The Princess and the Pirates (26 page)

“He’ll be along presently,” I assured her. “He had some affairs to attend to at the naval base and sends his apologies for his lateness.”

“Oh, wonderful! Now you must come along and meet our other guests.” She seized Julia’s arm and spirited her away, leaving me to follow them onto a broad terrace overlooking the sea. In the center of the terrace was a pool, now drained, where Cretan dancers performed. All around it the guests stood and conversed while servers circulated among them. Sergius Nobilior beckoned to me, and I joined him. He stood with two other men, one of them I recognized: Antonius the metal trader. The other was a very tall, thin man dressed in rich, colorful robes. His face was fine featured and very dark, with huge, black eyes. This had to be the Ethiopian prince Flavia had mentioned. Looking around, I saw that Flavia had plunged with her catch into a group of well-dressed ladies, Cleopatra among their number.

“Greetings, Senator,” Nobilior said. “Flavia will be impossible to live with now. She has Julius Caesar’s niece all to herself.”

“Whose niece?” asked the Ethiopian.

“At last,” I said, “someone who has never heard of him. I think I am going to like you.”

“Senator, I believe you have already met my friend Decimus Antonius. This is Prince Legyba of Ethiopia. He is here to attend the festival.”

“You’ve traveled far, Prince,” I said. “I know Homer speaks of the ‘pious Ethiopians,’ but you are the first I have met who travels to honor the gods.”

He flashed a smile full of brilliant teeth. “My people are always curious about the gods and religious practices of other people, but I am actually on a trade mission on behalf of my father the king.” He spoke excellent Greek, but with the strangest accent I had ever heard, an almost musical singsong.

At that moment a tall, mournful-looking man joined us. I recognized him as Nearchus, the archon of Paphos. On Cyprus that meant the head man of the city council. As usual in Hellenistic cities, he was one of the richest landowners.

“Senator,” he said, “while I hate to bring business to a social occasion such as this, might I have a few words with you?”

“By all means,” I said. “My friends, will you give us leave?”

“As long as you’re with us for dinner,” Sergius said. “It will be ready shortly, Nearchus, you’ll be in a better position to wring concessions from him after he’s had a bit to drink.”

We went a little aside to a quiet corner by some large, potted shrubs.

“Senator, our council meetings have come almost to a standstill. With Governor Silvanus dead, it is not at all clear who is the Roman authority on the island. We are stymied. General Gabinius behaves as if the mantle has fallen on him, but he is no more than an exile, although a prestigious one. You would seem to be the ranking Roman official here, but your commission is naval and you have not come forward to take control. What are we to do?”

“I really can’t administer the island,” I told him, “since I may be called away at any time to pursue pirates. Gabinius, however, has no standing. If he tries to give you orders, simply say that you are awaiting word from the Senate. They should have sent out an assistant governor long since, and perhaps they’ll speed up the process now. But on no account should you regard Gabinius as the man in power here. He is a noted plunderer, and you have to be pretty bad to get expelled from Rome for robbing foreigners.” I would not have said this earlier, but seeing Gabinius conferring with Spurius had changed my view of him.

He looked more mournful than ever. “This is most distressing.” I had to sympathize with him. It is always upsetting to see infighting among the conquerors. “I hardly know what to do.”

“Take my advice: just shut down operations and enjoy the festival. If Gabinius prods you further, tell him the goddess forbids official business until the next full moon. That’s how we do things in Rome.”

“I shall take your words to heart. Thank you, Senator.” From his look I had provided him with little comfort, but comfort was not in the commission I had received from the Senate.

At that moment Milo arrived. He had dressed impressively in a fine toga complete with a broad praetor’s stripe to which he was not really entitled, but who was going to argue with him on Cyprus? He immediately became the center of attention, and I was called upon to make introductions. Changed though he was, he was still a tremendously impressive man, diminished only in the eyes of those of us who had known him in the days of his glory. And when he turned on the charm, he was as magnetic as Marcus Antonius on his best day.

I saw Julia, with Flavia clinging to her like a barnacle, talking with the Ethiopian prince. He was pressing some sort of gift on her, with many graceful gestures. Then the majordomo announced dinner. We trooped into the triclinium and flopped down for the first course.

