The Princess and the Pirates (21 page)

My two faithful if somewhat insubordinate followers hoisted me off to my quarters.

“U
P
!”
SOMEBODY SHOUTED
. “G
ET UP
and get dressed!”

“Why?” I asked, not entirely sure where I was. I was fairly certain that I wasn’t in Rome, but that left a lot of territory to be considered. Gaul? Alexandria? Somehow I felt not. I knew it would come to me, given time.

Hermes yanked me to my feet and pulled my military tunic down over my shaky body. I was on military duty, that was clear enough. “What is going on?” Even to my own ears I sounded querulous as a used-up old man.

“The pirates have been seen!” Hermes said. “They sailed right past the harbor mouth, bold as purple-assed baboons!”

“Pirates!” I cried. “Thank the gods! For a moment there I thought the Gauls were attacking. Well, by all means, let’s go kill these pirates so I can get back to bed.”

Somehow Hermes got me fully dressed, armed, and halfway presentable and, accompanied by the redoubtable Ariston, we hurried down to the naval harbor.

Ion had the ships in the water and fully manned, although many of the men were cradling their heads or vomiting over the sides or collapsed at their benches. I clambered onto my ship and gave orders to push off. Cleopatra’s ship came smartly alongside.

“We have been waiting for you,” she said, seeming a bit indignant. “They went past about an hour ago, sailing southward. My own lookout spotted them.”

“Did you see them with your own eyes?” I asked.

“I did.”

“How did you get down here in time?”

“I slept on my ship, as you should have done! And I kept my crew here as well. No banqueting allowed. Now we will lose them!”

“Don’t scold me. I have a wife for that. How many ships?”

“Three.”

I tried to force rational thought through the fog within my thundering skull. “Just three? They must have split the fleet. All right, then. Oars out and let’s be after them. Timekeeper, as soon as we are in open water, I want you to set us a quick pace.”

Groaning and complaining, the men set to their oars. At first their strokes were so ragged that they might as well have been untrained land-lubbers. Soon, though, they were back into their usual rhythm and began to sweat out the previous night’s wine. I ran the marines through boarding drills and catapult drills until they, too, were sweating in their armor, and I made sure that the men on the other ships were doing the same. By the time the pirate vessels were in sight, I felt that the worst was over. My head was almost clear, my stomach had settled down, and the strength was returning to my limbs.

We were close to shore, near a stretch of beach I had not seen in my previous outings. It was rocky and deserted, except for some ruined old buildings that looked as if they had not been inhabited in centuries. It was an ill-favored place, fit haunt for harpies and Gorgons.

“They’re coming about,” Ion said. Ahead of us, the three lean vessels had dug in their oars, halting their forward motion. Then, with the port and starboard oars working rapidly in opposite directions, they spun on their axes and presented their rams to us.

“Prettily done,” Ariston noted. He had come to stand beside me in the prow of the
Nereid.

“That’s right,” agreed Ion. “And I think we had better do the same, Senator.”

“Why? We came here to catch them, and we are still four to their three, however well they row.”

He looked at me with disgust. “And how long do you think that will
last. If three of them think they can take on four warships, their friends can’t be far away. They’ve laid a trap for us, Senator.”

“Do you think I am totally dense? Hung over or not, I knew they were luring us out when I heard they’d traipsed past the harbor in something less than full strength. I was sent to bag these brigands, and I intend to do it. If their remaining ships will just come out from behind whichever headland they are lurking, I will give battle right here. Just remember to take some of them alive so that we can find out where their base may be.”

Ariston laughed. “Maybe the Senate sent out the right man after all.”

Ion shook his head. “I still have my doubts.”

As the ships drew nearer, I saw what the island woman had meant when she said the pirate ships had been “the same color as the sea.” The hulls were painted a deep shade of blue-green. With yards lowered and masts unstepped, they would blend with the surrounding water, making them difficult to discern at any distance. My own ships, painted in their traditional naval colors, were visible from far away. Cleopatra’s, with all its gilding, could be seen as far as the horizon on a sunny day and was tolerably visible by moonlight.

