‘Where?’
‘In the ruins.’
Marcus frowned. ‘I thought you said the ruins were patrolled and fenced off.’
‘I also said they were dangerous and there were ways through the fence. Even if there’s a guard there, he’ll only walk around the edge. He won’t go into the ruined palace in case it falls down on him. No one does – no grown-ups, anyway. It’s too dangerous, but that makes it a great place to hide from them.’
‘Where in the ruins and when?’
‘Follow the road down past the villa to the ruins,’ Dion said quietly. ‘Make sure you go wide around the villa, though. There will be guards on watch there. When you get to the fence, go around it to the left until you find a tree. You can climb through there. A bit further down there’s a part of the ruins like a square theatre with lots of steps. Go through that and there’s an intact building ahead with a broken door. Go in there and wait for him. He’ll be there about midnight, after the villa’s gone to sleep.’
‘How do I know I can trust you?’ Marcus asked quietly.
‘You don’t. But then I don’t know I can trust you either, and neither does he. Just take plenty of money.’
Marcus nodded and, as Dion rose to leave, grabbed the servant by the wrist. ‘If this is a trick or a trap, you’ll regret it.’
Dion pulled his hand from Marcus’. ‘No trick.’
‘If it’s useful, I’ll have more coins for you afterwards,’ Marcus added as the servant slipped away. Senex had always said that threats are useful, but greed keeps men coming back. Once Dion had gone, Marcus waited a few moments and then slipped from the hay loft, back out into the courtyard, surprised at how dark it had become in such a short time. They were in a valley, though, and the sun went down early and quick. Still, it would be several hours before he had to meet this African boy. Time to talk to Potens and eat a meal in the meantime.
Back in the inn, Marcus was interested to see that the legionaries were gathered together in one area and the majority of the other travellers had moved across to the eating area. The innkeeper, Marcus noted, was watching Potens unhappily and… nervously?
‘Ah, there you are,’ the engineer said. ‘I was about to send someone to find you. This place feels a bit unfriendly. I don’t want you wandering out of sight. Your uncle would kill me if he thought I wasn’t looking after you. If you need to go somewhere, take Maximus or Brutus with you.’
Marcus strolled over and slid into a seat opposite Potens. ‘No one will speak to you about our prey,’ he said, his voice little more than a whisper. ‘Everyone in Cnossus is frightened of him.’
‘I’m aware of that,’ grumbled Potens in a whisper. ‘No one claims to know anything about him. In the case of the visitors in the inn, it’s probably true. They’re all merchants passing through. But the innkeeper and his people also say they know nothing, but it’s pretty clear they’re hiding something.’
‘I have a lead,’ Marcus said, his voice quietening even more.
‘Oh?’ Potens leaned across the table, closer.
‘The Minoan lives in that big villa near the ruins – the one that we passed on the way in. He has a lot of guards there, I think, and he sort of owns the ruins. Has them fenced off and patrolled.’
‘Huh,’ Brutus sighed, ‘we leave the lad alone for a quarter of an hour and he finds out more than all of us.’
Marcus smiled. ‘It cost me a bit of money, and it’ll cost me a lot more yet. But Dion – the boy I spoke with – knows someone who works for the Minoan, I think. He’s arranged a meeting, at midnight in the ruins.’
Potens smiled. ‘Excellent. Perhaps we can find out more then. But I’m afraid you won’t be coming.’
Marcus straightened. ‘What?’
‘Your uncle wouldn’t allow it. Too dangerous. Give me the details and we’ll go meet this person.’
‘No.’
Potens narrowed his eyes. ‘Listen, Marcus, this could be very dangerous. I cannot allow you to go. I’ll leave a couple of men here to look after our stuff and the donkey, and you’ll stay with them, out of trouble.’
‘I won’t,’ Marcus said huffily, folding his arms.
‘You will do as you’re told. You promised me that.’
