SPQR IX: The Princess and the Pirates Read online

  “Ariston,” I said, “any suggestions?”

  “They can’t mean to fight,” he said. “The odds aren’t right, and they haven’t rigged for it. It must be a trap, but what sort?”

  I was beginning to have a terrible feeling about this, but what choice did I have? With my four warships I simply could not run from three scruffy pirate vessels. I’d be the laughingstock of the Forum. I’d be dubbed “Piraticus” in derision, as the elder Antonius had been named Creticus after that lowly regarded island people beat him in battle.

  “Captain,” shouted a sailor, “we’re taking on water!”

  “What!” Ion and I shouted at once. Then we saw. Water was bubbling up through the stones that ballasted the ship’s hull.

  “Impossible!” Ion said, wonder tinging his voice. “I’ve seen to every inch of this hull! There’s no rot, and we’d have felt it if we’d scraped a submerged rock.”

  “Senator,” shouted one of the other shipmasters just a few paces to our starboard, “we’re shipping water! We have to beach before we sink!” The skipper just beyond him reported the same problem.

  Cleopatra pulled up to our port side, and she came to the rail. “What is wrong?”

  I knew that my face was flaming as purple as a triumphators robe. “We’ve been sabotaged! Our hulls have been bored through and we’re sinking! Clearly you are not. We have to get these tubs on shore and repair them before it is too late. You will have to cover us while we retreat.”

  “There are three of them and one of me, Senator,” she said. “I am not the one who left his ships abandoned all night! Queen Artemisia had a way out of this sort of situation, remember?”

  I remembered all too well. Artemisia of Halicarnassus and her ships had been attached as allies to the fleet of Xerxes. When she saw that the Greeks were going to win the battle of Salamis, she rammed and sank a Persian vessel so that the nearby enemy would think her ships were Greek. As soon as she saw a way clear, she hoisted sail and fled from the battle.

  I was not going to argue with a subordinate officer, which was what she had wanted to be. “Keep between us and those ships until we are safely beached. Then you can pull for Paphos. If your rowers are as good as you say they are, you’ll have no trouble outdistancing them.”

  Ion began a brisk series of orders, and our rowers got to work. In the bows of the ships, men with long poles probed the bottom, feeling for submerged rocks. All the rest, sailors and marines, bailed frantically with buckets of wood or tarred leather, with cooking pots and with helmets. The pirate ships drew closer, but Cleopatra stayed with us. When the poles touched bottom, Ion turned the ships so that our rams were seaward, and we began backing water, moving sluggishly now as the hulls filled. The men with the poles moved to the sterns by the steering oars and began calling off the depth as we neared shore.

  “Rocky bottom, rocky beach,” Ion groused. “I’d never go ashore in this place except the alternative is to sink.”

  “Captain,” Ariston said, “they may have their main strength ashore. We’ll be vulnerable as we leave the ships.”

  “We’ll have to chance it,” I told him.

  The blue ships held off, just out of catapult range, grinning faces lining the rails. I looked for a large, long-haired figure, but there were several such, and I could spot no man I might positively identify as Spurius. Seldom in my life had I felt so frustrated and mortified. It did, however, beat being drowned.

  With a teeth-rattling grate, our stern crunched onto the stony bottom. We were within twenty feet of dry land, a bit of luck. The prospect of leaping full-armored into chest-deep water and wading a hundred yards to shore has been known to cool the combative ardor of the bravest soldiers.

  “Swing the corvus around,” I ordered, “and drop it onto the beach. No man should have to get his shoes wet. I am going to take half the men ashore and set up security. When I’ve done that, we can unload the ships and haul them ashore for repair.” I ordered the archers and catapult handlers to stay in the bows, just in case the pirates should try to attack us, and lined up the rest of the marines to rush ashore.

  The ponderous gangplanks swung around and dropped, their bronze spikes crunching into the rocky beach, the ships shivering with the impact. Immediately the marines double-timed down the planks and ashore. They fanned out and established a semicircular defensive perimeter, shields to front, spears slanting outward.

