'These labour gangs will assist the troops in digging a moat in front of the western, desert wall, and building a glacis, an earthen ramp, in front of it. They will also help construct a counter-glacis behind the wall.' Here goes, thought Ballista, unconsciously touching the hilt of his spatha.
'To make room for the counter-glacis, the internal earthen ramp, the labour gangs will assist in demolishing all the buildings in the first blocks in from the western wall.' For a moment there was a stunned silence, then men at the back began to shout in protest. Against the rising noise, Ballista pressed on.
'The labour gangs will also help the troops to demolish all the tombs in the necropolis outside the walls. Their rubble will be used as the filling of the glacis.'
Uproar. Almost all the councillors were on their feet, shouting: 'The gods will desert us if we pull down their temples… You want us to enslave our own citizens, destroy our own homes, desecrate the graves of our fathers?' The cries of sacrilege were echoing back off the walls.
Here and there were isolated islands of calm. Iarhai was still seated, his face unreadable. Anamu and Ogelos were on their feet but after initial exclamations they were silent and thoughtful. The hairy Christian still sat, smiling his beatific smile. But all the other councillors were up and shouting. Some were jeering, waving their fists, incensed.
Over the uproar Ballista shouted that, from now on, for ease of communication, his engagements would be posted up in the agora. No one seemed to be listening.
He turned and, with Maximus and Romulus covering his back, walked out into the sunshine.
X
Ballista thought it best to let the dust settle after his meeting with the boule. Syrians were notorious for acting and speaking on the spur of the moment and there was no point in risking an exchange of harsh, ill-considered words. For the next two days he remained in the military quarter, planning the defence of the city with his high officers.
Acilius Glabrio was smarting from losing 120 of his best legionaries to the new unit of artillerymen. And although they were not present, doubtless he was not pleased to think of Iarhai, Anamu and Ogelos, yet more barbarian upstarts in his view, being catapulted into command in the Roman army. He retreated into a patrician vagueness and studied unconcern. Yet the others worked hard. Turpio was keen to please, Mamurra his usual steady considered self and, as accensus, Demetrius seemed less distracted. Gradually, from their deliberations a plan began to form in Ballista's mind – which sections of wall would be guarded by which units, where they would be billeted, how their supplies would reach them, where the few – so very few – reserves would be stationed.
A lower level of military affairs also demanded his attention. A court-martial was convened to try the auxiliary from Cohors XX who had been accused of raping his landlord's daughter. His defence was not strong: 'Her father was home, we went outside, she was saying yes right up until her bare arse hit the mud.' His centurion, however, provided an excellent character statement. More pertinently, two of the soldier's contubernales swore that the girl had previously willingly had sex with the soldier.
The panel was divided. Acilius Glabrio, the very incarnation of Republican virtue, was for the death penalty. Mamurra voted for leniency. Ultimately, the decision was Ballista's. In the eyes of the law, the soldier was guilty. Quite probably his contubernales were lying for him. Ballista guiltily acquitted the soldier: he knew he could not afford to lose even one trained man, let alone alienate his colleagues.
Another legal case occupied him. Julius Antiochus, soldier of the vexillatio of Legio IIII Scythica, of the century of Alexander, and Aurelia Amimma, daughter of Abbouis, resident of Arete, were getting divorced. No love was lost; money was involved; the written documents were ambiguous; the witnesses diametrically opposed. There was no obvious way to determine the truth. Ballista found in favour of the soldier. Ballista knew his decision was expedient rather than just. The imperium had corrupted him; Justice had once more been banished to a prison island.
On the third morning after his meeting with the boule, Ballista considered that enough time had elapsed. The councillors should have settled down by now. Volatile as all Syrians were, it was possible they might even have come round to Ballista's way of thinking. Yes, he was destroying their homes, desecrating their tombs and temples, dismantling their liberties, but it was all in the cause of a higher freedom – the higher freedom of being subject to the Roman emperor and not the Persian king. Ballista smiled at the irony. Pliny the Younger had best expressed the Roman concept of libertas: You command us to be free, so we will be.
