Chapter Three

 

FRONTO staggered from the doorway of the bath suite, his bare toes knuckling at the feel of the cold marble now he had moved out of the balneum with its heated floors. Massilia was still in the cold grip of winter and although it was more temperate down here on the southern coast than far to the north where the legions huddled in their camps, it still made for a damn cold floor in the mornings. For just a moment he reeled and had to lean on the doorframe for support. It was odd, really. He was feeling as weak and old as he had done five years ago, before his wife and the burly Masgava had helped him return to a level of health and fitness that belied his age. In truth he still was as fit as ever, despite home life having replaced the routine of the legion. But the endless nights of broken sleep were taking a heavy toll, beset by the most appalling dreams, and occasionally by the flailing feet of either Marcus or Lucius, who oft-times yelled in the night until Fronto relented and brought them into bed.

The former officer rubbed his tired, sore, red eyes and wandered over to the large bronze mirror, which had cost half a legionary’s yearly pay, but which Lucilia had pronounced a basic requirement of the villa, for it was unblemished and returned an almost perfect likeness of the viewer. Fronto’s hand strayed to his purse every time he walked past it.

A corpse looked back out of the mirror, and he almost shied away from the sight. The old man in the reflective surface had turned rather grey-haired since he last remembered and, though some of the reason was the fact that it was still wet from the bath, those once shiny dark locks were now unfashionably long and looking rather limp, like a Greek philosopher gone to seed. Though his eyes were dark pink, they were nicely offset by a pale waxy face and deep grey rings beneath each orbit. His chin was clean-shaven from the session in the baths, but rather than removing age-enhancing grey whiskers, the razor had merely revealed a lot more folds and wrinkles than he remembered having.

For the love of Aesculapius, he was looking old. And he knew that while some of it was age – he was approaching his fortieth summer – a lot more of it was his current lifestyle.

Lucilia had spent the winter concerned, but in her usual way she masked her worry by treating him like some sort of petulant in-patient. After these last few years, Fronto had become so used to her ways that he could decode her moods, for even when she seemed snippy, it was almost always a method of self-defence, protecting her heart from that which she feared. And he knew that generally the more crabby she got with him, the more concerned she was. But in recent weeks she had become disconcertingly caring and supportive, and that had almost chilled Fronto to the bone.

At her instigation, he had visited two of the best physicians in Massilia, and Greek physicians were the best in the world. Neither had managed to alleviate his troubles, but both had lightened his purse and had expressed their concerns over the effects that his many old healed wounds might still be having beneath the skin; and also at his ‘trick knee’. He had left both practices grumbling over the kind of people that failed to provide a solution to your problem but tried to raise more complications instead. When the second of the two had suggested that he might want to have a check-up in a rather personal area, Fronto had been grateful he wasn’t wearing his sword, else the physician might have been busy stitching up a hole in himself. The man had been busy warming his hands in preparation when Fronto left in a hurry.

Then there had been the apothecaries, two Greeks and one Jew, all of whom had once more emptied his purse in return for a small bag of what looked, smelled, and tasted like forest floor. Each of the three had done nothing to bring untroubled sleep. Indeed, the last of the three had added a fairly severe case of the ‘Saguntian Squits’ to the night-time upheaval.

Finally there had been the religious angle. Fronto had been reluctant to visit the temples for so many reasons he’d run out of fingers on which to count them. While he acknowledged the existence of the gods in the same way he acknowledge the existence of paving slabs, he generally paid them about the same level of devotion, barring his personal deities. His history with temples was not good. Almost every visit he had ever made to a temple had ended in disaster, carnage or embarrassment. Given the choice, he would take carnage any time. But on top of his general distrust of those men who felt so pious as to take up the priesthood as a career and a general wariness of gods themselves, the temples in Massilia were to the gods of the Greeks. It felt wrong to stroll up to the three great temples on their rocky heights and pray to Athena and Artemis instead of Minerva and Diana, although at least golden Apollo looked and sounded the same in this strangely hairy Greek world. In the end, he had foregone the three great temples of the city and, in the absence of any house of worship for his patron goddesses, had ended up in the small temple of Asklepios.

The temple was jammed in between residential blocks and stores on the slope of the hill to the north of the harbour, by necessity. Rather than choose a lofty perch like the three great edifices that lorded it over the city, the Asklepion had been located where a natural ‘healing’ spring gurgled from the rock. About that spring had been constructed a modest sacred bath complex, with a small connecting courtyard and precinct, at the heart of which stood the temple itself. He had been greeted at the entrance by a young boy wearing far too much kohl around his eyes so that he looked faintly demonic. The boy had waffled on at him in Greek until Fronto had given him a coin to shut up, and had then escorted him into the temple, where an old man waited – an asklepiad – with a white robe, a staff wound round with a carved serpent and a beard he could have lost a young bear in. The ageing priest had listened earnestly to Fronto’s problem and given him a list of appropriate devotions, offerings and libations. Another empty purse, a jar of good wine, a small stack of gold coins and a rather unfortunate chicken later, the bad dreams were still there, and Fronto had crossed another god from his diminishing list of deities to give a flying fornication about.

And so, weeks on and a small fortune lighter, this sallow ghoul stared back from the mirror.

Enough was enough. He’d not mentioned as much to Lucilia, but Fronto personally knew what was at the heart of his troubles: he was missing his lucky charms. Nemesis had been broken and Fortuna had gone with Cavarinos of the Arverni. He could only hope that the luck that he himself was sadly lacking was bearing up his Gallic friend. His troubles had started almost immediately following the absence of Fortuna and Nemesis, and until he replaced the figurines around his neck with appropriate quality work, he would not sleep well.

It was too disheartening to lay the blame for the nightmares upon the multitude of deaths he had left in his wake. He was a soldier born and tried, and to think like that would be to deny all that he was.

Of course, he was no longer a soldier. He was a wine merchant now, even if not a particularly successful one.

He would take the blow on the chin and, without a word to his wife, go to the best artisans in town and commission a replacement for each charm in the best materials and at the highest quality. He would have done so months ago, had the money been available. It still wasn’t, of course, but he would work it out somehow. He couldn’t go on like this.

Of course, the financial side of the business was probably almost as much to blame for his state of exhaustion as the nightmares. He had come to Massilia with grand plans. There were a few Greek wine merchants in town already, of course, but no one with good access to the heart of Roman viticulture down in Campania. And quite apart from the Romans in Gaul who, he knew from years of watching Cita complaining over his stores, created an almost insatiable demand for wine, there was a growing sector of the upper Gaulish society that was starting to turn from their own beer to good southern wine. The trade should be lucrative. He’d felt that it would be. Even Balbus, who had been initially sceptical and rather disapproving of a Roman noble involving himself too closely in commerce, had nodded his agreement of the workability of the scheme. He would use those local merchant vessels who shipped Gallic goods to Neapolis and came back largely empty. He would fill them with wine from the estates of friends and connections in Campania, which he would be able to acquire considerably cheaper than most others could, and would then sell it on to either local Greek merchants, Gallic traders heading into tribal lands, or to the Roman supply system that fed the army in the north.

He hadn’t been able to tell his mother or sister, of course. His letters to them at Puteoli were carefully worded to avoid all mercantile mention, despite being conveyed there by the same factors who were organising his deliveries. His mother would implode from a hefty dose of patrician-ness if she thought her son had become a common salesman, and his sister would be scathing to say the least. After all, even Lucilia and Balbus had been fairly disapproving, but had lived with his decision because at least it had brought him home from the army.

