The Princess and the Pirates(82)

“My compliments. You’ve achieved an elegant balance in your double career. I take it the poet’s art does not pay well?”

“Alas, no. But that’s no matter. One practices art at the bidding of the muse, not for gain. But I do like to live well, and for that a supplemental income is necessary. The old fleets used to use actors for this purpose, but they were not welcome in respectable households except as entertainers, so a poet is a better choice.”

“I am getting dense in my old age,” I said bitterly. “It was you who suggested giving Ariston the oath at the Temple of Poseidon, then you excused yourself while I was distracted by Flavia disporting herself with her sailors. That was when you arranged the ambush, wasn’t it? Then you led us there at a deliberate pace with your poem about Orpheus and Eurydice—it was not at all a bad poem, by the way—and you held your torch high when the attack began to make sure nobody mistook you for one of the intended victims.”

My eyes were adjusting to the dimness, and I could see we were in a large cellar that was used for storage, with bales and jars stacked all around. I could see no way out except for the way we had come in. The Greeks whose names I had already forgotten bound my hands behind me and thrust me against a bale, forcing me to sit.

“Now stay there and don’t try to stand, Decius,” Alpheus said, “or I’ll be forced to nail one of your feet to the floor with a dagger.”

“I’m not going anywhere just yet. I truly want to meet your master.” A brave show harms nothing when you are helpless.

“Employer,” he corrected. “I have no master.”

At that moment a large form blocked the light from the door. Then a man entered with more men at his back. He wore a toga and blinked in the dimness for a moment. It was the pale-faced man from the public garden. Mentally I cursed myself.

“I should have known the second I saw your pasty face! But you were with other Romans, so I assumed you’d arrived with the grain fleet. But you should have been deeply tanned after such a voyage, and I didn’t catch it. When did you cut your hair and shave off your beard? This morning?”

“Yesterday. Actually, I’ve been arranging passage away from here on the flagship.” The rumbling voice was unmistakable. If he’d just spoken a few more words in the garden, I would have caught the Ostian accent. By such small chances are great opportunities lost.

“I knew Spurius couldn’t be your real name. Are you really the extribune Marcinus?”

“I am indeed.”

“And I suppose you were one of Gabinius’s officers in Syria and Egypt?”

“That, too. What are we to do with you, Decius Caecilius?”

“We kill him and get away from here,” said another voice I recognized. A pudgy man pushed forward and glared at me with his fists planted on his hips, Sergius Nobilior. “Why couldn’t you have kept chasing after the pirates as the Senate told you to? Did you have to poke your big Metellan nose into everything that was happening on this island? Some of us were doing very well here until you began stirring things up!”

“Nobilior! And our wives have become such good friends!”

“Yes, and a very good time they’re having today, if I know Flavia. And don’t worry, she’d never let me harm a Caesar. You, however, have to go.” He looked at one of the Greeks. “Cut his throat.” Nobody moved.

“My men don’t take orders from you,” Marcinus said. “His wife is a Caesar?”

“Niece to the great Caius Julius,” Nobilior affirmed. “But don’t let that concern you. He’ll be glad to have her a widow. He’ll be able to marry her off to someone far more important.”

“If he’s murdered, there could be a lot of trouble for you,” Marcinus said. “His family is one of the greatest, even if he doesn’t amount to much. But don’t let me stop you. I won’t be here. I’ll be on a leisurely voyage to Alexandria, then home. But do your own throat cutting.”

Nobilior stood there and fumed for a while, then Alpheus spoke up. “Must you Romans be so crude and brutal? He need not be murdered at all.”

“My thought exactly,” I said.

“This is festival time, a time when all the usual strictures on community behavior are relaxed. What more natural than a veteran tavern crawler like Decius Caecilius Metellus should have a bit too much to drink, topple into the harbor on his way back to the naval base, and drown? Let’s get some wine in him and on him, wait until nightfall, and carry him down to the water. The distance isn’t great, and nobody takes notice of men carrying a drunk at a time like this.”