Shadows in Bronze (32 page)

LXXI

Pertinax looked as if he was really seeing me at last. Yet his arrogance was barely dented. I think he failed to grasp how for the second time since their plot had failed he was threatened with a jail term, while his associates were coolly abandoning him. I almost pitied his plight - but when someone wants to kill me, my better nature fades.

I stood with my feet planted slightly apart, aware of the shifting deck beneath them, and the fragility of the Lass after the Sea Scorpion's workaday bulk.

Pertinax shot a wizened glance at Crispus, evidently supposing he would be arrested too. Crispus shrugged, and failed to enlighten him. I nodded to Milo. Since the skiff we had come across in was too small to take more than three, Milo transferred first to the Sea Scorpion with the prisoner, then sent it back empty for Gordianus and me.

While we waited none of us spoke.

The skiff came creeping back towards the yacht. Crispus exchanged courtesies with Gordianus, wishing him well for his position at Paestum. They both ignored me with a sort of polite deference, as if they were at a highly important banquet and had spotted a happy weevil winking out from a bread roll.

I myself was in no mood for self-congratulation. The sight of Atius Pertinax only made me feel sour. Until I landed him in a very solid jail cell, I would not relax.

I sent Gordianus down into the skiff first.

'Well, thanks for the delivery, sir!' The yacht rolled, such a delicate craft that the motion disturbed my balance; I grabbed at the rail. 'You can rely on Vespasian's gratitude.'

'I'm glad,' smiled Crispus. Here on his yacht in his holiday clothes, he looked older and shabbier than when he was fired with confidence at the Villa Poppaea - though more like a man you could go out with on a fishing trip.

'That so?' I asked levelly. 'So I can rule you out of any wicked schemes I've found involving Egyptian grain ships?'

'Dropped it,' Crispus admitted, frankly enough apparently.

'What - no joy from the fleet?

He made no attempt to repudiate the plan. 'Oh, the commander and the trierarchs will drink with anyone who pays for the liquor - but the marines all think of themselves as soldiers. Give your man his credit, Falco; Vespasian has the army's full loyalty.'

‘They know Vespasian is a good general, sir.'

‘Well, let's hope he makes a good Emperor too.'

I studied his face. Helena was right; he took his losses casually, however large the stake. If they were losses. The only way to find out was to give him his head, then watch him.

As I swung over the rail ready to descend, Crispus steadied my arm. 'Thanks. I meant what I said; I imagine you can ask Vespasian for whatever post you want,' I promised, still trying to salvage him.

Aufidius Crispus flashed a sly glance down at the skiff where Gordianus had slewed in the bow in his usual lumpish style. 'I'll need more than a damned priesthood then!'

I grinned. 'Ask away! Good luck, sir, see you in Rome...'

Perhaps.

So far recapturing Pertinax seemed too easy. I ought to have known. The Fate who controls my destiny has a sinister sense of fun.

The Sea Scorpion's skiff had rowed us half-way to its mother ship when a newcomer appeared in the lagoon. Gordianus glanced at me. It was a trireme from the Misenum fleet.

'Rufus!' I muttered. 'Trust him to turn up in his rosebud wreath when the banquet is already breaking up!'

The newcomer had glided up in silence but as soon as we spotted her they started the drum. On the side we could see, eighty oars dipped. As the rowers took their time from the drummer, sunlight flashed once off the shields and speartips of the squadron of marines who lined the trireme's fighting deck. She was steely-blue and grey, with a proud flash of scarlet round the horn on her nose. A vividly painted eye gave her a swordfish ferocity as she streamed forwards, lethally propelled by three huge banks of oars. Behind me I heard barrel-chested Bassos, the bosun of the Iris, utter a warning shout.

In our skiff the sailor who was rowing paused uncertainly. Though triremes are the navy's workhorses, and common enough in the Bay, to see one speeding at full thrust still stopped the breath. Nothing on water was so beautiful or dangerous.

