‘Do you have a balcony?’
The man pointed to a curtain.
The City Watch had reached the bottom of the second flight.
Ballista drew back the curtain. The balcony was narrow and sagging, and looked as if might part company from the wall with a gust of wind. It creaked ominously as Ballista stepped out. Thirty foot or more down to the ground. Too far not to be injured.
The sound of the City Watch was louder.
There were balconies on the tenement on the other side of the lane. They were at least ten foot away. So much for neighbours shaking hands across the divide.
Ballista tucked the knife back in his belt, and taking a plant pot from the rail, carefully placed it on the floor. This was not the moment to worry about a few herbs. He climbed precariously onto the rail. It gave a little under his weight.
‘Where is he?’ The City Watch were at the entrance to the apartment.
Aiming for the first floor balcony below on the other tenement, Ballista jumped.
The awful sensation of falling was replaced by the pain of the impact. He landed on top of the rail and screen. They shattered, and he rolled onto the balcony, amid pieces of rotten wood.
‘Down there!’ Someone was shouting.
As he groggily tried to get up, something hit Ballista across the shoulders. An old woman was wielding a broom.
‘Get off, Grandmother.’
Not mollified, she continued to belabour him.
Ballista crawled to the edge, gripped the floor, and swung himself over feet first.
The ground beneath his dangling boots was no more than fifteen feet away. He was readying himself for the drop when the broom cracked down on his knuckles. His grip broken, he fell.
He hit the pavement hard. His left ankle turned as he sprawled. The white-hot agony suggested it was broken. He lay, curled, clutching the injury.
A plant pot shattered near his head. A shard nicked his ear. Fighting down the nausea induced by the pain, somehow he got up. He could put barely any weight on the damaged ankle. It was twisted, not broken.
‘After him!’
The City Watch were crowded onto the balcony. A centurion was shouting. His men looked dubiously at the drop. One picked up another pot, and hurled it down. It did not miss by much.
Inspired, the others bent to find more missiles.
Stumbling and half hopping, Ballista lurched off into the night, pursued by a hail of shattering terracotta.
CHAPTER 12
The Subura
The House of Prayer
A
BAR, AT LONG LAST A BAR that was not closed. The shutters were drawn across, but a narrow entrance was left open. Light and the murmur of conversation spilled out into the street. Ballista did not go in straight away, but hobbled past, and, squatting down, watched from the shadows opposite.
He rubbed his ankle. It was sore, but nothing worse. Injuries to that joint were strange. At first the pain was so intense that you were sure the tendons were torn, the bones broken, but then very quickly it faded, and you discovered that the ankle would support your weight. The tight boots that Ballista wore might have helped.
A man came out of the bar. He stood in the opening, saying his farewells to those out of sight inside. Ballista hoped that the bar was not about to shut. His valedictions concluded, the man walked down the street. As he drew near, he gave Ballista a sharp look. Deciding that the huddled figure was no threat, perhaps just a vagrant – the gods knew, there were enough in the city – he walked away without another glance.
Ballista did not know where he was within the subura. After falling from the balcony, his sole intention had been to put as much distance as possible between him and the tenement where he had been so nearly trapped. By the time the City Watch could make it down to street level, and rounded the block to the alleyway at the rear of the building, Ballista would have been long gone. He had not run into any patrols of the City Watch since. The subura was an enormous rabbit warren. It could be flooded with soldiers, and they would be swallowed in the intricate, unplanned maze.
The swordsmen at the Mausoleum of Hadrian had been soldiers. Had it really been only a few hours since that encounter? Everything about them – the way they carried themselves, their disciplined movements, the tattoo he had glimpsed – proclaimed years under the eagles. Their down-at-heel scruffiness argued against current service in a legion or regular auxiliary unit. He could not remember how many there had been – gods below, he was tired – perhaps twenty. Not a great number. They could not be everywhere. There had been no sign of them since, but he was sure that they would not have given up the search.
