“You did not leave Corsica in haste by account of some sacrilege or manslaying, I suppose, my ser?” — the captain. A-smiling.
“Not I.” — Vergil. With much effort, suppressing a shudder. “Why?”
The man pointed with a hand like the claw of one of the ganter striding birds. “Yonder wee vessel is what we calls the justice-boat. What do I mean? Soon be seen. And heard.”
The wee vessel, ends turned up like some fanciful slipper, came alongside and disgorged an official of the port, assisted by two serjants-at-mace. “Ho, Plauto! take any good prizes?” he greeted.
A thin grin was all that skinny skipper allowed this sally. “None I’d share with you,” he said. Adding, “Festus.”
Festus at first made great show of mimicking a man unrolling a scroll of great import, but dropped it almost at once. Dropped the show, that is, not the scroll. He cast a swift, reckoning glance round the shabby ship (fit to vye with the Zenos, as sister-vessel in this regard), “You haven’t got the right hand of the Colossus of Rhodes,” he said, with feigned disdain.
“Ha! How do you know that I hadn’t had it, and sold it in Marsala?”
“Because it wouldn’t fit in this meager holk,” said Festus, promptly. “Matter of fact, I’ve been in women that had more room.”
Plauto was momentarily torn between an obvious desire to slap his thigh, and the need to make a show of injured pride; contented himself with, “What! You don’t mean to say it’s been stolen again? Who now?”
Festus shrugged. “Tiridates, King of Ermony the More … so men say … get to it … all right, then: have you got aboard of you, concealed or not concealed, one Polycarpo of Ecbatan, black-a-vized chap with very broad shoulders, wanted for spittin in the Sacred Fire a-kindled by the Magus Zoroaster himself? Swear it by Apollo and Juno and by all the other gods and goddesses whose names end in o —”
“Haven’t got it. I swear it by Apollo and Juno, and so on.”
“Have you a father and son called Fat Procopio and Thin Procopio, both marked with the shackles and the scourge, and wanted for murdering the widow Pessaleya of Apuleia and running with her treasure, to wit —”
“Not got. Swear it — and a wicked widow, I’ll lay she was, too —”
The inspector or procurator or whatever his title was, glanced once or twice at Vergil, who was already nervous enough, and said nothing; meanwhile, as the official read his Wanted list, the two serjants were prowling up and down, peering under sails and poking coils of rope with their maces, clambering below decks and glancing all around. Technically, Tingitayne was a port of the Empery like any other port of the Empery. Gaza. Naples. Marsella. Palermo. In the matter of geography, however, Tingitana (for why should a place have only one name? a human being has at least three! eh?) Tingitana was the port at the western end of the Midland Sea. It was well to know who did enter and who did leave. Even the Arabian Recess had its guards, although thither swam all the cargo-ships laded full of wealth of the Indoo Ocean and the Erythræan Sea; there passed not by Tingitane a tithe of such wealth: elephant and emerauld … pepper, pearls, and gold.
“In the olden days, Doctor,” said the official, “a very rich and busy commerce swarmed here. But now we almost slumber and sleep.”
It was as though the man had been reading his mind. A certain coldness suffused his heart. Here it was. “Ah, you know me, then,” said Vergil.
A bow, small but respectful. “At first I knew you not, ser. And then I reckoned that I knew you, yea. But not more. You were a-wearing of your green robe trimmed with fur when I had seen you at the Ceremonial, with the great gold ring upon your thumb. And later, I am sure, at the Straw Market.” Vergil had not the slightest memory of ever having seen the man in Rome, but the man’s memories provided the clues as to when the man had seen him. Along with the doctorate and the doctoral ring Vergil had, as was customary, received a small purse of gold: three golden solids and a golden paleólogus (this last of a paler cast, it was perhaps slightly flushed with silver: he had made no assay). Most of the gratuity had gone to pay his debts: board and lodging, of course, and the final purchase of the robe and ring as well, and his share of the costs of the Ceremonial. And out of what remained he had — true enough — gone to the Straw Market and, after much cheapening, bought a straw chair to send to Illyriodorus in Athens; with it he had sent the softest, thickest, most supple of sheep-fells, hoping that straw chair and sheepskin seat cushion would be easier on his old teacher’s aged bones than the plain hard benches. Any philosopher might tell you that the simple life was the most proper one, and (rolling up his eyes) that the superior man not merely ought to be, but was, satisfied with bread for all his meat and a clean scallop shell to dip his water for all his drink, a hollow bone to hold all his clean salt, and a wooden bench for all his seat and selle and seige. To be sure that Illyriodorus, if you were to give him (say) a flask of oil of nard, would never rub it in his aged oxters or dress his senatorial beard — he would make haste to have some student sell it quietly and then give the money to a worthy fund — for the relief and sustentation (say) of widows of philosophers slain at the capture of Corinth. But Vergil had observed the old man wince when sitting down and heard him say, “If my old goose had not died, gladly would she yield me some breast-feathers to stuff a small pillow, for when the rump dwindles, then the bones grow sore.” Illyriodorus would not be one for ostentatious suffering, he would fold the thicky sheep-fell and fit it in the chair to sit upon. Gladly …
“And how now, Doctor,” asked official Festus, “did you find our Yellow Rome?” Vergil answered, lightly, quickly, “Very easily.” Communications from those of higher rank to those of lower might be considered privileged communications, in that the former are privileged to communicate things of a very slightly humorous nature and are also privileged to hear in return sounds of amusement at least somewhat more than the same remarks would engender from one of equal rank; not that the laughter would need to be obsequious but that whatever was said would indeed seem funnier than if from an equal, or an inferior.
When the chuckles had not quite died away, Vergil then asked, equally lightly, equally quickly, “And what news do you hear from ‘our Yellow Rome’? — We have just come from Corsica, where we don’t hear much …” — No, said Festus, he supposed that in Corsica they didn’t hear much … more chuckles … “What we hears? We hears,” Festus considered the matter, brightened a bit, said, “Well. We hears that Himself the August Caesar continues in good health,” Vergil made a murmur of gratification. And this was no mere obsequiousness, either: for unless Himself the August Caesar were some very great tyrant — which he sometimes was — one would naturally wish him to continue in good health: for, whilst he did so, it was not very likely that hard-faced men with newly-sharpened swords would be dispatched hither and yon with instructions to return with newly-severed heads. And who knew, in such an event, whose? — or wished to? Still … as for the Slaves of the Immortal Gods …