andy01
Magistrate
Gabriella in Kytherramne
The night before she was crucified, Gabriella Sivilla partied. From his balcony, working in the mellow evening by the light of a graceful lamp – a good piece that, made by Eumenides a century before – the tribune could see the blaze of lights and hear senseless laughter and parrot talk. Kytherramne’s bright young things had flocked around, perfumed and coiffeured and bright with jewels – and that was just the men, he thought sourly. Perhaps it was inevitable. Kytherramne hadn’t been a free city since Alexander’s day, and for the past fifty years it had just been an insignificant part of Asia province, costing Rome a damn sight more than it was worth in Galerius’ opinion. Still, it was a useful base for keeping down pirates preying on the trade between the Great and Lesser Inland Seas. Galerius kept a flotilla of picket boats and a pair of solidly built, blunt-rammed biremes, not big but fast and low in the water. The pirates hated them.
His face had softened, but as he looked down the hill, it hardened again. Since the civil wars there were too many of the young who wanted nothing but frivolity. Not just here but in Rome itself. They saw no need to learn soldiering; the legions were there to ensure their safety. No need to take public office and order the state; the Augustus would do that for them. No need to farm or trade or create businesses; they would live fatly on the fortunes their fathers had earned.
Pirates were lice on the civilised world. But gazing down the hill, the legate the legate felt a chilly fear that the disssolute folly of the new generation was a greater threat to the empire than ever the pirates had been.
And the leader of all this folly in Kytherramne – if these creatures could have a leader, any more than kittens could be herded – was Gabriella Sivilla. The brightest parties were always at her house. She was always there at the most scandalous pranks and outrages. At twenty-four years old, she was walking proof of the folly of leaving a woman without a husband. Her father had died when she was just eighteen and should already have been married, leaving as head of the family a senile uncle who never left his country estates and who would not take steps to get her married. It was strange indeed that her father, a shrewd man who had amassed the fortune she was now flaunting, should have been so foolish. Yet, until now, Galerius had never imagined she was more than a fool. But if Flavius was right – and Galerius had never known him wrong yet – then she was not just a fool but guilty of everything under the sun. And maybe he would have the chance to teach these fools a lesson that would bring them to their senses.
They would be in and out of that house half the night, eating, drinking wine watered at most one to one, gossiping and talking nonsense that would be treasonous if spoken by serious people. A torchlit procession came staggering out – half drunk already although dusk had barely fallen – off to brawl in taverns and worse.
Inside the house, every room was ablaze with pure beeswax candles and lamps burning finest oils, all scented with different perfumes. In the atrium, flutes and stringed instruments were playing, and there was dancing. Elsewhere the couches were laid out around tables loaded with food, and the talk sparkled in verbal contests as first one and then another tripped an opponent. As always, there was a small crowd weeping with laughter around Julius Herennius as he acted out episodes of the lives of the great and good, and laid bare the real motives behind high words and proclamations.
“Gabriella darling, what a wonderful party, and what a wonderful dress … black silk and white skin … it’s disgraceful someone hasn’t torn it off you!”
“Well at least I know I’m safe with you Rufy. Isn’t Quintus with you?”
“Oh he’s over there making eyes at Herennius, the little bitch. Are you wearing black for my broken heart?”
“I can’t go into mourning three times a week, Rufy. No, I just think this shows up my hair ... don’t you?” She lowered her head and gazed up at him teasingly. “Besides, I’m feeling rather black just now.”
“Oh Gabby, why?”
For a moment the elfin face was sombre. Then she grinned again. “Just am.”
“Oh I know Gabby. Nothing ever happens in this dump. But say … hadn’t you heard about Mira?”
“I’ve been out at the villa for the past ten days Rufy. Do tell?”
“Oh she and Herennius got into a fight about something or other … one of his little bits of fluff I imagine … and he gave her the most marvellous black eye. Black as your dress, darling. Anyway, you know that cook of hers? What’s her name?”
“Ginny I think, something like that. Been in the family a long time. Used to be her wet nurse I think …”
“Well that would explain it … you know how broody they get. Anyway, seems she’d got a bit tired of Henny knocking her little girl about, so she planned to cook up a toadstool soup for him …”
“You mean …”
“Yep, our Henny very nearly had to miss your party darling, owing to a previous engagement. Luckily one of the kitchen maids cottoned on to what she was doing, and as she didn’t really fancy getting the cross, she told the steward and he told Mira, and she told Henny – who didn’t really see the joke.”
“Oh gods,” Gabriella murmured, looking a little sick.
“No problem, Gabby. In fact it’s the first bit of excitement we’ve had for ages. The steward nabbed her before she could get some of the soup for herself and they both went up to the barrack cells this afternoon …”
“Both?”
