No, Gaius has had to take sick leave. He wants you to look out for the man who attacked him, so he can claim compensation for his injuries."
He won't get it. The thug was brutish, but if it goes to court I'll have to say that Gaius Baebius asked for everything he got."
Unfair, Marcus. You just hate him because he's a public servant." I hated him because he was an idiot. His stupidity at the villa was dangerously real, my love. You're talking as if Gaius will never work again. Has the customs service lost its star?"
If Gaius has been really hurt, this is not funny."
I am not laughing." Whatever I thought of my sister Junia, no Roman woman wants a husband who can no longer work. If Gaius was ever laid off from tax collecting, the family would have only their savings, and they had always been spenders, plus a token income from the unpleasant snackshop on the Aventine which Junia ran as a hobby. Only part of the profits ever reached her. Apollonius, her put-upon general waiter, fiddled the figures; in better times he had been a geometry teacher and he could easily persuade my sister that an obtuse angle was acute. He had been my teacher, so I would never snitch on him. I forced my bleary brain back to the original subject. So what's this ship, Aulus?"
Well come and have a look, Falco. I want you to ask the captain about what was going on when I took him my payment."
You paid your fare before going aboard?" The lad knew nothing. Even I had failed to teach him common sense. Aulus Camillus Aelianus, son of Decimus, heir to a life of luxury, had been an army tribune somewhere or other and worked on the staff of the provincial governor in Baetica. Who knows how he managed to reach those overseas postings? When I took him to Britain, he had me to make all the arrangements.
I am a senator's son," he retorted. The master won't cheat me not if he wants to return to this port. He makes a fortune from passengers; he has to keep his good name."
It's your money!" It was his father's money. Still, Aulus was probably right about the captain. So what's the story?"
Are you up to taking the ferry?"
Only to pursue a really good story."
The best!" he assured me. I was too hungover to quibble. He clinched it, however. That blusterer Caninus who got you sozzled had his nose right in it. It sounded to me as if there had been a run-in with some pirates." I agreed to go to Portus. The vessel selected by our traveller to carry him in search of his legal education was a large transporter in which he had been promised speed, stability, the next best thing to a cabin and food prepared by the captain's own cook. If the weather blew up rough, there would be no food and little shelter, but Aelianus was his usual over-confident self. Well, he was going to Greece for education. Let him learn, I thought. I had assured Helena I would check over this transport and ensure that her brother would be as safe as it was ever possible to be, riding the route to Greece amidst the summer storms that thunder out of nowhere in the Tyrrhenian and the Aegean. The ship, called the Spes, was indeed solid. These days Rome was using the biggest traders ever known. This one had just brought a cargo of fish, olives and luxury goods from Antiochus via the Peloponnese, and was apparently awaiting wine and pottery to take out again. The captain, Antemon, was a calm Syrian with big feet. He had three warts on his left cheek and a birthmark on the right. While he found time to see us, Aulus briefed me on what he saw that morning, so I went straight into the attack. Antemon, my name's Falco. I hear one of your passengers has had a wife go missing. Has she run away with your first officer, or is she getting her leaks plugged by the ship's carpenter?"
Nothing to do with you," the captain told me, looking grim.
It is now. Please be honest. While Camillus Aelianus was waiting to book his passage, he heard your blow-up with a distressed passenger. When Aelianus came back to pay you his money It would do no harm to establish that Aulus had a witness, a naval attache was asking you more questions."
He was making a huge fuss," Aulus backed me up. And you hated it, Antemon."
The navy nark is called Caninus," I said. We know which rockpool he swims in. He told me himself, only yesterday. So, captain, were you troubled by pirates on your voyage to Rome?"
No!" Of course Antemon was anxious to avoid deterring passengers. I have never been bothered by a pirate ship in all my career. I told Caninus that, before I told him which gangplank to jump off."
Caninus endorses the myth that before Pompey lost his head in Alexandria, he turned all the Cilician pirates into farmers," I said.
Caninus says ex-pirates are lovely men, who now feed goats and adore their mothers. But if so, why was Caninus on board your ship? And why were you so keen to give him the fast fly-swat?"
I was only looking after my passenger."
With whom you had been arguing?"
