The Princess and the Pirates

9

The next day was largely given over to the funeral of Silvanus. The weather was beautiful, and the hired mourners wailed superbly. The whole Roman population of Paphos and neighboring towns turned out for the occasion, and there were more of them than I had expected. The visitors from Alexandria were there, naturally, and Photinus represented King Ptolemy, dressed in court robes, wig, and cosmetics, adding a delightful note of the bizarre to the proceedings.

Since Paphos was a Greek city, a chorus had been hired for the occasion. They sang traditional funeral songs, plus a new one specially written by Alpheus. Gabinius, dressed in an impressively striped augur’s toga (for he belonged to that priestly college), took the auspices, then sacrificed a couple of handsome calves. After the Greek custom, the fat and bones were offered to the gods. The rest would form part of the funeral feast.

Gabinius performed the oration ably, delivering an eloquent eulogy that, though formulaic, was so well crafted that I almost believed the departed had really possessed all those virtues and accomplishments. All the local dignitaries attended, and so did most of the town’s population. It was an occasion out of the ordinary, a minor spectacle, and everyone appreciates a good show.

Silvanus was laid out in his whitest toga, wearing a laurel wreath I doubt he ever rated in life, rings winking from his fingers, cosmetics restoring his face to an almost natural color.

When Gabinius finished his oration, he took a torch and touched it to the oil-soaked wood of the pyre. In moments it was ablaze, its fragrant wood and burden of incense disguising the aroma of roasting governor. I tossed my own handful of frankincense, benzoin, and myrrh onto the blaze and surveyed the scene. No anti-Roman demonstrations so far, but the obtrusive presence of Gabinius’s bullies, rattling with weapons and armor, seemed more of a provocation than a defense. I saw some of the rougher-looking elements of the crowd glaring at them with intense disfavor.

If there was to be trouble, I thought, it would be because the people here resented the insulting presence of these armed hooligans.

Even as the late governor went up in smoke, tables were being set up for a public memorial banquet. This agreeable custom seemed to put everyone in a fine mood. In no time people were taking their places at the long tables as slaves hired for the occasion heaped them first with great baskets of fruit, cheeses, and bread, then with plentiful courses of fish, more modest quantities of veal, lamb, fowl, and rabbit. The wine was indifferent and heavily watered, but only the fabulously wealthy can afford better for a public banquet. Knowing this, some of us took care to provide our own wine.

Most of the population were seated at long benches, but there were also special tables for the attending dignitaries and these had been provided with proper dining couches. I was, naturally, placed at one of these tables. On my right was Alpheus and on my left, none other than Flavia. I wondered, perhaps unworthily, whether she had bribed the majordomo to secure this arrangement.

“How goes your pirate hunt, Decius Caecilius?” she asked, apparently having decided that we were now intimate enough for her to drop my title and use praenomen and nomen only. I would have to be on my guard when she began to use my praenomen alone.

“Complicated by this lamentable turn of events,” I admitted. “I shall be infernally distracted until the matter of Silvanus’s murder has been put to rest. If this portends danger to Roman security on the island, the pirates may have to take second place in my priorities for a while.”

“How would you deal with such a distraction?” Alpheus asked.

“Well, Gabinius has his veterans, and I have my sailors and marines under arms. There is a sizable body of mercenary material hanging about the bars and taverns, and doubtless a quick voyage to the mainland would net us a sizable force. If necessary, we could secure the island for Rome. I would just rather not.”

“It seems a free-and-easy sort of military arrangement,” said the poet. “I am no soldier, but I would think your Senate would frown upon such unauthorized adventures.”

“Outside Italy,” I explained, “there is really nothing to stop any citizen from raising an ad hoc army to deal with an emergency. As long as it is Roman interests he looks after, the Senate won’t say a word in disap-probation. Some years ago Caesar, as mere quaestor, happened to be in Syria when he heard of an invasion from Pontus. He raised a personal army, marched to meet the invasion, and sent the enemy back across the border, all without so much as consulting the Roman governor of Syria. He suffered no censure for his high-handedness.”

“It helped that he was successful,” Flavia put in.

“It goes without saying that victory is essential,” I affirmed.

“But why,” Alpheus asked, “when your General Crassus was defeated at Carrhae, did Rome not immediately pursue that war? I would think that Parthia, not Gaul, would be your first priority.”

