Tiberius shook his head with a look of stunned bewilderment. The hatch was a few paces away and Valerius waited until the next wave that battered the stern broke across the deck before he dashed to open it. Serpentius stood unsteadily at the bottom of the ladder with blood masking his face and the women holding him upright.
‘He fell when the wave hit us.’ Domitia’s dress clung to her body beneath the cloak and she was shivering, but her voice was calm. ‘I think he is only stunned.’
The general’s daughter ushered her girls up the ladder and Serpentius groaned as Valerius helped him follow. When they emerged into the wind and rain they saw Domitia and her slaves huddled in the lee of the ship’s stern where most of the crew had taken cover, and joined them there.
Cronos stood by the steering platform peering into the murk ahead.
‘What can we do?’ Valerius shouted.
‘Pray,’ the steersman mouthed.
‘Food and water?’
Cronos laughed. ‘You really believe we’ll survive long enough to be hungry?’
‘Better to be prepared.’
The seaman nodded and put his mouth to Valerius’s ear. ‘Take Julius. He’ll show you where the spare water skins are stored. Fill them all. Don’t worry about the food. If we need it we’ll find it.’
Valerius beckoned to the tall sailor, who reluctantly struggled to his feet. Together they fought their way back to the hatch and into the hold, where the water was now waist deep. Julius muttered to himself as they inched their way through the darkness, but he never missed a step and steered Valerius past trouble until they reached the butts. The first they tried had been contaminated by seawater, but the second was sweet, if musty with age. They filled twenty skins and took them to the deck, where Valerius stored them at Cronos’s feet and placed one of Tiberius’s men to stand guard over them.
Despite the loss of the sail, the wind and the waves continued to drive the ship forward at astonishing speed. More than once he feared the ship would pitch sideways and broach, but the twin steering arms stabilized her course. ‘Now we must endure and survive,’ Cronos said solemnly, and reached up to touch the figure of Poseidon.
The lookout in the bows must have been asleep or blinded by the spray, because the first warning of disaster was the sound of the foot-thick oak mast snapping just as the ship crashed to an abrupt halt and twisted side on to the waves. Valerius was thrown helpless across the deck and smashed into the ship’s rail, where he lay for a moment feeling strangely detached as Cronos, who must have been on the steering platform testing the oars, was catapulted screaming over his head into the darkness. In seconds, the deck became a chaos of panic-stricken, wailing shapes who screamed all the louder when the next wave smashed into the ship’s exposed side. The snapped mast saved them, or perhaps Poseidon approved of Cronos’s sacrifice. It had fallen forward across the bow and was still attached to the ship by a tangle of ropes. Crossed by the spar that had held the sail, the twenty-five feet of oak acted as a sea anchor and when the next wave struck, instead of capsizing the Golden Cygnet, it threw the stricken ship on its axis with the stern closest to a shore which was just visible as a faint fluorescent line of breaking surf four or five ship-lengths away.
‘Valerius?’
Serpentius’s shout was just audible above the screams and the smash of the waves. He picked out the Spaniard in the crush of people in the centre of the deck. ‘Here,’ he called. A shadowy figure detached itself from the dark mass, dragging a second, smaller figure with him.
‘Take your hands off me. I will not go without my girls.’ Domitia struggled against Serpentius’s wiry strength, but he pulled her effortlessly to Valerius’s side.
‘The slaves are with Tiberius,’ the Spaniard said, bracing himself against the rail as another big wave crashed sickeningly into the bow. ‘We need to get off the ship before the sea smashes it to pieces. If that mast goes, we could only have seconds.’
Valerius ran to the side and as a flash of lightning lit the far horizon his heart quailed at the rush of brown water churning past the hull. The ship’s bottom appeared to be sitting on sand, which gave him hope, but the power of the waves would knock anyone who tried to escape that way off their feet and suck them under. The stern showed more potential. Here the wave line was broken by the ship’s mass and there was a chance that at least some might escape.
