Lindsey Davis - Time to Depart

I said nothing, but I had a sense that Petro's night of triumph had just been spoiled.

The freedmen had taken all the luggage on to the ship. They stayed aboard. We could see sailors assuming their places at the mooring ropes. The captain hovered at the head of the gangplank, impatient to sail now he had the breeze and approaching light. None of us made any attempt to look for Linus. It was best to forget he was there.

The vessel was a roomy merchantman called the Aphrodite. Balbinus would be well set up; there was a cabin for the captain and favoured passengers, a latrine hanging over the stern, even a galley where food could be prepared. The Aphrodite was half as big again as the ship on which Helena and I had returned from Syria. She needed to be strongly built to make such a long voyage so late in the year.

Now the criminal stood looking hesitant; he seemed uncertain what was expected of him. 'Am I to board?'

His doubt did not last. Petronius Longus appeared in front of him, flanked by Martinus and me. The other squad members clustered close, in a tight circle.

'Just a few formalities.' It was clear that now Balbinus was in the care of the Fourth Cohort there would be no hail-fellow handshaking. 'I've waited a long time, Balbinus,' Petro said.

'No doubt you have done your duty, officer.' The man spoke with reproach. He still seemed like a tunic-braid salesman – one who had just been told to his amazement that his embroidered Egyptian fancies had leaked crimson dye all over ten togas at some swanky laundry. 'I am innocent of the crimes of which I have been accused.'

'They all say that,' Petronius complained, addressing the sky in despair. 'Gods, I hate this hypocrisy! A straight villain always respects a straight arrest. He'll shrug and accept that he's caught. But all you self-justifying types have to make out that you cannot believe anyone could so terribly misjudge you. You convince yourselves all that matters in a civilised society is for men like you to continue your businesses without interference from officious sods like us. Sods who don't understand.' Petronius set his jaw so hard I thought I heard his molars crunch. 'Only I do understand!' he sneered. 'I understand what you are all too well.'

This rant had had no effect. Balbinus' eyes, some colour you wouldn't bother to notice, wandered to me. He seemed to realise I was an outsider, and was hoping for some sympathy. 'You had your chance,' I told him, before he could start whining. 'The benefit of a jury trial, in the calm of the Basilica. Six lawyers. A jury of your equals, who heard about your activities without allowing themselves to be sickened. A judge who, even while passing sentence, was polite. Meanwhile outside, market traders still had their takings grabbed by your rampaging street gangs. Near-destitute old women were being tricked out of their savings. Men who dared to resist your hold-up thieves spilled their lifeblood into the gutter. Female slaves were sold into prostitution by angry mistresses after your footpads snatched the shopping money – ' Petronius moved slightly. I fell silent.

'Is there anything further you wish to tell me about your business?' Petro's request was formal; a vain hope.

'I am innocent,' Balbinus intoned solemnly.

Petro's sarcasm was milder than I expected: 'Oh, for a moment I thought you were going to surprise me and admit something.'

His men were on edge, wanting to retaliate, wanting something to make them feel good.

Petronius held out his hand, palm upwards. 'You can keep what you stand up in. I need your equestrian ring.'

With automatic obedience, the big rissole pulled off the badge of his lost social status, struggling to wrench it over his first knuckle bone. He looked puzzled again. 'May I have a receipt?'

'No need.' Petro took the small band of gold between finger and thumb as if it offended him. He set it edge up on the top of a bollard, then raised one boot. A full inch of layered oxhide stamped down, studded with iron and moulded by hard usage to intractable curves that echoed the shape of Petro's foot. I knew, through having stumbled over it on many occasions when drunk, that my old tentmate's massive trotter deserved respect.

Petro crushed the ring into a useless twist. Sneering, he handed it back. The state would forego that gold.

'You're enjoying this,' Fusculus tutted, pretending to admonish his chief. Fitted out with a sense of irony, Fusculus must be the sensitive one.

'I enjoy knowing that I'm never going to see this bastard again.'

'Strip him of his rights!' That was Martinus, ever eager for drama and about as sensitive as a dead newt.

Petronius Longus folded his arms. Enjoying this he might be, but he sounded tired: 'Tiberius Balbinus Pius, you stand condemned of capital crimes. The laws of Rome grant you time to depart. That is your only prerogative. You are no longer a citizen. You no longer possess equestrian rank, nor the honours attached to that rank. Your property is forfeit to the Treasury and your accusers. Your wife, children and heirs have no future claims upon it. You shall depart beyond the Empire. You shall never return. If you set foot in any territoty governed by Rome, the penalty is death.'

'I am innocent!' Balbinus whined.

'You're grime!' roared Petronius. 'Get on the boat before I forget myself!'

Balbinus shot him a vindictive look, then walked straight to the ship.

Petro and I regained the quay later that morning. We had snatched a few hours' snoring on a bench in a wine bar that was fractionally more friendly than our previous foray. While we were relaxing the scene had changed completely. It was light. The quays were full of people. After a long, nerve- racking night, the hubbub was a shock.

As we hunted for the Providentia, which had brought me home from Syria, we could now make out fully the great man-made harbour basin. This was Portus. Claudius had first enclosed the spectacular new mooring that had replaced the old silted-up basin two miles away at Ostia. Nowadays only shallow-draught barges could use the old port. Portus had taken several decades of construction since Claudius sank the first breakwater – a massive ship once used to carry an obelisk for Caligula. That was now the base of a two-hundred-foot mole holding back the weather and carrying the three-storeyed lighthouse whose constant beacon announced from the harbour mouth that this was the centre of world navigation: one hundred and sixty acres of quiet mooring, to which all the Empire's trade came, eager to cough up harbour tax. I had paid my tax like a good citizen, one whose brother-in-law was a customs officer who liked asking unwanted questions. I was now trying to reclaim my goods.

There was more noise than earlier. Workers were already pouring in from Ostia along the rout through the market and flower gardens, or via the Claudian canal (which badly needed widening and dredging): clerks, customs inspectors, owners of vessels and goods, all jostling on the jetties with passengers and porters. We were tired, and the scene was unfamilar. Somehow the waterfront turmoil stripped us of our normal authority. Petronius and I were battered and cursed along with every other stranger.

'Sorry for getting you into this,' I told him ruefully. He was taking it well, however. This was by no means the wont pickle we had been in. Balbinus had put us in a gloomy mood; we were glad to forget him. We applied ourselves to commerce like heroes on behalf of my auctioneer father. He irritated all Hades out of me – but he had at least given us a chance to skive at the seaside for a time.

My father's general habit was to cause me trouble. From the day he had run away from home when I was still in the tunic of childhood I had despised pretty well everything he did. I never dealt with him if I could help it, but he had a way of winding himself into my life however hard I tried to avoid it.