Two For The Lions Page 23

  The air was clear as I sprang up the slope. To my left, the sea was stunningly blue, with a series of small islands or rocky outcrops near the shore. Breakers thundered in a cute cove, way below. A steep drop had opened before me. I stopped short; I caught my breath.

  Cut into the encircling cliff that had once formed a secluded little beach, was the most perfectly sited amphitheatre. It was in a sad condition, crying out for restoration by some high-minded public benefactor. The approach from the city had brought us out right at the top, with immediate access to the upper rows of seats. While I stood aloft like a statue on the roof of a temple, Claudia had climbed down several of the precarious terraces, where she was now seated with her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands, sobbing hysterically.

  I let her get her troubles out of her system for a while. I had to think out what to do. She had been treated appallingly by her crass young lover, and must be ready to throw herself at any sympathetic older man who offered her support. The situation could be dangerous.

  I stood still, with the wind dragging my hair and my feet planted apart for balance" From up here the oceanic horizon seemed to stretch in a semicircle. The beauty and isolation of the setting caught the heartstrings. If your life was good, then standing here, drenched in sunlight and exhilarated from the long walk over rocky ground, could make you glow with contentment. But if your soul already grieved for some desperate reason, the melancholy tug of sea and sky would be unbearable. For the sunken, shuddering girl below, sitting all on her own where there ought to be a noisy, sun-bleached audience, this heart-stopping theatre provided a desolate scene in which to dwell upon all she had thrown away"

  Once she seemed quieter, I climbed down to her" I made enough noise to warn her that I was coming, then I sat alongside on the steep stone blocks. I felt the trapped heat strike up warm through the cloth of my tunic; the edge of the stonework scratched against the back of my thighs Claudia must have blown her nose and wiped her eyes, though her face was, still wet as she stared out over the stage below us to where the breakers were pounding hard on the pale sand of the cove. She came from Corduba, which has a rather marshy river but is well inland; perhaps for her the call of the sea here would be stirringly exotic.

  "The noise of the waves must be quite a challenge for performers." I chose a neutral remark on purpose. I wished Helena was here to do this for me.

  I struck a casual pose, with my arms folded and one boot stuck out. I sighed thoughtfully. Claudia remained expressionless. Soothing young women when they are suffering can be hard work. I too stared out at the horizon. "Cheer up; things can only improve."

  I sensed that further tears were streaming down Claudia's face, as she ignored my advice.

  "However bad it looks to you at the moment, you haven't ruined your life. Nobody suggests going back to Aelianus--but you can face it out and marry someone else, in Rome or Baetica. What do your grandparents suggest?" Primed before I left home, I knew they had written to her that they forgave her. (This took the most practical form permission to draw on their bankers for funds.) She was all they had--always a good position to hold on the board game of life. "You're an heiress, Claudia. You can afford to make more mistakes than most people. Some men will admire your initiative." Or her full coffers, anyway.

  Claudia still made no response. When I was younger she would have been a challenge, but now I liked my women to have character. It was more fun if they answered back.

  "You know, you really must talk to Quintus." Helena and I had a terrible quarrel once. Part of it was that she thought what I had done to make her angry ought to be obvious. I just believed she had given up and dumped me . . . I mean, if it's Quintus you want, Claudia, I'm sure that can be sorted out."

  At last she did turn and look at me.

  I carried on bravely. "He doesn't know. He really does not understand how horrible your journey was for you. He thinks it is sufficient that you shared an exciting experience and both survived it--"

  "He knows how I feel," Claudia said abruptly, as if defending him. Her tone was too dry, however. "We had a long talk about that." Her very restraint told me how angry the argument must have been.

