Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 105, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 640 & 641, March 1995

“Yes, and sounds and moves like her, too, but that’s all a kind of mask, if you ask me, like warm sunlight sparkling on cold water. Underneath, he’s as stem as the master, and just as willful. Ask any of the slaves who’ve made the mistake of displeasing him.”

“Perhaps that’s the trouble between them,” I suggested, “that they’re too much alike, and vie for the attentions of the same woman.”

We reached Ostia, where the boat was moored on a short pier that jutted into the Tiber. Farther down the riverfront, at the end of the docks, I could just glimpse the open sea. Gulls circled overhead. The smell of saltwater scented the breeze. The strongest of the men unloaded the chests containing the ten thousand pieces of gold and loaded them onto a wagon which was wheeled into a warehouse on the docks. About half the men were sent to stand guard over it.

I expected the rest of the men to head for the nearest tavern, but Marcus kept order and made them stay on the boat. Their celebration would come the next day, after the ransom and whatever else resulted.

As for me, I intended to seek lodgings at The Flying Fish, the tavern mentioned in Spurius’s letter. I told Marcus I wanted to take Belbo with me.

“No. The slave stays here,” he said.

“I need him for a bodyguard.”

“Quintus Fabius said nothing about that. You mustn’t attract attention.”

“I’ll be more conspicuous without a bodyguard.”

Marcus considered this for a moment, then agreed. “Good,” someone called as Belbo stepped onto the dock, “the giant takes up the room of three men!”

At this Belbo laughed good-naturedly, perceiving no insult.

I found The Flying Fish on the seaside waterfront where the larger seafaring vessels pitched anchor. The building had a tavern with a stable attached on the ground floor, and tiny cubicles for rent on the second floor. I took a room, treated myself and Belbo to a delicious meal of stewed fish and mussels, then took a long walk around the town to reacquaint myself with the streets. It had been awhile since I’d spent any time in Ostia.

As the sun sank beneath the waves, setting the horizon aflame, I rested on the waterfront, making idle conversation with Belbo and looking at the various small ships along the dock and the larger ones moored farther out in the deeper water. Most were trading vessels and fishing boats, but among them was a warship painted crimson and bristling with oars. The enormous bronze ram’s head at its prow glittered blood-red in the slanting sunlight.

Belbo and I passed a skin of watered wine back and forth, which kept his tongue loose. Eventually I asked him what orders his master had given to the centurion Marcus regarding the armed company.

His answer was blunt. “We’re to kill the pirates.”

“As simple as that?”

“Well, we’re not to kill the boy in the process, of course. But the pirates are not to escape alive if we can help it.”

“You’re not to capture them for sentencing by a Roman magistrate?”

“No. We’re supposed to kill them on the spot, every one of them.”

I nodded gravely. “Can you do that, Belbo, if you have to?”

“Kill a man?” He shrugged. “I’m not like some of the others on the boat. I haven’t killed hundreds and hundreds of men.”

“I suspect most of the men on the boat were exaggerating.”

“Really? Still, I wasn’t a gladiator for long. I didn’t kill all that many men.”

“No?”

“No. Only—” He wrinkled his brow, calculating. “Only twenty or thirty.”

The next morning I rose early and put on a red tunic, as the ransom letter had specified. Before I went downstairs to the tavern I told Belbo to find a place in front of the building where he could watch the entrance. “If I leave, follow me, but keep your distance. Do you think you can do that without being noticed?”

He nodded. I looked at his straw-colored hair and his enormous torso and was dubious.

As the day warmed, the tavern keeper rolled up the screens, which opened the room to the fresh air and sunlight. The waterfront grew busy. I sat patiently just inside the tavern and watched the sailors and merchants passing by. Some distance away, Belbo had found a discreet, shady spot to keep watch, leaning against a little shed. The bovine expression on his face and the fact that he seemed hardly able to keep his eyes open made him look like an idler eluding his master for as long as he could and trying to steal a few moments of sleep. The deception was either remarkably convincing, or else Belbo was as stupid as he looked.

I didn’t have long to wait. A young man who looked hardly old enough to have grown his beard stepped into the tavern and blinked at the sudden dimness, then saw my tunic and approached me.

“Who sent you?” he asked. His accent sounded Greek to me, not Cilician.

“Quintus Fabius.”