Germanicus

'Marcus…'

'Perhaps you should go back inside, ma'am,' Theon said.

'If you think-!'

'Go on, Perilla.' I kissed her cheek. 'We'll be right there. Promise.'

She went. Once she was safely out of sight Theon picked the dead guy up and tossed him to the fish.

. .

'He joined the ship at Puteoli,' Theon said. He was sitting on the deckhouse's only stool. Perilla and I sat chastely on the bed, side by side. 'Our normal skivvy'd gone out on a bender and never come back.'

'Was that usual?' I said.

'Not unusual. Though so far we've known where to find him.'

'But not this time?'

'Not this time.' Theon made to spit, and then remembered where he was. 'So when this Albianus turned up asking for a job an hour before we sailed I took him on. You get a lot of that sort hanging about Puteoli harbour. Any harbour. Not real seamen, but if they can peel an onion, clean out a pan and stay sober nobody asks too many questions.'

'So you didn't know him?'

'No.' He scowled. 'Did you?'

'Uh-uh.'

'Then why did he attack you?'

'The gods know,' I said. Yeah, sure; they probably did, but all the same I could make a damn good guess myself. 'Maybe the heat got to him.'

'What heat?'

'Okay, make it the endless empty wastes of the briny.' I reached for the cup of wine — my own Setinian — on the side table. 'Whatever. How the hell should I know?'

'You'll report it when we get to Seleucia, naturally.'

'No.'

That rocked him, I could see. Sure, he was relieved; no ship's captain wants it to get around that his crew might try to puncture the passengers. The fact that I was a purple-striper and a current Roman consul's nephew made things worse. One word from me to the authorities in Syria and he'd spend the rest of his days hauling cabbages in the Black Sea. But he was puzzled, and a guy like Theon hated to be puzzled.

'You care to tell me why not?' he said.

I shrugged. 'Because it wasn't your fault. Because you saved my life. And because the bastard's dead anyway. What did you slug him with, by the way?'

'A belaying pin.'

'Yeah?' Jupiter! Maybe I'd've understood that in Latin, but I doubted it. 'Okay, so we'll agree to blame it on the heat, right? No questions either side.'

'Well, Corvinus, so long as you're satisfied.' Theon got to his feet. 'Nothing like this has ever happened before on a ship of mine. You've my apologies. And my thanks.'

He was a straight guy. Straight but puzzled. We shook hands and I saw him out and on his way to keelhaul the bilges or whatever the hell captains did at night. Then I poured myself another cup of wine and settled back against the bolster.

'That man was supposed to stop you getting to Syria, wasn't he?' Perilla said.

'Yeah.' I took a mouthful of Setinian. After the Laodicean it went down like liquid velvet. 'Of course he was.'

'So who sent him?'

'Jupiter knows, Perilla. I'll tell you one thing, though.'

'Yes?'

'It means we're on the right lines.'

She was quiet for a long time, her head on my shoulder. Then she said: 'Now I'll tell you something.'

'Yeah?'

'Antioch isn't Rome. You don't know it, you've no friends there. Right lines or not, if whoever sent Albianus tries again then next time they may succeed. And they might well have people already there and waiting. I want you to be very careful, please, because I don't want you dead. It isn't worth it. Do you understand?'

I kissed her forehead. 'I understand, lady.'

Sure I did. I didn't want me dead, either. But after that evening's little incident it might be pretty tricky avoiding it.

20

Twenty days later, we stepped ashore at Antioch's port of Seleucia in the middle of a major earthquake. At least that's what it felt like. The weird thing was that although the ground was jigging about like the lid on a soup pot the buildings seemed to be holding together okay, and none of the locals who turned up on the quayside trying to sell us things were paying any attention. But then that's Greeks for you. It'd take more than an earthquake to stop these guys turning an honest drachma.

Normal people planning a foreign trip arrange things the other end months before they put the door-key under the mat and stop the oil deliveries. We'd had ten days max, which meant we were starting cold. Theon had suggested that we use his cousin's guest house south of the city on the Daphne road as a temporary base, which seemed a good idea. So we left most of the baggage and one of the skivvies behind for collection later and took a ferryboat the fifteen miles upriver to Antioch itself. We got there late in the afternoon and disembarked at a landing stage just beyond the Bridge Gate.

'Isn't it lovely, Marcus?' Perilla was looking round her as I supervised the unloading and dickered with the carriers for the last stretch to Theon's cousin's place. We were smack in the middle of the Old Town, where most of the buildings dated back to the original founding of the city. Honey-coloured marble, shady porticoes. Lots of greenery and water, too, and at Rome you only get those two things together with the scum on the Tiber.

'Yeah. Great,' I said, wrestling with a rogue optative.

'So wonderfully Greek. I really feel we're on holiday.'

Personally I was feeling pretty sour. Dickering in street Greek with a pack of evil minded sharks who wilfully misunderstand your stress patterns isn't my bag, added to which I had serious problems with the exchange rate and I hadn't had a cup of wine since breakfast. There's a lot to be said for foreign travel, no doubt, but for an amateur it can be a real bummer. I wished I'd brought Bathyllus after all. With his organisational genius the little guy would probably have made all the arrangements telepathically while we were somewhere west of Crete.

Perilla stopped soaking up the local colour and came over.

'Having problems?' she said.

'You could say that.' Jupiter! I was being eaten alive here! Meton was no use either; he'd wandered off to check out a fish stall. Take that bastard away from his kitchen and he'd got no more idea than a dowager in a cathouse. 'Problems describe what I'm having pretty well.'

Perilla frowned. 'But it's simple! What was the name of Theon's cousin's guest house?'

'Uh…the Three Bay Trees. Two. Two Bay Trees. Cedars.'

'The Two Cedars. Fine.' Turning to the gang of carters who were squabbling over us, she pointed at random. 'You, you and you. You know the Two Cedars? On the Daphne road?'

The guys looked at each other and swallowed. I didn't blame them. When Perilla's in this mood you just grin and nod and go with it. Unless you can run for cover, of course, which these bastards couldn't because there wasn't any. Her stress patterns were pretty good, too.

'Yes, ma'am,' they said.

'We'll need two carriages and a wagon. Any problem?'

'No, ma'am.'

'A tetradrachm each. And you can keep the change. If you drive carefully and don't break anything.'

'Yes, ma'am. Thank you, ma'am.'

'Don't mention it. The rest of you can go.'

Five seconds later with the exception of our three carters the landing stage was empty, apart from a sandal or two that'd got left behind in the rush. Even the birds had shut up. Perilla turned back to me.

'There,' she said. 'Everything all right now?'

'Uh, yeah. Yeah. That about does it.'

Shit.

We left the city by the Daphne Gate. Even I'd heard of Daphne, and Theon had waxed lyrical about it on the boat. It's one of Syria's most famous tourist spots, a little town in the hills five miles south of Antioch with a precinct of Apollo and more greenery and springs than you can shake a stick at. The walk there's popular in summer, too, and your average tourist — or Antiochene, for that matter — won't go far without stopping off somewhere on the way, which means that the road's lined with places offering everything from a cup of chilled fruit juice to full bed and board with ten course banquets and a dozen dancing girls as optional extras.