  "The trouble with Quintus," I offered cautiously, "is that he may not feel too sure yet what he wants from life--"

  "Oh he told me what he wants!" scoffed Claudia" Her grey eyes blazed as she announced crossly, "According to him, this is the tale: when he was with you in the forests of Germania Libera, Marcus Didius, he had an encounter with a beautiful and mysterious rebel prophetess, whom he was forced to leave behind but who will haunt him all his life""

  I myself had spent a great deal of effort concealing that story in his interest once we returned to Rome. Trust bloody Justinus to tell the one person to whom he should never have confessed.

  Claudia stood up. Now she sounded even angrier than I expected: "It's nonsense, of course. Who did he really have an affair with? I hope it wasn't a tavern trollop; he may have caught a disease. Was it some married tribune's wife?"

  Everyone in Rome reckoned that Justinus had had a romance with an actress after he came home; apparently Claudia had not heard that one. I cleared my throat nervously. I thought it best to maintain that her beloved had never sought to confide in me.

  "Can I help make this easier for you, Claudia?"

  "Not really. Thank you for your advice," she said coldly. Then she turned and climbed back up the steep rows of seats on her way home, still furious, still heartbroken, yet disconcertingly self-assured.

  Done it again, Falco. While I had been so busy worrying about comforting the distraught girl, she had simply felt patronized. She did not welcome my well-meant intrusion. She was utterly straightforward, and thought she could manage everything herself.

  I knew Helena well enough; I should have expected this: some sad women don't fall into your open arms, they punch you in the eye. I was lucky Claudia Rufina was too shy to kick me as she went past.

  After a few moments of grinning ruefully to myself; I went down to shore level, exploring the theatre. I found Gaius and Nux sunbathing on the beach" I joined them and we relaxed; we threw pebbles and picked seaweed to pieces for a while, then we lads peed against the back of the stage to mark our territory, and since we hadn't eaten for a couple of hours we all strolled home.

  Helena Justina had obviously had a blazing row with her brother, who had gone out in a huff: Helena herself was tight-lipped and silent, sitting outside in the shade nursing the baby with her back to the house; she was performing a nice impersonation of someone wanting to be left alone, so naturally I went up behind her and made my presence felt. Being rebuffed by one female never put me off trying the next one I met. Helena at least allowed me to embrace her, whether she wanted it or not.

  Famia had come in and collapsed; he was now snoring loudly. Claudia had returned and set herself to prepare dinner for everyone else with a martyred air, as if she were the only sensible person in our group.

  It was perhaps true, though if she stuck with it, her future would be lonely, hard-working and glum. There was a spark to her sometimes that I knew made Helena think the girl deserved more. Part of the spark, the only hope of redeeming her, was that Claudia did want better for herself:

  The upshot was that even when Justinus returned home that night, we deferred our discussion of silphium. But the next day when the atmosphere had quietened down, he told me that he had found what he believed was a plant of it, growing in an isolated spot many miles away. To visit it, we would be obliged to leave the women, since it could only be reached on horseback" That suited him, of course. And I won my permit to travel from Helena because she thought that spending time alone with Justinus would give me a chance to sort out his love life.

  I didn't exactly see how that would work. In my opinion, sorting out a fellow's love life requires at least one woman to be present. Still, I was a perfectionist.

  XLIV

  IT WAS A fine day towards the end of April when Justi
nus and I approached the scene of his possible find. We were on horseback, a fact I was seriously regretting, for after four days of hard riding we must have traveled nearly a hundred Roman miles. It might have been more appropriate to calculate the distance in Greek parasangs since we were in Cyrenaica, but why bother; it would not have saved my sore backside.

  He had brought me over the hills, somewhere not too far from the coast on the eastern bulge of the province, near where you turn left heading for Egypt. I know that's vague. If you think I intend to be more precise about the possible location of a priceless commodity, known only to me and one close associate, you can think again!

  There is a legal restriction, in any case. Justinus and I had a brief but brutally tight contract, drawn up for us by Helena before we set out. Maintaining confidentiality about the product we were in business to exploit was its most critical term. Helena Justina had made us both swear to keep silent in perpetuity.

