"You know-in the wars between Caesar and Pompey he brought his army all around the Bay of Sirtes and surprised the enemy." Justinus was showing off his education; I refused to be impressed. Education is not as good as common sense.
"Amazing," I said. "They must have been flabbergasted when he first appeared. It's desert all the way, I believe-and am I right, there is no proper road along most of the coast?"
"Afraid not!" conceded Justinus, impossibly cheerful. "It took Cato thirty days on foot-we had a couple of donkeys, but we needed longer. It was quite a trip."
"I should think so."
"Obviously there is a coastal track that the locals use-and we knew it must go all the way, because Cato had marched through successfully. I thought it would be a grand adventure for us to do the same. Well, in the opposite direction of course."
"Of course."
"It must have been hard?" suggested Helena, dangerously quietly.
"Not easy," her younger brother confessed. "It took absolute dedication and army-style methods." Well, he had those. Claudia was a delicately reared young lady from a pampered home. Basic training for an heiress consists only of assaults on Greek novels and a grueling small-talk course. Still fired with enthusiasm, Justinus carried on, "It was five hundred miles of utterly tedious, seemingly endless desert-all dead flat, for week after week."
"Places to stay?" I asked neutrally.
"Not always. We always had to carry water for several days; sometimes there were cisterns or wells, but we could never be sure in advance. We often camped out. The small settlements were a long way apart."
"Bandits?"
"We were not sure. They never attacked us."
"What a relief."
"Yes. We just had to flog on, expecting the worst. Nothing but a distant glimpse of the blue ribbon of the sea on the left-hand side, and the horizon on the right. Bare dry sand, with tufts of scrub. After Marcomades, the land started to roll a bit, but the desert still went on forever. Sometimes the road meandered inland a little way, but I knew that so long as we sometimes caught a glimmer of the sea on our left, we were still going in the right direction… We saw a salt flat once."
"That must have been very exciting!" Helena said crisply. Claudia ate another grape, with no shadow of a smile. The salt flat must be a hideous memory, but she was blotting out the pain. "I am trying to imagine," said Helena to her brother, "what a catastrophe this must have been for Claudia. Expecting only a shipboard romance and starlit happiness. Finding herself instead cast into an endless desert, in fear of her life. A thousand miles from a hairdresser, and in entirely the wrong shoes!"
A brief silence fell. Helena and I were stunned by what the crazy lad had revealed. Perhaps Justinus finally sensed a critical atmosphere. He polished his plate with a piece of bread.
"How long did it take you?" I ventured, still in a neutral tone.
He cleared his throat. "Over two months!"
"And Claudia Rufina endured all this with you, Quintus?"
"Claudia has been very intrepid."
Claudia said nothing.
He was off again: "As you travel east, there tend to be a few date palms. Eventually there are flocks-goats, sheep, occasionally cows, horses, or camels, then towards Berenice, the terrain starts rolling. I'll never forget the experience. The sea and the sky, the way the desert changes color to a harsher gray as dusk starts falling-"
Very poetic. Claudia still looked ominously unmoved. The dead weight of her silence spoke of utter misery. I could work out just how much Justinus was omitting of discomfort, thirst, heat, the threat of marauders, the dread of the unknown. Not to mention their personal relationship rapidly falling apart.
"We did it, that's the main thing." For him, that was clearly true. For Claudia, her life must have been blighted forever. "As I said, we could not afford a ship. Had I not driven us on relentlessly, we would be out there still somewhere-probably dead."
Claudia Rufina stood up suddenly and left the room; in fact, she left the house. We heard the door slam. Upstairs a shutter rattled so hard its catch fell off. Justinus winced, but did not move; I suppose he had already heard plenty from her about how she felt. Unwilling to let a young woman of my party wander a strange city alone in distress, I hauled myself to my feet and followed the girl.
I left Helena Justina starting to explain to her once favorite brother how most people would regard him as guilty of outright cruel stupidity, not to mention unspeakable selfishness.
Forty-three
THE CITY OF Apollonia lies at the far edge of a flat plateau which runs out to the sea below an upland where the more refined foundation of Cyrene queens it over the whole area. Down on the red-sanded, rock-strewn, fertile plain, the seaport has a location of great beauty, even though it lacks the panoramic views which Cyrene enjoys from the heights above.
Apollonia is a long habitation, fronting the beach so closely that in really rough weather floods crash into the glamorous temples near the water's edge. The handsome peristyle houses of the Hellenistic traders and landowners are for the most part more judiciously set back. Yet even the most gracious of these habitations nestle close to the inner and outer harbors. Those embrace a rich variety of shipping which throngs the slipways at all times of the year. Trade is the life of Apollonia. Trade has for centuries made it one of the most prosperous ports, sited within striking distance of Crete, Greece, Egypt, and the East-yet as good a jumping off point for Carthage, Rome, and all the eager markets at the west end of the Mediterranean. Even without silphium, the stink of money vies with the salt tang off the sea.
That bright afternoon, Claudia Rufina had walked rapidly past the well-spaced sunlit mansions; they looked grand enough to be civic palaces, though since Cyrenaïca is administered from Crete they were in fact huge, ostentatiously lavish private homes. As usual at the habitations of the vulgarly rich, there was little sign of life. An occasional bodyguard polished the brightwork on a parked chariot, looking bored, or a neat maid walked out silently on some routine errand. Of the wealthy owners we saw nothing; they were collapsed in stodgy siestas, or might even be living elsewhere.
Eventually, at the eastern extremity, past the outer harbor and beyond the town itself, Claudia emerged on a switchback track which obviously led somewhere, so she kept going. I was a short distance behind her; she would have spotted me if she had looked back, though she never did.
It was hot and peaceful, a tranquil stroll through coastal scenery. Even in her girlish sandals Claudia kept up a cracking pace, despite the increasingly rough and informal track. The terrain climbed slightly. She breasted one ridge at the edge of town only to see another rise in the ground just ahead. Wrapping her stole around her more closely, Claudia strode directly to the further ridge, then abruptly disappeared. Nervous, I speeded up. A startled plover rose almost under my boot and headed inland.
The air was clear as I sprang up the slope. To my left, the sea was stunningly blue, with a series of small islands or rocky outcrops near the shore. Breakers thundered in a cute cove, way below. A steep drop had opened before me. I stopped short; I caught my breath.
Cut into the encircling cliff that had once formed a secluded little beach was the most perfectly sited amphitheater. It was in a sad condition, crying out for restoration by some high-minded public benefactor. The approach from the city had brought us out right at the top, with immediate access to the upper rows of seats. While I stood aloft like a statue on the roof of a temple, Claudia had climbed down several of the precarious terraces, where she was now seated with her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands, sobbing hysterically.