The Wish House and Other Stories (76 page)

‘Did those Alexandrian achators really work?’ said Baeticus.

‘I
’ve never seen cargo discharged quicker. It was time. The wind was taking off in gusts, and the rain was putting down the swells. I made out a patch of beach that looked less like death than the rest of the arena, and I decided to drive in on a gust under the spitfire-sprit – and, if she answered her helm before she died on us, to humour her a shade to starboard, where the water looked better. I stayed the foremast; set the spritsail fore and aft, as though we were boarding; told Sulinor to have the rudders down directly he cut the cables; waited till a gust came; squared away the sprit, and drove.’

Sulinor carried on promptly:

‘I had two hands with axes on each cable, and one on each rudder-lift; and believe me, when Quabil’s pipe went, both blades were down and turned before the cable-ends had fizzed under! She jumped like a stung cow! She drove. She sheared. I think the swell lifted her, and over-ran. She came down, and struck aft. Her stern broke off under my toes, and all the guts of her at that end slid out like a man’s paunched by a lion. I jumped forward, and told Quabil there was nothing but small kindlings abaft the quarter-hatch, and he shouted: “Never mind! Look how beautifully I’ve laid her!’”

‘I had. What I took for a point of land to starboard, y’see, turned out to be almost a bridge-islet, with a swell of sea ‘twixt it and the main. And that meeting-swill, d’you see, surging in as she drove,
gave her four or five foot more to cushion on. I’d hit the exact instant.’

‘Luck of the gods,
I
think! Then we began to bustle our people over the bows before she went to pieces. You’ll admit Paul was a help there, Red?’

‘I dare say he herded the old judies well enough; but he should have lined up with his own gang.’

‘He did that, too,’ said Sulinor. ‘Some fool of an under-officer had discovered that prisoners must be killed if they look like escaping; and he chose that time and place to put it to Julius – sword drawn. Think of hunting a hundred prisoners to death on those decks! It would have been worse than the Beasts!’

‘But Julius saw – Julius saw it,’ Quabil spoke testily. ‘I heard him tell the man not to be a fool. They couldn’t escape further than the beach.’

‘And how did your philosopher take
that?’
said Baeticus.

‘As usual,’ said Sulinor. ‘But, you see, we two had dipped our hands in the same dish for weeks; and, on the River, that makes an obligation between man and man.’

‘In my country also,’ said Baeticus, rather stiffly.

‘So I cleared my dirk – in case I had to argue. Iron always draws iron with me. But
he
said: “Put it back. They are a little scared.” I said: “Aren’t
you?”
“What?” he said; “of being killed, you mean? No. Nothing can touch me till I’ve seen Caesar.” Then he carried on steadying the ironed men (some were slavering-mad) till it was time to unshackle them by fives, and give ’em their chance. The natives made a chain through the surf, and snatched them out breast-high.’

‘Not a life lost! Like stepping off a jetty,’ Quabil proclaimed.

‘Not quite. But he had promised no one should drown.’

‘How
could
they – the way I had laid her – gust and swell and swill together?’

‘And was there any salvage?’

‘Neither stick nor string, my son. We had time to look, too. We stayed on the island till the first spring ship sailed for Port of Rome. They hadn’t finished Ostia breakwater that year.’

‘And, of course, Caesar paid you for your ship?’

‘I made no claim. I saw it would be hopeless; and Julius, who knew Rome, was against any appeal to the authorities. He said that was the mistake Paul was making. And, I suppose, because I did not trouble them, and knew a little about the sea, they offered me the port inspectorship here. There’s no money in it – if I were a poor man. Marseilles will never be a port again. Narbo has ruined her for good.’

‘But Marseilles is far from under-Lebanon,’ Baeticus suggested.

‘The further the better. I lost my boy three years ago in Foul Bay, off Berenice, with the Eastern Fleet. He was rather like you about the eyes, too. You and your circumcised apes!’

‘But – honoured one! My master! Admiral! – Father mine – how
could
I have guessed?’

The young man leaned forward to the other’s knee in act to kiss it. Quabil made as though to cuff him, but his hand came to rest lightly on the bowed head.

‘Nah! Sit, lad! Sit back. It’s just the thing the boy would have said himself. You didn’t hear it, Sulinor?’

‘I guessed it had something to do with the likeness as soon as I set eyes on him. You don’t so often go out of your way to help lame ducks.’

‘You can see for yourself she needs under-girting, Mango!’