  It was a relief that we had got ourselves away from the troubled atmosphere at Apollonia. In fact even Helena and Claudia had decided they needed a change of scene and were to depart for new lodgings; fired by Justinus' description of the refined city of Cyrene, they were heading there. He and I had made the mistake of querying the possible expense, only to have two independent women inform us they both had their own money, and since we were leaving them with only Gaius and the baby for an unknown period of weeks or months, they would make whatever arrangements suited them, thank you very much.

  We had promised to return as soon as possible and rescue them from any difficulties they might let themselves be lured into, and they had then described to us a cauldron in which we could boil our heads.

  Before we set out, I had chewed on the musty piece of leaf which Justinus produced as a sample. If I had had any choice, instead of galloping off into unknown terrain, exploring the Greek delights of Cyrene would have suited me best too. The so-called silphium was disgusting. Still, nobody eats raw garlic, and I myself had a high disdain for truffles. Owning a world monopoly was the aim. Luxuries only have to be scarce, not nice. Participants' enjoyment is in thinking they have something other people can't acquire or afford. As Vespasian said to Titus about their lucrative urine tax: don't mock the moolay, even if it stinks.

  So here I was. Whether Justinus and I were truly galloping off towards endless chests of chinkies, I did doubt.

  "Tell me, how did you set about finding this magical herb, Quintus?"

  "Well, I had your sketch."

  "That was wrong, I gather. According to my mother I should have drawn you something more like giant fennel."

  "So what does fennel look like?" Justinus asked, apparently serious.

  I watched him thoughtfully, as he forged eagerly ahead. He had a good seat on a horse. He had mastered Rome's least favorite mode of transport with the easy grace he applied to everything. Bareheaded, but with a length of cloth around his neck which he could wind over his dark hair when the sun grew stronger, he seemed to fit in here just as easily as I had seen him merge into Germany. His family had been mad to think they could tie him down to the numbing routine and pomposity of the Senate. He was too acute to stomach the low standards of debate. He would hate the hypocrisy. He enjoyed action too much to be penned into the eternal round of slow dinners among elderly bores with wine stains down their togas whom he was supposed to court, unworthy patrons who would be jealous of his talents and energy.

  He looked back with that daredevil grin. "It was a missing plant hunt, Marcus Didius. I set about my mission the way you would pursue a missing person. I went to the scene, studied the ground, tried to win the confidence of the locals, and eventually started asking discreet questions: who saw the stuff last, what its habits were, why people thought it had disappeared, and so forth."

  "Don't tell me it's being ransomed by kidnappers."

  "No such luck. We could infiltrate and retrieve it then--"

  "With missing persons, I always assume sex is involved somewhere."

  "I'm too young to know about that."

  "You're not so innocent!"

  Perhaps sensing I was about to probe the issue with Claudia, the sly lad burbled, "Anyway, one aspect I had to deal with was that people might not welcome my enquiries."

  "I don't like the sound of this."

  "I can see two difficulties. One: if the story of the silphium being overgrazed by animals is true, whoever owns the greedy flocks will want to continue to pasture them unhindered. I was told the nomad herdsmen actually tore up silphium by the roots to get rid of it."

  "So they definitely won't be pleased to see us," I agreed.

  "Two: the land where this stuff grows is the hereditary property of the tribes who have always lived here. They may well resent strangers appearing and taking an interest. If the plant was to be exploited again, they might want to control it themselves."

  I coaxed my mount past a little bush that was filling him with foolish terror. "So you think that going after silphium might be quite dangerous?"

  "Only if people see us looking, Marcus Didius."

  "You do know how to reassure me."

  "Suppose we really have found silphium again; people must realize what sort of investment it represents. The whole of the economy of Cyrene once depended on this. We will have to reach an accommodation with the landowners."

