The Eagle and the Dragon, a Novel of Rome and China

by Lewis F. McIntyre

  “And nothin’ better happen ter him... I swear, sir, why are we listenin’ ter this pirate crap? There’s just me an’ yer, we can take him...” As Antonius turned to Gaius, two silent figures emerged out of the shadows behind them, swords drawn.

  “Oh, I forgot... please meet Elibaal and Yakov, my two most unworthy servants. I fear I was most discourteous to not introduce them earlier.” Ibrahim smiled, again. “As I said, I am most difficult to kill, but you are always welcome to try.” He snapped his fingers, said something in Aramaic, and the two bodyguards disappeared back into the shadows. “More wine? As I recall, you like it neat, Antonius.”

  Ibrahim placed the cup before Antonius, but he did not take it.

  “So, Gaius,” Ibrahim turned toward the senior Roman, “Hasdrubal double-crossed me as well as the Senator. As I was securing this ship, my lookouts observed his ships veering north towards Parthia, taking the rest of the fleet and two-thirds of the gold to Rome’s greatest enemy. He would be most welcome in their capital at Ctesiphon.” He leaned across the table and whispered in a conspiratorial voice, “And somewhat beyond even Rome’s long arm, although you do have your agents there, too. I happen to know a few of them by name.”

  He leaned back again and continued in his normal voice. “And your cousin and all his servants, if they survived, would be sold on the block. There are quite a few Parthian nobility who would pay a good price to own a Roman Senator, to empty their chamber pots and other menial tasks around the house. And there would also be trouble waiting for me in Africa at my formerly safe harbor, which Hasdrubal had set up for me. So I chose to do the unexpected and continued east. Hasdrubal, in the meanwhile, may have encountered some Roman galleys, up near Masira. If he tried to double cross me, that was the only direction for him to go, so last month I planted an agent to be picked up by the Roman Navy at Masira, to tell them of his plot, and help them find the evidence if they intercepted him. I don’t know what really happened. My agent may not have been believed, Hasdrubal may not have gone to Parthia, or the Roman navy may not have found him. But if they did, Hasdrubal would now be in considerable trouble, for the evidence clearly documented his many crimes, and told where to find the money. As for your cousin the Senator, I would hope that he is alive and continuing his journey, thanks to your vigilant navy. But if the trap did not spring as planned… well, I do not know what actually took place. I hope I answered your question fairly, Gaius.”

  Gaius put his hand to his chin. “A most interesting turn of events.” He couldn’t resist a wry smile. “I admire your straightforward way of dealing with people. You should perhaps learn to be more devious. Now what are you going to do with the ship and with us?”

  Ibrahim sighed, and suddenly seemed old and sad. “Gaius, I am an old man. I have followed the sea for forty years, almost all of it as a pirate. Never have I had the opportunity to have a family, wives and children. Yakov, whom I adopted when he was a ten year old orphan cutpurse, is my only son. Had my life been different, I might have had more sons such as you two, and a home somewhere. But I have been a nomad on the water, as my father and his fathers before him had been nomads in the desert. I want to be somewhere where I do not need to look over my shoulder for the next danger. I have many accomplices and many enemies, but I have never had a friend. I want to know real friendship before I die, and perhaps wives and children. I can’t do that here. Perhaps somewhere far east of here, where no one knows me. Our next stop is a place called Galle in Taprobane, south of India. You are free to leave there, both of you, and anyone else who wishes to. I will guarantee your passage back to Muziris in India. From there, you may continue on your way, or return to Rome as you choose.”

  Ibrahim got up and pulled two chests from a closet. “These are your personal possessions, including your weapons. You will find everything there, and if you are missing anything, please let me know and we shall try to find it. I have arranged accommodations in the officers’ quarters below for you. You are free go about the ship as you wish. Please do not try to kill me, for I have grown to like you both, and I should miss you greatly... especially you, my gallant Antonius!”

