SHADOWS IN BRONZE

characters skulk on the sidelines of existence hoping no one will notice them.

We walked towards the beach. I weighed him up. He probably kept a bankbox in all the great ports from Alexandria to Carthage and Massilia to Antioch, but like a wary seaman he always carried sufficient good gold on his person to bribe his way out of seizure by pirates or tangling with small-town officials when he went ashore. He had earrings, and a nose stud, and enough amulets to ward off the Great Plague of Athens. His Sun God medallion would have caved in the chest of a lesser man.

He was not even the captain. The whip through his belt told me this was merely the bosun-the overseer who striped the hide of any oarsman on the Isis who upset her tranquil motion by catching a crab. He had the silent confidence of a man whose bulk can dominate a tavern from the moment he enters it, but who knows the first officer on a sleek lugger like the Isis never needs to cause a fuss. If this was just the bosun, Aufidius Crispus the owner probably thought himself foster brother to the gods.

'You've come from the Isis!' I commented, giving the ship an admiring eye but not bothering to annoy him with the obvious statement that she was a superb rig. Bassus condescended to flick me a glance. 'I need to see Crispus. Chance of a word?'

'He's not aboard.' Short and sweet.

'I know better than to believe that!'

'Believe what you like,' he returned indifferently.

We walked up the beach, as far as the road. I broached him again, 'I've a letter to deliver to Crispus-'

Bassus shrugged. He held out his hand. 'Give it to me if you like.'

'That's too easy to be true!' (Besides, I had left the Emperor's letter upstairs at the inn, when I changed my clothes.)

The bosun, who had been fairly passive so far, finally formed an opinion of me. It was unfavourable. He did not bother to say so. He simply suggested that I should get out of his way, which, being an accommodating type, was what I did.

•

While Bassus was disappearing over the horizon, I strode up to Larius and instructed him to find Petronius as quickly as he could. Without waiting, I retraced my steps to the edge of the sea where I stared out again at the tantalizing prospect of Aufidius Crispus' ship.

I have to admit, this was one occasion when being a non-swimmer became slightly inconvenient.

XXXVI

The beach at Oplontis was the usual litter of dank seaweed, broken amphorae, snaggles of stiffened fishing net and scarves left behind by girls who were intent on other things. Wasps homed in on half-gnawed melon rind. Walkers risked deadly hazards from rusty daggers and dress brooches. There was the usual left boot which always looks just your size and perfect, but when you trudge across to have a look has half its sole missing. If people managed to fend off the cynical urchins touting overpriced fishing trips, a jellyfish that was not as dead as it was pretending would sting them instead.

Now it was early evening. A subtle diminution in the brash daytime light, an imperceptible cooling of that glorious heat, and shadows which suddenly ran out to ridiculous lengths were giving the atmosphere a magical tinge; it almost made being at the seaside acceptable. People who were tired of working stopped. Families who were tired of quarrelling left. Tiny dogs stopped terrorizing mastiffs and settled for raping any bitches they could manage to climb onto, afterwards running round in glorious circles to celebrate their productivity.

I looked back towards our inn. Larius had loped off to find Petronius, and Ollia was gone too, along with her briny swain. The beach lay unusually empty. Apart from the dogs and me, a party of off-duty shop boys were making a lot of noise with a shuttlecock while their girlfriends dragged together driftwood for a barbecue fire. The fishermen who were normally cluttering the place had either sailed off with their lanterns to raid tuna shoals after dark, or had not yet returned from their more lucrative trade running tourists out to look at the rock on Capreae from which Emperor Tiberius had thrown people who offended him. All they left for me was a single skiff, upended above the tideline, growing silvery in the sun.

•

I am not a complete idiot. This broad-bellied cockleshell looked as if it had been lying here a long time. I did carry out a thorough inspection for stakes stuck through its planking, or bungholes with missing plugs. There was nothing wrong with my convenient coracle-or at least, nothing a highly cautious landlubber could see.

I found a spare oar leaning against someone's worm-eaten mooring post, then another paddle under the skiff when I managed to lever it right side up. I shouldered it down to the water's edge, helped by the shop boys' girlfriends, who were happy to fill time respectably before it grew dark and their lads started getting ideas. I tossed a last look back for Larius or Petro but there was no sign, so I climbed in, swayed on the prow with an effort at bravado, and let the girls shove me off.

It was a clumsy piece of carpentry. The clod who built it must have been feeling off colour that day. It bobbed in the wavelets like an intoxicated fruit-fly dancing at a rotten peach. It took some time to get the hang of keeping this mad thing pointing forwards, but in the end I began to make some progress from the shore. The breeze in my face was slight, though not helping much. My purloined oar had a bitten blade, and the other paddle was too short. The glare off the sea added a new glaze to my sunburn while it also made me squint. I didn't care. The reluctance Aufidius Crispus had demonstrated to facing an innocent interview fired my determination to get on board the Isis and find out what the big mystery was supposed to be.

I dug deep and pushed out steadily until I had halved the distance from Oplontis to the ship. I congratulated myself on my spirit and initiative. Vespasian would be proud of me. I came near enough to read her name, painted high on the prow in angular Greek lettering… At about the same time as I grinned triumphantly, a completely different sensation impinged on me.

My feet were wet.

Almost as soon as I noticed the cold, I was standing in seawater up to the ankles and my luckless skiff was foundering. Once the Tyrrhenian Sea discovered it could seep through the dried planks, it rushed in on all sides and my vessel sank beneath me rapidly.

There was nothing I could do but shut my eyes, hold my nose, and hope some sea nymph with a nice nature would pull me out.

XXXVII

Larius pulled me out. Wallowing with a Nereid would have been more fun.

My nephew must have seen me set off and been on his way after me before I sank. Remember his father was a boatman; Larius had been dandled in the Tiber even before he was weaned. He could swim when he was two. He never used the sinister, silent, Batavian crawl which the Army teaches. My nephew had a horrible style, though a thrashing turn of speed.

When I came round, with the feeling of having been violently engulfed then flailed against a concrete wall, I could tell how Larius had achieved my rescue by the agonies I had acquired as a result. I had a bruised throat where he had heroically gripped me, and a gashed ear where he had crashed my head against a mooring stage. The backs of my legs were raw from being dragged over the pumice up the beach, and I was being pumped back to life by Petronius Longus, applying his full bodyweight. Afterwards, I felt perfectly happy to lie still for a long time, considering my sore windpipe and pummelled flesh.

'Think he'll live?' I heard Larius ask; he sounded more curious than concerned.