“Crassus wanted a war with the Parthians to match Pompey in military glory. But the Parthians had done nothing to offend us, and the Senate refused to declare war. But Crassus was legendarily rich so he raised and paid for his own legions and marched out on his own. A Tribune of the Plebs named Trebonius laid a terrible curse on Crassus as he left Rome to join his army.”

“It was the terror of Rome for a while,” Flavia said. She drew a little phallus amulet from its resting place between her breasts and used it to make a complicated gesture, warding evil away from us. The tribune’s infamous curse had been terribly potent, endangering the whole citizenry.

“So when Crassus was defeated,” I continued, “most people said good riddance. We are under no obligation to avenge him and his army, and there has been no break in diplomatic relations with that kingdom, though young Cassius has been skirmishing a bit with them, or so I heard just before I left Rome. We would like to have the lost eagles back, and we want to free the survivors from captivity; but I suspect that when it happens we will just pay ransom.”

“I doubt that,” Flavia said. “Parthia is too rich a plum to resist plucking for long. When Caesar and Pompey are free of their current distractions, one of them will have a go at Parthia. Or Gabinius might when his exile is over. And none of them will blunder the way Crassus did, the senile old fool. Think how the plebs will love it when they see those freed captives marching in the Triumph, carrying their lost eagles.”

“You may well be right,” I admitted. I had known few women in Rome who were so politically astute. I looked around for her husband and saw him at a table next to some city dignitaries. Beyond him, at a table set for commoners, I saw Ariston. It annoyed me that he should expose himself in such a fashion and resolved to upbraid him for it. I turned to Alpheus.

“That was a very accomplished song you delivered,” I commended. “Especially when you consider what short notice you had.”

“You are too kind. Actually, it was just a variation on a funeral song I wrote years ago. I’ve employed it a number of times, making changes where necessary to fit the deceased. This was the first I’ve done for a Roman though. The real challenge was getting the chorus rehearsed. Luckily, I’ve had some experience in that art, and the chorus here is excellent. Of course, the whole citizenry sings, but these are the ones who take part in the theatrical productions.”

“In Rome we have nothing like your Greek choral singing,” I noted. “The closest we come is everybody piling into the Circus for a chariot race. The sounds we make there aren’t very musical I’m afraid.”

“So,” he said, “you’re thinking of putting off your pirate hunt until you’ve determined who killed Silvanus? That seems an odd sort of activity.”

I explained to him some of the reasons why it was urgent that I set the matter to rest as soon as possible. “Of course,” I added, “I cannot let an especially insolent or egregious act of piracy go unnoticed. It would be bad for Roman prestige.”

“And for your political future,” Flavia pointed out.

“Yes, there is always that. By the way, Flavia, while I realize your husband is a banker, does he, by any chance, ever deal in frankincense or have dealings with any who do?” It was clumsy, but I thought it worth a try.

She laughed. “Frankincense! Why ever would you ask that? Are you planning to go into the business yourself? Shame on you! And you a senator!” She went off into peals of laughter. Quite inappropriate at a funeral, but others were laughing as well. The wine wasn’t good, but it flowed freely.

“Well, I suppose that answers me. Believe it or not, the question is pertinent to my investigation.”

“I have little to do with my husband’s business, but I’ll ask him for you if you want. Frankincense, indeed!” She seemed to find the very idea inordinately funny. I doubted there was any aspect of her husband’s business she didn’t know about, but it was not unusual that she would deny it. Men were often suspicious of women who were too knowledgeable about such things as business, politics, and war. Of course, she had not been shy about flaunting her knowledge of the latter two subjects. Shyness was not among this woman’s attributes.

Nor was she abstemious about the food or the wine. She put away large quantities of both, apparently one of those lucky women whose immoderate gustatory habits had no effect on her figure, which was voluptuous but not quite to the point of overabundance. Like me she had brought her own wine, and frequently signaled her slave girl for a refill. Each time she did this, she slid her hand along the young woman’s body with the unconscious ease of a woman stroking a favorite pet. The girl seemed to take this quite naturally, and once leaned close to whisper into her mistress’s ear something that set them both laughing uproariously.

“Will Silvanus have funeral games?” Alpheus asked.

