Two For The Lions (20 page)

Helena Justina was waiting for me, pale and straighbacked. I knew she had come today because of my personal need to see Thurius die; she saw it as her duly to accompany me, though I had not asked her to do it" We shared our significant events. Supporting me, even when she loathed what was about to happen, was a task from which Helena would not flinch" She would hold my hand--and close her eyes.

Suddenly I was overcome by all the frustrations that had darkened my life for so long. I jerked my head. "Come on."

"Marcus?"

"We're going home""

The trumpets were sounding to announce the gluttony of death. Thurius was being dragged out now to be eaten by the big new Sabrathan lion but we would not be watching the spectacle. Helena and I were leaving the Circus. And then we were leaving Rome.

Part 2

Cyrenaica: April AD74

XL

Cyrenaica

To be precise, the harbour at Berenice. Hercules had made his landing at the ancient seaport of Euesperides, but that had silted up since mythical times. At Berenice however, there was still an otherwordly atmosphere: the first thing we saw was a man slowly walking along the foreshore taking a single sheep for a walk.

"Goodness' I exclaimed to Helena, as we sneaked a second glance to be sure. "Is he exceptionally kind to animals, or just fattening it up for a festival?"

"Perhaps it's his lover," she suggested.

"Very Greek!"

Berenice was one of the five significant cities: where Tripolitania had its eponymous Three, Cyrenaica boasted a Pentapolis. Greeks do like to be part of a League.

Bonded with Crete for administrative purposes, this was a lousily Hellenistic province, and that was already apparent. Instead of a forum they had an agora, always a bad start. As we stood on the wharf, listlessly looking up at the town walls and the lighthouse on its little knoll, taking a holiday somewhere that looked so fixedly towards the East suddenly seemed a bad idea.

"It's traditional to feel depressed when you arrive at a holiday destination," said Helena. "You'll calm down."

"It's also traditional that your qualms will be proved right."

"So why did you come?"

"I was sick of Rome."

"Well, now you're just seasick."

All the same, as Nux chased around our feet desperately counting us all like a sheepdog, we were at heart an optimistic party. We had left home, hard work, let-downs - and most happily of all for me, we had left Anacrites. With the spring sun warming our faces and the low hiss of a blue sea behind us, now that our feet were on firm dry land, we expected to relax.

Our party consisted of Helena and me, together with the baby--a factor which had caused ructions back at home. My mother was convinced that little Julia would be captured by Carthaginians and made a victim of child sacrifice. Luckily we had my nephew Gaius to guard her; Gaius had been forbidden to come by his own parents (my feeble sister Galla and her appalling absentee husband Lollius), so he ran away from home and followed us. I had dropped a few hints about where we would be lodging at Ostia, to help him catch up safely.

We also had with us my brother-in-law Famia. Normally (I would have run the lengths of several stadia wearing full army kit before agreeing to share weeks at sea with him, but if all worked out, it was Famia who would be paying for our transport home: somehow he had persuaded the Greens that since their chariot horses had been performing so abysmally, it was in their interests to send him out here to buy fine new Libyan stock direct from the stud farms. Well, the Greens certainly needed to beef up their teams, as I kept pointedly reminding him. For the voyage out we had acquired paying-passenger places on a ship bound for Apollonia. This enabled Famia to economise, or to put it another way, he was defrauding his faction of the full ship-hire costs for the journey out.

They had told him to select a decent Italian vessel at Ostia for a two-way trip. Instead, he was just going to pick up a one-way packet home. Maia's husband was not essentially dishonest--but Maia had made sure he had no spending money, and he needed it for drink. She herself had declined to accompany us. My mother had told me on the sly that Maia was worn out by trying to hold the family together and had had enough. Taking her husband out of the country was the best service I could offer my sister.

It quickly became obvious that the whole reason for this trip as far as Famia was concerned was getting away from his worried wife so he could booze himself senseless at every opportunity. Well, every holiday party has one tiresome bore; it gives everyone else somebody to avoid.

Landing at this harbour was more in hope than earnest. We were trying to catch up with Camillus Justinus and Claudia Rufina. There had been a vague arrangement that we might be coming out to see them. Extremely vague. Back in the winter when I let Helena first mention the possibility in a letter to them at Carthage, I had been assuming my work for the Censors would prevent me indulging in this treat. Now we were here--but we had no real idea where along the north shore of this huge continent the two fugitives might have ended up.

