Finally, Crassus spoke slowly and softly, a knife slipping gently between the ribs. “This freedom, Alexander, I shall grant you.” Before I could offer my thanks, he said, “Now go fetch me an apple.” As I turned to walk toward the shuddering galley tent, conceding the round to my master, he added without emphasis or emotion, “And bring one for yourself.”
Ah. A draw then.
•••
The apples were crisp and tart. Resuming our discourse beneath the pregnant sky, I said, “You have not yet told me of the curse, of which I have heard little else since your arrival, from everyone but you.”
“Alexander, I tell you, that man practically caused a riot. I approached the pomerium just at the sixth hour with my lictors and only the first century of the first cohort as escort. The sun was high and made blinding mirrors of their armor. Their weapons waited for them outside the city walls. There, like a recurring nightmare, at the Capena Gate stood Ateius, who had raced ahead to block the exit with his retinue. Before him a lit brazier was already aflame, the incense and oils he was pouring into it causing a stench as foul as low tide and burning blood. A large crowd had gathered by the time I stood before him. Billows of noxious yellow smoke rose even to the ramparts above the arch where spectators were climbing, scrambling for a view and cleaner air.
“Ateius screamed at me once more to abandon my plan to ignore the will of the senate. I calmly replied that I would not. He stared at me wild-eyed for a moment, his jowls turning red like a fat, mating lizard. Truly, he looked as if he was about to burst. At last he shouted, “So be it!” Then he threw off his toga to reveal yellow robes streaked as if stained with blood.”
“A magus,” I whispered.
“Yes. There was an audible gasp from the crowd as he raised his arms over his head. He began to wail in an unnatural, shrill falsetto that sent shivers through everyone, including me. This was not your typical malediction for the return of a stolen bath towel, scratched into a lead tablet and thrown down a well. No, this was a searing, hate-filled execration aimed not only at my total destruction, but everyone associated with the undertaking. He read from a parchment to increase the potency of his excoriation, and he’d obviously put much effort into its composition. He cursed me, my family and all my descendants to the seventh generation. He cursed the legionaries who marched with me, the auxiliaries, the cavalry; he even cursed the horses!
“Then, as if that wasn’t enough, he began chanting incoherently; I didn’t get all the words, some were Latin, some sounded Etruscan. He called upon Hades, Vulcan and Jupiter, along with demons and monsters of whom I’d never heard.
“Women threw their hands to their ears or covered those of their children. Others tried to get away; some were trampled. Merchants and soldiers shouted for him to stop. My guards would have strangled him on the spot had I not enjoined them. I would not have his blood on my hands as I departed. Now that would have been a foul omen.”
“The people were not confident in his ability as a magus?”
“Certainly not. I myself knew him to be a student of the law; no one had any idea he had also delved into the mystical texts. And of course everyone, from plebeian to tribune knew that if Ateius made one little slip in word or gesture, his curse might very possibly rebound and return to fall not only upon himself, which I’m certain no one would have minded at all, but onto the city as well.”
“I have heard tell of such things.” Though I did not believe them.
“Attend, there is more to come. He concluded his imprecation by saying the most peculiar thing. I was so struck by it I had Sabinus write it down.” Crassus opened a pouch tied to his belt and unfolded a piece of papyrus. “He said, ‘If you do not turn aside from this adventure against a people that has done Rome no injury, and with whom we are at amity, you will surely be undone. Your purpose will be wrecked utterly. You and all that follow you shall perish in ignominy, your bleached bones left to inhabit the desert. Before all this has come to pass, even then Melek Ta’us may take pity on you and grant you understanding, so that upon your death you may repent, and thereby cause some future good to yet spring from your own wrongdoing.”
“Remarkable,” I said.
