Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 105, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 640 & 641, March 1995

Little Caesar and the Pirates by Steven Saylor

The eight published short stories in Steven Saylor’s Gordianus series, all set in the period between the Roman civil wars, fill in the temporal gap between the first two Gordianus novels, Roman Blood (which begins in79 B.C.) and Arms of Nemesis (72 B.C.). Mr. Saylor plans eventually to use short stories to cover other periods skipped over as he continues Gordianus’s adventures in his novels. His current offering remains in the period between the wars, when Julius Caesar was a young man. Readers who would like a look ahead in time might try the latest Gordianus novel, The Venus Throw (St. Martin’s Press).

“Well met Gordianus! Tell me, have you heard what they’re saying down in the Forum about Marius’s young nephew, Gaius Julius Caesar?”

It was my good friend Lucius Claudius who called to me on the steps of the Senian Baths. He appeared to be on his way out, while I was on my way in.

“If you mean that old story about his playing queen to King Nicomedes while he was in Bythinia, I’ve heard it all before — from you, I believe, more than once, and with increasingly graphic details each time.”

“No, no, that bit of gossip is ancient history now. I’m talking about this tale of pirates, ransom, revenge — crucifixions!”

I looked at him blankly.

Lucius grinned, which caused his two chins to meld into one. His chubby cheeks were pink from the heat of the baths and his frazzled orange curls were still damp. The twinkle in his eyes held that special joy of being the first to relate an especially juicy bit of gossip.

I confessed to him that my curiosity was piqued. However, as it appeared that Lucius was leaving the baths, while I had only just arrived, and as I was especially looking forward to the hot plunge, given the night nip that lingered in the spring air — alas, the story would have to wait.

“What, and let someone else tell it to you, and get the details all confused? I think not, Gordianus! No, I’ll accompany you.” He gestured to his entourage to turn around. The dresser, the barber, the manicurist, the masseur, and the bodyguards all looked a bit confused but followed us compliantly back into the baths.

This turned out to be a stroke of luck for me, as I was in need of a bit of pampering. Bethesda did her best at cutting my hair, and as a masseuse her touch was golden, but Lucius Claudius was wealthy enough to afford the very best in body servants. There is something to be said for having occasional access to the services of a rich man’s slaves. As my fingernails and toenails were carefully clipped and filed and buffed, my hair expertly trimmed, and my beard painlessly shorn, Lucius kept trying to begin his tale and I kept putting him off, wanting to make sure I received the full treatment.

It was not until our second visit to the hot plunge that I allowed him to begin in earnest. Amid clouds of steam, with our heads bobbing on the water like little islands in the mist, he related his nautical tale.

“As you know, Gordianus, in recent years the problem of piracy has grown increasingly severe.”

“Blame it on Sulla and Marius and the civil war,” I said. “Wars mean refugees, and refugees mean more bandits on the highways and more pirates on the sea.”

“Yes, well, whatever the cause, we all see the results. Ships seized and looted, cities sacked, Roman citizens taken hostage.”

“While the senate vacillates, as usual.”

“What can they do? Would you have them grant a special naval command to some power-mad general, who can then use the forces we give him to attack his political rivals and set off another civil war?”

I shook my head. “Trapped between warlords and brigands, with the Roman senate to lead us — sometimes I despair for our republic.”

“As do all thinking men,” agreed Lucius. We shared a moment of silent contemplation on the crisis of the Roman republic, then he eagerly launched into his tale again.

“Anyway, when I say that the pirates have grown so bold as to kidnap Roman citizens, I don’t simply mean some merchant they happened to pluck from a trading vessel. I mean citizens of distinction, noble Romans whom even ignorant pirates should know better than to molest. I mean young Gaius Julius Caesar himself.”

“When was this?”

“Just as winter was setting in. Caesar had spent the summer on the island of Rhodes, studying rhetoric under Apollonius Molo. He was due to serve as an attaché to the governor of Cilicia, but he lingered on Rhodes as long as he could, and set out at the very close of the sailing season. Just off the island of Pharmacusa his ship was given chase and captured by pirates. Caesar and his whole entourage were taken prisoner!”

Lucius raised an eyebrow, which prompted a curious pattern of wrinkles across his fleshy brow. “Now keep in mind that Caesar is only twenty-two, which may explain how he could be so recklessly bold. Remember also that his good looks, wealth, and connections have pretty much always gotten him whatever he wants. Imagine, he finds himself in the clutches of Cilician pirates, the most bloodthirsty people on earth. Does he cringe beneath their threats? Bow his head? Make himself humble and meek? Far from it. Exactly the opposite! He taunted his captors from the very beginning. They told him they were planning to demand a ransom of half a million sesterces. Caesar laughed in their faces! For a captive such as himself, he told them, they were fools not to demand at least a million — which they did!”

“Interesting,” I said. “By placing a greater value on his life, he forced the pirates to do likewise. I suppose even bloodthirsty killers tend to take better care of a million-sesterce hostage than one worth only half as much.”

“So you think the gambit shows Caesar’s cleverness? His enemies ascribe it to simple vanity. But I give him full credit for what he did next, which was to arrange for the release of almost everyone else in his party. His numerous secretaries and assistants were let go because Caesar insisted that the ransom of a million sesterces would have to be raised from various sources in various places, requiring the labor of his whole entourage. The only ones he kept with him were two slaves — that being the absolute minimum to see to a nobleman’s comfort — and his personal physician, whom Caesar can hardly do without because of his bouts of falling sickness.

“Well, they say Caesar spent nearly forty days in the pirates’ clutches, and treated his captivity as if it were a vacation. If he had a mind to take a nap and the pirates were making too much noise, he would send out one of his slaves to tell them to shut up! When the pirates engaged in exercises and games, Caesar joined them, and as often as not bested them, treating them as if they were not his captors but his guards. To fill his idle time he wrote speeches and composed verses, such as he had learned to do under Apollonius Molo, and when he finished a work he would make the pirates sit quietly and listen to him. If they interrupted him or made critical remarks, he called them barbarians and illiterates to their faces. He made jokes about having them whipped, as if they were unruly children, and even joked about having them put to death on the cross for insulting the dignity of a Roman patrician.”

“The pirates put up with such behavior?”

“They seemed to adore it! Caesar exercised a kind of fascination over them, by sheer power of his will. The more he abused and insulted them, the more they were charmed.

“At last, the ransom arrived, and Caesar was released. Right away he headed for Miletus, took charge of some ships, and went straight back to the island where the pirates were stationed. He took them by surprise, captured most of them, and not only reclaimed the ransom money but took the pirates’ hoard as well, claiming it as the spoils of battle. When the local governor hesitated over deciding the pirates’ fate, trying to think of some legal loophole whereby he could claim the booty for his treasury, Caesar took it upon himself to tend to the pirates’ punishment. Many times while he was their captive he boasted that he would see them crucified, and they had laughed, thinking the threat was merely a boy’s bravado — but in the end it was Caesar who laughed, when he saw them nailed naked upon crosses. ‘Let men learn to take me at my word,’ he said.”

I shivered, despite the heat of the bath. “You heard this in the Forum, Lucius?”

“Yes, it’s on everyone’s lips. Caesar is on his way back to Rome, and the story of his exploits precedes him.”

“Just the sort of moral tale that Romans love to hear!” I grunted. “No doubt the ambitious young patrician plans a career in politics. This is the very thing to build up his reputation with the voters.”