Gordianus and I watched her come towards us. I realized she was passing dangerously close. We were terrified. We all glimpsed her jaws - the heavy timbers cased in bronze that formed her ram; that ever-open, evilly serrated mouth just above the water line. She passed so near we heard the grumble of the tholepins and saw water streaming off the blades as her oars rose. Then our own rower flung himself prone and we all clung to the skiff as huge combers from the trireme's wake buffeted our tiny craft.

We waited, knowing a trireme can turn on her own length. We waited for her to impress her terror on the Crispus yacht then swirl to a halt, dominating the lagoon. Helpless in her path, like a highly decorated piece of flotsam, the Isis Africana waited too. But the trireme did not stop. Just before impact, Aufidius Crispus took his last whimsical decision. I recognized his red tunic as he dived.

With that fatal flaw in his character, he had made the wrong decision yet again.

He went straight under the triseme's starboard blades. Only the top tier of oarsmen, those on the outrigger who could see the blades, would have known he was there. I glimpsed his torso once, churning hideously. Oars locked. A couple snapped. The rest ruffled on without pause, like the fluted fin on some gigantic fish, as they drove the great ship's slender keel straight into the yacht. The ram took her in full snarl. There was no doubt it was deliberate. The trireme ran into the his with one fierce stroke, then straightway backed oars: the classic manoeuvre to hook out her victim's shattered timbers as the two ships wrenched apart. But the his was so small that instead of pulling free, the trireme hauled the yacht's rumpled carcass backwards too, impaled on its nose.

Everything went quiet.

I noticed that the trireme was called Pax. In the feckless hands of an incompetent, small-town magistrate, it was hardly apt.

Our boatman had lost his oar; he swam for it, leaving us rocking on the turbulent sea. When we pulled him back aboard he turned the skiff towards the trireme, and we braced ourselves for recovering what we could.

By the time we pressed near enough, the choppiness was settling. The crew of the his were clinging to lines and being slowly brought on board the Pa, while marmes swanned over the mighty bronze ram, hacking off what was left of the yacht. Splintered shards of the beautiful toy skirled on the bay. We could hear screams from within a juddering fragment of the hull where a crewman was trapped; although the marines fought to save him, the timbers broke away and took him to the bottom before they managed it. Sickened, Gordianus and I left them to it and hauled ourselves up a rope ladder over the light-boned hull of the trireme to confront the magistrate. We came aboard in the stern. Rufus made no attempt to meet us, so we both walked the huge length of the ship and came up to him just at the moment when a group of marines, aided by the grim-faced bosun Bassus, dragged what was left of Aufidius Crispus in over the rail.

Another corpse.

This one thudded on deck streaming wet, with that thin, crimson poignancy fresh blood takes on when mixed with sea water. Yet another corpse, and yet again no need for it. I could tell Gordianus was as angry as I was. He wrenched off his cloak, then he and I wrapped the battered body in it; he spoke one harsh word to Aemilius Rufus before he turned away: ‘Waste'

I was less restrained.

‘What was the point of that hideous manoeuvre?' I raged, making free with my contempt. ‘Don't tell me Vespasian ordered it - Vespasian has better sense!'

Aemilius Rufus hesitated. He still possessed those startling looks, but the confident air which had once impressed me seemed a tawdry gift, now I had watched him in action and learned he was one more aristocrat with erratic judgement and a total lack of practical intelligence. I had seen it in Britain during the Great Rebellion, and here it was at home: yet another second-rate official with fool's gold in his pedigree, sending good men to the grave.

He made no answer. I expected none.

He had been scanning the rescued crewmen, trying to hide his agitation because he could not see the one man we all knew he was looking for. His elegant, fair-skinned face revealed the moment when he decided not to approach Gordianus - an irascible elder senator, who would give him short shrift. I had the honour instead.

'Rather unfortunate! But it solves the problem of Crispus-'

'Crispus was not a problem!' My terse answer unsettled him.

'Falco, what's happened to Pertinax?'

'Feeding the Baian oysters, if it was up to you! Oh, don't worry; he should be safe on the Sea Scorpion--'

I ought to have known better.

When we all turned to the rail and looked for my old friend Laesus and his sturdy merchant ship, we discovered that the Sea Scorpion had slipped her anchor during the malt. She was already far away from us, heading south for the open sea.