Ballista sent off messengers to Iarhai, Ogelos and Anamu inviting them to dine that evening with him and his three high officers. Bathshiba, of course, was invited too. Remembering the Roman superstition against an even number at table, Ballista sent off another messenger to invite Callinicus the Sophist as well. The northerner asked Calgacus to tell the cook to produce something special, preferably featuring smoked eels. The aged Hibernian looked as if he had never in his very long life heard such an outrageous request and it prompted a fresh stream of muttering: 'Oh, aye, what a great Roman you are… what next… fucking peacock brains and dormice rolled in honey.'
Calling Maximus and Demetrius to accompany him, Ballista announced that they were going to the agora. Ostensibly they were going to check that the edicts on food prices were being obeyed but, in reality, the northerner just wanted to get out of the palace, to get away from the scene of his dubious legal decision-making. His judgements were preying on his mind. There was much he admired about the Romans – their siege engines and fortifications, their discipline and logistics, their hypocausts and baths, their racehorses and women – but he found their libertas illusory. He had had to ask imperial permission to live where he did, to marry the woman he had married. In fact his whole life since crossing into the empire seemed to him marked by subservience and sordid compromise rather than distinguished by freedom.
His sour, cynical mood began to lift as they walked into the north-east corner of the agora. He had always liked marketplaces: the noises, the smells – the badly concealed avarice. Crowds of men circulated slowly. Half humanity seemed to be represented. Most wore typically eastern dress, but there were also Indians in turbans, Scythians in high, pointed hats, Armenians in folded-down hats, Greeks in short tunics, the long, loose robes of the tent-dwellers and, here and there, the occasional Roman toga or the skins and furs of a tribesman from the Caucasus.
There seemed a surfeit of the necessities of life – plenty of grain, mainly wheat, some barley; lots of wine and olive oil for sale in skins or amphorae, and any number of glossy black olives. At least in his presence, Ballista's edicts on prices appeared to be being observed. There was no sign they had driven goods off the market. As the northerner and his two companions moved along the northern side of the agora the striped awnings became brighter, smarter, and the foods shaded by them moved from Mediterranean essentials to life's little luxuries – fruit and vegetables, pine kernels and fish sauce and, most prized of all, the spices: pepper and saffron.
Before they reached the porticos of the western side of the agora the luxuries had ceased to be edible. Here were sweet-smelling stalls with sandal- and cedarwood. Too expensive for building materials or firewood, these could be considered exempt from Ballista's edict on the requisitioning of wood. Here men sold ivory, monkeys, parrots. Maximus paused to examine some fancy leather-work. Ballista thought he saw a camelskin being quietly hidden at the rear of the shop. He was going to ask Demetrius to make a note but the boy was staring intently over at the far end of the agora, once more distracted. Many of the things that men and women most desired were here: perfumes, gold, silver, opals, chalcedonies and, above all, shimmering and unbelievably soft, the silk from the Seres at the far edge of the world.
In the southern porticos, to Ballista's distaste, was the slave market. There, all manner of 'tools with voices' were on display. There were slaves to farm your land, keep
your accounts, dress your wife's hair, sing you songs, pour your drinks and suck your dick. But Ballista studied the merchandise closely; there was one type of slave he always looked to purchase. Having inspected all that was on offer, the northerner returned to the middle of the slave pens and called out a short simple question in his native tongue.
'Are there any Angles here?'
There was not a face that did not turn to gaze at the huge barbarian warlord shouting unintelligibly in his outlandish tongue but, to Ballista's immense relief, no one answered.
They moved past the livestock market to the eastern portico, the cheap end of the agora where the rag-pickers, low-denomination money lenders, magicians, wonder workers and others who traded on human misery and weakness touted for trade. Both Ballista's companions were looking intently back over their shoulders at the alley where the prostitutes stood. It was to be expected of Maximus, but Demetrius was a surprise – Ballista had always thought the young Greek's interests lay elsewhere.
