"My master's old partner is to appear in court on a charge; my master has to give evidence."
This sounded suspiciously close to what I was supposed to arrange myself. The mad thought crossed my mind that "Romanus' could be Scilla herself in masculine disguise. She had the spirit-but of course, she liked to claim she was respectable. "What, is Calliopus on a charge too?"
"Just a witness." That could be a ruse to get him there.
"For or against?"
The slave looked disgusted. "Against, man! They hate each other. My master would never have gone otherwise."
What a wonderful scenario. If I had wanted a way to set the two men up, this was the perfect scheme; tell Calliopus he could help prosecute Saturninus. I wished I had thought of it.
So who did? Who was this mysterious character with the summons, and what, if any, was his interest in my case?
I walked back to the harbor. It was dark by now. The breeze that had driven us to shore lashed cold on my face but it was fading. I needed to consider my sudden feelings of uncertainty. The harbor had a long, attractive waterfront; I went for a stroll. Approaching me in the opposite direction came a man who looked obviously Roman. Like me he was mooching idly beside the ocean, in a deep, pensive mood.
No one else was about. We must have both reached the point of knowing that our private thoughts were leading nowhere. We both stopped. He looked at me. I looked at him. He was an upright figure, slightly too much flesh, sharp haircut, clean-shaven, bearing himself like a soldier though with too many years out of action to be an army professional.
"Good evening." He spoke with an unmistakable Basilica Julia accent. The greeting alone told me he was freeborn, patrician, tutor-educated, army-trained, imperially patronized, and statue-endowed. Wealth, ancestors, and senatorial self-confidence yodeled from his vowels.
"Evening, sir." I made a quiet legionary salute.
Two Romans far from our native city, protocol allowed us to accept this chance of exchanging news from home.
It was necessary to introduce ourselves.
"Excuse me, sir. You seem like the proverbial "one of us'-your name is not Romanus, I suppose?"
"Rutilius Gallicus." He sounded alarmed. Whoops. Titles are a sensitive matter. I had just accused a highly bred patrician of being a gutter rat with just one name. Still, the highbred one was out ambulating a harbor without his guards and flunkies. You could argue he had asked for it.
"Didius Falco," I returned. Then I hastened to reassure him that I could tell he was a man of rank. "Are you connected with the provincial governor in some way, sir?"
"Special envoy status. I'm surveying land boundaries." He grinned, looking eager to astonish me. "I have heard of you!" My face fell. "I've a message from Vespasian," he told me. "This is obviously of grave national importance: if I see you out here, Didius Falco, I am to instruct you to return to Rome for an interview about the Sacred Geese."
After I finished laughing, I had to tell him enough for him to realize just what an administrative shambles was involved. He took it well. He was a sensible, down-to-earth type of administrator himself, which must be why some vengeful clerk had sent him out here on a fool's errand to separate the rebellious landowners of Lepcis and Oea.
"I've just been here in Oea to receive representations from the top men." He sounded low. "Hopeless. I need to be out of here very fast tomorrow before they realize I'm coming down in favor of Lepcis. The plan is to announce my results at Lepcis, where the happy winners will ensure I'm not torn apart."
"What's the problem?"
"The towns were up in arms during the civil war. Nothing to do with Vespasian's accession-they just took advantage of the general chaos to fight a private battle over territory. Oea called in the Garamantes to help, and Lepcis was besieged. No doubt about it, Oea caused the trouble, so when I draw the new official lines I'll be hammering them."
"Lepcis gets the advantage?"
"It had to be one or the other, and Lepcis has the moral right."
"Time to flee from Oea!" I agreed. "How are you going?"
"On my ship," said Rutilius Gallicus. "If Lepcis is where you're heading, can I offer you a lift?"
On rare occasions you do meet officials who serve some use. Some will even help without having to be greased with a backhander first.
I managed to slide my party and their luggage off Myrrha's old boat while she and her people were at their evening meal. When it was all fixed, I told the interpreter that I had met an official I knew and hooked up with him. Rutilius Gallicus had a fast caravel that would soon outstrip Myrrha's bum-heavy hulk, and to help matters even further his fearless captain slipped anchor and took off by night.
"I know why I'm doing a flit. What's your hurry, Falco?" Rutilius asked curiously. I told him a little of the background to the dirty tricks war. He grasped the point immediately. "Struggling for dominance. This all runs parallel to the problems I came to adjudicate-" Rutilius was settling in for a lecture, not that I minded. I was at sea; my concentration was fixed on avoiding being ill. He could talk all night so long as it distracted me. We were out on deck, feeling the breeze as we leaned on the rail. "None of the Three Towns has access to enough fertile land. They occupy this coastal strip, with a high jebel protecting them from the desert. It makes a good climate-well, a better one than the arid interior-but they are stuck on a small plain between the mountains and the sea, plus only whatever they can irrigate inland."
"So what's their economy, sir? I thought they relied on trade?"
"Well they need to produce food, but in addition, Lepcis and Oea are trying to build up an olive oil industry. Africa Proconsular is proper is a grain basket, as I'm sure you know-I heard one estimate that Africa provides a third of all the corn we need in Rome. Here it's not suitable for so much cereal production, but olive trees do thrive and they need very little effort. I can see a time when Tripolitania will outstrip all the traditional outlets-Greece, Italy, Baetica."
"So where are these olive groves?"
"Inland, a lot of them. The locals have a very refined system of irrigation, and I've calculated on maybe a thousand or more farms totally geared to production of oil-hardly any living quarters, just huge milling equipment. But as I say, there is not enough land, even with careful resource management. Hence the fighting."
"Oea and Lepcis slogged it out, and Oea brought in the tribes? That was what caused Valerius Festus to pursue the Garamantes back into the desert?"
"Useful move. Lets them know who's in charge. We don't want to have to install a military presence too far south, purely to control nomads in the sand dunes. Pins down too many troops. Waste of effort and cash."
"Quite."
"As for your wild beast merchants, their problem is probably related to the land famine. Families who own too little ground to match their ambitions with produce are hunting the beasts to supplement their incomes."
"I think they enjoy it and are good at it too. What's driving them at present is the chance to make a huge profit when the new amphitheater opens."
"Exactly," said Rutilius. "But that's a long-term thing. The Flavian Amphitheater has a planned construction timetable of what-ten years? I've seen the design drawings. If it comes off, it will be a beautiful thing but simply quarrying the stone out on the Via Tiburtina will take time."
"They have had to build a whole new road to take the weight of the marble carts."
"There you are. You don't build one of the new wonders of the world overnight. While these beast suppliers are waiting to cash in, their business is extremely expensive, and since the Statilius Taurus arena burned down it's one with few immediate rewards. Capture, keeping the creatures, shipping them-all difficult and fiendishly pricey. They want to keep their organizations up to strength because the year the new amphitheater opens they will be working flat out. But I can tell you, your fellows are all in hock up to their earlobes, with no hope of balancing their budgets for a long time."