by David Capel
It was too much, too soon. He looked at me with narrowed eyes.
“You know, Lascaris, you speak too much. And you are clearly fitter than the others. This suggests to me that you are not carrying your fair share of the burden.”
And with that he barked out some sharp orders to those of his men who rode nearby, and one of them went to the wagon while another drew his whip and lashed me to the back of the column. There I was given a heavy sack of meal, and made to carry it on a yoke like an ox, with my hands tied to it on either side of my face.
It was nightmare to walk thus laden in the heat, and now I suffered with the worst of my fellow slaves. Before long the muscles in my arms and neck ached like fire. As the day wore on they became numbed with pain, until at last they were released, which was a new agony, and I could not pick up the spoon to eat my gruel for a half hour at least, by which time it was like a solid lump of dough.
So we sweated and burnt by day, and shivered without covering by night. Two of our number caught dysentery, which meant that they were carried in the wagon and the load they displaced shared among the other captives.
We travelled south by east, our captives hounding us on, with me at the rear bearing the brunt of the lash. I tolerated this, for though after a while I felt strong enough to move up the column, I feared that Erkan would use the opportunity to increase my load further.
In all we must have walked for four or five weeks at the least, first through mountainous plateaus, and then arid desert. From time to time we stopped near towns or villages, and Erkan sent men to replenish our supplies. As we descended to the flat plain of the Syrian desert we crossed several wide rivers. One of them must have been the upper reaches of the Euphrates, but we had no cause to discuss their names, for always our tormentor kept us away from settled population or travelling caravans.
Yet bit by bit I pieced together what had happened at the great battle, and where Erkan stood among the great events of our time. For after a while, I think, he tired of the long journey and the tedious company of his boorish companions, and so he took to taunting us Romans, as much as a means of diversion as from his evil nature.
At one point, south west of Lake Van (which we never saw), we descended to a plain that was littered with the dead, Romans mostly, though you could only tell that from their gear. For the crows and the wolves had had their way with them, and the remnants of their flesh rotted in the heat. For a moment I felt we had come full circle, but then I heard a horse trot up beside me, and Erkan laughed and said,
“See here, Lascaris, another of your Roman armies! Scattered and destroyed like the one at Manzikert. I’m afraid the Turks are everywhere victorious.”
“Tarchaneiotes! It is the southern force!” gasped the Roman just in front of me, and I remembered the name from the two officers who had met my column at the start of the battle a few days before.
“That is right,” sneered Erkan, “this is all that is left of the force sent to capture the stronghold of Khliat a few miles yonder,” and he pointed to the East.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“One of my compatriots told me, whom we met on the road yesterday. He was on the Roman side, under this Tarchaneiotes, at least until the Seljuk came into view. Then all the army just ran in panic! My friend had to change sides quickly, or he would have been hunted down like these poor fellows at our feet.”
“So he was a traitor, like you,” I said, risking the lash, but Erkan just laughed.
“I’ll give it to you, Lascaris, you have spirit still. But you are also hopelessly naïve. I am, or was, but a mercenary. I was paid by the Emperor, and no longer am, so I am free to fight for whom I please. Last week it was the Sultan, now it is no-one.”
“So even your own folk must pay for your services.”
He shook his head. “But they are not my own. The Seljuks are not my people. I am an Oguz, which is different altogether. So of course I insist on payment. In this case in the form of captives. More profitable in the long run that taking gold at the standard rate, I can assure you!”
“And the Sultan is happy for you to make off with such payment?”
I had guessed right, for Erkan narrowed his eyes. “No, probably not. It might have upset his delicate discussion with the Emperor. The Sultan Alp Arslan is overly impressed by your Emperor, I can assure you. Did you know that after the battle, they sipped sherbet in the Sultan’s tent, and that now Diogenes has been released?”
And seeing the amazement on my face he said again, “Released! I would have cut off his head and sent it to your City in a box.” He spat into the dust at my feet, but I felt encouraged at his words, and spoke again, this time almost to myself.
“So all is not lost. The Emperor is released, and maybe peace is at hand.”
But Erkan laughed again. “Peace!” he snorted. “You are even more foolish that I thought, Lascaris. Earlier you called me a traitor (and I should cut out your tongue for that, even though it lower the price on your head). But even if I were, treachery from the likes of me is the least of your Empire’s problems. Your whole state is riven with it. At Manzikert half of your army ran away because of treachery. Ducas, who commanded the rearguard, simply vanished from the field. Even I, who have made it my business to understand the corrupt dealings of your people, get confused by who is stabbing whom in the back.”
There was no answer to this, for of course his words rang true. I even wondered if he had had knowledge, or even involvement in the plot.
“How did you know about Ducas?” I asked. “Did you know him?”
“Never met him, thankfully,” was the cheerful reply. “All I know about him and his family is by repute – that they are as treacherous and cowardly as the rest of you Romans.”
I had to take his word for it, though it provided me with little comfort. Still, it seemed to me that if Diogenes could make peace with the Sultan, then, civil war or no, the degradations of the Turks might at least be brought to an end. I suggested as much, but Erkan smiled and shook his head.