But not telling the family had added the complication of not being able to rely on family finances. He had not touched the vaults of the Falerii and had funded the initial concern entirely from his own capital following his resignation of commission from Caesar’s army. Every last denarius he could lay his hands on had gone into acquiring the warehouse in the city, the cart and two oxen, a small staff, and the first stock of wine from Campania. Then he had realised that he could hardly afford to pay the ship captains to transport it, let alone the many sundry expenses that seemed to mount daily.

By the week before Saturnalia he had pored over the figures and gloomily labelled himself more or less bankrupt. He still had the assets, of course – the warehouse and a consignment of Falernian on the dock at Puteoli, but he was unable to pay the staff, animal feed, and shipping. In the most humbling moment of his entire life, he had gone to visit Balbus without his wife knowing, and had begged for a hand-out. The old man had been generous to a fault, which had made the need for begging in the first place all the more embarrassing, but at least now he had enough of a float to see him through hopefully ‘til spring. Yet unless business picked up, he would be in trouble again by Aprilis.

His former singulares were helping out. Despite being signed on as household security, they had willingly stepped in to fill roles in the business, but to be honest, they were often more trouble than help. Aurelius had set profits back one evening when he had encountered a bat in the warehouse and dropped a very brittle amphora of very expensive wine as he ran screaming.

The three locals he’d hired were considerably more competent at the actual work – when such work was forthcoming, at least – and yet even they were troubling in their own right. The brothers, Pamphilus with the beak nose and close-set eyes and Clearchus with the tic in one eye and the unsettlingly white hair, were good enough at lifting and carrying and driving the cart. But after weeks in their company there was no escaping the conclusion that they were as thick as two short planks and could be mentally outmanoeuvred by a bowl of beef broth. And they seemed to be dangerously impulsive, too. A horrible combination, but at least a reasonably cheap one. Aurelius hated the pair, and tried to keep away from them, having told Fronto that there was a distinct possibility that he would flatten that beak nose someday. When the brothers had almost run him down in the yard with a cart-load of jars and barrels, Aurelius had had to be dragged away from them screaming imprecations.

And the other hireling… well, Glykon seemed perfectly friendly and helpful and excellently competent at his work. There was absolutely nothing wrong with him, other than the fact that Fronto could feel in his bones that there was something wrong with the man, even if he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

Of course, if he could only get rid of Hierocles, things might be different. But this was a lawful city and not subject to Rome, so Fronto had no real rights here, especially against a Greek who was a citizen of the town. The greasy arse-faced rat of a wine merchant had made Fronto’s life hell since his return to Massilia. The former legate of the Tenth had expected healthy competition, and was ready to have to push hard to carve himself a niche in the market. He had not been prepared for Hierocles. The old bastard had taken Fronto’s dip into the wine trade very personally and had publically decried him as a foreign agent trying to infiltrate free Massilia and bind her to the republic with ties of trade. When Fronto had responded calmly to the contrary, the man had taken his calm for weakness and had stepped up his campaign of defamation to actively accuse him of crooked dealings and various small criminal acts.

Though Fronto had argued his corner in the city’s agora like a good Roman orator and had managed to clear himself of any charge levelled, the stigma of a blackened name seemed to have stayed with him and nothing he could do had rebuilt his reputation. Moreover, being thwarted had simply set Hierocles off on a new path. Unable to remove Fronto through law, he had instead turned to his fellow Greek merchants in the town, further denigrating Fronto and gathering an informal cartel against the new Roman competitor.

Consequently, for the last month, Fronto had found himself repeatedly undercut for deals, passed over by ship captains and the target of seemingly accidental damage to his wares. Business was bad, but even that bad business was dwindling. Soon…

He looked deep into his own eyes in the mirror and was not surprised to see an unhealthy dose of defeat in them. He’d had such high hopes for this business. It was something strategic and real in which to immerse himself without diving into the political cesspools of Rome or the bloodbaths of the army. The military was out of the picture anyway. Even if he felt like going back, which in his current physical state would be truly dreadful, Caesar’s time in Gaul was coming to an end shortly and those legions would be stood down as their general returned to Rome to take up higher office. By the time he arrived in Caesar’s tent, there probably wouldn’t be a legion there to command. And that left Rome as an option. To take up a role in the government and be gradually ground down to sand between the rough edges of Caesar and Pompey. Lucilia had broached the idea once that perhaps he could grease a few palms in the senate and try to secure himself a governorship. Fronto had laughed at that until wine came out of his nose.

He wasn’t laughing now.

Who was that old man in the mirror?

‘Marcus?’

He turned and riveted a beaming smile on his face.

‘Don’t give me that,’ Lucilia snorted.

He let the forced smile slide from his visage and sighed.

‘You thrashed around like a windmill in a storm last night,’ she said quietly. ‘Worse than usual?’

Fronto shrugged. ‘Same as usual. I was just finally actually settling and hoping to squeeze in another hour of slumber when Amelgo woke me. Got to get going early today, you see? Irenaeus is due in port this morning and he’s one of few Greek captains who’ll still give me the time of day. I need to get down to the port and get his mark on my contract before that po-faced bastard Hierocles gets to him and turns him from me.’

‘Marcus, you should have a man to do this for you.’

‘Who? Aurelius? The brothers? Masgava maybe? No. All our lads are workers, not spokesmen. This is a job for glib tongue and I’m the nearest thing here. Unless you want to take a turn at the steering oars of this enterprise?’

Lucilia gave him a look that startled him, as though she were actually considering it. Hurriedly, wanting to draw the argument to a close before it began, he waved concerns aside. ‘Do you know where my best chiton is? The blue one with the white edging.’

‘Must you dress as a Greek?’

‘When dealing with these people it is better not to over-publicise my Romanness. Irenaeus is a good man, but even he might be better disposed to a man in a chiton than in the red tunica of a Roman officer. Do you know where it is?’

Lucilia nodded. ‘Amelgo laid it out in our room, along with your best sandals and the white cloak. You will look quite the Hellenic gentleman.’

‘Thank you, my love. Are the boys up?’

‘And crawling about like a pair of rodents. Lucius is up on his feet, holding onto table edges and pulling himself round. Marcus, as usual, cannot be bothered to try and walk, and simply sits there drinking. I’m beginning to wonder if the very name is cursed?’ The harsh words were delivered with a sly upturn of the mouth to remind Fronto that she was as dry a joker as her father, and he chuckled. ‘He’ll stand up in his own good time. Never fret about him walking. Children always learn in the end. You don’t see many forty year olds still crawling about on the floor, do you?’

‘Only you and your friends on market day after a session in the Ox.’

Again the upturn, and Fronto laughed aloud. Gods, but it felt good to laugh.

His mood slumped again at the all-too familiar sound of a shattering amphora outside in the gardens. The distressing noise was followed by a verbal altercation between the recognisable Greek slur of Pamphilus and Clearchus and the angry Latin of Aurelius and Masgava. Odd though it was to hear a polyglot argument like that, the novelty had long since worn off.

‘Why did I put idiots and jugglers in charge of the best stock?’

And it was his best stock. The very finest of wines he’d managed to import into the city before Hierocles’ cartel of hate had interfered and soured the deal with the trader who had been set to buy it. After another ‘accident’ at the warehouse, Fronto had had the best stock moved to the villa, and had finally managed to line up another buyer, though for considerably less profit. And now it sounded like he’d have to speak to the buyer and apologise for being at least one amphora short.

