by Peter Tonkin
‘Crinas, will he die of his wounds if they remain untreated?’
‘Of course, in time.’
‘Within the next day or two?’
‘No. They have stopped bleeding. They will only become dangerous if they are infected. And infection takes time.’
‘Very well. Quintus. I want you to take the men who made your ladders and get them to make a cross, a good strong one stout enough to take Zeuta here.’
Gaius Omerus choked. His senior men paled. ‘You’re going to crucify him?’ croaked the centurion. ‘Didn’t you hear what Brassus said? You will bring death and destruction down on us all!’
‘I think not. I think I will bring life and liberty to my little contubernium. At least until we reach the safety of Florina and the border of Greece! Crinas, Furius, I want the boy stripped and his wounds bound. Brassus, I want you or one of your men to carry a message to Deceneus, King if the Daci...’
And so, at dawn the contubernium set out for Florina, riding as fast as the wagons allowed. Accompanied by the escort Publius had assigned them as far as Heraclea Lycensis, who would be returning there the next day. With orders from Artemidorus to give Gaius Omerus and his command a thorough shaking up.
All along the via between their left shoulders and the mountains, bands of mounted Dacian warriors kept watch but did not approach too closely. For, bound naked to a cross stepped securely in the last wagon, hung Zeuta, favourite nephew to Deceneus high king of the Daci, due to be released and returned with Publius’ cavalry command once Artemidorus and his contubernium were safely in Florina and Greece.
ALEXANDRIA
IX: Liburnian
i
The docks along the back of the port of Thessaloniki were a dizzying bustle. The massive anchorage was packed with vessels of all shapes and sizes. The largest were the warships from the Libertore fleets, clearly visiting here for one reason or another: to pick up information, men or supplies not available in their current home-port of Rhodos, for example. Artemidorus saw military quadriremes, quinqueremes with four and five banks of oarsmen – but usually with three banks of oars, and one or two even larger polyremes with four or even five. These were the vessels he needed to steer well clear of – though he hoped that Messala, Lucius and the messenger would have departed on one of their kind more than a week ago.
After a moment, he redirected his gaze away from the military monsters towards the smaller commercial vessels. The triremes, biremes and liburnians that sailed these waters with men like User aboard. Out for profit rather than conquest; seeking cargoes and markets rather than battles and glory. These were the vessels he was interested in. Potential transports for his group of secret messengers between here and the Western Harbour behind the Pharos Island.
‘You have no warehouses here?’ he asked User, who was sitting beside him on the latest replacement for the black stallion he had befriended in Dyrrhachium. He was speaking in Greek, as he had been since crossing the border at Florina, happy to be back in the land of his birth and much of his youth. Though not precisely in Sparta, on whose barren hillsides he had been discovered as a baby. But, if he had not returned to Sparta, at least he was back in that half of the Roman Sea east of a line from Athens to Alexandria which remained solidly Greek. There was a sense of coming home, whose strength had surprised him. As did the ease with which he slipped back into his native tongue and the mindset that went with it. He detected a similar look in the eyes of the ex-slave Kyros stolen from Kos by Cilician pirates as a boy, the massive Achaean tutor Hercules, and the Athenian physician Crinas.
Ferrata was Hibernian, swept into the Ironclad Legion by Pompey in Spain. Despite her colouring, Puella had been born on Brutus’ step-father’s estate in Tuscany – the result of a breeding experiment between two Nubian slaves. Furius and Notus had been born in the Subura and so were truly Roman but less so than Quintus who came from ancient Patrician stock who owned a massive antique villa high on the Palatine. User, born in Alexandria was in some ways the most Greek of all of them. Artemidorus’ contubernium all spoke Greek with varying levels of fluency. Only Puella, the ex-slave who had not been educated in the language, found it hard. But User spoke it even more fluently than he spoke Latin and he promised to help her learn.
