Of Merchants & Heros (3 page)

‘Run!’ I cried. Then I saw what had stopped her.

The road did not turn, as I had thought; it ended there at the low wall, and beyond was nothing but a sheer drop down the cliff-face.

She looked, and hesitated. The Libyan, realizing she was trapped, was roaring out what he would do to her. She took one last look at him. Then she turned and stepped into the void, as easily as a person might step over the threshold of a house.

There was silence.

The Libyan reached where she had been. He peered down. Then he began to laugh. It was his laughter – chilling, cruel laughter from some foul place in his soul – that finally released the madness in me and made me do what I did.

Our captors, in their shock, had forgotten to hold us. I broke away, ducking past the nearest of them and running. The Libyan turned, and I slammed into his side with all my strength, in the place where the girl had stabbed him.

He yelled out in pain, and struck my head with his fist. But I must have caught him off balance, for then he teetered and stumbled backwards. His foot caught on the ledge, his arms went up, and with a look of amazement on his face he toppled over the low wall and was gone. There was a long-drawn-out terror-filled scream as he contemplated his death. The scream broke off, and then there was silence.

The other pirates came crowding up and gaped over the precipice. Then their eyes slewed round to me.

I heard my father’s voice cry out in Latin, ‘Go! Find your uncle.

Caecilius is his name. Remember!’ And then, switching into Greek, he waved his arms and shouted at the pirates, ‘Your friend brought that upon himself, the animal, and his death was gentle compared with what you will suffer when the Romans come.’

I looked at him. For a moment, before he looked away, our eyes met and locked, and suddenly my mind was sharp and clear, and I understood what he was doing.

He continued shouting like a madman, calling down the curses of the gods, telling the pirates they were worse than beasts. Then I turned and ran. I ducked through a frameless window and scrambled through the saplings and twisted brambles, running for my life through the ruined interior of a house.

Twilight was falling fast. There were hurrying footsteps, and somewhere behind me one of the pirates shouted out. But then another said, ‘Let him go. It will soon be dark. The wolves will have the brat before morning.’

I came out into what had once been the back yard of some grand house. There was the broken basin of a fountain, and a statue grown over with ivy. I scaled a crumbling brick wall at the back, and scrambled up a steep incline beyond it. At the top I came out onto a terrace of overgrown, tangled vines. Ahead was the dense pine forest.

Only then did I pause and look back.

Out beyond the plateau the sun had sunk into a dazzling crimson glow across the sea. At first I could see nothing else. But then, in the ruined town below, a torch moved between the buildings, and I saw the pirates and prisoners assembled, and in their midst the blond one they called Dikaiarchos.

He held a sword in his hand. At his feet, prone in the dirt, lay my father.

I thought at first it was the twilight shadow, and the glare of the torch, that obscured his head. But then the torch-bearer drew nearer, and I saw what they had done to him.

A farmer will set light to a field. The field will burn, and afterwards there is nothing. That was how my mind felt. I could conceive of no future. My past seemed no more than a dream. My only reality was pain.

For days I wandered about the pine-clad ravines, expecting at any moment to be captured, or to be taken by wolves, as the pirates had predicted. For food I ate berries and roots and whatever else I came across, not caring whether or not they were deadly. Eventually I came to a long flat sea-strand, deserted but for an old fisherman who had paused there to sew his nets. He spoke Greek, or a version of it, and agreed to ferry me across the strait to Kerkyra.

It is a lesson every man should learn, to know how it feels to have nothing in a strange city. I had not considered, till then, how I must have looked. My hair and body were filthy, my tunic ripped open from where I had fallen down a slope of rocky scree; my hands and knees were grazed and bloody.

I wandered around the stalls of the quayside market, trying to stop one of the people to ask where the house of Caecilius was. But even before I spoke they shook their heads and turned away. And all the time, amid the smells of cooked fish, and stalls of fruit and honey-cakes, hunger gnawed at my innards like a sickness.

Reaching Kerkyra was the only thing that had kept me going.

