Rome's Lost Son

by Robert Fabbri

  The slope was loose scree and Vespasian found himself once again grateful for the trousers as his legs were spared much of the grazing and tearing from the sharp stones; his momentum increased. He could hear Hormus just behind him but could see very little, enveloped as he was in a cloud of dust on a moonless night. The slope gradually levelled out towards its base and his speed decreased until he stopped, jolting as he thudded into an object that groaned in pain as he hit it. Hormus then tumbled on top of him in a flurry of gravel.

  ‘Jupiter’s cock,’ Magnus grumbled, his teeth clenched as he gingerly touched his left arm, ‘you’ve got the whole fucking hillside to break your fall with and you both choose to do it on me instead.’

  An arrow slamming into the ground next to them caused Magnus to cut short his complaint and in an instant they were on their feet sprinting towards the Parthian lines, two hundred paces away. Arrows whipped about them and shouts followed them. Vespasian glanced over his left shoulder and saw that the south gate remained shut; perhaps there would be no pursuit.

  Magnus groaned with effort and pain as he ran, cradling his left arm and limping badly on the same foot. Vespasian slowed and put his arm around Magnus’ shoulders, taking some of the weight as they ploughed on through the darkness. The arrows trailed off as the gloom swallowed them and soon they felt safe enough to stop and assess the damage. Magnus slumped down on the ground and Hormus examined his arm.

  Vespasian did not need to be told that it was broken; the angle of the wrist attested to the fact.

  ‘We need to get that set properly,’ Hormus said as Magnus shoved him away and nursed his injury protectively.

  ‘Oh yes? And where are we going to do that?’ he hissed.

  ‘He’s right, Magnus,’ Vespasian said. ‘If we don’t, you might never be able to use that hand again. We’re just about to walk through an army and if there is one profession that clings to armies almost as much as whores do, it’s doctors.’

  Vespasian peered forward; the three men seated around the fire seemed to be dozing with their chins on their chests. It was the fourth such fire that they had checked but the first where the sentries seemed to be less fastidious about their duties.

  Magnus tutted, in spite of his pain. ‘Asleep on duty; they’d be beaten to death by their mates in our army.’

  ‘Yes, well, let’s be thankful that the Parthians seem to have a more lax view of discipline,’ Vespasian said. ‘Hormus, you go first; if you’re challenged, give them your best Aramaic.’ He looked at Magnus in the gloom. ‘Just remember if you’re going to moan, groan, mutter or mumble to do it in Greek; there’re plenty of Greek speakers in the Great King’s army but precious few Latin ones.’

  Magnus grumbled something in Greek as Hormus stood and walked forward, skirting the fire.

  None of the guards stirred as Hormus approached. Vespasian and Magnus followed close behind, hardly daring to breathe, keeping as much in the shadows as possible. The noise from the camp, even at this time of night, was enough to drown their footsteps. Just as they were level with the fire, one of the guards snorted in his sleep, causing him to splutter and shocking him awake. He opened his eyes and looked directly at Magnus. Hormus shouted in Aramaic and the guard turned to see where the noise had come from. Again Hormus shouted a sentence and then the guard started to laugh; he nudged his fellows awake and said something to them which made them smile, bleary eyed. The guard shouted something back at Hormus and waved them on and then added, with a grin, what sounded to be a quip; Vespasian and Magnus did not need a second invitation and, grinning back at the guard, they moved on.

  ‘What did you tell them?’ Vespasian asked once they were well within the camp perimeter and feeling less conspicuous.

  Hormus looked shyly at his master. ‘I said that my friend had broken his arm getting too close to the rear of a mule and we were looking for a doctor. They got the inference immediately and said that some doctors could be found towards the rear of the camp if we headed straight through. Then he asked if the mule needed a doctor too.’

  Vespasian suppressed a laugh; Magnus mumbled something about jokes at his expense while he was in agony.

  They walked slowly and with confidence through the camp as if they had every right to be there. After so long by himself in a sealed tomb, Vespasian found the variety of new sights, sounds and smells overwhelming and he had to fight the urge to take his slave’s hand again, telling himself that it would soon pass as he readjusted to being part of the world.

