But what about Ballista? He would go mad – literally, mad – if he found out. Was he likely to? The slaves and freedmen of the imperial bedchamber would know. Ballista was highly unlikely to be talking to them. The story might spread amongst the Praetorians, if the two in the corridor had recognized her or one of the imperial servants named her in their hearing. That was far more dangerous; Ballista was one of their commanders. There was nothing she could do about that.
A sickening thought hit Julia. After abducting and raping their wives, the emperor Caligula used to enjoy an over-dinner discussion of their performance with their husbands. Might Quietus gloat in the same way? At first, before he had resorted to threats, when it was still oily seduction, he had tried to encourage her by saying that no one need know – it would be their secret. How much faith could be put in that?
When summoned to the dinner party, Julia had taken only one maid with her. Anthia was loyal. She would not talk. They could slip back into their own apartment. The rest of her household need not know.
Another sickening thought broke over Julia like a wave. Was she in some way to blame? Why had she taken only one maid? Had she been expecting it? Had she been already limiting the witnesses, or almost inciting the rape by her lack of care?
Of course it was not her own fault. She dismissed the disgusting idea with the ingrained self-control of her senatorial background. She had feared what might happen from the moment she had been ordered to dwell in the imperial palace while her husband was away. She had not shared her fears with Ballista. His barbarian nature would have driven him to spontaneous and disastrous actions. Daughters of the senatorial nobility of Rome did not give way to emotions; the icy self-control did not slip.
And when at last it was over, when Quietus put out the lamps and straight away fell asleep, why had she merely got dressed in the dark and left? Quietus had been lying on his back, naked, exhausted and defenceless. There must have been something that could have been used as a weapon somewhere in the room. He was unconscious. Why had she not tried to kill him?
Of course she knew the reason: she would have been caught and executed. The children would have lost her, possibly suffered themselves. Even as she framed the thoughts, she knew they were not the real reasons. She had been too shocked and scared to act. She had behaved exactly as a Roman man would expect a woman to behave. Unlike at the fall of Antioch, she had been weak, timorous, irresolute. Her behaviour disgusted her. Her disgust encompassed the world. This world created by men, this imperium, was an unfair world.
They were now at the side door, the one that led straight to Julia’s private rooms. Anthia was waiting, clearly expecting her to say something. No words came. At last Julia spoke: ‘I am no Luctretia. I must protect my children. Tell no one. This must be our secret.’
The waves, driven by the continual south-westerly, crashed and boomed against the harbour defences of Sebaste, the name given to the port area of Caesarea Maritima. Calgacus had walked the southern breakwater, followed it when it dog-legged to the north, all the way to the big lighthouse at the end. High on the battlements, the late-spring sun was warm on his shoulders. Calgacus remembered the bitter cold of that night back in the winter when he had nearly died on a Galilean hillside. Gods, but it was good to be warm and alive; a free man with time on his hands. He looked around.
To his left, out to sea, the lines of white-topped water rolled in relentlessly. One after another, they thundered against the rocks at the foot of the mole. The spray flew high, jewelled in the sunshine. They were powerful, these waves, but there was no malice in them. They might kill you, but only in an absence of mind. Unlike a winter storm, they would mean nothing by it.
To the Caledonian’s right, the port was busy. Out in the road-stead, three big merchantmen were being taken in tow by open rowing boats. The first of them was already being drawn into the narrow, north-facing harbour mouth between the pharos where Calgacus stood and the harbour master’s house at the tip of the other breakwater. Inside, another six or seven large roundships were tied to the several jetties. There were many more small coasting vessels or local fishing boats at rest or moving. Away in the innermost basin, an imperial trireme was moored.
It was good the port was busy. According to local reckoning, the sailing season began eleven days before the ides of March, the day marked by the two festivals of the birthday of the Tyche of Caesarea and the coming to the water of the goddess Isis to bless the sailors. That day had long passed. Now, just ten days before the kalends of June, even the most cautious would have to admit that the time when the seas could be sailed with some safety was fast approaching. It was good the port was busy, for, with the imperium divided into three, attacked on every frontier, and with civil war between the forces of Gallienus and those of Macrianus being fought out in the Balkans, nothing was certain.