Dinner was a great success. Flavia, it turned out, had cleverly selected dishes that had some connection to Aphrodite. Some came from plants or animals sacred to the goddess; others were mentioned in the legends of her life and exploits. The wines were all from vineyards connected to her most famous temples and shrines.

After dinner we retired once more to the terrace to catch the cool, evening breeze and clear our heads of wine fumes. Julia came to check on me.

“Why you’ve restrained yourself,” she said, finding me sober. “I’m so pleased. I was speaking with that Ethiopian prince before dinner, such an elegant, delightful man, and so exotic! Look, he’s given these to all the ladies here.” From somewhere within her gown she produced a small, plump bag of snowy white cloth, bound with a ribbon. Its sweet scent was familiar.

“Let me see that!” I snatched it from her and tugged at the ribbon.

“Don’t you dare spill any!” She snatched it back. “Let me open it. You’re so clumsy with anything except dice.” She opened the top to reveal a cluster of tear-shaped drops from which a lovely fragrance arose. They were white, almost transparent. “Why, it’s frankincense!”

“Exactly. Governor Silvanus met his end through a surfeit of the common, yellow variety from Arabia Felix. This is the white, Ethiopian
frankincense, the purest and finest sort. I’ve become quite an expert on this stuff as you can see. Where is that prince?”

He wasn’t difficult to find, and it was easy to draw him aside, as everyone else was watching a wonderful Syrian magician who could do amazing things with flames, live birds, large serpents, and even more unlikely props.

“Prince,” I said to him, “I am curious about the gift you gave my wife.”

His eyes went wide. “Was this improper? If so I am very sorry and must plead ignorance of your customs.”

“No, no, it was perfectly delightful. But we seldom see white frank-incense in our part of the world. It seems an extremely extravagant gift.”

He gave me that dazzling smile again. “Oh, not at all! We have so much of it this year, since we are not sending it up the coast to Egypt. I thought it would be perfect for small guest gifts. It is easy to carry, and everyone loves it.”

“So they do, so they do. Ah, you said that you are not shipping it to Egypt this year? Might that be because of King Ptolemy’s troubles?”

“Yes, yes.” He smiled and nodded vigorously at the same time.

“Is there trouble between Ethiopia and Egypt?”

“No, no,” now smiling and shaking his head with equal vigor. The sudden changes in direction of those flashing teeth were making me a little dizzy. “No, it was King Ptolemy who asked us to hold back certain things we have always traded directly with the royal house: ivory, feathers, a few other things. And, of course, the frankincense. He said these things would be stolen from him.”

“Stolen? Because of the unrest in his country?”

He looked embarrassed. “Why, please forgive me, Senator, I do not wish to give offense, but he said it was because of you Romans.”

I nodded too, much more slowly and without smiling. “I see.” And indeed I was beginning to see. “Thank you, Prince, both for your gift and for your information.”

“I have not offended?” He seemed genuinely concerned.

“Not at all. And I think that very soon things will be back to normal between ourselves and King Ptolemy and your father’s kingdom.”

This time he
really
smiled, an ear-to-ear stretch of ivory bright as a bucket of pearls. “Wonderful! My father will be so pleased!”

Flavia, I saw, was now hanging on Milo as eagerly as she had attached
herself to Julia. Good luck to her, I thought. No man who had spent years married to Fausta had anything to fear from a social-climbing bacchante like Flavia.

Before long the dice were out, and I pitched in with a will. Things were beginning to come together in my mind, and I was able to give the little cubes the full attention they require.

“You’re doing well,” Flavia noted, looking over my shoulder. She had temporarily lost Milo.

“I usually do. If there are no races or fights going on, I can always rely on the dice. Where is Alpheus tonight? I thought he never missed a party in this town.”

“I’ve no idea. I sent him an invitation, but he probably found another, more profitable party somewhere else. As you can imagine, this is the height of the entertaining season in Paphos.”

“Well, you’ve scored a great success, even without him.” I rolled the dice and won again. Everybody else groaned.

“Oh, yes! Cleopatra, Julia Caesar, and Titus Annius Milo, what a list!” Her voice dripped satisfaction. It wasn’t common to give any woman a cognomen, but I knew that Flavia would refer to her thus when talking about her. She would want to leave nobody in doubt
which
Julia had come to her event.