  It had grown dark, and the brighter stars were visible through the windows of the cabin. Ibrahim went to secure them, as the noise of men shouting and running to their stations filtered into the cabin. “It sounds as though Demetrios is getting ready to get underway. You’ll pardon me... I think that I am tired and must rest. We must chat again.”

  CHAPTER 23: A THOUGHT OF SUICIDE

  The master’s cabin in the Asia was blazing hot, although the windows were open wide to whatever breeze stirred in the barren harbor at the southern tip of Masira. Outside, the pink rocks of the hills elbowed their way toward the brassy sky with no hint of vegetation.

  A rivulet of sweat ran down Lucis Parvus’ nose, where it hung, before plummeting to the wax tablet worksheets spread out before him.

  Lucius set aside his stylus. “Sir, no matter how you calculate it, you personally lose twenty million sesterces if you delay to next sailing season. Mostly due to the increased costs, penalties, and those last three bargain loans we struck up in Alexandria. They looked good when we were certain to complete our expedition in a single season. But the interest goes from ten percent to a hundred percent if we don’t repay the loan by the next winter solstice. We’ve been over these figures a dozen times already, sir.”

  “Hmm.” Aulus’s tunic was wet with sweat. A fly buzzed noisily somewhere in the cabin. “Well, I think we have no alternatives, Lucius. The officers and crew are compromised, from the captains on down to the deckhands. We can’t go back for a new crew, train them and still sail this season, and we can’t come close to breaking even if we wait till next year. Not with the Europa lost and ten million in gold and silver with her.”

  He sighed. “Lucius, I can’t lose that much. My family, everything we worked for, it would be gone. All of you, my loyal servi and servae, auctioned on the block, your families broken up, sold to the gods know who... or what. All my homes and businesses and shipyards, gone. Nothing for my child but my leftover debts. You know what I must do, so please order up a splendid meal for us and the servants. Then draw my bath, take down my words to my family, and help me off quietly. Oh, and please, take this.” He withdrew a rolled scroll from the desk and handed it to Lucius.

  Lucius unrolled the scroll, and his eyes grew wide with surprise. Manumitted! Free! He, his wife and children, and the four menservants… and their families. Free! This was his dream. Then the impact of the Senator’s words sank in. This was the old man’s testamenta, his last will... he was going to take ‘the pink bath,’ slit open the veins in the crook of his arms and let his life ooze slowly out as he relaxed in a hot tub of water, falling asleep to slip over the edge of life quietly at the end.

  “Sir? I can’t accept this, much as it means everything to me and my family. You and I have put together too many crazy business deals in the past, we’ve gambled millions and won some and lost a lot. This... please, don’t.” His eyes filled with tears. “It’s no different than some of the other deals. Don’t you remember that olive oil grove and factory in Pompeii? How the owner was so proud of the fine trees that grew on the slopes of Vesuvius? ‘It’s the ash,’ he said. ‘Makes them really flourish.’”

  “It wasn’t the same, Lucius. We scarcely lost a million on that. And I’m old and tired. I should have let a younger man try this gamble. Hasdrubal took me for a sucker!”

  “Well, sir, if you don’t mind my pointing out, Hasdrubal took in a lot of others besides you. He was recommended by everyone, the governor, the city council of elders, even some of the other merchants he shilled. You were in good company, indeed... Aulus.” Lucius was taking a chance. He had been his servus for all of his forty-three years, born into the household and risen to be his financial manager. Never, not once, had he called his master by his praenomen: not to his face, not behind his back. But he had his manumission papers in hand, and his master wante
d to kill himself three thousand miles from home. What was Aulus Aemilius Galba going to do, get mad and whip him? Maybe that would at least steer him away from his planned course. “And maybe the papers the slave Philippus found are all a forgery.”

  But Aulus was nonplussed. “No, Lucius. They tortured some of the officers today and it didn’t take long to corroborate the outlines of the story. The details will take months to verify, maybe years, but I suspect they will all fit. Titus Cornelius wants to know what to do with the crew, to take them into custody, or what.” He paused, then chuckled, “That damned olive oil scheme. It’s been twenty years. I had almost forgotten that one! How long did we own it?”