“I don’t believe he was that important,” I answered him. “Ordinarily, munera are only held in memory of the most distinguished men, consuls at the very least. At one time only former consuls who had triumphed were allowed gladiatorial displays, but our standards have slipped somewhat of late. This is at Rome, you understand. In his hometown, his family may hold any sort of funeral games they wish. For all I know, Silvanus may have been the most distinguished man in Bovillae or Lanuvium or Reate or some such place. Senators who are political nobodies in Rome are often very important men in their ancestral towns. He may have provided for games in his will.”

“He was from Ostia,” Flavia said, her words beginning to slur a bit, “same as my husband. And yes, his family is a great one in that town. There’s usually a Silvanus serving as one of the duumviri. I think he held the post three times. Yes, I think we can expect a good show after his ashes arrive home. I hope we’re back in time to attend. I love the fights.”

“You will be,” I assured her. “Believe me, they take time to arrange. It will be a year or two before he gets his final rites. Look at Faustus Sulla. He celebrated the Dictator’s games twenty years after his father died.

You’re lucky you live in Ostia. Women aren’t allowed to attend the munera in Rome.”

“Rome is so stodgy and straitlaced,” she said. “You should go to Baiae when there’s a festival. I spend the summers there when I can. They do things there that would drop Cato and his tiresome crowd dead with shock.”

“So I’ve heard,” I said enviously. “I’ve never managed to be there when anything really scandalous was going on.”

“Let me tell you what happened last time I was there,” she said, her voice dripping musk and lasciviousness. She launched into a description of her adventures with several matrons of that free-and-easy resort town during the celebration of the Priapalia, a festival banned from Rome generations ago because of the licentious behavior that always accompanied the worship of that rustic deity, who in Rome is confined to gardens and brothels.

“You are an adventurous lady,” I commended her, when the tale was done.

“On the island of Cythera,” Alpheus said, “which also claims to be the birthplace of Aphrodite, there are very similar practices during their annual festival of the goddess; activity that even the inhabitants acknowledge as intolerable at other times become acts of pious worship during those three days.”

“In Rome,” I pointed out, “we men of the senatorial class have always wondered what our wives get up to during the annual rites of Bona Dea. Clodius once tried to spy on the rites dressed as a woman, but he was caught and expelled before he saw anything interesting.”

“It’s all very tame I am sure,” Flavia said. “Roman women of spirit and imagination have to find their fun outside the City.”

“Speaking of women,” I said, “where is Cleopatra?” I looked around but did not see her.

“Up on the temple porch,” Alpheus said, nodding toward the noble building. I looked and saw a long table where Cleopatra reclined next to Gabinius. The city archon, the high priest of Poseidon, and Photinus were at the same table.

“I would think you would be at the highest table,” Flavia’s tone was that of the devoted troublemaker. I pushed aside my own annoyance in recognition of the fact.

“Gabinius arranged the funeral,” I pointed out, “and I am just a visiting military officer. The dining arrangements seem to be punctilious.” Gabinius was using the practice to put me in my place, but I determined to settle the matter later. For now a united front was called for. “Where are lone and the priestesses of Aphrodite?” I asked, to change the subject.

“With the Aphrodisia only days away,” Alpheus explained, “they may not attend a funeral or enter a house of mourning. They would be ritually unclean, and the festival would have to be canceled for the year. It would be a terrible portent for the whole island.”

“And this island has had all the bad luck it can handle,” I said, “between Roman annexation, the pirates, and the copper trade, which has desolated large parts of it.”

“Ah, you know how the island has been ruined by mining?” Alpheus said.

“I’ve heard something of it,” I hedged.

“But it made the place rich,” Flavia pointed out. “It is the special genius of Rome,” I said, feeling the wine a bit myself and growing expansive, “that we understand the proper path to wealth.”

“What is that?” Alpheus asked. I had the distinct impression that he was humoring me.

“The way to get rich is not by ruining your own land to sell your resources abroad. Instead, you conserve your own land and go plunder somebody else’s wealth.” Flavia laughed like a jackass. Even Gabinius, on the temple porch, heard and glared in our direction. Well, his friend had just died. I tried to keep a straight face while he was looking my way.

When we had all gorged and swilled to repletion, people rose from their tables and began to circulate. Evening was drawing on and torches were brought out to illuminate the central part of the city. It was a great extravagance, but it is with these touches of excess that we hope to be remembered after we die.