‘You need more men,’ Lucilia said quietly. ‘And not ex-soldiers or surly Greeks. You need to get down to the slave market and get some bargains. Go early on the morning three days after market day, when the leftover stock has gone but the new slaves have come in.’

‘I don’t like buying slaves. I don’t really like owning slaves. Father always said a man who works for a wage you can trust, but a man you have to keep at the end of a stick will beat you with it the moment you turn your back.’

‘Your father, gods forgive me for saying it, was a hopeless drunk with less sense than a Scythian.’

‘Lucilia…’

‘Don’t snap at me. I’m quoting your sister. I’ve noted your aversion to owning them, and I know that there are those who won’t do it for fear of another slave war. I didn’t even argue when you emancipated Amelgo after only a week of being back. But those slaves who are treated well are happy with their lot, Marcus. Slaves are the norm. Good grief, even the Greeks keep slaves, and they consider themselves the masters of equality. Daddy has slaves. Everyone has slaves. And slaves will be careful with your stock out of respect, or at least fear.’

‘Listen Lucilia…’

He was interrupted by another muffled crash of pottery and further bellowing in two languages.

‘Alright,’ he sighed. ‘I take your point. I don’t like spending money we haven’t really got, but I suppose I could maybe buy three or four, if I can find them cheap enough.’

‘And another two for the house, Marcus. We’re woefully undermanned here.’

He winced, but nodded.

‘If money’s too much of an issue, talk to Father. I’m sure he would happily lend you a few sesterces.’

Fronto winced again and coughed to cover his nerves. ‘That won’t be necessary. I’ll take your advice on timing though. Five more days until the old stock’s gone and the new are in.’

Lucilia smiled reassuringly. ‘If it makes you feel better, just keep the slaves long enough to know that they’re good at the job and trustworthy, then give them their freedom along with room and board. But at least then they’ll be bound to you and more careful than those hirelings out there.’

‘I tell you what: five days, and you can come with me and help me choose.’

As the shouting intensified outside, he sighed, kissed his wife on the cheek and strolled off to find his fine Greek clothes to face the day as best he could.

 

* * * * *

 

Fronto lurched to the side as a burly Greek with a two-week beard, reeking of sour wine, pushed past him into the throng of the agora and on into the crowd, muttering something angrily. His grumbling was soon lost in the general chaos and din of arguing amateur philosophers, fishmongers, salesmen, beggars and madmen, though Masgava turned and shot the man the darkest of looks on principle.

The entrance and solid, otherwise-featureless rear wall of the theatre loomed on their right, seated at the foot of the green, rocky hill upon which sat one of the city’s three great temples. To the left, the narrow, disorganised tangle of streets cobwebbed off into the heart of the city, for Massilia’s agora was oddly offset at one end of the wide bay. Behind them the pandemonium of that public space raged and surged like a stormy sea of humanity, but the way ahead was little better. The wide thoroughfare from the agora to the northernmost jetties of the port was packed with life as merchants and teamsters hurried this way and that, carts bouncing and jolting on the cobbled ground, stray dogs winding in and out of the unheeding legs. Men haggled and argued, and the masts of ships were visible over their heads a tantalisingly short distance away. All this, and the sun was still barely over the horizon. On a busy day and with a clear sea, even in winter Massilia made Rome look sedate, calm and organised.

It had taken Fronto some time to get used to the utter bedlam that was the last free Greek city in the west. It had seemed to him that the place had no rules and no order, but long-term exposure was teaching him otherwise. Massilia had its rules and its order, but they were a far cry from the Pax Romana, and a foreigner could never hope to understand the workings of the city-state or the Hellene mind behind it in a year of market days.

Slowly, though, he was unburdening his soul of Roman canker. If only Massilia would stop resisting his acclimatisation...

‘If you would let us come with you armed and in force, you would not have to fight your way through the crowd,’ the huge ex-gladiator grunted.

‘And my almost non-existent popularity would disappear into the cracks between the cobbles, Masgava. It’s all a game.’

‘Other merchants have bodyguards.’ The Numidian threw out a finger and pointed at a man in a yellow chiton, dripping with gold and jewels, surrounded by a gang of burly Gauls in mail shirts, their fingers dancing on the pommels of their swords as they eyed the crowd suspiciously.

‘He’s a Greek. He can afford to stand out because people don’t hate him for what he is.’

Masgava eyed the ostentatious jewellery and snorted. ‘I hate him.’

‘But here and now, sadly, your opinion counts for about the same as mine, which is to say: not at all. Today is about trying to foster good relations with our Greek neighbours, not asserting our Roman-ness with red tunics and blades. Come on, that looks like Irenaeus’ ship.’

As the two men moved on through the crowd, pushing towards the port, Fronto kept his gaze intermittently on the tall mast, which he felt sure would be the friendly Greek’s ship. Very few of the port’s sailors would contemplate a black sail, for the ill luck associated with the colour, though Irenaeus allowed himself this little foible, since at the sail’s centre Apollo’s white raven theoretically overrode all misfortune.

Fronto’s heart sank as he emerged from the crowd with Masgava at his shoulder to see the ship’s owner busily haggling with a Levantine merchant with a beard like the ancient Cypriots or Sumerians, tightly curled, oiled and falling to twin points at his collar bones. Gods, but the sailor was early. It had been said that Irenaeus would be in Tauroentum, a little way along the coast, and would not arrive in Massilia until the middle of the morning. He was, instead, already part unloaded as the height of the ship riding in the water confirmed. He must have arrived before dawn and, since no sailor in their right mind would try the rocky coast of southern Gaul in the dark, he must have actually put in at Massilia late last night.

The Roman’s hopes of getting Irenaeus’ mark before any opposition got to him were almost shattered in that realisation. The only chance was that Hierocles and his fellow arseholes were equally unaware of the new arrival. And that the squint-eyed Levantine currently sealing a deal had not filled the hold with a proposed cargo already.

‘Make sure we’re not interrupted as soon as that Phoenician leaves, alright?’

Masgava nodded and flexed his muscles. A moment later, Fronto was standing a disrespectful three feet behind the intricately-bearded merchant, hovering and trying to catch the eye of Irenaeus. The Levantine had clearly finished his actual business and was now passing the time of day with the Greek captain, and Fronto’s impatience was rising at a dangerous rate. His business was urgent and, while he had no intention of further alienating himself from the city’s Greek populace, he had no trouble arguing with another foreigner who got in his way.

Noisily, he cleared his throat and the Levantine looked around in surprise. As he turned, his face creased into an angry scowl ready to unleash his feelings on Fronto, but the sight of Masgava, looming a foot taller than Fronto and more than a foot wider at the shoulders, all muscles and teeth gleaming in the sun, seemed to rip the invective from his tongue and leave him with a weak apologetic smile.

‘I shall be moving on, sirs. Good day to you captain, and to you, sir.’

Fronto nodded impatiently and waited for the man to be out of the way by only the narrowest of margins before stepping into his place.

‘Irenaeus, you’re early.’

‘Good winds for this time of year, my Roman friend. And your motherland has been almost as kind to me as Poseidon these past weeks.’

His tone was affable, but Fronto was enough of a student of humanity to spot the underlying tension. Something unsaid. Something disquieting. There was a faint troubled look to the man’s eyes, which kept flicking downward.

‘What’s the matter, Irenaeus? You’ve sold off the last of your hold space?’

The Greek’s eyelid twitched as he shook his head.

