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

by Harry Sidebottom

  Ballista stood for a moment, blinking in the sunshine. The slave had scurried back underground. If his absence had been noticed, he would get a beating. No doubt he would talk. Although Ballista thought it unlikely he would mention the coin.

  He really should get moving. But it was pleasant with the sun on his face. And he was hurting. Back in the tunnels, before he had caught the slave, he had hacked rough bandages out of the hem of his cloak, and bound the wound he had taken. The cut was long, but not deep. It was on the left of his chest, the same side as the ribs he had damaged in the Tiber. Neither were too bad, and his ankle only felt stiff and ached. The most painful injury was the small cut on the palm of his right hand. When this was all over, he would lie for hours in the warm water of a tepidarium, then sleep for days. Of course, if it turned out badly, he would have an eternity of quiet and rest.

  The camp of the frumentarii on the Caelian was not far. Ballista knew the general layout of this part of the city. The direct route was out of the question. Not only would it take him too close to the Colosseum, but he would have to pass by the quarters of the sailors from the fleet at Misenum, the armoury, and the various barracks of the gladiators. With the City Watch searching for him, such official buildings were best avoided. It was safer to walk east, through residential districts, then turn south, skirt the Mint, before circling back to approach the Caelian from the other direction.

  Ballista strolled as if he did not have a care in the world. At least five hours remained until sunset. To hurry invited scrutiny. There was time to reach the Commander of the Strangers, divulge every-thing that he knew, and be escorted to the Colosseum. Once appraised of the threat, and ringed by the German guard, Gallienus would be safe.

  Although not as opulent as the Carinae district at the western end of the Esquiline, this was an affluent area. There were spacious houses as well as tenements. Trees could be seen over garden walls. The streets were wide, but they were busy. There were shops set in the ground floor of the houses. Most were small cubicles with no access to the prosperous homes into whose structures they were built. Trying to convey an air of leisure, Ballista used their displays of merchandise as an excuse to stop, and check if he was being followed.

  The third time he paused, there was something suspicious. A man in a dark tunic, unshaven, with a prominent nose. He was also looking into a shop about thirty paces away. The last time Ballista halted, the man had been engaged in the same activity outside another store about the same distance from Ballista.

  It might be coincidence. There were a lot of people shopping. Taking no chances, Ballista cut down the next alley on the right, and came out on a street running roughly parallel. A market square opened off the street, and Ballista stood by the corner, looking back.

  Sure enough, a few moments later, the man came out of the alleyway. The aquiline nose seemed almost to be searching for a scent, as the man looked first one way then the other up and down the street.

  Before he was spotted, Ballista went into the market. It was obvious at a glance what was sold here. The high, blank walls on either side, the wooden block in front of the third wall with its solid gate and narrow barred windows. The main slave markets were in the Saepta Julia near the Pantheon in the Campus Martius, and behind the Temple of Castor off the Forum. You went to the former for exotic merchandise, the latter for a cheaper purchase. Yet there were smaller markets like this in every region of the city.

  There was a reasonable crowd, with more people arriving. Dealers sold their less desirable slaves first. By now the slaves on the block should be starting to be of higher quality. Ballista worked his way into the cover of the throng. He took a place at the front. To disguise his height, he leant against the steps leading up to the raised platform. So far there was no sign of the man with the hooked nose.

  ‘Clean and hard-working, honest and amiable, not given to gossip or drink; she is one in a thousand.’

  The auctioneer was working hard.

  ‘You could put her to any task: polishing furniture, folding clothes, weighing wool. Who will offer me eight hundred sesterces?’

  The woman was not old, but servitude had aged her. She had been dressed in an incongruously bright and fine tunic, no doubt to distract potential purchasers away from her thin and puny limbs. Likewise, the cosmetics on her cheeks aimed to counterfeit youth and vivacity.

  ‘Gentlemen, do you not recognise a bargain? I am giving her away at seven hundred.’

  A portly man near Ballista called out two hundred.

  ‘My dear sir,’ the auctioneer recoiled in feigned horror, ‘you would see me on the block myself. Such a pittance would not cover her transport from distant Lusitania.’