Ballista needed to get off the streets. He stood. The ankle was not too bad. In the light from the doorway, on the wall next to the shutter, he could see a painted drinking vessel, and a sign that read Salvius. Perhaps barkeepers took professional names like prostitutes or actors. It was time to test if the hospitality of the establishment lived up to its owner’s name.
Ballista paused on the threshold, squinting in the brighter light.
On his appearance, all conversation ceased.
Ballista took stock of his surroundings. An L-shaped bar; a lone drinker to the right, two on the left, a couple more at a table towards the rear of the room, next to some stairs to an upper floor, and a corridor right at the back, which was partly screened by a curtain. None of the drinkers belonged to the City Watch, and none had a military bearing. Ballista walked to the bar, took a place to the right of the corner.
‘Health and great joy, stranger.’ The innkeeper wore the high-belted leather apron of his trade.
‘Health and great joy.’
‘What can I get you?’
‘Wine, half and half with water.’
‘The average wine, or the better stuff?’
‘The better.’
As the innkeeper busied himself, the others remained silent. Not catching anyone’s eye, Ballista scanned the room. There was a mirror facing him behind the bar. It was tarnished, but he could see the doorway at his back. The right hand wall of the bar was lined with racks of amphorae. A rail ran above them, hung with ancient, tough looking hams and some strings of garlic.
A slatternly girl emerged from the corridor at the back with a plate of bread and olives and oil, which she gave to the two men at the table. They grunted their thanks, began to eat, and resumed a low, weary-sounding conversation. By the cloaks and broad-brimmed hats beside them, they were travellers, at this hour of the night, most likely waggoneers or drovers. The other men continued to regard the newcomer in silence.
‘Here you are.’ The innkeeper put a jug and a glass on the chipped counter.
‘My thanks.’ Ballista opened one of the three wallets on his belt. He took out a coin at random. It was gold, far too high a denomination. It had the attention of the men at the bar.
‘The dice have been kind tonight.’ Ballista spoke with the over-careful precision of a man in his cups. ‘A jug of the good stuff for every man here, and one for yourself.’
‘That is generous. Isn’t it, boys?’
Prompted by the barkeeper, the men at the bar muttered their thanks. The two at the table expressed their gratitude in the archaic formalities of the countryside.
‘What about me, big man?’ The girl was at his side.
‘You too, sweetness.’
She was pretty.
‘You want some company?’
Ballista smiled. ‘After a drink or two, that might be good.’
She lingered. There was calculation in her eyes – hard-learned rules for self-preservation, a lifetime of hard choices.
The barkeeper brought the change. Ballista shovelled it back into the wallet with the unconcern of a drink-taken gambler up on his luck.
‘The man will call you if he wants,’ said the barkeeper.
Dismissed, the girl drifted off up the stairs.
‘Hot little piece,’ the barkeeper said. ‘Isn’t she, boys?’
‘Bought her down in Ostia, straight off the boat from Syria. Hot, but lazy. Needs a belt across her arse now and then.’
Ballista inclined his head, as if the barkeeper had said something important and profound. He had no desire for a girl, but some time in a room up the stairs offered greater privacy.
‘Like I was saying about the pickled fish.’ The man on Ballista’s left was talking to his companion, but loud enough for all to hear. ‘The owner could not work out where they were going.’
The barman went and leant against the counter by the speaker.
‘He locked the kitchen, no one but him could get in, yet every night more of them were gone. So one night, he hides in the corner.’
The man paused for dramatic effect.
‘And you know what he saw?’
No one hazarded a guess.
‘In the dead of night, he hears something coming up the latrine. Then he sees a tentacle, then another. It’s a fucking great octopus, what lives down there.’
‘Well – its his own fault for connecting his latrine to the sewers,’ the other man said. ‘Any fool knows all sorts of horrors live down there. What is more: every time the Tiber floods, the sewer backs up, and your house is full of shit.’
‘You’re right there, my friend. A fucking waste of money. Throw your shit in the street, like everyone else.’
‘Talking about wasting money, what about the colossal statue of himself our beloved emperor is having built up on the Esquiline?’
