‘No sign of Claudius Mercator or Vabalathus,’ Flaminius commented at the end of the search. ‘And most of the Nasamoneans are missing.’
‘Maybe they’re buried deep in the sand,’ said Dido.
‘Or maybe they recovered earlier,’ Flaminius said, ‘and continued. We may find them if we hurry. Let’s hope we meet them on the way to the green fields of the Garamantian country.’
But the following day they found themselves in a landscape like the back hills of Hell.
—8—
Libyan Desert, Al Harūj al Aswad, 6th December 124 AD
After a day’s journey, Flaminius was no longer disorientated. Unless the sun no longer rose in the east in this eerie region, he knew where all the cardinal points lay. They were heading south-south-west again, in the hopes that this would bring them to Phazania and Garama, when they found their way blocked by a wide expanse of cinders and blackened rock, from the midst of which rose mountainous black cones of rock.
It stretched into the distance, where a heat haze hung shimmering in the air. Already they had encountered illusory expanses of blue amidst the sands that had seemed like great lakes. For a while Flaminius wondered if this new sight was not another mirage, if less pleasing on the eye.
‘Looks like the pits of Tartarus.’ He remembered the countryside near his friend Karus’ villa, the tortured blackened ground at the foot of Mount Vesuvius. ‘Or the floors of the forge of Vulcan, when the Cyclopes have been slacking on the sweeping up.’
Dido turned to him, eyes wide. ‘We can’t be expected to cross this,’ she said. ‘We must be on the wrong road.’
‘This was the direction in which Claudius Mercator was leading us,’ Demetrius commented. ‘Ergo, we must continue in this direction.’
‘But no caravan trail would go this way,’ Dido said. ‘The sand was difficult enough, but this—it’s like the floor of a furnace.’
A distant wind stirred up dust devils of ash.
‘The cosmos is a place of balance and harmony,’ Demetrius said as if addressing a lecture hall, ignoring the unending waste of blackened earth. ‘In the far north it is cold, and the ground is frozen for much of the year; in the remote south, northern cold is counterbalanced by extreme heat.’ He gestured at the burnt ground. ‘Here the heat, perhaps of the sun, has burnt so fiercely that the ground is charred and blackened.’
What Demetrius said made scientific sense, and fitted the facts as Flaminius knew them: in the north was Drustica, cold and proud, while in the south was Dido, sultry and tempestuous.
‘It reminds me of the old story of Phaethon,’ he said, ‘the sun god’s boy, who rode out in his father’s chariot and made such a hash of it he burnt up much of the earth. The lesson to this story,’ he added, with a meaningful look at Amasis, who was paying no attention, ‘is that youth should pay attention to its elders and betters.’
‘What’s that, Uncle Gaius?’ the boy asked, glancing up. Without waiting for an answer, he added, ‘Do we have to cross this?’
Dido was decisive. ‘No,’ she said. ‘We have to go round.’ She looked at Flaminius. ‘I don’t know what this is, Vulcan’s forge, Phaethon’s funeral pyre or what. The Nasamoneans didn’t mention this place. But we can’t be expected to cross it.’
Flaminius pursed his lips. ‘Demetrius says that our direction lies straight across.’
Dido shook her head. ‘Impossible. We go round it.’
As if it was settled, she turned and began marching southwards. With a look of dismay at the others, Flaminius followed her. Casting uncertain glances around them, the Greek scholar and the Egyptian youth brought up the rear.
But getting around Phaethon’s funeral pyre proved very difficult. After a day of following the edges of the great expanse of ash it became clear that it extended south for many miles, just as it stretched westward seemingly forever. As the sun set, they built a fire against the night chill using dried camel dung brought for the purpose and some scrubby brushwood collected along the way. During the journey, Dido had brought down an antelope that had been grazing on vegetation that grew incredibly amid the field of cinders, and they skinned and gutted this to cook it on the embers of their own fire.