“I was thunderstruck, and I had no idea what this rant might signify. I said to him, ‘Tribune Gaius Ateius, whatever happened to Jupiter Capitolinus? Or Mars Invictus? If I am to be sent to the underworld in shame, at least I should like to know a little more about the deity who is sending me there.’ The crowd about us fell silent. I asked him if he did not think it unusual to end a curse with lenience. Ateius looked almost as bewildered as I and replied that he had been instructed to say these things by the goddess. ‘This Melek Ta’us,’ I presume. ‘The very same,’ he replied. ‘And who is Melek Ta’us?’ I inquired. He said he did not know. ‘This is becoming tiresome,’ I said. ‘How is it, then, you come to invoke his name?’ ‘Her name,’ he said.”
At that moment, Petronius came back on deck. “Your leave, general.” He saluted by hitting his closed right fist upon his breast. Crassus nodded. “Preparations for the sacrifice will be ready within the hour. Rain approaches from the west,” he added, hoping Crassus would reconsider his decision to embark.
“Then we’d better get those oxen slaughtered,” came the disappointing reply. “Where was I?” he asked as Petronius clambered back down to the jetty.
“This goddess…”
“Ah yes. Ateius told me she had come to him in a dream, in the form of a peacock. This Melek Ta’us assured Ateius that my purpose was made of stone and that I would not be deterred, but that, short of violence, he should try to dissuade me nonetheless. I said in a louder voice for all to hear, ‘It augurs well that the gods know my purpose and determination, even if they be gods unknown to and unsanctioned by Rome. Now, you’ve done your duty and your conscience should be clear. You have also disrupted the tranquility of this city and put needless fear in the hearts of your countrymen. For this, you shall most likely have to answer to them when I have gone, but that is not my concern. Now stand aside and let us pass.’ And that was essentially the end of it.”
“I would have to say,” I said, glancing at clouds so heavy and leaden they appeared to be straining with the effort not to burst, “that this is as inauspicious a beginning to an expedition as ever one might dread. These are powerful signs, lord. Dare we ignore them?”
“You don’t fool me for an instant, Alexander. You put no stock in omens and incense. You see them for what they are: pacifiers for children. Your fear of this undertaking does not become you. There is no Roman death more honorable than one earned on the field of battle.”
“Alas, I am no Roman.” I imagined the Via Appia as Crassus had left it after his defeat of Spartacus. How was the fate of those six thousand eyeless sentinels, their limbs given an occasional twitching, false life by the maggots that consumed them, any different?
To a corpse, honor meant nothing. Death on the battlefield or on a cross was death all the same.
Crassus threw the core of his half-eaten apple over the side. “Don’t mistake me. The gods have their place; fear of them may keep the peace as handily as a veteran legion. I, for one, though I observe the forms, am too busy shaping my own destiny to wonder whether public prayers are heard or not. Politicians make ready use of religion, but press us beyond our devout mouthings and you will find little faith.”
I said nothing, but nodded toward the canopy in the stern, and shelter. In the distance to the west, a grey curtain of rain marched steadily toward the port, and lightning finally broke through the clouds. It crackled and hummed as the gods wrote a brief but illegible note on the landscape. Whether benediction or curse, who could say?
Chapter XXII
55 – 54 BCE - Winter, On the March
Year of the consulship of
Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus and Marcus Licinius Crassus Dives
Those of you with decent memories will recall that the tribune Ateius invoked the name of the same goddess
of whom Melyaket the Parthian was so enamored. It is a strange coincidence, I grant you. Yet there are many wondrous things between the instant we perceive our own mortality and the final moment when, with our last exhalation of disappointment, we resign ourselves to death’s embrace, of which we have no understanding. Do I believe there exists a divine Peacock Angel (Melek Ta’us in the Parthian tongue) keeping a feathery eye on us, her mortal charges? I do not. You may do so if you choose, but with apologies to Aristotle, life among the Romans has caused me to edge closer to Epicurus on this issue: the gods have no time nor interest in the comings and goings of man, and their reality is in all likelihood so far removed from ours that they are entirely unaware of our existence. If a divine peacock has somehow slipped its celestial confinement, someone ought to herd it back to its pen.
