Avenger of Rome

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With the pirates so close behind that he could feel their breath on his neck, Valerius sprinted towards the galley’s bow. The crew of the Golden Cygnet had cast off the grapnels and the big merchant ship was already five feet away, with the gap widening every second. He glanced up to see a row of anxious, wide-eyed faces and registered the ropes hanging from the bigger vessel’s side.

Still travelling full pelt, he mounted the low platform in the bow and dived for the ropes, reaching out with his left hand. Even carrying the weight of his armour he would have done it. He was certain he would have done it. But, as he launched himself, a callused pirate hand clipped his heel and turned the leap into a sprawling tumble that smashed him against the ship’s side. His helmet struck the seasoned oak with a clang and the impact knocked the breath from his body, before he plummeted into the blue-black void under the Cygnet ’s rail.

The shock of the freezing waters seemed to stop his heart and for a fleeting moment he had no idea what was happening. His bewildered mind registered the ship’s weed-streaming timbers through the opaque curtain of blue water and silver bubbles as the light above him faded to a tiny window. As he sank, the fingers of his left hand scrabbled for the straps of the armour that was carrying him to his death, but he knew it was useless. He had drowned before, trapped in the narrow aqueduct tunnel below the Viminal Hill, but that had been a terrible, violent drowning, while this was almost dreamlike by comparison. He made no conscious decision to hold his breath. His body’s natural inclination to survive was automatic. But he could only hold it for so long. Gradually, the pressure grew in his chest and his nose and throat began to fill. He looked up at the wooden hull for the last time before a convulsive jerk made him choke and the darkness closed in.

‘I’ve seen it done before.’

The words seemed to come from very far away.

‘Put him on his stomach and pump his back.’

He felt himself being turned over and the pressure of strong hands on his ribs. At first nothing happened; then he felt a burning sensation in his chest and throat.

‘One of the steersmen fell overboard in the harbour at Alexandria. We thought he was gone, but his bunkmate who was sweet on him lay on top of the body and gave him a good squeeze. Suddenly all the water came out and he was good as new.’

Valerius noisily vomited what seemed like gallons of salty water. His eyes opened and he watched the contents of his lungs and stomach slowly spreading across the smooth planks of the deck. Good as new? He tried to raise his head, but it seemed terribly difficult. Someone turned him over so that he was looking up into a patch of darkening sky circled by a ring of inquisitive, concerned faces. Rough hands pulled him into a sitting position and his head spun as if he was on his third jug of wine.

‘Tribune?’ Tiberius stared at him as if he were a ghost, which he supposed, in a way, he was. How many deaths must one man endure? He tried to speak, but the drowning and the vomiting had torn his throat.

‘How…?’ It was a sound really, not a word, but Tiberius seemed to understand.

‘Your slave is a man of some resource,’ he said cheerfully. ‘When you ordered him away he tied a rope to your waist. The sailors were able to haul you in like a fish after you fell, but it took so long we thought you must be dead.’

Someone — Serpentius? — placed a cup in his hand. He looked at the clear liquid suspiciously, but other hands raised it to his lips and the water was cool and soothing as it ran down his ravaged throat.

He nodded his thanks. ‘The pirates?’ The water seemed to have helped his voice.

‘They are gone. Our axe men must have done their work well — the galley foundered. The others ran, not even attempting to rescue their friends.’

For the first time Valerius realized that the deck was pitching much more wildly than when he had left it. He looked up at the big mainsail, taut and straining at its stays, the wind whistling through the ropes. Tiberius pulled him to his feet and Serpentius wrapped a cloak around him. Not for the first time, he owed the Spaniard his life. It was only then that he noticed the other little group huddled over a bundle by the ship’s side.

Tiberius saw the question in his eyes and shook his head. ‘Aurelius. He wanted to help and picked up a spear. It was just bad luck really.’

Valerius pushed his way through the crowd and knelt by Aurelius’s side. The captain’s face had taken on the colour of old parchment and already bore the unmistakable stamp of death. He saw immediately what had happened. Aurelius must have been lifting the spear to throw when the arrow pierced his lower right chest, angling its way up towards the heart. They had torn away his tunic and there was very little blood, but the point was buried deep, with only a short span of shaft and the feathered fletching showing above the bruised flesh. Each laboured breath was accompanied by a hoarse groan and small frothy bubbles of red that clicked as they burst on his lips.

The captain opened his eyes and beckoned Valerius nearer. His voice was the merest whisper and the Roman had to lean close to hear what was said.