“This Ginny and the other kitchen maid, the one who didn’t tell. I saw them taken up this afternoon, bit fat Ginny looking like the bottom had fallen out of her world, and a little scrawny scrubbing girl bawling that she didn’t know and please won’t her mistress forgive her. So it’s hammer and nails for two tomorrow.”
“They’re going to crucify them?” Gabriella’s voice was faint.
“Of course they are. Can’t have slaves messing up the soup, it spoils good food and we’d all be afraid to go to a party. Oh Gabby you will come and watch won’t you. It’s been months since I saw a crucifixion … and fatty Ginny, she’ll baste herself in her own lard on a cross ... And think of the delicious contrast of that big arsed cook hung up with a scrawny little skivvy …”
“You really enjoy crucifixions, don’t you Rufy? I’ll leave you to it.”
“You won’t be there?”
“No, these things make me sick. Oh yes I know it has to be done and I don’t blame Mira … or Henny really, come to that. I think I’ll go and get another drink.”
Rufius Cearnor shook his head sadly as he watched Gabriella sway away across the room, her rounded backside swaying delightfully. Though not that way inclined, Cearnor was a connoisseur and the girl’s slender form, long legs, long arms, beautifully shaped breasts – someone should make a statue of her. Maybe a bronze. He’d buy it like a shot.
But a strange girl. Bubbling with laughter half the time, leaping into all sorts of games, but then suddenly gloomy, like tonight. Almost afraid, at times, he imagined. And lovely as she was, she never kept a lover more than a day or two. And he couldn’t remember when last she had taken one. Maybe that was what she needed, a really good rogering. Pity though, she was a nice kid.
The stone Flavius tossed onto the legate’s table glistened as it bounced. It seemed to draw in and distil the lamplight, radiant on the dark leather of the desk.
“She was a fool to put a stone like that on the market. Even in Tyre it was remarkable, and once it was recognised, well …”
“All right Marcus Flavius, what have you got?”
“All of it, Publius Galerius. The whole story. It’s taken me three months to trace that sparkler back from Tyre to here, and another month to get the rest of the story.”
Briefly he outlined what he had learned. It had started seven years earlier with pirate raids on ships carrying shipments of jewels – raids that had gone unchecked for almost two years. For the past three years, Flavius had spent all the spare time he had to trying to trace what had happened.
“For a while I thought it was Pius Sivillius who was behind it. He had the resources, and with his contacts in the jewel trade he’d have known when the good stones were being shipped. And he was senior autarch; he could give pirates any protection they asked.”
“Yes, I remember Sivillius,” the legate murmured. “I met him when we were coming back from Egypt. We’d broken the rebellion’s back at Actium but there was chaos everywhere. We hadn’t the men or time to put everything right, and this place was running better than most. And he was running it. All through the civil wars, when people were backing the wrong side or losing their heads he’d kept his – and most of the losers’ estates as well. What in hell could we do, Flavius. Either leave the big fish in charge or chop him up and feed him to the others. Either way we had to move on fast to the real danger spots, and come back later when we could. But none of us liked it much. What made you so sure it wasn’t him?”
“He died six years ago, but the raids didn’t stop – not for months. When I learned that, I crossed Sivillius off my list. In the end, this was about five years ago, one of the local gang leaders, a man called Allius, was washed up on shore with his throat cut. He’d been in the water a long time, almost certainly thrown off a ship at sea. Then there were no more raids. And for a long time, that was all I could learn.”
“Until this turned up in Tyre, a diamond stolen in one of those raids? So you say you’ve traced it?”
“Right back to one of Sivillius’s companies. Owned by his daughter now. They’ve run the jewellery trade on all this coast, and a lot more. She’s been feeding these onto the markets little by little for years. She’s got such a huge trade nobody noticed a few extras, but once I’d realised it was easy enough to pick up others.”
“You say ‘she’? Why not someone in the companies, a crooked manager or book keeper? Can we prove it’s her.”
“There’s a strongbox in her study out at her villa. I had one of my lads sneak in and pick the lock last night. It’s got thirty packets of jewels. He brought me one. A lot of the stones are fairly ordinary, but some … well, I’ve had seven identified for certain, and they were all lost to pirates.”
The legate steepled his fingers and thought for some minutes. Then he nodded. “We’ll have to move now, before she finds the packet gone. Bring me the senior archons … Alexias and Lyssiades. They’re both in town. I warned them they might be needed.”