  In the short time that it took them to traverse the Parthian camp Vespasian heard more than a dozen different languages, saw as many, if not more, styles of dress and smelt so many different and new spices and herbs on the steam and smoke wafting from the cooking fires that his head would have spun even if he had not just been released from a solitary cell earlier that day.

  Having asked for directions a couple of times, Hormus eventually guided them to an area of the camp, near the horse-lines at the very back, that was populated with larger, plusher tents.

  ‘This looks to be the right sort of place,’ Vespasian said, noticing the ostentatious displays of wealth in the form of silver lamps and elegantly carved camp furniture laid out around each tent, guarded by expensive-looking slaves, bulked with muscle. ‘Giving false hope to the dying seems to be just as profitable here as it is at home. Go and make some enquiries, Hormus.’

  The slave approached one of the huge guards and after a short discussion returned. ‘For two drachmae, he’ll allow us through; the best man for what we need is in the tent with the red and blue facings.’

  ‘Drachmae?’ Vespasian questioned.

  ‘Yes, I was surprised too,’ Magnus said, grimacing as he cradled his arm. ‘Apparently they’ve used the drachma ever since Alexander’s conquest.’

  Vespasian nodded to Hormus to pay the man.

  They followed Hormus to the appropriate tent and waited outside while the slave entered and tried to gain admittance for them.

  ‘Twenty-five drachmae,’ he said upon his eventual return. ‘Plus an extra ten due to the lateness of the hour.’

  Despite the exorbitant fee, far more even that the most avaricious doctor would have charged back in Rome, Vespasian led Magnus and Hormus into the tent. A waiting slave bowed to them as he took the purse that Hormus proffered; having satisfied himself that it contained the correct coinage, he said something in Aramaic to which Hormus replied, causing the slave to switch languages to Greek. ‘Follow me; my master Lindos is waiting.’

  Like so many doctors, Lindos was a Greek and, like so many Greeks, he treated those not of Attic blood and speaking serviceable but accented Greek with contempt. ‘Where are you from?’ he asked after Magnus had told him some rubbish about how he had broken his arm. ‘Your Greek is ghastly.’

  ‘We’re from …’ Magnus stopped and groaned with pain to cover his inability to answer the question truthfully.

  ‘Colchis,’ Vespasian answered after a couple of nervous heartbeats thinking.

  Lindos’ expression made it quite clear what he thought of the morals and sexual proclivities of those who hailed from that far-flung kingdom on the eastern coast of the Euxine. Having made his displeasure clear at having to come into physical contact with lowlife hardly better than barbarians, Lindos went to work at setting the bone and splinting the arm with remarkable professionalism. Biting down on a strip of wood, Magnus fought the pain, which, judging by the way Lindos pulled on the broken limb and also by the variety of Magnus’s facial expressions, must have been considerable.

  Within a quarter of an hour Lindos was finished and Magnus, with his arm set straight and protected by two splints, was covered in sweat, his eyes screwed shut. ‘Jupiter’s cock, that hurt,’ he blurted as the slave removed the wooden bit from his mouth. He opened his eyes to see Vespasian staring at him aghast and dawning suspicion on Lindos’ face.

  He had spoken in Latin and had invoked Rome’s best and greatest god.

  Hormus was th
e first to react, grabbing the slave, and with both hands clamped to his head, twisted it, violent and sudden, breaking the neck with a snap.

  Vespasian’s shock at his previously timid slave’s new murderous abilities was the instant that Lindos needed to flee and scream for help and quickly and loudly he did so, retreating back into the depths of the tent.

  ‘This way,’ Vespasian said, gathering his mind and drawing his sword. He ran to the side of the tent and slashed a long rend in it as burly bodies bundled through the entrance. He pushed the loose material aside and ran out into the night with Magnus and Hormus following. At speed they sprinted away, dodging a couple of guards whose agility was not helped by their bulk. Behind them cries of warning rang out. After they had covered fifty paces or so Vespasian slowed down so as not to draw attention to themselves; as he did so he caught the sweet animal scent of the horse-lines and, following his nose, walked swiftly towards them.

