The Princess and the Pirates (16 page)

He nodded. “It makes sense. With all that stuff cleared out of his mouth, he’ll look presentable enough for his funeral, except for the color of his face. How shall we say he met his end?”

I shrugged. “People drop dead all the time, and nobody can say why. But you might as well simply say he choked to death. It’s not an uncommon cause of death. I’ve known men of great distinction and accomplishment who have choked on peach pits or chicken bones. It will account for his blackened face.”

“I shall do it then,” he agreed.

“How many of the household know for certain that he was murdered?” Cleopatra asked.

Gabinius thought for a moment. “Doson, Androcles the steward, and the slave who discovered him; and she’s spoken to no one but Doson, he’s assured me. My own men, and I’ve instructed them to keep silent about it. For the rest, they just know the master’s dead.”

“Let’s see how long we can keep it that way,” I advised. When will you notify Rome?”

“It’s too late for a ship to sail today. I’ll compose a letter to the Senate this evening and dispatch it to Rome at first light. I can’t detach any of your ships, and Caesar’s stripped the naval base as you learned. I’ll hire a ship to row hard to Tarsus. There is a naval base there, and the commander is a friend of mine, Lentulus Scaevola. He’ll detach a fast cutter to take the letter to Brundisium or Tarentum. A rider can carry the letter to the house of Cicero in Rome, and Cicero can present it to the Senate.”

I thought about it for a moment. “I probably can’t get word there any faster. Are you and Cicero on good terms these days?”

“Excellent. He’ll call a special meeting of the Senate for this.” He was all but grinning, and I could see the wheels turning in his head. Cleopatra looked from one of us to the other, clearly mystified.

“Let’s do it that way then.” Finished with my examination of the area around the bed, I straightened. “And now, if you don’t mind, the princess and I are overdue for dinner and some rest.”

“Go ahead. I’ll see to things here. Doson!” He bellowed the name, but the majordomo had been waiting just outside the bedchamber door. He hurried in. “General Gabinius?”

“You may release the household staff, but none of them are to leave the house or talk to anyone outside until I say so. They are to attend to their late master’s guests as always. Begin preparations for a funeral and tell everyone to mourn quietly. They can wail as loud as they like at the funeral.”

The majordomo bowed. “It shall be as you say, General.” We left and repaired to the garden. Slaves appeared and efficiently set about making us comfortable and getting us fed. Despite swollen eyes and tear tracks, they didn’t appear especially grief stricken, merely anxious in the usual fashion of slaves when the master is dead and their future uncertain.

“Is this the way you Romans always do things?” Cleopatra asked. “I find it difficult to believe that a serving Roman official is deferring to a
mere exile! Why did you not take charge and arrange affairs to your own liking?”

I took a sip of the excellent wine and selected a seedcake. “Rome is a republic, not a monarchy,” I reminded her. “I am not a viceroy, and Gabinius is not a powerless nobody, like someone your father would exile, stripping him of lands, wealth, and influence. Rome is governed by great families whose leading members hold the consulships and praetorships. Their supporters comprise Romans of all levels. There are the bulk of the senators, who are men who have held the lesser offices; the class of
equites,
who have money and property but who don’t go into politics, like our friend Sergius Nobilior the banker; and the great bulk of the citizenry, who vote in the Plebeian Assembly. There is also the Centuriate Assembly and the Tribunician Committee, but these days real power lies in the Senate and the Plebeian Assembly.”

I dipped the seedcake in honey. “Politics consists of a constant rearrangement of support and power blocs, as each of the great families seeks to place as many of its own members and supporters in high public office as it can. Yesterday’s deadly enemy becomes today’s staunch ally. An exile voted by an indignant Senate may be rescinded by a friendly tribune passing a law in the Plebeian Assembly.”

She shook her head. “It sound like anarchy. It’s political chaos.” “It can be confusing, but it works well for us. For instance, the nearest naval base is at Tarsus. The commander there is Scaevola, and he is a supporter of Pompey, who detests the Metelli. If I were to send that letter under my own seal, he’d put it on the slowest scow on the sea.