‘Good, ‘cause I have a shipment of Falernian costing me warehouse fees in Puteoli, and I need to get it here as soon as possible. Your next trip, yes?’

Again, there was a shifty discomfort in the Greek’s expression. ‘How big a shipment?’

‘Forty amphorae, roughly eighty talents in weight, all well-sealed and stamped by the producer. A good shipment, but small enough still to leave room in your hold.’

‘Can we agree on twenty deka?’

Fronto actually stepped back with a blink. Irenaeus had the decency to look rather embarrassed.

‘Two hundred drachma?’ Fronto gasped. ‘For a shipment of forty amphorae? Gods, man. That’s five drachma per jar. I could buy slaves to carry them back from Puteoli for about the same! That’s ridiculous.’ The Roman’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. ‘Has Hierocles been sniffing around? Did he put you up to this?’

‘It’s the best I can do, Fronto.’

The former legate, seething, glanced down at the document still open on the rickety wooden desk. ‘Bet you can do better for Levantines, eh?’ But his roving eyes picked out what looked like an unreasonably high price on that agreement too and the fire died in the furnace of his anger. Irenaeus looked genuinely unhappy, and the same unreasonable terms had apparently been directed at the unknown easterner who had just left. ‘What’s this all about, Irenaeus? You and I are friends, aren’t we?’

The Greek sighed. ‘It’s the new tax, Fronto.’

‘New tax?’

‘It went up this morning. A thirty percent tax on all import and export matters involving non-citizen merchant concerns.’

‘Thirty percent?’

‘It seems some influential group of local businessmen managed to persuade the city’s boule that traders such as yourself are bringing in and taking out goods without a single obol going into the city treasury throughout. Massilia runs on trade, Fronto. The boule will have listened very intently and jumped on the idea.’

‘Irenaeus, twenty dekadrachm will make the entire trade worthless. I might even lose on the deal.’

The Greek sighed. ‘I feel for you, Fronto. You know it’s not me, and this is going to hit a lot of Roman, Judean, Gallic and Hispanic merchants. If there was a way I could waive the tax, you know I would. But I have to pass on the tax to the city, so if I help you, I’ll lose on the deal instead, and I’m a businessman too. You have to understand.’

Fronto sucked on his teeth. ‘Can you not grant me even the tiniest bit of leeway? If I promise to try and find a more lucrative deal for you next time?’

‘Fronto, there will be no more lucrative deal. You’ll not get anything better if you continue to operate through Massilia. If you want to make a niche, you’d be better heading down the coast to Narbo and setting up there.’

‘Can’t do that. Family all live here. Besides, Narbo already has Roman wine merchants galore serving the provincial communities down there. Massilia is the only largely-untapped port, and one of the biggest on the whole Hispanic-Gallic-Roman coast.’

Irenaeus scratched his head. ‘Look,’ he said, glancing around furtively. ‘I’ll help you this once. It’ll have to be the last time, though. Mark your manifest down on here.’ He proffered the vellum document beneath the one just completed by the Levantine. Fronto frowned in suspicion, but filled the spaces with his cargo details, including supplier, warehouse number, weight and quantity. The Greek then turned the vellum around and scribbled his section in spidery Greek text before handing it back, tapping his finger on the price.

‘One hundred and thirty drachma?’

Irenaeus nodded.

‘That would lift my nuts back out of the fire. Might even keep me going for a while. How can you do it? Will you get into trouble?’

The Greek tapped the top of the sheet. ‘No.’ Fronto followed the finger and spotted the date that had been freshly added. Yesterday’s date. ‘We sealed the deal late last night at the Dancing Ox, mere hours before the tax came in. Do you understand? If you gainsay that in any way at any time, I will be penalised and therefore so will you. You with me?’

Fronto stepped forward and wrapped his arms around the Greek. ‘Thank you, my friend. You just saved me.’

‘I’m not going to make a habit of it, Fronto. You’re going to have to find a solution to your trouble, ‘cause next time I’ll have to add the full weight of the tax.’

‘I understand.’

‘Now get out of here. Since we made the deal last night, it would be better if you’re not seen here this morning.’

Fronto nodded, squeezed the man in an uncharacteristically grateful hug and then stepped back. With a last nod, he turned and slipped back among the crowd, Masgava following. Even as he stepped away he caught sight of Hierocles and his small cadre of rodents making straight for the jetty that held Irenaeus’ black-sailed ship.

‘Too late, you slimy bastard,’ he snapped with a malicious grin. For a moment he was tempted to stay close enough to watch the Greek wine merchant fume and rant when he learned that Fronto’s deal had not gone sour, but the ship captain was right. Better not to be seen anywhere near.

‘You were lucky today,’ Masgava noted, somewhat redundantly.

‘Thanks. I noticed.’

The big Numidian blew out a tired breath. ‘I was trying to draw your attention to the fact that even without your little Fortuna doll…’

‘Doll?’

‘Without Fortuna around your neck, you still managed on the strength of friendship.’

‘I don’t think I can land the credit of that with Fortuna. Just a little desperate begging. The longer I stay in this trade the better I’m getting at begging. Handy, really, since that’s probably going to be my sole source of income by high summer!’

‘The Greek was right, Fronto. You’re going to have to find a solution to this, else you’re just going to slide into poverty, and then you won’t be able to pay me!’

Fronto looked aside at the gleaming white grin of his friend and rolled his eyes. ‘Thank you for your heartfelt support, you big Numidian ox.’

‘Speaking of ox, shall we go for a jar?’ the former gladiator chuckled. ‘My treat.’

‘Thanks. That sounds good. You’ve got more money than me at the moment anyway! Then, this afternoon I’m off to the street of the goldsmiths. Time Fortuna was appropriately honoured again. It’s a start, eh?’

 

* * * * *

 

The squeaking drew Fronto’s eyes upwards again and he squinted into the dark rafters until he picked out the two bats wheeling and flittering in the shadows, playing their odd nocturnal games. He smiled to himself, remembering Aurelius’ first encounter with the warehouse’s resident chiroptera when the superstitious ex-legionary had been busy attaching ropes to the rafter pulleys, had suddenly exploded into a shrieking mass of flapping black hairy beasts, and had ended up hanging from his own ropes by one foot, screaming, while the rest of the former singulares howled with laughter.

That had been a good day.

Fronto had still been positive then.

His gaze dropped once more to the ledgers on the table before him. The numbers added up alright. They added up to one huge steaming turd of a business future. He’d seen criminals being led bound into the arena where angry bears waited, who had longer life expectancies than his business. He really couldn’t face looking at those lists any more. In fact he’d not really needed to in the first place. There were servants at the villa who could easily have totted up lists and run inventories without the need for Fronto to get personally involved. But the sad fact was that although the task was as depressing as the year was long, at least it kept his mind busy. While he was fretting about lines of unpleasant numbers, he was not writhing around in his sleep, soaking the sheets with sweat and dreaming of faceless lemures coming to tear him apart.

And there was the added bonus of being alone. Although Masgava would be irritated with him for going off on his own, the big Numidian would almost certainly guess where he’d gone. And here, the twins were not crying. Here, Lucilia was not trying to be helpful. Here, Aurelius was not arguing with the other staff and the former singulares were not dropping amphorae and blaming each other. Here, Balbus was not being supportive with an air of quiet concern. Here he could be alone with his headache.

‘Piss,’ he announced with feeling, sweeping the ledger across the table. With a deep sigh, he slumped forwards across the cluttered surface, his arms out and hands drooping at the far side.