Flavia, Alpheus, and I were fast friends by now, at least until the wine wore off; and like many others we began to walk off dinner, trying to make room for the sweets that had been brought out as the last course. At the funeral of Scipio Africanus, sweets were served and the extravagance was remembered for generations. His was a more austere time, and the island of Cyprus had access to such luxuries in abundance.

I met some of Flavia’s friends, a number of whom seemed to be as debauched as she. Alpheus did a bit of business, arranging to compose songs for festivals in other towns. We came to a table set up on a side street off the main plaza and I stopped, my jaw dropping in shock. “What are you doing here?” I demanded.

Ion looked back at me, not at all dismayed. “All the resident foreigners in the city were invited to the banquet, Senator, just like you.” Looking along the table, I saw the crews of my ships, my marines, and the hired mercenaries.

“You were to be at the ships, ready to sail on the instant!” I yelled. “What are we to do if there is news of an attack?”

He looked me over. “Do you really think you’re in any shape to lead us?”

“I could be carried to the ships and sober up on the voyage out!” I told him. “How I get into fighting shape is my business, not yours! What are you laughing at?” This last was addressed to Alpheus and Flavia, who seemed unreasonably amused by my embarrassment.

“Suppose the pirates were to strike the city right now!” Flavia whooped. “How would it sound in the Forum, when Pompey’s men spread the word that Metellus and his whole crew were gorged and besotted at the banquet tables when the enemy came calling!”

“If Themistocles and his men had been like this the night before Salamis,” Alpheus put in, “I’d be composing verses to Ahura-Mazda in Persian right now!”

“No one attacks at night,” Ion asserted, refilling his cup. “We’ll be ready to sail at dawn, and a sailor who can’t put to sea with a hangover is a poor excuse for a seaman anyway.”

“Well, not much to be done about it now,” I said, my indignation running out like wine from a punctured skin. Just be ready to sail at first light.”

“Let’s be away from here,” Flavia urged, pressing a great deal of soft flesh against my side. “It’s noisy in this place. My litter is somewhere around here. Let’s go find it. Come along, Decius.” There it was: the praenomen.

I looked for Alpheus and saw him making a discreet exit. The man was the soul of diplomacy. Joining Flavia in some secluded nook seemed like a fine idea, which shows the condition I was in. Abruptly, the soft flesh pressing against me was replaced by hard muscle on both sides.

“Why, here you are, Captain!” said Ariston, taking one arm in a steely grip.

“Better come along with us,” Hermes said, gripping the other. “Tomorrow comes early, as you keep reminding me.” He turned to Flavia. “My lady, we have to get the master to bed.”

She looked him over, then she gave Ariston an even longer look, up and down. “That sounds like an excellent idea. Why don’t we all find a place to relax away from this crowd? I know a house just two streets away that provides all the amenities we could wish.”

Hermes leaned close to my ear and whispered, “Julia could be here tomorrow.” That did it. He might as well have cast me into icy water.

“Flavia,” I said, “much as I appreciate your generous offer, duty comes first for an officer of the Senate and People. I must be ready to sail at daylight.”

She looked at me with great disfavor. “I had hoped better of you, Decius.” She turned and walked away. I sighed after her twitching, Coan-veiled buttocks.

“There goes a shipwreck in woman’s form,” said Ariston. “Come along, Captain. Plenty more where that one came from and much better time for them than tonight.”

My two faithful if somewhat insubordinate followers hoisted me off to my quarters.

“Up!” somebody shouted. “Get up and get dressed!”

“Why?” I asked, not entirely sure where I was. I was fairly certain that I wasn’t in Rome, but that left a lot of territory to be considered. Gaul? Alexandria? Somehow I felt not. I knew it would come to me, given time.

Hermes yanked me to my feet and pulled my military tunic down over my shaky body. I was on military duty, that was clear enough. “What is going on?” Even to my own ears I sounded querulous as a used-up old man.

“The pirates have been seen!” Hermes said. “They sailed right past the harbor mouth, bold as purple-assed baboons!”

“Pirates!” I cried. “Thank the gods! For a moment there I thought the Gauls were attacking. Well, by all means, let’s go kill these pirates so I can get back to bed.”

