SPQR I: The Kings Gambit

by John Maddox Roberts

  “Odd,” Milo said, “that even after the rebellion of Ser-torius, they want to maintain contact with the pirates. Those pirates love to slap the Roman face. Last year we could see their sails from the docks as they cruised past, unconcerned as you please, and our fleet laid up in the sheds, doing noth-ing.”

  “It’s a disgrace,” I agreed. “It’s possible that some of them are accepting bribes to keep the fleet laid up so the pirates can operate without interference. That would surprise me little.”

  Milo tossed a handful of nuts into his mouth and washed them down with wine. “I doubt that. Those pirates aren’t afraid of the Roman fleet even when it’s at full strength. Why pay to be rid of it?”

  “You’re right. It could be some of them plan to hire the pirates as an auxiliary fleet; that’s been done before, in past wars.” At this, the beginning of a thought began to form somewhere in the back of my mind, where the worst ones always take shape. “No,” I muttered, “even they wouldn’t stoop to that.”

  Milo’s interest brightened. “You’ve made it plain that there isn’t much that our more ambitious men won’t stoop to. What is it that seems so unlikely?”

  “No, this I can’t even speculate about. It will have to wait until I have some sort of evidence.”

  “As you will,” Milo said. “Come, are you ready to find a room for the night?”

  “Might as well.” Only when I rose from my seat did I realize how tired I was. It had been another incredibly long and eventful day, beginning with my waking in Claudia’s getaway, still in a drugged stupor. There had been the murder of Paulus, my near-strangulation by Asklepiodes, the encounter with Claudius and his thugs, the trip downriver and my brief tour of Ostia, ending in this underground tavern. It was indeed time to find some rest. We ascended to the fresh air and Milo found a priest to show us to our room, which I did not even examine before crashing onto my cot.

  8

  I WOKE FEELING IMMEASURABLY better. The light coming through the door was that of dawn just before the sun appears. I could see someone standing outside the doorway, leaning on a balustrade. I climbed from my cot and found a basin of water with which I splashed my face liberally. Milo turned as I came out of the little room.

  “About time you were up, Commissioner. Rosy-fingered Aurora rises from the bed of her husband Tithonus, or whatever his name is.”

  “You’re another of the early risers, I see.” I walked out onto the gallery that ran along the front of the inn. We were on the fourth floor. I didn’t even remember climbing the stairs the night before. From our vantage point we could look out over the roof of the temple and see the harbor just a few hundred paces distant. The growing light revealed a myriad of details, and a fresh wind brought us the smell of the sea. The markets of the town were beginning to send up their daily din like an offering to the gods. Smoke rose from before the great Temple of Vulcan, probably a morning sacrifice. It was time to begin another overlong day of doing my duty by the Roman Senate and People.

  “Let’s go,” I said to Milo. We descended the rickety steps and began to make our way toward the Juno dock, first stopping for a shave from a street-corner barber. Milo was frequently hailed, and I wondered what had caused him to leave a place where he was plainly so popular. Probably Os-tia was too small for him, I decided.

  We found the shop we needed without difficulty. It lay, as promised, between the rope shop and the used-amphorae-dealer’s establishment. From the stacks of jars in the latter’s yard came the reek of sour wine lees. The interior of Has-drubal’s shop had a different smell, odd but not unpleasant. I found that it was the characteristic odor of cloth colored with the murex dye. It was tremendously popular in the East, but in Rome we used it mainly for the broad stripe on the senatorial tunic and the narrow border on the equestrian tunic. Only a general celebrating a triumph was permitted to wear an entire robe dyed with it, in the fashion of the Etruscan kings. There could not have been a great demand for triumphal robes, but Italy was full of old priesthoods and cults demanding their own regalia, and I presumed that Has-drubal did the bulk of his business keeping them supplied.

  Hasdrubal himself was in the front of the shop, arranging the drape of some of his rich cloth to show it to best advantage. He looked up smiling, but the smile wavered slightly when he recognized Milo. He was a tall, lean man, dark of complexion, with a black, pointed beard. He wore the conical cap of his nation.

  “Welcome, my old friend Titus Annius Milo. And you, sir …” He trailed off interrogatively.

  “I am Decius Caecilius Metellus, of the Commission of Twenty-Six, of which I am part of the Commission of Three, in Rome, Subura district.” Hoping he was impressed by my long-winded title, I pressed on. “I am investigating the untimely demise of a colleague of yours, one Paramedes of An-tioch.”

  “Ah, yes, I had heard that he was dead.” Hasdrubal made some complicated hand-gestures, undoubtedly placating the spirits of the dead or some foul Oriental god. “I knew him only slightly, through our mutual business dealings, but I regret his passing.”

  “Well, his passing was neither accidental nor voluntary, which is why an investigation became necessary.”

  “I am of course at your disposal.” Hand to breast, Hasdrubal bowed deeply.

  “Excellent. The Senate and People of Rome will be most pleased.” I could be as mealymouthed as the best of them. “What was the nature of the business you and Paramedes transacted with the pirates?”

  “Usually, it involved the negotiation of ransom. From time to time, the pirates would capture a ship or raid an estate that would yield some valuable personage: a wealthy merchant, even”—he allowed himself a faint chuckle—"if you will forgive me, a Roman magistrate. If that person’s relatives, guild or corporation were in the Rome-Ostia area, one of us would transact the negotiations for transfer of the ransom. Many of the seafaring guilds here in Ostia, for instance, maintain a ransom fund for members taken prisoner by pirates. In most such cases, the ransom is set by long agreement: so much for a master merchant, so much for a helmsman and so forth. In the case of a wealthy or important person, the ransom must be agreed upon by the interested parties.”

  “I see. Did you or Paramedes negotiate any really large-scale or special commissions between the pirates and citizens of Rome?”

  He was nonplussed. “Special? How do you mean, sir?”

  “Well, for instance: A few years back, at the time of Sertorius’s rebellion in Spain, certain arrangements were made between that rebellious general and King Mithridates of Pontus, with the pirates acting as intermediaries. Might you or Paramedes have handled such a commission?”

  He spread his hands in a self-deprecating gesture. I found these constant gesticulations annoying, and was happy that Romans did not thus supplement their speech. “That is a far larger commission than any I have ever undertaken. We local agents are not really a part of the pirate community. I doubt that anything of such magnitude would be entrusted to one of us.”

  That didn’t sound promising. “And Paramedes?”

  “Also unlikely. He had been an agent for longer than I, and he had operated in other parts of the Mediterranean.” He pondered for a moment. “Of course, if a Roman wished to engage one or more of the pirate fleets on such a commission, he might very well approach one of us to arrange the initial contact.”

  That sounded better. “And have you been thus approached?”

  "Such has never fallen my lot. However, I cannot speak for Paramedes.”

  “Unfortunately, he can no longer speak for himself. Would you happen to know who did negotiate on the pirates’ behalf on the occasion of the conspiracy between Sertorius and Mithridates?” This was a wild cast, but I have found that these seem to bag as much game as the aimed sort.

  “The pirate captains are an individualistic lot, so it is seldom that one of them is allowed to speak for the combined fleets. Instead, they employ a well-placed and educated person to negotiate for them. I believe that on that occasi
on the man who acted on the pirates’ behalf was young Tigranes, the son of the Armenian king.” The expression on my face must have been a sight to behold. “Sir,” Hasdrubal asked, “are you well?”

  “Better than you can imagine. Hasdrubal, I thank you. The Senate and People of Rome thank you.”

  He beamed. “Just remember me when you are a praetor and need a purple border for your toga.”

  “One more thing, if you please. During the recent slave rebellion, Spartacus arranged with the pirates to ferry him and his army from Messina to some unspecified destination. On the appointed day, the pirates did not arrive. Somebody had bought them off.”

  Hasdrubal looked uncomfortable. “Yes. Most unlike them, to renege on an agreement like that.”

  “I won’t ponder the ethics of it,” I said, “but I would like to know something: Was Tigranes the pirates’ negotiator that time as well?”