‘Blargh!’ he added, trying to load one sound with every ounce of feeling in his tortured body. His mind began to fill with images of dead legionaries clawing up at him from a sea of smashed wine amphorae and he shook his head to dislodge the unwanted visions.

 

He had no idea how long he’d been asleep, but he awoke with a start to discover that his drool had formed a huge damp patch on the vellum below him. He could feel it, though not see it, since the oil lamp that had lit his work area had long since expired. Some time, then. Best sleep he’d had in ages. Shame it couldn’t continue. What had woken him again?

The gong rang with nine deep booms over in the temple of Apollo, announcing the ninth hour of the night across the dark cityscape. So the gong must have disturbed him. He’d been asleep five hours. Amazing that Masgava hadn’t come for him yet. Lucilia would be livid when he got back. He decided it might be a good idea now to cut his losses and spend the rest of the night in the warehouse.

He frowned.

Wait a moment. He’d heard the nine gongs for the hour. If he’d been woken by an earlier clang, that would make it the tenth hour at least, if not the eleventh. And he’d spent enough nights in this warehouse over the winter to know that by the tenth hour, the first faint stain of morning light was starting to show through the upper window, highlighting some of the beams in the roof.

Above was just as dark as below.

Logic began to tug at his tired brain. It was still dark, so from experience it could not be later than the ninth hour. And he had heard nine clangs, so that confirmed the precise time. Which meant that there had been no earlier gong. And that meant that something else had woken him.

Fronto the soldier was suddenly in charge again, pushing down the tired, miserable Fronto the Merchant and taking his place, alert and concerned. The hairs stood proud on the back of his neck.

The warehouse was pitch black and utterly silent. So silent he could hear the padding paws of that mangy animal Trojan, who belonged to a family across the road but had taken to the habit of urinating on the warehouse doors at every opportunity.

And something else.

He was not alone in the warehouse.

Thoughts ran through his head swiftly. Intruders. Clearly, it was intruders. Anyone official or friendly would have opened the door and called out, bearing a lamp or torch. Anyone skulking around in the darkness was up to no good. He listened carefully and was sure he could pick out more than three distinct footsteps at the far end of the warehouse. They were creeping around, but they seemed to be wearing heavy leather boots, and so even creeping they made plenty of noise. Fronto carefully, silently, reached down to his sandals, which had been unfastened for comfort, and slipped them off. With a nimbleness which he still owed to Masgava’s ongoing training and exercise program, he slipped out from the seat without nudging the table or the chair. He’d not made a single noise as he rose in the darkness. On the balls of his feet, he padded over to roof support, where he knew Masgava kept a handy length of ash for poking stuck pulleys in the ceiling. His fingers closed on the reassuringly seasoned wood.

Despite the near-complete darkness, his eyes were starting to pick out the faintest shapes of things. He heard a whisper of muttering in Greek across the warehouse, and then a crescent of golden light bloomed behind the racks of amphorae. He could see the shadows of two people thrown onto the wall in that warm glow. There were at least two more, still.

He hefted the staff, wishing he could twirl it to get the measure of its weight and balance, but that would be risking clattering it on a shelf or the floor or ceiling and giving the game away. Masgava had insisted that he learn as many different weapons as possible over the past three years, and it was moments like this he found himself once again grateful to the former gladiator for his enforced lessons.

Almost silently, he padded three shelf-bays towards the glow, ducking sideways into the gloom and protection of the aisle just as the golden glow filled the main hall of the warehouse, right to the table and chair where he’d so recently been in repose.

Thank you, decades of military instinct.

Damn it. At least five of them, he now reckoned as they moved in. The intruders seemed to have decided that the place was empty, and now they began to speak and a second lamp bloomed into life. Fronto was no past master at the Greek language. He couldn’t have written poetry or translated the great Gortyn codes, or suchlike. But his basic written and spoken Greek was as good as any high-born Roman with years of tuition under his belt.

‘Three each side,’ a hushed voice commanded, and Fronto felt his heart lurch. Six! No… seven. Even in an indistinct whisper, that was not a voice used to including himself in the action. That was a man giving orders to six others. He could hear faint muttering among the others. Some of them had strange accents, telling him that they were not native Massiliot, but probably Sicilians or Cretans or some such, come to Massilia for work. They were thugs or hirelings. Nothing more.

His deductions proved slightly askew as he heard a second strong voice telling the others to shut up. So… at least one other proper fighter. They would be the two to take down first, given the chance.

‘Check every aisle. Make sure we’re alone. Then get to work, but make sure you take only the valuable stuff. This has to look like a genuine theft.’

Fronto felt his blood surging and boiling. No name had been mentioned, but given that little slip, there was absolutely no doubt in his mind who was behind this ‘incident’.

He pressed himself back against the roof support, the ash pole vertical and pulled in tight. He watched the first two men pass, peering in half-heartedly, making only a cursory check for lurking figures and completely missing the Roman hidden behind the thick wooden pillar. On the assumption the three at the other side were moving at roughly the same speed, that would leave three men at the rear still to come. It was tempting to wait until everyone passed and then strike, but that was too dangerous. While moving now risked landing himself with enemies on both sides, if he waited, the more experienced men might well see him and he’d lose the element of surprise, ending up trapped in this aisle.

It was fifty-fifty whether that second authoritative speaker would be on this side of the warehouse or the other. He counted under his breath and heard the footfalls of the third man behind the pillar. Taking a silent breath, he stepped out from the support, levelling the staff as he moved. As the figure of the third man came into view, the iron-hard butt of the staff hit the man in the stomach, hard enough to burst organs. There was an explosive rush of air from the man’s mouth, almost masking the grunt of pain as the figure fell away with a clatter to the darkened floor.

He knew that the thug in charge would not be so foolish as to walk into the same position – that commanding voice belonged to a man who knew his business. And so, keeping as much of the initiative on his side as he could, he stepped around the corner into the main hall of the warehouse. The leader turned out to be too far away to attack, since he had stayed close to the entrance.

Fronto momentarily weighed up the value of running over and taking down the leader anyway, against the likelihood that the result would be him being brought low by the other five interlopers in short order and then beaten to death. Instead, he decided upon a path of creating as much chaos and confusion as possible. When a legion lost cohesion, men stopped listening to the calls of their cornicen and to their centurions’ whistles, and there was a true danger of complete failure. Such was all the worse when a force did not have the discipline of a legion to begin with. If he could keep them off-balance, the leader could not control them and Fronto would have a chance.

‘Over by the door!’ he shouted in a passable Massiliot Greek. Two of the hired morons turned to look at the second warehouse door, past the empty table, while one was already running back towards his boss. Fronto lashed out with the spinning staff and swept the running man’s feet from under him. As the lad fell with a squawk, his legs flailing up in the air, Fronto spun on his heel, allowing the staff to build up momentum as it circled until it struck the flailing legs with the crack of breaking bone.

‘What in the name…’ came the second commanding voice from nearby, and Fronto reappraised. Two men down but only injured. Four men still intact, and the leader by the rear exit. Soon they would pull together and he would be in trouble.

Leaping towards the two at the head of the group, who had initially passed him while he hid, he smacked one of them in the centre of the back with the staff, hearing ribs break. The second man jumped lithely out of the way, and two others were now closing on him. Three down, but three well-prepared men now tightening in an arc around him. All three had clubs a good two feet long. He had the reach, of course, but the moment those men got inside the span of his staff, his weapon would be rendered ineffective and he would have to fight off clubs with his fists. The situation was beginning to look rather dire.