“Well, Caesar needs something to recover his dignity, after having given it up to King Nicomedes,” said Lucius with a leer.

“Yes, in the eyes of the mob, nothing enhances a Roman’s dignity like having another man nailed to a cross,” I said glumly.

“And nothing more diminishes his dignity than being nailed himself, even by a king,” observed Lucius.

“This water grows too hot; it makes me irritable. I think I could use the services of your masseur now, Lucius Claudius.”

The tale of Caesar and the pirates proved to be immensely popular. Over the next few months, as spring warmed to summer, I heard it repeated by many tongues in many variations, in taverns and on street corners, by philosophers in the Forum and by acrobats outside the Circus Maximus. It was a clear example of how terribly out of hand the problem of piracy had gotten, men said, nodding gravely, but what really impressed them was the idea of a brash young patrician charming a crew of bloodthirsty pirates with his haughtiness and in the end inflicting upon them the full measure of Roman justice.

It was on a sweltering midsummer day in the month of Sextilis that I was called to the home of a patrician named Quintus Fabius.

The house was situated on the Aventine Hill. The structure looked at once ancient and immaculately kept — a sign that its owners had prospered there for many generations. The foyer was lined with scores of wax effigies of the household ancestors; the Fabii go all the way back to the founding of the republic.

I was shown to a room off the central courtyard, where my hosts awaited me. Quintus Fabius was a man of middle age with a stem jaw and graying temples. His wife Valeria was a strikingly beautiful woman with hazel hair and blue eyes. They sat on backless chairs, each attended by a slave with a fan. A chair was brought in for me, along with a slave to fan me.

Usually, I find that the higher a client ranks on the social scale, the longer he takes to explain his business. Quintus Fabius, however, lost no time in producing a document. “What do you make of it?” he said, as yet another slave conveyed the scrap of papyrus to my hands.

“You can read, can’t you?” asked Valeria, her tone more anxious than insulting.

“Oh yes — if I go slowly,” I said, thinking to buy more time to study the letter (for a letter it was) and to figure out what the couple wanted from me. The papyrus was water-stained and roughly torn at the edges and had been folded several times, rather than rolled. The handwriting was childish but strong, with gratuitous flourishes on some of the letters.

While I pondered the note, from the corner of my eye I saw that Quintus Fabius was drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair. His wife anxiously fidgeted and tapped her long fingernails against her lips.

“I suppose,” I finally said, “that you would like me to go ransom the boy.”

“Oh yes!” Said Valeria, leaning forward and fixing me with a fretful gaze.

“He’s not a boy,” said Quintus Fabius, his voice surprisingly harsh. “He’s seventeen, and put on his manly toga a year ago.”

“But you will accept the job?” said Valeria.

I pretended to study the letter again. “Why not send someone from your own household? A trusted secretary, perhaps?”

Quintus Fabius scrutinized me. “I’m told that you’re rather clever. You find things out.”

“It hardly requires someone clever to deliver a ransom.”

“Who knows what unexpected contingencies may arise in such a situation? I’m told that I can trust your judgment... and your discretion.”

“Poor Spurius!” said Valeria, her voice breaking. “You’ve read his letter. You must see how badly he’s being treated.”

“He makes light of his tribulations,” I said.

“He would! If you knew my son, how cheerful he is by nature, you’d realize just how desperate his situation must be for him, even to mention his suffering. If he says he’s lost a little weight, he must be half-starved. What can such men be feeding him — fish heads and moldy bread? If he says these monsters are ‘not too cruel,’ imagine how cruel they must be! When I think of his ordeal — oh, I can hardly bear it!” She stifled a sob.

“Where was he kidnapped, and when?”

“It happened last month,” said Quintus Fabius.

“Twenty-two days ago,” said Valeria with a sniffle. “Twenty-two endless days and nights!”

“He was down at Baiae with some of his friends,” explained Quintus Fabius. “We have a summer villa above the beach, and a town house across the bay at Neapolis. Spurius and his friends took a little skiff and went out among the fishing boats. The day was hot. Spurius decided to take a swim. His friends stayed on the boat.”

“Spurius is a strong swimmer,” said Valeria, her pride steadying the tremor in her voice.

Quintus Fabius shrugged. “My son is better at swimming than at most things. While his friends watched, he made a circuit, swimming from one fishing boat to another. His friends saw him talking and laughing with the fishermen.”

“Spurius is very outgoing,” his mother explained.

“He swam farther and farther away,” Quintus Fabius continued, “until his friends lost sight of him for a while and began to worry. Then one of them saw Spurius on board what they had all thought to be a fishing vessel, though it was larger than the rest. It took them a moment to realize that the vessel had set sail and was departing. The boys tried to follow in the skiff, but none of them has any real skill at sailing. Before they knew it, the boat had disappeared, and Spurius with it. Eventually the boys returned to the villa at Baiae. They all thought that Spurius would turn up sooner or later, but he never did. Days passed without a word.”

“Imagine our worry!” said Valeria. “We sent frantic messages to our foreman at the villa. He made inquiries of fishermen all around the bay, trying to find anyone who could explain what had happened and identify the men who had sailed off with Spurius, but his investigations led nowhere.”

Quintus Fabius sneered. “The fishermen around Neapolis... well, if you’ve ever been down there you know the sort. Descendants of the old Greek colonists who’ve never given up their Greek ways. Some of them don’t speak Latin! As for their personal habits and vices, the less said the better. Such people can hardly be expected to cooperate with finding a young Roman patrician abducted by pirates.”

“On the contrary,” I said, “I should think that fishermen would be the natural enemies of pirates, whatever their personal prejudices against the patrician class.”

“However that may be, my man down in Baiae was unable to discover anything,” said Quintus Fabius. “We had no definite knowledge of what had become of Spurius until we received his letter a few days ago.”

I looked at the letter again. “Your son calls the pirates Cilicians. That seems rather far-fetched to me.”

“Why?” said Valeria. “Everyone says they’re the most, bloodthirsty people on earth. One hears about them making raids everywhere along the coasts, from Asia all the way to Africa and Spain.”

“True, but here, on the coast of Italy? And in the waters around Baiae?”

“It’s shocking news, I’ll agree,” said Quintus Fabius. “But what can you expect with the problem of piracy getting worse and worse while the Senate does nothing?”

I pursed my lips. “And it doesn’t seem odd to you that these pirates want the ransom brought to Ostia, just down the Tiber from Rome? That’s awfully close.”

“Who cares about such details?” said Valeria, her voice breaking. “Who cares if we have to go all the way to the Pillars of Hercules, or just a few steps to the Forum? We must go wherever they wish, to get Spurius safely home.”

I nodded. “What about the amount? The ides is only two days away. A hundred thousand sesterces amounts to ten thousand gold pieces. Can you raise that sum?”

Quintus Fabius snorted. “The money is no problem. The amount is almost an insult. Though I have to wonder if the boy is worth even that price,” he added under his breath.

Valeria glared at him. “I shall pretend that I never heard you say such a thing, Quintus. And in front of an outsider!” She glanced at me and quickly lowered her eyes.

Quintus Fabius ignored her. “Well, Gordianus, will you take the job?”

I stared at the letter, feeling uneasy. Quintus Fabius bridled at my hesitation. “If it’s a matter of payment, I assure you I can be generous.”