  ‘Has she had children, any of them stillborn?’ Most likely the man was a dealer. ‘Do her menses come regularly?’

  ‘Ah, a man with an eye to the future. Four children, all strong and healthy, the youngest just five. They were sold off this morning. Six hundred for this fine piece of breeding stock.’

  ‘Three hundred, not a sesterce more.’

  ‘Anyone with five hundred?’

  ‘Looks melancholic,’ a man said. ‘Probably hang herself.’

  ‘Five hundred?’

  As a youth on the Palatine, Ballista had endured long afternoons with a philosophy tutor. To pass as a member of the upper orders in Roman society, at least a certain acquaintance with its tenets were necessary. The influence of philosophy was pervasive. The morality of the plebs, who had never attended the schools, was largely shaped by its teaching. The major sects believed in a brotherhood of man. Everyone had a spark of the divine reason within them. Under the skin all mankind was the same. Given such thinking, Ballista had asked how slavery could exist. His classmates had sniggered. Evidently it was the sort of question only a barbarian would raise. The tutor had looked at him almost with pity at his ignorance. Ballista had completely misunderstood. What he took for slavery was nothing of the sort. Legal status only affected the outer man. It was an irrelevance to the moral purpose which defined a man. If the King of Kings of Persia, sat on his throne, master of all he surveyed, had a servile heart, then he was a slave. Conversely if the lowest slave, chained in the mines or about to be thrown into the arena, had a noble soul, then he was free. It was, Ballista thought, a belief most convenient for the Romans.

  The woman had been taken back into the building unsold. Quite likely, when her finery was removed, she would get a thrashing for letting her owner down by not looking more cheerful on the block.

  No one in the crowd seemed out of the ordinary. There was still no sight of the dark tunic and the distinctive nose. Best to wait a little, until he was sure to have moved on.

  Next up was a strapping young man. Only a loincloth covered his nakedness. His feet were whitened with chalk. Opinion was divided. Some owners thought it not worth the trouble breaking in the newly enslaved like this youth. Others believed that they could be moulded like wet clay into whatever shape the master wished.

  Around the neck of the boy was hung a placard. It gave his age as eighteen, and his place of birth as Cappadocia. In keeping with their view of the world, the Romans had fixed ideas about the potential of slaves from the many peoples within their empire and beyond: Greeks for secretaries and book-keeping, Egyptians and Syrians for pleasure, Gauls for labouring in the fields. No one would want a German as a personal servant. They were best employed as bodyguards or as gladiators. As a hostage, Ballista had risen to high command in the Roman army, but in a sense it was nothing but a gilded servitude.

  ‘Now, my friends, we come to the quality.’ The auctioneer smiled, an insincere smile. ‘A strong boy, like all Cappadocians, he would make an ideal litter-bearer. But with his looks, he would grace any table, or bedchamber. He would not look out of place in the Palace itself.’

  ‘Let us see him then.’

  At a nod from the auctioneer, the boy untied the loincloth. Reluctantly he let it drop.

  ‘Get him moving,’ one of
the prospective buyers shouted.

  ‘Do what the man says.’

  The youth hesitated. When the auctioneer showed him the whip, he squatted down, then jumped into the air.

  After all these years, Roman slavery still unsettled Ballista. It was not that they did not have slaves at home in Germany. There were unfree servants in the hall of Ballista’s father. Old Calgacus had been a slave. But they were not a breed apart. Ballista had grown up with the children of the servants, had been treated no differently. There was not this cruel degradation. As adults, most of the slaves were set up on smallholdings in a dwelling of their own. They had to give a higher proportion of their produce to their master, and it was a hard fact that if times were difficult they could be sold, but otherwise there was little to distinguish them from peasants.

  ‘Sound in his wind, graceful in his movements – what am I bid? Who will start me at two thousand?’

  ‘One thousand.’

  ‘With the man at back. One thousand, I am bid. Who will offer me twelve hundred?’

