We had a satirical discussion about whether he had become so intellectual that he meant the secrets of the universe, but-not knowing that I had already arrived in the province-he had also instructed Claudia, "Send for Falco urgently!" Since everyone else agreed my presence was hardly necessary at a philosophical symposium, they reckoned I was needed to formally identify a sprig of silphium.
Forty-two
MEETING CAMILLUS JUSTINUS came as a huge relief. He at least looked the same as always: a tall, spare figure with neat, short hair, dark eyes, and a striking grin. He managed to combine an apparently unassuming air with a hint of inner strength. I knew he was confident, a linguist, a man-manager, courageous and inventive in crises. At twenty-two he should have been setting out on adult responsibilities in Rome: marriage, children, consolidating the patrician career that had once looked so promising. Instead, here he was at the back of beyond on a mad mission, his hopes dashed by snaring his brother's wench, offending his family, her family, and the Emperor-and all, we were beginning to suspect, for nothing.
The depth of Claudia's unhappiness became most fully apparent once we saw them together. Helena and I had taken a small house at Apollonia down on the coast. When the fabled Justinus eventually joined us, his greeting for his sister and me was far more joyous than the restrained smile with which he favored Claudia.
Before we arrived they had been alone together for four months; inevitably they shared a visible domestic routine, enough to have fooled some people. She knew his favorite foods; he teased her; they often muttered together in a private undertone. There was no resistance when Helena put them sharing a bedroom-yet when she poked her head around the door nosily she came back to whisper that they had made up two different beds. They seemed just about friends-but by no means in love.
Claudia remained expressionless. She ate with us, went to the baths, came to the theater, played with the baby, all as if she lived in a world of her own. She made no complaint, but she was holding her tongue in a way that condemned all of us.
I took Justinus aside. "Do I gather you have made a terrible blunder? If so, we can face it, and deal with it, Quintus. In fact, we must do so-"
He looked at me as if what I said was hard to understand. Then he said curtly that he would prefer other people not to interfere in his life. Helena had been receiving much the same reaction when she tried to probe Claudia.
We cracked it almost by accident. Famia, who was still loosely attached to us, had gone into the interior hunting for horses as he was supposed to, so that had relieved us of one strain. He could drink as he pleased so long as there was no direct pressure on me to keep him sober for the sake of my sister and her young family.
I was starting to understand what life back at home must be like for Maia: Famia preferring to be almost always absent, and tiresome when he did appear; Famia constantly raiding the household budget for wine money; Famia proclaiming loud social jollity at unsuitable moments; Famia forcing other people either to share in his relentless habit, or else making them seem tight-arsed if they tried to save him from himself. Maia would be much better off without him- but he was the father of her children, and really too far gone to abandon.
My nephew Gaius had disappeared for a walk on his own. He had always been a free spirit, and although being part of a group like this generally did him good, he scowled with hostility if he was too closely supervised. Helena thought he needed mothering; Gaius was a tyke who had decided otherwise. I preferred not to tether him too tightly. We were settled in Apollonia; he knew his way around and he would come home when he was ready. He had left Julia with us. The baby was happily playing with a stool she had learned to push around the floor, crashing it into the other furniture.
At last, in private, it seemed an occasion to talk about silphium. The prospects of a fortune were vast if Justinus really had rediscovered the plant, and we brought the subject up indirectly, a delicate acknowledgment of the enormous dreams that might be about to be realized for all of us. As usual in families, being indirect only led to a row about something quite different.
Helena and I, Claudia and Justinus, had been partaking of a fairly basic lunch. Somehow the conversation touched on our first landing at Berenice, and although Helena and I carefully avoided any mention of Claudia's thwarted yearning to visit the Gardens of the Hesperides, in discussing our own sea trip a question was asked about how the other pair had endured their sailing from Oea. That was when Justinus came out with his astonishing remark: "Oh we didn't sail; we came by land."
It took a moment to sink in. His sister must have been harboring suspicions already; while I wiped chickpeas off my chin with a napkin, Helena addressed the issue rather tersely: "You don't mean all the way?"
"Oh yes." He pretended to be surprised that she had asked.
I glanced at his fellow traveler. Claudia Rufina was pulling grapes individually from a bunch; she ate each one very carefully, then removed the pips from between her front teeth with exquisite good manners, laying them around the rim of a plate in a neat order, equally spaced. She might have been fortune-telling lovers-only her lover was supposed to be the young man sitting here.
"Tell us about it," I suggested.
Justinus had the grace to grin. "We had run out of money, for one thing, Marcus Didius." I shrugged, accepting his slight rebuke that I could have been more generous with financial help. Like a true patrician, he had no real idea how tight my budget was. "It was my idea-I wanted to emulate Cato."
"Cato?" enquired Helena, in a frosty tone. I wondered if this was the Cato who always came home from the Senate in time to see his baby bathed. Or perhaps it was the baby, when grown up. At any rate, my darling had stopped approving of him as a model.
"You know-in the wars between Caesar and Pompey he brought his army all around the Bay of Sirtes and surprised the enemy." Justinus was showing off his education; I refused to be impressed. Education is not as good as common sense.
"Amazing," I said. "They must have been flabbergasted when he first appeared. It's desert all the way, I believe-and am I right, there is no proper road along most of the coast?"
"Afraid not!" conceded Justinus, impossibly cheerful. "It took Cato thirty days on foot-we had a couple of donkeys, but we needed longer. It was quite a trip."
"I should think so."
"Obviously there is a coastal track that the locals use-and we knew it must go all the way, because Cato had marched through successfully. I thought it would be a grand adventure for us to do the same. Well, in the opposite direction of course."
"Of course."
"It must have been hard?" suggested Helena, dangerously quietly.
"Not easy," her younger brother confessed. "It took absolute dedication and army-style methods." Well, he had those. Claudia was a delicately reared young lady from a pampered home. Basic training for an heiress consists only of assaults on Greek novels and a grueling small-talk course. Still fired with enthusiasm, Justinus carried on, "It was five hundred miles of utterly tedious, seemingly endless desert-all dead flat, for week after week."
"Places to stay?" I asked neutrally.