“Payment is always an issue,” I acknowledged, though considering the yawning gulf in my household coffers and the mood of my creditors, I was in no position to decline. “Will I be acting alone?”

“Of course. Naturally, I intend to send along a company of armed men—”

I raised my hand. “Just as I feared. No, Quintus Fabius, absolutely, not. If you entertain a fantasy of taking your son alive by using force, I urge you to forget it. For the boy’s safety as well as my own, I cannot allow it.”

“Gordianus, I will send armed men to Ostia.”

“Very well, but they’ll go without me.”

He took a deep breath and stared at me balefully. “What would you have me do, then? After the ransom is paid and my son released, is there to be no force at hand with which to capture these pirates?”

“Is capturing them your intent?”

“It’s one use for armed men.”

I bit my lip and slowly shook my head.

“I was warned that you were a bargainer,” he growled. “Very well, consider this: If you successfully arrange the release of my son, and afterwards my men are able to retrieve the ransom, I shall reward you with one-twentieth of what they recover, over and above your fee.”

The jangling coins rang like sweet music in my imagination. I cleared my throat and calculated in my head. One-twentieth of 100,000 sesterces was 5,000 sesterces, or 500 gold pieces. I said the figure aloud to be sure there was no misunderstanding. Quintus Fabius slowly nodded.

Five hundred pieces of gold would pay my debts, repair the roof on my house, buy a new slave to be my bodyguard (a necessity I had been without for some time), and give me something left over.

On the other hand, there was a bad smell about the whole affair.

In the end, for a generous fee plus the prospect of five hundred pieces of gold, I decided I could hold my nose.

Before I left the house I asked if there was a picture of the kidnapped boy that I could see. Quintus Fabius withdrew, leaving me in his wife’s charge. Valeria wiped her eyes and managed a weak smile as she showed me into another room.

“A woman artist named Iaia painted the family last year, when we were down at Baiae on holiday.” She smiled, obviously proud of the likenesses. The group portrait was done in encaustic wax on wood. Quintus Fabius stood on the left, looking stern. Valeria smiled sweetly on the right. Between them was a strikingly handsome hazel-haired young man with lively blue eyes who was unmistakably her son. The portrait stopped at his shoulders but showed that he was wearing a manly toga.

“The portrait was done to celebrate your son’s coming of age?”

“Yes.”

“Almost as beautiful as his mother,” I said, stating the matter as fact, not flattery.

“People often remark at the resemblance.”

“I suppose he might have a bit of his father about the mouth.”

She shook her head. “Spurius and my husband are not related by blood.”

“No?”

“My first husband died in the civil war. When Quintus married me, he adopted Spurius and made him his heir.”

“Are there any children in the household?”

“Only Spurius. Quintus wanted more children, but it never happened.” She shrugged uneasily. “But he loves Spurius as he would his own flesh, I’m sure of it, though he doesn’t always show it. It’s true they’ve had their differences; but what father and son don’t? Always fighting about money! Spurius can be extravagant, I’ll admit, and the Fabii are famous for stinginess. But the harsh words you heard him utter earlier — pay them no attention. This terrible ordeal has put us both on edge.”

Valeria turned back to the portrait of her son and smiled sadly, her lips trembling. “My little Caesar!” she whispered.

“Caesar?”

“Oh, you know who I mean — Marius’s nephew, the one who was captured by pirates last winter and got away. Oh, Spurius loved hearing that story! Young Caesar became his idol. Whenever he saw him in the Forum he would come home all breathless and say, ‘Mater, do you know who I saw today?’ I would laugh, knowing it could only be Caesar, to make him so excited.” Her lips trembled. “And now, by some jest of the gods, Spurius himself has been captured by pirates... well, that’s why I call him my little Caesar, knowing how brave he must be, and pray for the best.”

I left the next day for Ostia, accompanied by the armed force that Quintus Fabius had hired and outfitted for the occasion. The band was made up of army veterans and freed gladiators, men with no prospects who were willing to kill or risk being killed for a modest wage. There were fifty of us in all, jammed together in a narrow boat sailing down the Tiber. The men took turns rowing, sang old army songs, and bragged about their exploits on the battlefield or in the arena. If one were to believe all their boasting, taken together they had slaughtered the equivalent of several cities the size of Rome.

Their leader was an old Sullan centurion named Marcus, who had an ugly scar that ran from his right cheekbone down to his chin, cutting through both lips. Perhaps the old wound made it painful for him to speak; he could hardly have been more tight-lipped. When I tried to discover what sort of orders Quintus Fabius had given him, Marcus made it clear at once that I would learn no more and no less than he cared to tell me, which for the moment was nothing.

I was an outsider among these men. They looked away when I passed. Whenever I did manage to engage one of them in conversation, the man quickly found something more important to do and in short order I found myself talking to empty air.

But there was one among their number who took a liking to me. His name was Belbo. To some degree he was ostracized by the others as well, for he was not a free man but a slave owned by Quintus Fabius; he had been sent along to fill out the ranks on account of his great size and strength. A previous owner had trained him as a gladiator, but Quintus Fabius used him in his stables. The hair on Belbo’s head was like straw, while the hair on his chin and chest was a mixture of red and yellow. He was by far the largest man in the company. The others joked that if he moved too quickly from one side of the boat to the other he was likely to capsize it.

I expected that nothing would come of questioning him, but soon discovered that Belbo knew more than I thought. He confirmed that young Spurius was not on the best of terms with his father. “There’s always been a grudge between them. The mistress loves the boy, and the boy loves his mother, but the master has a hard spot for Spurius. Which is odd, because the boy is actually more like his father in most ways, even if he is adopted.”

“Really? He looks just like his mother.”

“Yes, and sounds and moves like her, too, but that’s all a kind of mask, if you ask me, like warm sunlight sparkling on cold water. Underneath, he’s as stem as the master, and just as willful. Ask any of the slaves who’ve made the mistake of displeasing him.”

“Perhaps that’s the trouble between them,” I suggested, “that they’re too much alike, and vie for the attentions of the same woman.”

We reached Ostia, where the boat was moored on a short pier that jutted into the Tiber. Farther down the riverfront, at the end of the docks, I could just glimpse the open sea. Gulls circled overhead. The smell of saltwater scented the breeze. The strongest of the men unloaded the chests containing the ten thousand pieces of gold and loaded them onto a wagon which was wheeled into a warehouse on the docks. About half the men were sent to stand guard over it.

I expected the rest of the men to head for the nearest tavern, but Marcus kept order and made them stay on the boat. Their celebration would come the next day, after the ransom and whatever else resulted.

As for me, I intended to seek lodgings at The Flying Fish, the tavern mentioned in Spurius’s letter. I told Marcus I wanted to take Belbo with me.

“No. The slave stays here,” he said.

“I need him for a bodyguard.”

“Quintus Fabius said nothing about that. You mustn’t attract attention.”

“I’ll be more conspicuous without a bodyguard.”

Marcus considered this for a moment, then agreed. “Good,” someone called as Belbo stepped onto the dock, “the giant takes up the room of three men!”

At this Belbo laughed good-naturedly, perceiving no insult.

I found The Flying Fish on the seaside waterfront where the larger seafaring vessels pitched anchor. The building had a tavern with a stable attached on the ground floor, and tiny cubicles for rent on the second floor. I took a room, treated myself and Belbo to a delicious meal of stewed fish and mussels, then took a long walk around the town to reacquaint myself with the streets. It had been awhile since I’d spent any time in Ostia.

