and ensure that her brother would be as safe as it was ever possible to be, riding the route to Greece amidst the summer storms that thunder out of nowhere in the Tyrrhenian and the Aegean. The ship, called the Spes, was indeed solid. These days Rome was using the biggest traders ever known. This one had just brought a cargo of fish, olives and luxury goods from Antiochus via the Peloponnese, and was apparently awaiting wine and pottery to take out again. The captain, Antemon, was a calm Syrian with big feet. He had three warts on his left cheek and a birthmark on the right. While he found time to see us, Aulus briefed me on what he saw that morning, so I went straight into the attack.
'Antemon, my name's Falco. I hear one of your passengers has had a wife go missing. Has she run away with your first officer, or is she getting her leaks plugged by the ship's carpenter?'
'Nothing to do with you,' the captain told me, looking grim.
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