The barkeeper tipped his head slightly towards Ballista.
The speaker looked over. ‘You are no frumentarius.’ He turned back to his listeners. ‘Any fool knows they pick men from the army who will blend into a crowd for the imperial spies. They don’t pick a hulking great barbarian, twice the size of anyone else, covered in scratches like something wild has been at him, with hair like a badly reaped field of stubble.’ He glanced at Ballista. ‘No offense, friend.’
‘None taken.’
‘As I was saying, the statue has to be twice the size of the one down by the Colosseum, big enough so a child can climb right up inside the spear it’s holding.’
The barman spoke. ‘They say he wants a chariot and horses built to match now.’
The speaker ignored the comment. ‘He has lost all the western provinces to Postumus, in the East this Arab Odenathus only pretends to follow his orders, and what does Gallienus do? Empties the treasury trying to found Plato’s Republic up in the Apennines, that’s what he does. A city of philosophers; what the fuck use is that?’
They were quiet for a moment, pondering imperial folly.
‘And now, what’s more, he has taken to wearing a dress.’
‘A dress?’ Ballista put down his drink. ‘I saw Gallienus in the Circus about a month ago; he was wearing normal clothes.’
‘Not all the time, he doesn’t, look at this.’ The man hunted through his coins. ‘Bugger, Salvius, you got one of them?’
The barman got down the takings from a box on the shelves with the amphorae. Finding what he wanted, he tossed the coin over to Ballista.
On one side of the coin was a figure that looked like Gallienus dressed as the goddess Demeter, wearing her crown of corn. The inscription read Gallienae Augustae.
‘He has a sister, Galliena, lives in Africa,’ Ballista said.
‘Has she got a beard?’
Ballista held the coin up to the light hanging above the bar. The figure had a beard. He could think of nothing to say.
‘I want that back.’
Ballista handed the coin over. ‘Where is the latrine?’
‘Out back, down the corridor.’
As soon as he went through the curtain, Ballista could smell the latrine. The foul cubicle had no door. The dim light from a tiny lamp in the corridor revealed a wooden seat over a hole, and a large amphora. Ballista unbuckled his belt, eased down his britches, and pissed into the amphora.
The officials in charge of the mint chose the images and words on imperial coins, but they were shown to the emperor for approval.
From the other end of the corridor came the sound of the curtain being drawn back. Another customer wanted to use the latrine.
What had Gallienus been thinking when he passed that extraordinary coin type? Perhaps he had not bothered to look at the thing. There were many demands on his time.
The light from the corridor was blocked. The two talkative drinkers crowded Ballista’s back. The point of a knife touched the side of his throat.
‘Where did a barbarian like you steal all that money?’ The man’s breath was hot on the back of Ballista’s neck.
‘Told you, won it at dice.’
‘Hand it over.’
Ballista adjusted his britches, buckled his belt.
‘Hand the fucker over.’ The knife pricked a little deeper, just nicked the flesh.
Ballista weighed his options. They were not good. Best give them the three wallets.
‘He has seen our faces,’ the other drinker said. ‘Just do him.’
So that was how it was. This was not a good place to die.
‘I won’t say anything.’ Buying time, Ballista fumbled with the laces of one of the wallets. If he threw himself backwards, he would get cut, but perhaps not fatally.
‘No one move,’ a previously unheard voice said. ‘Kill the barbarian, and your friend here dies.’ It had to be the man who had been drinking on his own on the right of the bar.
The pressure of the knife eased. Ballista could sense its owner’s indecision.
‘Tell you what, boys, there is more than enough for everyone.’ Ballista removed a wallet from his belt, passed it back over his shoulder. The man took it, and removed the knife from Ballista’s throat.
Ballista turned, and stood next to the man who had been about to kill him. Out in the corridor, posed like a scene from the amphitheatre, the quiet man had a blade pressed to the stomach of the other would be robber.
‘No harm done,’ Ballista said. ‘Just a mistake.’
‘Tell him to get that knife out of my guts.’
Instead Ballista drew his own weapon. ‘Now we have all got steel in our hands. In a small space like this, at least two of us are going to die, all of us are going to get badly cut.’
‘Like you said, just a mistake.’
‘Exactly, so we are going to leave. You two follow in a moment. Then, when we have left the bar, you can buy yourselves a few drinks. How does that sound?’
‘Good.’
‘Yes, I thought so.’
Ballista went first down the corridor, the quiet man walking backwards, covering them both.
Back in the bar, the travellers had gone. The girl was nowhere in sight. Only the barkeeper remained. He stayed behind his counter, a hefty cudgel in his hands. He watched in silence as Ballista and his unforeseen saviour walked out into the night.
*
‘You are not what I expected,’ Ballista said.
‘I am a great disappointment to my brothers,’ the man said.
They had talked on the way down. Ballista could not have been more surprised at the identity of the man who had saved him.
‘We are here.’
A shabby door at the end of an alley; not a tenement, a small house. The man rapped on the door in a rhythm, evidently a code. The door opened.
‘Is he one of us?’ The doorkeeper was suspicious.
‘No, he is not.’
‘Have you taken leave of your senses?’
‘Let us in, or do you want to continue the debate in the street.’
The doorkeeper shut the door behind them. ‘Are you drunk?’
‘Perhaps a little,’ Ballista’s rescuer said. ‘Is charity not a virtue?’
‘Are we not told to fear our neighbours, our own families, lest they denounce us?’
‘This is Marcus Clodius Ballista, the high official who saved our brothers and sisters in Ephesus. He had been set upon b
y robbers. They intended to murder him. I offered him sanctuary.’
An elderly man appeared in the hallway. Long-bearded, he looked like a follower of one of the more respectable schools of philosophy. Obviously he had heard every word. The other two deferred to him. ‘You acted as a good Samaritan,’ he said to the man from the bar. Then he addressed himself to Ballista. ‘You are welcome, but, until the Eucharist is over, you must remain with those who listen by the door.’
There were three men and two women left standing in the vestibule with Ballista. They kept apart from him, and did not speak.
Ballista could see into the room used for their worship. There were rows of benches, and a low table at the front, but no altar or fire or statues; none of the apparatus of traditional religion. On the wall behind where the bearded elder had taken his stand there was a painting of a man with a sheep on his shoulders. On the other wall that Ballista could see was a picture of a man carrying a bed.
Ballista had run a terrible risk in Ephesus. The Emperor Valerian had ordered him to eradicate the followers of the crucified god from the city. Ballista very quickly had been sickened by the tortures and hideous executions, but also by the insane zealotry of some of the sect: I am a Christian, and I want to die. Manufacturing a riot, he had used it as an excuse to suspend his investigations. When leaving, he had smuggled the Christians already arrested from the gaol. As a persecutor, he had learned much about their sect. He knew that the man pictured with the sheep was the epiphany of their god, and the one carrying the bed was Lazarus raised from the dead by the wonder worker Chrestus.
‘The Lord be with you,’ the elder intoned.
‘And with your spirit,’ the rest replied.
There were Christians everywhere these days. It was no more than an accident of politics and war. There had always been sporadic, local persecutions. The crops failed, or a plague descended, and the mob shouted Christians to the Lion! The Governor executed a few adherents of the sect, employing inventive methods and exemplary cruelty, all under the approving gaze of the populace, and order was restored. Just over a decade ago, the Emperor Decius had ordered that all inhabitants of the empire should sacrifice to the traditional gods in public. A few years later, Valerian had decreed the universal persecution, which had sent Ballista to Ephesus. Decius had been cut down by the Goths, the first emperor to die in battle against barbarians. The fate of Valerian had been worse. Captured by the Persians, it was said that when the Sassanid king wished to go out riding that he used the aged emperor as a living mounting block. The Christians had exulted in what they saw as proofs of the vengeance of their god. It had given others pause for thought; perhaps there was some power in this strange, new god from the East.
The Last Hour: Relentless, brutal, brilliant. 24 hours in Ancient Rome Page 13