As the sun sank beneath the waves, setting the horizon aflame, I rested on the waterfront, making idle conversation with Belbo and looking at the various small ships along the dock and the larger ones moored farther out in the deeper water. Most were trading vessels and fishing boats, but among them was a warship painted crimson and bristling with oars. The enormous bronze ram’s head at its prow glittered blood-red in the slanting sunlight.

Belbo and I passed a skin of watered wine back and forth, which kept his tongue loose. Eventually I asked him what orders his master had given to the centurion Marcus regarding the armed company.

His answer was blunt. “We’re to kill the pirates.”

“As simple as that?”

“Well, we’re not to kill the boy in the process, of course. But the pirates are not to escape alive if we can help it.”

“You’re not to capture them for sentencing by a Roman magistrate?”

“No. We’re supposed to kill them on the spot, every one of them.”

I nodded gravely. “Can you do that, Belbo, if you have to?”

“Kill a man?” He shrugged. “I’m not like some of the others on the boat. I haven’t killed hundreds and hundreds of men.”

“I suspect most of the men on the boat were exaggerating.”

“Really? Still, I wasn’t a gladiator for long. I didn’t kill all that many men.”

“No?”

“No. Only—” He wrinkled his brow, calculating. “Only twenty or thirty.”

The next morning I rose early and put on a red tunic, as the ransom letter had specified. Before I went downstairs to the tavern I told Belbo to find a place in front of the building where he could watch the entrance. “If I leave, follow me, but keep your distance. Do you think you can do that without being noticed?”

He nodded. I looked at his straw-colored hair and his enormous torso and was dubious.

As the day warmed, the tavern keeper rolled up the screens, which opened the room to the fresh air and sunlight. The waterfront grew busy. I sat patiently just inside the tavern and watched the sailors and merchants passing by. Some distance away, Belbo had found a discreet, shady spot to keep watch, leaning against a little shed. The bovine expression on his face and the fact that he seemed hardly able to keep his eyes open made him look like an idler eluding his master for as long as he could and trying to steal a few moments of sleep. The deception was either remarkably convincing, or else Belbo was as stupid as he looked.

I didn’t have long to wait. A young man who looked hardly old enough to have grown his beard stepped into the tavern and blinked at the sudden dimness, then saw my tunic and approached me.

“Who sent you?” he asked. His accent sounded Greek to me, not Cilician.

“Quintus Fabius.”

He nodded, then studied me for a moment while I studied him. His long black hair and shaggy beard framed a lean face that was accustomed to sun and wind. There was a hint of wildness in his wide green eyes. There were no scars visible on his face or his darkly tanned limbs, as one might expect to see on a battle-hardened pirate. Nor did he have the look of desperation or cruelty common to such men.

“My name is Gordianus,” I said. “And what shall I call you?”

He seemed surprised at being asked for a name, then finally said, “Cleon,” in a tone that suggested he would have given a false name but couldn’t think of one. The name was Greek, like his features.

I looked at him dubiously. “We’re here for the same purpose, are we not?”

“For the ransom,” he said, lowering his voice. “Where is it?”

“Where is the boy?”

“He’s perfectly safe.”

“I’ll have to be sure of that.”

He nodded. “I can take you to him now, if you wish.”

“I do.”

“Follow me.”

We left the tavern and walked along the waterfront for a while, then turned onto a narrow street that ran between two rows of warehouses. Cleon walked quickly and began to turn abruptly at each intersection, changing our course and sometimes doubling back the way we had come. I kept expecting to walk into Belbo, but he was nowhere to be seen. Either he was unexpectedly skilled at secret pursuit, or else we had eluded him.

We drew alongside a wagon, the bed of which was covered with a heavy sailcloth. Looking around nervously, Cleon shoved me toward the wagon and told me to crawl under the cloth. The driver of the wagon set the horses into motion. From where I was lying I could see nothing. The wagon took so many turns that I lost count and finally gave up on trying to track our direction.

The wagon at last came to a stop. Hinges creaked. The wagon pulled forward a bit. Doors slammed shut. Even before the cloth was thrown back, I knew from the smells of hay and dung that we must be in a stable. I could smell the sea as well; we had not gone too far inland. I sat up and looked around. The tall space was lit by only a few stray beams of sunlight which entered through knotholes in the walls. I glanced toward the driver, who turned his face away.

Cleon gripped my arm. “You wanted to see the boy.”

I stepped down from the wagon and followed him. We stopped before one of the stalls. At our approach a figure in a dark tunic rose from the hay. Even in the dim light I recognized him from his portrait. In the flesh young Spurius looked even more like Valeria, but where her skin had been milky white, his was deeply browned by the sun, which caused his eyes and teeth to sparkle like alabaster, and while his mother had worn an expression of anxious melancholy, Spurius looked sarcastically amused. In the portrait he had shown some babyfat which could stand melting away; he was leaner now, and it suited him. As for suffering, he did not have the haunted look of a youth who had been tortured. He looked like a young man who had been on an extended holiday. His manner, however, was businesslike.

“What took you so long?” he snapped.

Cleon looked at him sheepishly and shrugged. If the boy meant to imitate Caesar’s bravado, perhaps he had succeeded.

Spurius looked at me skeptically. “Who are you?”

“My name is Gordianus. Your father sent me to ransom you.”

“Did he come himself?”

I hesitated. “No,” I finally said, nodding cautiously toward the pirate and trying to communicate to Spurius that in the presence of his captors we should discuss no more details than were necessary.

“You brought the ransom?”

“It’s waiting elsewhere. I wanted to have a look at you first.”

“Good. Well, hand the money over to these barbarians and get me out of here. I’m bored to death of consorting with rabble. I’m ready to get back to Rome and some good conversation, not to mention some decent cooking!” He crossed his arms. “Well, go on! The pirates are all around us, just out of sight; don’t doubt that they’ll gladly kill us both if you give them any excuse. Bloodthirsty beasts! You’ve seen I’m alive and well. Once they have the ransom, they’ll let me go. So, off with you both. Hurry up!”

I returned to the wagon. Cleon covered me with the cloth. I heard the stable door open. The wagon began to roll. Again we turned and turned, until at last the vehicle came to a stop. Cleon pulled back the cloth. I rubbed my eyes at the sudden brightness and stepped onto the street. We were back where we had started, on the sea front only a short distance from The Flying Fish.

As we walked toward the tavern my heart fell to see Belbo in the very spot where I had last seen him, leaning against the shed across from the tavern — with his mouth slightly open and his eyes shut! Was it possible that he hadn’t followed us at all, but had dozed through the whole episode, standing upright?

“I’ll leave you now,” said Cleon. “Where shall I collect the ransom?”

I described to him the location of the warehouse on the Tiber. He would bring his wagon and some men to carry off the gold. I would go with them, alone, and when they were safely away they would deliver Spurius into my custody.

“What assurance do I have that the boy will be released? Or for that matter, that I’ll be released?”

“It’s the ransom we want, not you, and not... the boy.” His voice broke oddly. “In an hour’s time, then!” He turned and vanished into the crowd.

I waited for a moment, then spun around, intending to march up to Belbo and at the very least kick his shins. Instead I collided headlong with a large, immovable object — Belbo himself. As I tumbled backwards Belbo caught me and righted me, picking me up as if I were a child.