Now, after so many days of forcing myself onwards, something inside me collapsed and I gave in to despair.

I cast myself down by a wall on the edge of the market and sank my head in my hands. I would have wept, if I had been able to; but I had not wept once since the day I escaped from the pirates – the day my father died to save me. And then, as I sat staring at the ground, I heard through the babble of Greek and Epirot and Phoenician voices the steady familiar cadences of Latin.

They were two sailors from the Roman naval base. At first they looked at me with as much suspicion as the others. But when, in a torrent of words, I managed to say something of what had happened, and when they heard I spoke Latin, they paused and listened.

Yes, they said, they knew the name Caecilius – a man from Campania, who ran the trading station and supplied the fleet. Was that the man I wanted? Relieved beyond measure, I assured them it was, though in truth I did not know.

One of them knew where the house was; he was going that way and would take me there if I wished. And so they conducted me through the narrow, busy streets of Kerkyra town, up the hill to a high-walled, white-painted mansion overlooking the harbour.

The house-steward cast his eyes over me and told me to wait outside in the street, leaving me standing like some beggar at the closed iron gate while he ambled off to consult his master.

He returned after some little while. The master was busy at supper, entertaining important friends; but I was to come in and clean myself up, and my uncle would see me presently when he was free.

He led me to a bath-house at the back, ordered the attendant to find me something to wear, then left me.

I sat on the edge of the great marble bath and looked around. The room was decorated with tiles of lapis-blue and panelled frescoes of plump naked dryads bathing in a woodland pool. There was a marble towel-stand with gilt fittings, and in the corner a stone-topped table with little jars of scent in bottles of coloured glass. Nothing could have been more different from the spare simplicity of home, and as I scrubbed myself with a great soft sponge I wondered for the first time what had made my father want to come here.

No doubt all children begin with the tastes of their parents, until they think for themselves, and change, and take the trouble to school themselves in something better. But not all change is progress. I remembered how my father used to laugh at the new fashionable men of Rome, the thrusting ambitious knights who left their farms in the hands of bailiffs and went off to the city to make their fortunes.

Taste and wisdom, he would say, does not change with the seasons.

He used to say they were chasing their own shadows. And yet he had set out to come to this strange, rich man’s house, leaving the home he loved. And it had cost him his life. I could not understand it.

The bath-attendant returned with a clean tunic of rough slave’s homespun, and carried away my old clothes to the furnace, as a housewife might carry off a dead rat; and in due course the steward returned and said my uncle would see me.

I had supposed he would have sent his guests home and I should find him already grieving. But as the steward led me through the garden, I heard the sound of men’s laughter echoing along the colonnade. They were still at their wine.

My uncle Caecilius was reclining on a dining-couch, propped up on one elbow in the Greek style, balancing a great embossed silver wine-cup in his hand. It was clear he was got up for some grand party. He wore a long robe of fine-combed wool dyed light green, scarlet doeskin sandals buckled with golden clasps, and, on his head, a great bushing wreath of spring flowers. His hair was jet-black, but his face was pale and going to fat. Beside him reclined a young woman, scantily dressed, with her hair bound up in elaborate plaits.

She stared at me through painted eyes. Even I, with my country naivety, could see she was no wife.

‘Ah, Marcus,’ he cried, a little too loudly. ‘We thought you were dead. If you had been a little earlier you could have joined us; but tell the slave to give you something from the kitchen. Still, I expect you will have a cup of wine?’ He fluttered his hand at a slave in the corner, who began ladling wine into a cup from the krater.

I said, ‘I am alive, sir, but my father is dead. We were taken by pirates.’ I had already poured all this out to the steward, and had supposed he would have told my uncle.

And so he had. For then he said with an unsteady swing of his wine-cup, ‘Yes, it really is very unfortunate, and it will be an unwelcome surprise for your mother. Still, we can discuss this another time . . . But tell me, how is she?’