Buying himself time to think, Fronto began to twirl his staff around him in a very showy fashion, passing it from hand to hand behind his back with each rotation, making sure to keep himself far enough from walls and shelves to avoid catching the sweep of the weapon. He could almost have laughed. Masgava and he had argued for several hours over why the big man had bothered teaching him such a clearly decorative move. He’d not been able to see any circumstance in which being able to do this would be of benefit.

Yet here he was, spinning the thing like an acrobat and holding off three thugs in the process.

Time. He had a moment to think. Could he get out of the nearer of the doors?

But that would leave these men with free rein in his warehouse. An escape, but hardly a win.

His spin faltered for a moment as the staff caught the hand of one of the men who’d tried tentatively edging closer. It hadn’t been his weapon hand, sadly, but certainly that appendage would not be useful for some time, if ever.

A cry of dismay at the far end of the warehouse changed everything. The second sound, which followed quickly on the first, was a familiar voice.

‘Fronto?’

Not Masgava, after all. In fact, it was the slightly pinched tone of Glykon, the local recruit to his business. He’d found early on that there was something that unsettled him about Glykon, but right now he had to admit that he’d rarely been more grateful to hear his name called.

‘Here!’ he replied, noting the sudden sounds of a scuffle at the warehouse’s far end. He heard the distinctive rasp of a sword leaving a scabbard’s collar and flinched for a moment. His spinning staff went slightly astray and he lost his spin-rhythm. Fortunately, the three men facing him had turned their attention away from their prey, focusing on the new activity at the far end.

‘Fronto! I’m coming,’ Glykon yelled, and then: ‘get out of my way you greasy anus!’

There was a sound that Fronto recognised as sharpened iron being turned aside by hard wood, and the interlopers’ leader yelled ‘pull out!’

Fronto watched the three men turn and run, happy to get out of the range of his staff. The one with the broken ribs was on his feet now, arms huddled round his aching midriff, but running for his life with the rest. One of them was helping up the last man – the one Fronto had first winded. The Roman winced as the escaping troublemakers paused long enough to smash a few amphorae and grab a couple of the smaller, more portable, vases, and then they were gone.

Fronto leaned on his staff for a moment, heaving in grateful breaths. One of the now-fled thugs had helpfully placed their small lamp on the table while they’d faced him and had left it there when they ran, the light continuing to throw the room into golden visibility. As he stumped towards the table and then slid his feet into his sandals, he turned to see Glykon limping down the warehouse towards him. The local employee’s stubbled face and close-shorn black hair gleamed in the lamplight. He was holding one arm tight across his chest, blood from some small wound soaking into his chiton, and he’d clearly taken a blow to the leg that had caused the limp but not drawn blood. A lucky man, or else Glykon was more martially-skilled than Fronto had thought. The Greek had held only a short club and had survived a run in with a veteran criminal armed with a blade.

‘You alright, Domine?’

The Roman mode of address formed within a Greek sentence seemed extremely odd, but the tone was respectful and concerned, and Fronto found himself warming to the odd man.

‘Remarkably, I seem to be entirely unharmed,’ he glowered at a mass of pot sherds further along the warehouse and a growing pool of dark red around them. ‘My stock does not seem to have borne up quite so well. I think that’s the Chian busy running out into the gutters.’ He shook his head, turning to more immediate concerns. ‘And you? I see you’re bleeding. Is it just a flesh wound? We’d best get you seen to. It’s a bit early for the physicians to be open in town, but Balbus’ major domo is a former field medic, and he knows a thing or two about wounds.’

Glykon smiled. ‘Your wife is beside herself with worry, sir. I can walk on to master Balbus’ house, or even stitch the wound myself. First thing’s first: let’s get you home, sir.’

Fronto nodded slowly. ‘If you’re really alright. I cannot thank you enough for your timely arrival. My business concerns would have been the last of my worries in another quarter of an hour.’

Glykon gestured to the door. ‘I’ve brought the spare keys, sir. Go ahead and sluice down in the fountain outside and I’ll lock up and meet you there. You could do without being spattered with other people’s blood when the domina sees you. It would raise difficult questions, sir.’

Fronto nodded. ‘Quite right. Sage advice, there, my friend. I’ll see you outside when I’ve cleaned up. And when we get home I want to set a two-man armed guard in the warehouse each night. Hierocles has just shifted his game up a notch. I’m going to make him sorry for this.’

 

* * * * *

 

‘I still don’t like this.’

Lucilia nodded patiently. ‘I know dear. You’re startlingly un-Roman in your outlook sometimes, you know, my love? But bear in mind that these people will soon have a roof over their head, a warm home, good meals and even a few coins. Better than the free but poor of Rome. And every slave you buy is someone you save from fieldwork or the mines, if you’re feeling philanthropic again. They won’t understand their good fortune after spending their youth living in mud huts and washing in streams.’

Fronto snorted. ‘Sorry, Lucilia, but that’s the sort of blinkered Romanitas that only afflicts those who haven’t fought alongside the Gauls. Don’t forget that many of them served in Caesar’s army. They have their own world that’s in some strange ways more civilised than ours. And they don’t live in mud huts. They have stone- and timber-built houses with windows and doors and rugs and furniture.’

‘And there’s little chance of another servile war,’ Lucilia went on as though he hadn’t spoken. ‘The Spartacus debacle taught people a lesson.’

‘Balls! It taught people a lesson for a couple of years. A few people have shunned slaves, but the rest stopped treating them so badly for a few months until the horrors were forgotten, then they went straight back to beating the boys and humping the girls like a good Roman pater familias.’

‘Then you be an exception to the rule.’

‘You don’t understand, Lucilia. The majority of the slaves at the market will be Gauls of one tribe or another. It’s possible I was even commanding the fight when some of them were taken. And even if not, they were once free men with a sense of nobility and they’re hardly likely to view a new Roman master with any level of acceptance. If you buy a Gaul and speak Latin, watch for a makeshift knife in the night.’

‘Then just be choosy about who we buy. I am quite capable of selecting good house slaves. You can steer us right in terms of Gauls, and Glykon knows the trade world, so he can advise us well on who to take on for your business.’

Fronto turned and looked at the dark-haired Greek who followed at a respectful distance. Behind him, Masgava and Aurelius watched the crowd carefully. Masgava had decided that following the ‘incident’ at the warehouse, Fronto would have an armed guard whenever possible, and the former officer had not the strength to argue. Consequently, while Biorix and Arcadios watched over the warehouse, the big ex-Gladiator and the superstitious former legionary accompanied he and Lucilia, both wearing nondescript local-style clothing but with a long dagger and a short one at their belt beneath the cloaks they all wore against the Januarius chill. The temperature had finally risen last month and the skies had been blue for weeks. At least it never snowed or froze down here like it did in the north, but there was still a chilling wind from the sea.

Glykon was clearly doing his best for the business. He had managed to secure a few small deals, to help alleviate the pressure, with the contacts he had in the city. And he worked all hours, despite a lack of bonus in pay. And, of course, he had saved Fronto’s skin in the warehouse. Lucilia had wanted to give him a gift for his timely interruption there, but Glykon had refused, labelling it his duty. He was a good man. But…

Far from the agora, close to the huge pottery warehouses and the kiln buildings pouring their pungent smoke into the sky, the slave market was strangely – given the general chaos of the Greek city-state – a much more ordered and solid affair than the sprawling mass of the graecostadium in Rome. Enclosed by a wide boundary wall, the place consisted largely of three large blocks of pens, each subdivided into rooms labelled with the traders’ signs, the central yard with a block for the display of wares, a set of wooden seating stands that could easily double as a theatre, and a separate building that housed the market’s staff and guards.