“I thought you were asleep!” I said.

He laughed. “Pretty good at playing dead, aren’t I? That trick saved my life in the arena once. The other gladiator thought I’d fainted from fear. The fool put his foot on my chest and smiled up at his patron — and the next minute he was tasting dirt and had my sword at his throat!”

“Fascinating. Well, did you follow us or not?”

Belbo hung his head. “I followed, yes. But I lost you early on.”

“Did you see when I got into the wagon?”

“No.”

“Numa’s balls! Then we have no idea where the boy is being kept. There’s nothing to do but wait for Cleon to come for the ransom.” I stared at the uncaring sea and the wheeling gulls above our heads. “Tell me, Belbo, why do the circumstances of his kidnapping have such an odd smell?”

“Do they?”

“I smell something fishy.”

“We are on the waterfront,” said Belbo.

I clapped my hands. “A ray of light descends from the heavens to pierce the fog!”

He stared at the clear sky above and wrinkled his brow.

“I mean, Belbo, that I suddenly perceive the truth... I think.” But I still had a very, very bad feeling about the situation.

“Do you understand? It’s absolutely essential that you and your men make no attempt to follow when Cleon carts off the gold.”

The centurion Marcus looked at me skeptically. “And you with it! What’s to keep you from running off with these pirates — and the gold?”

“Quintus Fabius entrusted me with handling the ransom. That should be enough for you.”

“And he entrusted me with certain instructions as well.” Marcus crossed his brawny arms, bristling with black and gray hairs.

“Look here, Marcus. I think I know these men’s intentions. If I’m right, the boy is perfectly safe—”

Marcus snorted. “Ha! Honor among pirates!”

“Perfectly safe,” I continued, “as long as the ransom proceeds exactly as they wish. And also, if I’m right, you’ll be able to retrieve the ransom easily enough afterwards. If you attempt to follow, or foil the transaction as it happens, then it’s you who’ll be putting the boy’s life at risk, along with my own.”

Marcus chewed his cheeks and wrinkled his nose.

“If you don’t do as I ask,” I went on, “and something happens to the boy, consider how Quintus Fabius will react. Well? Cleon and his men will be here any moment. What do you say?”

Marcus muttered what I took to be his assent, then turned as one of his gladiators trotted up to us. “Four men and a wagon, sir, coming this way!”

Marcus raised his arm. His men disappeared into the shadows of the warehouse. There was a tap on my shoulder.

“What about me?” asked Belbo. “Shall I try to follow again, like I did this morning?”

I shook my head and looked nervously at the open door of the warehouse.

“But you’ll be in danger. A man needs a bodyguard. Make them take both of us.”

“Hush, Belbo! Go hide with the others. Now!” I pushed him with both hands and realized I would probably have better luck pushing over a yew tree. At last he gave way and lumbered off looking unhappy.

A moment later Cleon appeared at the open door, followed by the wagon with its driver and two other young men. Like Cleon, they looked Greek to me.

I showed him to the chests of gold and opened the lid of each one in turn. Even in the dim light, the glitter seemed to dazzle him. He grinned and looked a little embarrassed. “So much! I wondered what it would look like, but I couldn’t picture it. I kept trying to imagine ten thousand golden minnows...”

He shook his head as if to clear it and set to work with his companions loading the heavy chests into the wagon. A group of bloodthirsty pirates might be expected to dance a gleeful jig at the proximity of so much booty, but they went about their work in a somber, almost fretful manner.

The labor done, Cleon wiped a trickle of sweat from his brow and indicated a long, narrow space between the trunks in the bed of the wagon. “Room enough for you to lie down, I think.” He looked uneasily into the shadows of the warehouse and raised his voice. “And I’ll say it again: No one had better follow us. We have watchers posted along the way. They’ll know if anyone comes after us. If anything happens to arouse our suspicions, anything at all, I can’t be responsible for the outcome. Understood?” He posed the question to the empty air as much as to me.

“Understood,” I said. As I stepped into the wagon I gripped his forearm to steady myself and spoke in his ear so the others couldn’t hear. “Cleon, you wouldn’t really hurt the boy, would you?”

He gave me a strangely plaintive look, like a man long misunderstood who suddenly finds a sympathetic ear. Then he hardened his face and swallowed. “He won’t be hurt, as long as nothing goes wrong,” he said hoarsely. I settled myself in the gap between the trunks. The sailcloth was thrown over the wagon bed. The wagon lurched into motion, moving ponderously under its heavy load.

From this point, I thought, there was no reason for anything to go wrong with the ransoming. Marcus had agreed not to follow. Cleon had the gold. Soon I would have Spurius. Even if my assumption about the kidnapping was wrong, there would be no reason for his captors to harm the boy or myself; our deaths could profit them nothing. As long as nothing went wrong...

Perhaps it was the cramped, suffocating darkness that set my thoughts spinning into the awful void. I had taken Marcus’s muttering as an agreement to postpone his pursuit, but had I read him rightly? His men might be following us even now, clumsily showing themselves, alerting the watchers and sending them into a panic. Someone would cry out, there would be an assault on the wagon, swords would clash and clang! A blade would rip through the sailcloth, heading straight for my heart—

The fantasy seemed so real that I gave a jerk as if waking from a nightmare. But my eyes were wide open.

I took a breath to steady myself, but found my thoughts spinning even more recklessly out of control. What if I had completely misjudged Cleon? What if his soulful green eyes and uncertain manner were a crafty deception, a deliberate disguise for a hardened killer? The petulant, beautiful boy I had seen that morning might already be dead, his bravado cut short along with his throat. The wagon would return to the stable where they had murdered him, and as soon as the pirates were sure that no one had followed, they would pull me from the wagon, stuff a gag into my mouth, tie me up like a rolled carpet, and lug me off to their ship, laughing raucously and dancing the jig they had suppressed while they loaded their booty. Cilician pirates, the cruelest men ever born! I would be taken off to sea, kicking and screaming into my gag. By the light of the moon they would set my clothes afire and use me for a torch, and when they were tired of hearing me scream they would toss me overboard. I could almost smell the stench of my own burning flesh, hear the hiss of the flames expiring as the hard water burst open and then slapped shut above me, taste the stinging salt in my nostrils. What would be left after the fishes made a feast of me?

In the cramped space I managed to wipe my sweaty forehead on a bit of the red tunic. Such morbid fantasies were nonsense, I told myself. I had to trust my own judgment, and my judgment decreed that Cleon was not the sort of fellow who could murder anyone, at least not in cold blood. Not even Roscius the actor could mime such innocence. A strange sort of pirate, indeed!

Then a new fear struck me, more chilling than all the rest. Belbo had said that Quintus Fabius wanted the pirates to be slaughtered. We’re not to kill the boy in the process, of course — but was he only inferring this? He could hardly be expected to know every secret order that his master had given to Marcus. Spurius was not of his own blood; Quintus Fabius spoke of him with contempt. What if he actually wanted the boy dead? He had sent the ransom, yes, but he could hardly have refused to do that, if only to placate Valeria and to save face in public. But if in the end the boy were to be murdered by the pirates, or if it could be made to look that way...