‘We’re getting nowhere,’ Flaminius said after the meal was over. It was very dark, except for the glow of the fire and the sheen of starlight from the constellations that leapt extravagantly across the clear desert sky. Demetrius had gone to sleep. Amasis was perched on a hillock of sand nearby, supposedly on guard duty during the first watches of the night; although when Flaminius had last gone to check him, he was curled up and snoring.
Now it was only Flaminius and Dido. No mention had been made of their lovemaking during the storm. The threat of death sometimes caused women—and men—to act irrationally. To make one last attempt to create new life before Death came for them. Or had she always desired him, and had it been her last wish to sleep with him? They had grown close when they fought together as gladiators; and later, when she and Maccabeus had led him through the Nile Delta to the rebels’ stronghold, she had pretty much thrown herself at him. He’d forgotten about it, what with everything that had happened since.
The fire lit her large limbs with its orange glow, and struck highlights on her face, but her eyes were in shadow as he regarded her.
She poked the fire awkwardly. ‘Looks like it’s just us now,’ she said. ‘I…’
‘I…’ he began, interrupting her inadvertently. They both halted, and laughed. ‘Go on,’ he told her.
She shook her head. ‘No, you,’ she said.
‘I was just going to say that circumstances could be better,’ he said with a laugh. ‘Why is it always like this between us?’ He patted the sand. ‘Come and sit here,’ he said.
To his partial surprise, she came over obediently and sat heavily beside him. ‘At least it’s drier than the Delta mud,’ she said, flinging a big arm round his shoulder. ‘What are you doing here, Tiro?’
A little bashfully, he slipped an arm round her waist. ‘Just my work,’ he said.
She nodded, and asked no more. She leant her head against his and together they watched the flickering of the flames. A desert vixen screamed somewhere out in the darkness. A night breeze was blowing. Flaminius could smell the stench of ash in the air, coming from the black hills.
‘You work for the emperor,’ she said thoughtfully.
He turned his head and pressed his lips to her forehead. ‘I told you that, didn’t I?’ he whispered. ‘I thought you were dying, in that camp in the swamps.’
‘I survived,’ she said, reaching up to caress his face. ‘I’m a survivor, Tiro. Yes, you told me, though I knew already. But why did an imperial agent join a doomed expedition into the desert?’
She sat up, pushing him from her a little. ‘Because it is doomed,’ she added. ‘We only have water for three more days’ journey, if we ration it scrupulously. We’ve seen no sign of water as we skirted this expanse of ash, and surely there’s no water among those blackened hills.’
‘But it could be that Phazania is on the other side,’ Flaminius said. ‘It could be that if we go straight across, we’ll reach the Garamantian kingdom. And that is an oasis that leaves Ammonium and Augila in the shade, by all accounts. So I say we forge on across that devastation, instead of circling the edges. It’s said to be twenty two days’ journey from Augila to Garama, and although we’ve gone astray since the sandstorm, we had travelled about half that before disaster struck. I say we go straight over.’ He didn’t mention that the calculation was based on a group on horse- or camelback, and they would be walking.
She didn’t question it, to his relief, but instead looked thoughtful. She said nothing for a while. They sat close. He caressed her hair but she shook her head, shook him from her.
‘You don’t suggest the obvious solution,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘To go back. However close we may be to Garama, we could be sure of water at least in Augila. Perhaps we could hire more Nasamoneans ther
e, if we could find any desperate enough to join us.’
Flaminius shook his head. ‘I don’t think we should go back,’ he said. ‘It would waste time.’ He sighed. ‘I think I can trust you,’ he added. ‘I’m not here to finance any caravan—good thing too, since it seems to have foundered…’
‘I know the emperor sent you,’ she said.
Flaminius laughed. ‘I doubt the august Publius Aelius Hadrian has a clue about what half his operatives are up to,’ he said, ‘but yes, I was sent on a mission for the empire. I have to get to Garama.’ Haltingly, he explained. She listened in silence.
‘Very well, Tiro,’ she said. ‘In that case, it would be futile to return to Augila. And it would be futile to skirt this area in the hopes of finding a way round. We go across. And unless we can find sweet water amid all that ash, let us hope the Garamantian kingdom is no more than three days’ journey away. Otherwise that plain of ash and rock will be our burying ground.’
