The Ancient Ocean Blues

by Jack Mitchell

  “Of course,” I said automatically. “I’ve been your guest for nine days. I can hardly refuse.”

  Neither could I refuse, I thought, to get my hands on that note. Suddenly I had visions of fulfilling my mission for Gaius after all. He had declared that Cicero and Pompey must not join forces, and here was Cicero proposing exactly that.

  “I would go,” the Captain said. “I’m well now. But my galley has no oarsmen.”

  “I’ll provide them,” said Atticus, “at my expense. In exchange, I’ll borrow the copyists, if you don’t mind. There are one or two books I would like to borrow from my friends and have copied out.”

  “Wait a minute,” interrupted Homer. “The copyists belong to me. I stole them. If you want someone to take the letter, I shall go! Spurinna is my former master, and he is with Pompey.”

  “If Spurinna’s there, I think I’m the natural choice,” volunteered Paulla softly.

  Atticus chuckled. “Four candidates, then? Indeed I’m touched by your friendship. As a matter of fact, I was hoping you would all go together. These spies of Caesar’s – you must be careful, and watch each other’s backs. Beware of any Spanish Romans you meet. No one must know what Cicero hopes to arrange with Pompey It would wreak havoc with the plans of all good men.”

  As he thanked us once again, I thought, Well, Gaius, wreaking havoc with the plans of all good men is your specialty, not mine. But no doubt Caesar will be extremely grateful.

  The Cilician Sword

  t was with some trepidation that I boarded the Hesiod once again. Our two previous voyages – the first ending in shipwreck, the second starting with our escape from the villa – had not been tranquil. Nonetheless, I felt the burden of my secret mission. If I could only frustrate Cicero’s plans with Pompey, Gaius would certainly overlook my delays. Part of me even wished I was back in Reate, where they never sent you on secret missions.

  We were headed for Samos, the large island on the eastern side of the Aegean. Atticus had told us that Admiral Pompey was using Samos as his supply depot during the campaign against the pirates in those waters, though his ships were mostly out hunting for them.

  Our host had been generous in equipping us. He hired twenty free men to serve as rowers. It was a tradition at Athens not to use slaves as rowers on the galleys, and the port was full of unemployed people who were happy to serve. He also purchased new clothes for us: togas for Homer and me, a costly Phoenician robe for the Captain, and a new silk dress and matching veil for Paulla. Foreseeing a meeting with Spurinna, she had even borrowed money and gone to the most talented hairdresser in Athens. She was now wearing her hair pinned up in the Greek style. Space was again limited on the little Hesiod, but we took shifts in the cabins. Fortunately, the voyage this time would be short.

  Homer had entrusted Spurinna’s memoir to Atticus and the copyists. In its place, he was now carrying Cicero’s note to Pompey inside his shirt. I spent most of the trip to Samos trying to get a look at it. Unfortunately, the Greek had evidently decided that Caesar’s secret agent might have infiltrated the Athenian crew and consequently he felt honor-bound never to allow it off his person. I tried asking his opinion of its literary style, to get him to read it to me, but he informed me superciliously that it was “doubtless in the very best taste.” I tried getting him to demonstrate the workings of the ballista to me, which I thought might require him to remove the letter from his clothing, but he preferred to explain the ballista from the comfort of his hammock. I even tried slipping into the cabin while Homer was asleep, but his tasteless snoring made me nervous, and the scroll I grabbed from the side of his bed proved to be no more than an astronomical treatise in verse. After that I gave up. All I could do, I decided, was to keep my eyes open and hope to interfere with Cicero’s plans on Samos. But time was running out.

  So, in style, and with intrigue in the air, we coasted through the Cycladic Isles. First, we rounded Point Sunium, waving good-bye to Poseidon’s temple, and passed between Ceos and Cynthus. We went east past Syros, and saw Delos, the Holy Island, and the beaches of Mykonos gleaming in the sunset. That night we crossed the open waters until, at dawn, we found Icaria off the port bow. We followed its steep edge to the eastern tip. From there it was an afternoon’s sail, along Thymaina and Corassia, to Samos itself. The island was large, however, and the Captain decided we would travel around the north side to the city and its ancient harbor. The free rowers were proving their worth. The Hesiod was cutting through the choppy waves like a real warship.