“I
would
send the letter to Cicero to read to the Senate. Cicero has always been friendly with me and usually with my family as well. He once attacked Gabinius in a lawsuit. As I recall, he characterized Gabinius as ‘a prancing, effeminate dancing boy in hair curlers.’”

“That is difficult to imagine,” she replied.

“Nothing is too scurilous in a Roman lawsuit. A few years later, he ably defended Gabinius in a lawsuit for extortion; but Cicero was no longer so popular in Rome, and Gabinius was exiled. Gabinius is a strong supporter of Caesar though. So when Caesar returns from Gaul, he will have Gabinius recalled and restored to all his honors. This sort of thing happens all the time.”

She sipped at her wine and said nothing for a while, then declared, “You people are insane. That is no way to run a petty city-state, much less
a great empire. Can you really administer
anything
on a basis of friendships and feuds and temporary pacts of assistance between families and individuals? Can anything of importance be decided when four separate assemblies have to take a vote? When one consul can overrule the other and a decision of the Senate can be blocked by the veto of a single tribune? It is madness!”

“We’ve done rather well with it,” I said, with some complacency. “We control most of the world and are quickly expanding into the rest of it. Our system may lack the orderliness of a monarchy with a king and a hereditary nobility, but it spares us the government of pedigreed imbeciles. In Rome any man of great will and ability can shape the destiny of the world.”

My confident words were purely for her benefit. The sad fact was that our rickety old Republic was fast coming apart. It was being destroyed by self-seeking megalomaniacs like Caesar, Pompey, and Gabinius, and, I hate to admit, by reactionary, aristocratic families like my own. We thought ourselves conservative because we steered a moderate course between the would-be Alexanders, but our maneuverings always had the goal of expanding our own clientage, holdings, and influence.

“Rome may be master of the world,” she said, “but soon one of your great men must make himself master of Rome. There can be no other outcome.”

The coming years were to prove her words prophetic.

T
HAT NIGHT A DREAM CAME TO ME
. M
OST
people make far too much of dreams, attaching vast import to the most banal reflections of everyday cares, woes, and ambitions. I do not believe that the gods often put themselves to the trouble of sending prophetic visions to individuals, and it is usually a mark of vanity to believe oneself the frequent recipient of such divine messages. When the gods wish to communicate with us, they speak to the entire community; and they do so through the medium of thunder and lightning, the flights of birds, and signs put in the heavens. We have officials and priests whose task it is to interpret such omens.

Personally, I have never believed that the entrails of sacrificial animals have anything to do with it. That is mere Etruscan superstition.

Nevertheless, upon very special occasions, I experience a dream vision so remarkable that I think it must be sent by some divine agency,
although perhaps not by a true Olympian. My vanity is not that great. Each of us, man or woman, is born with an attendant genius. These spirits watch over us and inspire us throughout life. It may be that they are in contact with other, equally supernatural beings and are able, at times of great import in our lives, to pass on messages from a world invisible to us.

However, it is the custom of the immortals to speak in signs, riddles, and conundrums when communicating with mortals; and so it was this time. For what it is worth, this was my dream.

I opened my eyes as from a deep sleep and discovered myself to be surrounded by clouds. In an instant I broke free of the clouds and saw below me a mass of brown and green surrounded by a deep blue-green. At first I could make no sense of what I was seeing. Then it came to me that I was gazing upon a great island lying in the sea. This, I understood, must be how the world looks to a soaring eagle. In the manner of dreams the great height at which I hovered did not alarm me, nor did it occur to me to wonder how I could be flying in the first place. Dreams take place in another world in which there is no past leading to the events we experience there.

I flew down toward the island (somehow I knew how to do this) and began to see details that had been invisible from higher up: ships upon the sea looking like children’s toys, jewel-like towns with white walls and red roofs, and cattle no larger than ants grazing the hillsides.

I began to circle the island and, as I did, saw a disturbance in the wine dark sea perhaps a legionary mile offshore (distances are hard to judge when one is flying). There arose a great boiling and foaming, as if a volcano were erupting far below. The foam rose into a tower and began to take human shape. Soon there stood, larger than the greatest colossus, the form of a beautiful woman. She was, of course, the goddess Venus (well, Aphrodite, to be precise). She was still composed of semitransparent foam, for which I was grateful. To behold a real goddess would have blasted me to vapor even in my dream state. Such sights are not for mortals. I felt no fear but rather experienced awe of a purity I have seldom known in my long life.