“Down with the yards and masts!” Ion bellowed, as if reading my mind. Quickly, the crews of all four vessels lowered the yards, then lifted the masts from their footings and laid them upon the grooved wooden blocks on the decks. It is customary to do this before going into battle because otherwise the ships would be top-heavy and inclined to wallow during fast maneuvers. In place of the mast, they raised a shorter, thicker post with a pulley at its top. This was to be used as a crane for raising and dropping the
corvus
when we got within boarding distance.

Thinking of this caused me to note an odd discrepancy in the ships fast approaching us. “Why are their masts still up?” I wondered aloud. I could now see this plainly, and that their yards, though lowered, lay athwart the deck railings, a most inconvenient arrangement for combat.

“They must mean to hoist sail and run for it,” Ion speculated, “but there’s little sense to that. In this weak breeze we’d catch them easily. And where are their reinforcements? We ought to have seen them by now.”

“Ariston,” I said, “any suggestions?”

“They can’t mean to fight,” he said. “The odds aren’t right, and they haven’t rigged for it. It must be a trap, but what sort?”

I was beginning to have a terrible feeling about this, but what
choice did I have? With my four warships I simply could
not
run from three scruffy pirate vessels. I’d be the laughingstock of the Forum. I’d be dubbed “Piraticus” in derision, as the elder Antonius had been named Creticus after that lowly regarded island people beat him in battle.

“Captain,” shouted a sailor, “we’re taking on water!”

“What!” Ion and I shouted at once. Then we saw. Water was bubbling up through the stones that ballasted the ship’s hull.

“Impossible!” Ion said, wonder tinging his voice. “I’ve seen to every inch of this hull! There’s no rot, and we’d have felt it if we’d scraped a submerged rock.”

“Senator,” shouted one of the other shipmasters just a few paces to our starboard, “we’re shipping water! We have to beach before we sink!” The skipper just beyond him reported the same problem.

Cleopatra pulled up to our port side, and she came to the rail. “What is wrong?”

I knew that my face was flaming as purple as a
triumphators
robe. “We’ve been sabotaged! Our hulls have been bored through and we’re sinking! Clearly you are not. We have to get these tubs on shore and repair them before it is too late. You will have to cover us while we retreat.”

“There are three of them and one of me, Senator,” she said. “I am not the one who left his ships abandoned all night! Queen Artemisia had a way out of this sort of situation, remember?”

I remembered all too well. Artemisia of Halicarnassus and her ships had been attached as allies to the fleet of Xerxes. When she saw that the Greeks were going to win the battle of Salamis, she rammed and sank a Persian vessel so that the nearby enemy would think her ships were Greek. As soon as she saw a way clear, she hoisted sail and fled from the battle.

I was not going to argue with a subordinate officer, which was what she had wanted to be. “Keep between us and those ships until we are safely beached. Then you can pull for Paphos. If your rowers are as good as you say they are, you’ll have no trouble outdistancing them.”

Ion began a brisk series of orders, and our rowers got to work. In the bows of the ships, men with long poles probed the bottom, feeling for submerged rocks. All the rest, sailors and marines, bailed frantically with buckets of wood or tarred leather, with cooking pots and with helmets. The pirate ships drew closer, but Cleopatra stayed with us. When the poles touched bottom, Ion turned the ships so that our rams were seaward, and we began backing water, moving sluggishly now as the hulls filled.
The men with the poles moved to the sterns by the steering oars and began calling off the depth as we neared shore.

“Rocky bottom, rocky beach,” Ion groused. “I’d never go ashore in this place except the alternative is to sink.”

“Captain,” Ariston said, “they may have their main strength ashore. We’ll be vulnerable as we leave the ships.”

“We’ll have to chance it,” I told him.

The blue ships held off, just out of catapult range, grinning faces lining the rails. I looked for a large, long-haired figure, but there were several such, and I could spot no man I might positively identify as Spurius. Seldom in my life had I felt so frustrated and mortified. It did, however, beat being drowned.

With a teeth-rattling grate, our stern crunched onto the stony bottom. We were within twenty feet of dry land, a bit of luck. The prospect of leaping full-armored into chest-deep water and wading a hundred yards to shore has been known to cool the combative ardor of the bravest soldiers.

