Shadows in Bronze

LXXI

Pertinax looked as if he was really seeing me at last. Yet his arrogance was barely dented. I think he failed to grasp how for the second time since their plot had failed he was threatened with a jail term, while his associates were coolly abandoning him. I almost pitied his plight – but when someone wants to kill me, my better nature fades.

I stood with my feet planted slightly apart, aware of the shifting deck beneath them, and the fragility of the Lass after the Sea Scorpion's workaday bulk.

Pertinax shot a wizened glance at Crispus, evidently supposing he would be arrested too. Crispus shrugged, and failed to enlighten him. I nodded to Milo. Since the skiff we had come across in was too small to take more than three, Milo transferred first to the Sea Scorpion with the prisoner, then sent it back empty for Gordianus and me.

While we waited none of us spoke.

The skiff came creeping back towards the yacht. Crispus exchanged courtesies with Gordianus, wishing him well for his position at Paestum. They both ignored me with a sort of polite deference, as if they were at a highly important banquet and had spotted a happy weevil winking out from a bread roll.

I myself was in no mood for self-congratulation. The sight of Atius Pertinax only made me feel sour. Until I landed him in a very solid jail cell, I would not relax.

I sent Gordianus down into the skiff first.

'Well, thanks for the delivery, sir!' The yacht rolled, such a delicate craft that the motion disturbed my balance; I grabbed at the rail. 'You can rely on Vespasian's gratitude.'

'I'm glad,' smiled Crispus. Here on his yacht in his holiday clothes, he looked older and shabbier than when he was fired with confidence at the Villa Poppaea – though more like a man you could go out with on a fishing trip.

'That so?' I asked levelly. 'So I can rule you out of any wicked schemes I've found involving Egyptian grain ships?'

'Dropped it,' Crispus admitted, frankly enough apparently.

'What – no joy from the fleet?

He made no attempt to repudiate the plan. 'Oh, the commander and the trierarchs will drink with anyone who pays for the liquor – but the marines all think of themselves as soldiers. Give your man his credit, Falco; Vespasian has the army's full loyalty.'

‘They know Vespasian is a good general, sir.'

‘Well, let's hope he makes a good Emperor too.'

I studied his face. Helena was right; he took his losses casually, however large the stake. If they were losses. The only way to find out was to give him his head, then watch him.

As I swung over the rail ready to descend, Crispus steadied my arm. 'Thanks. I meant what I said; I imagine you can ask Vespasian for whatever post you want,' I promised, still trying to salvage him.

Aufidius Crispus flashed a sly glance down at the skiff where Gordianus had slewed in the bow in his usual lumpish style. 'I'll need more than a damned priesthood then!'

I grinned. 'Ask away! Good luck, sir, see you in Rome…'

Perhaps.

So far recapturing Pertinax seemed too easy. I ought to have known. The Fate who controls my destiny has a sinister sense of fun.

The Sea Scorpion's skiff had rowed us half-way to its mother ship when a newcomer appeared in the lagoon. Gordianus glanced at me. It was a trireme from the Misenum fleet.

'Rufus!' I muttered. 'Trust him to turn up in his rosebud wreath when the banquet is already breaking up!'

The newcomer had glided up in silence but as soon as we spotted her they started the drum. On the side we could see, eighty oars dipped. As the rowers took their time from the drummer, sunlight flashed once off the shields and speartips of the squadron of marines who lined the trireme's fighting deck. She was steely-blue and grey, with a proud flash of scarlet round the horn on her nose. A vividly painted eye gave her a swordfish ferocity as she streamed forwards, lethally propelled by three huge banks of oars. Behind me I heard barrel-chested Bassos, the bosun of the Iris, utter a warning shout.

In our skiff the sailor who was rowing paused uncertainly. Though triremes are the navy's workhorses, and common enough in the Bay, to see one speeding at full thrust still stopped the breath. Nothing on water was so beautiful or dangerous.