  The horses were tethered in long lines and tended by slaves who groomed, fed and exercised them; hundreds of horses meant scores of slaves and Vespasian knew that any pursuit would soon think to look at the horse-lines. ‘There’s no time for niceties,’ he said, striding forward with purpose towards the horses nearest them, his sword still naked in his hand. With a swift, military jab he rammed the point into the throat of an enquiring slave and within a few moments had unhitched the first three horses in the line. ‘It’ll have to be bareback,’ he said, hauling himself up onto the unsaddled beast.

  Hormus gave Magnus a leg up before mounting his horse as slaves came running towards them, their shouts alerting the guards, coming from the opposite direction in pursuit, as to the whereabouts of their quarry.

  Pulling his mount round, Vespasian kicked it into action, followed by Magnus gamely hanging on with one hand, as Hormus slashed down at a slave attempting to grab his leg, opening up his face with a spurt of blood; the iron tang caused his horse’s nostrils to flare and with flattened ears it sped away after his master.

  Vespasian did not slow his mount as it clattered through the arriving guards, sending them diving to either side and leaving the escape into the empty south clear. They thundered their horses out into the night, leaving uproar behind them, and headed, with as much haste as possible in the black night, for the tributary of the Tigris that would take them down to the great river itself. Then they would follow it south, drawn by its current, into the beating heart of the Parthian Empire.

  CHAPTER XIIII

  THE TIGRIS WAS being kind to them, flowing at a steady pace, its surface smooth, gliding them south at the speed of a trotting horse. Vespasian lay in their boat’s bow, looking up past the triangular sail at the cloudless sky and wondering how he could have lived for two years without seeing such beauteous colour; the intensity of the blue transfixed his eyes and it was as much as he could do to check the tears that he could feel welling up within him. Now that he had time to think, relief coursed through his whole being; relief that the dark ordeal was now over; relief at once again feeling the companionship of a fellow human being.

  For the two days since they had come across the boat pulled up on the riverbank and covered with vegetation, Vespasian had lain prone in the bow as they sailed down the tributary river to its confluence with the Tigris. He had joined in some conversation with Magnus and Hormus but it had been an effort and he found that he preferred just to let his thoughts wander free and enjoy the exhilaration of having nothing over his head preventing him from seeing the sky.

  He had listened to his companions’ account of how Magnus, having befriended the gaoler, had sold Hormus to him at a reasonable discount after they had murdered his original slave and the sexual ordeals that Hormus went through at the hands of that man for the six days that he had served him before their escape. Vespasian’s gratitude to his slave for sacrificing himself so that he could rescue his master was profound and he understood that Hormus was completely devoted to him, serving him in such a way that he could be trusted with anything. Hormus sat in the stern of the boat, holding the steering-oar as the current and the small sail, full bellied with wind, pushed them on towards Ctesiphon; his eyes fixed on the river ahead and his mouth set firm in concentration beneath the beard that masked his undershot chin. Vespasian studied the man and wondered what he had done to deserve such unquestioning, animal loyalty; he swore to himself that he would repay that loyalty by freeing Hormus at the earliest legal time: when he reached the age of thirty in a few years.

  Magnus sat beneath the mast, his head on his chest, snoring; his splinted arm lay across his lap. Vespasian smiled at the sight. He had never dared give rein to the hope that his friend would find and rescue him in all those dark days; but there had always been a little flicker in the deeper recesses of his mind that it was a possibility. Now he was free he could afford to admit to himself that the reason he had survived relatively unscathed was because he had clung on to that tiny morsel of hope, nurturing it but not relying on it. He knew that he was extremely fortunate with his companions and, as they sailed on south, he said a prayer of thanks to Mars for holding his hands over him and promised the finest bull as soon as he was back within the Empire.

  They kept to the middle of the river, a hundred and fifty paces from either bank, both of which were dotted with farms, small settlements and larger towns. The land was lush, most of it under cultivation and the communities that they passed seemed prosperous. Occasionally they would land just downstream from one and Hormus would walk back to buy food; they aroused no suspicion and other craft that they passed on the water would hail them cheerfully and sail on without incident.

