The King's Gambit(56)

“It’s beginning to make a sort of sense,” I allowed. “And it’s even worse than I’d thought. They’re both in on it, Milo. Crassus as well as Pompey.”

We were only a few steps from the Juno dock and within minutes we arranged passage upriver on a barge carrying amphorae of Sicilian wine. Under no circumstances was I going to travel on one carrying fish. As soon as we were seated in the bow, the barge cast off and we began to move up the harbor to the river mouth, which we had passed the night before. Milo watched the oarsmen critically for a while, then turned his attention on me.

“I’m not certain I want to be so near you,” he said. “A man with not one but two Consuls for enemies must draw lightning like a temple roof. Why do you think Crassus was in on it?”

“It was Crassus who had Spartacus boxed in at Messina. As soon as he made the agreement with Spartacus, Tigranes must have gone to Crassus to see if he could get a better offer.”

“But Pompey fought the slave army too,” Milo pointed out.

I shook my head. “That was later. Pompey was still on his way from Spain when Spartacus was at Messina. He fought the band under Crixus after they broke through the breastwork Crassus built across the peninsula. Besides, who was in a better position to bribe a whole fleet of pirates? Crassus is incredibly rich, while Pompey squanders all his wealth pampering his soldiers.”

“It makes sense so far,” Milo said. “But that was the slave rebellion last year, and the uprising of Sertorius a few years before that. What has it all to do with what’s happening in Rome right now?”

I settled back against a bale of the sacking used to pad the big wine jars. “I don’t know,” I admitted, “although I’m beginning to entertain some suspicions. The pirates’ chief— What shall we call him? Diplomat?—is in Rome right now, in the last month of the joint Consulate of two men he’s dealt with before. The pirates’ former agent at Rome, Paramedes, was murdered a few days ago. It strains coincidence.”

“And Tigranes is the houseguest of your friend Claudius.” There are few things more satisfying than unraveling a conspiracy, and Milo was enjoying it. “But where does the murder of Paulus come in?”

“That I have yet to work out,” I said, uncomfortably remembering the palanquin I had found in Claudia’s hideaway, the one I had seen leaving Paulus’s house after my visit. “He was rich, though, maybe even as rich as Crassus. That’s enough of a connection for suspicion’s sake. As I figure it, Sinistrus killed Paramedes and was killed in turn to silence him.”

“Or he might have tried to blackmail his employer,” Milo pointed out.

“Even better. Whichever, he was an expendable nobody. I just need to know who bought him out of the Statilian school and then freed him, at a time when it was illegal to do so. The praetor who allowed the transaction must have been in on it as well.”

Milo grinned. “You’ll have half the Senate involved in this soon.”

“It could go that far,” I said, only half-joking.

“There is still the matter of the stolen amulet,” he said.

“There I am totally mystified. Until it’s found, I can’t fathom how such a thing could be of any significance.”

We were silent for a while, admiring the river. There was no convenient breeze to speed us along, but the rhythmic chant of the rowers was soothing. The dip and splash of the oars was melodious as well.

“Tell me,” I said, “how does a strapping young rower from Ostia happen to arrive in our city with the good old Roman name of Annius?”

He leaned back against the bale and laced his fingers behind his head. “My father’s name was Caius Papius Cel-sus. He was a landowner with an estate just south of here. We didn’t get on well and I ran away to the navy when I was sixteen. My mother was from Rome and she always spoke about the city, how big and rich it was, how even an outsider could become a great man there. So last year I came to Rome and had myself adopted by my mother’s father, Titus Annius Luscus. Even as an Ostian I had citizenship, but this gives me a city tribe. I can attend the Plebeian Council and the Centuriate Assembly. I’m learning street-level politics from Macro.”

“And you’re learning Senate-level politics from me,” I said.

He laughed his great laugh again. “You’re right. And so far, it looks just like the street.”

A trip upstream is, for obvious reasons, slower than one downstream. Recent rains had made the river higher and swifter than usual for that time of year. To make matters worse, there was a constant head wind. We could have walked to Rome along the Via Ostiensis in about four hours. This way, it was almost dark when we arrived in Rome, but we arrived without sore feet.