The small group approached the gate to the complex, Lucilia almost buzzing with the anticipation of the trade, Masgava and Aurelius watching their surroundings carefully, and Fronto gazing longingly at the Artemis tavern across the road. As they neared the pair of guards, Glykon stepped ahead and opened the purse of business funds he carried on behalf of his employer.

‘We’re here for a private visit.’

The two men looked at the purse and watched as Glykon counted out two small coins apiece, before nodding and gesturing inside. It was the way of things. Those with influence or money or both could arrange such a visit instead of having to sit in the crowd at the public sale in an hour or so and argue with the rest of the buyers. For a small gratuity to the gate guard and a small donation to the market funds, they would be permitted to peruse the indoor pens, select any goods they wished to purchase, and then speak to the merchants who would be here gearing up for the main event. If a deal could be reached early, that slave would be withdrawn from the lists for a private transaction.

Passing through the gate, Glykon deposited a few more obols with a minor functionary, who led them to the first of the three buildings. ‘Apologies, Kupios, but only the one building is available. We are awaiting a large shipment, but winter is a thin time for supplies, and the other two buildings remain empty at this time.’

‘Maybe we should come back another day?’ Fronto murmured, but Lucilia smiled at the man. ‘I have confidence we will find what we need, sir.’

The man bowed and opened the door so they could enter. The interior was sweaty and warm even from the entrance, and Fronto passed his cloak to the functionary along with the others, to hang on the pegs and await their return.

The next quarter of an hour ranked highly on Fronto’s list of experiences not to repeat. The conditions of the slave quarters naturally led to the entire building reeking of faeces, urine, vomit and filth. The inhabitants, familiar with the routine, rushed over to the bars and clamoured to be purchased, desperate to get out of this place. As Lucilia perused them, staying carefully out of reach of the flailing arms, Glykon checked them over. Masgava looked positively ill, and Fronto found himself wondering how long the big Numidian had lived in a place like this before he’d been given a blade and sent out onto the sands. Aurelius looked nervous but then, for such a big fellow, Aurelius always looked nervous.

Fronto watched as Lucilia selected a short, narrow-hipped Spaniard with a face like a fighting dog and the build of a wrestler. Glykon quizzed the man and discovered that the strange figure spoke not only his own tongue, but Latin and Greek, and knew his numbers and letters too. The company in that particular cell suggested that his owner was not aware of his talents, having naturally lumped him in with the other muscle. Lucilia was ever sharp. A bargain had been found already.

He’d tried to argue against her choosing a Gaul at all, though the vast majority of the stock seemed to be Gauls. In the end, he’d had to back down and let her have the delicate red-haired Parisi girl who had been so nervous that Lucilia had had to coax her to the bars. Fronto had his own suspicions as to how reticent the girl might be when she was up at the villa and made a mental note to have her kept well away from blades or other pointy things.

Lucilia and Glykon together then began to set upon the task of finding Fronto some new workers. As they discussed the property on offer, moving from cell to cell, Fronto started to look at the markers on the walls. The script was in a particularly jagged form of Greek and he had to concentrate to translate the words. The names of the various traders were universally Greek: Anatolios. Nikomachos. Tychon. His eyes widened as he read the text on the signs below the merchants’ names. The traders themselves may be Greek, but the supplier name was also given for transparency of business, and Kaísaras appeared on four of every five cells. It seemed too much of a coincidence for there to be more than one man of that name supplying slaves.

‘Lucilia, these slaves are almost all from Caesar. They’ve come down from the fights last year. I probably saw a bunch of these faces at Alesia.’

‘Do stop worrying, Marcus. It is only natural that many of Caesar’s slaves would end up here. He has to spread the captives about. Sending them all to Rome would simply ruin the market altogether. You’re supposed to have a head for business now.’

‘I don’t like it.’

He peered into Tychon’s pen at the denizens and his helpful imagination dressed them in bronze and mail and put blades in their hands. Suddenly he was right back at the desperate fight for the gate at Mons Rea. In fact, he could swear that the one currently glaring at him with wide blue eyes actually threw a spear at him back there. He shuddered and turned away from the pen, opening his mouth to speak. But as he stepped away, a stray desperate hand caught the edge of his pale green chiton and the darker green himation worn above it, and he felt his clothes ripped away as he moved. He was jerked to a halt as the material held tight around his middle, leaving him naked to the waist. Turning, he yanked on his clothing, jerking it out of the slave’s hands. The functionary, who had been following them around at a respectful distance, rushed over with a thin wand of wood, smacking the errant slave on the hands and eliciting a howl.

‘Many apologies, Kupios, but I must really advise you not to get too close to the goods. If you wish a closer viewing, we have guards to keep things under control.’

Fronto grunted as he struggled to separate the two tangled garments.

‘Roman!’

The five of them turned at the call and Fronto frowned.

‘Roman officer,’ added the husky female voice. ‘From Bellovaci war, yes?’

‘What in the name of Juno…?’

A solitary figure stood in an otherwise empty cell, gripping the bars. She was dirty, but her stance was not one of a broken slave. Straight-backed, she laughed.

‘Naked again, Roman. But not so small this time, eh?’

Fronto’s blood chilled and he turned to Lucilia to see that her own questioning look had fallen upon him.

‘Gods, it cannot be.’

‘Marcus, who is this woman who seems to know you?’

‘She… err. She was a Bellovaci woman who almost gutted me in a river in Belgae lands – what? – six years ago now? Seven? How in the name of Fortuna did she end up here?’

He gave up trying to disentangle the clothes and simply wrapped them round himself and over his shoulder as he strode over to the cell. She was older, perhaps thirty summers now, and wearing rags, and his memory was not what it once was, but there could be no mistaking those eyes. It was the woman who had grabbed his blade while he bathed in a cold river and who had latched on to him like a puppy seeking a home until he’d managed to palm her off on Crispus.

‘Why is she in her own cell?’ he asked the functionary.

‘She’s trouble, that one, Kupios. She looks good, but she keeps going out and coming back. No one wants to keep her. Some have beaten her, but they say it makes her all the more defiant. She seems impervious to pain. Sethos the trader loves her. He keeps selling her for a good profit, and she comes back to him cheap to sell again.’

Fronto felt Lucilia’s interrogative gaze on his back and shivered. ‘This girl was not taken as a slave. She was in the care of an officer.’ His helpful memory chose to remind him that Crispus had died years back on a Gallic spear. What would have happened to a girl in his care? His family in Rome would probably not want such a rough barbaroi in their house.

‘I should have checked up on you when Crispus died.’ He turned to Lucilia. ‘She was, I think, a girl of good family among her tribe. She was under our protection, but the Fates seem to have been unkind to her.’

‘We should get her out of here then, Marcus.’

Fronto stared into Lucilia’s gaze and tried to separate the strands of emotion therein. His wife was intrigued, suspicious, perhaps even jealous? But there was a healthy dose of compassion there too.

‘Lucilia, you heard the man. She’s trouble.’ He turned to the functionary. ‘How much does she stand to make at auction?’

‘Between one hundred and one hundred and fifty drachma, Kupios.’

Fronto sighed. ‘We can’t go doling out that kind of money, Lucilia. Not for someone we don’t desperately need.’