•••
The crossing from Brundisium to Dyrrhachium would have taken a single trireme less than a day and a night sailing under fair skies. Our passage took three times as long. Which meant we would have been very hungry and very thirsty, had we been able to think of such things without retching. Before our voyage was over, what food we did have in our bellies was heaved up on deck, washed overboard or onto the rowers below. The storms were relentless; not for even an hour was our captain able to raise the sails and grant the oarsmen a rest. Some were broad-backed free men, mostly Greeks from Syracusae working off their twenty-six year contract to earn Roman citizenship. From what I could hear of their labors through the decking, they earned every one of the four sesterces credited daily to each man’s account. Most, however, were our own legionaries, chosen from among those with the least seniority, to help man the 170 oars. There was room on deck for no more than a century, less if the trireme was carrying cargo or animals.
These cedar ships were meant to sail along the coast for a single day, then dock and take on stores for another short journey, on calm seas. Triremes and other ships of war are not built to withstand winter storms. If you were an eagle soaring high over the Middle Sea at this time of year, your keen eyes would be shocked to find the white-capped waters filled with our frail centipedes, oars beating a desperate, funereal rhythm against the iron waves.
By the time Scourge of Ctesiphon shipped its oars under clearing skies in Epirus Nova’s finest harbor, the last of our storm-battered fleet was barely halfway through their own ordeal. Never had the Adriatic done so much to dissuade so many from the Eastern journey. We arrived drained, drenched and shivering. And behind us, on an ever darkening horizon, lightning silvered the grey sea.
The bosom of Dyrrachium’s port may have been welcoming and blessedly unmoving, but its outstretched arms could only accommodate a fraction of the numbers Crassus had amassed. Weeks passed while thousands of men waited for their turn to disembark, steaming themselves dry in the cool air. Even at the rate of ten ships a day, thousands spent over a month just getting themselves off those accursed boats. The town had to ferry food and water to the queued ships while the men gambled, sharpened their blades, and baled harbor water from their chastised transports.
I say this: if man had been meant to ply the seas, the gods in their wisdom would have given him a stronger stomach. If destined to tread the earth, surely he would have been created with the legs of a lion and the feet of a pachyderm. One must be forced to the conclusion that the unerring gods blessed man with a form best suited for contemplation, study, and a life undisturbed by travel.
(Even an atheist may invoke the gods by way of expression and turn of phrase. I defy you to deny it. The supposition, I maintain, is nevertheless accurate.)
•••
Scanning back across the decades compresses time, like a length of string held taut in both hands, then slowly turned till it is looked at from one end to the other. How odd to think back on that time now. Events tumble one upon the other. A mere six years after we departed Dyrrachium for Parthia, Caesar would descend upon the port to face a resolute Pompeius. There would Magnus give Caesar such a thrashing that the war between them could have ended in Caesar’s defeat, had Pompeius not halted the rout before the final blow could be struck. Of his narrow and inexplicable escape Caesar would remark to his friends, “Today victory belonged to the enemy, if the enemy had only been led by a victor.” Of this and all that followed my master would be beyond caring.
Was it better for my lord that the Fates cut the thread of his life and dropped him into the black ignorance of death before learning of either of his rivals’ fate? Though the Spinner had been distracted and the Measurer had lost track of Time, though the wool of dominus’ life wound round his life’s spool far more than most, I say it matters not. Like many blinded by their passions, clarity struck Crassus only when the hot breath of his mortality moved the hairs upon his neck, when the oiled, preparatory snips of the Cutter came close upon his ear. He saw, only at the last, the folly of his quest for vengeance. Too late, too late. A multitude would suffer; life would change in uncounted ways as shards from the collisions of his choices’ children spun off in all directions.
Time and the world will rumble on without him, leaving brave Tertulla to grieve and go on. They will roll over each of us in our turn, as they had Pompeius and Caesar, Antonius and Cleopatra, as they will Melyaket, Livia, our son, me, you, your progeny and theirs, on into infinity until one or the other grows tired and decides to grind to a halt.
