She returned to the wellhead. The troglodytes were good diggers, and they had excavated a grave of some depth. As she joined them, Flaminius and one of their number was lowering Amasis’ body into the dark hole.
‘There are people coming,’ she reported.
Flaminius looked up, pained. ‘Let them come,’ he said, flinging a clod of earth down into the grave. ‘You go, if you want to,’ he added generously, as the troglodytes added their own earth.
‘You know I can’t,’ she said coldly. ‘I understand your grief…’
‘His spirit will haunt us if we don’t bury him,’ Flaminius told her.
She stared at him. This wasn’t the Tiro she knew, always so scornful of the gods and the supernatural. She wondered if it was a ruse. But to what purpose? It seemed that Flaminius’ own spirit was broken.
She couldn’t leave him. Oh, not for the sake of any finer feelings. But she had no chance of survival, alone and on the run in a hostile desert land. She would find safety in numbers, or at least so she hoped.
With a sigh, she joined the others at the graveside.
Shortly afterwards, they were making their way out from the narrow strip of farm lands, entering the rocky plains that ended in the lea of the great cliffs. Behind them, in the distance, the walled city was again noisy with life. Chariots had been seen. Patrols would be out looking for them.
On the edge of the plain they found a scene of devastation, the aftermath of the battle; fallen corpses, broken gear, smashed chariots, dead horses, all picked over by scavengers. Vultures flew away squawking to circle overhead, desert foxes slunk away only to return to their feeding as the small group hurried on. Human scavengers were also visible, picking over the field for what they could find, but there was no sign of warriors. They must still be in the city, or searching the farmland for fugitives.
But it was an uneasy journey, out there in the sand and rocks. They were conspicuous, however much they ducked behind rocks, visible for miles to Dido’s mind, and their trail was clearly indicated by the circling vultures. They reached the foot of the cliffs as the sun was setting.
Looking back, they could see no sign of pursuit, but chariots were still visible in places in the farmland. Perhaps the Garamantes had not thought they would be so suicidal as to run off into the barren rocks. Or perhaps they feared these hills. This was where the troglodytes lived, Flaminius had said. Unwary Garamantes might have an unpleasant surprise.
Halfway up a narrow defile they found a cave out of sight of the plain and settled in it for the night. The troglodytes used the withered branches of a small tree to start a fire, and two of them caught snakes among the rocks. Snake meat was much like gamy guinea fowl, Dido discovered, although she had no desire to eat it in future.
In the morning, the troglodytes were gone. ‘Out hunting?’ she asked Flaminius hopefully.
He shook his head. ‘They’ve returned to their kingdom of the caves, Troglodyte City,’ he said. ‘Joined up with Menander’s army. I should think a revolution is imminent in the troglodyte realm, even if King Gulussa has clung on to power in Garama.’
‘We’re not going to be involved, are we?’ Dido asked.
Flaminius shook his head. ‘This is where we part ways with our friends,’ he said. ‘They left us meat.’ He showed her the carcases of an orangetail lizard and three snakes, including a horned viper. ‘It’s just their way of saying thank you,’ he said with an affable smile.
Dido studied him. Flaminius seemed to have recovered his wits this morning. She had found his behaviour yesterday disturbing, not that it had been a surprise. He had buried a boy he was fond of, who had meant something to him. It had left its mark. But after sleep and food of sorts his wits seemed no longer to be wandering.
It was not the fact that he had feared the anger of Amasis’ spirit that had troubled her; she understood such fear. She believed in ghosts, gods and much else. It was the fact that it was him, of all people. She had never known him show any kind of fear, and he had always been scornful of the supernatural.
She herself believed in it devoutly. And yet…
‘What now?’ she asked. ‘We’re hunted by the Garamantes. Your friends the troglodytes are fighting amongst themselves...’
‘This mission is now aborted,’ said Flaminius. ‘Time to return to civilisation.’
Hanging the snake carcases from his belt, he led her up the rocky defile and out into the bleak hill country. Nothing lived here except snakes and lizards, it seemed; even the troglodytes dwelt in hidden valleys further away. The silence was like a palpable thing, crushing the two tiny figures with its weight as they plodded through bleak, barren immensity beneath a blazing sun.