‘East,’ Aurelius gasped. ‘You must go east. Judaea. Settlements by shore. Plenty of them. Cronos is a good seaman, but a poor sailor. He will want to go south for Egypt, because it is easier to run before the wind and a storm is coming. But by the time you get there water will be short, and unless Fortuna favours you, all you will find is desert.’ He closed his eyes and drew in a long, agonized breath. For a moment Valerius thought he was dead, but even though the captain was drowning in his own blood he had one last message to impart.

‘Good crew, but keep the women out of the way. Shouldn’t allow women on ships. Bad luck. Pour a libation for Poseidon and give his knee a rub for me. He has never let me down.’ A smile flickered on his lips, he sighed once, and was gone.

No funeral oration dispatched Claudius Aelius Aurelius to join his beloved sea god. Four sailors carried him to the side and weighted the body before consigning it to the depths as was their custom. In the nervous silence that followed, Valerius called Tiberius and Cronos to the steering platform. By now the wind had risen to a low howl and the sky was dark, though it could only be mid-afternoon. He addressed the helmsman. ‘With Aurelius gone, you are the man we depend on for our knowledge of the sea, Cronos. What is your understanding of our situation?’

Cronos frowned. He was a heavily built man with well-muscled shoulders from working the big steering oars, but he had a petulant mouth and a truculent, almost dismissive demeanour. Valerius had had little contact with him during the voyage, but he seemed capable enough. Perhaps the sullen attitude could be explained by the sudden change in his responsibilities. A fine seaman, but no sailor, Aurelius had said.

The man looked up at the brooding sky as if measuring their chances. ‘We were a day’s sailing from Cyprus when we first sighted the pirates, but we have been driven far south off our course. By now we are at least two days from land and must keep the wind at our back. This,’ he gestured at the sky, ‘is Poseidon’s punishment for taking women on board without sacrificing to him first. If we do not placate him, the god will whip up a storm above and below and when the time is right he will rise from the depths and drag us all to his lair.’

Valerius felt Tiberius’s eyes on him. ‘Then we will make a libation to him at the appropriate hour and ask his forgiveness.’

‘A few drops of olive oil or wine will not be enough to placate the god for this insult.’ Cronos glowered. ‘If we are to survive we must make a suitable gesture. I have spoken to the crew. We should make a gift of one of the women.’

Tiberius stiffened and his hand strayed towards his sword, but Valerius only nodded, as if he understood the crew’s concerns. He lowered his voice and laid his hand on the seaman’s shoulder. The physical gesture was reassuring, almost friendly, but the fingers closed like a claw, digging into the flesh, and the words that accompanied it held all the threat of a drawn blade. ‘I want you to understand, Cronos, that whatever you and your friends believe, I command here and I would sacrifice every one of the crew before I would allow harm to come to the general’s daughter or her women. Let it be known that if there is to be a sacrifice I plan to be generous, and storm or not the ship’s master will be first over the side.’

It took time for the words to sink in, but Valerius was satisfied to see the man go pale beneath his sun-scorched skin.

‘We will not sail with the wind at our backs,’ he went on. ‘We will turn east, for Judaea, where there is more likelihood of making landfall close to some community who can supply us. In the meantime, I want all food and water to be placed under guard — Tiberius will organize it — and we will ration its use.’

Cronos bristled at the order, but he had no choice but to accept. Valerius saw the hatred in his eyes and knew that before long it would be reflected by the whole crew. Sailors were superstitious by nature, and if Cronos told them the storm had been caused by Poseidon’s anger and the presence of the women he would be believed. Pouring a libation wouldn’t be enough, unless the winds died down.

Instead, they worsened.

Two hours later Valerius stood beside the steering platform whipped by spray and soaked to the skin. The steersmen battled to keep the Golden Cygnet on an easterly heading, but time and again her hull rang as it was battered by a big wave from the flank and she took a lurch southward. The winds had redoubled in force to a full gale and Cronos ordered the curtained awning on deck to be dismantled before it was torn away. Now he studied the cloth sail with anxious eyes as it rippled and cracked because of the angle of the wind across its surface.

‘If we don’t run before the storm we will lose it, tribune.’