Gordianus and I watched her come towards us. I realized she was passing dangerously close. We were terrified. We all glimpsed her jaws – the heavy timbers cased in bronze that formed her ram; that ever-open, evilly serrated mouth just above the water line. She passed so near we heard the grumble of the tholepins and saw water streaming off the blades as her oars rose. Then our own rower flung himself prone and we all clung to the skiff as huge combers from the trireme's wake buffeted our tiny craft.

We waited, knowing a trireme can turn on her own length. We waited for her to impress her terror on the Crispus yacht then swirl to a halt, dominating the lagoon. Helpless in her path, like a highly decorated piece of flotsam, the Isis Africana waited too. But the trireme did not stop. Just before impact, Aufidius Crispus took his last whimsical decision. I recognized his red tunic as he dived.

With that fatal flaw in his character, he had made the wrong decision yet again.

He went straight under the triseme's starboard blades. Only the top tier of oarsmen, those on the outrigger who could see the blades, would have known he was there. I glimpsed his torso once, churning hideously. Oars locked. A couple snapped. The rest ruffled on without pause, like the fluted fin on some gigantic fish, as they drove the great ship's slender keel straight into the yacht. The ram took her in full snarl. There was no doubt it was deliberate. The trireme ran into the his with one fierce stroke, then straightway backed oars: the classic manoeuvre to hook out her victim's shattered timbers as the two ships wrenched apart. But the his was so small that instead of pulling free, the trireme hauled the yacht's rumpled carcass backwards too, impaled on its nose.

Everything went quiet.

I noticed that the trireme was called Pax. In the feckless hands of an incompetent, small-town magistrate, it was hardly apt.

Our boatman had lost his oar; he swam for it, leaving us rocking on the turbulent sea. When we pulled him back aboard he turned the skiff towards the trireme, and we braced ourselves for recovering what we could.

By the time we pressed near enough, the choppiness was settling. The crew of the his were clinging to lines and being slowly brought on board the Pa, while marmes swanned over the mighty bronze ram, hacking off what was left of the yacht. Splintered shards of the beautiful toy skirled on the bay. We could hear screams from within a juddering fragment of the hull where a crewman was trapped; although the marines fought to save him, the timbers broke away and took him to the bottom before they managed it. Sickened, Gordianus and I left them to it and hauled ourselves up a rope ladder over the light-boned hull of the trireme to confront the magistrate. We came aboard in the stern. Rufus made no attempt to meet us, so we both walked the huge length of the ship and came up to him just at the moment when a group of marines, aided by the grim-faced bosun Bassus, dragged what was left of Aufidius Crispus in over the rail.

Another corpse.

This one thudded on deck streaming wet, with that thin, crimson poignancy fresh blood takes on when mixed with sea water. Yet another corpse, and yet again no need for it. I could tell Gordianus was as angry as I was. He wrenched off his cloak, then he and I wrapped the battered body in it; he spoke one harsh word to Aemilius Rufus before he turned away: ‘Waste'

I was less restrained.

‘What was the point of that hideous manoeuvre?' I raged, making free with my contempt. ‘Don't tell me Vespasian ordered it – Vespasian has better sense!'

Aemilius Rufus hesitated. He still possessed those startling looks, but the confident air which had once impressed me seemed a tawdry gift, now I had watched him in action and learned he was one more aristocrat with erratic judgement and a total lack of practical intelligence. I had seen it in Britain during the Great Rebellion, and here it was at home: yet another second-rate official with fool's gold in his pedigree, sending good men to the grave.

He made no answer. I expected none.

He had been scanning the rescued crewmen, trying to hide his agitation because he could not see the one man we all knew he was looking for. His elegant, fair-skinned face revealed the moment when he decided not to approach Gordianus – an irascible elder senator, who would give him short shrift. I had the honour instead.

'Rather unfortunate! But it solves the problem of Crispus-'

'Crispus was not a problem!' My terse answer unsettled him.

'Falco, what's happened to Pertinax?'

'Feeding the Baian oysters, if it was up to you! Oh, don't worry; he should be safe on the Sea Scorpion-'

I ought to have known better.

When we all turned to the rail and looked for my old friend Laesus and his sturdy merchant ship, we discovered that the Sea Scorpion had slipped her anchor during the malt. She was already far away from us, heading south for the open sea.