Lindsey Davis - Two For The Lions

Tripolitania was now Punic, going on Roman. With every appearance of sincerity its people were giving themselves Roman town planning, Roman inscriptions, and what passed for Roman names. The Three Towns were collectively known as the Emporia, and that summed them up: an international trade center. It follows that they were all crammed with well-dressed, thriving ethnic millionaires.

My party was clean and civilized, but when we landed at Sabratha we felt like ragged tinkers with no business to be there.

Two points need to be mentioned. First point: Sabratha is the One Town without a harbor. When I say "landed" I mean our ship beached itself on the strand unexpectedly and very violently with a horrid rending noise. The captain, who had become a close friend of my brother-in-law Famia, was-we discovered after the abrupt landing-nowhere near sober at the time.

Second point: Although we landed at Sabratha, I had given the captain very precise orders to sail somewhere else.

It seemed clear enough to me; it ought to be my decision. I was in charge of our group. What's more, I had found the vessel at Apollonia, I haggled and commissioned her, then I arranged the loading of the splendid Libyan stock Famia had somehow managed to buy for the Greens. Given that I supported the Blues, this was pretty magnanimous. It is true that Famia had actually paid for the ship. In the end, in the crucial matter of winning the captain's confidence, Famia's amphorae were what carried weight. By bargaining hard for the horses he had managed to leave enough Green funds over for a substantial number of amphorae.

Famia wanted to go to Sabratha because he thought horses were brought there from the interior oases by the desert tribes. He had emptied Cyrenaica, but was still buying. The Greens had always been profligate. And the more horses he bought, the more banker's orders he could cash, releasing more cash for wine.

The significant tribe from the interior was that of the Garamantes, those whose thrashing by the Roman commander Valerius Festus had already been discussed by Justinus and me when we thought they might have captured us. In view of their very recent defeat it was likely that they had ceased trading, at least temporarily. However, from the great oasis of Cydame caravans still wound their way to Sabratha bearing gold, carbuncles, ivory, cloth, leather, dye stuffs, marble, rare woods, and slaves, not to mention exotic animals. The town's commercial emblem was an elephant.

I was after men who traded in wild beasts, but elephants did not come into it, thank the gods.

"Famia," I had said back in Apollonia, speaking slowly and pleasantly, lest I offend or confuse the drunken bastard, "I need to go to Oea and I need to go to Lepcis. Either will do to start with, though we shall reach Lepcis first. Sabratha is the one place we can leave out."

"All right, Marcus," Famia had replied, smiling in that aggravating way all drunks do when they are about to forget everything you have said. As soon as my back was turned the slippery deviant must have begun palling up with the captain, a swine who turned out to be just as bad as Famia.

When I felt the jolt as we scraped up the rocks and sand at Sabratha, I emerged from below where I had been paralyzed with seasickness; I had to grip my hands to keep them from squeezing my brother-in-law's throat. Now I knew why the journey had seemed endless. It ought to have been over days before.

It was absolutely pointless trying to remonstrate. I had now realized Famia floated in a state of incurable inebriation, never totally sobering up. His daily intake propelled him into wilder moods or duller troughs, but he never let himself hit the real world. If I belted him into oblivion as I wanted to do, when we returned to Rome he would moan to my sister and then Maia would hate me.

I felt helpless. I had lost some of my natural supporters too. As Justinus had requested, we had left him behind at Berenice. When we put him off, everything between him and Claudia had still seemed set for tragedy. Then, when he had unloaded his meager luggage and bade farewell to the rest of us on the quayside, he had marched up to the young lady.

"You had better kiss me good-bye then," we had heard him say to her quietly. Claudia thought twice, then pecked him on the cheek, bouncing off again rapidly.

Army-trained for speedy reactions, Camillus Justinus seized the advantage and got one arm around her. "No, I meant properly-"

His steadiness pressurized her so Claudia had to do it. He made the kiss last a long time, holding her about as close as possible without actually committing an impropriety. He had the sense to hang on until she gave up resisting and burst into tears. Consoling her as she wept on his shoulder, Justinus signaled that he intended to keep her with him and for us to collect Claudia's belongings. Then he started talking to her in a low voice.

"Jupiter, I've seen what happens when Quintus has a chat with a girl who secretly thinks he's wonderful!"

Helena paused on the way to pack Claudia's luggage for her. She gave me a piercing look. On reflection, I could not remember if I had ever told Helena about her brother disappearing up the tower in the German forest with the prophetess who subsequently left him lovelorn. I saw him come down from the tower later, visibly altered-and it had been easy to guess why. "Perhaps he's apologizing," Helena suggested caustically.

Claudia, far from passive even when she was crying her heart out, interrupted Justinus with a long, fierce argument, the gist of which I could not catch. He answered, then she tried to hold off from him, striking aggravated blows on his chest with the palms of her hands until he was forced to step back by degrees almost to the edge of the harbor. She could not bring herself to shove him into the water, and they both knew it.

Justinus let Claudia rant at him until she fell silent. He asked a question. She nodded. Still balanced rather precariously on the edge of the quay, they put their arms around each other. I noticed his face was white, as if he knew he was condemning himself to trouble, but perhaps he thought the trouble he already knew about was better than any other sort.

I myself suppressed a grin, thinking about the fortune Justinus had just corralled. My nephew Gaius mimed being violently sick into the harbor at the soppy scene he had just witnessed. Helena went and sat by herself in the prow of the ship, stricken by seeing her younger brother adopt a life of his own.

The rest of us reboarded. We cast off. Justinus called out that they would try to catch us up before we left Lepcis.

I still thought they were doomed. But people had said that about Helena and me. It had given us a good reason to stick it out. Good omens let you down. Bad ones give you something to fight against.

"Sabratha seems a very attractive city," Helena tried to mollify me as I absorbed the mistake Famia had then landed on us. That was before she found out there was a Sanctuary of Tanit, causing her to take a tighter grip on both the baby and my nephew Gaius.

"I'm sure the rumors of child sacrifice are simply designed to give Tanit a notorious aura and increase her authority."

"Oh yes," scoffed Helena. Rumors of revolting religious rites can appall the most sensible girls.

"No doubt the reason for all those tiny sarcophagi is that those who revere the Punic gods also love little children dearly."

"And have the bad luck to lose a lot of them at a very similar age

… What are we going to do, Marcus?"

Helena was losing her courage. Travelers always hit low moments. Enduring a long journey, only to find at the very moment you expect to arrive that you are actually two hundred miles away from your destination (and have to go backwards) can reduce the bravest soul to despair.