It was important that they all spoke Greek. For only User spoke any Egyptian. And Greek was the language of Cleopatra’s court. The queen herself came from the Greek and Macedonian stock of the first Ptolemy, Alexander’s general Ptolemy Soter, descended in as direct a line as that claimed by Brutus with his forefather who drove King Tarquin out of Rome and founded the Republic. The Queen and Pharaoh spoke Ptolemy Soter’s language, therefore, two hundred and forty years after his death. Even though, as Artemidorus knew, she was fluent in more than half a dozen languages. Including Egyptian – the first Pharaoh ever able to talk to her subjects in their native tongue.
‘Not here, no,’ said User in answer to his question. ‘I’ve never even dreamed of owning anything here in Thessaloniki. Look how busy it is. The rates are ruinous. Property prices a joke – even your famous Marcus Licinius Crassus would have been hard-put to buy much. There’s no commercial real estate to be had at any price. You bloody Greeks owned it all long before Alexander was born. As I said, my main warehouses this end of the middle sea are in Xanthus.’
‘With your wife and children,’ said Puella in her careful Greek.
‘In a villa which makes even the family home in Alexandria look like a goatherd’s cottage,’ nodded User. ‘Property prices in Xanthus are much more reasonable.’ He turned to the rest of them, explaining, ‘The city of Xanthus itself, like Rome, is set a little back from the sea but, as with Ostia, there are good docks all along a sandy, open bay within easy reach. There’s a navigable river almost as big as the Tiber joining the docks to the city itself. And the port is excellent for sailing in and out unless there are fearsome easterlies, in which case Rhodos is just across the channel. Closer than Dyrrhachium is to Brundisium.’
‘Very well,’ said Artemidorus. ‘You have no warehousing here, but do you have a reputation? Are you known?’
‘There will be captains who know me or know of me, certainly, though none of my own vessels should be in port. But there will be men with local businesses who will know my name and reputation too. I assume you are keen that I organise passage to Alexandria – as well as a good deal – for you, your contubernium and all the supplies you are carrying.’
‘We can leave the wagons and the horses – sell them if we need to,’ nodded Artemidorus. ‘But yes: the contubernium and what we are carrying. And a swift departure is preferable to a good deal.’
*
Artemidorus’ plan to guarantee them safe passage out of the Dacians’ country had worked perfectly. The naked, intensely embarrassed Zeuta, bound rather than nailed to Quintus’ cross, wedged upright in the last wagon, had guaranteed that his doting uncle kept his raiders in check. And the fact that Publius’ cavalrymen then took Zeuta back with them guaranteed their safe passage to their new billets in Heraclea Lyncestis as well. Artemidorus had left orders that the boy and any other survivors be released; and the dead be respectfully returned for burial according to Dacian custom. But it would have to be up to centurion Omerus to make the ultimate decisions.
The contubernium stayed in Florina for two nights and a day while Artemidorus organised the final details as well as he could. They were able to reach Edessa by the third night, Pella by the fourth and Thessaloniki in the early evening of the fifth. Coming unchallenged through the city’s main gate and heading straight for the docks.
‘It’s getting late,’ said User. ‘I suggest we find a hospitium and the local baths. After a bit of a soak and a bite to eat, we can go out and do some business. Test the waters anyway. See what’s going on this end of the middle sea, who’s sailing south, when, and what they think the wind is going to do during the next few days. I know Thessaloniki almost as well as I know Alexandria. Let me be your guide.’
The hospitium User took them to was up the hill, well back from the docks but close to the baths. ‘I recommend it for several reasons,’ he explained. ‘It is comfortable, the food is good and the people who run it are welcoming and honest. You may leave horses, wagons, and their contents here without worrying. It is convenient to the best bathhouse in town. Also, for some reason it does not attract many soldiers, sailors, or oarsmen. So, it is largely peaceful.’
They dropped off their kit. They bathed. They ate. Then, dressed in their tunics, armed but without their armour, they went out to less salubrious establishments that were patronised by soldiers, oarsmen and sailors. Especially trierarchi, naucleri and gubernators: captains, skippers, and pilots. User led the way. Artemidorus and Puella followed. Quintus and Ferrata brought up the rear, as ever hopeful that even if the mission failed at least there would be lots to drink. There was hopefully going to be no work for Crinas to do. Hercules, Furius, Notus and Kyros were overseeing the slaves and – despite User’s assurances – mounting guards to watch the wagons and their precious contents.
