Two for Lions

The rest of us reboarded. We cast off. Justinus called out that they would try to catch us up before we left Lepcis.

I still thought they were doomed. But people had said that about Helena and me. It had given us a good reason to stick it out. Good omens let you down. Bad ones give you something to fight against.

"Sabratha seems a very attractive city," Helena tried to mollify me as I absorbed the mistake Famia had then landed on us. That was before she found out there was a Sanctuary of Tanit, causing her to take a tighter grip on both the baby and my nephew Gaius.

"I'm sure the rumors of child sacrifice are simply designed to give Tanit a notorious aura and increase her authority."

"Oh yes," scoffed Helena. Rumors of revolting religious rites can appall the most sensible girls.

"No doubt the reason for all those tiny sarcophagi is that those who revere the Punic gods also love little children dearly."

"And have the bad luck to lose a lot of them at a very similar age… What are we going to do, Marcus?"

Helena was losing her courage. Travelers always hit low moments. Enduring a long journey, only to find at the very moment you expect to arrive that you are actually two hundred miles away from your destination (and have to go backwards) can reduce the bravest soul to despair.

"Let's hope Scilla won't mind me turning up a week late." Scilla had insisted on making her own way to Lepcis Magna-an example of the wayward attitude that made me suspicious of her as a client. "We can either try to persuade Famia to sail back again-or leave him looking at horses' teeth, hope one of them bites him, and book another ship ourselves. While we're here let's look around like tourists," I offered. It was my responsibility to make available to my family the Empire's rich variety of cultural experience.

"Oh not another lousy foreign forum!" muttered Gaius. "And I can do without any more fu

Like a decent paterfamilias I ignored the boy. His parents dealt with arguments by swiping him: I wished to set him an example of benign tolerance. Gaius had yet to be impressed by that, but I was a patient man.

Like most cities in the narrow hinterland of North Africa, Sabratha had a superb setting right on the waterfront, where there was a strong smell of fish. Houses, shops, and baths almost merged with the deep, deep blue ocean. The cheapest of them were built of unclad local stone, which was a reddish limestone of the most porous kind, readily pocketed with holes. The civic center also played to the sea views. The spacious, airy forum was not only foreign in tinge as Gaius feared, but its main temple-to Liber Pater, a Punic deity he definitely viewed askance-had partly tumbled down in a recent earthquake and was not yet rebuilt. We tried not to think about earthquakes. We had enough problems.

We prowled about like lost souls. At one end of the forum were the Curia, Capitolium, and a Temple of Serapis.

"Ooh look, Gaius-another fu

Gaius amused himself making a rude noise. "Uncle Marcus, you're not going to be thwarted by that fat bastard Famia?"

"Of course not," I lied, wondering where I could buy a spicy meat rissole and whether in this new town it would give me any new kinds of bellyache. I spotted a stall, and fetched fishcakes for all of us. We ate them like disreputable tourists, an experience which left me covered with oil.

"When you eat you get more food on you than Nux," Helena commented. I wiped my mouth very carefully before I kissed her-a politeness which always reduced her to giggles. She leaned against me wearily. "I suppose you are just sitting here waiting for a scantily dressed female acrobat to come along."

"If it's one of my old Tripolitanian girlfriends she'll be a hundred and on crutches by now."

"That sounds like a good old Tripolitanian lie… There is one thing that you could do," Helena suggested.

"What-gaze around at this splendid, salt-tanged city with its jostling merchants and shippers and landowners, all totally disinterested in me or my problems, then cut my throat?"

Helena patted my knee. "Ha

"Ha

So we all jumped up and made enquiries straightaway.

Fifty-one

UNLIKE THE GREEK stiffs of Cyrene, the easygoing millionaires of Sabratha looked to the western end of the I

For the present, however, those who could afford the best lived east of the forum. In Sabratha the best was palatial. Ha

He was not reporting to Ha

Ha

More practical and accommodating than Ha

Refreshments were produced. My companions tucked in; I apologized, especially for young Gaius. Ha

I alluded to business in Lepcis and Oea, making a joke of my enforced visit here. We all laughed. The slave passed on my glowing compliments about Ha