‘Listen, sir,’ Marcus said quietly, ‘the boy that Dion arranged for me to meet is expecting to see me. If I’m not there and it’s a bunch of legionaries, he’ll probably just run away and you’ll learn nothing. I know what he looks like and exactly where to meet him. You need me.’
Potens pursed his lips and glared at Marcus. Finally, he sighed and leaned back. ‘Alright. You win. But although you’re coming, the centurion or I are still in charge, and you do what we tell you, yes?’
‘Yes, sir,’ grinned Marcus.
‘You can be too clever for your own good sometimes,’ Potens said. ‘Just like your sister.’
At that moment the inn door opened and in walked Centurion Gallo and his companions. ‘I need dinner and something to drink,’ the commander said, irritation in his voice.
‘Trouble, sir?’ Potens asked.
‘The council are being vague and unhelpful. No one will tell me anything, even if I show them the governor’s letter. Everyone’s too frightened of this man.’
The engineer nodded. ‘We found the same. But fortunately, where legionaries and officers come up short, we have a clever lad with us who’s found a clue. Marcus, tell the centurion what you found out.’
Chapter Six
Callie’s Journal:
It has been just two hours since Marcus left with the centurion to cross the mountains and hunt the mysterious collector called the Minoan at Cnossus and already I miss him dreadfully. I am resolved to be nicer to him when he comes back, and I must remember to pray in the temples that he is successful and stays safe. Given what Senex tells me about the ancient place to which they are going, I am almost envious of them, despite the danger. Cnossus is a place of legends, of Minotaurs and Greek heroes, and I would love to see it. But while they all seek the villain who we came to Crete to find, there is another thread of clues to follow on this island, and if Fortuna, the goddess of luck, is really watching over me, perhaps I might find out what happened to our parents. For now it is time to put down this journal and see if the others have finished their bathing yet. How two men can take so long to scrub themselves when I finished half an hour ago is beyond me.
Callie emerged from the private baths of the inn they had chosen near the centre of Gortyn to find her uncle and old Senex already dressed and dry, with Dog mooching around the small changing room, desperately trying to chew a leather shoelace enough to swallow it comfortably.
‘Shall we go?’
Uncle Scriptor rolled his eyes. ‘We’re not in that much of a rush, girl. The others will be gone for days, and we only have the port records to check.’
‘And I’ll feel much happier when we’ve checked them,’ she said.
‘I want to eat first,’ Senex said, watching Dog swallowing the leather lace with a triumphant look and feeling his tummy rumbling in sympathy.
‘You always want to eat,’ snorted Scriptor.
‘I’m old. You’re allowed to be hungry when you’re old. I’m thirty years hungrier than you, and fifty years hungrier than her.’
‘Work first, food later,’ the standard bearer announced loftily, winking at Callie, who hid a chuckle behind a hand, pretending to cough.
‘Alright,’ moaned the old legionary. ‘Where do we go, then?’
‘I would think all the records will be kept in the forum, in the basilica offices,’ Scriptor replied.
‘Or maybe in the governor’s palace,’ Callie added.
‘Let’s go and ask someone.’
They strolled out of the inn and into the centre of the busy city. There was still an hour or two of daylight left. Her eyes strayed to the hills just visible to the north above the roofs of Gortyn. Somewhere out there, several miles from the city, Marcus and the others would be look
ing for somewhere to make camp on their journey. She missed him already, but she was sure he would be fine, and she had her own task to concentrate on.
Across the forum, they made for the great basilica building that acted as the law court, public speaking stage, records office and even market from time to time. Small signs bolted to the basilica wall directed the traveller to various places, including the office of public works, that of law and order, and the office of trade among others. Reasoning that trade was the most likely to cover shipping records, they followed the sign for that office, Dog trailing along behind, having a field day scooping up half-decomposed scraps of food left behind by traders or fallen from market stalls. When they arrived he lay down outside the place and chewed happily on something squashy and unidentifiable.
