The Eagle and the Dragon, a Novel of Rome and China

by Lewis F. McIntyre

  He was so lost in reverie that when Marcia came up beside him to say hello, he was almost startled. “Goodness, Antonius, I didn’t mean to make you jump. What, have those dolphins followed us all this way?”

  “Just lost in thought, Marcia,” he said, turning to smile at her. “I don’t think those are the same fish, or they must really like us. Where’s your brother?”

  The wind rippled her white ankle-length stola and she hugged a light wrap tightly about her bare shoulders. “He’s not feeling well today. He gets a bit queasy the first day at sea, and he thought he would just stay in our quarters and nap for a while.” She shook her long black hair, flowing free in the breeze. “I love wearing my hair loose, Roman-style, instead of done up in an Hanaean bun.

  They watched the dolphins for a while, then Marcia cleared her throat a bit. “That was a terrible fight the other night. Quite a show! What are those things you were shooting?”

  “Ballistae. The crews did very well, considering it was their first time in a real fight. We’re sorry, Gaius and I, for not keeping you and your brother informed about what was going on. I hope that didn’t catch you two by surprise.”

  “Captain Demetrios has been keeping us informed. He has been very good, and we usually take dinner with him.”

  “Good, we have been stuck with Ibrahim, out of necessity. But he can be quite a charming individual, surprisingly.”

  “Have you had any word on the other ships?”

  “No, and not likely to. We are, as you know, going on to your home by ourselves.”

  “Thank you.” She stopped to look over the rail. The dolphins seemed to have tired of their big toy, and were moving off in search of something edible. “My life is very confused right now. Wang Ming is not in my life, and may never be again. I feel free for the first time since I was twelve. But if he is lost, so are those two ships and their people. I can’t be happy for that.”

  “Mmmh… twelve, you say. That is … very young.”

  “I thought so, too. We were taken from our homes, when they needed translators and found that we could do nicely. We needed to learn proper court Hanaean, which is different from what we spoke. Like your soldier Latin, and what they speak in Emperor Trajan’s court. They wanted people under thirty, because it would be a hard trip. But Latin is dying out in my home town after more than a century, there were only ten of us young enough, and I was the youngest. Ming just… took me, because he wanted me.”

  “You deserved better.”

  “Thank you, Antonius. Thank you for listening, and please understand, I can’t talk any more about this right now. I am going back to my quarters, but please, you didn’t offend me.”

  She touched his shoulder gently in farewell, but to Antonius, it almost felt like a hot coal. “Glad to help. Listen, yer need ter talk, or anythin’, we’re in the officer’s staterooms. Or here.”

  “Thank you!” She turned and left.

  I think she was about to cry. Mmmh. Don’t even be thinkin’ those kinder thoughts, soldier, she ain’t yer type. Way above yer station.

  Ibrahim invited the two Romans to his cabin, for what was becoming a traditional dinner together. Gaius could not help but like the wily old pirate, who despite his background, had an excellent grasp of philosophy. The dinners included some of the best conversations that he had ever had the pleasure of sharing. Even Antonius, though still wary of the man, was warming to his charm and wit, and all three of them now had shared the experience of combat, having fought together to save the ship.

  An hour after sunset, they arrived at the cabin. Ibrahim had already lit the oil lamps about the cabin. He had prepared a roast lamb for the night. The dinners were rather predictable: either goat or lamb. The Romans longed for some pork, but had long ago learned that Ibrahim, like most Semitic people, had a strong aversion to that animal, and would starve before eating something he considered unclean.

  They seated themselves on the floor, Arab-style, around a blanket with the food in bowls.

  “So, Ibrahim,” said Gaius, slicing off a piece of mutton, “that was a most generous thing you did, rescuing the wounded and collecting the dead. How does a pirate come to be so scrupulous?”

  “Well, for me, death is part of my business, as it is of yours,” said Ibrahim, sipping some wine. “You kill for Rome, I kill for myself. But none of us, I think, enjoy it. I have nothing to gain by killing one more person than I must to survive. Do you remember the first man you killed?”

