The Princess and the Pirates(66)

“I don’t doubt Harmodias has been doing exactly that every year. What about Gabinius’s house?”

“It’s about a mile south of town on the coastal road. It’s built near the beach and has its own little wharf.”

“That’s convenient.”

He sighed. “What are you planning?”

“Tonight we are going to pay the illustrious general a little visit. We’ll go by water. That way nobody will see us leave through one of the city gates.”

“Just you and me?”

“We’ll take Ariston. He’s a good man in a tight spot, and besides, he can row, which neither of us can. Go find him and send him here. Then get some sleep. We may have a long night ahead of us.” He sighed again as he went to do my bidding. He knew better than to argue. Sometimes he acted more like my caretaker than my slave, but I suppose he had to look after his own well-being. After all, where would he find another master as sweet tempered and reasonable as I?



AN HOUR AFTER SUNDOWN, WE GOT INTO the skiff. The three of us wore dark tunics, and Hermes and I wore soft-soled sandals. Ariston, as usual, was barefoot. He had also covered his startling, blond hair with a scarf. He set to the oars in near silence, having already expertly muffled the tholes with scraps of cloth. We crossed the naval harbor and slid among the ships in the commercial basin as silently as an eel gliding along the surface. As we passed Cleopatra’s yacht I saw lights burning in her little cabin. On deck, her crew went about their tasks as silently as we.

Not for the first time, I wished I could trust the princess, but I knew all too well how foolish it would be to do so. In so many ways she seemed like a civilized human being: cultured, staggeringly well educated, high-born, and charming beyond all common understanding of the term.

She was also an alien, an Orientalized pseudo-Greek, and the royal progeny of centuries of incest. On top of that she was a willful child and, should she become queen, might well remain a willful child all her life. Such people are supremely dangerous. They are mercurial, self-centered, and usually lack a conscience, as the rest of us understand such things. No doubt she believed herself to be something of a goddess. Even if she was my staunch ally and supporter at the moment, she could easily change her allegiance the next day, should the mood take her.

Once past the harbor mole, Ariston began rowing hard, pulling us southward with long, powerful strokes. The moon was nearly full, and I remembered that the Aphrodisia would commence upon the full moon. Curious, I thought, that Aphrodite’s festival would be governed by the moon, which is the realm of Diana, or rather Artemis, since we were in Greek territory. But then, Aphrodite was a sea-goddess here. Perhaps, in the days of the world’s youth, the gods and goddesses were not so strictured in their aspects as they have become since men began raising temples to them.

“Should be near here somewhere,” Ariston said in a low voice, after he had rowed for the better part of an hour. I scanned the shoreline for the wharf. Even as I looked, I saw a flame making its way from the beach out onto the water. It was someone bearing a torch, and it looked as if he was walking along a jetty. At the end of the structure, the flame began waving back and forth. Behind and above this vision, a line of perhaps ten more torches appeared, spaced evenly to illuminate what had to be a path or stairway leading from the wharf to the bluff above, where I judged the general’s house to be.

“Now what—” I barely got the words out before Hermes gripped my shoulder.

“A ship!” he said, in an urgent whisper. Immediately, Ariston shipped his oars and turned to look.

“You have better eyes than mine,” I said. “Where?” But then I heard it: the steady, two-note piping of a hortator setting time for ship rowers. A low, shadowy form slid across our line of sight perhaps half a bow-shot ahead of us. I could just hear the low call of the poleman in the bow calling out the depth.

“A penteconter,” Ariston reported, this being a ship with only a single bank of oars, much favored for raiding and smuggling. It has a limited cargo capacity but needs only half the crew of a Liburnian.

“Think they’ve seen us?” I asked him.

“Doubt it. Approaching shore like that, in the dark, all eyes are straight ahead.”

“But they’ve got a light to bear on,” Hermes said. “Doesn’t that tell them they’re on course?”

“They’ll take no chances,” he replied. “Ships get nightbound on the water sometimes, and people ashore light false beacons to lure them onto the rocks so they can take the cargo. Coast guards will do the same thing to lure smugglers in. They’ll feel for rocks and keep their hands on their swords until they’re safely tied up and sure of whom they’re dealing with.”