John Roberts - The Princess and the Pirates

But one thing was certain: I did not want to linger another minute in that cellar. I ran for the crowd, hoping to bull my way through and keep running. A sword rose, lanced toward my belly, then several strong hands stopped me as solidly as if I had run into a wall.

“A man could get killed rushing onto sharp steel like that,” said Ariston, grinning. One of his hands rested against my chest. The other held his big, curved knife. So he was with them, too? Then I saw who was holding the sword that just pierced the cloth of my tunic: Hermes, his face gone so white I could not help laughing.

“Hermes, if you could see yourself!”

“You’re something of a sight yourself,” Titus Milo said. His were the other hands that had stopped me so abruptly. Milo never carried weapons because he never needed them. Hermes resheathed his sword with a shaky hand.

“What,” I asked, “is going on?”

“You’ve led us a lively chase, Captain,” Ariston said. He spun me around and slashed my bonds with a single stroke. “Your boy came running to the base, said you’d been abducted, and we should all turn out and look for you.”

“I knew something like this would happen,” Gabinius said, walking toward us. He was wiping blood from a sword that looked as natural in his fist as a finger. “That’s why I’ve had my men watching you all day. When they said they’d seen Furius Marcinus in town with his hair cut and his beard shaved, I suspected he’d want to take care of some unfinished business and sent them to bring you to me. They saw Alpheus make off with you, so I set them to combing the town. One of them spotted the man they sent out for wine and followed him back here, then ran to fetch me. Why didn’t you just bring your suspicions to me, Metellus? It might have simplified things.”

“I thought you were trying to kill me.” I looked over the room. There were bodies everywhere, lying among the leaves and petals, in a mixture of oil and blood. All of Alpheus’s men lay dead. Alpheus himself looked dead. Marcinus and Nobilior were certainly dead, their throats decorated with gaping wounds. “I see you’ve eliminated your partners.”

“Metellus,” he said, “I am showing forbearance out of respect to Caesar and your family; but if you accuse me of complicity in the murder of my friend Silvanus, I may just make a clean job of it right here.”

“Let’s not be hasty now,” Milo said, smiling his most dangerous smile. Hermes and Ariston let their hands fall to their sheathed weapons.

“We have more than a hundred armed men just outside,” Hermes said.

“So have I,” Gabinius answered.

Suddenly I was very tired. “There’s been enough bloodletting today,” I said. “Let’s not have Romans fighting each other in a new territory. The civil wars ended twenty years ago. Come on, let’s get away from this slaughterhouse and talk somewhere where there’s clean air.”

“Good,” Gabinius said, handing his sword to one of his men. “By preference, in a place where you can get a clean tunic.”

An hour later, washed up and dressed in a clean tunic, I walked out to the terrace before my quarters. Gabinius was there, and Milo and Mallius, the new governor.

“Hermes,” I’d asked as I bathed and dressed, “how did you know to summon help so quickly?”

“I found Julia only two streets away from where I left you. I gave her your message, and Flavia said Paphos had no tavern named Hermaphroditus. I knew that woman would know what she was talking about.”

“It’s a good thing you did. If you hadn’t been there, Gabinius might have gone ahead and killed me just to be rid of the annoyance. He could have claimed that he got there too late.”

Now as I went out to talk with them, I was fairly certain I had most of the facts. Milo sat with some scrolls and tablets in front of him. Gabinius looked supremely confident. Mallius looked bemused. I took a seat.

“This shouldn’t take long,” I said. “Then we can all get back to the festival. Aulus Gabinius, tell me why I should not charge you with murder and piracy and a number of other charges before a praetor’s court?”

“Furius Marcinus was tribune in the same year I was. He supported me in passing the lex Gabinia that gave Pompey his command of the whole sea to sweep it clean of pirates. In return, when I had my propraetorian command in Syria, I took him along as legate. When I agreed to put Ptolemy back on his throne, it was Marcinus I used to recruit the bulk of the mercenary army I took to Egypt.”

“That included recruiting among the aforementioned pirates, then settled in villages inland?”

“Right. After the war, when we set about collecting the enormous debt Ptolemy had incurred, several merchant organizations came to protest Ptolemy’s extortions. He was trying to raise the money from foreigners so he could keep the Egyptian population docile. Among these was the Holy Society of Dionysus. Rabirius had seized control of the frankincense trade, the most lucrative of the Ptolemaic monopolies.”

“Rabirius was trying to collect that debt, too,” I pointed out.

“For himself and his own cronies. I wanted to be sure that my own part, and that of my supporters, got paid back. To foil Rabirius, Ptolemy sent word to Ethiopia and Arabia Felix not to deliver the stuff while he had no control of it. This was unthinkable. The Society of Dionysus agreed to advance me the money to buy the incense and get it to them secretly somewhere other than Alexandria. Marcinus told me he had two acquaintances from Ostia: Nobilior the banker and Silvanus, a prominent politician, on Cyprus. Silvanus was an old friend of mine, and Cyprus was a perfect location. I gave Marcinus the job of setting up the route. It was then that I was called back to Rome to stand trial. This petty little exile resulted. Naturally, I decided to spend my exile on Cyprus. By the time I got here, the business was going along nicely.”

“I seized Harmodias’s books and clapped him into a storage shed under guard,” Milo reported. He picked up a scroll. “As I suspected, Pompey’s agents took only the triremes and the better equipment. They weren’t interested in the smaller ships. The first ships he turned over to Spurius, as he was called, were the penteconters. Then Spurius wanted the Liburnians as well. Nobilior brokered the deal, with Silvanus well-paid to look the other way.”

“Marcinus was an adventurous man,” Gabinius said, “not really suited to ordinary military duties and administrative work. At first, he used the penteconters. They were ideal for smuggling, at which he branched out far beyond our incense trade. Then that became too tame for him. He wanted to try his hand at piracy, and that called for real warships. I had nothing to do with that, I assure you. I advised Silvanus against all such dealings, but so much wealth so easily had is difficult for a man to pass up.”

“Then,” I said, “Rabirius got wind of what was happening and was very angry with his ‘friend’ Sergius Nobilior?”

“Yes. The trade was too big to keep hidden. Rabirius has agents everywhere. He gave Nobilior one chance: redeem himself by returning his profits to Rabirius and killing Silvanus with a fitting gesture. Otherwise Rabirius would ruin him with the Ostian bankers and the whole banking community. For a climber like Nobilior, that was death. I got word of it too late.”

“You didn’t scruple to keep employing Marcinus for your own smuggling.”

“Just for the one last cargo. And I advised him to get out of the business while he could, although you may not believe me.”

“Oh, I believe you,” I said. “By the way, what were you smuggling? Copper?”

His shaggy brows went up. “You must be brighter than I thought. Yes, it was copper. I’ve been investing my profits in copper right here at the source, where it’s cheap.”