  Antonius watched Gaius intently, for Antonius certainly remembered that day.

  Gaius’ eyes faded as his memory took him back to the event decades past, recounting a story he had never before shared with anyone. The armorer had reported three swords missing, and the legatus was convinced that they lay somewhere in the village around the legion’s winter quarters near Vindebona. He had ordered a house-to-house search of all the residences, and I, new to the legion, led a centurion and an eight-man squad, including Antonius, on a search of the village. I knocked at each hut, politely inquired in halting German if we could search their house for contraband military supplies. I phrased the inquiry as a question, though it was not.

  The search had turned up nothing. The last hut was like all the rest, a rude structure of timber. As we approached it, a German emerged from the blanket covering the door. He was big, verging on fat, with dirty, reddish-blond shoulder length hair hanging in tangled strings. His beard and huge mustache were bushy and unkempt with greasy food stains. He crossed his hairy bear-like arms across his chest and stood defiantly in the doorway, icy blue eyes flashing fire. A long German sword hung at his side, stuck scabbardless through a twisted rag that served as a belt.

  I began to speak, but the German interrupted. “Aus! Macht dich fort” he ordered, “Get out! Go away!” I took another step toward him, and the man dropped back and drew his sword.

  Another subaltern might have dropped back and given the order to the centurion to take the man. But I was young and brash, and full of self-confidence. I drew my own sword and waved the centurion and the milites back. The two of us circled, both smiling wickedly at each other, sizing each other up: me and the overweight but fierce-looking German.

  I had not intended to harm the man, who probably had just one too many tankards of that foul barley beer. We lunged and parried several times, then I thrust forward with a maneuver called “tickling the ribs,” a quick thrust to the side, close to, but not quite touching the ribs. This usually caused the victim to step backwards, off balance and wide open for a stunning blow to the side of the face with the flat of the sword.

  But the German didn’t feint backwards. Perhaps he lost his balance, or had in mind a countermove. He fell forward across my outstretched sword. Surprised, I immediately drew the sword back, and as I did, I heard a sound like ripping cloth. The German looked up from his hunched-over position in surprise, straightened up and looked stupidly at his stomach. A line of red ran from rib to navel, and as he stared, a green knot of intestines erupted with a wet sloppy sound. The man dropped his sword and put his hands over his guts, trying to stuff them back inside, making mewing noises like a kitten.

  “Take him, lordship. Put him down. It’s the most merciful thing yer can do fer him now,” Antonius hissed. A wound to the stomach was almost invariably fatal, but might take a week to kill, as the victim grew more and more feverish. It was an awful way to die.

  A woman peered from the door, watching in horror, while around her ragged skirts clung dirty little children. Damn, did they have to come to the door now to watch this? I swallowed hard and did what I had to do: I buried my sword to the hilt in the man’s chest, then wrenched it free. I felt the ribs splinter against the blade.

  I will remember the look in the woman’s eyes for the rest of my life, as she watched the man sink to his knees, a rivulet of blood staining his beard. The German gasped wetly, pitched over and died at her feet.

  They found the missing swords the following day, in the armory, wh
ere they had been all along. An accounting error, said the armorer. Just an accounting error. “Yes,” said Gaius. “I remember him very well.”

  They ate in silence, until Ibrahim broke the chill that had settled on the meal. “I fear I touched a nerve, my good Gaius. Please forgive me.”

  “It’s all right. It’s not one of my favorite memories,” replied Gaius.

  Antonius shifted his weight to relieve the pressure on his knees, still eyeing Gaius intently. “If it’s the one I’m thinking of, Ibrahim, I was there, too. Gaius took it hard,” he said hoarsely. “It should not have turned out that way, but it did.”

  “It is good to know that even the much-feared Roman soldier does not enjoy killing, either,” said Ibrahim, smiling, as he poured them both more wine.

  “Like you said, it’s part of the job. You do what you have to do, and get it over with. And like you, I don’t want to kill one person more than I have to. I don’t enjoy it, and I’ve never met anyone who did,” said Gaius.

  “I have met a few what did enjoy it, an’ they was as big a danger to their messmates as they was to their enemies,” added Antonius bitterly, in Latin.