‘So did that Tyrian tub last month. And you told her she might bear up for Narbo or bilge for all of you! But he shall have his working-party tomorrow, Red.’

Baeticus renewed his thanks. The River man cut him short.

‘Luck of the gods,’ he said. ‘Five – four – years ago I might have been waiting for you anywhere in the Long Puddle with fifty River men – and no moon.’

Baeticus lifted a moist eye to the slip-hooks on his yardarm, that could hoist and drop weights at a sign.

‘You might have had a pig or two of ballast through your benches coming alongside,’ he said dreamily.

‘And where would my overhead-nettings have been?’ the other chuckled.

‘Blazing – at fifty yards. What are fire-arrows for?’

‘To fizzle and stink on my wet seaweed blindages. Try again.’

They were shooting their fingers at each other, like the little boys gambling for olive-stones on the quay beside them.

‘Go on – go on, my son! Don’t let that pirate board,’ cried Quabil.

Baeticus twirled his right hand very loosely at the wrist.

‘In that case,’ he countered, ‘I should have fallen back on my foster-kin – my father’s island horsemen.’

Sulinor threw up an open palm.

‘Take the nuts,’ he said. ‘Tell me, is it true that some infernal Balearic slingers of yours can turn a bull by hitting him on the horns?’

‘On either horn you choose. My father farms near New Carthage. They come over to us for the summer to work. There are ten in my crew now.’

Sulinor hiccoughed and folded his hands magisterially over his stomach.

‘Quite proper. Piracy
must
be put down! Rome says so. I do so,’ said he.

‘I see,’ the younger man smiled. ‘But tell me, why did you leave the slave – the Euxine trade, O Strategos?’

‘That sea is too like a wine-skin. Only one neck. It made mine ache. So I went into the Egyptian run with Quabil here.’

‘But why take service in the Fleet? Surely the wheat pays better?’

‘I intended to. But I had dysentery at Malta that winter, and Paul looked after me.’

‘Too much muttering and laying-on of hands for
me,’
said Quabil; himself muttering about some Thessalian jugglery with a snake on the island.

‘Yow weren’t sick, Quabil. When I was getting better, and Paul was washing me off once, he asked if my citizenship were in order. He was a citizen himself. Well, it was and it was not. As second of a wheat-ship I was
ex officio
Roman citizen – for signing bills and so forth. But on the beach, my ship perished, he said I reverted to my original shtay – status – of an extra-provinshal Dacian by a Sich-Sish – Scythian – I think she was – mother. Awkward – what? All the Middle Sea echoes like a public bath if a man is wanted.’

Sulinor reached out again and filled. The wine had touched his huge bulk at last.

‘But, as I was saying, once
in
the Fleet nowadays one is a Roman with authority – no waiting twenty years for your papers. And Paul said to me: “Serve Caesar. You are not canvas I can cut to advantage at present. But if you serve Caesar you will be obeying at least some sort of law.” He talked as though I were a barbarian. Weak as I was, I could have snapped his back with my bare hands. I told him so. “I don’t doubt it,” he said. “But that is neither here nor there. If you take refuge under Caesar at sea, you may have time to think. Then I may meet you again, and we can go on with our talks. But that is as The God wills. What concerns you
now is
that, by taking service, you will be free from the fear that has ridden you all your life.’”

‘Was he right?’ asked Baeticus after a silence.

‘He was. I had never spoken to him of it, but he knew it.
He
knew! Fire – sword – the sea – torture even – one does not think of them too often. But not the Beasts! Aie!
Not
the Beasts! I fought two dog-wolves for the life on a sand-bar when I was a youngster. Look!’

Sulinor showed his neck and chest.

‘They set the sheep-dogs on Paul at some place or other once-because
of his philosophy! And he was going to see Caesar – going to see Caesar! And he – he had washed me clean after dysentery!’

‘Mother of Carthage, you never told me that!’ said Quabil.

‘Nor should I now, had the wine been weaker.’

T
HE
M
ODERN
L
IBRARY
E
DITORIAL
B
OARD

Maya Angelou
•
Daniel J. Boorstin
•
A. S. Byatt
•
Caleb Carr
•
Christopher Cerf
•
Ron Chernow
•
Shelby Foote
•
Vartan Gregorian
•
Richard Howard
•
Charles Johnson
•
Jon Krakauer
•
Edmund Morris
•
Joyce Carol oates
•
Elaine Pagels
•
John Richardson
•
Salman Rushdie
•
Oliver Sacks
•
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
•
Carolyn See
•
William Styron
•
Gore Vidal