  Paulla was the first to spot the fleet. As soon as we sighted Samos, she took station on the bow, with her veil blown back like some sea goddess from the days when nymphs and satyrs inhabited these shores. She knew it, too, and she was confident that Spurinna, for his part, would be gazing westward from the prow of the Roman flagship and would, therefore, behold her at her best. She gave a shout and pointed at the mouth of Samos harbor ahead of us.

  “Carry on, Captain!” she called. “We’re nearly there!”

  There were a dozen warships lying at anchor at the mouth of the bay, and we were rapidly approaching. Besides the flagship, which was a tall quinquereme with immense oars, there were four triremes and seven biremes. It seemed that Pompey’s fleet was not dispersed after all. Perhaps he was preparing for a new operation and would not be able to return to Italy. We lowered our sail and came in under oar power.

  “I didn’t know Rome still had any quinqueremes,” I said to Homer.

  “Perhaps they’ve bought one out here,” he answered.

  We coasted to a halt between one of the triremes and the giant quinquereme. Another trireme moved immediately to our rear. I looked at the marshaled vessels and felt a qualm. Surely it was unusual for Roman warships to be decorated in these gaudy colors, each with a toothy mouth painted onto its bow like a ravening shark’s maw. It didn’t say much for discipline, and the few seamen staring curiously over the side looked to be an unruly gang – hardly Roman officers.

  “Ahoy, there, little galley!” called a voice from the quinquereme, towering twenty feet above us.

  “Ahoy!” called the Captain from the poop deck. But I saw him looking nervously at the trireme which had taken station behind us. Not much of a welcome, I could see him thinking.

  “Ahoy!” I called from the Captain’s side. “We have come with news for Admiral Pompey May we come aboard?”

  The man who had hailed us did not reply for a moment. He stared briefly; he was wearing a yellow handkerchief over his hair. Then he vanished from the side, and soon a different person appeared, taking hold of the rigging with one foot on the rail. He was wearing a Cilician cap and had a long pointed beard, dyed red. It was emphatically not Pompey the Great.

  “I’m Admiral here,” he announced in a thick Cilician accent. “I’ll take your news, by Sabazius, and meanwhile it’s we who’ll do the boarding!”

  With that, a growl went up along the rails of the two ships on either side. Panic seized our ship and the Captain shouted frantically to back water; but with the trireme behind us we had no room to turn around. At that moment, half a dozen ballista bolts impacted all along our hull, and one struck the poop deck beside me. The Captain roared and cursed: a huge splinter had stuck inside his lower leg. Grappling hooks came sailing through the air, snagging our rigging, and the quinquereme’s oars were drawn in on the side facing us. The Hesiod was pulled sideways toward it, into the shade of the giant galley’s top deck. Shirtless men with knives in their belts and bandanas on their necks tumbled to the Hesiod’s deck and sprang up with fire in their eyes. They were undoubtedly merciless pirates.

  “We surrender!” I shouted hastily. They had us hopelessly outnumbered. More pirates had encircled Paulla at the bow – she had begun to swing the ballista round on them, but they overpowered her. She was shoved back to join us on the poop deck, where the man who had first hailed us took control. He knocked the wounded Captain down and bellowed to his own men.

  “Half of you, now, you
keep those rowers in their seats – nothing funny, got it? You gentlemen,” he said, addressing Homer and me with his best impression of a smile, “can go up that ladder, quickly now! And the lady, of course,” he said, with a leer at Paulla, who had lowered her veil again.

  Our hearts were beating hard – at least I know mine was – as the three of us were pushed and pulled up a ladder to the main deck of the quinquereme. Even in the bay, the two ships rose and fell on the swell, and it was hard not to look down at the chasm of seething sea beneath the ladder’s frail rungs. At the top we were hauled up by both armpits and made to stand in a little group. The self-proclaimed Pirate Admiral was there, and he laughed at us heartily.

  “One… two… three Roman birds caught in our cage!” he counted, chuckling at our discomfort. Homer’s toga had slipped off his shoulder and he did look pitiful. I saw that the Pirate Admiral’s face was covered with the scars of vicious combat. He was a huge man, middle-aged, but showing every sign of immense physical strength.

  “Our Captain is wounded!” Paulla protested shrilly. “One of your bolts hit his leg. Bring him up, he needs a doctor!”