“Swing the
corvus
around,” I ordered, “and drop it onto the beach. No man should have to get his shoes wet. I am going to take half the men ashore and set up security. When I’ve done that, we can unload the ships and haul them ashore for repair.” I ordered the archers and catapult handlers to stay in the bows, just in case the pirates should try to attack us, and lined up the rest of the marines to rush ashore.

The ponderous gangplanks swung around and dropped, their bronze spikes crunching into the rocky beach, the ships shivering with the impact. Immediately the marines double-timed down the planks and ashore. They fanned out and established a semicircular defensive perimeter, shields to front, spears slanting outward.

“They’re leaving,” Ion remarked. I saw the yards ascend the masts of the blue ships, the sails dropping to hang slack for a moment, then filling with wind, billowing like pregnant bellies as the pirates laughed, hooted, and cheered.

“Anyone inland?” I called. A few curious goats studied us from the rocks, but nobody saw so much as a single human form. I was so frustrated that I almost wished for an attack. No one, however, wanted to oblige me. “Ariston, Hermes, take some men and scout inland. Raise a shout if you see anyone. Everyone else, stand to arms until they come back.”

I sat on a convenient rock, already sure they would find nothing. Spurius did not want to trap me. He wanted to humiliate me. Trust a
Roman to know that men of my class preferred death to ignominy. Actually I could take quite a bit of humiliation before I considered death preferable, but this could mean the end of my political career. Beached on Cyprus by a pack of scruffy criminals who never had to shoot a single arrow my way.

“Cheer up, Senator,” Ion said, reading my expression. “You still have your ships and your men. You’ve lost nothing but a little reputation, and you didn’t have all that much to begin with.” I sensed that he meant this kindly, but it galled me anyway.

“Why,” I said, “didn’t the rowers notice the ships were getting heavier?”

“I intend to find out. Soon as I get a look at the hulls, I’ll tell you.” Cleopatra was rowed ashore in her golden skiff, and slaves carried her onto the beach so she would not get her golden sandals wet. If she had some cutting remark prepared, she changed her mind when she saw my face.

“Gabinius did this to me,” I said to her.

“How?”

“He invited my sailors and marines to the funeral banquet, then he sent men to sabotage my ships while they were deserted. He is in collusion with Spurius. For all I know, he could
be
Spurius! All it would take is a wig and a false beard.”

“That is far-fetched,” she protested. “But collusion, perhaps. But why?”

“Any number of reasons, simple profit being the most obvious. He likes to live well, he has a minor army of thugs to pay, and he had a bad reputation for extortion when he was a governor. Even Cicero couldn’t get him an acquittal, so that has to say something.”

“Gabinius strikes me as the sort of man who would simply kill you if you displeased him.”

“Perhaps he’s learned subtlety out here in the East. He wants to dishonor me and perhaps humiliate my family in the process. Maybe he’s planning to go over to Pompey.”

Her eyebrows rose. “More Roman politics?”

“It gets more complicated than this, believe me. With me out of the way, he might get the Senate to appoint him governor of Cyprus. Then the island would be his to loot. It will do until I can think of a more plausible reason. But whatever the reason, Gabinius was the only man with the means. He used his friend’s funeral banquet to send me out to sea with a hung-over crew rowing leaky ships.”

She shrugged. “Maybe it is true. What will you do now?”

“First, I have to assess the damage. I suppose it’s too much to hope that the ships can be made seaworthy quickly. You may have to go back to Paphos for supplies.”

“Why don’t you go with me?”

“No, I’ll not return without my ships and my men. He’ll be waiting at the harbor with a smirk on his face. Just say publicly that my ships struck submerged rocks and have to be repaired. He’ll have to go along with it or admit his complicity.”

“Kings do more foolish things to save face. I shall do as you ask.”

Ask, I thought. So much for her being my subordinate officer.

An hour later Hermes and Ariston returned. They had seen no one save a few goatherds, and the goatherds had seen only other goatherds in the last year or more. So I had the men down arms and set to unloading the ships. This done, we dragged them ashore. Ion winced at the sound of the keels grating on the stony beach.