Like a great cloud in motion, she strode across the waves, her feet indenting the water as if she walked upon a blue-green mantle thrown across a bed filled with the finest down. When she reached the coast, I expected to see great activity from the tiny towns: people rushing to see,
songs of praise ringing out, a great stoking of altar fires. But I detected no reaction from the minute inhabitants of this place. They did not see her.

With a graceful gesture the goddess beckoned to me, and I followed her. Along the coastline of the island we went, passing many small coves, some of them lively with small fishing craft, some deserted. I was no longer at eagle-soaring height, though I was well above the tallest trees on the shore. I felt now more like a cruising gull, but that was because I was over water. As an attendant of Aphrodite, I suppose I was a dove, that bird being sacred to her.

We came to a part of the island that was different from the rest. A great district was denuded of trees, its soil gouged away into deep pits. Everywhere I saw columns of smoke rising to the heavens, as if a hundred farmsteads were burning.

The goddess arose from the sea and began to walk over the island, her toes just touching the crests of the hills as she strode inland. I followed, flying at the level of her perfect waist.

Inland the devastation was enormous. Whole hillsides and valleys were reduced to bare dirt and rock, furrowed with erosion, the stream muddy and foul. Everywhere the pits and tunnels made the island leprous. Gradually, light faded from the sky, and from the base of every column of smoke there came a sullen, red glow, as of a fire burning night and day.

We came to the other side of the island, and it was dawn again. The night had passed with the magical swiftness of dreams. The goddess walked out upon the waves once more. Below me the coastline was green and beautiful. Here no unnatural despoliation blighted the landscape, and all was serene perfection.

Aphrodite (if it truly was she and not some phantom in her shape) turned a last time and regarded me with a look of great sadness upon her wonderful features. Then she began to lose shape, to collapse in upon herself, returning to the sea until she was no more than scattered streaks of white atop the waves.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
I
WENT ABOUT IN A
daze. The dream did not fade from memory as most of mine do but rather stayed sharp in all its details, and I had no doubt that it was a vision of utmost significance. But what did it mean? There are those who interpret dreams as a profession, but I had always doubted their gifts. In any case
I felt that the goddess had not spoken to me in riddles, but rather had shown me some real thing, though whether this was a reflection of the present or a prophecy of the future I did not know.

Leaving Hermes in the house to relay any messages from the naval base, I walked out into the town. The hour was early, but already it was abuzz with news of the murder. People eyed me warily, perhaps expecting some sort of violent vengeance from Rome, but I paid them no attention. For once my political and street senses were in abeyance. I had my mind on higher matters. Almost without conscious volition, my steps took me back to the Temple of Aphrodite.

“Senator!” The priestess lone regarded me with some surprise. “You are back so soon?” She was supervising a bevy of her ever-charming acolytes who were hanging enormous, colorful wreaths all over the temple and its grounds.

“I hate to bother you when you are so busy preparing for the festival,” I said to her. “But last night I believe your goddess sent me a vision.” I added hastily, “Please, I am not the sort of person who has visions all the time. Quite the contrary in fact. That is why I hope you might be able to help me.”

“Surely,” she said, as if this were the sort of request she received every day. Maybe it was. She issued instructions to the white-robed women and asked me to accompany her. We went to a secluded part of the garden surrounded by a high hedge, its open side over looking the sea. I sat beside her on a marble bench supported by carved dolphins and told her of my dream. She followed this recitation with a look of deep seriousness, saying nothing until I was finished.

“This is most unusual,” she said, when I was done. “Aphrodite very often appears in dreams. Most often it is because the dreamers are troubled in matters of love or fearful of barrenness or the dangers of childbirth. She has dominion over all these things. Here on Cyprus and some of the other islands she guides the thoughts and decisions of seafarers as well. What you saw in your dream is most uncharacteristic.”