The fighting crew dozed. The rowing boss kept up his unerring rhythm in soft grunts. This was running silent 240 B.C. The naked kid on lookout slid down the mast and stuck his head in an open barrel of water to drink his fill.
Ahinadab lay flat on his back on the deck. Caroline thought at first that the skipper was still drunk. He held his hands up before his face, fingers pointed and arms sweeping slowly across the firmament. He was studying the dome of stars above to determine their new course. She wondered what he might have done if the night was overcast.
The captain rose to his feet and kicked two crewmen awake. He growled orders to them. They jumped to pull loose lines and haul them away to raise the sail up the mast. The hemp folded as the lower and upper spars drew together. The braided lines squeaked through the wooden tackle.
The captain joined Yada on the tiller deck and pointed a hand at an angle along the port bow. He touched the helmsman’s shoulder and brought the man’s eyes in line with his pointing arm. Yada nodded and shoved the tiller hard starboard with the help of the skinny Nubian. The timbers of the Lion creaked as the prow swung slowly in line with the new course. They were heading away at a sharp angle. With any luck, they would be over the horizon by dawn and out of sight of the pursuing vessel.
The top tier of oarsmen hauled in their oars and stood to stretch aching legs and backs before lying down on the benches and floor planks to catch what sleep they could. The bottom rank kept up the sweep of their oars through the water at a reduced pace. The rowing boss climbed down to the lower oar deck. He sat down cross-legged on the center planks and kept the metronomic rhythm by tapping his staff on the board before him.
Dwayne startled Caroline by stepping out of the dark and touching her arm. He jerked his head toward the lower decks. She followed him down between dozing oarsman and stowed oars on the second deck then past the lower rowing deck where the banks of men leaned forward and back in a mechanical rhythm. She could see now that most of the work was done with their legs. They braced their bare feet against blocks mounted on the deck. The surfaces of the blocks were worn smooth by the friction and stained dark with sweat. A boy, who could not be more than ten years old, moved nimbly among them with a bucket under his arm. He stopped each time a man grunted to him and held a ladle to the man’s lip. It looked to Caroline like an oily gruel of some kind. Protein for fuel. Salt to restore them.
They reached the sand floor of the hold and Dwayne moved to where the mast rested in the sand, footed into a gravel-filled box. Caroline followed him into the darkest shadows toward the stern. There were puddles in the sand along either hull. She sniffed the air and gagged audibly. The stench of urine was overwhelming.
“Yeah, no bathroom breaks on this ride.” Dwayne laughed where he knelt in a patch of dry sand. He was pulling off his t-shirt.
“What are you doing?” she said. “Get your shirt off,” he said.
“Are you serious? Is this some kind, of gladiator fantasy of yours?”
“I like the way you think. But I had something else in mind. We need to do more to hide your girl parts. I saw some of the guys checking you out. Maybe they’re not so sure you’re one of the boys. That ass looks fine no matter which way they swing.” Dwayne had a small knife he picked up somewhere and was cutting the NRA t-shirt along the seam.
“Okay. I get it.” She pulled off the soccer jersey to reveal a sweat-soaked sports bra.
Dwayne cut the shirt to create a broad sheet of cloth. He sliced a pair of strips from the hem, then folded the main body of the shirt in half. Caroline took it and wrapped it twice around her chest, then helped Dwayne loop the strips torn from the hem over her breasts. He pulled them tight behind her and knotted them. The effect was good. Her breasts were flattened against her chest to reduce her feminine profile.
“Too tight?”
“I can stand it.” She slipped the jersey back on. She laughed when she looked up to see Dwayne tying a remaining strip of the t-shirt in a headband around his forehead.
“Going Roman on me?”
“I am Spartacus,” he said.
She knitted her brows at that and tilted her head.
“Man, you really need to watch more movies,” he said.
They climbed out of the stinking hold into the cool night air. The oar crews had changed while they were below. The lower tier now rested with oars drawn inboard. The upper rank was back at work with a new man keeping the rhythm. He was a leather-skinned guy with a white beard and shaved head who squatted and tapped the deck boards with an iron-headed cudgel. One tap. Two taps. One tap. Two taps.
Praxus found Caroline when she went to the mast to fill a cup with water.
“I know your secret,” he said to her, gripping her arm as he spoke.
She looked about them at the fighting men sleeping along the gunwales.
“They cannot understand. Only you and I speak the Roman language,” he hissed.
“What secret can I have? I told you the truth,” she said and pulled her arm from his grasp.
“Your master. The Gaul. He is in the hire of Carthage. They have many Gauls in their army. You are spies. Both of you.”
“That is madness,” Caroline said and turned to walk away but could only move slowly over the dark, rocking deck. Praxus