‘You said the other day that Captain Irenaeus had saved you quite a bit of money. Marcus, you said she was under your protection. You can’t leave her in this place.’

‘Lucilia…’ he peered into his wife’s eyes, but he knew that look all too well. ‘If you want her, then we can’t get that little redhead you liked the look of.’ It was a long-shot, but worth a try.

‘Fine.’

He sighed, and strolled over to the cell. ‘I never did learn your name?’

‘They call me Annia.’

‘I’m sure. What do you call you?’

‘My name was Andala.’

‘Then it still is,’ Lucilia said firmly. ‘Glykon, find this Sethos and haggle him down as low as you can. For every two drachma you save on the hundred and fifty, you can have one of them.’

Glykon smiled and Fronto looked at the straight-backed, pretty young woman who had once held him at knife-point. He could hardly wait for Helladios the goldsmith to finish his new Fortuna pendant. He needed a bit of good luck for a change, and this, while extremely coincidental, did not smack of good luck.

Quarter of an hour later the small party of five left the slave markets, Fronto grasping a sadly very thin purse, Lucilia with a satisfied smile. She’d come away with the redhead too, after all. ‘I think I would like to spend an hour in the markets, Marcus. Our new staff will need clothing and bedding.’

Fronto sighed. He could really do without spending yet more money he didn’t really have on material, but there would be no arguing with Lucilia when she was in this mood. Besides – his gaze strayed across the road – the Artemis tavern was still calling him. ‘Alright, dear. But this place is not safe at the moment. My opposition are not above taking those things I love, even in public, so Masgava and Aurelius can go with you.’ The two former bodyguards nodded their approval and understanding.

He smiled. ‘And I’ll…’

‘I know, dear. I’ll look for you in the tavern when I’m done. Try to be able to talk when I get back. The new slaves are being delivered this afternoon and it would look bad if you can’t address them clearly.’

Fronto smiled and kissed his wife, watching her stroll off towards the busy market area, Aurelius and Masgava hovering around her protectively. He was confident that nothing would happen to her. There were no two men in the world he would trust more to protect her.

Turning, he gestured for Glykon to follow and strode into the doorway of the Artemis. It was a tavern he rarely got to – he never seemed to be in the south of the city, where there was no connection to his business or his private life. He’d been in a couple of times over the past year or more, though, and had found the place to be largely patronised by workmen, teamsters and sailors from the port buildings and shipyards that loomed on the far side of the potters’ quarter. It had a curious smell, derived from the various industries that surrounded it and from the smoked meats hanging behind the bar.

Fronto heard a strangled noise and turned to see Glykon with a look of haughty disapproval.

‘You don’t like this place?’

‘It is not a place for man of quality, Domine.’

‘Despite appearances, I’m not a man of quality,’ grinned Fronto, indicating his ruffled and badly-settled chiton and himation.

‘Perhaps I should return to the villa and prepare for the new staff?’

Fronto frowned, then shrugged easily. ‘If you want.’

‘Then I shall see you upon your return, Domine.’

He watched the odd Greek bow, turn and leave, making his way northeast, through the heart of town towards the gate that gave access to the hills upon which the villa sat. With a chuckle, Fronto turned to the tavern. Strangely, it seemed already quite full of life, and no table was entirely unoccupied. In the end, he strolled to the bar, bought himself a cup of medium quality Lemnian, and then made for a table near the door where a man sat alone with his cup. A man, Fronto had noted, who had been watching him with interest as he and Glykon had conversed in the doorway.

The fellow was tall, broad-shouldered and had the build of a manual worker but the face of a thinker. He was clean-shaven, but his dark hair was odd, cut short at the front but long at the rear with braids behind each ear, keeping strands from his face when he leaned forward. His chiton was cut from strong, functional material, and the green and blue container that sat beside his chair had the look of a traveller’s kit bag. His features were strange; hard to place. If he had to, Fronto would put him as a northern Gaul, or perhaps a German.

‘Mind if I sit?’ he asked politely in good Greek.

‘By all means,’ the man replied in a curious accent that did nothing to help clarify his oddness.

Fronto slumped into the chair with a grateful sigh and threw down a mouthful of wine. ‘My name is Fronto. Marcus Falerius Fronto.’

‘Yes,’ the man smiled. ‘Fronto the wine merchant.’

‘You know me?’

‘Everyone in the port knows Fronto the wine merchant. You’re rapidly becoming infamous, my Roman friend. Besides, I’ve watched you and your lot at the jetties many a time.’

Fronto suddenly felt very uncomfortable again. Today seemed to be catching him on the back-foot rather a lot. ‘So who are you?’

‘My name is Catháin. Well, the bit you’ll pronounce is, anyway.’

‘You’re in the wine trade?’

‘Not quite. I was foreman of Eugenios’ olive oil business, though he and I had a little disagreement over wages. It seems foreigners are starting to work at something of a disadvantage in Massilia.’

‘I hear you there, brother.’

Catháin leaned forward, a questioning look on his face. ‘If you are the Fronto who is currently in the sights of Hierocles’ artillery, then what are you doing with his man?’

It was Fronto’s turn to frown now. ‘What?’

‘Glykon, the little shit weasel. What are you doing with him?’

Fronto felt as though a trapdoor had opened beneath him. ‘Glykon?’

‘Of course. He’s been Hierocles’ man since the dawn of the wine trade. I believe they’re distant cousins.’

Fronto blinked and took another slug of wine. Suddenly the reason for his employee’s presence in the warehouse the other night became startlingly clear. In fact, he’d be willing to bet that the commanding voice he’d heard from the leader with the sword was Glykon. And the man had switched sides and saved Fronto when he realised their ‘theft’ had gone wrong and the gang had been spotted. Damn it, how had he missed all this?

‘Shit. Why has no one told me before?’

‘Because you’re a Roman, Fronto. You’re about as popular as a turd in a bath to most of these people. I’ll bet the new taxes are squeezing you tight, eh?’

‘You have no idea,’ Fronto sighed.

‘You want my advice?’

‘Given the evidence so far, I’d be a fool to turn it down.’

Catháin grinned. ‘Have someone you trust check into all your employees. Hierocles is a devious bastard and he’ll get under your skin. Get rid of Glykon and vet the rest carefully. I’ve seen your workers down on the docks, too. Half of them are soldiers with no idea what they’re doing. Separate your guards, your household, and your workforce completely. The guards might think they’re being helpful, but your workers would actually be more efficient if the others stayed out of things altogether.’

‘Can’t really argue with you on any of that.’

‘Then, the only way you’re going to be able to beat the high tax legally is by improving your business. Secure cheaper sources, markets and transport and seek out buyers as yet untouched by Hierocles so you can carve out a niche from which to expand your influence.’

Fronto blew out a heavy breath and leaned back in his seat. ‘Are you for hire?’

‘That, my Roman friend, depends upon how much you’re paying.’

Fronto snorted. ‘My wife is busy spending a small fortune on rubbish at the moment. I’ll give you a standard teamster’s wage and Glykon’s pay on top as soon as I fire him. That should be about right for a foreman, I reckon?’

Catháin chuckled. ‘On one condition. When I start to make you money, I take an extra five percent cut of all profits.’

‘Done.’

Fronto grinned as he drained the last of his cup. ‘Now I shall go to the bar, buy a small amphora of Rhodian to seal the deal, and you can tell me about where you come from, since I cannot for the life of me place your accent.’