Forty-five

DEPLORING FAMIA 'S HORRIBLE habits kept the fun going for an hour or two. We managed to get through the rest of the day, and an obligatory night of feasting and very heavy drinking, without being forced to explain too accurately why we were riding in a suspicious manner around the uninhabited parts of Cyrenaïca. Justinus did most of the talking, and luckily his head for wine was worse than mine so he passed out while we were still in control of the situation; he had managed to avoid indiscretions about our search for the silphium. The big Punic character was an entrepreneur. He was energetic and showed a driving ambition. We did not want him to hear our story and decide that harvesting herbs would be easier work for him than hunting Circus beasts.

As it turned out, we need not have worried about disguising our intentions. When we clambered onto our horses next morning, almost unable to stay upright, the man in charge, now our close crony, came to see us off and shared a few more sweet nothings with my companion. As they talked, Justinus seemed to be laughing at something and looking my way. We all exchanged extremely polite salutes and groaned over our thick heads, then we two rode off very gingerly.

"What were you two giggling over?" I said, once we were clear of the camp. "It looked like our Punic playmate was announcing that he would sell me his daughter-the ugly one, probably."

"It was worse than that," sighed Justinus. He waited patiently while I explained to my horse that a tiny clump of bristly bush could not be a crouching leopard because all the leopards for miles around were in the huntsmen's cages. "I found out, dear Marcus, why he never asked what we are doing here."

"How come?"

"He thinks he knows."

"So what's our secret?"

"It's yours. You're Falco-the Emperor's Census examiner."

"He's heard of me?"

"Your fame has a long reach."

"And he's an importer of beasts. I should have thought of it."

"Hanno thinks you are spying on some soon-to-be-hammered defaulter."

"Hanno?"

"Our lion-hunting host."

"I'll tell you something else," I said, grinning over it to some extent. "Hannobalus is the romanized name of a tycoon from Sabratha who runs a huge animal import business for the Games in Rome. This must be the same man. Quintus, our genial host at the camp last night has already been the subject of a penetrating enquiry by Falco & Partner."

Justinus went even more pale than he already had been due to his hangover. "Oh dear gods! Did you hammer him? "

"No; he has a brilliant accountant. I had to let him off."

"That's fortunate." Justinus had rapidly recovered powers of logical thought, despite his headache. "If you had imposed too many penalties, last night the excellent Hanno could have fed us to a lion."

"And no one the wiser! Let's hope he could tell that our meeting was coincidental. He has a host of men, armed to the teeth."

"And all the time," mused my gentle companion, "we two are just two innocent plant-hunters!"

"Speaking of which, I think you're overdue to present me with your fabled little sprout of greenery."

Later that day, somewhere before-or maybe after-Antipyrgos, Quintus Camillus Justinus, disgraced son of the most noble Camillus Verus, did produce his sprout for me, though it was not little.

"Olympus, it's grown a bit since I found it!" he marveled, as the monstrous tussock towered alongside him.

I tipped back my head, shading my eyes from the sun as I admired his treasure. The bigger the better. It was leaning a bit, but looked healthy. "It's not exactly dainty. How in Hades could anything that size ever get lost?"

"Now we've found it again we could guard it with a dragon like the Apples of the Hesperides, but this plant might eat the dragon-"

"It looks as if it could eat us too."

"So: is that it, Marcus?"

"Oh yes."

It was silphium all right. There was just this one, the largest plant I had ever come across: not exactly a pot-herb to grow in your window box. The bright green giant had reared itself over six feet high. It was a coarse, bulbous unattractive creature, with strappy leaves pushing up out of one another to form a thick, central stem. Prominent on top of the stout column was one very large sphere of yellow flowers, an alliumlike globe of individual bright gold blossoms, with much smaller clusters nodding on long fine pedicels that came from the junctions of leaves lower down the plant.

My horse, which had been so terrified of every other growing piece of greenery, decided to sniff the silphium with unconcealed interest. We gulped, and rushed to tie him safely out of reach. We took note; this precious plant was attractive to animals.

Justinus and I then adopted the only possible course for two men who had just discovered a fortune growing in the wilds. We sat down, fetched out a flagon we had brought along for this purpose, and drank a frugal draft to destiny.

"What now?" asked Justinus, after we had toasted ourselves, our future, our silphium plant, and even the horses who brought us to this elevated spot.

"If we had some vinegar we could make a nice jar of silphium marinade to soak lentils in."

"I'll bring some next time."

"And some bean flour to stabilize the sap. We could tap the root for resin. We could cut some stem and grate it on a roast-"

"We could slice it up with cheese-"

"If we needed medicine, we have a wonderful ingredient."

"If our horses needed medicine, we could dose them."

"It has an abundance of uses."

"And it will sell for a huge amount!"

Chortling, we rolled about in sheer delight. Soon, every apothecary's snailshell of this treasure would pour profits into our banker's chests.

Our hunter friend Hanno from Sabratha had fed us on decent drumsticks last night, but had not gone so far as to send us on our way with a brace of birds to picnic on tonight. All we actually had to eat was army-style baked biscuit. We were tough lads; we traveled in discomfort to prove the point.

I did trim off a little piece of silphium leaf, to see whether the taste I had winced at in Apollonia could be improved upon. In fact fresh silphium seemed even worse than the elderly version that I had tried before. It smelt of dung. In the raw its taste was as disgusting as its smell forewarned.

"There must be some mistake," decided Justinus, losing heart. "I was expecting ambrosia."

"Then you're a romantic. According to Ma, when silphium is cooked the bad taste vanishes-virtually. And your breath afterwards is-more or less-acceptable. But she reckoned it causes unavoidable wind."

He recovered himself. "People who will be able to afford this treat, Marcus Didius, won't need to care where they fart."

"Quite. The rich make their own social rules."

We farted ourselves, on principle. As Romans we had been granted this privilege by the kindhearted, conscientious Emperor Claudius. And we were in the open air. Anyway, we were going to be rich. From now on, we could behave objectionably whenever and wherever we liked. Freedom to expel flatulence without comment had always struck me as the main benefit of wealth.

"This plant of ours is flowering," observed Justinus. His record as an army tribune was impeccable. His approach to logistical problems never failed to be incisive. He could come up with a reasonable order of the day, even when ecstatic and slightly drunk. "It's April. So when will there be any seeds?"

"I don't know. We may have to sit this out for a few months before they form and ripen. If you see any bees passing, try to entice them over and speed the stripy fellows onto the flowers. Tomorrow when it's light we'll go for a stroll around the jebel and look for a feather. Then I can try tickling up our big boy by hand." Real horticultural spoiling lay in store for this baby of ours.