Scourge of Rome

by Douglas Jackson

  But nobody had told this civilian. He had the balance of a gymnast and Valerius felt as if he’d been pegged to the ground as the man danced around him seeking an advantage. If ever there was a moment to regret sending his unexpected saviour to deal with the horse holders this was it. The knife darted and weaved in little half-moon arcs that threatened first one flank then the other. Valerius knew that somewhere behind him the man he’d left untouched would have freed himself, but he didn’t dare take his eyes off that glinting blade. A howl of terror from the direction of the fire drew his attention for a fatal heartbeat. He realized his mistake just in time to suck in his stomach so the dagger point barely scored his flesh in a white hot bolt of fire. Another desperate hack at his opponent won him the room to hobble out of range, but it was only a matter of time. Where in the name of Hades was his ally?

  The sound of galloping horses from the darkness behind the knifeman answered his question and the resolve faded from the snarling features. With a frustrated glance towards the fire the killer darted off, pausing to casually run his blade across his wounded comrade’s throat as he went.

  If Valerius was honest he’d expected the woman to be dead by now, but she had other ideas. She’d taken advantage of the surviving attacker’s momentary incapacity to snatch up a flaming brand and defend herself. From the look of his face, now a blackened, unrecognizable mess, it appeared she’d been all too successful. As Valerius watched, she continued to hammer the branch home with short, vicious, left-handed blows that landed with a wet slapping sound.

  ‘I’d have liked to be able to talk to at least one of them.’ The words were in Greek and his weariness tempered any tendency towards sympathy.

  The woman looked up and he felt as if someone had run a gladius point down his spine. The deepest blue eyes he’d ever seen glared at him from beneath slanted lids. ‘Get this pig off me. Why did you let the other one get away?’

  Her reply was also in Greek, which surprised him, because in Syria, as in Rome, it was the language of the educated and more affluent. He’d created an image of her as a village woman snatched by bandits to be used at their leisure and then discarded with her throat slit. But she was young, probably not yet twenty, and her tone was anything but that of a serving girl. If she’d been the daughter of a farmer or a merchant her skin would have been reddened by years of outdoor toil; instead it had the startling luminosity of a new-harvested pearl. A bruise to her right cheek was the only visible sign of her ordeal. She pushed vainly at the big man whose blood had drenched her torso and Valerius looked around for something to cover her.

  A discarded cloak lay nearby. He handed it to her and hauled the near-decapitated giant aside, the dead man’s head flopping like a strangled chicken’s. The girl accepted the garment without a word of thanks, and struggled clear as the weight shifted. She wrapped the cloak around the tattered remnants of her clothing, spat on the man she’d killed and pushed him into the fire with her foot for good measure. His blood sizzled noisily in the glowing embers.

  It was only when she tried to stand that it finally hit her. Valerius rushed to stop her toppling to join the man gently roasting on the fire. She was shorter than he’d realized, but the body beneath the cloak was full and well fleshed. Taking her by the shoulders he cursed himself as she flinched away from any contact on a right hand covered in blisters the size of ripening grapes.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said with enormous dignity before her eyes turned up in their sockets and she slumped into his arms.

  At that moment, Valerius’s deliverer emerged from the darkness, leading a saddled mare. Lean as a stockman’s oxhide whip, his brutish features were a patchwork of shadowy planes that made an already frightening face all the more fearsome. Valerius felt a rush of pleasure at the appearance of this savage creature.

  ‘Seldom has a Spanish horse thief been a more welcome sight,’ he said with mock formality. ‘Serpentius of Avala, I thought you’d be halfway back to that nest of barbarians you call home by now.’

  Serpentius spat towards the fire. ‘Do not think you can escape me so easily, Gaius Valerius Verrens. You’re not a hard man to track. I followed a trail of bodies from Achaia to Antioch before I lost you in the hills. I must have been up and down the Orontes road three times before I discovered where you’d crossed. A prudent man does not invade another’s camp by night, but when I heard the scream I knew you’d be around here somewhere.’ He nodded to the woman in Valerius’s arms. ‘You’ve been getting acquainted.’

  ‘She’s in shock,’ Valerius laid the woman gently on the ground, ‘and her fingers are badly burned. They were torturing her.’

  Serpentius studied the woman’s injuries. ‘We should immerse the hand in cold water. Then a loose bandage soaked in olive oil.’ It was more an order than a suggestion, but Valerius remembered how Serpentius had treated his burns after an Egyptian shipwreck and knew better than to argue.