  “That first one was a mistake,” said Gaius, soberly. “One I wish that I could erase.”

  “I met a man once he told me he believed that past mistakes could be wiped out,” said Ibrahim, sipping his wine.

  “Nice trick! How did he propose to do that?” asked Gaius.

  Ibrahim related the story. “I told you of the Astarte, the ship on which I began my career as a pirate. Just before that event, we were sailing from Caesarea, and a Jew was brought aboard, under Roman military escort. For some reason, he came up to talk to me while I was watching the sea go by, off-duty for an hour. Deckhands were not supposed to mingle with passengers, and he seemed to be well-educated, maybe even upper class. The Roman centurion seemed to give him very respectful treatment.”

  “So what did yer two talk about?” asked Antonius.

  “Many things I didn’t understand at the time. I was illiterate then, and also had no Greek, not enough to carry on a conversation. He switched to Aramaic for my benefit.”

  “Nice of him,” agreed Antonius. “What did he want from yer?”

  “Nothing, and that was odd. Just… to talk about the meaning of life, and life after death, mistakes, and setting straight the score. Something he called The Way. Of course, at twenty, I didn’t think I had done anything wrong yet! My, how that has changed!” Ibrahim laughed. “The foolishness of youth!”

  “Anyway, he sought me out every day for a week, until he got off in Myra to take another ship going to Rome. He was, he said, going to see Nero himself, as a citizen, to bring him to his Way – did I mention that he was a citizen?”

  The two shook their heads negatively.

  “He invited me to come with him to Rome, to help spread something I didn’t even understand. I turned him down, but he said, ‘May God grant you your greatest wish, young Ibrahim.’” Ibrahim paused to take a sip of wine.

  “The next week there was that terrible storm, the one I told you about, when I came to command the Astarte as my first ship. He had booked passage out of Myra on a big Alexandrian grain freighter, the Castor and Pollux, which was lost in that same storm, foundered a thousand miles off course in Malta. A ship that size foundering feeds the dockyard gossip mill for months. I always wondered if he survived, what he had been trying to tell me, or if his god had in fact granted me my greatest wish. Bear in mind, I don’t believe in gods. I lean toward the Epicurean philosophy that we are all just random atoms, dust in the wind, and gone when we are gone. But I never forgot him.”

  Ibrahim rose to light an oil lamp against the gathering gloom.

  “Sounds like one of the stories that we Romans would attribute to Fortuna, the goddess of fate. What was this Way he was talking about?” Gaius said.

  “He was a follower of a Jewish holy man, Jeshua bar Josef, the one some now call Chrestus.” said Ibrahim.

  Antonius sputtered, half choking and spraying wine. “Chrestus! Those cannibalistic bastards! You’re lucky you didn’t end up on his dinner table! Eaters of flesh and blood!”

  “Easy, Antonius,” said Gaius, refilling Antonius’ goblet. “That’s a much maligned myth against them. My tutor in Pompeii was a follower of Chrestus, and so were several others of my father’s servi. That story has to do with a ritual they do, and maybe something with how they explain it. They have a dinner of bread and wine, and believe that this represents the flesh and blood of their holy man. Some Chresti will tell you adamantly that it really is, which is how that story got started. My brother and I sneaked a peak at one of their ceremonies one day, and watched... it was bread and wine just the same after they said their magic words as before. They were really a very gentle people, and my father liked them. He bought as many servi Chresti as he could, because he said they were a good deal... never lazy, never stole, and all he had to do was give them every seventh day off.” Gaius laughed, and poured himself another drink of wine.

  “Well, I hope your friend never made it to Rome, Ibrahim,” growled Antonius. “Nero did some nasty things to them, un-Roman things. He blamed them for the big fire there thirty or so years ago, and hung them up in his gardens for torches. Women and children, right alongside the men. Brr!” Antonius shivered. “That’s not right. Bastard was a perverted butcher. Anyway, many don’t believe the story about their being cannibals and all. I knew a few, too, and they seemed right decent folk.”