The office of trade turned out to be, like all the other named offices, a small room, just large enough to house a man at a desk with two or three cupboards. The door stood open and as they entered, a small man with a pointed nose, hooded eyes and hair like a bird’s nest that had exploded looked up with interest. He immediately put Callie in mind of a squirrel for some reason.
‘Can I help you?’ he asked in very educated Greek, but with a whiny, nasal tone.
‘We are looking for shipping records for the port at Lebena,’ Scriptor answered in passable Greek. Callie smiled. Senex and she also spoke Greek well, which would be very useful in Gortyn.
‘Ah, the main naval office for the region is at the port of Matala about ten miles to the west. There is your first port of call, if you’ll pardon the pun.’
‘I thought the port records were kept in Gortyn?’ asked Callie.
The rodent-like man peered down at her, his brow furrowed.
‘My dear girl, yes. The records are stored in the city, but they can only be accessed by those with appropriate permission, and the head of the naval office, who can grant that permission, is based at Matala. You will have to seek his permission first, and then come back to Gortyn with it.’
‘And if we have the governor’s permission?’ Scriptor asked archly.
The man frowned. ‘Really? Well that would be a different matter, of course. The port records are part of the main records office, which is in the governor’s complex. You don’t need to enter the palace, though. There are offices on the western side, open onto the street. You want the third one along. If you have the permission you claim, there won’t be a problem.’
Thanking the man, they left the basilica once more, collected Dog, and walked on towards the great bulk of the governor’s palace. Ignoring the arch in the colonnaded front, they moved off into the street that ran along its western side and there, in among the columns that ran all the way along, were a number of doors. Sure enough, the third one was labelled ‘Records’.
Scriptor knocked and a voice from inside told them to enter. Callie turned and told Dog to stay there. He had the sort of smell that filled a small room very quickly and made your eyes water, and she couldn’t imagine taking him into an official’s office being a popular move. Dog stared at her as though he had no idea what she was saying, then sauntered off across the street to cause trouble in a wine merchant’s store.
Praying that the mutt would not be kicked and would still be there when they returned, she followed the grown-ups inside. It seemed to Callie that to work in any sort of office, you had to resemble some sort of rodent. If you’d stuck whiskers onto the small, wiry man behind the desk he would have been hard to spot in a pack of rats.
‘What can I do for you?’ the man asked, his voice oddly hoarse.
‘We need to check some records for the port at Lebena. We have the governor’s authority,’ he added, holding out the scroll he’d received during their visit to the palace earlier in the day. The man took the document and studied it carefully before nodding and handing it back.
‘That all appears to be in order. What do you need to know?’
Scriptor and Senex both turned questioning expressions on Callie, who stepped forward.
‘We would like to know the last records you have of a ship called the Argo, which disappeared three years ago on the way here from Alexandria. Anything you can tell us might be useful.’ She paused, deep in thought and tapped her chin. ‘Also anything you have on a merchant ship named the Queen of Sheba. The Argo might be registered here or in Egypt, but she had been into port here before, I’m sure. The Queen of Sheba I suppose must be registered locally.’
The rat-man nodded. ‘Please wait here and I will consult the records.’
Leaving them alone, he folded the documents on which he was working, tucked them under his arm and disappeared through another door to the rear. He was gone for so long that Callie wondered if it had got dark outside while they waited, but eventually the door opened again with a click and the clerk reappeared, a pile of ledgers in his hands. He dropped them on the counter and opened them, creating a cloud of dust. He flipped through the vellum pages until he found what he was looking for.
Callie moved to the counter, a little further along, and opened her journal, poised with her writing stick.
‘The Argo. Yes. We have more than a dozen entries. Seems it was a regular on the Alexandria to Crete route. An independent trader who also carried passengers. The last record we have of it in port is the winter three years ago, but we have a handy little addendum here which was forwarded to us from the port offices of Alexandria, logging the Argo’s departure on the day after the Kalends of June three years ago. It logs four passengers and the cargo as well as timings and the destination.’
‘May I see?’ asked Callie.