They were travelling east along the ridge of rocky hills, in the direction of Talgae and the black mountains, when they encountered travellers as lonely as themselves. Keeping to the rocky defiles meant avoiding the busy trade routes where there was a chance of being seen and recognised as fugitives, although neither Flaminius nor Dido had more than a vague idea of where they were going. But at least they were alone, and sometimes they even had food to eat, snakes that Flaminius caught at some risk, and brackish water to drink from occasional water holes in the rocks. But they were steadily weakening.
Turning a corner they saw that they had company.
Hurrying across the rocks were two figures, one overweight and panting, the other young and sleek, though both showed the stains of travel. As Flaminius and Dido appeared, the bigger one turned to glare at them, then increased its efforts to escape, leaning upon its companion for support.
‘Melanthus,’ Flaminius called out. ‘Your majesty, it’s an honour to meet you again.’
Dido glance at him in surprise. ‘You know this man?’
Melanthus and his female companion came to a halt, and turned to watch their approach.
‘What is it you want?’ the troglodyte tyrant asked. ‘I send you out to levy tribute from my unruly subjects, and what happens? My brother turns up out of the desert and leads that army you trained so well to banish me from my own kingdom!’
Dido followed Flaminius down to meet them. The girl who was helping the portly figure eyed her, and clicked her tongue at her disapprovingly. Flaminius laughed.
‘And where are you going now?’ he asked. ‘To raise another army?’
Melanthus sat down on a rock. ‘Can you help me?’ he pleaded. ‘Can you help me raise a new army? I would go to Alexandria, where I lived in my youth. I will offer all the riches of my kingdom to anyone who will fight for me…’
‘Empty promises.’ Flaminius shook his head. ‘You’re a dreamer, Melanthus,’ he said disparagingly. ‘I met your brother—in fact, I’ve known him for a while. You had him sold into slavery because you thought he threatened your power.’
‘He did!’ said Melanthus in outrage. ‘He did threaten my power! He was a coward when he ruled, and he was justly ousted from his throne. I had him sold into slavery because it was better that he did not return and cause trouble. I could have had him killed, of course, but I did not want it said that I had a brother’s blood upon my hands… And now he turns up out of nowhere at the head of the army you trained, and casts me out of my kingdom. Says my citizens would rather take their chances in the mountains of the south. He can go all the way to Agysimba for all I care. It is my city, and I shall rule it!’
‘Rule what?’ Flaminius asked. ‘Rocks? Sand? Menander will lead your former subjects to a better place, where they are not preyed upon by the Garamantes. No one wants you to rule them.’
Melanthus’ brows contracted in a scowl. ‘It was you who brought this about,’ he said accusingly. ‘I offered up the hospitality of my caves and my people. You could have had any woman you wanted, and as much lizard meat as you liked. But you chose to betray me.’
‘Is this true?’ said Dido. ‘Tiro, by Ceres, what have you been up to?’
Melanthus rose painfully to his feet, gesturing at his woman, who helped him. He shuffled ro
und to face Flaminius. ‘I go now, but you have not heard the last of me,’ the troglodyte declared. ‘Depart from my presence henceforth with my curse, traitor! In the name of all the gods I curse you! I curse you!’
Still cursing, he shuffled away, back the way they had come, leaning on his woman as he went.
Dido’s laugh broke the silence that fell after Melanthus vanished over the rise. ‘Was that the great tyrant of the troglodytes?’ she asked. ‘He spoke good Greek.’
Flaminius nodded. ‘He seems to have worked as a whore’s protector in Alexandria in his youth. I think the old king sent both his sons to the city to receive an education. Melanthus certainly seems to have picked up some colourful language. When he returned to his people’s land, he used his wiles to have his brother deposed and sold into slavery.’
‘Just what has been going on since you vanished from the camp?’ Dido asked. ‘Why did you go anyway?’
Flaminius gave her a dark look. ‘I overheard your plans,’ he said, and walked on.