  ‘I—’

  Without warning Serpentius spun round and one of the little Scythian throwing axes he favoured appeared magically in his hand.

  ‘No!’ Valerius’s shout made the Spaniard freeze a moment before he released the weapon. Ariston stood at the edge of the trees paralysed by fear, staring at the silver glint of death aimed at his heart.

  ‘I think our journey might take a little longer if you killed our guide,’ Valerius said with heavy irony. ‘Ariston, this is Serpentius, a friend who will be travelling with us.’

  Ariston glared at the Spaniard, but his attention was quickly drawn to the near-headless body by the fire. He stalked over to kneel beside the corpse, hesitating before he peeled back the scarf and let out a low whistle. Taking it delicately by the hair he tilted the head so Valerius and the Spaniard could see the unwholesome grey flesh and twisted features, so contorted and swollen by disease as to be rendered almost inhuman.

  ‘No wonder he hid his face,’ Valerius said.

  ‘He didn’t hide it because he was ashamed of it,’ Ariston corrected him. ‘He hid it because he didn’t want to be recognized.’ He dropped the head and picked up one of the distinctive knives the men had carried. ‘His name is Shimon Ben Judah, and he is … was … high in the ranks of the Sicarii.’ He saw Valerius’s puzzlement and showed him the knife. ‘A society of assassins,’ he explained. ‘This is their mark. I don’t understand it.’

  ‘What’s to understand?’ Valerius grunted as he picked up the unconscious girl. ‘A murderer and rapist gets the justice he deserves.’

  The Syrian shook his head. ‘The Sicarii seldom venture far from Jerusalem and I have never known them to appear this far north.’ He stared significantly at the bundle in Valerius’s arms. ‘They rarely kill for gain or satisfaction.’

  As Valerius carried the girl back towards the camp he noticed that Serpentius hadn’t moved. The Spaniard stood among the bodies as if unsure what to do next. The inertia was so unusual that Valerius stopped and called to him.

  ‘Serpentius?’

  The former gladiator shook his head with a look of bewilderment. ‘Was I … gone?’

  ‘You seemed a little strange, that’s all.’

  ‘It has happened to me a few times since this.’ Serpentius turned so Valerius could see the back of his shaven head. Among the old scars was a clearly visible depression the circumference of a wine cup. Valerius tried not to show his shock at the sight of the terrible injury. Domitia had hinted that the Spaniard had been badly hurt defending Vitellius’s son, but this blow must have come close to killing him. The bone of the skull had been smashed in by a sword or a club. If such a wound happened on the battlefield, the more experienced medici would use some kind of cutting tool to remove the shattered bone, then pick fragments of it from inside the head. Only one man out of a hundred lived to fight again. ‘They said the dent was too big.’ Serpentius read his eyes. ‘If they opened it up more than likely they’d kill me. The lady Domitia stayed with me until I recovered, but sometimes,’ he frowned as if the thought had just occu
rred to him, ‘it’s as if I’m just a memory. A ghost trapped between worlds.’

  ‘How often does it happen?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Valerius saw a tear roll through the dirty grey stubble of his friend’s cheek and it disturbed him more than anything that had gone before. He’d never seen Serpentius show self-pity, never mind weep, not even when he talked of the wife and son murdered by Rome. The Spaniard was the hardest man he’d ever known, and the quickest with a sword; indomitable and without fear. ‘I let them down, Valerius.’ Serpentius shook his head. ‘I couldn’t save the boy. There were so many of them and then everything went dark.’

  ‘Nothing could have saved the boy.’ Valerius’s reply was harsher than he intended, but he knew Serpentius needed support, not sympathy. ‘He was dead from the day Vitellius announced him as his heir and I would rather he died than you. Now come. We have the girl to treat and a war to fight.’

  V

  Her name was Tabitha.

  When she woke the next day she possessed only a vague recollection of the previous night. Valerius offered to delay the journey until she’d fully recovered, but she insisted they keep to their normal schedule. Still, he watched her carefully for some reaction to her ordeal and saw her face grow pale as the memories returned. It surprised and pleased her that her injured hand had been bandaged so efficiently, and the oil Valerius applied reduced the pain to a dull throb. One thing puzzled her. A vague recollection of lying beneath a giant pig of a man who had bled copiously … Someone had roughly stitched together the remains of her dress. Her mouth dropped open and she stared at Valerius, her expression changing swiftly from dismay, to outrage, to devastation. When she finally realized what must have happened she burst into tears. Ariston and Serpentius exchanged a look and found something essential to do with the horses, leaving Valerius to explain the unexplainable.