The first dockside taberna they entered was huge and packed. One or two heads turned as they entered, but User’s face was familiar enough to put everyone at ease. Or, if not his face, then his distinctively Egyptian headwear. After a glance, the men sitting crowded round the tables went back to business. Everyone seemed to accept User as one of their own, but no-one greeted him. No-one called him over to their tables. They walked to the bar, eyes busy as they looked over the blank, unwelcoming faces, bought drinks, took them to a table, drank and left.
The next taberna was smaller, less busy. Once again, User’s presence raised no eyebrows. It didn’t generate any greetings either. But the wine was an improvement on the first’s. The third one they visited yielded nothing but better wine still. ‘I like this,’ said Ferrata, swilling back the contents of his goblet. ‘If we keep it up long enough, we’ll end up drinking the nectar of the gods.’
‘True,’ answered Artemidorus, with an edge of impatience in his voice. ‘But by the time we find anyone to talk to we’ll be too drunk to make much sense.’
‘Patience!’ said User. ‘Remember you are a stoic at heart. You can’t control the future – so don’t worry about it!’
‘Spoken like Zeno himself,’ said Quintus. ‘But even Zeno would want to get on with things as fast as possible. Before the tide turns or the wind changes.’
‘For someone who spends so much time throwing up over the side, you seem to have picked up the basics of ship-handling pretty well,’ said User.
‘I’m seasick,’ said Quintus. ‘Not blind, deaf or stupid.’
‘User?’ came a bellow of surprise echoing across the room. ‘USER!’
They swung round at the same time to see a great bearded barrel of a man come rolling through the door. He wore green leggings, a blue tunic and a gold-coloured cap.
‘Cilician,’ muttered Ferrata.
‘Aren’t they all pirates?’ wondered Puella.
‘Those that weren’t wiped out by Pompey the Great,’ nodded Quintus knowledgeably.
But User stopped the whispered speculation by bellowing back as he rose, ‘Halys you old pirate, how are you?’
A moment later the two men were embracing, beating each-other on the back with a cheerful exuberance that must have put their ribs at risk. Artemidorus, who had risen to his feet at the same time as User, grabbed an empty chair from a nearby table so that when they disentangled themselves, there was somewhere for the Cilician to sit. One glance at the man had also prompted him to catch the eye of a waitress. ‘More wine,’ he ordered. ‘Two flagons. No water.’
*
It was inevitable that User and Halys should dominate the early part of the conversation as they all worked their way through the first flagon of excellent Cretan. It immediately emerged that they were old friends, though neither had ever worked for the other. That Halys, having risen from the lowly position of oarsman through horator and pausarius, to sail-handler and gubernator, was now the nauclerus skipper of a neat little full-decked libernian called Glaros Seagull; a bireme with fifty oars a side in two sets of twenty-five, one hundred feet in length and twenty wide counting the rowing boxes but with a draft of only a few feet. ‘She can go where I can wade,’ boasted the besotted captain, ‘in water that only comes up to my belt!’
‘So, she’s a river boat as well as a seagoing vessel?’ queried User, his eyes narrow and the muscles of his forehead clenched in a frown.
‘When she needs to be,’ answered Halys enthusiastically. ‘But she’d be wasted on a river any smaller than the Nile or the Cydnus. She’s as fast as the birds she’s named after. She can outrun anything else out there in the harbour under sail or oars. She can reach fifteen knots with a following wind and the better part of ten knots in a dead calm. And I have a crack team of oarsmen who can keep up that speed for one of the Roman God Divus Julius’ new weeks! They’re expensive but worth every drachma!’
‘But where is she actually going now?’ asked Artemidorus. ‘Where is your next port of call?’
‘And how many passengers could she accommodate?’ wondered Quintus, ‘without adding too much to her draft or slowing her down in a pinch.’
‘Passenger accommodation largely depends on the voyage,’ answered Halys cheerfully answering the second question first. ‘She’s not a passenger vessel, though, she’s a trader…’
‘Pirata,’ said Quintus not quite under his breath.