Valerius reluctantly nodded his agreement. Clearly, Aurelius had never envisaged a tempest of this magnitude. The largest of the waves carried a terrifying power. Each time one struck, the whole ship lay over so that anything not secured cascaded across the deck. If they carried on with their eastern course there was a danger they might capsize. An unceasing bellow like an orphaned bull calf’s filled the air, so that even a shouted conversation became difficult, and every so often a rainstorm swept out of the darkness with the sound of arrows striking a cohort’s shields. Time meant nothing in this whirling vortex of wind and water. At one point Valerius’s senses told him he should sleep and he huddled in his sodden cloak jammed between the steering platform and the ship’s side, but fear, discomfort and the constant motion denied him the oblivion he sought.

Daylight brought little respite. If anything, the winds strengthened, shifting at the same time so that Cronos believed they were now being driven east. All through the long day Valerius watched the seaman and his exhausted crew fight to keep the Golden Cygnet afloat, cursing at his own impotence. Around nightfall the motion of the ship subtly changed, and he could feel her wallowing beneath him as if she was trailing an anchor. A shadowy figure crawled out of the darkness and Tiberius shouted something into his ear. He had to repeat himself three times before Valerius worked out that he was wanted below. Together they staggered across the pitching deck just as the next rain shower arrived, driven horizontally so that every giant drop stung like a slingshot against exposed flesh. Tiberius hauled open the hatch and Valerius felt a surge of relief as they slipped below and away from the incessant howl of the wind.

His respite was short lived.

When he reached the base of the ladder he was up to his knees in water that surged and foamed with the motion of the ship, the disturbance intensifying the bitter stench of decay, bodily ordure and fresh vomit. The torment of the wind was replaced by the incessant creaking of the ship’s planks and a tortured rending as some piece of cargo worked itself to pieces. As their eyes adjusted to the gloom an almighty crash shook the whole ship, instantly followed by the terrified scream of a panicking horse and a series of smaller thunderclaps.

‘Your slave Serpentius is with the horses. They are kicking their stalls to pieces, but that’s not the worst of it.’ The ship reeled beneath their feet and something huge and pale sailed past Valerius and crashed into the side with enough force to make him wonder that the hull hadn’t been stove in. ‘Some of the timber cargo has worked its way free,’ Tiberius explained in a voice that was an eye of calm amidst the echoing clamour of the hold. ‘The crew are securing what they can, but there’s still enough loose to shake the ship to pieces unless the storm dies down.’

He led the way to where the sailors had erected a temporary cabin for Domitia and her women. Valerius realized he’d been so busy and so exhausted during the past few hours that he’d forgotten the other passengers. Only now did he understand the agonies they had suffered as they lay here in the pitching bowels of the ship, battered physically and mentally in a groaning, waterlogged chamber that must have felt more tomb than sanctuary.

‘I’m not sure how much more of this they can take,’ the young tribune said. ‘They’re being very brave, but…’

Somehow they’d managed to light a small oil lamp and Domitia held it aloft to identify the intruders. All the patrician arrogance had vanished. She was just a pale, frightened face — more child than woman — in the flickering yellow glow of the flame, her expensive cloak stained by the vomit that dribbled from the corner of her lip. Yet the dark eyes still contained a reservoir of pride and defiance, as if Domitia Longina Corbulo had vowed to go to her death undefeated by the elements. She sat on a couch, just clear of the stinking bilge waters, the cloak encircling the slave girls who huddled at her side. Tulia lay with her head in her mistress’s lap, eyes closed and her face a deathly shade of green.

‘My lady, I apologize for your discomfort, but I…’

Domitia raised her head and his heart lurched as he saw how close to collapse she was. It took her a second to recognize him and her voice was barely audible above the noise of the storm. She managed a bloodless smile. ‘I’m sure you are doing everything you can, tribune. We understand that our fate lies with the gods now.’

He shook his head. ‘The ship was built to withstand these conditions. It will be unpleasant for a time, but we will survive.’ Even as he said the words the gods were laughing at him.

She frowned. ‘I believe the water is rising faster than before.’

‘The lady is right,’ Tiberius cried. For a moment Valerius was almost overwhelmed by the troubles which threatened to overwhelm him. The women’s situation among the darkness and the filth was unspeakable, but on deck they would be exposed to the driving rain and the knife-edge of the gale. He considered trying to create some sort of shelter, but knew it would be torn to pieces within moments. But what choice did he have now? In the seconds he had taken to consider it, the water had risen another inch. Serpentius appeared in the doorway with a question in his eyes. The horses? It would be a release, but something stopped him from agreeing.

He shook his head. ‘We’ve no time. Tiberius, get your men to carry Tulia and the girls on deck. Serpentius, help me with the lady Domitia.’

He reached out a hand, but an almighty crack from the deck above froze everyone in position.