It was even possible that Quintus Fabius himself had arranged to have his son kidnapped — a clever way to get rid of Spurius without drawing suspicion to himself. The idea was monstrous, but I had known men devious enough to concoct such a scheme. But if that was the case, why had he engaged my services? To demonstrate his conscientious concern by calling in an outsider, perhaps. To prove to Valeria and the rest of the world that he was quite serious about rescuing his kidnapped son. In which case, part of his plan for getting rid of Spurius would have to include the unfortunate death of the Finder sent to handle the tragically botched ransom...

The journey seemed to go on forever. The road became rockier and rougher. The wagon rattled and lurched. My extravagant fantasies of death and destruction suddenly paled beside the imminent danger of being crushed if one of the heavy trunks should be pitched onto me. By Hercules, the wagon bed was hot! By the time the wheels ground to a halt, my tunic was soaked as if I had taken a dip in the sea.

The sailcloth was thrown back. I was chilled by a salty breeze.

I had expected that we would return to the stable where I had seen Spurius. Instead, we were on a strip of sandy beach beneath low hills somewhere outside the city. The tiny cove terminated in boulders at both ends. A small relay boat was drawn up in the shallows. A larger vessel was anchored out in the deeper water. I sprang from the wagon, glad to breathe fresh air again.

Cleon and his three companions began to hurriedly move the trunks from the wagon into the relay boat. “Damned heavy!” grunted one of them. “We’ll never be able to move it all in one trip. It’ll take two, at least two—”

“Where’s the boy?” I demanded, grabbing Cleon’s arm.

“Here I am.”

I turned and saw Spurius approaching from a group of sheltering boulders at the end of the beach. In the heat of the day he had stripped off his tunic and was wearing only a loincloth. It was all he usually wore, if he wore even that; his lean torso and long limbs were deeply and evenly bronzed by the sun.

I looked at Cleon. His brows were drawn together as if he had pricked his finger. He stared at the boy and swallowed hard.

“It’s about time!” Spurius crossed his arms and glared at me. Petulance made him even more beautiful.

“Perhaps you’d like to put on your tunic,” I suggested, “and we’ll be on our way. If you’ll point the way to Ostia, Cleon, we’ll begin walking. Unless you intend to leave us the wagon?”

Cleon stood by dumbly. Spurius stepped between us and drew me aside. “Did anyone follow the wagon?” he whispered.

“I don’t think so.”

“Are you certain?”

“I can’t be absolutely certain.” I glanced at Cleon, who appeared not to be listening. The little relay boat was heading out to the larger ship with its first load, riding low in the water under the weight of the gold.

“Well, did Pater send along a troop of armed guards or not? Answer me!” Spurius spoke to me as if I were a slave.

“Young man,” I said sternly, “my duty at this moment is to your mother and father—”

“My father!” Spurius wrinkled his nose and spat out the word as if it were an expletive.

“My job is to see that you get home alive. Until we’re safely back in Ostia, keep your mouth shut.”

He was shocked into silence for a moment, then gave me a withering look. “Well, anyway,” he said, raising his voice, “there’s no way these fellows will release me until all the gold is loaded onto the ship. Correct, Cleon?”

“What? Oh, yes,” said Cleon. The sea breeze whipped his long black hair about his face. He blinked back tears, as if the salt stung his eyes.

Spurius gripped my arm and led me farther away. “Now listen,” he growled, “did that miserly pater of mine send along an armed force or not? Or did he send you alone?”

“I’ve already asked you to keep quiet—”

“And I’m ordering you to give me an answer. Unless you want me to make a very unsatisfactory report about you to my parents.”

Why did Spurius insist on knowing? And why now? It seemed to me that my suspicions about the kidnapping were confirmed.

If there were no armed force, then Spurius might as well stay with his so-called captors, if only to stay close to the gold, or his portion of it. Perhaps his father could be had for a second ransom. But if an armed force was waiting to act, then it would be best for him to be “rescued” by me now, to allow the fishermen — for surely these Neapolitan Greeks were anything but pirates — to make their escape immediately, along with the gold.

“Let’s suppose there is an armed force,” I said. “In that case, your friends had better get out of here at once. Let’s suppose they get clean away. How will you get your share of the gold then?”

He stared at me blankly, then flashed such a charming smile that I could almost understand why Cleon was so hopelessly smitten with the boy. “It’s not as if I don’t know where they live, down on the bay. They wouldn’t dare try to cheat me. I could always denounce them and have every one of them crucified. They’ll keep my share safe for me until I’m ready to claim it.”

“What sort of bargain did you strike with them? Nine-tenths of the gold for you, one-tenth for them?”

He smiled, as if caught at doing something wicked but clever. “Not quite that generous, actually.”

“How did you find these ‘pirates’?”

“I jumped in the bay at Neapolis and swam from boat to boat until I found the right crew. It didn’t take long to realize that Cleon would do anything for me.”

“Then the idea for this escapade was entirely your own?”

“Of course! Do you think a half-witted fisherman could come up with such a scheme? These fellows were born to be led. They were like fish in my net. They worship me — Cleon does, anyway — and why not?”

I scowled. “While you’ve been romping naked in the sun, enjoying your holiday with your admirers, your mother has been desperate with worry. Does that mean nothing to you?”

He crossed his arms and glared. “A little worry won’t kill her. It’s her fault, anyway. She could have made the old miser give me more money-if she’d had the nerve to stand up to him. But she wouldn’t, so I had to come up with my own scheme to get Pater to cough up a bit of what’s rightfully mine anyway.”

“And what about these fishermen? You’ve put them all in terrible danger.”

“They know the risks. They also know how much they stand to profit.”

“And Cleon?” I looked over my shoulder and caught him staring doe-eyed at Spurius. “The poor fellow is heartsick. What did you do to make him that way?”

“Nothing to embarrass Pater, if that’s what you’re getting at. Nothing Pater hasn’t done himself, anyway, from time to time. I guess the gods pulled a joke on poor Cleon, making him fall in love with me. It suited my purposes well enough, but I shall be glad to be rid of him. Too much attention is trying. I’d rather be waited on by a slave instead of pursued by a suitor; you can get rid of a slave just by clapping your hands.”

“Cleon could be hurt before this is over. He might even be killed if something goes wrong.”

Spurius raised his eyebrows and looked beyond me at the low hills. “Then there is an armed guard...”

“It was a stupid scheme, Spurius. Did you really think it would work?”

“It will work!”

“No. Unfortunately for you, young man, I have a vested interest not only in rescuing you, but in recovering the ransom as well. A portion of that gold will be mine.”

Challenging him outright was a mistake. He might have offered to buy my silence, but Spurius was even more miserly than his father. He waved to Cleon, who came running. “Is all the gold loaded?”

“This is the last trip,” said Cleon. The words seemed to catch in his throat. “The relay boat is loaded and ready. I’m going with them. And you? Are you coming with us, Spurius?”

Spurius scanned the hills above the beach. “I’m still not sure. But one thing’s for certain — this man will have to be silenced!”

Cleon stared plaintively at Spurius, then glanced uneasily at me.

“Well,” said the boy, “you have a knife, Cleon, and he doesn’t. It should be simple. Go ahead and do it. Or do I need to summon another of the men from the relay boat?”

Cleon looked miserable.

“Well? Do it, Cleon! You told me you once killed a man in a brawl, in some rat-infested tavern down in Pompeii. That’s one of the reasons I chose you to help me. You always knew it might come to this.”