  Hasdrubal stroked his beard and nodded. “He was.”

  I rose and prepared to leave. “Hasdrubal, I’ll never buy purple from any merchant save you.” He saw us out amid effusive farewells and many annoying gesticulations.

  “To the docks,” I told Milo when we were outside. “I have to get to Rome as quickly as possible.”

  “No problem there. It’s still early enough to catch a barge headed upriver.” He grinned as if it had all been his doing. “There, wasn’t that worth the trip here?”

  “It’s beginning to make a sort of sense,” I allowed. “And it’s even worse than I’d thought. They’re both in on it, Milo. Crassus as well as Pompey.”

  We were only a few steps from the Juno dock and within minutes we arranged passage upriver on a barge carrying amphorae of Sicilian wine. Under no circumstances was I going to travel on one carrying fish. As soon as we were seated in the bow, the barge cast off and we began to move up the harbor to the river mouth, which we had passed the night before. Milo watched the oarsmen critically for a while, then turned his attention on me.

  “I’m not certain I want to be so near you,” he said. “A man with not one but two Consuls for enemies must draw lightning like a temple roof. Why do you think Crassus was in on it?”

  “It was Crassus who had Spartacus boxed in at Messina. As soon as he made the agreement with Spartacus, Tigranes must have gone to Crassus to see if he could get a better offer.”

  “But Pompey fought the slave army too,” Milo pointed out.

  I shook my head. “That was later. Pompey was still on his way from Spain when Spartacus was at Messina. He fought the band under Crixus after they broke through the breastwork Crassus built across the peninsula. Besides, who was in a better position to bribe a whole fleet of pirates? Crassus is incredibly rich, while Pompey squanders all his wealth pampering his soldiers.”

  “It makes sense so far,” Milo said. “But that was the slave rebellion last year, and the uprising of Sertorius a few years before that. What has it all to do with what’s happening in Rome right now?”

  I settled back against a bale of the sacking used to pad the big wine jars. “I don’t know,” I admitted, “although I’m beginning to entertain some suspicions. The pirates’ chief— What shall we call him? Diplomat?—is in Rome right now, in the last month of the joint Consulate of two men he’s dealt with before. The pirates’ former agent at Rome, Paramedes, was murdered a few days ago. It strains coincidence.”

  “And Tigranes is the houseguest of your friend Claudius.” There are few things more satisfying than unraveling a conspiracy, and Milo was enjoying it. “But where does the murder of Paulus come in?”

  “That I have yet to work out,” I said, uncomfortably remembering the palanquin I had found in Claudia’s hideaway, the one I had seen leaving Paulus’s house after my visit. “He was rich, though, maybe even as rich as Crassus. That’s enough of a connection for suspicion’s sake. As I figure it, Sinistrus killed Paramedes and was killed in turn to silence him.”

  “Or he might have tried to blackmail his employer,” Milo pointed out.

  “Even better. Whichever, he was an expendable nobody. I just need to know who bought him out of the Statilian school and then freed him, at a time when it was illegal to do so. The praetor who allowed the transaction must have been in on it as well.”

  Milo grinned. “You’ll have half the Senate involved in this soon.”

  “It could go that far,” I said, only half-joking.

  “There is still the matter of the stolen amulet,” he said.

  “There I am totally mystified. Until it’s found, I can’t fathom how such a thing could be of any significance.”

  We were silent for a while, admiring the river. There was no convenient breeze to speed us along, but the rhythmic chant of the rowers was soothing. The dip and splash of the oars was melodious as well.

  “Tell me,” I said, “how does a strapping young rower from Ostia happen to arrive in our city with the good old Roman name of Annius?”

  He leaned back against the bale and laced his fingers behind his head. “My father’s name was Caius Papius Cel-sus. He was a landowner with an estate just south of here. We didn’t get on well and I ran away to the navy when I was sixteen. My mother was from Rome and she always spoke about the city, how big and rich it was, how even an outsider could become a great man there. So last year I came to Rome and had myself adopted by my mother’s father, Titus Annius Luscus. Even as an Ostian I had citizenship, but this gives me a city tribe. I can attend the Plebeian Council and the Centuriate Assembly. I’m learning street-level politics from Macro.”

