David Wishart - Foreign Bodies

Yeah, fair enough. Provincial governors were busy men at the best of times, and although the guy probably wouldn’t be directly involved militarily with Claudius’s upcoming plans to expand the empire, he’d have his share of the bread-and-butter side of things to see to. Major military campaigns involve a lot in the way of extra-to-the-norm supplies and equipment; it all has to come from somewhere, and finding that ‘somewhere’ is a governor’s job. Gabinius just wouldn’t have the time to spend on a simple murder, of an imperial protégé or not, nor would he have the staff to delegate, and Claudius would know it.

Hence, presumably, me. Ah, well. It made a change, anyway, and I’d never been west of Ostia. Plus if I was travelling as an emperor’s personal rep at least we’d be doing things in style; Perilla would enjoy the novelty. Which reminded me …

‘I can take my wife along, yes?’ I said.

‘Oh, my dear fellow, but of course you can! Take whoever you like, within reason. In fact, I was going to suggest it myself. Rufia Perilla will enjoy the trip immensely. Not a p-particularly interesting place, Gaul, outside the old Province, a bit rough and ready, but as I said Lugdunum is charming. Make sure you sample the local wine, too. Very respectable indeed, on its home ground, and I speak from experience.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Yes, I’ll definitely do that.’

‘Jolly good.’ Claudius beamed and picked up his pen. ‘Oh, I almost forgot. Nothing to do with your mission, but you’ll have a travelling companion. I thought that since everything will be laid on transport-wise as far as Lugdunum I might as well kill two birds with one stone.’

‘Oh?’ I said. ‘And who’s that?’

‘One of my own people, a doctor by the name of Lucius Domitius Crinas. I’m sending him to make a survey of the medicinal hot springs near the German border, with a view to developing them for the use of the legions stationed there. After you reach Lugdunum he’ll be carrying on to Moguntiacum, where the Fourteenth Gemina and Fourteenth Gallica are based.’

Bugger! My son-in-law Clarus aside, doctors I can do without, particularly on long journeys like this would be. Still, the person making the arrangements being a ruling emperor, there wasn’t a lot I could do about it. And you never knew; like Clarus, the guy might buck the trend and turn out to be OK company. We’d have to wait and see.

It’d only be as far as Lugdunum, anyway.

Claudius reached for his writing tablet. ‘Well, that’s about it,’ he said. ‘There’s n-nothing more to be said, really. Certainly no more information I can give you. So unless you have any questions yourself …’

I could recognize a polite dismissal when I heard one. I stood up.

‘Not at the moment,’ I said. ‘Thank you, Caesar.’

‘Oh, tush, tush! What for? You’re the one doing the favour, my dear chap. Thank you , and good luck to you. And of course you’ll tell me how things went when you get back. We’ll have you round to dinner, you and Perilla. A quiet family dinner, not one of those silly big affairs like the last time. Messalina will be delighted.’

Yeah, I’d just bet she would; skeleton at the feast wouldn’t be the half of it. And it wasn’t something I was particularly looking forward to, either. I said nothing.

He stretched out his hand, and I shook it.

‘Thank you again, Valerius Corvinus,’ he said. ‘Do give Perilla my very best regards. And have a p-pleasant and successful journey.’

I left.

So much for that. Now all I had to do was break the glad news to the lady that her holiday arrangements were shot to hell.

Actually, it wasn’t quite as bad as I’d thought it’d be; quite the reverse in fact. Which was fair enough, really: Castrimoenium wasn’t exactly just down the road, but the trip only took a few hours even travelling by coach, and we saw the kids often enough one way or the other during the rest of the year to make missing one visit no great deal. Besides, there was the novelty of the thing: like I say, we’d never been anywhere that side of the Pond before, and the lady is always ready to broaden her touristic horizons. The fact that we’d be travelling first class at government expense could’ve had something to do with it as well, mind.

So I sent a skivvy down to Clarus’s and Marilla’s to explain, and just before dawn the next morning we set off in the coach and luggage-cart for Ostia; the ‘we’ being the two of us, Perilla’s maid Phryne, and Bathyllus. Oh, sure, no doubt everything would be laid on where we were going, bought help included, but I couldn’t do him out of the chance to brag that he was buttling for an imperial procurator, however temporary the job happened to be. Besides, it’d give the little guy a well-deserved break and let him see a bit of the world. Meton, though, was another matter; shit-hot chef though he might be, the joys of sharing that surly anarchic bugger’s company all the way to Lugdunum and back was a pleasure I could do without. Besides, it’d probably only lead to trouble: wherever we’d be putting up, the chances were the catering side of things would be well up to scratch, and given Meton’s contempt for his culinary colleagues in general he was an international incident waiting to happen.

Like Claudius had said, the government yacht was waiting for us, which was par for the course: these things have to be ready to sail at a moment’s notice, and because they’re equipped with a full set of oars and oarsmen for use at need they’re independent of wind. Fast as hell, too, given the right conditions. Which, according to the captain who met us on the quayside, we had.

‘Wind’s strong and steady from the east, sir,’ the captain said, handing Perilla across the gang-plank as the luggage was unloaded from the cart. ‘You couldn’t’ve asked for better. If it keeps up, which I think it will, we’ll have you in Massilia well inside of three days.’

‘That’s great.’ I edged cautiously after her; Italy, in the form of the quayside, was solid enough, but that was where reliability stopped. The captain put out a hand to steady me.

‘You haven’t had much to do with ships in the past, Valerius Corvinus, have you?’ he said.

I grinned. ‘Is it obvious?’

‘Don’t worry, sir, I haven’t lost a passenger overboard yet. Particularly while we’re still in dock.’ Yeah, well, that was a relief. Even so, I wasn’t taking any chances. ‘You and the Lady Rufia have the aft deckhouse to yourselves, of course.’ He paused and pointed. ‘That’s at the, ah, back, over there. You should find it very comfortable.’

‘Your other passenger arrived yet?’ I said. ‘The doctor. Domitius Crinas, wasn’t it?’

‘That’s right. No, not yet, but we’re expecting him at any moment.’

I nodded. ‘Good. Good.’ It wasn’t, but there was no point in being churlish. At least, evidently, we weren’t being expected to share the deckhouse with him. Be grateful for small mercies.

The lady was already heading aft, and I followed her. She pushed open the door and went inside.

‘But this is lovely, Marcus!’ she said. ‘A proper room!’

Yeah; I had to admit that it was a lot more swish than I’d expected, and that was putting it mildly: despite what I’d said to the captain, we’d done our share of travelling by sea, and although we’d bunked down in deckhouses before – you could get them, or a share of them, usually, if you paid a whopping surcharge on top of your passage money, which was essentially a bribe for the captain to move out – this one had them all beat, hands down. Which again, I suppose, was par for the course given that this was a yacht purpose-built for transporting VIPs, and you couldn’t expect these guys and girls to slum it like ordinary mortals, let alone bed down under an awning in the scuppers as usually happened when you shipped on a merchantman. The room was much bigger, for a start, big enough for two bunks, a small table with a couple of couches and a dressing table to be squeezed into the floor space without looking too embarrassed about it, plus shelves for storage fixed to the walls. I was impressed.