John Roberts - The Princess and the Pirates

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.”