Calgacus supposed he should be doing something, but there was no great urgency. Ballista, Maximus and the troops were away on their final mission in Syria Palestina. This task had no particular target, being no more than an armed march through Galilee as a show of strength. No opposition was expected. It was not so much that all the previous missions throughout the winter and spring, and the many they had killed, had destroyed the opposition as the fact the locals knew they were leaving. Why attack a dangerous enemy who is about to withdraw anyway?
The whole thing seemed futile to Calgacus. The Jews were united in their hostility to Roman rule. The Jewish brigands or rebels – how was one to tell them apart? – if they did not want to fight, they just merged back into the population. It was quite clear that no Jewish patriarch would hand over to the Romans even the most bloodstained murderer. The whole thing was a complete kick of the arse to nothing.
In two or three days, the expedition would return. Calgacus and the new secretary Hippothous had been left behind to put their affairs in Caesarea in order. Apart from a couple of minor things, they had done so. As soon as he was back, Ballista wanted to be free to march north, to Antioch and his family. Calgacus knew Ballista was worried about his familia living in the imperial palace.
Calgacus wondered what kind of reception they could look forward to in general. Macrianus father and son were in the west. Quietus, the only member of the imperial house in Antioch, particularly hated Ballista. Throughout his campaign in Galilee, Ballista had continuously ignored one detail of his imperial mandata. He had always spared the male children – only selling them into slavery, rather than killing them.
Soft-hearted, Ballista had always been soft-hearted, ever since he was a child, thought Calgacus. Still, it was part of his humanitas. That hard-to-define quality – it was part of what made Calgacus love him and, very strangely, it seemed to be part of what made rough, violent men follow him.
Calgacus was pleased that Ballista had taken the small Jewish boy he had rescued from the cave at Arbela into his household. Simon-bar-Joshua, he was called. Simon was a good-natured boy. Ballista had bought a young Jewess to look after him. Calgacus was pleased with that too. There was something about the way Rebecca moved, something about the look in her eye, that made you think what she would do for a man she liked. Calgacus felt a familiar stirring. But it was not at all the right moment. It was not yet noon. Almost all the brothels would still be shut. The one he liked, out by the north harbour, very reasonably priced, would certainly not be open.
To break his run of thoughts, Calgacus looked around, taking in the whole city. Caesarea Maritima: the dream of the old Jewish king Herod, the one they called the Great. Ballista had told Calgacus about Herod. A right murderous bastard he had been. Killed his relatives at the drop of a handkerchief. Put several of his sons to the sword at the merest whisper of suspicion. But he had been a political survivor. Having left it almost too late to abandon Mark Antony, he had spent the rest of his life cultivating the favour of his conqueror, the first emperor Augustus. Herod had called this new town Caesarea. Its port district was Sebaste, the Greek for ‘Augustus’. The lighthou
se above Calgacus’s head was named after one of Augustus’s stepsons, Drusus. Out beyond the harbour mouth, on two huge concrete bases rising from the seabed, six fine columns supported larger-than-life statues of Augustus and five of his close family. Inland, dominating the town and the harbour on its enormous manmade podium, was Herod’s temple to the goddess Roma and the god Augustus. Its red-tiled roof and white columns were visible miles out to sea: no one could miss that.
All those ostentatious proofs of loyalty had kept Herod on his throne. But they had not shielded the Jewish client king from the sharp tongue of the first Roman emperor: ‘I would rather be Herod’s pig than his son.’
Calgacus decided to walk back along the quayside. Sometimes it was pleasant to walk unarmed through a peaceful crowd. It made a change, gave a teasing glimpse of how life might be different. Calgacus had no weapons on him, except the small knife at his belt – and, of course, the one always hidden in his right boot. He pulled his broad-brimmed travelling hat down on his head to keep off the sun. He whistled, tuneless but cheerful.
It was quite busy down on the waterfront. Bales, barrels, sacks and amphorae were dotted about as stevedores loaded produce from inland farms and unloaded more exotic goods from further afield. As you walked, you had to keep an eye out for the dockers in their leather harnesses hauling vessels into the right berths by sheer physical strength. Here and there at the back of the quay stood a few girls. They were of an age, not all that attractive. It was the cheaper end of the market; they were waiting for sailors for whom the voyage had been long. Such urgent needs would be taken care of standing in the inadequate privacy of one of the empty warehouses. All in all, there was more than enough to keep the telones busy. Whores paid taxes like merchants and everyone else.
It was the empty warehouses that got Calgacus thinking. Some were boarded up because they were clearly unsafe. In places, the whole edifice of the breakwater had shifted, tilting outwards, cracking the quayside, weakening the roofs and walls of the buildings. In other places, the warehouses had been shut because the berths in front of them had silted up so much that big seagoing ships could not tie up there. But others had no such physical reasons to be closed. Only a fall in trade could account for it. When you looked, there were many more mooring places than there were boats.
As he strolled along, Calgacus found himself smiling. If Ballista were here, the boy would be busy calculating the best way to repair the breakwater, dredge the harbour, how much it would all cost. Calgacus, on the other hand, did not give a fuck. He liked looking at ships, but the people of Caesarea Maritima were nothing to him. As far as he was concerned, they could all go to Hades; fuck them.
As he walked past the inner basin, Calgacus saw a crowd at the top of the steps to the temple of Roma and Augustus. The sun on his back and the sight of the girls on the dockside, even though they were not that good-looking, had rekindled his urge. It would be an extravagance to have a girl at midday just on a whim. He would definitely want one tonight, and to pay for two in a day was too much. For distraction, he climbed the steps to see what was happening.
A military awards ceremony was taking place. The governor Achaeus sat on a curule chair in front of the temple. He was backed by his consilium, including the miserable-faced senator Astyrius. The governor himself was beaming. Presumably, handing out awards and promotions to those who had done well in the campaign against his Jewish subjects was congenial to him.
Off to one side, smiling in the sunshine, stood a crowd of those who had already received their awards. Calgacus thought it typical, in this as in almost everything in Rome: what you got was as much determined by who you were as what you had done. In the imperium, the social order had to be seen to be maintained.
First, towards the bottom of the steps, were those of lower rank. They proudly sported different awards: phalerae, the metal discs attached to their chest armour; torques around their necks; and armillae on their wrists. Above them stood a smaller group, with decorations available to all ranks. These men wore crowns on their heads; of oak leaf if they had saved another citizen’s life, of gold for other acts of conspicuous courage. At the top, nearest to the governor and the military standards, were those of the rank of centurion or higher. Most of them grasped the ornamental spears in precious metals deemed suitable awards for brave officers. Just two wore the Corona Muralis, the mural crown. Few officers were first over the wall of an enemy position; fewer still lived to receive the crown with its golden walls. Ballista has one of those, thought Calgacus.
The ceremony had moved on from awards to promotions. Calgacus leant against a column to watch. Strangely, on a cloudless spring day, the stone was wet to the touch. Drops of condensation like tears ran down the fluted shaft of the column.
The herald announced the first promotion. A vacancy having arisen in Legio X Fretensis, according to the order of seniority, the optio Marcus Aurelius Marinus was to be awarded the rank of centurion. His years of distinguished service, good birth and adequate means fitted him for the duty.
A well-built, soldierly figure, Marinus stepped forward.
Up on the tribunal, Achaeus was all ready to hand over the vine-switch, symbol of the rank of centurion.
Just as Marinus came before the governor, unexpectedly, another man emerged from the ranks.
‘Dominus,’ he called up the steps. Everyone was silent at this interruption.
‘By old-established laws, Marinus is debarred from holding rank in the Roman army. He is a Christian. He will not sacrifice to the emperors. By order of seniority, the post of centurion belongs to me.’
For a moment, Achaeus looked bewildered, then he laughed. ‘This is not Saturnalia, soldier. Not a time for joking.’
Calgacus noticed that Marinus was standing stock-still.
‘Dominus, I am not joking,’ the soldier persisted. ‘Marinus is a Christian. He joined the disgusting sect years ago. Ask him yourself.’
Still half-smiling, wishing to brush this off as a piece of ill-timed foolery, Achaeus turned to Marinus. There was something about the unnatural stillness of the optio that made the governor pause.
‘Is … is it true?’
Marinus’s jaw started working. He seemed to be reciting something under his breath. He drew a big, slightly ragged breath.
‘I am a Christian.’
There was a collective gasp from the audience. A buzz of conversation flew up.
‘Silence!’ The herald had to bellow. ‘Silence!’
‘I am a Christian,’ Marinus said again, a little louder.
‘Nonsense,’ said Achaeus. The governor still looked puzzled. ‘Do not be ridiculous. How can you be? Soldiers have to worship the standards and the imperial portraits at least once a year.’
‘I have sinned. God will be my judge.’
‘You have a distinguished war record. Christians do not kill.’
‘I have sinned. God will be my judge.’ Marinus repeated the phrase as if drugged.
Achaeus looked flustered. This scandal, treasonous and divisive, was not at all what he wanted for this ceremony.
‘Marinus, you are not well. You have been through a hard campaign – the constant threat of death, terrible privations, constant bad weather. You are not in your right mind. I grant you three hours to reconsider. Sit and reflect quietly. Talk to men of sense.’
Marinus did not reply.
‘You are not under arrest. No one is to harass or detain you. Return here in three hours with a better answer.’
Mechanically, Marinus saluted, turned, marched down the steps and pushed into the crowd of onlookers.
Calgacus moved after him.
Marinus had turned into the agora. It was crowded. At first Calgacus could not see him. The Caledonian did nothing precipitous, nothing that would draw attention. He just strolled on, looking this way and that – a man from out of town, travelling hat on head, taking in the sights.
An eddy in the people, and there was Marinus. The optio was with another m
an: older, bearded, a civilian. The newcomer was leading Marinus by the hand, talking to him, low and earnest.
Calgacus followed. They crossed the breadth of the agora. They negotiated the many stalls selling various goods. They walked by the imposing facades of the temples of Apollo and Demeter, the shrines of Isis and Serapis, the sanctuaries of Tiberius and Hadrian.
The older man led Marinus out to the north-east. The centre of town was set out in regular, Hippodamian blocks. It was easy for Calgacus to trail them inconspicuously. He thought maybe he should become a frumentarius.
After they had been walking some time, they came to the Caporcotani Gate, which led to the Great Plain and the hills of Galilee beyond. Calgacus wondered if Marinus was going to make a run for it. But as soon as they had passed under the gate, the civilian led him off to the right into the suburbs.
Outside Herod’s wall, there was no street plan. Lanes and alleys twisted and turned. Calgacus had to keep closer, but he had no great problems staying both in touch and unnoticed.
Marinus and his companion came to an unremarkable door. They knocked and were admitted by a burly-looking man. Calgacus waited at the street corner. This was a poorish suburb. The buildings were mainly low, a bit shabby. The walls of the amphitheatre loomed over the area. Calgacus smiled. If he was right and this was a Christian meeting place, the authorities would not have to drag them far to meet their fate.
Calgacus walked to the door and knocked.
‘Yes?’ The burly man looked wary.
‘I am a Christian,’ said Calgacus.
The man just looked at him.
‘From out of town,’ added Calgagus. ‘From Ephesus, just docked.’
Still the man said nothing.
‘Appian, son of Aristides, who bore witness during the persecution under Valerian, told me where to find you.’ It was a shot in the dark that the man would have heard of the most renowned of the Christians, whom Ballista had killed while they were in Ephesus. Calgacus had no idea if Appian was likely to have known the location of the Christians’ meeting place in Caesarea. At any moment he might be needing the knife in his boot, be testing the limits of the sect’s pacifism.
Warrior of Rome III Page 24