With his knife, Valerius cut the ropes holding the steering oars and Serpentius retied them so that they dropped over the rail into the area of relative shelter in the lee of the stern.
‘Can you swim, lady?’ Valerius demanded.
Domitia shot him a startled look. ‘I was taught as a child.’
‘Then get ready.’ She hesitated only for a moment. It was clear that if she took to the water in her long stola of fine wool she would drown in seconds. She dropped her cloak and began working at the ties of the dress. The outer garment fell to the deck to reveal a short tunic of filmy material which, in the rain, clung to her body like a second skin. Her slight frame shook with the cold and Valerius picked up the cloak to cover her, taking her in his arms at the same time to provide her with the warmth of his own body. He felt her start and thought she would break away, but she only moved a little closer. For a moment he was torn between a burning need to keep her safe and the greater responsibility he had to the surviving crew of the Golden Cygnet.
‘We don’t have much time.’ Serpentius’s voice cut through his thoughts.
‘You go first. I’ll lower the lady Domitia down to you. See, there, that line of white? The beach will be just beyond. Make your way there and I’ll join you when I can.’
Serpentius disappeared over the stern. When the Spaniard shouted, Valerius led Domitia to the rope. ‘You’ll be safe with Serpentius. There is no better man in a crisis.’
‘My girls?’
‘We will get them off next.’
She gave a little nod of thanks and picked up the fallen dress before scrambling over the side. It was such a female thing to do that it made him smile, but his heart sank as her head disappeared below the waves. He only breathed again when she surfaced and Serpentius appeared at her side to support her through the heavy surf.
Tiberius arrived at the stern with the two slave girls already stripped like their mistress. A collective growl went up from the seamen crowding behind.
‘No slave is leaving this ship before me.’ Julius, the tall lookout who had saved Valerius on the galley with his timely axe stroke, forced his way to the front of the crowd. ‘You can go, tribune, and your little fighting cock here, but I’ll be next down that rope.’
‘You’ll stay until these women are off the ship.’ Valerius stood between the sailor and the slave girls. He knew any sign of weakness would trigger a mutiny. ‘If we maintain discipline and do our duty we’ll all come out of this alive.’
‘Like fuck I will.’ Julius produced a long knife from his tunic and dashed forward. Valerius reached for his sword, only to discover it had slipped from its scabbard when the ship struck. He looked for something he could use as a weapon, but Julius was almost upon him. A glittering dart flashed across the deck and Julius stopped as if he had walked into a marble pillar. With a terrible choking noise he collapsed to his knees and keeled over on his side. Without a word, Tiberius stepped forward and lifted the dying man’s head to retrieve the knife that was buried to the hilt in his throat.
Valerius went to stand at the young soldier’s side. ‘Your shipmate received the justice he deserved,’ he shouted. ‘And anyone who thinks otherwise should say so now. There will be no more mutinies. Prove that you are Romans, not pirates, and nothing more will be said. If we survive this, we may be here for days, so we’ll need all the food and water we can gather.’ The grumbling had been replaced by a sullen silence and Valerius hesitated as another big wave pushed the ship further aground. ‘Tiberius, get the girls off now.’ He placed himself between the crew and the stern, but no one moved to stop the young officer. ‘I will be the last man off the ship, but now I want you to collect up the water skins and anything else you can carry.’
There was a moment’s hesitation before they moved off to gather water skins from where they’d scattered when the ship ran aground. Valerius heard a frightened whinny from the hold below and realized he’d forgotten the horses. He lifted the hatch and dropped into the surging waist-deep waters of the hold. Two of the beasts were down, their eyes opaque in the gloom and their already bloated bodies floating among the swirling filth of the stall, but a pair of frightened white discs told him the gelding still survived. He drew his dagger and stepped closer to the big chestnut to place the point just behind his ear. There was an odd moment of calm when he could feel the