“You do not listen, Lascaris. And worse, you do not heed the evidence of your eyes. Have you not travelled across Anatolia as I have done? A new settlement is coming. The Turks are carving themselves a new homeland in Asia. Seljuk, Oguz and all of the tribes. It does not matter what the Emperor or the Sultan say in their tents!
Soon all of the land between Persia and the Greek Sea will be filled with my people. For they are as numerous as the grains of sand in the desert, and as hungry as the goats that go with them. Your people must flee, or be killed, or be taken as wives, or as slaves. So you see, in your misfortune you are not alone, and indeed not so unlucky. There are worse fates than yours, I can assure you!” He smiled again, as far as his cruel face would allow, sitting upright, almost jaunty on his horse against the hot blue sky.
“Yes,” he said, after a moment’s musing to himself. “Yes, a great cleansing is taking place across the lands of Asia. There is a Greek word for it, is there not? Catharsis! How I like these Greek words. The days of the Romans are numbered, and a new chosen people has arrived.”
He smirked and said it again.
“Catharsis!”
π
We walked all the way to Damascus, and by the time we reached the city we were burnt as brown as the desert nomads, and were forged as tough and wiry as them too. The journey that had started out as a taste of Hell had become easier to endure the longer it went on. For Erkan had no interest in destroying our bodies completely. We were financial assets to him, and so had to be kept in good health. Once he was confident that we had no realistic prospect of escape (and on foot we stood no chance against his horsemen) we walked unbound. Even my yoke was removed as the meal supplies ran down and the two dysentery victims recovered.
When at last we reached Damascus, set amidst its orange groves in the lee of Lebanon, we were corralled in a wooden barracks about half a mile from the gate, and there chained once more overnight, until the slave sale the fo
llowing morning.
At dawn the Turks made us wash in a tub of filthy water. Our rags and boots were removed and we were dressed in plain tunics of undyed cloth. We were then bound together with rope and marched barefoot through the northern gate and into the city.
The sale was a demoralising confusion of discomfort and confusion, with very little clear indication as to what our fates would be until the end. Partly it was because I knew no Arabic, and the proceedings merged into a cacophony of sights and sounds. It all took place in a small square near the main bazaar – that much I do know, because I went there often afterwards. The sale lasted all morning, and Erkan became frustrated at the delay.
At first we entered a large pen where many other slaves were gathered – male and female, of all ages, and seemingly from every nation under heaven. There were many Romans there, captives like us from the wars to the North, but also tall black slaves from the heats of Africa, both men and women. There were a few fair-skinned men that looked as if they came from lands to the North and West of the Empire, traded perhaps down the great rivers of Rus or by corsair ships from North Africa.
There were dark skinned people with sharp features, and one or two strange looking yellow men with scrawny bodies and hooded eyes. Scattered here and there were a few children and young girls, and these were prodded and pinched as they were herded into the crowd.
As we entered the pen an Arab slaver daubed a symbol on each of our hands that I guessed signified we were Erkan’s merchandise, and indeed he kept a close eye on us, following us as best as he could from his side of the fence.
The slave pen took up a good quarter of the square, and was divided from the town by nothing more than a flimsy wicket fence. We could have broken it down in seconds and fled into the narrow streets beyond, for there were few guards there to restrain us. But like sheep we were herded, and as sheep we behaved as the story of our lives turned on an instant for better or for worse.
When all who were to be sold were gathered there a group of traders entered the pen and started to go amongst the slaves barking orders in Arabic and prodding at them with sticks. I could not at first understand their purpose until one came near us, a villainous looking, crow-faced man with one eye closed, wrapped from head to toe in an evil smelling olive-coloured robe. He tapped me roughly on the shoulder with his stick and gabbled at me, pointing to one corner of the pen. There were slowly gathering an assembly of male slaves, including most of the blacks and a large proportion of us soldiers.
I noticed then that we were being divided roughly by category. Young women with female children in one corner. Male children (not many of these) in another. Then there were two groups of young men, my own and another.
Wails and shouts sprang up. I looked over and there was a pale-skinned man, shouting and reaching out for a woman and two children. He lashed out at one of the slavers, and then two guards leapt over the fence and rushed towards him. They beat him mercilessly with the butts of their spears, again and again until he was subdued, curled into a shivering ball on the ground. Then they dragged him over to my group.
His wife and daughter were pulled to the far corner, and then the boy came, trembling with fear, and squatted with the small group of his fellows not far from where we stood. From there he stared at his half conscious father, bleeding on the ground next to me with a broken nose and cuts around his face and breast. The boy said nothing, and nor did he weep, but stood there with his eyes wide open and his hand in his mouth. He must have been six years of age. Lucky to survive the journey form his northern home perhaps, but gazing for the last time on the ruin of his family.
For the rest of us slaves it was a long and wearisome wait in the growing heat and smell, being occasionally jostled and poked like cattle. In fact the experience was very like visiting a normal livestock market, except of course that we were the beasts on display. I think that we captives were rather thankful not to be marching for once, and after a while we squatted on the floor and chatted rather gaily, before we were prodded to our feet by an Arab guard with a spear.