LXXII

There were still pieces of wreckage to untangle from the trireme, and broken oars to pull in. Even then we ought to have caught up. But as we set off in pursuit, we ran into the regatta I had seen earlier as we first sailed towards the island. The Sea Seel" had already positioned herself the far side of this line so our great craft had no choice but to pick its way diagonally through the little boats, none of whom understood that we were involved in a chase. Their owners were senators' sons and equestrians' nephews, and once we had disrupted their race these high-spirited youths decided it would pay us back if they dodged their zippy yachts round us like mad minnows pecking at a waterlogged bread roll.

'Oh, for heavens' sake!' roared Gordianus. 'Pertinax must have overpowered Laesus somehow, and now he's making off' A thought struck him. 'He's got Milo!'

'Never mind Milo,' I uttered in a hollow voice. 'He's got my nephew Larius!'

The trireme carried a sail, but it had been lowered for action so we lost precious minutes raising her mast again and setting the canvas aloft. Meanwhile, the merchantman was running for the end of the peninsula. The breeze which had carried us out to Capreae was still sending her along at a good five knots as she made for the headland. Then she turned in around the Amalfi coast, and we lost sight of her.

'How could he manage it?' Gordianus fretted.

'Well-placed friends!' I said grimly. 'Your ally and mine, the trustworthy Laesus, must have been in league with Pertinax from the start!'

'Falco, what do you mean?'

'I mean we're victims of a Calabrian clique. When I first met Laesus in Croton that was no coincidence; he must have been there to meet Pertinax. I thought he looked shocked when I said Pertinax had died! Once Laesus discovered what I was there for, I’m damn sure he tried to poison me. Then when Pertinax attacked your deputy at Colonna, I'll bet the Sea Scorpion took him off. When Laesus conveniently agreed to take you to Paestum, he was marking you for Pertinax-'

'But why?'

'They both come from Tarentum. They must have known each other long before Marcellus adopted Pertinax. Tarentum is the sort of crooked Calabrian town with unshakeable local loyalties.'

I remembered with a sinking feeling that Laesus had admitted he used to sail to Alexandria: Pertinax must have asked him here for his knowledge of the corn ships' annual run. Crispus was dead, but now Pertinax was on the loose with full knowledge of his colleague's plan to blackmail Rome. Pertinax, whose adopted father had filled him with ludicrous ideas of his own worth...

On the face of it, compared to a candidate with heavyweight talents like Crispus, Pertinax posed no threat to the Empire at all. But I happened to be more cynical. Think of Caligula and Nero: Rome has a habit of taking lunatic would-be emperors to its heart.

The magistrate Aemilius Rufus came up: more trouble.

'We'll soon overtake,' he boasted. Wrong as usual. We never caught the Sea Scorpion. When we finally made it round the headland towards Positanum, the sea was full of litter from her decks, but the ship had disappeared.

There was no point in hurrying; they reefed our sail.

Then a marine yelled. The Pax rowed up nearer and gently stopped. Some of the sailors were there, clinging to driftwood; we pulled them in. Then I let out a hoarse sob of relief: Grinning weakly, but so tired he could not speak, I recognized my nephew floating on his back. He was desperately struggling to subdue a half-submerged figure who was thrashing stupidly: 'Milo!' cried Gordianus. 'Falco, your brave young nephew has saved my steward!'

I muttered that Larius had never showed much sense.

We must have missed quite a party. When Milo saw Atius Pertinax grinning in triumph as he was greeted by the sea captain, the steward ran amok. In the process of being overcome he was beaten and roped up with fishing lines. Meanwhile, my nephew stood by looking innocent; the sea captain suggested to Pertinax keeping Larius as a hostage.

'Did he, by Jupiter! But how did you get in the water, Larius - and where is the ship?'

Larius assumed his expression of playful nonchalance. 'Oh, I could see the Sea Scorpion needed a new coat of pitch so I guessed she was pretty barnacled. I pretended to feel seasick and went below decks. I had a chisel in my satchel from when we were selling lead, so I just set to in the bilges. The worms had nearly done the job anyway; she was so spongy one good storm would have claimed her as a wreck. I soon punched her hull full of more holes than a wine strainer-'

‘Then what happened?'