  “They’re leaving,” Ion remarked. I saw the yards ascend the masts of the blue ships, the sails dropping to hang slack for a moment, then filling with wind, billowing like pregnant bellies as the pirates laughed, hooted, and cheered.

  “Anyone inland?” I called. A few curious goats studied us from the rocks, but nobody saw so much as a single human form. I was so frustrated that I almost wished for an attack. No one, however, wanted to oblige me. “Ariston, Hermes, take some men and scout inland. Raise a shout if you see anyone. Everyone else, stand to arms until they come back.”

  I sat on a convenient rock, already sure they would find nothing. Spurius did not want to trap me. He wanted to humiliate me. Trust a Roman to know that men of my class preferred death to ignominy. Actually I could take quite a bit of humiliation before I considered death preferable, but this could mean the end of my political career. Beached on Cyprus by a pack of scruffy criminals who never had to shoot a single arrow my way.

  “Cheer up, Senator,” Ion said, reading my expression. “You still have your ships and your men. You’ve lost nothing but a little reputation, and you didn’t have all that much to begin with.” I sensed that he meant this kindly, but it galled me anyway.

  “Why,” I said, “didn’t the rowers notice the ships were getting heavier?”

  “I intend to find out. Soon as I get a look at the hulls, I’ll tell you.” Cleopatra was rowed ashore in her golden skiff, and slaves carried her onto the beach so she would not get her golden sandals wet. If she had some cutting remark prepared, she changed her mind when she saw my face.

  “Gabinius did this to me,” I said to her.

  “How?”

  “He invited my sailors and marines to the funeral banquet, then he sent men to sabotage my ships while they were deserted. He is in collusion with Spurius. For all I know, he could be Spurius! All it would take is a wig and a false beard.”

  “That is far-fetched,” she protested. “But collusion, perhaps. But why?”

  “Any number of reasons, simple profit being the most obvious. He likes to live well, he has a minor army of thugs to pay, and he had a bad reputation for extortion when he was a governor. Even Cicero couldn’t get him an acquittal, so that has to say something.”

  “Gabinius strikes me as the sort of man who would simply kill you if you displeased him.”

  “Perhaps he’s learned subtlety out here in the East. He wants to dishonor me and perhaps humiliate my family in the process. Maybe he’s planning to go over to Pompey.”

  Her eyebrows rose. “More Roman politics?”

  “It gets more complicated than this, believe me. With me out of the way, he might get the Senate to appoint him governor of Cyprus. Then the island would be his to loot. It will do until I can think of a more plausible reason. But whatever the reason, Gabinius was the only man with the means. He used his friend’s funeral banquet to send me out to sea with a hung-over crew rowing leaky ships.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe it is true. What will you do now?”

  “First, I have to assess the damage. I suppose it’s too much to hope that the ships can be made seaworthy quickly. You may have to go back to Paphos for supplies.”

  “Why don’t you go with me?”

  “No, I’ll not return without my ships and my men. He’ll be waiting at the harbor with a smirk on his face. Just say publicly that my ships struck submerged rocks and have to be repaired. He’ll have to go along with it or admit his complicity.”

  “Kings do more foolish things to save face. I shall do as you ask.”

  Ask, I tho
ught. So much for her being my subordinate officer.

  An hour later Hermes and Ariston returned. They had seen no one save a few goatherds, and the goatherds had seen only other goatherds in the last year or more. So I had the men down arms and set to unloading the ships. This done, we dragged them ashore. Ion winced at the sound of the keels grating on the stony beach.

  “Neptune will not forgive me for treating good ships like this,” he lamented. Then he examined the hulls. With a blunt finger he began prying a sodden mess of fibers from between the siding planks. He carried a handful of the repulsive stuff to me and held it up.

