gladiator thought I'd fainted from fear. The fool put his foot on my chest and smiled up at his patron-and the next thing he knew, he was tasting dirt and had my sword at his throat!'
'Fascinating. Well, did you follow us or not?'
Belbo hung his head. 'I followed, yes. But I lost you early on.'
'Did you at least see when I got into the wagon?'
'No.'
'Numa's balls! Then we have no idea where the boy is being kept. There's nothing to do but wait for Cleon to come for the ransom.' I stared at the uncaring sea and the wheeling gulls above our heads. 'Tell me, Belbo, why do the circumstances of this kidnapping have such an odd smell?'
'Do they?'
'I smell something fishy.'
'We are on the waterfront,' said Belbo.
I clapped my hands. 'A ray of light descends from the heavens to pierce the fog!'
He stared at the clear sky above and wrinkled his brow.
'I mean, Belbo, that I suddenly perceive the truth… I think.' But I still had a very, very bad feeling about the situation.
'Do you understand? It's absolutely essential that you and your men make no attempt to follow when Cleon carts off the gold.'
The centurion Marcus looked at me skeptically. 'And you with it! What's to keep you from running off with these pirates- and the gold?'
'Quintus Fabius entrusted me with handling the ransom. That should be enough for you.'
'And he entrusted me with certain instructions as well.' Marcus crossed his brawny arms, which bristled with black and silver hairs.
'Look here, Marcus. I think I know these men's intentions. If I'm right, the boy is perfectly safe-'
Marcus snorted. 'Ha! Honor among pirates!'
'Perfectly safe,' I continued, 'as long as the ransom proceeds exactly as they wish. And also, if I'm right, you'll be able to retrieve the ransom easily enough afterward. If you attempt to follow, or foil the transaction as it happens, then it's you who'll be putting the boy's life at risk, along with my own.'
Marcus chewed his cheeks and wrinkled his nose.
'If you don't do as I ask,' I went on, 'and something happens to the boy, consider how Quintus Fabius will react. Well? Cleon and his men will be here any moment. What do you say?'
Marcus muttered what I took to be his assent, then turned as one of his gladiators trotted up to us. 'Four men and a wagon, sir, coming this way!'
Marcus raised his arm. His men disappeared into the shadows of the warehouse. There was a tap on my shoulder.
'What about me?' asked Belbo. 'Shall I try to follow again, like I did this morning?'
I shook my head and looked nervously at the open door of the warehouse.
'But you'll be in danger,' said Belbo. 'A man needs a bodyguard. Make the pirates take both of us.'
'Hush, Belbo! Go hide with the others. Now!' I pushed him with both hands, and realized I would probably have better luck pushing over a yew tree. At last he gave way and lumbered off, looking unhappy.
A moment later Cleon appeared at the open door, followed by the wagon with its driver and two other young men. Like Cleon, they looked Greek to me.
I showed him the chests of gold and opened the lid of each one in turn. Even in the dim light, the glitter seemed to dazzle him. He grinned and looked a little embarrassed. 'So much! I wondered what it would look like, but I couldn't picture it. I kept trying to imagine ten thousand golden minnows…'
He shook his head as if to clear it and set to work with his companions loading the heavy chests into the wagon. A group of bloodthirsty pirates might be expected to dance a gleeful jig at the proximity of so much booty, but they went about their work in a somber, almost fretful manner.
The labor done, Cleon wiped a trickle of sweat from his brow and indicated a long, narrow space between the trunks in the bed of the wagon. 'Room enough for you to lie down, I think. He looked uneasily into the shadows of the warehouse and raised his voice. 'And I'll say it again: No one had better follow us. We have watchers posted along the way. They'll know if anyone comes after us. If anything happens to arouse our suspicions, anything at all, I can't be responsible for the outcome. Understood?' He posed the question to the empty air as much as to me.
'Understood,' I said. As I stepped into the wagon I gripped his forearm to steady myself and spoke in his ear so the others couldn't hear. 'Cleon, you wouldn't really hurt the boy, would you?'
He gave me a strangely plaintive look, like a man long misunderstood who suddenly finds a sympathetic ear. Then he hardened his face and swallowed. 'He won't be hurt, as long as nothing goes wrong,' he said hoarsely. I settled myself in the gap between the trunks. The sail cloth was thrown over the wagon bed. The wagon lurched into motion, moving ponderously under its heavy load.
From this point, I thought, there was no reason for anything to go wrong with the ransoming. Marcus had agreed not to follow. Cleon had the gold. Soon I would have Spurius. Even if my assumption about the kidnapping was wrong, there would be no reason for his captors to harm the boy or myself; our deaths could profit them nothing. As long as nothing went wrong…
Perhaps it was the cramped, suffocating darkness that set my thoughts spinning into the awful void. I had taken Marcus's muttering as an agreement to postpone his pursuit, but had I read him rightly? His men might be following us even now, clumsily showing themselves, alerting the watchers and sending them into a panic. Someone would cry out, there would be an assault on the wagon, swords would clash and clang! A blade would rip through the sail cloth, heading straight for my heart-
The fantasy seemed so real that I gave a jerk as if waking from a nightmare. But my eyes were wide open.
I took a breath to steady myself, but found my thoughts spinning even more recklessly out of control. What if I had completely misjudged Cleon? What if his soulful green eyes and uncertain manner were a crafty deception, a deliberate disguise for a hardened killer? The petulant, beautiful boy I had seen that morning might already be dead, his bravado cut short along with his throat. The wagon would return to the stable where they had murdered him, and as soon as the pirates were sure that no one had followed, they would pull me from the wagon, stuff a gag into my mouth, tie me up and lug me off to their ship, laughing raucously and dancing the jig they had suppressed while they loaded their booty. Cilician pirates, the crudest men ever born! I would be taken off to sea, kicking and screaming into my gag. By the light of the moon they would set my clothes afire and use me for a torch, and when they were tired of hearing me scream they would toss me overboard. I could almost smell the stench of my own burning flesh, hear the hiss of the flames expiring as the hard water burst open and then slapped shut above me, taste the stinging salt in my nostrils. What would be left after the fishes made a feast of me?
In the cramped space I managed to wipe my sweaty forehead on a bit of my red tunic. Such morbid fantasies were nonsense, I told myself. I had to trust my own judgment, and my judgment decreed that Cleon was not the sort of fellow who could murder anyone, at least not in cold blood. Not even Roscius the actor could mime such innocence. A strange sort of pirate, indeed!
Then a new fear struck me, more chilling than all the rest. Belbo had said that Quintus Fabius wanted the pirates to be slaughtered. We're not to kill the boy in the process, of course-but was he only inferring this? He could hardly be expected to know every secret order that his master had given to Marcus. Spurius was not of his own blood; Quintus Fabius spoke of him with contempt. What if he actually wanted his stepson dead? He had sent the ransom, yes, but he could hardly have refused to do that, if only to placate Valeria and to save face in public. But if in the end the boy were to be murdered by the pirates, or if it could be made to look that way…
It was even possible that Quintus Fabius himself had arranged to have his stepson kidnapped-a clever way to get rid of Spurius without drawing suspicion to himself. The idea was monstrous, but I had known men devious enough to concoct such a scheme. But if that were the case, why had he engaged my services? To demonstrate his conscientious concern by calling in an outsider, perhaps. To prove to Valeria and the rest of the world that he was quite serious about rescuing his kidnapped stepson. In which case, part of his plan for getting rid of Spurius would