The next day, they had no choice but to leave the increasingly impassable hills and follow the traders’ road. They were still some days’ journey from the borders of Gulussa’s kingdom. Food was more plentiful here than among the cliffs, and they found groves of date palms and an occasional oasis or irrigation channel. But they were too close to civilisation, such as it was in these parts, for comfort. It was not long before they encountered enemies.
Surrounded by warriors they were marched into a bustling camp in a small oasis off the road. Both were bleeding from a score of cuts, and were weaponless, having fought unsuccessfully for their freedom. Dido walked with her head bowed. This must be it, she thought, the end of the journey.
‘We found these wandering along the road,’ said their captor. Like the others they had fought he spoke Greek as well as Melanthus, if not better.
‘Let me look at them,’ came a familiar voice. ‘Why,’ the speaker added, ‘I think I know these fugitives. I believe there is a price on both their heads.’
‘Would you sell us to our enemies?’ Flaminius asked contemptuously.
Dido looked up. Sitting on a camp chair by a fire was an old Egyptian. Standing beside him, arms folded, was a larger, more muscular young man with a similar cast to his features. She recognised them at once as Rhampsinitus of Heliopolis and his son Sarapion. Grouped around them were the other Egyptian merchants.
As Flaminius faced Rhampsinitus defiantly across the fire, the Egyptian laughed.
‘What a disaster Claudius Mercator’s expedition was,’ he said in Greek, smirking up at his son. ‘Is this all that remains? Two bedraggled gangrels? Where is my old friend and rival?’
‘Claudius Mercator is dead, Egyptian,’ said Dido bitterly. ‘I remember you, Rhampsinitus. I remember you in the temple of Tanit. How you connived and conspired with the Garamantian king against us.’
‘Hardly,’ Rhampsinitus said with a laugh. ‘It was you who desecrated the temple, spilled blood in the sacred precincts. And then someone upset the statue! Such impiety.’
Dido hung her head.
‘They would have shed Dido’s blood in the same sacred precincts,’ Flaminius said. ‘I rescued her. They would have killed her as a spy.’
‘They are touchy about foreigners in this land,’ Rhampsinitus informed him. ‘Tricky negotiators, too. All my bargaining skills had to come to the fore, but it was well worth it.’ He opened a small coffer in which winked red stones.
‘Garamantian carbuncles,’ muttered Flaminius.
‘Yes,’ said Rhampsinitus, ‘and over there we have natron, salt, ivory, gold… All gained at a remarkably good price.’
‘What did you have to make such a profitable trade with the Garamantes?’ Flaminius asked.
‘Oh, the usual merchandise,’ Rhampsinitus said slyly. ‘Some of it worth its weight in gold. Oil, wine, glassware. But, ah, intelligence proved to be the most valuable commodity.’
‘You sold us out!’ Dido spat. ‘You told the king that we were spies!’
Rhampsinitus hooted with laughter. ‘You’re at my mercy, woman,’ he said, ‘so don’t take such a high handed tone with me! I disposed of a rival with the aid of the king of this highly sensitive country. My first plan of filling in the wells was foolish, I don’t know what I was thinking of. It was much better to follow Claudius Mercator’s new route, steal a march on you when the opportunity arose and sow the seeds of trouble for you. And you reaped a bitter harvest, it seems. Sometimes we must stoop if we would conquer. Now Phazania is mine, for trading at least. I have reopened the trading routes. I am a rich man.
‘And rich men,’ he continued, ‘can afford to be magnanimous. No, I won’t betray you to the king. To seek recompense for any trouble I have put you to, I offer you both places in my caravan guard.’
He rose.
‘It is a long journey back to the empire, and we all know how fraught it is,’ he said. ‘Due to my machinations you are fugitives in this country. Fight for me—I will return your weapons—and in return I will feed you and shelter you. And we will forget and forgive. How does that sound?’
‘It sounds like a bargain,’ said Flaminius.
That night, they were both on guard duty. Dido was unhappy.
‘Rhampsinitus feels he owes us something,’ she said. In the distance a lion coughed, but it was too far away to represent a threat. Concealed in that dark night could be all manner of perils, robbers, wild beasts, perhaps even troglodytes. ‘I think he’s wrong.’