‘I speak Latin as well as Greek and a little Egyptian, my Roman friend,’ Halys warned Quintus, who did not look in the slightest abashed, especially as the too-cheerful, multilingual captain had not denied that he was, amongst other things, a pirate.
iii
‘I am here looking for trade,’ admitted Halys as he broached the second flagon of Cretan. ‘And where I’m bound depends partly on what I get and partly on the wind. The best outcome is that I find something quickly that I can sell in Ephesus, Tyre or Alexandria. The winds are northerly at this time of year – though not as steady as they are in the summer – and it has taken far too long to get here in the first place, so my preferred course is to the south with the wind behind me. Also, the harbour fees here are ruinous. Not to mention what it costs to get a decent meal, some drinkable wine and a lupa whore that doesn’t actually look like a she-wolf.’
‘Spices?’ suggested User sympathetically. ‘Perfumes? They go through myrrh at an amazing rate in almost every country south of here and the trade routes from the Land of Punt are getting difficult I hear.’
‘No myrrh to be had,’ said Halys sadly. ‘Or Frankincense come to that. Not to mention bears. They’re popular in Egypt for some reason – but getting bears or Frankish incense down from Germania is impossible. The Dacians have closed all the roads to the north. I was thinking of turning around and heading for Lebanon. Pick up some cedar wood also for Egypt. But the market for building materials is almost dead there at the moment, together with about half the population. At least that’s what I was told in Alexandria last month. Luckily, the plague doesn’t seem to have come past Tiperses well upriver; what you Romans call Giza. Though it seems to have left the Holy City of Memphis alone, they say. I’d hoped for a cargo of corn, but they had none of that to spare either.’ He shook his head sadly.
‘Shocking!’ User shook his head in sympathy and shot a glance at Artemidorus. Halys might be an old friend, but that didn’t stop the Egyptian setting up the Cilician for Artemidorus’ proposal.
‘Actually,’ he said, picking up on User’s cue, ‘my contubernium and I are looking for passage to Alexandria if we can find a vessel to take all twenty or so of us and our impedimenta luggage. And if the price is right.’
‘Well, Glaros isn’t really a passenger vessel as I said. It’d be basic fare if I agreed to take you even if I could load twenty of you aboard. Where have you come from?’
‘Rome,’ answered Artemidorus. ‘We left around t
he Ides of Februarius, before the Lupercalia.’
‘You’ve come from Rome? That fast?’ Halys expression and tone were sceptical.
‘I can vouch for them,’ said User. ‘I joined them just before they reached Dyrrhachium and I’ve been with them ever since. We came along the Via Egnatia almost as fast as military couriers. Stopped off to sort out a little trouble with the Dacians and here we are. I have to tell you, old friend, that roughing it on a liburnian will be as nothing to this lot. Except for Quintus there, who’ll spend the entirety of any voyage trying to hurl his guts out of his mouth and over the side.’
*
Warehousing at Thessaloniki was every bit as expensive as User warned it would be. But Ferrata and Furius sold the horses in the market next day for so much that Artemidorus had to add surprisingly little of Antony’s gold to get accommodation for the wagons and the camping equipment that they contained – which would be of no use at Cleopatra’s court or on the Glaros which was taking them there. Everything they left behind would be housed safely at the hospitium they had stayed in last night. And if they weren’t back to collect them before the sailing season ended in October, then the innkeeper could sell them and keep the profits. He was so enthusiastic about this idea that he lent them his own ox-drawn supply wagon and a couple of his stable-slaves to carry everything they did want to take with them down to the dockside where the liburnian called Glaros – Seagull – awaited them.
Getting twenty or so travellers and their baggage aboard took surprisingly little time. The oarsmen, free men on a salary, were willing to help. There was less space than on the triremes that brought them from Brundisium to Dyrrhachium, but also fewer oarsmen, and no marines at all. So there was ample room as it turned out for the contubernium and their slaves. Who were in any case legionary slaves, solid, reliable, well-trained soldiers only one small step down from their legionary masters. Planning, like gladiators, to earn their freedom through bravery and battle.