  “About a week, until the eruption. It must be under twenty or thirty feet of ash now. Maybe we should go back and excavate it… fine ash now, for sure!” Lucius said, smiling.

  “Hmm, maybe we don’t have to excavate the grove. How high above the ground do my property rights extend? If property is buried under ash, doesn’t it still lay on the surface of the ash? That sounds like an interesting case for the Roman courts! And an interesting surveying task. Maybe we can go into the olive oil business after all,” said Aulus. “And thanks for calling me Aulus. You’ve always been more like a younger brother to me than a slave. We certainly have put together some crazy schemes, haven’t we?”

  Lucius rejoiced, for his master was turning his mind away from thoughts of suicide. “You know, you thought you were done for then. Not yet thirty-five and having to start over. But you did.” But then he saw his master’s face turn downward again. He had chosen the wrong words.

  “No,” said Aulus, sighing heavily again. “It’s not the same. Twenty million isn’t a million. And I had barely begun then, so starting over was hardly the same as now.”

  “You didn’t think so then. And anyway, if you have lost twenty times as much today, you are worth far more than twenty times what you were worth then.”

  “I’m too old. Look, just call the boys up and let’s get on with the celebration.”

  Lucius was fed up. He shouted angrily, “They’re not boys, they are men, damn it. You freed them and you freed me, so call them yourself, and by the way, draw your own damned bath and open your own damned veins! I’m a freed man, and I’m too busy to waste my time on an impotent old fart who can’t take a little setback. Don’t pee in your bathwater!” He turned to leave, but Aulus put a hand on his shoulder.

  “You have a good temper, but your tears betray you,” Aulus said quietly.

  Lucius turned to shout something again but collapsed to hug the old man, sobbing into his shoulder. “Master! Don’t make me beg. Let me help you, and we’ll see it through. Trust me, just one more time. I’ll see you home to Livia Luculla Galba and your child, with a profit. Please!”

  Aulus held him, patting his shoulder as if the newly-freed man were a child. “Now there, Lucius!” But his own eyes brimmed with tears. “I want to trust you, but what else can we do? We can’t get a new crew this year, and can’t afford to do it next year. What else can we do?”

  “Go with what we have!” said Lucius, breaking away from the hug.

  “What, sail with a crew that will throw us overside as soon as we’re out of sight of land?”

  “So? Then you just don’t show up at destination. Lost at sea. Most of our notes have an escape clause for just that eventuality. Lost at sea, that’s a write-off. Delaying a year, that’s non-performance. Suicide, also non-performance. Your estate, and Livia, gets stuck with your debts. But if they kill you, the bankers get stuck. Of course, we’re both dead, but one of us wants to die anyway, and I’ll bet my life that we can make it.”

  “You crazy fool! Are you sure?” said Aulus, excitedly.

  “Of course I’m sure! I negotiated those contracts, damn you!” Lucius was beginning to enjoy the amenities of being free.

  “Go over those figures again, and tell me what my estate is out if we are lost at sea.”

  Lucius sat down again at the desk, erased the wax tablet with his thumb, and recalculated. The stylus scratched on wax for about five minutes, the abacus clicked rapidly, then he announced, “With some insurance payments on the ships that cover losses at sea, and assuming they cover the Europa, and counting the replacement costs of four manservants and one financial wizard, your estate is out a million and a quarter sesterces... a manageable sum. Livia likes Alexandria and that little villa, so I would suggest she dispose of the one in Ostia and reside there permanently. Assuming this terrible thing happens to us. Put that in a letter to her and I will have Cornelius deliver it with the next supply ship. It will get there before any bad news does.”

  “Lucius, I don’t know what I would do without you.”