Cleon swallowed hard and reached to the scabbard that hung from his belt. He pulled out a jagged-edged knife of the sort fishermen use to gut and clean their catch.

“Cleon!” I said. “I know everything. The boy is simply using you. You must know that. Your affection is wasted on him. Put down your knife. We’ll think of some way to rectify what you’ve done.”

Spurius laughed and shook his head. “Cleon may be a fool, but he’s not an idiot. The die is cast. He has no choice but to follow through. And that means getting rid of you, Gordianus.”

Cleon groaned. He kept his eyes on me but spoke to Spurius. “That day on the bay, when you swam up to our boat and climbed aboard, the moment I laid eyes on you I knew you’d bring me nothing but trouble. Your mad ideas—”

“You seemed to like my ideas well enough, especially when I mentioned the gold.”

“Forget the gold! It was the others who cared about that. I only wanted—”

“Yes, Cleon, I know what you want.” Spurius rolled his eyes. “And I promise, one of these days you’ll get it. But right now...” Spurius waved his hands impatiently. “Pretend he’s a fish. Gut him! Once that’s done, we’ll climb into the relay boat and be off with the gold, back to Neapolis.”

“You’re coming with us?”

“Of course. But not until this one is silenced. He knows too much. He’ll give us all away.”

Cleon stepped closer. I considered fleeing, but thought better of it; Cleon had to be more used to running on sand than I was, and I couldn’t stand the idea of that jagged knife in my back. I considered facing him head-on; we were about the same size, and I probably had more experience at fighting hand-to-hand. But that didn’t count for much, as he had a knife and I didn’t.

My only advantage was that he was acting without conviction. There was heartsickness in his voice whenever he talked to Spurius, but also a tinge of resentment. If I could play on that, perhaps I could stave him off. I tried to think of a way to exploit his frustration, to turn him against the boy or at least keep him confused.

But before I could speak, I saw the change in Cleon’s face. He made his decision quite literally in the twinkling of an eye. For the briefest instant I thought he might lunge at Spurius, like a cur turning on its master. How would I ever explain to Valeria that I stood by helplessly while her darling son was stabbed to death before my eyes?

But that was a wishful fantasy. Cleon didn’t lunge at Spurius. He lunged at me.

We grappled. I felt a sudden burning sensation run down my right side, more as if I had been lashed by a whip than cut by a blade. But a cut it must have been — as the world spun dizzily around us I glimpsed a patch of sand spattered with blood.

We tumbled onto the ground. I tasted gritty sand between my teeth. I felt the heat and smelled the sweat of Cleon’s body. He had been working hard, loading the gold into the relay boat. He was already tired. That was a good thing for me; I had just enough strength to fend him off until a figure came running from the boulders at the end of the beach.

Belbo had followed after all.

One instant Cleon was atop me, crushing the strength from my arms, bringing his blade closer and closer to my throat; the next moment it seemed that a god had snatched him by the back of his tunic and sent him soaring skyward. In fact it was Belbo who plucked him off me, lifted him into the air, and then slammed him to the ground. Only the lenient sand prevented him from being broken in two. He managed to hold onto his knife, but a sideways kick from Belbo sent it flying through the air. Belbo dropped to his knees onto Cleon’s chest, knocking the breath out of him, and raised his fist like a hammer.

“No, Belbo, don’t! You’ll kill him!” I cried.

Belbo turned his head and gave me a quizzical frown. Cleon flailed like a fish beneath the weight on his chest.

Meanwhile, Cleon’s three friends clambered out of the relay boat. So long as it was Cleon against me, they had stayed where they were, but now that Cleon was down and outnumbered, they came to his rescue, drawing their knives as they ran.

I got to my feet and ran after Cleon’s knife. I picked it up, feeling queasy at the sight of my own blood on the jagged blade. Belbo was back on his feet, his own dagger drawn. Cleon remained flat on his back, gasping for breath. So, I thought: three against two, all parties armed. I had a giant on my side but my right arm was wounded. Did that make the odds even?

Apparently not, for the fishermen suddenly stopped in their tracks, bumped against one another in confusion, then ran back to their boat, calling for Cleon to follow. I basked for a moment in the illusion that I had frightened them off (with a little help from Belbo, of course), but realized that before they turned and ran they had been looking at something above and beyond me. I turned around. Sure enough, Marcus and some of his men had appeared atop the low hills and were running toward the beach with swords drawn.

Back in the relay boat, two of the fishermen scrambled for their oars while the third leaned toward the beach, crying for Cleon to join them. Cleon had managed to get to his hands and knees but couldn’t seem to stand upright. I looked at Marcus and his men, then at the fishermen in the boat, then at Spurius, who stood not far from Cleon with his arms crossed, scowling as if he were watching a dismally unfunny comedy.

“For the love of Hercules, Spurius, why don’t you at least help him to his feet!” I cried, and ran to do it myself. Cleon staggered up and I pushed him in the direction of the boat. “Run!” I said. “Run, unless you want to be a dead man!”

He did as I told him and went splashing into the surf. Then he suddenly stopped. The relay boat was pulling away, but he turned and stared at Spurius, who gave him a sardonic, aloof stare in return.

“Run!” I screamed. “Run, you fool!” The men in the boat called to him as well, even as they began to row rapidly away. But as long as Spurius met his gaze, Cleon remained frozen, struggling to stand upright in the waves, his face a mask of misery.

I ran to Spurius, put my hands on his shoulders, and spun him around. “Get your hands off me!” he snarled. But the spell was broken. Cleon seemed to wake. His face hardened. He turned and plunged into the waves, swimming after the relay boat.

I dropped onto the sand, clutching my bleeding arm. A moment later Marcus and his men arrived on the beach brandishing their swords.

Marcus satisfied himself that Spurius was unharmed, then turned his wrath on me. “You let One of them escape! I saw you help the main to his feet! I heard you telling him to run!”

“Shut up, Marcus. You don’t understand.”

“I understand they’re getting away. Too far out now for us to swim after them. Damn! Just as well. We’ll let them reach the bigger ship and then the Crimson Ram can take care of the lot of them.”

Before I could puzzle out what he meant, Belbo let out a cry and pointed toward the water. Cleon had finally reached the relay boat. His friends were pulling him aboard. But something was wrong; the heavy-laden boat began to tip. The experienced fishermen should have been able to right it, but they must have panicked. All at once the relay boat was upside-down.

Marcus snarled. Spurius yelped. Together they cried, “The gold!”

Farther out, the fishermen on the larger ship were scrambling to set sail. They seemed awfully quick to abandon their friends, I thought, then saw the reason for their hurry. They had been able to see the approach of the warship before those of us on the beach could see it. It was the red warship I had seen anchored in the water off Ostia. The bristling oars sliced into the water in unison. The bronze ram’s head butted the spuming waves. The Crimson Ram, Marcus had called her. As soon as she came in sight around the bend of the cove, Marcus gave a signal to one of his men back on the hill, who began to wave a red cape — a signal that Spurius had been rescued and the action against the pirates could commence.

It seems impossible that what came to pass was intended by anyone; but then, that might describe everything about the whole disastrous affair. Surely the Crimson Ram meant to outflank the fishing vessel and board her to recover the gold. A warship should have been able to achieve such a capture with ease. But there was no accounting for the actions of the hapless fishermen. Just as their fellows in the relay boat had panicked, so did they. When the Crimson Ram moved to draw alongside, the fishing vessel seemed to turn as if intent on deliberate self-destruction, like a gladiator impaling himself on an enemy’s sword, and offered her starboard flank to the massive bronze ram’s head.

