The Princess and the Pirates(57)
If there was to be trouble, I thought, it would be because the people here resented the insulting presence of these armed hooligans.
Even as the late governor went up in smoke, tables were being set up for a public memorial banquet. This agreeable custom seemed to put everyone in a fine mood. In no time people were taking their places at the long tables as slaves hired for the occasion heaped them first with great baskets of fruit, cheeses, and bread, then with plentiful courses of fish, more modest quantities of veal, lamb, fowl, and rabbit. The wine was indifferent and heavily watered, but only the fabulously wealthy can afford better for a public banquet. Knowing this, some of us took care to provide our own wine.
Most of the population were seated at long benches, but there were also special tables for the attending dignitaries and these had been provided with proper dining couches. I was, naturally, placed at one of these tables. On my right was Alpheus and on my left, none other than Flavia. I wondered, perhaps unworthily, whether she had bribed the majordomo to secure this arrangement.
“How goes your pirate hunt, Decius Caecilius?” she asked, apparently having decided that we were now intimate enough for her to drop my title and use praenomen and nomen only. I would have to be on my guard when she began to use my praenomen alone.
“Complicated by this lamentable turn of events,” I admitted. “I shall be infernally distracted until the matter of Silvanus’s murder has been put to rest. If this portends danger to Roman security on the island, the pirates may have to take second place in my priorities for a while.”
“How would you deal with such a distraction?” Alpheus asked.
“Well, Gabinius has his veterans, and I have my sailors and marines under arms. There is a sizable body of mercenary material hanging about the bars and taverns, and doubtless a quick voyage to the mainland would net us a sizable force. If necessary, we could secure the island for Rome. I would just rather not.”
“It seems a free-and-easy sort of military arrangement,” said the poet. “I am no soldier, but I would think your Senate would frown upon such unauthorized adventures.”
“Outside Italy,” I explained, “there is really nothing to stop any citizen from raising an ad hoc army to deal with an emergency. As long as it is Roman interests he looks after, the Senate won’t say a word in disap-probation. Some years ago Caesar, as mere quaestor, happened to be in Syria when he heard of an invasion from Pontus. He raised a personal army, marched to meet the invasion, and sent the enemy back across the border, all without so much as consulting the Roman governor of Syria. He suffered no censure for his high-handedness.”
“It helped that he was successful,” Flavia put in.
“It goes without saying that victory is essential,” I affirmed.
“But why,” Alpheus asked, “when your General Crassus was defeated at Carrhae, did Rome not immediately pursue that war? I would think that Parthia, not Gaul, would be your first priority.”
“Crassus wanted a war with the Parthians to match Pompey in military glory. But the Parthians had done nothing to offend us, and the Senate refused to declare war. But Crassus was legendarily rich so he raised and paid for his own legions and marched out on his own. A Tribune of the Plebs named Trebonius laid a terrible curse on Crassus as he left Rome to join his army.”
“It was the terror of Rome for a while,” Flavia said. She drew a little phallus amulet from its resting place between her breasts and used it to make a complicated gesture, warding evil away from us. The tribune’s infamous curse had been terribly potent, endangering the whole citizenry.
“So when Crassus was defeated,” I continued, “most people said good riddance. We are under no obligation to avenge him and his army, and there has been no break in diplomatic relations with that kingdom, though young Cassius has been skirmishing a bit with them, or so I heard just before I left Rome. We would like to have the lost eagles back, and we want to free the survivors from captivity; but I suspect that when it happens we will just pay ransom.”
“I doubt that,” Flavia said. “Parthia is too rich a plum to resist plucking for long. When Caesar and Pompey are free of their current distractions, one of them will have a go at Parthia. Or Gabinius might when his exile is over. And none of them will blunder the way Crassus did, the senile old fool. Think how the plebs will love it when they see those freed captives marching in the Triumph, carrying their lost eagles.”
“You may well be right,” I admitted. I had known few women in Rome who were so politically astute. I looked around for her husband and saw him at a table next to some city dignitaries. Beyond him, at a table set for commoners, I saw Ariston. It annoyed me that he should expose himself in such a fashion and resolved to upbraid him for it. I turned to Alpheus.