Steven Saylor - The House Of The Vestals

We heard the distant impact, the splintering of wood, the cries of the fishermen. The sail collapsed. The fishing boat convulsed and folded in on itself. The vessel vanished into the rolling sea almost before I could comprehend the horror of it.

"By the gods!" muttered Belbo.

"The gold!" snarled Marcus.

"All that gold…" sighed Spurius.

The men from the capsized relay boat had set out swimming for their ship. Now they floundered in the water, trapped between the Crimson Ram and Marcus's men on shore. "They'll have to head in eventually," Marcus muttered, "along with any survivors from the other ship. We'll ring the cove and strike them down one by one as they crawl from the water. Men! Listen up!"

"No, Marcus!" I clutched my arm and staggered to my feet. "You can't kill them. The kidnapping was a hoax!"

"A hoax, was it? And the lost gold-I suppose that was only an illusion?"

"But those men aren't pirates. They're simple fishermen. Spurius put them up to the whole thing. They acted on his orders."

"They defrauded Quintus Fabius."

"They don't deserve to die!"

"That's not for you to say. Stay out of this, Finder."

"No!" I ran into the surf. The scattered fishermen struggled in the waves, too far out for me to tell which was Cleon. "Stay back!" I screamed. "They'll kill you as you come ashore!"

Something struck the back of my head. Sea and sky merged into a solid white light that flared and then winked into darkness.

I awoke with a throbbing headache and a dull pain in my right arm. I reached up to find that my head was bandaged. So was my arm.

"Awake at last!" Belbo leaned over me with a look of relief. "I was beginning to think…"

"Cleon… and the others…"

"Shhhh! Lean back. You'll set your arm to bleeding again. I should know; I learned a thing or two about wounds when I was a gladiator. Hungry? That's the best thing, to eat. Puts the fire back in your blood."

"Hungry? Yes. And thirsty."

"Well, you're in the right place for both. Here at the Flying Fish they've got everything a stomach needs."

I looked around the little room. My head was beginning to clear. "Where's Spurius? And Marcus?"

'"Gone back to Rome with the rest, yesterday. Marcus wanted me to go, too, but I wouldn't. Someone had to stay with you. The Master will understand."

I cautiously touched the back of my head through the bandages. "Someone hit me."

Belbo nodded.

"Marcus?"

Belbo shook his head. "Spurius. With a rock. He would have hit you again after you were down, but I stopped him. Then I stood over you to make sure he didn't do it again."

"The vicious little…" It made sense, of course. His scheme foiled, the best Spurius could hope for was to silence everyone who knew about his plot, including me.

"Cleon and the rest-"

Belbo lowered his eyes. "The soldiers did as Marcus ordered."

"But they can't have killed them all…"

"It was horrible to watch. Seeing men die in the arena is bad enough, but at least there's some sport when it's two armed men, both trained to fight. But the sight of those poor fellows coming out of the water, worn out and gasping for breath, pleading for mercy, and Marcus's men slaughtering them one after another…"

"What about Cleon?"

"Him, too, so far as I know. 'Kill every one of them!' was what Marcus said, and his men did just that. Spurius helped, pointing and yelling whenever he saw one of them about to come ashore. They killed the pirates one by one and threw their bodies back into the sea."

I pictured the spectacle and my head began to throb. "They weren't pirates, Belbo. There never were any pirates." Suddenly the room became blurry. It wasn't from the blow to my head; it was only the tears welling up in my eyes.

A few days later I was back at the Senian Baths, lying naked on a bench while one of Lucius Claudius's slaves massaged me. My battered body needed pampering. My bruised conscience needed the release of pouring the whole sordid tale into Lucius's sponge-like ear.

"Appalling!" he finally muttered. "You're very lucky to be alive, I should think. And when you got back to Rome, did you call on Quintus Fabius?"

"Of course, to collect the balance of my fee."

"Not to mention your share of the gold, I should think!"

I winced, and not from the massage. "That was something of a sore point. As Quintus Fabius pointed out, I was to be paid one-twentieth of whatever portion of the gold was actually recovered. Since the ransom was lost-"

"He cheated you on a technicality? How typical of the Fabu! But surely some of the gold washed up on the shore. Didn't they go diving for it?"

"They did, and Marcus's men recovered a little, but only a tiny fraction. My share hardly came to a handful of gold."

"Only that, after all your labor, and after putting yourself in so much danger! Quintus Fabius must be as miserly as his stepson claims! I suppose you told him the truth about the kidnapping?"

"Yes. Unfortunately, the very men who could back me up- the fishermen-are dead, and Spurius continues to blithely insist that he was kidnapped by pirates."

"The bald-faced young liar! Surely Quintus Fabius knows better than to believe him."

"Publicly, at least, he accepts his stepson's version of the story. But that's only to save himself the embarrassment of a scandal, I think. He probably suspected the truth all along. I think that's the real reason he hired me, to find out for certain. And that's why he ordered Marcus to kill his stepson's accomplices on the spot, to keep the truth from getting out. Oh yes, he knows what really happened. He must detest Spurius more than ever, and the enmity is mutual."

"Ah, the type of family bitterness that so often ends in-"

"Murder," I said, daring to utter the unlucky word aloud. "I wouldn't care to wager which will outlive the other!"

"And the boy's mother, Valeria?"

"Her son subjected her to agonizing worry, just to satisfy his greed. I thought she had a right to know that. But when I tried to tell her, she suddenly seemed to go deaf. If she heard a word I said, she didn't show it. When I was done, she politely thanked me for rescuing her son from those awful pirates, then dismissed me."

Lucius shook his head.

"But I did get something I wanted from Quintus Fabius."

"Yes?"

"Since he refused to give me a full share of the ransom, I insisted that he give me something else he owned, a possession he clearly undervalued."

"Ah yes, your new bodyguard." Lucius glanced at Belbo, who stood across the room with folded arms, sternly guarding the niche that held my clothing as if it contained a senator's ransom. "The fellow is a treasure."

"The fellow saved my life on that beach outside Ostia. It may not be the last time."

Every now and again, business takes me south to the vicinity of Neapolis and the bay. I always make a point of visiting the waterfront where the fishermen congregate. I ask in Greek if any of them knows of a young man named Cleon. Alas, the Neapolitans are a close-lipped, suspicious bunch. Not one of them has ever admitted to knowing a fisherman by that name, though surely someone in Neapolis must have known him.

I scan the faces on the fishing boats, on the chance that I might see him. For no good reason, I have convinced myself that he somehow eluded Marcus's men on that fateful day and made his way home.

Once, I was almost certain that I did get a glimpse of him. The man was clean-shaven, not bearded, but his eyes were Cleon's eyes. I called out from the dock, but the boat slipped by before I could get a better look. I was never able to confirm whether it was Cleon I saw or not. Perhaps it was a relative, or merely a man who resembled him. I didn't pursue the matter as fully as I might have, perhaps afraid that the truth would disappoint me. I prefer to believe that it was Cleon after all, proof or no proof. Could there be two men in the world with the same soulful green eyes?