  “Well, if that isn’t the way to lecture your captors!” exclaimed the Pirate Admiral. “Your captain will come up, don’t you worry, along with the rest of your crew.” He leaned over the side again and addressed his man in the yellow handkerchief. “Get those rowers up here,” he bellowed. “We’ll still be shorthanded, but we need ’em. And search the ship!”

  Homer, meanwhile, was gyrating surreptitiously where he stood. I knew he was trying to shift Cicero’s sealed note from his midriff, where it bulged rather obviously beneath his shirt.

  “Can’t say I’ve ever seen this!” said the Pirate Admiral with a grin. “Usually we have to go chasing galleys such as yours, but here you are, coming to us like old friends. Still, I guess you must have thought we were your friends, eh, your precious little Roman fleet? Can’t blame you! But that Pompey never got so many ships in once place, believe me, as I’ve got here, and he never set foot on such a flagship as this here Sword of Cilicia! You can ask the man himself soon, I’m sure.”

  “You mean you’ve got him?” I cried. “Pompey the Great?”

  “The Great, is he? No doubt he is, no doubt he is!” laughed the Pirate King. “He can look to revising his titles after we’re through with him. But to answer you, he’s not here yet, but you can give me your news for him, I’ll pass it on.”

  “No treasure on the galley, Your Honor!” called the man in the handkerchief from the deck of the Hesiod.

  “You’re sure?” growled the Pirate Admiral over the side. “What about jewels?”

  “Sure I’m sure,” came the reply. “We’ve torn through it, there’s nothing.”

  “Well,” said the Pirate Admiral, returning to us with an angrier glance. “No gold, no jewels, what kind of prize is this?”

  Homer replied that gold and jewels were nothing to us, since he, for one, valued modesty above mere worldly wealth.

  “Modesty, eh?” spat the Pirate Admiral. “Well, I’m not modest, and neither are these shipmates of mine. Modesty! Ever heard of a modest pirate? But what’s that you’re hiding in your shirt, then, you great prince of modesty?”

  At the pirate’s bidding, two sailors seized hold of Homer and a third rifled his clothing. Cicero’s note was discovered immediately and shown to the Pirate Admiral.

  “Yes, yes,” he said as he unrolled it. “No doubt this’ll be some of that news for Pompey we’ve been hearing so much about. Any of you devils read that Latin?” he barked, looking to his crew. One lanky, unshaven fellow volunteered meekly.

  “Read it aloud, then!” bellowed the Pirate Admiral. The lanky pirate broke the seals. This is what we heard:

  Atticus to Pompey: Greetings. I am sending these three people to you, Admiral, along with the note enclosed. They are Oppius Sabinus, Aemilia Lepida Paulla, and Lucinus Homerus. The last will be familiar to your young friend Spurinna; the girl is the daughter of Aemilius Lepidus Paullus, whom of course you know. Please give them a friendly welcome and send them back to me.

  “Oh-ho!” cried the Pirate Admiral when he heard this. “You’ll fetch a powerful great ransom, the three of you, from this! Better than jewels to me!”

  Paulla groaned. She was imagining the humiliation of being ransomed back to her family. But I felt a sudden gust of fearlessness.

  “You would do better to kill us now,” I declared to the Pirate Admiral.

  Homer jerked his head at me and began to protest vehemently.

  “Eh?” asked the Pirate Admiral with a giggle, ignoring Homer. “Now why would I do that, when you’ll fetch such a fine bag of gold from your rich friends?”

  “Because,” I answered in a quavering voice, “if you don’t kill us, we shall track you down!”

  There was silence. Then the whole deck burst out laughing. It went on for a while.

  “By Sabazius, what a day!” said the Pirate Admiral, wiping the tears of merriment from his red beard. “I wish all prizes were like this! But you,” he said, clearing his throat and turning to the lanky crewman, “read the rest.”

  The unshaven pirate cleared his throat and now read out Cicero’s note to Pompey

  Cicero to Pompey: Greetings. Old friend, the time has come for all good men to make alliance. I hear from my young friend Spurinna that you will soon be returning to Italy, for your fleet is scattering, the pirates are subdued, and your glorious campaign is complete. I myself will come to Brundisium to welcome you. We must speak about the Tribunes for next year: Caesar is trying to rig the election, and your votes will make the difference. Come before September. In exchange, I shall organize your Triumph. Farewell.