A little later Flaminius took over the watch from Amasis, who went to sleep in the more comfortable situation of the campfire. The Roman sat up on the hillock listening to the night noises of the desert and pondering. Claudius Mercator’s caravan had been more disastrous than most. He remembered the words of the diviner in Ammonium. Only one of you will return… Already they were down to four. And if he insisted they travel on, some of them might die of thirst amid ashy hills, others might be killed by the Garamantes if they reached the other side. Only one would return! Would Demetrius of Oxyrhynchus die? Would Amasis? Flaminius hoped not. Would Dido die?
Or would he?
He couldn’t die. He had to get through to the temple in Garama, steal the veil, and then make the return journey. A pretty tall order, even he had to admit. Right now, getting to the temple seemed beyond hope. As for getting back into the empire—maybe the diviner was right. All but one of them would die. But which one?
The next day, Dido woke him. She had taken the last watch, and she seemed weary when she shook him awake. Amasis and Demetrius were both up, Amasis bouncing around full of life and energy, Demetrius complaining about his sciatica. They ate cold smoked gazelle meat then packed and prepared for the journey.
‘Dido agrees with me that the best approach is to go straight across the ash,’ Flaminius told the other two. ‘It seems likely that the Garamantian kingdom lies on the other side.’
‘That would make sense,’ said Demetrius, head shaking as if denying his own words. ‘The kingdom is cut off from all other lands. If rough country like this surrounds it, no wonder. I seem to recall some reference to black mountains in the account of Cornelius Balbus’ expedition.’
‘There, what did I tell you?’ Flaminius said, almost shaking with relief, rounding on Dido. She grinned.
‘But that can’t be right,’ the scholar added doubtfully. ‘Cornelius Balbus and his men came from the north, from Leptis Magna. They marched due south, rather than west from Egypt. These can’t be the mountains he mentions.’
Flaminius’ heart sank, but he said, ‘Still, we can take it as a good sign. Come on, we’d better start. We only have three days’ water left.’
The ashy ground crunched beneath their feet as they began the journey. The blackened rock piled up on every hand, great slopes of black basalt with gritty sand lying between them. They tried to keep to the sandy stretches, but frequently had to clamber across stretches of basalt, or even thread their way through a bewildering labyrinth of defiles in the black rock, its walls higher than Flaminius’ head.
They drew close to one of the cones, which reared hundreds of cubits above them. It looked much like Vesuvius, as Flaminius remembered the mountain from his visits to Baiae, although it was somewhat smaller. But while Vesuvius was but one extrusion of Vulcan’s realm amid pleasant vineyards and olive groves, this was an ashy pimple on a vast skin of similar excrescences.
At Amasis’ suggestion, they climbed partway up the cone, leaving Demetrius guarding their scanty provisions. The Egyptian boy galloped ahead up the grey, gritty slope.
‘We should be able to see the far side if we climb high enough,’ Flaminius panted as he and Dido followed the boy. She nodded, too breathless to answer.
But when they reached a flattish ledge some way up the side, halting for breath, all they saw was endless black rock and ash stretching towards the distant shimmering horizon. The sun blazed down upon the burnt ground from an empty sky, and Flaminius’ throat was dry. Black mountains broke the monotony of basalt, but served only to make the alien landscape seem all the bleaker, all the more hellish. A smell of brimstone hung in the unmoving air. It seemed like the end of the world.
Dido brushed sweat from her eyes. ‘Any sign of the other side?’ she asked.
Flaminius shook his head wordlessly, and led them back down the mountainside.
They rested in the shade of the cone until the afternoon, and continued when it was cooler. All that could be heard was the crunch-crunch-crunch of their feet in gritty sand. All that could be seen was mile upon mile of ash and basalt, broken up by the very occasional acacia. No breeze stirred the air or cooled their skin, and the stink of brimstone grew stronger the further they went.