An hour or so before dawn Gabriella Sivilla woke gasping, her silken sheets clammy with sweat. She sat in bed shaking, then burst into silent sobs. Always that nightmare of her lover lying on the litter on the beach, water dribbling from his lank hair and his face … but he had no face because the fishes … And beside him her father standing, his face melting like wax in the sun, sliding down on the left side, dribbling …
Her beautiful Allius … her strong, loving father. The glories of her life. Her strongholds. And she had ruled the future with them. In perfect harmony of mind they had worked and planned. Father was lord of Kytherramne and all the coastal plain, strong as a king. Now he planned to bind all together, gather the wealth to gain influence in Rome and be declared not just a makeshift governor but independent king and ally of the Roman people. With Allius as his right hand, to reach out and snap up ships with the jewels he needed. Night after night they met and planned, and success came swift. Time after time Allius took out his hired crews and came back with the sun in his eyes and in the stones he brought with him.
How do you make the fates laugh? Tell them your plans. At the age of forty-eight Pius Sivillius was struck down by a massive stroke, and after two months had died. Allius had carried his schemes forward, and Gabriella had played her part. Played her part as if she were an actor on a stage reciting lines and performing actions that someone else had written for her. That her father had written for her.
But Allius went too often to the well. The crews grew shifty. With Pius Sivillius, first archon of Kytherramne dead, who would ensure the patrol boats were diverted and the beaches clear of watchers? One night he sailed, his crew well paid with gold, and the ship never returned. His body washed ashore three days later. And Gabriella Sivilla, his lover, threw open her house to the empty-headed chatterers, to the music and laughter and the barely watered wine.
At a little after dawn next morning, Gabriella Sivilla’s carriage was waiting outside the town walls to take her to her villa in the hills. It waited until noon, but she did not come. By then she was otherwise engaged.
When the watchmen stopped her at the gate and required her to go with them to the archons, she felt a dull wave of exasperation. Her mouth was sour and there was a slight throbbing in her temples. She wanted to be out of the town in the clean hill air, not have to go to those dull men to be lectured and scolded like a child. What was it this time, she wondered. Had someone smashed up a bar after the party last night? Well, why pick on her for it? She hadn’t been there. Or had Henny touched them on the raw with another of his epigrams? They couldn’t touch her for that either, and their gloomy sulks would only provoke him. That one about the chief archon’s long drooping face and short drooping other part … that had been composed after they’d all been brought up for a lecture. Why couldn’t they leave her alone?
The night before she was crucified, Gabriella Sivilla partied. From his balcony, working in the mellow evening by the light of a graceful lamp – a good piece that, made by Eumenides a century before – the tribune could see the blaze of lights and hear senseless laughter and parrot talk. Kytherramne’s bright young things had flocked around, perfumed and coiffeured and bright with jewels – and that was just the men, he thought sourly. Perhaps it was inevitable. Kytherramne hadn’t been a free city since Alexander’s day, and for the past fifty years it had just been an insignificant part of Asia province, costing Rome a damn sight more than it was worth in Galerius’ opinion. Still, it was a useful base for keeping down pirates preying on the trade between the Great and Lesser Inland Seas. Galerius kept a flotilla of picket boats and a pair of solidly built, blunt-rammed biremes, not big but fast and low in the water. The pirates hated them.
His face had softened, but as he looked down the hill, it hardened again. Since the civil wars there were too many of the young who wanted nothing but frivolity. Not just here but in Rome itself. They saw no need to learn soldiering; the legions were there to ensure their safety. No need to take public office and order the state; the Augustus would do that for them. No need to farm or trade or create businesses; they would live fatly on the fortunes their fathers had earned.
Pirates were lice on the civilised world. But gazing down the hill, the legate the legate felt a chilly fear that the disssolute folly of the new generation was a greater threat to the empire than ever the pirates had been.
And the leader of all this folly in Kytherramne – if these creatures could have a leader, any more than kittens could be herded – was Gabriella Sivilla. The brightest parties were always at her house. She was always there at the most scandalous pranks and outrages. At twenty-four years old, she was walking proof of the folly of leaving a woman without a husband. Her father had died when she was just eighteen and should already have been married, leaving as head of the family a senile uncle who never left his country estates and who would not take steps to get her married. It was strange indeed that her father, a shrewd man who had amassed the fortune she was now flaunting, should have been so foolish. Yet, until now, Galerius had never imagined she was more than a fool. But if Flavius was right – and Galerius had never known him wrong yet – then she was not just a fool but guilty of everything under the sun. And maybe he would have the chance to teach these fools a lesson that would bring them to their senses.
They would be in and out of that house half the night, eating, drinking wine watered at most one to one, gossiping and talking nonsense that would be treasonous if spoken by serious people. A torchlit procession came staggering out – half drunk already although dusk had barely fallen – off to brawl in taverns and worse.