I looked at him and thought, He is drunk; he does not comprehend. I glanced at the other guests. They were all middle- aged men like my uncle, each with a young female companion. They were gazing at me with shining eyes and expressions of frozen merriment, and I had the sudden sense that I was an embarrassment.

My uncle was still looking up at me, his mouth half open, and I realized he was waiting for me to answer. I managed to tell him something or other, but all the while I was thinking, as I had already reflected many times before, of what I should say to my mother, of how I could explain that I had brought about my father’s death.

A wave of tiredness like nausea swept over me. I glanced down, at a loss, and my eyes rested on the girl. Her fingers and toes were painted bright red, and she was wearing a dress of thinnest silk, through which I could see her breasts and painted nipples. She was pouting and looking at me with bright vacant eyes.

I ignored her, and looked back at my uncle. ‘Thank you, sir, for your hospitality, and for these clean clothes,’ I said, pulling myself together. ‘But I am very tired, and should like to go and sleep.’

For a moment he frowned at me. But then, waving away the boy who had come with the wine, he cried, ‘Yes, yes, go and sleep then.

The slave will show you a room.’

Even before I had left the courtyard I heard the laughter resume, and the clank of the wine ladle as the cups were refilled.

I was given a room on the upper floor, with a window that looked down the hill towards the harbour. I told myself next day, when I had eaten and slept, that I must have interrupted some important gathering of my uncle’s, that today his mood would be different.

It was not until nearly noon that the slave came to fetch me.

Caecilius was in his workroom, seated behind a large desk topped with green onyx, upon which were strewn scrolls and tablets of accounts. His face looked puffy and grey. A flask of wine and a half- empty cup stood by his arm.

He motioned for me to sit, and, after a pause, he set his papers aside and looked at me. Then he began to ask questions about our farm – the crops and buildings, the number of slaves, the yield, the livestock, and the arrangement of the land.

I answered as best I could, wondering what concern it was of his.

As I answered he nodded to himself, and now and again made notes on a wax tablet. He seemed to be considering something; but whatever it was he did not say, and at length he changed the subject and began to talk of his own affairs – the supplies to the fleet which he sourced from Italy and Greece; the difficulties he had with employees and slaves, and other business to do with agents and cargoes. And then he dismissed me, saying he had an appointment at the naval yard, and we should speak again presently.

I waited for the rest of that day, but he did not send for me again. On the following morning he went out early, and did not return till night.

Three days passed. Then four. Each morning I expected he would tell me he had arranged my passage home. I thought, at first, he was leaving me to rest and recover, but on the fifth day, tired of waiting, I went unbidden to his workroom and asked him.

I had begun to wonder, indeed, whether it was a question of money, though he did not seem short of it, and so I began by saying, ‘I realize, sir, I have nothing to pay my passage; but I am sure my mother, when she hears, will arrange—’

‘Come now, Marcus,’ he said, cutting me off with a wave of his hand. ‘This is not a time to talk of money, not at all – though,’ he added, his eye dwelling on mine, ‘I am glad to see you are mindful of it and give it its proper value.’ He sat back in his chair. ‘But I was just about to come to this, for as it happens I have decided to make a trip to Italy myself. One of my own trading ships is due to sail for Brundisium with a cargo of Korinthian silver-work at month-end, and—’

‘—Month-end?’ I cried, shaken out of all politeness and staring at him. ‘But sir, it is only just new moon.’

His fleshy mouth hardened.

‘I do not need to be told what day it is.’ He waited for me to apologize, then went on, ‘You need not concern yourself with your mother: I have already sent her a letter; and, since you have wisely brought up the question of money, you must ask yourself why I should pay passage on another man’s ship, when I can use my own.’

He raised his plump hand and made a money-counter’s sign with his fingers. ‘This,’ he said, when he was sure I had understood the gesture, ‘is how I have succeeded in life. Your father never thought in such terms – if he had, he might have made more of himself.’

I looked down at the inlaid floor, for I could not trust myself to meet his eye. I had crossed mountains and forests and ravines to get here; I told myself this was just one ordeal more in a season of pain, and then I should be home, and need never see this man again.