They camped in a hollow where sparse grass and other vegetation grew. From somewhere came the distant gurgling of a stream, but Flaminius was too listless and dispirited to suggest they look for it. The smell of brimstone told him that any water they found would be undrinkable.
They had barely enough left in the water skin to wet their mouths on awaking. The sun seemed fiercer today than yesterday, and the rocks they had to cross were hot enough to burn. The desolation stretched to the horizon. They had to keep on walking, keep on until they reached the land of the Garamantes. But how long would it take on foot? Would they run out of water? Would they be forced to drink from the sulphurous pools dotted about the hollows in the rock?
On the morning of the third day, Flaminius climbed a hillock and looked west to see that there was no end to the black desert. Dark mountains fanged the edge of the sky, and between these voracious teeth extended wastes of ash and basalt. Nothing stirred in this barren, lifeless expanse. Not even a vulture was visible in the blue skies.
They had barely any food, and the water was running out. What vulture would waste its time picking the skin and bones they would leave when they died in this endless wasteland?
Something made him look back. Perhaps it was to assess their chances of returning to the wholesome desert from which they had come. There had been game there for the hunting, and perhaps water among the rocks that was not poisonous with sulphur… He halted, and put his hand to shield his eyes. He stood there a long time, watching.
‘What can you see, Tiro?’
He glanced down to see Dido standing in the ashy hollow. ‘Dust,’ he said, flapping tiredly towards the horizon. ‘A column of dust in the far distance.’
Her face fell. ‘Another sandstorm?’
He shook his head. ‘More like another caravan. But far away. Far, far away. Too far to help us.’
Amasis joined them. Even the Egyptian youth looked weary and dispirited.
‘How far is it to the other side?’ he complained. ‘You said three days.’
Flaminius gritted his teeth. ‘I see no sign of any end,’ he admitted.
This was all his fault. Would even one of them return to fulfil the diviner’s prophecy? It would be none of the people in his party. And who else had survived the sandstorm?
Amasis pointed at the nearest mountain. ‘We should climb up there,’ he said. ‘You can’t hope to see anything from that little rock.’
Flaminius tried to argue. It would be a waste of effort, he explained to the boy. They couldn’t waste their flagging energies on futile endeavours. But Dido agreed, and so did Demetrius when he joined them.
In the end, of course, it was Flaminius himself who ascended the cone on his own. No sense in them all risking their necks.
Halfway up the cliff, he reached a narrow led
ge that ran around the mountainside. Here he halted, exhausted with the exertion and the endless heat, and paused for a rest.
As he did so, he must have dislodged something, because with a clattering smack, a heavy object bounced down to land on a narrower ledge, level with his eyes.
It was a skull. A human skull.
Flaminius gazed into the face of Death, and Death grinned back derisively.
He looked up. On a higher ledge he could see a scatter of bone, very white against the black basalt. Looking back down the slope he saw the tiny dots of his three companions far below him, clustered together protectively like frightened children. They were the only specks of life in a vast, harsh landscape that rolled endlessly towards every horizon. He leant his forehead against the hot basalt and closed his eyes.
‘That’s it, then,’ he found himself saying, in tones of strange relief. ‘It’s all over. We’ll die in this place.’
There was a clatter of footsteps and something blotted out the heat of the sun. A voice said, ‘So there you are. We were wondering when you would catch up with us. You can see Phazania’s borders from higher up this peak. What was that you were saying, sir?’
—9—
Libyan Desert, Al Harūj al Aswad, 10th December 124 AD
Pushing himself upwards, away from the rock, Flaminius turned to see Menander’s dark, bearded face gazing at him from further down the ledge. Claudius Mercator’s taciturn Ethiopian body slave was clad in sand- and salt-crusted rags, his face was drawn and gaunt, but otherwise he looked no different from when Flaminius had last seen him. But he must have spoken more in the last moment than at any point since Flaminius had met him.
Flaminius looked about in surprise. ‘Where did you come from?’ he asked. ‘I thought you must have died in the sandstorm. How did you get here?’
The Kingdom That Rome Forgot Page 7