In time I packed away my winnings and collected my wife and Milo and made my farewells to all the guests and to my host.

“You must come again, Senator,” said Sergius Nobilior. “I want a chance to win back some of my losses.”

Milo put a hand on my shoulder. “With Decius, never use his dice and always take his tips on horses and gladiators.”

“Don’t worry, Sergius,” I assured him, “you’ll see plenty more of me.”

“How much did you win?” Julia asked, as we rolled into our litter and were lifted to shoulder height.

“Roughly nine hundred sesterces in staters, drachmae, darii, minae, and some sort of Arabian silver coin I’ve never seen before. Six rings, one of them set with a small emerald, two strings of pearls, and a jewel-hilted dagger.”

“Oh, let me see the pearls!” She pretended to study them in the dimness. “Isn’t Flavia the most wonderfully vulgar woman? A Coan gown! You could see that she rouged her nipples!”

“Never glanced in that direction.”

“Liar. But Cleopatra was right. She is loads of fun. She’s promised to show me the town tomorrow. Will that be all right?”

I thought about it. “Tomorrow morning and afternoon, fine. But be back well before nightfall. After tomorrow, you had better stay away from her.”

“Why?”

“Because I am going to have to arrest her husband soon.”

“Really? On what charges?”

“I’m not sure about all of them. And I
am
sure that he’s not alone, so I can’t proceed precipitately. When dealing with a conspiracy, you know, it is always a bad idea to attack it piecemeal. You should try to bag everyone at once.”

“That makes sense.”

Back at the naval base I tipped the bearers and sent them back to the house of the late governor. Milo, minus his showy toga, joined us in the triclinium, where Julia made extravagant use of candles and lamps so she could examine her new pearls. I sent Hermes to fetch Ariston.

“How are the men shaping up?” I asked Milo.

“I have them under control. We’ll have a viable force when the time comes to smash these bandits. First, we have to get rid of their colleagues here in Paphos.”

“We’ll be ready to start that soon,” I told him.

“Good. I want to seize Harmodias’s account books, but I don’t want to tip him off too soon.”

“I should have done it as soon as I took command here,” I admitted.

“Just as well you didn’t. You’d’ve had your throat cut before you went out on your first patrol.”

“So Harmodias is in with them?” Julia said.

“Certainly,” Milo answered. “It wasn’t that so much had been taken by Pompey’s agents for the war in Gaul. It was that
everything
wasn’t seized. It’s my guess that only the larger ships and their gear and the war engines were taken, maybe some of the arms. But it was the paint that first roused my suspicions.”

“I should have seen it,” I said, “as soon as that woman on the island said their ships were ‘the same color as the sea’. They have no use for Roman naval colors, have they? They don’t want their ships bright and showy.”

“Same with the naptha and the rams,” he said. “Pirates don’t want to
sink or burn ships; they want to take them intact. The arms that were left behind are a mixture of types and nationalities unsuitable for the legions. Most of the pirates probably already had their own arms, so Harmodias didn’t have to strip his arsenal bare. Easy enough to claim that Pompey seized it all to send to Caesar. Who’s going to call them to account?”

Hermes arrived with Ariston.

“Have a seat,” I told the ex-pirate.

He sat. “Are we going out on another late-night scout?”

“Not this time,” I said. “Describe for Titus Milo the ship we saw out there at Gabinius’s estate.”

“A penteconter: typical pirate craft, favored by smugglers, too. It’s light, fast, draws little water, and can go into almost any creek or inlet. Rides low, hard to see. Can’t go head-to-head with a trireme, not enough men or power. If there’s to be fighting, three or four penteconter skippers can gang up on a bigger ship.”

“And this one was riding high in the water,” I said.

“Looked like it to me, but I didn’t get as close as you did. Looked like it was wallowing a bit, too.”

“At Gabinius’s estate, they took on cargo. Might it have been frankincense?”

He frowned and thought. “Doesn’t make sense. Any sort of incense is a light-weight cargo. Even if he was going to pack his hold with it, he’d’ve come ballasted. It’s unsafe making any sort of crossing with too little weight in the hold. Whatever he picked up, it was heavy enough to make the ship stable for the voyage to wherever they took it.