  “And you’re learning Senate-level politics from me,” I said.

  He laughed his great laugh again. “You’re right. And so far, it looks just like the street.”

  A trip upstream is, for obvious reasons, slower than one downstream. Recent rains had made the river higher and swifter than usual for that time of year. To make matters worse, there was a constant head wind. We could have walked to Rome along the Via Ostiensis in about four hours. This way, it was almost dark when we arrived in Rome, but we arrived without sore feet.

  “I had some calls to make,” I told Milo. “Now it’s too late. Well, it hasn’t been a bad day’s work as it is.”

  He was less pleased with the prospect. “I wish we could have got here sooner.” His eyes scanned the river docks with suspicion. “It’s going to be chancy, now it’s almost dark.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I mean Claudius has had two days to nurse his wounded patrician pride. He’s liable to call on us before we can reach our homes.”

  I hadn’t considered that. If he was still set upon thwarting me, he would have men stationed at the Ostian gate and the river docks. I was still armed, and Milo seemed to have little need of arms, but we were sure to be heavily outnumbered. At that time, it was not unusual for a political adventurer like Claudius to maintain a retinue of twenty or thirty thugs and be able to whistle up a mob of two hundred or more at short notice. Of course, he was just beginning his disreputable career, but I was certain that he could easily have a dozen bullyboys and bravos out looking for us.

  “We should have picked up some hooded cloaks in Os-tia,” I said. “A disguise would be desirable just now.”

  “If it’s dark enough,” Milo said, “they may not be able to see us.”

  I was not certain of that, no matter how dark the Roman streets were. “There is somebody in the city who can see in the dark better than a cat. The break-in at my house, the stranglings of Sinistrus and Paulus, all of those things took place in pitch blackness.”

  “It could have been a ghost,” Milo said. I wondered if he was serious. “But I never heard of a ghost strangling anyone, or stealing things, or taking an interest in politics. No, it must be something more substantial than a ghost.”

  Darkness comes quickly so late in the year. By the time we tied up at the dock the stars were out, although the moon had not yet made an appearance. There were the usual late idlers hanging about the docks.
There was no way to tell if any of them were on the lookout for us. We climbed the ladder to the wharf and walked through the warehouses, alert to any sign of pursuit.

  “I’ll accompany you to your house,” Milo offered.

  “I thank you.” I wasn’t about to let any foolish pride compel me to go alone. “You may stay there for the night, if you wish.”

  He shook his head, the gesture barely visible in the gloom which deepened with every step we took. “It’s you they’re after. No one will bother me.”

  Soon we were feeling our way along like blind men. The feeble light shed by the stars barely revealed the outlines of the larger buildings, and it reflected dimly from pavement wet from a recent shower. I jerked as Milo touched my shoulder. He leaned forward and whispered in my ear: “Someone behind us.” We were still several streets from my house.

  Quietly, I reached into my tunic. With my right hand I grasped the hilt of my dagger and drew it. On my left I slipped the caestus. We walked on for a while and Milo whispered again.

  "There were four behind us. Now there are two. Two others have slipped around a block to get ahead of us.” Whoever they were, the one with cat’s eyes was their guide. I could hear them, but Milo was better at judging their number. He was also a better tactician. “Let’s turn and get the ones behind us first,” he said, “then tackle the other two afterward.”

  “Good idea,” I acknowledged. We whirled in our tracks and I could hear the two nearing us; then I heard their footsteps falter as they realized that our steps had stopped. There was a whispered consultation between them.

  “Now!” Milo said, rushing forward. I heard him collide with one and I rushed in as blindly, leading with my dagger. I could feel someone there, but I wasn’t exactly sure where he stood and I was afraid of stabbing Milo. Then there was a face near mine and a blast of winy, garlic-laden breath and I knew this was my target. I thrust with my dagger as I saw starlight glitter on something coming toward me. I managed to bat the sword aside with the bronze strap over my knuckles just as I felt the dagger blade strike home.