  “You probably would have taken a pink bath a long time ago and died a pauper. Now pardon me, but I am taking away all your sharp knives, and have Cornelius release the officers. I presume we sail on the morning’s tide?”

  “Make it so!”

  Titus reluctantly released the officers. The navigators, who were academic types with no involvement, had been locked up separately for safekeeping, and treated gently. Hasdrubal was also separately confined, in chains. The other officers and the two captains had been thrown into the naval prison, and two flogged to assess the Greek sailor’s story and the incriminating documents. It didn’t require more than ten lashes to loosen their tongues, and they confirmed the conspiracy. This wasn’t legally correct, since only slaves’ testimony under torture could be accepted as evidence. But if some fat-assed praetor wanted to make a trip out here to Masira to question him, he could just do so. June was a perfect month for a praetor’s visit, with the temperature hot enough to fry eggs on rocks - his sailors had done that, for a joke - and no rain since April.

  “Your master is sure he wants these men released? You have that in writing from him?” Titus had asked, when Lucius communicated his request. Lucius had anticipated this, and had the necessary paperwork. Titus didn’t like it, but it was the Senator’s ship, his money and his crew. And his life. If the Senator wanted to risk all that, it too was his choice.

  However, Titus had an insurance plan for the man, in the form of a talented artist among his marines. This artist was particularly good at making full color portraits and tiny, life-like cameos on ivory. The young man made a fair supplement to his wages capturing the likeness of his shipmates to send home to their mothers, wives and lovers... sometimes, sailors being what they were, to all three. And each likeness could not be more lifelike than if the subject himself had been captured in the two-inch white disk. Rusticus could work swiftly, from a charcoal sketch to the delicately painted final piece in just a few days. Titus was particularly fond of the full-sized portrait done of him in honor of his new command.

  Titus displayed this work of art to the released officers, admiring the way in which Rusticus had captured his square jaw, the look of determination in his eye, and the stray lock of hair that fell, undisciplined, across his right eye. Behind him, battles that he never fought raged between galleys on a storm-tossed sea. The Senator’s officers admired the artwork.

  Then Titus had them each sit for a quick sketch by Rusticus. “I promise you each as good a portrait as this one,” he said, strolling around them as Rusticus’ charcoal scratched along the stiff paper. “And if the Asia and Africa safely return, I will deliver them to the addresses you have given me with my personal best wishes, complements of the Roman Navy and the far-flung Classis Alexandrina. On the other hand... rest assured, Rusticus can make many copies of these portraits in the next six months, and each shall be as good as the last. If the two ships do not return by the end of the sailing season, it would be best if you didn’t either, for I shall distribute them to every naval commander from here to the Pillars of Hercules in Spain! You may change your names, but you had best change your face as well, or there will be no port safe for you if you repeat your treachery!”

  The Asia and Africa set sail the following morning.

 
CHAPTER 24: A DEAL IS STRUCK

  The Europa returned to her sailing routine with little break. Only the presence of Ibrahim was different.

  Antonius and Gaius settled into their new quarters in the officer’s section, just below the master’s cabin. Not as spacious as their former quarters on the deck above, the spartan accommodations were more to their taste. They shared a single curtained-off cubicle with two bunks, two stools in the common area, with room for the two men to move around. Gaius dragged his campaign chest into the stateroom, and opened it to inventory its contents. It was all there: his field armor and his parade kit. His sword, a fine scarlet cloak and a faded wool sagum. Gaius gently removed the dress helmet, dusted the red horsehair plume and rubbed a smudge from the metal.

  “That’s a fine piece of dress armor there, sir. If I may say so, kind of dated. They haven’t made helmets like that since Augustus’ time,” said Antonius, admiring the curve of the neck guard on the highly-polished bronze, with its gold and silver filigrees.

  “No, they haven’t. This dress kit was a special gift to me. I don’t know why, but Commodus always thought I might amount to something in the army. So when I left his school to go to Noricum with my first legion, he made a gift of this to me. It was very special, because... he was murdered a few weeks after I left.”