  Days melted into one another, the river widened and the temperature grew hotter. Gradually Vespasian began to feel the weight of his incarceration lift; he could sleep without fear of waking up to find himself back in his cell so that for the first time in two years he began to feel rested and strong and capable of an arduous caravan journey across the desert to either Judaea or Syria. As his strength returned so did his ambition: somehow he had survived an ordeal that would have left most people gibbering wrecks; he had done it with his will and, he was well aware, with the help of the gods. He was now sure that there was substance behind all the omens of his birth and the subsequent prophesies and signs. Mars was preserving him: how else had his mind been kept from cracking?

  ‘We should be getting there soon,’ Magnus observed, shading his eyes and peering forward. ‘When I looked at a map back in Syria, from what I could make out, it seemed to be about two to three hundred miles from Arbela to Ctesiphon. This is our fifth day on the river.’

  ‘How will we know that we’re at Ctesiphon?’ Hormus asked.

  Vespasian sat up and looked south. ‘Because it will be the biggest city that you’ve ever seen outside Rome or Alexandria. It’s even bigger if you count the Greek city of Seleucia on the western bank of the Tigris.’

  Magnus was surprised. ‘You mean there’s a whole city full of Greeks in the middle of the Parthian Empire?’

  ‘Yes, and most cities have a sizable Greek or Macedonian minority. Thousands of colonists came out in the wake of Alexander and most of them stayed. There are Greek speakers all the way to India. Parthia is not an empire just comprising Persians, Medes and Assyrians; there are many different peoples and all owe allegiance to the King of Kings, who, incidentally, is the son of the previous incumbent, Vorones, and a Greek concubine.’

  ‘They get everywhere, the Greeks,’ Magnus said, shaking his head in disapproval.

  ‘What have you got against the Greeks?’

  ‘What, apart from being liars and cheats with an uncommon desire to be buggered and a penchant for sleeping with close relatives?’

  ‘Yes, apart from all that.’

  ‘Well, nothing, I suppose, other than the fact that Pallas and Narcissus are both Greek and look at how much trouble they’ve piled upon us in their lives. Tryphaena turns out to be Greek and it would seem that she’s responsible for us being, without any obvio
us allies, in the middle of the Parthian Empire, which is ruled by some bastard who happens to be half-Greek. Do you want me to go on?’

  ‘No, no, fair enough; fucking Greeks, eh? Anyway, what we have to remember is that most Greeks are completely loyal to the regime …’

  ‘As loyal as any Greek can be, you mean?’

  ‘Yes, and as such it would be best not to let on that we’re Romans even to a Greek.’

  ‘Especially to a Greek; he’d sell that information faster than his sister once he’d taken her virginity. Did you hear about the Greek who took his new bride back to her family because he found out on their wedding night that she was a virgin?’

  Vespasian frowned. ‘No.’

  ‘Well, he did, telling them that if she wasn’t good enough for her brothers then she wasn’t good enough for him.’

  Vespasian laughed, long and loud; at first it was at the joke but then it became much more about the joy of freedom.

  It was truly magnificent. Walls of stone, painted blue and yellow, decorated with animal motifs and studded with towers soaring to the sky, encasing a city almost the size of Rome; and that was just on the east bank of the Tigris. On the west bank, just before the river split in two to pass either side of a fortified island, there was another city, less old, set out in a grid pattern: Seleucia, the former capital of the Macedonian Seleucid Kingdom, built just over three centuries before. Equally as impressive in scale but without the painted walls, Seleucia’s ordered streets made it feel like it was purpose built; whereas the higgledy-piggledy maze of Ctesiphon’s layout showed a city that had grown slowly from nothing over the centuries. These two monuments to human achievement sat half a mile apart, either side of the Tigris, swarming with life, feeding off the great river that at the same time joined and separated them. Crafts of all sizes ploughed through the gently flowing water, browned by sewage, back and forth between the two cities as they supported each other in a symbiotic relationship of trade.