Inside the house, every room was ablaze with pure beeswax candles and lamps burning finest oils, all scented with different perfumes. In the atrium, flutes and stringed instruments were playing, and there was dancing. Elsewhere the couches were laid out around tables loaded with food, and the talk sparkled in verbal contests as first one and then another tripped an opponent. As always, there was a small crowd weeping with laughter around Julius Herennius as he acted out episodes of the lives of the great and good, and laid bare the real motives behind high words and proclamations.
“Gabriella darling, what a wonderful party, and what a wonderful dress … black silk and white skin … it’s disgraceful someone hasn’t torn it off you!”
“Well at least I know I’m safe with you Rufy. Isn’t Quintus with you?”
“Oh he’s over there making eyes at Herennius, the little bitch. Are you wearing black for my broken heart?”
“I can’t go into mourning three times a week, Rufy. No, I just think this shows up my hair ... don’t you?” She lowered her head and gazed up at him teasingly. “Besides, I’m feeling rather black just now.”
“Oh Gabby, why?”
For a moment the elfin face was sombre. Then she grinned again. “Just am.”
“Oh I know Gabby. Nothing ever happens in this dump. But say … hadn’t you heard about Mira?”
“I’ve been out at the villa for the past ten days Rufy. Do tell?”
“Oh she and Herennius got into a fight about something or other … one of his little bits of fluff I imagine … and he gave her the most marvellous black eye. Black as your dress, darling. Anyway, you know that cook of hers? What’s her name?”
“Ginny I think, something like that. Been in the family a long time. Used to be her wet nurse I think …”
“Well that would explain it … you know how broody they get. Anyway, seems she’d got a bit tired of Henny knocking her little girl about, so she planned to cook up a toadstool soup for him …”
“You mean …”
“Yep, our Henny very nearly had to miss your party darling, owing to a previous engagement. Luckily one of the kitchen maids cottoned on to what she was doing, and as she didn’t really fancy getting the cross, she told the steward and he told Mira, and she told Henny – who didn’t really see the joke.”
“Oh gods,” Gabriella murmured, looking a little sick.
“No problem, Gabby. In fact it’s the first bit of excitement we’ve had for ages. The steward nabbed her before she could get some of the soup for herself and they both went up to the barrack cells this afternoon …”
“Both?”
“This Ginny and the other kitchen maid, the one who didn’t tell. I saw them taken up this afternoon, bit fat Ginny looking like the bottom had fallen out of her world, and a little scrawny scrubbing girl bawling that she didn’t know and please won’t her mistress forgive her. So it’s hammer and nails for two tomorrow.”
“They’re going to crucify them?” Gabriella’s voice was faint.
“Of course they are. Can’t have slaves messing up the soup, it spoils good food and we’d all be afraid to go to a party. Oh Gabby you will come and watch won’t you. It’s been months since I saw a crucifixion … and fatty Ginny, she’ll baste herself in her own lard on a cross ... And think of the delicious contrast of that big arsed cook hung up with a scrawny little skivvy …”
“You really enjoy crucifixions, don’t you Rufy? I’ll leave you to it.”
“You won’t be there?”
“No, these things make me sick. Oh yes I know it has to be done and I don’t blame Mira … or Henny really, come to that. I think I’ll go and get another drink.”
Rufius Cearnor shook his head sadly as he watched Gabriella sway away across the room, her rounded backside swaying delightfully. Though not that way inclined, Cearnor was a connoisseur and the girl’s slender form, long legs, long arms, beautifully shaped breasts – someone should make a statue of her. Maybe a bronze. He’d buy it like a shot.
But a strange girl. Bubbling with laughter half the time, leaping into all sorts of games, but then suddenly gloomy, like tonight. Almost afraid, at times, he imagined. And lovely as she was, she never kept a lover more than a day or two. And he couldn’t remember when last she had taken one. Maybe that was what she needed, a really good rogering. Pity though, she was a nice kid.
The stone Flavius tossed onto the legate’s table glistened as it bounced. It seemed to draw in and distil the lamplight, radiant on the dark leather of the desk.
“She was a fool to put a stone like that on the market. Even in Tyre it was remarkable, and once it was recognised, well …”
“All right Marcus Flavius, what have you got?”
“All of it, Publius Galerius. The whole story. It’s taken me three months to trace that sparkler back from Tyre to here, and another month to get the rest of the story.”
Briefly he outlined what he had learned. It had started seven years earlier with pirate raids on ships carrying shipments of jewels – raids that had gone unchecked for almost two years. For the past three years, Flavius had spent all the spare time he had to trying to trace what had happened.