Somehow Hermes got me fully dressed, armed, and halfway presentable and, accompanied by the redoubtable Ariston, we hurried down to the naval harbor.

Ion had the ships in the water and fully manned, although many of the men were cradling their heads or vomiting over the sides or collapsed at their benches. I clambered onto my ship and gave orders to push off. Cleopatra’s ship came smartly alongside.

“We have been waiting for you,” she said, seeming a bit indignant. “They went past about an hour ago, sailing southward. My own lookout spotted them.”

“Did you see them with your own eyes?” I asked.

“I did.”

“How did you get down here in time?”

“I slept on my ship, as you should have done! And I kept my crew here as well. No banqueting allowed. Now we will lose them!”

“Don’t scold me. I have a wife for that. How many ships?”

“Three.”

I tried to force rational thought through the fog within my thundering skull. “Just three? They must have split the fleet. All right, then. Oars out and let’s be after them. Timekeeper, as soon as we are in open water, I want you to set us a quick pace.”

Groaning and complaining, the men set to their oars. At first their strokes were so ragged that they might as well have been untrained land-lubbers. Soon, though, they were back into their usual rhythm and began to sweat out the previous night’s wine. I ran the marines through boarding drills and catapult drills until they, too, were sweating in their armor, and I made sure that the men on the other ships were doing the same. By the time the pirate vessels were in sight, I felt that the worst was over. My head was almost clear, my stomach had settled down, and the strength was returning to my limbs.

We were close to shore, near a stretch of beach I had not seen in my previous outings. It was rocky and deserted, except for some ruined old buildings that looked as if they had not been inhabited in centuries. It was an ill-favored place, fit haunt for harpies and Gorgons.

“They’re coming about,” Ion said. Ahead of us, the three lean vessels had dug in their oars, halting their forward motion. Then, with the port and starboard oars working rapidly in opposite directions, they spun on their axes and presented their rams to us.

“Prettily done,” Ariston noted. He had come to stand beside me in the prow of the Nereid.

“That’s right,” agreed Ion. “And I think we had better do the same, Senator.”

“Why? We came here to catch them, and we are still four to their three, however well they row.”

He looked at me with disgust. “And how long do you think that will last. If three of them think they can take on four warships, their friends can’t be far away. They’ve laid a trap for us, Senator.”

“Do you think I am totally dense? Hung over or not, I knew they were luring us out when I heard they’d traipsed past the harbor in something less than full strength. I was sent to bag these brigands, and I intend to do it. If their remaining ships will just come out from behind whichever headland they are lurking, I will give battle right here. Just remember to take some of them alive so that we can find out where their base may be.”

Ariston laughed. “Maybe the Senate sent out the right man after all.”

Ion shook his head. “I still have my doubts.”

As the ships drew nearer, I saw what the island woman had meant when she said the pirate ships had been “the same color as the sea.” The hulls were painted a deep shade of blue-green. With yards lowered and masts unstepped, they would blend with the surrounding water, making them difficult to discern at any distance. My own ships, painted in their traditional naval colors, were visible from far away. Cleopatra’s, with all its gilding, could be seen as far as the horizon on a sunny day and was tolerably visible by moonlight.

“Down with the yards and masts!” Ion bellowed, as if reading my mind. Quickly, the crews of all four vessels lowered the yards, then lifted the masts from their footings and laid them upon the grooved wooden blocks on the decks. It is customary to do this before going into battle because otherwise the ships would be top-heavy and inclined to wallow during fast maneuvers. In place of the mast, they raised a shorter, thicker post with a pulley at its top. This was to be used as a crane for raising and dropping the corvus when we got within boarding distance.

Thinking of this caused me to note an odd discrepancy in the ships fast approaching us. “Why are their masts still up?” I wondered aloud. I could now see this plainly, and that their yards, though lowered, lay athwart the deck railings, a most inconvenient arrangement for combat.

“They must mean to hoist sail and run for it,” Ion speculated, “but there’s little sense to that. In this weak breeze we’d catch them easily. And where are their reinforcements? We ought to have seen them by now.”

“Ariston,” I said, “any suggestions?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How?”

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

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

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

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

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

Her eyebrows rose. “More Roman politics?”

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

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

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

“Why don’t you go with me?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“They were unusual rocks.”

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

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

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

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

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