PART TWO

Cyrenaïca: April A. D. 74

Forty

CYRENAÏCA.

To be precise, the harbor at Berenice. Hercules had made his landing at the ancient seaport of Euesperides, but that had silted up since mythical times. At Berenice, however, there was still an otherwordly atmosphere: the first thing we saw was a man slowly walking along the foreshore taking a single sheep for a walk.

"Goodness!" I exclaimed to Helena, as we sneaked a second glance to be sure. "Is he exceptionally kind to animals, or just fattening it up for a festival?"

"Perhaps it's his lover," she suggested.

"Very Greek!"

Berenice was one of the five significant cities: where Tripolitania had its eponymous Three, Cyrenaïca boasted a Pentapolis. Greeks do like to be part of a League.

Bonded with Crete for administrative purposes, this was a lousily Hellenistic province, and that was already apparent. Instead of a forum they had an agora, always a bad start. As we stood on the wharf, listlessly looking up at the town walls and the lighthouse on its little knoll, taking a holiday somewhere that looked so fixedly towards the East suddenly seemed a bad idea.

"It's traditional to feel depressed when you arrive at a holiday destination," said Helena. "You'll calm down."

"It's also traditional that your qualms will be proved right."

"So why did you come?"

"I was sick of Rome."

"Well, now you're just seasick."

All the same, as Nux chased around our feet desperately counting us all like a sheepdog, we were at heart an optimistic party. We had left home, hard work, letdowns-and most happily of all for me, we had left Anacrites. With the spring sun warming our faces and the low hiss of a blue sea behind us, now that our feet were on firm dry land, we expected to relax.

Our party consisted of Helena and me, together with the baby-a factor which had caused ructions back at home. My mother was convinced that little Julia would be captured by Carthaginians and made a victim of child sacrifice. Luckily we had my nephew Gaius to guard her; Gaius had been forbidden to come by his own parents (my feeble sister Galla and her appalling absentee husband Lollius), so he ran away from home and followed us. I had dropped a few hints about where we would be lodging at Ostia, to help him catch up safely.

We also had with us my brother-in-law Famia. Normally I would have run the lengths of several stadia wearing full army kit before agreeing to share weeks at sea with him, but if all worked out, it was Famia who would be paying for our transport home: somehow he had persuaded the Greens that since their chariot horses had been performing so abysmally, it was in their interests to send him out here to buy fine new Libyan stock direct from the stud farms. Well, the Greens certainly needed to beef up their teams, as I kept pointedly reminding him.

For the voyage out we had acquired paying-passenger places on a ship bound for Apollonia. This enabled Famia to economize, or to put it another way, he was defrauding his faction of the full ship-hire costs for the journey out. They had told him to select a decent Italian vessel at Ostia for a two-way trip. Instead, he was just going to pick up a one-way packet home. Maia's husband was not essentially dishonest-but Maia had made sure he had no spending money, and he needed it for drink. She herself had declined to accompany us. My mother had told me on the sly that Maia was worn out by trying to hold the family together and had had enough. Taking her husband out of the country was the best service I could offer my sister.

It quickly became obvious that the whole reason for this trip as far as Famia was concerned was getting away from his worried wife so he could booze himself senseless at every opportunity. Well, every holiday party has one tiresome bore; it gives everyone else somebody to avoid.

Landing at this harbor was more in hope than earnest. We were trying to catch up with Camillus Justinus and Claudia Rufina. There had been a vague arrangement that we might be coming out to see them. Extremely vague. Back in the winter when I let Helena first mention the possibility in a letter to them at Carthage, I had been assuming my work for the Censors would prevent me indulging in this treat. Now we were here-but we had no real idea where along the north shore of this huge continent the two fugitives might have ended up.

The last we had heard from them was two months earlier, saying that they were intending to set off from Oea for Cyrenaïca and would be heading here first, because Claudia wanted to see the fabled Gardens of the Hesperides. Very romantic. Various letters which Helena was bringing them from their abandoned relations were likely to shake the dim-witted elopers out of that. The rich seemed to lose their tempers with their heirs in a formidable style. I did not blame Justinus and Claudia for lying low.

Since I was the informer, whenever we arrived at a strange town that might be unfriendly, it fell to me to scout it out. I was used to being pelted with eggs.

I enquired at the local temple. Rather to my surprise, Helena 's brother had actually left a message that he had been here, and that he had gone on to Tocra; his note was dated about a month ago. His military efficiency did not quite dispel my fears that we were about to start on a pointless chase all around the Pentapolis. Once they left Berenice, our chances of making a connection with the flitting pair became much more slim. I foresaw handing over frequent emoluments to temple priests.

Our ship was still in harbor. The master had very generously put in here specially to allow us to make enquiries, and after he took on water and supplies he reloaded all our gear while we rounded up Famia (who was already trying to find a cheap drinking house), then we reboarded.

The vessel was virtually empty. In fact the whole situation was curious. Most ships carry cargos in both directions for economic reasons, so whatever this one was supposed to be fetching from Cyrenaïca must be extremely lucrative if there was no need to trade both ways.

The ship's owner had been on board from Rome. He was a large, curly-haired, black-skinned man, well dressed and of handsome bearing. If he could speak Latin or even Greek he never obliged us with so much as a good morning; when he conversed with the crew it was in an exotic tongue which Helena eventually guessed must be Punic. He kept himself to himself. Neither the captain nor his crew seemed disposed to discuss the owner or his business. That suited us. The man had done us a favor taking us on board at reasonable rates, and even before the kindness of putting in at Berenice we had no wish to cause ructions.

Basically that meant one thing: we had to conceal from Famia that our host was even slightly tinged with a Carthaginian flavor. Romans are in general tolerant of other races-but some harbor one deeply embedded prejudice and it goes back to Hannibal. Famia had the poison in a double dose. There was no reason for it; his family were Aventine lowlifes who had never been in the army or come within smelling range of elephants, but Famia was convinced all Carthaginians were gloomy child-eating monsters whose one aim in life was still the destruction of Rome itself, Roman trade, and all Romans, including Famia. My inebriated brother-in-law was likely to be racially abusive at the top of his voice if anything obviously Punic crossed his wavering path.

Well, keeping him away from our ship's owner took my mind off my seasickness.

Tocra was about forty Roman miles further east. By this time I was beginning to regret not taking the advice my father had boomed at me: to travel on a fast transport right out to Egypt, maybe on one of the giant corn vessels, then to work back from Alexandria. Pottering east in little stages was becoming a trial. In fact I decided the whole trip was pointless.