The last we had heard from them was two months earlier, saying that they were intending to set off from Oea for Cyrenaica and would be heading here first, because Claudia wanted to see the fabled Gardens of the Hesperides. Very romantic. Various letters which Helena was, bringing them from their abandoned relations were likely to shake the dim-witted elopers out of that. The rich seemed to lose their tempers with their heirs in a formidable style. I did not blame Justinus and Claudia for lying low.

Since I was the informer, whenever we arrived at a strange town that might be unfriendly, it fell to me to scout it out. I was used to being pelted with eggs.

I enquired at the local temple. Rather to my surprise, Helena's brother had actually left a message that he had been here, and that he had gone on to Tocra; his note was dated about a month ago. His military efficiency did not quite dispel my fears that we were about to start on a pointless chase all around the Pentapolis. Once they left Berenice, our chances of making a connection with the flitting pair became much more slim. I foresaw handing over frequent emoluments to temple priests.

Our ship was still in harbour. The master had very generously put in here specially to allow us to make enquiries, and after he took on water and supplies he reloaded all our gear while we rounded up Famia (who was already trying to find a cheap drinking house), then we reboarded.

The vessel was virtually empty. In fact the whole situation was curious Most ships carry cargos in both directions for economic reasons, so whatever this one was supposed to be fetching from Cyrenaica must be extremely lucrative if there was no need to trade both ways. The ship's owner had been on board from Rome. He was a large, curly-haired, black-skinned man, well-dressed and of handsome bearing. If he could speak Latin or even Greek he never obliged us with so much as a good morning; when he conversed with the crew it was in an exotic tongue which Helena eventually guessed must be Punic. He kept himself to himself. Neither the captain nor his crew seemed disposed to discuss the owner or his business. That suited us. The man had done us a favour taking us on board at reasonable rates, and even before the kindness of putting in at Berenice we had no wish to cause ructions.

Basically that meant one thing: we had to conceal from Famia that our host was even slightly tinged with a Carthaginian flavour. Romans are in general tolerant of other races--but some harbour one deeply embedded prejudice and it goes back to Hannibal. Famia had the poison in a double dose. There was no reason for it; his family were Aventine lowlife who had never been in the army or come within smelling range of elephants, but Famia was convinced all Carthaginians were gloomy child eating monsters whose one aim in life was still the destruction of Rome itself; Roman trade, and all Romans, including Famia. My inebriated brother-in-law was likely to be racially abusive at the top of his voice if anything obviously Punic crossed his wavering path.

Well, keeping him away from our ship's owner took my mind off my seasickness.

Tocra was about forty Roman miles further east. By this time I was beginning to regret not taking the advice my father had boomed at me: to travel on a fast transport right out to Egypt, maybe on one of the giant corn vessels, then to work back from Alexandria. Pottering east in little stages was becoming a trial. In fact I decided the whole trip was pointless.

"No, it's not. Even if we never manage to find my brother and Claudia, it's served a purpose," Helena tried to comfort me. "Everyone at home will be grateful we tried. Anyway, we are supposed to be enjoying ourselves."

I pointed out that nothing which involved me and the ocean would ever be real enjoyment.

"You'll be on land soon. Quintus and Claudia probably do need us to find them; their money must be running out. But so long as they are happy, I don't think it matters if we can't bring them home."

"What does matter is that your father has contributed to our trip--and if he loses his son, his other son's betrothed bride, and then what it costs to fund us on an abortive mission, my name will be so black in the household of the illustrious Camilli at the Capena Gate, that even I won't ever be going home again."

"Maybe Quintus will have found the silphium."

"That's a charming thought."

At Tocra the sea became much rougher; I decided that whether or not we encountered the fugitives, it was as far as I could bring myself to sail" This time when we disembarked, we said goodbye. The silent owner of the ship surprised us by coming to shake hands.

Tocra nestled between the sea and the mountains, where the coastal plain narrowed significantly so the inland escarpment--previously out of sight--appeared distantly as rolling hills. The city was not only Greek, but huge and hideously prosperous. Its urban elite lived in palatial peristyle homes built of a very soft local limestone, which quickly weathered in the brisk sea breeze. The lively wind whipped the white horses on the bay; it tossed the flowers and the fig trees behind the high wall... of the gardens and caused sheep and goats to bleat in alarm.