“For a while I thought it was Pius Sivillius who was behind it. He had the resources, and with his contacts in the jewel trade he’d have known when the good stones were being shipped. And he was senior autarch; he could give pirates any protection they asked.”
“Yes, I remember Sivillius,” the legate murmured. “I met him when we were coming back from Egypt. We’d broken the rebellion’s back at Actium but there was chaos everywhere. We hadn’t the men or time to put everything right, and this place was running better than most. And he was running it. All through the civil wars, when people were backing the wrong side or losing their heads he’d kept his – and most of the losers’ estates as well. What in hell could we do, Flavius. Either leave the big fish in charge or chop him up and feed him to the others. Either way we had to move on fast to the real danger spots, and come back later when we could. But none of us liked it much. What made you so sure it wasn’t him?”
“He died six years ago, but the raids didn’t stop – not for months. When I learned that, I crossed Sivillius off my list. In the end, this was about five years ago, one of the local gang leaders, a man called Allius, was washed up on shore with his throat cut. He’d been in the water a long time, almost certainly thrown off a ship at sea. Then there were no more raids. And for a long time, that was all I could learn.”
“Until this turned up in Tyre, a diamond stolen in one of those raids? So you say you’ve traced it?”
“Right back to one of Sivillius’s companies. Owned by his daughter now. They’ve run the jewellery trade on all this coast, and a lot more. She’s been feeding these onto the markets little by little for years. She’s got such a huge trade nobody noticed a few extras, but once I’d realised it was easy enough to pick up others.”
“You say ‘she’? Why not someone in the companies, a crooked manager or book keeper? Can we prove it’s her.”
“There’s a strongbox in her study out at her villa. I had one of my lads sneak in and pick the lock last night. It’s got thirty packets of jewels. He brought me one. A lot of the stones are fairly ordinary, but some … well, I’ve had seven identified for certain, and they were all lost to pirates.”
The legate steepled his fingers and thought for some minutes. Then he nodded. “We’ll have to move now, before she finds the packet gone. Bring me the senior archons … Alexias and Lyssiades. They’re both in town. I warned them they might be needed.”
An hour or so before dawn Gabriella Sivilla woke gasping, her silken sheets clammy with sweat. She sat in bed shaking, then burst into silent sobs. Always that nightmare of her lover lying on the litter on the beach, water dribbling from his lank hair and his face … but he had no face because the fishes … And beside him her father standing, his face melting like wax in the sun, sliding down on the left side, dribbling …
Her beautiful Allius … her strong, loving father. The glories of her life. Her strongholds. And she had ruled the future with them. In perfect harmony of mind they had worked and planned. Father was lord of Kytherramne and all the coastal plain, strong as a king. Now he planned to bind all together, gather the wealth to gain influence in Rome and be declared not just a makeshift governor but independent king and ally of the Roman people. With Allius as his right hand, to reach out and snap up ships with the jewels he needed. Night after night they met and planned, and success came swift. Time after time Allius took out his hired crews and came back with the sun in his eyes and in the stones he brought with him.
How do you make the fates laugh? Tell them your plans. At the age of forty-eight Pius Sivillius was struck down by a massive stroke, and after two months had died. Allius had carried his schemes forward, and Gabriella had played her part. Played her part as if she were an actor on a stage reciting lines and performing actions that someone else had written for her. That her father had written for her.
But Allius went too often to the well. The crews grew shifty. With Pius Sivillius, first archon of Kytherramne dead, who would ensure the patrol boats were diverted and the beaches clear of watchers? One night he sailed, his crew well paid with gold, and the ship never returned. His body washed ashore three days later. And Gabriella Sivilla, his lover, threw open her house to the empty-headed chatterers, to the music and laughter and the barely watered wine.
At a little after dawn next morning, Gabriella Sivilla’s carriage was waiting outside the town walls to take her to her villa in the hills. It waited until noon, but she did not come. By then she was otherwise engaged.
When the watchmen stopped her at the gate and required her to go with them to the archons, she felt a dull wave of exasperation. Her mouth was sour and there was a slight throbbing in her temples. She wanted to be out of the town in the clean hill air, not have to go to those dull men to be lectured and scolded like a child. What was it this time, she wondered. Had someone smashed up a bar after the party last night? Well, why pick on her for it? She hadn’t been there. Or had Henny touched them on the raw with another of his epigrams? They couldn’t touch her for that either, and their gloomy sulks would only provoke him. That one about the chief archon’s long drooping face and short drooping other part … that had been composed after they’d all been brought up for a lecture. Why couldn’t they leave her alone?