Allfather, but he could do with a woman himself. In one sense it would be so good, so easy. But in another sense it would be neither. There was Julia, his vows to her, the way he had been brought up.
Ballista thought bitterly of the way some Romans, like Tacitus in his Germania, held the marital fidelity of the Germans up as a mirror to condemn the contemporary Roman lack of morality. But traditional rustic fidelity was all very well when you lived in a village; it was not designed for those hundreds of miles, weeks of travel, away from their woman. Yet Ballista knew that his aversion to infidelity stemmed from more than just his love for Julia, more than the way he had been brought up. Just as some men carried a lucky amulet into battle, so he carried his fidelity to Julia. Somehow he had developed a superstitious dread that, if he had another woman, his luck would desert him and the next sword thrust or arrow would not wound but kill, not scrape down his ribs but punch through them into his heart.
Thinking now of his companions, Ballista said, 'For the sake of thoroughness, perhaps we should check what is on sale in the alley? Would you two like to do it?'
Demetrius's refusal was immediate. He looked indignant but also slightly shifty. Why was the boy acting so strangely?
'I think I am qualified to do it on my own,' said Maximus.
'Oh yes, I believe you are. But, remember, you are just looking at the goods, not sampling them.' Ballista grinned. 'We will be over there in the middle of the agora, learning virtue from the statues set up to the good citizens of Arete.'
The first statue Ballista and Demetrius came to stood on a high plinth. 'Agegos son of Anamu son of Agegos,' read Ballista. 'It must be the father of our Anamu – a bit better-looking.' The statue was in eastern dress and, unlike Anamu, he had a good head of hair. It stood up in tight curls all around his head. He sported a full short beard like his son but also boasted a luxurious moustache, teased out and waxed into points. His face was round, slightly fleshy. 'Yes, better-looking than his son, although that is not hard.'
'For his piety and love of the city' – Ballista read out the rest of the inscription – 'for his complete virtue and courage, always providing safety for the merchants and caravans, for his generous expenditure to these ends from his own resources. In that he saved the recently arrived caravan from the nomads and from the great dangers that surrounded it, the same caravan set up three statues, one in the agora of Arete, where he is strategos, one in the city of Spasinou Charax, and one on the island of Thilouana, where he is satrap (governor). Your geography is better than mine' – Ballista looked at his accensus – 'Spasinou Charax is where?'
'At the head of the Persian Gulf,' Demetrius replied.
'And the island of Thilouana is?'
'In the Persian Gulf, off the coast of Arabia. In Greek we call it Tylos.'
'And they are ruled by?'
'Shapur. Anamu's father governed part of the Persian empire. He was both a general here in Arete and a satrap of the Sassanids.'
Ballista looked at Demetrius. 'So which side are the caravan protectors on?'
In the afternoon, about the time of the meridiatio, the siesta, it started to rain. The man watched the rain from his first-floor window while he waited for the ink to dry. Although not torrential like the first rains of the year, it was heavy. The street below was empty of people. Water ran down the inner face of the city wall. The steps which ran up to the nearest tower were slick with water, treacherous. A lone rook flew past from left to right.
Judging that the ink was dry, the man lit a lamp from the brazier. He leant out of the window to pull the shutters closed. He secured them and lit another lamp. Although he had locked the door when he entered the room, he now looked around to check that he was alone. Reassured, he picked up the inflated pig's bladder from where he had hidden it and started to read. The artillery magazine has been burnt. All stocks of ballistae bolts are destroyed. The northern barbarian is gathering stocks of food for the siege. When he has gathered enough, fires will be set against them. There is enough naptha for one more spectacular attack. He has announced that the necropolis will be flattened, many temples and houses destroyed, his troops billeted in those that remain. He is freeing the slaves and enslaving the free. His men strip and rape women at will. The townsmen mutter against him. He has conscripted townsmen into army units to be commanded by the caravan protectors. Truly the fool has been made blind. He will deliver himself bound hand and foot into the hands of the King of Kings.