One particular sensation affected me. Changing into the short tunics exposed our skin where until now it had been covered against the stinging sand and sun of the Syrian desert. So whereas my face and hands were burnt a deep wooden brown, the skin of my limbs was as pale as a maiden’s. As a result I was uncomfortably affected by the sunshine. For some reason this made the scar of my slave branding itch abominably.
First to be sold were the women and girls. They were made to stand in a row and buyers moved among them, poking and prodding, and a lengthy process of auction began, none of which I understood, until the last of them had been led away, a scribe keeping careful record as they left the square with their new masters.
Then, closer at hand, it was the turn of the second group of males, from which at the start I had been separated. By chance one of the overseers came close to me, herding this group from the rear towards a low podium from which they could be displayed. As he stooped to rap one of the slaves on the backside with his stick, something fluttered from his garments next to me, and out of instinct I stooped to pick it up.
It was a paper, some sort of sale list perhaps, and I held it up to read it but could make nothing of it for it was written in that curious flowing Arabic script which looks nothing like the Greek letters whatsoever.
The overseer snapped at me to hand it over, which I did, but then he looked at me more closely. I felt my flesh creep as his eyes swept up and down my body, and I was conscious of my white skin and my status as a chattel. Then he asked me something and I answered in both Greek and Latin, “I don’t understand.”
He turned to the crowd of onlookers at the fence and rapped out a question, and Erkan stood forward and answered him. They conversed to and fro for a few moments, Erkan answering his questions, but then arguing back about something. Then he shrugged his shoulders and turned away again. The overseer prodded me with his baton, indicating that I should join the group now up for sale.
Most of my fellow captives from Erkan’s haul of prisoners were there, along with some of the fair-skinned northerners and a handful of darker men who could have been Arabs themselves. One of them muttered to me in accented Greek as I approached: “you had a lucky escape there.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“He saw that you could read, and that’s what he asked your owner about. That’s why you’re with us. We have a chance of being sold as household slaves. We’ll fetch more money that way. The other lot are for the fields, or worse.”
I looked back at the group I had left in horror. Yes, now I could see what he meant. All the black slaves were there, tall and strong, with the fair-haired giant and any others who looked big and fit. My new group, by contrast, were by and large slenderer, or older, or much younger looking.
“Don’t count yourself saved yet, though,” said the man. If we don’t sell here, we’re back with the other lot.”
There was a burst of guttural Arabic beside us, and we were led onto the low podium at the edge of the market. There Erkan and the other owners argued with a toothless overseer who then shouted instructions at the crowd by the fence. A handful of men yelled back in response. They looked like merchants, mostly. I remember one of them was enormously fat, with evil looking eyes half folded into the skin of his face. He bid heavily and early for the youngest of my fellow captives and won him against some stiff competition.
But thereafter the sale was slow, and as one by one my fellow prisoners were reluctantly bought, it became clear that just as I had been last to join the group, so I would be last to be sold. And judging by the slow pace of the sale, there was every chance that I would be forced to rejoin the brutes being lined up for forced labour and a short life. I looked over at them – dumb, witless-looking Africans, and some of the tougher Roman soldiers, all as yet unwitting of their fate. Already some buyers had gathered near them, assessing their strength and durability for the ordeal ahead.
; I looked around in desperation as the afternoon sun started to wester, and the first shadows crept across the dusty square. Erkan was grimy and grumpy, and my group was down to the last half dozen. He had chosen a slow day and it did not improve his temper.
The toothless overseer was chatting to sellers, shrugging his shoulders and nodding, and I felt destiny tighten around me. Just then there was a movement in the thinning crowd beyond and someone pushed through to the front. He was a sober looking man in a brown tunic with a short beard and iron grey hair. He chatted briefly to the auctioneer who waved him in our direction. He came up to us and spoke haltingly, so that for a moment I did not understand him:
“Can anyone here speak both Latin and Greek?”
Before I could speak an older officer, a Roman slave who I had not seen before, stood and answered him.
“I can!” he said, “take me!”
I knew in an instant this was my only chance, that I had somehow to see off this rival. But already the newcomer was turning back to the overseer.
Then Erkan intervened. He grabbed the man and spoke to him in Greek, then quickly changed to Arabic. He pointed at me, no doubt describing my best features, until they were interrupted by another man, an Arab who apparently was the owner of my officer rival. In a moment the auction was turned on its head, with both sellers trying to offload their goods to a single buyer in the hope of attracting a price somewhat higher than the human oxen would command later.
And in the end Erkan saved me. His own selfish greed was my salvation. For of course he knew the Empire well himself, and could speak good Greek. So he devised a test that he hoped would divide me from my rival. The three negotiators jabbered to each other in Arabic until all turned to us and Erkan said:
“Both of you. You will recite a passage in Latin. You first, Lascaris.”
Of course, put on the spot I could not remember a thing. I had read Virgil, but my mind was free of his hexameters. For the life of me I could not recall any Livy or Seneca, let alone the oratory of Cicero. So I recited the simplest thing that sprang to mind, in a voice as clear as I could manage, something that must have been muttered a thousand times in a hundred different tongues in that little square of misery: