The Last Hour: Relentless, brutal, brilliant. 24 hours in Ancient Rome

by Harry Sidebottom

  Many Batavians and the like took ridiculously inappropriate Greek and Roman names.

  Two slatternly looking women brought out olives, flatbread, and cheese.

  Ballista was hungry, and ate.

  ‘What do you think of Egyptians?’

  ‘I never served there.’

  Diomedes laughed. ‘You don’t have to go there, half the scum from the Nile are here now. A gang of them has settled on the other side of the camp; probably to be near the big Temple of Isis.’

  ‘You see them everywhere,’ another said, ‘dressed all in linen, carrying about lit lamps in broad daylight. Some of their priests walk about with their heads all covered with the mask of a dog.’

  ‘They do say they worship strange gods,’ Ballista said. ‘Monstrosities with the heads of birds and crocodiles.’ Feigned prejudice might establish some pretend bond with these men. He could not fight his way out against ten of them.

  ‘That is not the worst of it,’ Diomedes said. ‘Each of them is convinced that only the god he worships deserves to be recognised. It is not just our gods they deny, they hate each other’s. There were two towns out there, one worshipped dogs and the other fishes. They set to at a festival: faces bashed to jelly, features knocked out of true, cheeks split wide to expose the bone. Yet because there were no corpses to trample, they regarded the whole thing as mere horseplay. So they picked up stones, some got hold of swords. One poor bastard got captured. They tore him apart with their bare hands, and ate him piece by piece, all raw.’

  All around the fire shook their heads at such barbarity. Ballista recognised the story as a garbled version of one of the Satires of Juvenal.

  ‘And now they are bringing their filthy foreign ways here,’ Diomedes continued. ‘They are happy to eat people, but will they touch honest mutton or lamb? To eat onions or leeks is some sort of outrage.’

  Another of the gang appeared from a rickety shelter in the corner of the yard. He roped the door shut behind him, and walked over looking pleased with himself.

  ‘Good time?’ The others were smiling with complicity.

  ‘She said she had never had better.’

  ‘My turn.’ An ugly brute got up. ‘Show her what a real man can do.’

  The rest chortled, their faces, lit from below by the fire, daemonic.

  Ballista looked up at the green boughs of the tree. They seemed incongruous, vitiated by the squalor of the surroundings.

  Diomedes touched his arm. Leaning forward, he adopted a conspiratorial air. ‘We have got a good thing going here. All the drinking dens and whores in the camp give us our due. The rag pickers and rubbish sorters need our license. The City Watch don’t bother us, not since we paid off the local station.’

  ‘Many thousands in the camp,’ Ballista said. ‘Business must be good.’

  Diomedes shrugged. ‘Has been for a couple of years. But now we’ve got a problem.’

  ‘The Egyptians?’

  ‘Knew you were quick, as soon as I saw you. The dog worshippers are running their own whores, trying to get the others to pay them a cut, muscling in on all our clients. The other day one honest man told them to fuck off. He went off along the bank looking for what had washed up, never came back. Got a wife and son; loved that boy he did, would never have deserted him.’

  Ballista took a drink, and said nothing.

  ‘Lot of Egyptians there are. We got twenty good boys, all handy with a knife or a cudgel. But it seems to me a man like you, experienced with a sword, not afraid to use it, could help tip things our way.’

  ‘Some say money is the root of all evil,’ Ballista smiled. ‘What do I get?’

  ‘Share and share alike with us. Four shares for me, two for Titus and Marcus, my legates, one for everyone else. Join us, swear the oath, and I reckon a double share for you would be fitting.’

  ‘A good offer,’ Ballista said, ‘but I don’t like to rush into things.’

  Diomedes gave him a sharp look. Ballista knew that he would only walk out of this with this bandit leader’s permission. Odds of ten or more to one were no odds at all. To get away called for a change of tack.

  ‘But it is a good offer. I have a debt to collect at the Milvian Bridge. When I return, I will swear the oath.’

  There was applause around the campfire, not all of it wholehearted. Some would be resentful that an incomer should be awarded twice their share of the profits.

  Diomedes, however, clapped him on the shoulder. ‘We northerners must stick together, eh? The rest of the boys will get used to you. Tell you what, it is hours until dawn. When Marcus has finished, why don’t you enjoy the woman we’ve got over there?’

  ‘That is kind, but I was with a whore just now in the Stadium of Domitian. I am not as young as I was, maybe tomorrow.’

  One of the bandits guffawed. ‘Wont be no good to you tomorrow.’

  Diomedes’ waxy face was ill suited for showing emotion, but his eyes glittered with malicious glee. ‘The wife of one of the Egyptians chose a bad path this morning. But we are civilised men. When she has paid for her lodging, we will send her back to her husband.’ Diomedes grinned, showing little pointed teeth, like those of a rat. ‘Send her back piece by piece – I was thinking of starting with her nose.’

  Ballista felt sick, the wine he had drunk turned to vinegar in the back of his throat.

  ‘Or maybe her ears. Perhaps the Egyptians will eat her morsel by morsel.’

  *

  The mist still lay close to the ground. If anything, it had thickened, spectral tendrils coiling through flowerbeds, shrubs, and the lowest branches of trees. Yet, looking up, the stars were clear. North of the camp the parkland of the Campus Martius, apart from isolated monuments, resembled open countryside. The tall obelisk erected by Emperor Augustus at the centre of his now defunct sundial loomed above the fog. Taking it as a bearing, although he could see but a few paces around himself, Ballista had no difficulty navigating his course north and east.

  Send her back piece by piece. The cruelty of men was infinite. Some philosophers held that there had once been a bucolic golden age, a time before possessions and cities and power had corrupted mankind. For others savagery was innate, only laws and civilisation restraining the beast in man. Some of both persuasions thought that in the fullness of time the sins of humanity provoked the gods to bring down fire and flood, to wipe the slate clean in a cataclysm of destruction.

  Send her back piece by piece. It was nothing to do with Ballista. He was not Hercules, set on this earth to punish the wicked, to vanquish evil. When he reached Volusianus, the prefect could send a squad of praetorians. If they moved swiftly, they might be in time to rescue the unfortunate woman. Ballista could not be distracted. If he did not reach Gallienus, his own wife would die. Most likely Julia would be tortured, almost certainly raped, before she was killed. The end would not be kinder for Isangrim and Dernhelm. Lust ignited by the boys’ beauty, their brutal killers would not be swayed by their innocence and youth. What did an unknown Egyptian woman weigh in the scales against Ballista’s own family? Her fate was not his concern.

  Ballista judged that soon he would strike the Via Flaminia, which ran across his route. He was tired, the effects of the wine dying out of him. His whole body ached, and his ribs hurt. The new boots fitted better, but his feet were lacerated. He should rest before crossing the road, and setting off into the Gardens of Lucullus.

  Without warning, a wooden fence emerged out of the mist on his left. It encircled a pit. Ballista knew it at once. He had been to the Altar of Peace before. Long ago it had been a central piece of imperial propaganda. At some point the land around had been raised, and now, half hidden in the earth, it had become no more than picnic destination for idlers and a curiosity for provincials and those of an antiquarian disposition. No one would be drawn to it on a foggy night.

  The gate to the fence was chained, but it was low. Ballista tossed over the rolled toga, and climbed after. He stumbled down the incline. The south wall
of the monument rose above him. If it had once been painted, centuries of weather had stripped it back to the bare marble. The half-remembered reliefs shimmered in the mist: intricate sculpted foliage – acanthus and lotus flowers – topped by a formal procession of men in togas and women in dignified costume. There were four children. One, with the long hair of a barbarian, clutched the trailing hem of a stern-looking Roman’s clothes. A matron placed her hand reassuringly on the boy’s head. As a youth, the image had saddened Ballista. It had evoked a care and love that had been absent from his life as a young hostage in an alien city.

  He went around to the western side, and climbed the steps to the entrance. Above his head Aeneas prepared to sacrifice a pig, and the she-wolf suckled Romulus and Remus. Inside, Ballista settled his back to the wall, took off his boots, and spread the toga over himself as a blanket.

  Send her back piece by piece. He tried to get the woman out of his mind. His thoughts were broken, they came and went unbidden. Pius Aeneas doing his duty to his family and the gods. The terrible crack of the pimp’s broken arm. His howl of pain. A beast offering kindness to helpless babies. A woman in the dark, men grunting on top of her. Had they told her what awaited? That refinement of cruelty might appeal to Diomedes. The Egyptian was nothing to Ballista.

  But, as Diomedes had said, it was hours until dawn.

  Ballista shrugged off the toga, painfully pulled on his boots, and levered himself to his feet. He draped the toga around his shoulders, as if a cloak.

  Once Calgacus had said that there was nothing worse for a man than waking up and wondering who he was.

  *

  ‘As you said, it is hours until dawn.’

  Diomedes slapped Ballista on the back. ‘And what better way to pass the time than with a drink and good company.’

  The rest of the brigands were less effusive.

  ‘Your lookout was sleeping,’ said Ballista.

  ‘Useless bastard.’ Diomedes turned to one of his men. ‘Get out there, and kick his arse. Those Egyptians must suspect that we have their bitch.’ He gestured to one of the serving women to bring more wine.

  ‘Not for me,’ Ballista said. ‘I will need my wits about me. Actually, I thought a woman might sharpen me, before what has to be done on the Milvian Bridge.’

  ‘Knows you are coming does he, your friend?’

  ‘Not exactly. But I know that he is coming.’

  ‘Only what you share with your friends is yours forever,’ Diomedes said. ‘Might go easier if a few of us came along.’

  ‘This partakes of the personal. You might call it a debt of honour. One last thing I need to do on my own, before I join your brotherhood.’

  Diomedes’ face was unreadable, like a badly made effigy. It was odd that men who were strangers to honour might still respect its name.

  ‘As for sharing,’ Ballista made himself sound convivial, ‘is anyone with the Egyptian woman?’

  ‘Worn us out, she has. Was thinking it was near time, but help yourself, before we cut her.’

  Ballista untied the knots that secured the hut. The door was solid, no doubt stolen from a building site or merchant’s yard. The shelter itself was flimsy, knocked together out of mismatched scraps of wood. There were no windows. The interior was lit by a clay lamp. It stank of wine and sweat and copulation. The woman lay on a pallet of soiled straw, naked. Her throat, breasts and thighs were mottled from slaps and covered in scratches and bites. She did not look at Ballista, but stared at the ceiling. Ballista latched the door behind him.

  Her eyes remained fixed on the rafters as Ballista sat on what passed for a bed. She neither flinched nor reacted in any way when he leant over her.

  ‘Do not make a sound.’

  She did not respond, her gaze still fixed, perhaps on something that was not there.

  Ballista wondered if her suffering had unhinged her mind. Against his will, Ballista noted the shape of her breasts, the big, flat nipples. The philosophers who said the beast was innate were right.

  ‘I have come to get you out,’ he whispered.

  She looked at him, seemingly uncomprehending.

  ‘When I return, do not scream, be ready to run.’

  Finally she spoke. ‘Did Horus send you?’

  ‘No.’ He had no idea if Horus was her husband or a deity.

  ‘Then why?’

  ‘I am not sure myself.’

  Ballista waited for a time, but, when he went back to the fire, was still greeted with the inevitable ribaldry about the brevity of his visit.

  ‘I need a piss.’ He stretched, like a man whose back ached after vigorous activity.

  ‘Over there, the midden is beyond the horse lines.’

  Perhaps the Allfather did watch over his descendants, the Woden-born. The corral was central to his plan.

  Ballista ambled off into the gloom. The horses shifted as he went past. One whickered, and came over. He spoke softly to it over the fence, bringing his face close, his breath in its nostrils.

  The smell guided him towards the dung heap at the rear.

  ‘You the newcomer?’ The sentry had been concealed by some bales of hay and straw. No, the Allfather was not one of those gods who often intervened, even for their distant progeny. Nothing in life was ever easy.