His moving finger stopped. His lips ceased inaudibly shaping the words. It would do. The rhetoric was pitched a bit high, but it was not part of his plan to discourage the Persians.
He picked up two oil flasks, one full and one empty, and placed them on the table. He untied the open end of the pig's bladder and squeezed the air out. As it deflated, his writing became illegible. Taking the stopper out of the empty flask, he pushed the bladder inside, leaving its opening protruding. Putting his lips to the bladder and silently giving thanks that he was not Jewish, he reinflated it. Then he folded the protruding swine's intestine back over the spout of the flask and bound it in place with string. When he had trimmed away the excess with a sharp knife, the bladder was completely concealed within the flask, one container hidden within another. Carefully he poured oil from the full flask into the bladder in the other. As he replaced the stopper in both, again he looked round to check he was still alone.
He looked at the oil flask in his hands. They had stepped up the searches at the gates. Sometimes they slit open the seams of men's tunics and the stitching of their sandals; sometimes they stripped the veils from respectable Greek women. For a moment he felt dizzy, light-headed with the risk he was running. Then he steadied himself. He accepted that he might well not survive his mission. That was of no consequence. His people would reap the benefits. His reward would be in the next world.
In the queue at the gate, the courier would know nothing. The flask would arouse no suspicion.
The man took out his stylus and started to write the most innocuous of letters.
My dear brother, the rains have returned… From the colonnade at the front of his house Anamu regarded the rain with disfavour. The streets were again ankle-deep in mud: the rains had put him to the expense of hiring a litter and four bearers to take him to dinner at the palace of the Dux Ripae. Anamu did not care to be put to unnecessary expense, and now the litter-bearers were late. He tried to smooth down his irritation by summoning up a half-remembered line from one of the old Stoic masters: 'These four walls do not a prison make.' Anamu was not sure he had it word perfect. 'These stone walls do not a prison make.' Who had said it? Musonius Rufus, the Roman Socrates? No, more likely the ex-slave Epictetus. Perhaps it wasn't a Stoic at all – perhaps he had written it himself?
Warmed by this secret fantasy of other men quoting his words, men completely unknown to him drawing comfort and strength from his wisdom in their time of troubles, Anamu looked out at the rainswept scene. The stone walls of the city were darkened by the wat
er running down them. The battlements were empty; the guards must be sheltering in the nearby tower. An ideal moment for a surprise attack, except that the rains would have turned the land outside the town into a quagmire.
The litter-bearers having eventually arrived, Anamu was handed in and they set off. Anamu knew the identity of the other guests due at the palace. Little happened in the town of Arete that Anamu did not quickly hear about. He paid good money – a lot of good money – to make sure it was that way. It promised to be an interesting evening. The Dux had invited all three of the caravan protectors, all of whom had complaints about the barbarian's treatment of the town. Iarhai's daughter would be there too. If ever a girl had a fire burning in her altar, it was her. More than one paid informer had reported that both the barbarian Dux and the supercilious young Acilius Glabrio wanted her. And the sophist Callinicus of Petra had been invited. He was making a name for himself- he'd add culture to the mix of tension and sex. With the latter in mind Anamu got out the scrap of papyrus on which earlier, in privacy, he had written a little crib for himself from Athenaeus's Deipnosophistae, The Wise Men at Dinner. Anamu was widely known to be very fond of mushrooms and it was most probable that, as an act of respect, the Dux would have instructed his chef to include them in the menu. To be prepared, Anamu had lifted some suitably esoteric quotes from the classics about them.
'Ah, here you are,' said Ballista. 'As they say, "Seven makes a dinner, nine makes a brawl."' Since his rather impressive rhetorical display at the gates, Ballista had gone down and down in Anamu's estimation. The northerner's bluff welcome did nothing to restore the position. 'Let us go to the table.'
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