  “This is goat hair, just like we use to caulk the seams, only they’ve mixed it with wax instead of with pitch. It’s waterproof for a while, but hard rowing and the ship working softens the wax and it gives way all at once. That’s what they did, and that’s why the rowers didn’t notice. It wasn’t a slow leak. All the seams gave way at once. It’s a miracle we didn’t just sink immediately.” In disgust he hurled the loathsome mass out to sea. “They scraped out my careful caulking with gouges and replaced it with this. We’ve a job ahead of us, Senator.”

  “So it’s just a matter of recaulking the hulls? That sounds simple enough.” I looked at the animals on the rocks. “Goat hair should be no problem anyway.”

  “You wouldn’t have any pitch on you, I don’t suppose?”

  CLEOPATRA RETURNED TWO DAYS LATER with the needed supplies, which turned out to be considerable. I learned that you don’t just take handfuls of pitch and slap the ugly stuff onto the hulls. It has to be heated in pots first, and that takes firewood. The place where we were stranded turned out to be as denuded of trees as the Egyptian desert beyond the pyramids. Once heated, it must be mixed with goat hair and stirred, then taken out with special, paddle-shaped tools and worked carefully into the seams of the wood, then pounded in with wooden mallets. After all that, the entire hull must be sealed with a coating of pure pitch, without the hair. It takes a lot of pitch and a great deal of work.

  When I say that Cleopatra returned with the supplies, I do not mean to imply that she sullied her royal yacht with such a foul-smelling cargo. No, in her wake came a tubby merchantman bearing the goods. The fatbellied freighter could not be hauled onto such a beach as could a galley, so it was another job to unload tubs of pitch, sacks of reeking hair, bundles of firewood, heavy copper pots, and other, less objectionable supplies using our skiffs.

  In charge of the naval supplies was Harmodias. He made me sign for all of it.

  “It’s a good thing for you,” he informed me, “that the ship chandlers are willing to extend credit to Rome.”

  “They’d better,” I said, not in the best of moods.

  “Seemed a little odd though. We heard you’d run onto rocks, but you didn’t need wood or nails just caulking material.”

  “They were unusual rocks.”

  He walked over to one of the ships. It lay almost on its side, exposing a flank all the way to the keel. “Wax caulking, eh? I thought that was what it might have been. It’s an old trick, Senator. Usually done by some merchant to destroy a rival. The ship just sails off and, if the trick works as planned, is never heard from again.”

  “And where were you on the night of Silvanus’s funeral banquet, Harmodias?”

  He grinned within his beard. “I know what you’re getting at. Fact is, I was at the banquet like everyone else. It’s my job to oversee naval stores not to guard your ships, Senator.”

  I turned around, saw the copper cauldrons already heating over the wood fires, smelled pitch melting in them.

  “Let’s get to work,” I said. “I want to sail into Paphos by sundown tomorrow.”

  10

  WE HAD A FAIR WIND FOR THE VOYAGE back, so most of the sailors got a little rest after the arduous labor of repairing the hulls, then dragging the ships back into the water and reloading them. I had little to occupy my mind except for my problems and my predicament.

  Gabinius was my enemy, that much was clear. I had allowed myself to be distracted by the exotic image of a Roman pirate chief, trying to invent a character and a past to explain him, when in all probability he was just one of Gabinius’s old soldiers and still obeying the commands of that failed, scheming general.

  But that must mean that it was Gabinius who had Silvanus killed. Something was wrong there. I have seen false friendship in plenty. Everyone has. I would have sworn that there was genuine affection between those two otherwise unlikable men. Of course, even family affection counts for little where great wealth and power are concerned, as witness Cleopatra and her family. And a sense of betrayal can turn love to hatred in an instant.

  There remained that business of the frankincense. Most likely, I thought, it was just another piece of irrelevant nonsense thrown in to confuse the investigation.

  I half expected to see laughing, jeering crowds lining the wharfs, ready to pelt us with rotten fruit and offal as we skulked in, cowed and humiliated. Nothing of the sort. In fact nobody paid us much attention at all. We had become a familiar sight, and it looked as if word of the trick that had been played upon us had not spread.