  ‘Vandrad.’ Ballista put out his right hand. The lookout grasped it. Ballista moved close, as if to embrace him, and punched the knife in his left hand down into the side of the man’s neck. The sentry grunted, sounding more surprised than in pain. Still clasping the man’s hand, Ballista swung him around, got his left hand over his mouth, and used his weight to bear him to the ground. The sentry thrashed – the fingers of his left hand clawing at the hilt of the blade protruding from his neck – then lay still.

  Ballista retrieved the knife, and slipped through the rails into the corral. Quietly he moved through the horses to the wicket gate that faced the yard. Although he could clearly see the men drinking, with luck, the glare of the fire around which they sat should have robbed them of their night vision. As he sawed through the rope that held the gate, a horse came and nuzzled his face.

  Ballista opened the gate a fraction, then moved behind the herd. The horses were restless now; either they could smell the blood of the sentry, or they sensed the tension in the man in their midst.

  Taking several deep breaths, Ballista readied himself. He would have to move quickly now. Do not think, just act.

  ‘Egyptians!’ Yelling, he slapped the rump of the nearest beast. ‘The Egyptians are here!’

  The horse jumped and lashed out. Its hooves missed Ballista’s head by a hand’s breadth. He whacked it again. The horse thundered forward, chesting the gate wide open and bursting out into the yard. Where one horse runs, all the others will follow. In moments the entire herd were tearing out. They crashed around the confined space, overturning cooking pots and jugs of wine, scattering the half drunk bandits.

  ‘Egyptians!’ The bandits had taken up the cry, as they dodged the flying horses. ‘Get the weapons!’

  Ballista vaulted the rails, and ran to the rear of the hut. Inserting the blade into the chink between two ill joined planks, he prised one free. Nails popped out of rotten wood. The clamour from the yard covered a couple of hefty kicks, which snapped another piece of thin timber.

  The woman sat, hugging herself on the straw.

  ‘Come on!’

  She made no move.

  Ballista reached in through the hole, grabbed an arm, and hauled her bodily out. She collapsed in a heap in the alley. Ballista pushed himself half through the gap, and flicked the oil lamp onto the bedding.

  ‘Now run!’ He yanked the woman to her feet.

  He had planned his escape when he had worked his way back to the lair. On some of the junctions he had carved an arrow. They had a start. Ballista had seen the chaos a loose horse could cause in an army camp at night, let alone seven or eight among a rabble of drunk brigands. To begin with, Diomedes’ men would not be looking for them, not
until they found the dead sentry or realised that the woman was gone. Even then they would not know which direction they had fled. But the woman was in no condition to run. They had gone no great distance when she fell. There was no hope of her getting up.

  Ballista knew that they had to get clear of the camp. There were voices shouting not far away. Soon the whole place would be in uproar. The slum dwellers were afraid of Diomedes. They would lead the bandit to the fugitives. If Ballista could get them both to the open parkland, with the fog, he was confident that he could lose any pursuit. Even with a semi-comatose woman, his training by the Harii night fighters could render them invisible.

  First he had to get there. He pulled the woman upright, wound the material of the toga around her. Then, grunting with the effort, slung her over his shoulder, like a badly rolled carpet. There was no question of running, but grimly he put one foot in front of another.

  This was going to be a long night.

  CHAPTER 9

  The Gardens of Lucullus

  ‘I’

  M NOT WEARING THAT.’

  Ballista was beginning to regret that the Egyptian woman had recovered the power of speech. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Only prostitutes wear the toga.’

  ‘Would you look less like a prostitute naked?’

  The woman took this with an ill grace. ‘Turn away. It is not fitting for a married woman to be seen by anyone other than her husband, and then only on the wedding night.’

  Not pointing out that it was somewhat late for such decorum, Ballista turned his back. As he listened to the rustling of her arranging the folds of the voluminous garment, he thought that the woman displayed remarkably little gratitude to him for preventing her mutilation, almost certainly saving her life. Horus, for he turned out to be her husband, could not have an easy domestic life.

  Once they had got clear of the Camp of the Immigrants, Ballista had set her down. With the toga wrapped around her like a blanket, he had led her through the foggy parkland back to the Altar of Peace. She had tottered at first, but did not complain, and had seemed to gain strength with every step towards safety. Apart from some shouts drifting from far off through the mist, there had been no evidence of any pursuit.