  The leg from Taprobane to Bandar Aceh in Sumatra took thirty uneventful days. The ship beat her way ahead of the stiffening monsoon wind, but with no storms other than a few brief squalls. And Marcia and Antonius managed to meet alongside the rail, weather permitting, nearly every afternoon, sometimes alone, sometimes with her brother Marcus or with Gaius, sometimes even Ibrahim.

  CHAPTER 34: A TOWN DESTROYED

  Dionysius queried the Asia’s navigators: “Are you sure this is the right promontory? This area seems deserted.” But they checked their charts and calculations, shook their heads, and assured him that this was indeed the harbor mouth, just two miles ahead. But it didn’t seem right. They had raised the headland of the port of Galle at daybreak, and now, nearly three hours into daylight, the wooded promontory and beaches were clearly visible, but no fishing boats were yet out to ply the waters for the morning catch.

  The Asia rounded the promontory an hour later, and sailed in eerie silence into a town destroyed. Smoke hovered in a thick sheet over the water with the morning mist, curling above demolished buildings from the dock all the way up to the center of town. Not a dog barked, not a person hailed the big ship. Dionysius reluctantly gave the order to lower sails and drop anchor. The crew stared over the rail, awestruck at the destruction. Only the cry of birds broke the silence.

  Aulus requested Dionysius put ashore an armed landing party, almost in a whisper. He himself donned a military sword, making him a caricature with his portly figure in a tunic. Lucius Parvus and the body guards wore their weapons with greater credibility. Wang Ming insisted on coming along as well, impressively clad in padded Hanaean military equipment, a sword on his left hip.

  “No need for you two to go ashore here, sir,” said Dionysius deferentially to Ming and Aulus. “My men can handle it alone. There may be some considerable danger here.”

  “Thank you for your concern, Dionysius. But I fear that one of my ships may have wreaked this mayhem here, and I am responsible,” replied Aulus, struggling over the side onto the rope ladder to the boat waiting below, followed by Ming.

  “Well, I am coming with you, sir,” said Dionysius, buckling his sword. One of the sailors handed him a helmet and shield. “Your servi could use some gear. Here! Helmets!” The sailors broke out more helmets from the armory and tossed them to Lucius and his crew.

  They landed at the shattered dock, and noted with dismay the Roman bolts still embedded in the wood. “The Europa! Your friend Ibrahim did this!” said Au
lus, wrenching one of the bolts from the charred wood and tossing it into the water.

  Dionysius ordered the sailors into a defensive formation, the best fighters on the outside, with Aulus, Ming and himself in the middle, advancing up a main road leading into the town.

  The buildings were gutted by fire, and bodies lay in various postures in the muddy road, others half in and half out of doorways... men, women and children, all dead violently. Flies buzzed noisily about the carnage.

  “About three or four days ago, if I can judge by the smell. Bodies decompose quickly in this heat,” said Dionysius grimly.

  At the head of the hill, the road opened onto a small square. The townspeople had apparently been herded into the square and slaughtered en masse, for hundreds of bodies lay in heaps. Buzzards strutted and quarreled with each others for the remains, beating each other with their wings for the right to feast on a particular carcass. Many of the women had their wraps pulled up over their heads, exposing themselves... rape had accompanied the pillage. The men stared at one young girl, whose hair and dress indicated she might at one time been quite attractive before death. “Cover her up!” Aulus ordered. A sailor almost tenderly unfolded her saffron sari from around her head and lowered it about her torso, covering her nakedness. Her face seemed serene, as though she had welcomed death when it finally came. She probably had.

  Around the square, dozens of men’s heads were impaled on pikes, their faces frozen in the grimace of the last terrible second of their life, eyes staring at the horrible square. Flies crawled in and out of noses and open mouths. “Take them down! At once! Down!” Aulus was becoming overcome with emotion and horror at the sight of so much wanton death. He had not had any military experience, and nothing in his life had prepared him for this awful sight. He felt violently ill, collapsed on his knees and retched uncontrollably, while Lucius attempted to comfort him. Dionysius remained close, uncomfortable that he might have allied himself with a human being that could cause such slaughter.