John Roberts - The Princess and the Pirates

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.

“That was my own thought,” I said, “but I don’t trust my knowledge of nautical matters. Titus, Cyprus produces in abundance one very heavy product: copper.”

“So why is Gabinius stockpiling copper in his house and smuggling it out?” he mused. “It’s a legitimate trade.”

“Good question. But we know already that there are a number of people involved in this matter. Spurius said, ‘Your business isn’t just with me and you know it.’ I am certain that Nobilior the banker is one of them. But who are the others?”

“I hope not Cleopatra,” Julia said. “I like her, and besides, anything touching Egypt is always dangerous.”

“Say that again,” Milo said.

“Say what?”

“What Spurius said. You were imitating his accent, weren’t you?”

“I suppose I was. I’ve been trying to place it since I heard him. It’s from somewhere near Rome, I’m sure.”

“Repeat everything you heard him say. I’m sure I know that accent.”

So I repeated everything the man had said, which wasn’t all that much. Milo stopped me a few times to get the pronunciation of certain words.

At the end of it, he grinned. “The man is from Ostia! I ought to know since I spent so many of my younger years there.”

I slapped the table. “Why didn’t I realize it! It’s the way you talked when I first met you, back before you became more Roman than Cincinnatus!” Things began to connect more firmly. “Silvanus was from Ostia, and so is Nobilior.”

“I wonder if Spurius meant what he said,” Hermes put in.

“About what?” I asked him.

“About attending the Aphrodisia. ”

I looked at him. “Surely the gods would never be so good to me.”

The town was packed. The harbor was jammed with ships of every size and description. The Roman grain fleet was still in harbor, loading supplies for the final leg of its long journey down the coast of Syria and Judea, past the Delta of the Nile, on to Alexandria. Although predominantly Greek, the crowds featured people seemingly from every nation of the world. There were Arabs in desert robes, Egyptians in linen kilts, Africans in colorful skins, tattooed Scythians, and people from no country I had ever heard of. I even saw some Gauls in checked trousers.