Flaminius was astounded. ‘If you consider what that avaricious Egyptian baboon put us through with his lies to King Gulussa…’ he said. ‘Of course he owes us something! A job and a means of returning home is the least he could do.’
‘But were they lies?’ she said. ‘When he told the Garamantian king we were spies, wasn’t that the truth?’
Flaminius halted and stared at her. ‘You know full well that I’m an imperial agent,’ he said. ‘But he doesn’t know—unless you told him.’
She shook her head. ‘I told him nothing. But I know you are a spy. I was willing to denounce you to them myself. Rhampsinitus outdid me, accusing us all. But I am as much of a spy as you.’
‘I know,’ Flaminius said. ‘The Punic rebels sent you.’
‘You realised?’ She stared at him. ‘I have been working for them since I fled Egypt. No one but rebels or criminals would take me on.’
‘You denounced me as a spy because you thought I threatened your own mission,’ Flaminius observed. ‘And I would have done; we were both sent to steal the Veil of Tanit.’
‘The rebels thought it would be a rallying point, a standard for their cause,’ she said.
Flaminius nodded. ‘So did my legate.’
‘But it wasn’t there!’ she protested. ‘I will return to Carthage with a story of failure. The Veil was said to be hanging from the arms of the statue of the goddess—the one you desecrated,’ she added without rancour.
Flaminius laughed bitterly. ‘It was never there,’ he said. ‘It was nothing more than a mirage of the desert.’
‘But Claudius Mercator…’ she began.
‘The merchant confessed to me,’ he said, ‘as he lay dying. He told me that he invented the whole story. His first expedition was a failure, so he invented his story of the Veil of Tanit, made sure it was the talk of Africa, in the full knowledge that the rebels would want to possess it and the empire would want it destroyed. I think he knew who I was all along. But I don’t think he realised that you and your Nasamoneans were Punic, although it was pretty obvious to me.’
‘All a lie,’ she whispered, gazing into the desert night. ‘All a lie. All those deaths… treachery… and it was all a lie.’
‘Yes,’ said Flaminius blandly. ‘The fabulous story of a fantasist, who has paid the ultimate price for his lies.’
She flung down her spear. Flaminius said nothing. In silence he watched as she walked alone, out into the desert.
—32—
> Camp of the Twenty-Second Legion, Nicopolis, Province of Egypt, February 125 AD
Flaminius stood before Avidius Pollio’s desk, waiting in silence as the legate read his report. Wearily, he gazed out of the window at the barracks blocks outside, where a late winter sun shone down upon the fortress of the Twenty Second Legion. All was quiet and still, an air of order hanging over everything. A couple of junior tribunes walked past, chatting to each other in excitable, boastful tones. Flaminius cast his mind back to the days when he’d been a young tribune, just as brash and arrogant and insufferable, even if he had been the lowest of the low—tribune of auxiliary cavalry.
The return journey had been less fraught than Rhampsinitus had been expecting, although they had known a few clashes with nomads along the way. Nevertheless, the unprincipled Egyptian merchant had been true to his word, paying Flaminius handsomely with money advanced on the sale of the carbuncles he had bought in Garama.
It had been a lonely journey, all the same. Flaminius had ridden much of the way sunk in his own thoughts, not wishing to join in the conversations of the merchants. His previous journey had been a particularly luckless one, and he was oppressed by a weariness of spirit that had haunted him until he reached the oasis of Ammon, where he offered a plump wether to Jupiter Ammon in thanksgiving to the god. It had been as the diviner had prophesied: only one had returned. What had happened to Dido Flaminius didn’t know for certain, but everyone else who had set out on that ill-starred journey had died as surely as the hapless Gaul who stole Tanit’s veil all those years ago.
The caravan of Rhampsinitus returned to Alexandria late in the evening. The streets were quiet, and after they reached the Egyptian’s warehouses down by the canal, and the merchandise was unloaded and stored safely, Flaminius felt impatient to leave. As soon as possible he took his pay from Rhampsinitus’ scribe, and made his way through the streets.
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