He was climbing down from a high-wheeled cart drawn by two mules, which bore a reinforced cage with a sliding door. From within came the unmistakable deep roar of a fierce Libyan lion. The whole cart shook as the beast threatened to burst out of the outrageous confinement, hurling itself against the sides of the cage. Even the head man, who was of no mean size and strength, leapt from his perch hastily, though the cage held fast. Attendants laughed; he laughed with them, perfectly at ease. Covers were flung over the cage so the beast would quiet down in the dark, and extra ropes were lashed on. Then the man turned to inspect us and he realized, as I had done as soon as we approached him, that he and I had met before. It was the owner of the ship which had brought my party from Ostia.
"Hello," I grinned, though from past experience I did not expect much conversation with him. "Quintus, how's your Punic?" Justinus was a great one for picking up smatterings. I knew he would not have wasted his visits to Carthage and Oea. "Would you mind greeting this character and telling him I'm delighted to renew our acquaintance, and that as he can see, I found you in the end?"
The Punic fellow and Justinus exchanged a few remarks, then Justinus turned to me rather nervously while the big dark man watched my reaction with that close attention that meant he was either insulting my grandmother-or had just made some terrible joke.
"He wants me to ask you," said Justinus, "what's happened to that drunk you had with you on his ship, the one who hates Carthaginians?"
XLV
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 Cyrenaica. 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 amp; 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 allium-like 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 snail shell 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.