We heard the distant impact, the splintering of wood, the cries of the fishermen. The sail collapsed. The ship convulsed and folded in on itself. The vessel vanished into the roiling sea almost before I could comprehend the horror of it.

“By the gods!” muttered Belbo.

“The gold!” snarled Marcus.

“All that gold...” sighed Spurius.

The men from the capsized relay boat had set out swimming for their ship. Now they floundered in the water, trapped between the Crimson Ram and Marcus’s men on shore. “They’ll have to head in eventually,” Marcus muttered, “along with any survivors from the other ship. We’ll ring the cove and strike them down one by one as they crawl from the water. Men! Listen up!”

“No, Marcus!” I clutched my arm and staggered to my feet. “You can’t kill them. The kidnapping was a hoax!”

“A hoax, was it? And the lost gold — I suppose that was only an illusion?”

“But those men aren’t pirates. They’re simple fishermen. Spurius put them up to the whole thing. They acted on his orders.”

“They defrauded Quintus Fabius.”

“They don’t deserve to die!”

“That’s not for you to say. Stay out of this, Finder.”

“No!” I ran into the surf. The scattered fishermen struggled in the waves, too far out for me to tell which was Cleon. “Stay back!” I screamed. “They’ll kill you as you come ashore!”

Something struck the back of my head. Sea and sky merged into a solid white light that flared and then winked into darkness.

I awoke with a throbbing headache and a dull pain in my right arm. I reached up to find that my head was bandaged. So was my arm.

“Awake at last!” Belbo leaned over me with a look of relief. “I was beginning to think...”

“Cleon... and the others...”

“Shhh! Lean back. You’ll set your arm to bleeding again. I should know; I learned a thing or two about wounds when I was a gladiator. Hungry? That’s the best thing, to eat. Puts the fire back in your blood.”

“Hungry? Yes. And thirsty.”

“Well, you’re in the right place for both. Here at The Flying Fish they’ve got everything a stomach needs.”

I looked around the little room. My head was beginning to clear. “Where’s Spurius? And Marcus?”

“Gone back to Rome with the rest, yesterday. Marcus wanted me to go, too, but I wouldn’t. Someone had to stay with you. The master will understand.”

I cautiously touched the back of my head through the bandages. “Someone hit me.”

Belbo nodded.

“Marcus?”

Belbo shook his head. “Spurius. With a rock. He would have hit you again after you were down, but I stopped him. Then I stood over you to make sure he didn’t do it again.”

“The vicious little...” It made sense, of course. His scheme failed, the best Spurius could hope for was to silence everyone who knew about his plot, including me.

“Cleon and the rest—”

Belbo lowered his eyes. “The soldiers did as Marcus ordered.”

“But they can’t have killed them all...”

“It was horrible to watch. Seeing men die in the arena is bad enough, but at least there’s some sport when it’s two armed men, both trained to fight. But the sight of those poor fellows coming out of the water, worn out and gasping for breath, pleading for mercy, and Marcus’s men slaughtering them one after another...”

“What about Cleon?”

“Him, too, so far as I know. ‘Kill every one of them!’ was what Marcus said, and his men did just that. Spurius helped, pointing and yelling whenever he saw one of them about to come ashore. They killed the pirates one by one and threw their bodies back into the sea.”

I pictured the spectacle and my head began to throb. “They weren’t pirates, Belbo. There never were any pirates.” Suddenly the room became blurry. It wasn’t from the blow to my head; it was only the tears welling up in my eyes.

A few days later I was back at the Senian Baths, lying naked on a bench while one of Lucius Claudius’s slaves massaged me. My battered body needed pampering. My bruised conscience needed the release of pouring the whole sordid tale into Lucius’s spongelike ear.

“Appalling!” he finally muttered. “You’re very lucky to be alive, I should think. And when you got back to Rome, did you call on Quintus Fabius?”

“Of course, to collect the balance of my fee.”

“Not to mention your share of the gold, I should think!”

I winced, and not from the massage. “That was something of a sore point. As Quintus Fabius pointed out, I was to be paid one-twentieth of whatever portion of the gold was actually recovered. Since the ransom was lost—”

“He cheated you on a technicality? How typical of the Fabii! But surely some of the gold washed up on the shore. Didn’t they go diving for it?”

“They did, and Marcus’s men recovered a little, but only a tiny fraction. My share hardly came to a handful of gold.”

“Only that, after all your labor, and after putting yourself in so much danger! Quintus Fabius must be as miserly as his son claims! I suppose you told him the truth about the kidnapping?”

“Yes. Unfortunately, the very men who could back me up — the fishermen — are dead, and Spurius continues to blithely insist that he was kidnapped by pirates.”

“The bald-faced young liar! Surely Quintus Fabius knows better than to believe him.”

“Publicly, at least, he accepts his son’s version of the story. But that’s only to save himself the embarrassment of a scandal, I think. He probably suspected the truth all along. I think that’s why he sent me with the ransom, to find out for certain. And that’s why he ordered Marcus to kill his son’s accomplices on the spot, to keep the truth from getting out. Oh yes, he knows what really happened. He must detest Spurius more than ever, and the enmity is mutual.”

“Ah, the type of family bitterness that so often ends in...”

“Murder,” I said, daring to utter the unlucky word aloud. “I wouldn’t care to wager which will outlive the other!”

“And the boy’s mother, Valeria?”

“Her son subjected her to agonizing worry, just to satisfy his greed. I thought she had a right to know that. But when I tried to tell her, she suddenly seemed to go deaf. If she heard a word I said, she didn’t show it. When I was done, she politely thanked me for rescuing her son from those awful pirates, then dismissed me.”

Lucius shook his head.

“But I did get something I wanted from Quintus Fabius.”

“Yes?”

“Since he refused to give me a full share of the ransom, I insisted that he give me something else he owned, a possession he clearly undervalued.”

“Ah yes, your new bodyguard.” Lucius glanced at Belbo, who stood across the room with folded arms, sternly guarding the niche that held my clothing as if it contained a senator’s ransom. “The fellow is a treasure.”

“The fellow saved my life on that beach outside Ostia. It may not be the last time.”

Every now and again, business takes me south to the vicinity of Neapolis and the bay. I always make a point of visiting the waterfront where the fishermen congregate. I ask in Greek if any of them know of a young man named Cleon. Alas, the Neapolitans are a close-lipped, suspicious bunch. Not one of them has ever admitted to knowing a fisherman by that name, though surely someone in Neapolis must have known him.

I scan the faces on the fishing boats, on the chance that I might see him. For no good reason, I have convinced myself that he somehow eluded Marcus’s men on that fateful day and made his way home.

Once, I was almost certain that I did get a glimpse of him. The man was clean-shaven, not bearded, but his eyes were Cleon’s eyes. I called out from the dock, but the boat slipped by before I could get a better look. I was never able to confirm whether it was Cleon I saw or not. Perhaps it was a relative, or merely a man who resembled him. I didn’t pursue the matter as fully as I might have, afraid perhaps the truth would disappoint me. I prefer to believe that it was Cleon after all, proof or no proof. Could there be two men in the world with those soulful green eyes?