•••
Being assigned to Crassus as his non-military aide did have its benefits: we were the first to disembark to anemic welcoming noises made by magistrates, citizens and manifestly amateur musicians. Never mind. I had to restrain myself to keep from embracing each in his turn. Romans, as you are probably aware, do not have the world’s finest reputation as sailors, and with apologies to the 300 oarsmen and 50 crew who got our flagship safely to port, as I stepped off onto the dock, my first thought was to ask myself how much longer it would take on the return trip to go the long way around on solid ground.
My immediate objective, after finding suitable lodgings for dominus while the engineers laid out our first temporary camp to the south of the city, was to locate Livia. It is good to have objectives, for they are the ropes by which we pull ourselves through this life from one milestone to the next. I advise, however, moderation in this task of setting goals, or else risk becoming tangled up in a Gordian knot of life’s many disappointments.
By way of example, take my desire to find my wife. Frantic to know if she was safe, I longed to hold her and to hear every detail of how she had weathered the crossing. Then, having secured a room adjacent to and almost as fine my lord’s, I intended to sup with her, bed her, and assure her that I would stand by her and protect her until we were safely returned to our home and our son. And I cannot claim to have had, by way of excuse, even a solitary cup of watered wine.
I dined alone that first night, while Crassus met with his legates. The next day, I waited on my master, and when dismissed, dove into the confusion of the docks in search of my lady. This I repeated each day of the first week, and again on every day of the second. A ship came into port carrying Musclena, the chief medicus, but Livia was not on board. I found Octavius, legate of Legion I, and second-in-command. He could not say for sure, but he thought the remaining two triremes carrying the field hospital and the rest of the medical supplies and personnel would be another week at sea. In spite of being pulled in a hundred directions, the commander took the time to put a hand on my shoulder and reassure me that now that the weather had eased, the rest of the fleet would arrive safely.
And they did, but was “the rest of the fleet” all of the fleet? There were rumors. Before they could be substantiated, Crassus' patience ran out, even as a dozen sails crawled over the milky horizon. I begged my lord to allow me to tarry in Dyrrachium, but his deteriorating handwriting sentenced that hope to an early death.
Even before we left Rome, Crassus had been finding it more and more difficult to hold a pen. Once we had departed the city, he wrote more than ever, composi
ng at least one letter to my lady each day without fail. I offered to assign a scribe to him, but he would not hear of it. I was the only one he would entrust with the intimate details of his dictation. I made two copies: one would accumulate to be sent home by courier in a bundle at the end of each month; the other I would secure as insurance against the original failing to reach its destination. When I asked him how this cramping might affect his sword arm, he assured me it was only the narrow grip of the writing instruments that troubled him.
“If we fought with pens,” he said, “I would be forced to fall upon mine.”
That evening, I sat wearily in my master’s tent, scrawling listlessly to Tertulla of the weather, the scenery and varied matters of equal import. We were to learn later that of the original 36,000 souls that left Brundisium, two thousand legionaries, five hundred auxiliaries and five hundred cavalry would be lost at sea, twelve ships sacrificed to Poseidon. Or to Crassus. Since I have never seen the water god, where else can the blame lie but at the feet of the mortal?
•••
As soon as one of the grain ships was offloaded, we broke camp with four legions; Octavius stayed behind to await the remainder of the army; Crassus himself led our troops. I left the port, turning in my saddle as we rounded the last hill that would put the sea from view. There were many more sails now sitting upon the water with stripes of red and cream, and from their number I took hope. I turned from the sight and whispered a brief appeal to no god in particular to bring her safely to port.
Strange, is it not, how even those of us who scoff at divine intervention will fall to our knees and clasp our hands the moment we realize our futures are defined by uncertainty and hazard. A thoughtful man would never leave his knees. A wise man would never drop to them. In any case, it wasn’t really a prayer, but one does like to follow convention now and then.
A Mixture of Madness, Book II of The Bow of Heaven Page 25