  "Or pinch a bit and grow it on land of our own." I was thinking of Great-Uncle Scaro. Of course according to Ma, his experimental snippets all fell down and died. Also according to my mother, of course, the family member I most took after was my hopeless great-uncle.

  "Could we cultivate silphium in Italy?" Justinus asked.

  "It was tried. Many people had a go down the centuries--if they could lay hands on it, which the smart Cyrenians tried to prevent. A relative of mine attempted to take cuttings, without any luck. Seeds might work better, though we'd have to work out whether to plant them when they ripened up or in the green. Be prepared: the whole reason silphium was so rare was that it only grew in the particular conditions here. The prospects for transplanting it or cultivating it elsewhere are bleak."

  "I wouldn't mind acquiring land out here." Justinus sounded more than pioneering; he had the grim air of a young man who was resolutely turning his back on all he knew.

  "The problem with that, Quintus, is that even the locals don't have enough fertile soil to go around." I had done some research. From the time of Tiberius, Roman efforts at administering this province had mainly consisted of sending our surveyors to adjudicate land disputes.

  Justinus looked defiant. "Why don't you say, and anyway, I belong in Rome?"

  "You have to decide for yourself where you belong."

  We flogged on past a few hundred more bushes, each one a source of discontent for the fragile horse I had hired. The only good thing about him was that he was easier to quiet than the agitated people I had cast myself among. If this horse had a tricky love life, he was bravely hiding it. Though when I tried to chivy him along, he ignored it just as stubbornly as everybody else did. Frankly, this was a trip where my funds of compassion were starting to run low.

  The day we expected to arrive at the plant site was when things livened up unexpectedly. As we trotted along, trying to merge into the landscape to save us having to invent excuses for being there, shouts disturbed the peace. We ignored them, which led to a series of shrill whistles, then hoarse yells, and finally a thunder of hooves.

  "Don't run."

  "Nowhere to run to."

  "What are we going to say?"

  "I'll leave that to you, Marcus Didius."

  "Oh thanks."

  A group of five or six mounted locals surrounded us, jabbering loudly and waving their arms. They were brandishing long spears, which we eyed with diffidence. Obviously we were for it. We reined in, aiming to be helpful, since there was no alternative.

  Communication was minimal. We tried Greek, then Latin. Justinus applied a friendly smile and even attempted Celtic; he knew en
ough of that to buy hot damson pies, seduce women, and halt wars--but it carried no weight here. Our captors became more angry. I grinned like a man who was confident that the Pax Romana had spread to every corner of all provinces, while I actually swore obscenely in several unpleasant tongues that I had learned at a low moment of my past career.

  "What's up, do you think, Quintus?" I asked, leaning on my horse's neck and playing innocent.

  "I don't know," he murmured, this time through his teeth. "I just have an uncomfortable feeling these may be representatives of the warlike Garamantes!"

  "Would those be the famous, very fierce Garamantes whose traditional recreation is to ride out of the desert looking for plunder? The ones who tend to kill anyone who crosses their path?"

  "Yes, didn't we fight a war against them recently?"

  "I think we did. Can you remember if we won?"

  "I believe a commander called Festus chased them back into the desert, cut them off in a cunning manner, and gave them a smart thrashing."

  "Oh good for him. So if these stalwart fellows are some remnant of a raiding party who survived being slaughtered, they will know we are not to be trifled with?"

  "Either that," agreed my phlegmatic young companion, "or they are hot for revenge and we're in deep shit."

  We kept up the brilliant smiles.

  We extended our repertoire by shrugging a lot, as if helpless to grasp what was wanted. That was pretty plain: we had to ride off with these excitable fellows the way they wanted us to go--and we had to do it immediately. Expecting to be robbed and thrown down a ravine, we let ourselves be nudged along with them. We were armed with swords, though they were in our packs, since we had not expected hairy entertainment. As the men jostled us, still loosing off excited shouts which meant nothing to us, we tried to maintain a cool demeanor; meanwhile inside we were growing increasingly alarmed.