‘Of course. It’s all open record. Here.’ He turned the book to face her and slid it along the counter.
Callie peered at the yellowing page and copied notes into her journal as she read, biting her lip at the sight of her parents’ names among the passengers. The others, Florus and Selene, were both residents of Alexandria, and his profession was logged as ‘engineer’. Nothing appeared suspicious about them. The cargo was listed in three parts. One was bundles of Egyptian flax, which was a reasonably common export from Alexandria. Another was ox hides, which were again not an uncommon sight in the ports. The third sparked her interest.
‘What is this?’ she asked, pointing at it.
‘ARS S. VPC DEL. BEROSSUS. UL BY RCVR,’ the clerk read. ‘That’s notes in port short-hand to fit in the small space in the ledger. ARS means artworks. That could be anything from a great big marble statue to a tiny ring. S is to clarify. It means ‘scroll’. VPC is five pieces, so five scrolls together. DEL is a note that the cargo is very delicate to allow for extra care taken to protect them. Berossus I do not know, but that will be a description of the contents. And then UL BY RCVR means that the cargo was enclosed and locked and could only be unlocked by the receiver at the end of the journey.’
Callie nodded as she copied it down.
Berossus. Why was that name familiar?
‘I know Berossus from somewhere,’ she said. ‘I wonder where from?’
Senex shrugged. ‘There was a Berossus who was a high priest in Babylon centuries ago. Famous man. Wrote a history of his people.’
Callie dropped the pen, her eyes widening. ‘That’s it! Berossus of Babylon. He wrote the Procreatio and the Babyloniaca, both of which are lost.’
‘Lost?’ Scriptor asked, surprised.
‘They were both stored in the great library in Alexandria, but they were two of the books believed lost when Julius Caesar accidentally burned the library down. If this is five scrolls by Berossus, then one of them must have survived. That cargo was priceless, then!’
Senex nodded. ‘This is starting to look less and less like an accident. A ship goes missing and it has a priceless set of scrolls on it? Sounds fishy to me.’ He turned back to the clerk. ‘What do you know about the Queen of Sheba, then?’
The man opened up another record book and rifled through the pages until he found the place he wanted. His finger danced across the ve
llum as he read.
‘The Queen of Sheba has never been to Alexandria. She sails from here to both Paphus on the island of Cyprus and to Caesarea on the coast of Judea, and she carries a wide variety of cargo but has never been logged as carrying passengers.’
‘How old is the Queen of Sheba?’ asked Callie, prompting the man to squint at his records and dance with his finger again. He frowned, then reached out a hand and gestured to the book in front of Callie. ‘May I?’
Callie nodded and slid the book back to the man.
‘Now there is a curious coincidence,’ the man said, tapping both books with his fingers. ‘The Queen of Sheba was commissioned at Lebena only a week and a half after the Argo disappeared on the way there. Odd, isn’t it?’
‘Odd, my foot,’ Scriptor snapped. ‘Clearly the Queen of Sheba is the Argo. The ship never sank as people suspected. It disappeared, somehow came to be in Lebena harbour, was stripped down, repainted and renamed and then logged as a newly-built ship with the harbourmaster. And that, to me, makes the Lebena harbourmaster suspicious. How could he control a port and not notice all that going on?’
The clerk shrugged. ‘There is no proof that that is what happened, of course. It seems highly likely, I will grant you, but if you wanted to bring it up in the courts there is not enough evidence to confirm your theory. As for the harbourmaster of Lebena, it is entirely plausible that he had no idea what had happened. There are boatyards in several places on the south coast. Some merchants have their own, some ships are just built from scratch on the beach. And any boat or ship built within about forty miles of the coast around Lebena would be registered there. All very suspicious, but with little proof.’
Callie grabbed the book she had handed back once more and turned it, studying it. ‘The Argo was owned by a man called Spurius Postumus. Is he also the owner of the Queen of Sheba?’
Pirate Legion Page 5