Once again there was a message. This time it led us to the bad end of town, for even flourishing Greek-founded seaports have their low dives for visiting sailors and the slappers who attend them. In a seedy backroom in a raucous area, we discovered Claudia Rufina, all alone.

"I stayed behind in case you came."

Since we had never said definitely that we were coming, that did seem odd.

Claudia was a tall girl in her early twenties, looking much slimmer and even more solemn than I remembered; she had acquired a rather vivid suntan which would have been out of place in good society. She greeted us quietly, seeming sad and introspective. When we knew her in her home province of Baetica and in Rome she had been a walking fortune, well-dressed, manicured, always expensively coiffured, and wearing ranks of bangles and necklaces. Now she was robed in a simple brown tunic and stole, with her hair loosely tied at the nape of her neck. There was little of either the nervous, rather humourless creature who had come to Rome to marry Aelianus, or the minx who had quickly discovered how to giggle with his more outgoing younger brother, then kicked up her heels and ran off on an adventure. That now seemed to have paled.

Without comment, we paid off her shabby landlady and took the girl to the better premises where we ourselves were lodged. Claudia grabbed Julia Junilla from my nephew Gaius and absorbed herself in the baby. Gaius gave me a disgusted look, and stalked out with the dog. I shouted out for him to look for Famia, whom we had lost again.

"So where is Quintus?" Helena asked Claudia curiously. "He has gone on to Ptolemies, continuing his search." "No luck so far?" I grinned.

"No," said Claudia, returning not the slightest flicker of a smile.

Helena exchanged a discreet glance with me, then took the girl off to the local baths lugging large quantities of scented oil and hairwash, in the hope that pampering would restore Claudia's spirits. Hours later they were back, reeking of balsam but no further forward. Claudia remained tortuously polite, refusing to unbend and spill gossip.

We passed her the letters we had brought from the Camilli and from her own grandparents in Spain. She took the scrolls to read in private. On her reappearance she did ask, in a rather strained voice, "And how is Camillus Aelianus?"

"How do you think he is?" Respect for a bride who bunked off a week before her formal engagement was not my style. "It's polite of you to ask, but he lost his betrothed--very suddenly. At first he thought you had been kidnapped by a mass murderer, so that was a bad shock. More importantly, he lost your winsome fortune, lass. He's not a happy boy. He has been viciously rude to me, though Helena still thinks I should be kind to him."

"And what do you think, Marcus Didius?"

"As is my wont, I accept all blame with a tolerant smile."

"I must have misheard that," murmured Helena.

"I did not mean him to be hurt," said Claudia wanly.

"No? Just humiliated, maybe?" If I sounded angry it was probably because I found myself defending Aelianus, whom I disliked. "Since he's not getting respectably married, he stood down from the Senate elections this year. Now he's twelve months behind his contemporaries. Every time his career comes under scrutiny in future, he'll have to explain that. He will have cause to remember you, Claudia."

Helena gave the girl a shrewd stare. "I doubt if that marriage would have worked. Don't blame yourself," she said. Predictably, Claudia herself did not react.

For a moment I wondered whether we could return Claudia to her snooty betrothed in Rome, and pretend the adventure with Justinus had never occurred. No. I could not be that cruel to either of them. If she now married Aelianus he would never forget what she had done. The public scandal might die down, but he was the type to harbour a deep grudge. Every time they wanted to quarrel he would be burning to drag up the past, while the normal self-righteousness that helps a woman survive being married to a bastard would be lost to Claudia. She had crossed the bridge into enemy territory, and cut off her own retreat. Now the barbarians were just waiting to descend on her.

We changed the subject and made plans for travelling to Ptolemiis, to join Justinus. There was no way I would take ship again unnecessarily. It was only about twenty-five more miles along the coast, so I hired a couple of carts. Claudia had made some feeble suggestion about going by sea but I cut her short. "If we start really early and push ourselves, we might force it in a day," I assured her. "All it needs is luck and military discipline." She still looked miserable. "Trust me," I cried. The poor girl clearly needed somebody to invest her with spirit. "All your cares are over, Claudia: I'm in charge now."