  A couple of years before, out on the Steppe, Ballista had travelled with the nomadic Heruli. With their vivid tattoos, and elongated skulls from having them bound as infants, they were a strange race. Many of their customs were bizarre. But their attitudes to slavery were admirable. Their slaves rode with them to war. If any of them fought bravely, they were given their freedom. Several of the advisors to their king had begun as slaves.

  Bidding for the youth was brisk. He was sold for two and a half thousand sesterces. It seemed a lot, but Ballista had not bought a new slave for years. People were always complaining of the inflation of prices. Successive regimes adulterating the precious metal in the coinage had not helped. The purchaser insisted on a detailed written contract: name, race, price, the full names of the vendor and his guarantor, date and place of sale, together with a certificate of health, and no record of running away or gambling. The crowd waited patiently enough while the formalities were concluded. Nothing looked out of place as Ballista surveyed the market.

  ‘Gentlemen, for your delectation . . .’ The auctioneer paused theatrically.

  His burly assistant led a girl out from the building and to the foot of the steps.

  ‘Margarita! A pearl by name, a jewel in looks!’

  A boisterous cheer from the assembled men.

  ‘Come now, up you come, don’t be shy.’

  A gentle push from the assistant, and the girl scurried up the steps.

  ‘Your wife won’t like it when you take her home, but who could resist such a hot little number from Syria? We all know what they are like! More avid than sparrows, full of licentious oriental tricks.’

  The girl was wearing a plain short tunic. There was no need for artifice to aid her looks. She stood, eyes cast down, hands clasped across herself.

  ‘Show us what she’s got,’ a man called from the floor.

  The auctioneer pulled her hands apart, then, with a practiced movement, tugged her tunic from her shoulders. The material pooled around her feet.

  ‘Turn her round,’ someone shouted, ‘we want to get a good look at all of her.’

  Naked, she shuffled around. Her reluctance seemed to fan the lust of the viewers.

  Ballista glanced back at the throng. Everyone was studying the girl, every face captivated. Except right at the back, near the entrance, an unshaven man with a long nose was surveying the crowd. The two men with him also gave no attention to the girl.

  Stooping, Ballista turned to where the assistant stood at the bottom of the steps. ‘Do you have anything special kept back in the cells?’

  The man looked at Ballista with contempt. With his ragged cloak, and the rent in his tunic, never mind the bruises and scratches, Ballista knew he cut a tatterdemalion figure. He opened his wallet. There were only two gold and half a dozen bronze coins left. He took out one of the gold.

  ‘The Master always holds a few back for special customers.’ The assistant’s demeanour had changed. ‘What are you looking for?’

  ‘Something discreet.’

  ‘Ah, one of those.’ An unpleasant look of complicity appeared on the man’s face. ‘You want one that has been cut?’ He whispered, as he took the coin. ‘Come with me.’

  Leaning forward, Ballista shuffled after him through the door.

  Inside, metal cages opened off a central walkway. Wretched merchandise huddled inside most of them. From somewhere came the sound of sobbing. The assistant snapped at an underling to quiet that row.

  ‘Here you are.’ A young boy, perhaps no more than twelve, sat on the floor of one of the cages towards the rear. ‘He was cut in Abasgia on the Black Sea; outside the empire, all perfectly legal.’

  True or not, Ballista was sure that it was against the law to sell castrated slaves in Roman domains.

  ‘Change of plan,’ Ballista said.

  ‘What is wrong with him? Good looking, perfectly healthy.’

  ‘Nothing.’ Ballista produced his last gold coin. ‘Does the building have a back door?’

  ‘Why?’

  Sometimes it was best to tell the truth, or part of it. ‘There are three men out front, I don’t want them to see me.’

  The assistant took the coin. ‘Ask no questions, get no lies.’

  There were two locks, three bolts and a bar on the door. Ballista forced himself not to fidget with impatience.

  ‘It only leads into the alley.’

  ‘That is fine.’

  ‘Soon as you are through, it is shut and locked. Had people try to steal the goods before. You better not be thinking of any funny business.’

  ‘No funny business.’

  A mean alleyway. The door slammed shut behind him. A tall, unclimbable wall to the right, and a building site ahead. The alley was a dead end. The only way out, a corner which must lead back to the street by the entrance to the market. This was not good.

