I ran into the estuary with a gale rising behind me. The estuary of the great river runs east to west, and we ran east for hours in the odd light, with the sky to the west growing blacker. But the water of the estuary was calm and shallow — almost too shallow.
Amphitrite had trouble tacking back and forth, and she parted company to travel long boards to the north and south.
We had to row, and my unfed rowers were increasingly unhappy. I had no more wine to give them. I walked up and down the catwalk, promising them a life of ease once we reached the town. I had only other men’s word there was a town. The estuary seemed to go on for ever, and by the end of the day, despite the rising storm behind us, we had slowed to a crawl because Amphitrite had no more room to tack and had to row. Everyone was exhausted. No one was making their best decisions.
Late in the afternoon, Gian spotted what seemed to him to be a line of masts to the north. We turned towards the north bank of the estuary and rowed slowly, and as we rowed, it became clear that the fisherman was right. The masts developed hulls — big, high, round hulls like Athenian grain merchants’. And to our delight — well, to mine — there wasn’t a single trireme among them. In the darkness of my thoughts, I’d expected to find the whole Phoenician squadron here ahead of us, trapping us against the storm at our backs.
There was a town, later we knew it was called Loluma, and the first lights were starting to twinkle on the storm-laden air as the sun set. I could see a line of three stone piers, and another pair of wooden ones built, it seemed, of enormous trees. Tied up along the piers were lines of large open boats of a type unfamiliar to me — dozens of open boats, ten yards long and only one yard wide. Closer up, each boat seemed to be carved of a single giant tree.
Beyond the piers and docks was a broad beach — more of a mud-flat, or so it appeared. The tide was high — let me just add that by now, I was beginning to learn to judge their fickle and titanic tides.
We stirred a great deal of interest. A pair of small boats launched from the piers while the light was still good. I wanted to beach all my ships; Demetrios came up under my stern to tell me the same.
‘It’s going to be bad,’ he said.
We lay on our oars, watching that pretty town — big wooden houses with thatched roofs, muddy streets, open fields, cows and the smell of woodsmoke, which to a sailor is the smell of home and hearth. I don’t know what the oarsmen thought, but I know what I thought. I thought about what the Venetiae would say. Now that I was here, I wasn’t sure that the Phoenicians hadn’t burned the other Venetiae settlements behind us. That they hadn’t decided to arrest us.
In fact, we’d gone and bought tin from their source.
The first man up the side of my warship was Detorix.
In a way, seeing Detorix was a relief. He was a known quantity. He’d done right by his own lights, and at least I wouldn’t have to explain from first principles. I saluted him gravely, and then offered him my hand.
He took it and clasped it like an old friend.
‘We thought you dead,’ he said. He smiled. ‘And some of us thought that was the better way.’
‘Still alive,’ I said. ‘How is Olario?’
He nodded. ‘Untouched. The Phoenicians were so busy trying to kill you, they passed us by. How many of their ships did you destroy?’
I shrugged. ‘One,’ I said. ‘At least, that’s all I know of. I lost the rest of them on the coast of Alba.’ I thought I might as well get that in right away.
‘I took my round ship to sea behind you and ran north to Ratis,’ he said. ‘But the Phoenicians stayed on you out to sea.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘So: you found Alba.’
‘Yes,’ I admitted. ‘No thanks to you.’
He shrugged.
‘Listen,’ I said. ‘I have a cargo of tin. I want to take it all the way south to Marsala. I’ll pay the freightage — in ships. I’ll sell you these four ships for the freight on our tin and other metals. You don’t need to worry about my coming back for your tin — I won’t have a ship on the Western Ocean.’
He smiled. ‘I do want your ship.’ He ran his hand down the steering oar. ‘A warship.’ His lust was evident.
Who was I to stand in his way? And I’d thought it through. This way seemed to me to cause the least chance of resentment. The last thing I needed was for the Venetiae to have me killed to protect their tin monopoly. I wasn’t ever coming back. I was prepared to swear oaths on any god they named.
‘Well?’ I asked.
He shrugged. ‘I can’t say,’ he prevaricated. ‘But I imagine something can be arranged along those lines. I don’t have the prestige to negotiate such a big trade in one go. I’ll need partners. No one will want these smaller boats-’ He pointed to the triakonters. ‘It’s a miracle they’ve survived as long on our coast as they have. And I imagine you want to land tonight, and not fight that storm.’
This was the part I had been dreading.
‘Yes,’ I admitted.
He nodded.
Leukas translated what we were saying for the other man — another aristocrat, taller, older and wearing a torq of solid gold. I bowed to him. He was introduced as Tellonix. He had the only cloak I had seen among the Keltoi that was dyed with Tyrian dye, bright purple — like a tyrant or a king or an Aegyptian priest.
He looked at my ship. ‘How many ingots of tin do you have?’ he asked in Greek.
In the Inner Sea, we like to chat a little before we do business — but there, with the lights of the town behind us and the gale beginning to blow down the estuary, I was happy to negotiate in a hurry.
‘Seventy,’ I said.
He twirled his moustaches, which were heavy.
‘Land your ships as our guests,’ he said. ‘You have my word you will not be seized here.’ He gave Detorix a significant look.
The younger man was unabashed. ‘What was I to do?’ he asked. ‘He had three hundred fighting men.’
‘And he still does. And yet he has come back to us in peace,’ Tellonix said in Keltoi, which Leukas translated.
Well, I knew I had nowhere else to go, but there was no reason I had to say so aloud.
We got our keels up the beach — as I say, it was more mud than sand. Men’s feet stank when they got ashore, and we were so far up the estuary that the water was scarcely salt. We pulled the ships even higher up the beach — at high tide, my trireme was ten horse-lengths onto the grass. We had help from a hundred willing Keltoi — men and women.
We got the ships ashore, and we got our cargoes off and under our tarpaulins, and then the rain started and we ran for shelter. I think that in all Gaul, only the Venetiae had the facilities to sleep three hundred sailors, and even so, we had to raise our tents — in a blustering, squall-laden wind. It was hard work, but our feet were on dry land and we were filled with spirit, like Heracles.
In the morning, the weather was, if anything, worse, but I woke in a fine wooden house — a little smoky, I confess, and cold, but outside a gale blew over the town, and even the water of the estuary looked deadly.
Breakfast was an oddly shaped squash full of good butter and honey, and we ate with gusto and drank the thin local beer. Demetrios raised his small beer and said, ‘May the gods protect all sailors on a day like this. Even the poor Phoenicians.’
I don’t think Neoptolymos would have drunk to that, but he was away south.
We slept and ate for three days while the storm blew itself out, and then the serious trading began.
We had been unlucky in some things, and lucky in others. In our favour, the winds that had seemed adverse to us had allowed us to bring a cargo of tin before the last convoy left the mouth of the Sequana for the interior. Winter closed down the tin trade, as it closed everything else, and we had arrived in good time to make the trip.
Our ships were not as valuable as I had hoped. Freighting three hundred men and seventy mule-loads of tin overland to Marsala cost me all four ships and all my silver. ‘My’ silver. That’s a laugh.