  I amended that thought. That “trick” had been no lighthearted prank. The sabotage of our hulls might have cost all our lives, had we been farther from shore when we discovered it. Or had we been opposite sheer cliffs instead of a shelving beach. Or had we caught up with the pirates and in the middle of a sea fight when our ships went down beneath our feet. No, it was no minor jest that had been played upon us.

  The question was: What to do about it?

  When the ships were secured, I assembled the men on the pavement before naval headquarters, where they had taken their oath of service.

  “Our situation has changed,” I announced. “From now on every man bunks here at the naval base. That includes me. Any man who needs to go into the town must get permission from his skipper and must on no account be away for more than two hours. Anyone who leaves must return by nightfall, and no one leaves after dark. We now know that we have enemies in the town.” Their looks darkened. “I have complete faith in you men,” I continued, “and I know that there has been no treachery among us. For one thing, no man is such a fool as to go to sea aboard a ship he knows will sink.

  “We have taken on a task and we will complete it. Those pirates are laughing at us now. You will have the opportunity to laugh at them when they hang on crosses. I want no loose talk. The time to boast is after we have conquered. In the meantime nobody needs to know what we are thinking or doing. We are through with play and with half measures. We now commence serious operations. Be ready.”

  They heard me out in silence, and I detected no insolence in their manner. That suited me well enough. The ability to inspire men has never been my gift. Caesar and Pompey were the masters of that art, and it has always been a mystery to me.

  I sent Hermes and a couple of sailors to the house of Silvanus to get our gear, which didn’t amount to all that much. I was not afraid to go myself. Gabinius would not try an open attack. He had done that once and failed on the night I had reeled back from the waterfront tavern with Cleopatra and Alpheus. It had been an uncommonly clumsy attempt for a crafty old campaigner like Gabinius, but he had not expected very stiff resistance, and he had not dared to use his own men. He had not counted on the presence of Ariston, who had eliminated three of the attackers. And, of course, he had made sure that neither of the men who left the fight alive survived to talk about who had hired them.

  The more I thought about it, the more comfortable I became with the idea of Gabinius as my enemy. It was in the long tradition of war between members of the senatorial class, an extension of our everyday activities in the Forum and in the streets of Rome. Gabinius had a private game to play here on Cyprus and I was interfering, so he had to eliminate me. I had been sent to get rid of the pirates, so I needed evidence to put before the Senate tying Gabinius to their plunderings. It should not prove difficult now that I knew what to look fo
r.

  He must have an agent, a go-between to do his will while keeping his hands clean. It would have to be someone well-placed, accustomed to moving large sums without arousing suspicion. Nobilior? He was a banker and a Roman, but he had as much as told me that Gabinius was behind all the problems on Cyprus, in Egypt, and in the East generally. Cyprus was a commercial crossroads and full of merchants, financiers, speculators, and others who would fit Gabinius’s needs perfectly.

  I told Cleopatra of my new arrangements.

  “I can make quarters for you on my ship,” she offered. “You will be much more comfortable there than in these austere barracks.”

  “All too tempting,” I said. “But I must beg off. It might be bad for morale if I insist that my men live here while I enjoy palatial accommodations. All the most successful generals make a point of sharing the same hardships as their men during a campaign. Caesar’s tent is little more capacious than those of his men, and half the time he keeps the army marching days ahead of their supply train anyway. Then he sleeps on the ground wrapped in his cloak just like any common trooper.”

  “Really?” She seemed enthralled. “You must tell me more about Caesar.”

  That is what it was like in those days. All anybody wanted to hear about was Caesar.

  Hermes returned with our gear. “All’s quiet at the mansion. The funeral’s done, so the loud mourning is over. They’re packing up, waiting for word from Rome as to what’s to be done next.”

  “What is the feel of the place?” I asked him.

  He shrugged. “The way it usually is when the master’s dead and nobody knows who is going to take over. It’s an anxious time for slaves. They may go right on taking care of another house, or they might be handed over to a cruel master, or they could be parceled off and sold who knows where. Working in a big, rich house with a fairly easygoing master is about as good as a slave’s life gets, so they’re not expecting any improvement.”