  There was silence on deck. The pirates seemed to be wondering if they had already been subdued, as the letter said. They didn’t show much sign of it to me. Weren’t we at anchor in the midst of a twelve-ship pirate fleet?

  “By the great god Sabazius,” the Pirate Admiral swore at last. “Is this a trick? Has he actually scattered his fleet?” He snatched the letter from the lanky pirate and peered at the broken seals, giving us a searching glance. He was still for a moment, his red beard stiff in the sea breeze. Then he swung round to his crew.

  “Where did the fisherman say Pompey’s flagship was?”

  “Making for Miletus, Your Honor!”

  “Aye, Miletus. That’s where we’ll catch him, then! Boys,” he proclaimed to the crew, and the other triremes heard the great booming voice as well, “the Roman fleet’s scattered! Tomorrow, aye, tomorrow we’ll sail, and get our revenge on the Roman Admiral!”

  A deafening cheer went up.

  “Here’s to the Red Beard! Here’s to the Admiral!” they called, shouting it from all three decks. “Tomorrow we sail! Tomorrow!”

  “As for you guests,” said the Pirate Admiral wickedly, “you can watch from the deck while the Romans lose this battle. Fair is fair: it’s you that have opened the road to dear Admiral Pompey!”

  “No,” groaned Paulla softly. “Not poor Aulus!”

  “Take them to the brig,” rasped the Pirate Admiral, and straightaway six pirates pulled us through the stern cabin door and down a short ladder. Before we entered the smelly darkness of the interior, I caught a glimpse of our rowers being forced up the ladder from the Hesiod. The Captain was in front, his face white and his costly robe, now soaked with blood, wrapped tightly round his calf. I don’t know if he caught my eye, for we were soon hidden from view, but in my mind I could already see him shackled helplessly to a pirate oar.

  “Here’s your fine accommodation!” giggled our escort, opening a low door. Inside were various wooden crates, several large jugs, strings of sausage, and sets of iron shackles. A small lamp gave off dull light. “Don’t go eating the Admiral’s dainties, or he’ll ransom you half dead!”

  They put our hands and legs in fetters, with a familiar chain through the leg cuffs, attaching them tightly to our hands. It was most uncomfortab
le. We could hear the Admiral celebrating with his shipmates in the cabin above our heads. From far below came a more ominous sound: the shuffling and clanking of our crew being hitched to the quinquereme’s oars. They had been pressed to help fill the vast number of hands needed to speed the great vessel in search of its enemies.

  “Well, Homer?” I asked, as our jailors departed and we were left alone with our chains. “Any suggestions? Any sign of poetry in that brute’s character for you to get a handle on?”

  He regarded me coolly from his awkward posture. “I’m quite satisfied at being still alive, sir,” he replied, “after your rather precipitous suggestion that we be murdered. Besides, sir, it sounds as though this Pirate King is preoccupied with the coming battle.”

  “What about you?” I asked Paulla. She was twisting herself in a rather bizarre fashion and trying to get her veil off. “Any great ideas from The Sad Spanish History?”

  At that she bridled, ceased her fidgeting, and looked at me with contempt. “By Juno, Marcus, will you never stop whining? You’re fine sometimes, but other times I think you’re worse than one of my father’s mules! What’s the point in having adventures if you only look on the negative side all the time?”

  “Maybe you’d like to tell me the positive side of being kidnapped by pirates!”

  “I’m making a bigger point!” she said with exasperation. “A philosophical point, come to think of it. What I’m saying is, the gods help the brave! They, and I for that matter, haven’t got time for the Marcus Oppius School of Pessimism.”

  “Are you suggesting, madam,” inquired Homer, intervening, “that ‘Whoever shall against the Titans strive, Jove won’t ignore, nor of renown deprive as Hesiod expresses it?”

  “Probably,” Paulla answered impatiently. “I mean, we need to be serious and escape! Think of Aulus! We need to get word to Admiral Pompey And to answer your initial question, Marcus,” she said, calming down and resuming her twisting motion, “I am actually thinking of something in The Twice-Told Tale where…” She stretched her neck down to her hands and snatched at her pinned-up hair, then gave a cry.