  Labourers wheeled barrows of bricks down the passage, and unloaded them by ladders leading up to the half finished house. Other workers hauled the hods onto their backs, and carried them aloft.

  Ballista walked behind a man returning with an empty barrow. Using the builder for cover, he peered around the corner. Two men were lounging by the entrance. Both wore cloaks too heavy for the weather. Under one could be seen the outline of a hilt. Ballista ducked back.

  His last two gold coins had bought him entry into a trap. While there was life, there was hope. Ballista took off the cloak, screwed it up, and dropped it in the gutter. He pulled his tunic up through his belt, shortening it like a labourer. Hide in plain sight. If you act with confidence, you are seldom questioned.

  Ballista strode to the foot of a ladder. He swung a basket full of bricks onto his shoulders. Allfather, these things weigh a ton. One hand holding the hod, the other grasping the rungs, he went up the ladder. Each time his boot came down, he thought the rung might snap under the weight. There must be an art to this, or these labourers are as strong as oxen.

  At the top, he put the container down where others were stacked under the eye of a foreman. Without a word, he walked off along the planks on the scaffolding.

  ‘Where the fuck are you going?’

  Ballista stopped.

  ‘And who the fuck are you?’

  ‘New on site. The master told me to help out on the other side of the building.’

  ‘Never told me about it. You got a trade?’

  ‘Carpenter. Some of the timber over there needs looking at.’

  ‘What’s wrong with it?’

  ‘Don’t know until I look.’ Adopting the air of a skilled man whose craft had been maligned, Ballista walked off.

  One step, then another; waiting for a shout that never came. Clambering from one set of scaffolding to another, Ballista passed out of sight. Only then did he realise that the foreman had not noticed that he carried no tools. Probably the man was better with numbers on a papyrus than actually constructing anything.

  There was less work going o
n away from the overseer. Wedged behind a partly tiled stretch of roof, two men were rolling dice. They looked up guiltily, but then grinned back at Ballista.

  The other side of the building gave onto a patch of mud. One day it would be a garden, but for now was littered with building materials waiting to be lifted by a crane clamped to a platform at roof level. A low wall surrounded the yard. There was a gate. It was open, but a man stood there. Theft was as much a problem on building sites as in slave markets.

  There was a drop of thirty feet or more from where Ballista stood to the ground. There were no ladders, and no scaffolding here. Looking at the ropes hanging from the crane, Ballista wished that he had been able to keep his cloak. Now there was nothing for it but to ruin his tunic or burn his hands. The cut on his right palm decided the issue. With the knife, he sawed strips from the bottom of the tunic. He wound them tightly around his hands.

  Not for the first time today, he was glad that he had no fear of heights. Reaching out, he took a firm grip on one of the ropes. A deep breath, and he swung out. The muscles in his shoulders and arms strained – his hands slipped a little – and then he got his boots one above the other on the rope.

  Even through the wadded cloth, he could feel the heat of the friction in his hands, as he slid fast to the ground.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ The site watchman came over. Obviously it was an hour for people to ask questions laced with obscenities.

  Ballista did not have time for this. With his wrapped right hand held rigid, he chopped the man in the throat.

  Struggling to breath through his damaged windpipe, the man could neither shout nor scream as he fell.

  There was no outcry. No one else appeared. So Ballista walked out of the gate.

  CHAPTER 21

  The Temple of Isis

  ‘G

  ET YOUR COPPER READY AND you will hear a tale of gold.’

  The cry was a traditional one, but the itinerant storyteller obviously had a good reputation in the neighbourhood. At once a crowd began to gather.

  Ballista stood on the corner, from where he could see down both streets. Time was pressing now, and he ought to keep moving. Yet he was tired and famished. The audience would offer some cover while he rested. On the other hand, if he found a cook shop, he could get off the street and sit down. Perhaps he had enough coins left for a mug of wine and a bowl of soup in comfort. It seemed an age since he had eaten in the Street of the Sandal Makers. But then again, if he was spotted, it might be more difficult to get away from inside a tavern. He knew that he was dithering. It was hard to think clearly through fatigue and hunger.