Shadows in Bronze

XXXV

Just before we reached the road we passed an aristocratic litter borne by half a dozen slaves, progressing at a stately pace towards the house. Tall windows hid the occupant but his slaves' gold-braided livery and the spanking crimson carriagework said it all. Luckily the Marcellus approach road was wide enough for both of us, since my nephew made it a point of honour never to give way to anyone of a higher rank.

All the way back to Oplontis Larius was so annoyed at my treatment of Helena that he refused to speak to me. Damned romantic!

Still in silence we bedded Nero down.

We went in to change our grimy clothes. Our landlady had been dyeing her wardrobe a deeper shade of black so the filthy stink of oak gall extract pervaded the whole inn.

'You'll never see her again!' Larius exploded, as his disgust finally broke.

'Yes I will.'

She would buy me my bucket; then he would probably be right.

The Petronius offspring were all in the inn courtyard, crouched in the dust with their heads together, playing elaborate games with myrtle twigs and mud. They turned their backs as a sign we should not interrupt the intensity of their play Their kittens lolloped round them. No one appeared to be in charge.

We strolled outside. The nursemaid Ollia was lying on the beach while her fisherboy displayed his glossy pectorals alongside. He was talking, as they like to; Ollia stared out to sea, stuck with listening. She had a wistful look on her face.

I gave the girl a grim nod 'Petronius?'

'Gone for a walk.'

Her fisherboy was no older than my nephew; he had the kind of moustache I really hate – a skinny black lugworm stitched on above his feeble mouth.

Larius skulked along with me. 'We ought to rescue Ollia.' 'Let her have her fun!'

My nephew scowled, then to my surprise abandoned me. Feeling my age, I watched him lope over to the pair then squat down too. The two lads glared at each other while young Ollia continued to stare at the horizon, an overweight, overemotional monody paralysed by her first social success.

I left this awkward tableau and kicked my heels along the shore. I was thinking about Pertinax and Barnabas. I was thinking about Crispus. I was wondering why I had started to feel that Crispus and Barnabas had me constantly struggling at some tangent to the truth…

After that, I was thinking about other things, irrelevant to work.

I hunched irritably on the tideline, playing with a desiccated dogfish eggcase, until I gradually began to feel like Odysseus in Polyphemus' cave: a huge single eye was watching me balefully.

It was painted on a ship. Scarlet and black, with the shameless elongation of a painted Egyptian god; there was presumably a matching one around the vessel's haughty prow but she lay sideways to shore, so without a tame dolphin to tow me out behind there was no way I could check. She was riding at anchor, safely beyond the reach of holiday-makers' curiosity. Apart from reeking of the kind of happy affluence that loves to be viewed by wide sectors of the public while supposedly enjoying its privacy, she was not the kind of precious toy to be brought in and belted against the ratty bales of straw which formed a rough-and-ready bump rail on the Oplontis mooring stage.

Whoever designed this nautical beauty had a statement to make. There was along written all over his ship. She was forty feet of blatant artistry. She had a short, single bank of red ochre oars which were perfectly aligned at rest, dark sails, a mainmast for her square rig plus a second for a foresail, and lines so suave they hurt. Somehow the shipwright had managed to combine a slim keel like a warship with enough cabin and deck space to make life aboard a pleasure for the financier who possessed the stupendous capital that had created her.

At a slight shift of the incoming evening breeze, the gilding on her duck tail stern and her masthead goddess flashed restlessly. There was a nippy little bumboat trailing behind in a perfectly matching rig – identical steering paddles, identical toy sail, and the same painted eye. While I gawked, the bumboat was pulled closer and after some distant activity I watched it set off shorewards, sculled at a fast and elegant pace.

Cheered by this happy accident, I walked onto the landing stage and waited my chance to introduce myself to what I was convinced would be the Crispus' rig.

There were two tykes aboard: a lean, wide-awake sailor standing astern to row, plus a substantial chunk of bellypork taking his ease in the prow. I hung about, ready to make myself useful catching their mooring rope. The oarsman touched; I gripped the bumboat's prow; the passenger stepped out; then the deckhand pushed off at once. I tried not to feel superfluous.

The man who landed wore soft doeskin boots with copper half-moons jingling on their thongs. I had heard the sailor call him Bassus. Bassus clearly thought a lot of himself. He was the type of mighty transit barrel who rolls through life clearing a wide swath. And why not? Far too many feeble whingers with all the dye bled out of their characters skulk on the sidelines of existence hoping no one will notice them.

We walked towards the beach. I weighed him up. He probably kept a bankbox in all the great ports from Alexandria to Carthage and Manila to Antioch, but like a wary seaman he always carried sufficient good gold on his person to bribe his way out of seizure by pirates or tangling with small-town officials when he went ashore. He had ear-rings, and a nose stud, and enough amulets to ward off the Great Plague of Athens. His Sun God medallion would have caved in the chest of a lesser man.

He was not even the captain. The whip through his belt told me this was merely the bosun – the overseer who striped the hide of any oarsman on the ship who upset her tranquil motion by catching a crab. He had the silent confidence of a man whose bulk can dominate a tavern from the moment he enters it, but who knows the first officer on a sleek lugger like his never needs to cause a fins. If this was just the bosun, Aufidius Crispus the owner probably thought himself foster brother to the gods.

'You've come from this!' I commented, giving the ship an admiring eye but not bothering to annoy hint with the obvious statement that she was a superb rig. Bassus condescended to flick me a glance. 'I need to see Crispus. Chance of a word?'

'He's not aboard.' Short and sweet.

'I know better than to believe that!'

'Believe what you like,' he returned indifferently.

We walked up the beach, as far as the road. I broached him again, 'I've a letter to deliver to Crispus-'

Bassus shrugged. He held out his hand. 'Give it to me if you like.'

'That's too easy to be true!' (Besides, I had left the Emperor's letter upstairs at the inn, when I changed my clothes.)

The bosun, who had been fairly passive so far, finally formed an opinion of me. It was unfavourable. He did not bother to say so. He simply suggested that I should get out of his way, which, being an accommodating type, was what I did.

While Bassus was disappearing over the horizon, I strode up to Larius and instructed him to find Petronius as quickly as he could. Without waiting, I retraced my steps to the edge of the sea where I stared out again at the tantalizing prospect of Aufidius Crispus' ship.

I have to admit, this was one occasion when being a non-swimmer became slightly inconvenient.