‘What do you think? She sank.'

While my sister's boy was being treated like a hero, I discovered that when the Sea Scorpion had started to wallow everyone had leapt overboard. Those who could swim, did. Milo was still tied up. My nephew's tricky conscience made him save the steward: no small task for a fourteen-year-old lad. Even when Larius edged a floating spar half under them, buoying up fifteen stone while Milo wrestled around in panic took a determined effort. By the time we found them, my boy looked pretty limp.

We rowed the Pax as close to the rocks as possible, and took bumboats ashore. We picked up a few more soggy crewmen, but both Laesus and Pertinax had made good their escape. They had been spotted heading up into the Lactarii Mountains together. Aemilius Rufus took the trireme into Positanum and made a great fuss organizing a search.

He had no success. Trust him.

I stayed in the port below the steep little town and bought a meal to revive Larius. Milo stuck to him too, with pathetic gratitude, but if I was hoping he would repay us by digging into his pocket for a flagon I was wrong. Once things quietened down around us, Larius murmured privately, 'Pertinax has a bolt hole he uses, back towards Neapolis - he said something to the sea captain about hiding up.'

‘On the farm!'

The quiet voice came from Bassus. We had pulled that big, breezy man from the water after the trireme had sunk the his, just before he was submerged under the weight of his own gold amulets. Here he had been drinking heavily in silence: mourning the loss of his employer, the yacht, and especially his livelihood. I signalled him to join us. The bench sagged dangerously under his bulk as he huddled in with Larius, Milo and me.

'You been to this farm, Bassus?'

'No, but I heard him complaining to Crispus that it was grim. That was his excuse for coming aboard with us-'

‘Bassus!' Bassus, who was already drably sozzled, frowned as he dimly deciphered that my appeal was made to him. ‘Bassus, give us a clue about this hideaway.'

'He said it was a farmhouse - and it stinks.'

Then Milo contributed, 'Must be that run-down dungheap.'

'You know it?' I rounded on him urgently. 'You tailed him there? Can you find it again?'

'No hope, Falco. He was dashing all over the mountain that night, trying to shake us off. It was dark and we lost ourselves-

'What mountain? Vesuvius? Near his father's estate?' Larius laughed suddenly - a quiet, confident chortle deep in his throat.

‘Oh no! Oh Uncle Marcus, you really will not like this - it must be the one where that man chased you: the one with the pretty girl - and the big friendly dog!'

As soon as he said it, I guessed Larius was right.

Without more ado we drained our cups, dragged ourselves upright and started outside. I asked the bosun, 'You with us, Bassus?' But, deeply depressed by the loss of the sir, Bassus said he would stay in Positanum with the drink.

He came with us to the door though. As we reeled in the sudden sunlight that glanced off the harbour, I heard him let out a chuckle ironically. 'That's fate for you!' Then he pointed southwards out to sea. 'Here they come...'

Bearing slowly towards the Amalfi coast was the most amazing vessel I had ever seen. The Royal Barge of the Ptolemies was supposed to be larger, but I had never been privileged to gawk at the Egyptian fleet. This one was a monster. If her deck was less than two hundred feet in length, the shortfall could not be more than any lad on the Tiber waterfront could spit. When she docked she must tower above everything else like the multistorey apartments in Rome. Across the beam she was forty feet easily. And the depth of her hull, labouring so heavily, was probably even more than that.

To power this immense bulk she had not merely the normal square sail but a fabulous arrangement of red topsails as well. Far behind her I could just make other dark smudges, apparently motionless on the horizon, though they too would be heading towards us, low in the water beneath their huge cargoes, at an inexorable pace.

'Bassos! Whatever in Hades is that?'

He squinted at her thoughtfully as she loomed imperceptibly nearer the rocky coast. Parthenope, probably... but could be Venus of Paphos-'

I knew before he said it: the first of the corn ships had arrived.