  ‘We couldn’t leave you as you were.’ He chose his words with exaggerated care. ‘We didn’t know if the blood came only from him or if you had been injured also. I …’ She stopped weeping long enough to spear him with a look of open-mouthed incredulity and he hurried on. ‘I treated you as I would the body of a dead comrade fresh from the battlefield,’ he assured her. ‘With reverence and respect. To me you were just an empty vessel, as if I were washing a bowl or a cup.’ He stumbled, aware of his voice taking on a pompous solemnity as he fought the memory of skin with the texture of silk and intriguing curves and hollows and shadows. ‘I did not look upon you as a person.’

  ‘Truly?’ she said.

  ‘Truly,’ he lied, hoping the word didn’t sound as hollow in her ears as it did in his.

  She frowned, unsure whether to be pleased his medical ministrations had been carried out with such professional detachment or dismayed that her charms had so little effect. ‘I do not know your name, though I would guess by your accent you are a Roman.’

  ‘Gaius Valerius Verrens, at your service, lady …?’

  ‘I am called Tabitha.’ She bowed her head with grave dignity. ‘It was fortunate you strayed so far from the road.’ The statement contained a question he found intriguing.

  ‘We are on the way to Emesa.’ He shrugged as if the journey were of little consequence. ‘Then perhaps I will continue on to Judaea. My guide,’ Valerius sensed Ariston’s ears twitch, ‘pledged to show me the wonders of the Orient, but he turns out to have poor eyesight and not much sense of direction.’

  Tabitha explained that she was the servant of a lady travelling from Chalcis to Hamah with a caravan of five hundred camels laden with precious frankincense. ‘An escort of fifty mounted archers provided by the king rode with us and we were judged safe from any interference.’ She lowered her eyes. ‘I wandered away from our encampment … I did not like to … under the gaze of the soldiers and rough camel drivers.’ She sighed. ‘I was a fool. They must have been waiting.’

  ‘They must also have been eager to know the dispositions of the guards.’ Valerius nodded towards her injured hand.

  ‘Yes,’ Tabitha said too quickly. ‘They put me to the question before …’ A tear ran down her cheek and he placed a fatherly hand on her shoulder. The touch clearly surprised her and she raised her eyes to meet his. For some reason Valerius found breathing difficult. ‘If we make reasonable time we could reach Hamah before the caravan, or perhaps meet them on the road,’ she continued eagerly. Valerius must have looked doubtful because her expression turned downcast. ‘I promise I will not be a burden to you. I can ride as well as any man, and despite my foolishness my mistress will reimburse you for any inconvenience I have caused. Please.’

  Valerius hesitated. He’d discussed the conundrum with Serpentius and Ariston during the night. In their opinion she would hold them back and his first instinct had been to leave her at the next village with enough money to see her home. Ariston had suggested returning to the river and hailing one of the boats carrying olive oil from the Syrian heartland to Antioch. But if she could ride …

  ‘I have seen a mouse put up more of a struggle against a cat.’ Ariston’s complaint to his mount travelled back to where Valerius rode beside the pack horse. Tabitha had forged a few yards ahead with Serpentius, the shapely form from the previous night engulfed in Valerius’s hooded cloak. ‘With one flutter of her eyelashes she has him doing tricks like a trained monkey. I once owned a camel with such eyes and she was the most wilful, vain, pernickety creature ever spawned. I sold her to a Bedou who was not so impressed by her looks and less inclined to spare the whip.’

  ‘If you’ve finished reciting the merits of your menagerie,’ Valerius gave him a sour look, ‘perhaps you could keep your eyes open for signs of the lady’s caravan and we’ll be able to dispense with our unwanted distraction.’

  ‘Unwanted? Hah.’ The Syrian dropped back to take station beside him. ‘A caravan of five hundred camels would leave a trail a hundred paces wide,’ he said soberly, ‘which would be visible even to a guide with poor eyesight. In addition, it would create a dust cloud that could be seen for ten miles. I see no dust cloud.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘Six men, or even ten, why would they risk raiding a caravan guarded by fifty bowmen?’

  ‘They might have been only the advance guard,’ Valerius suggested.

  ‘They were Sicarii, I am certain of it. The Sicarii are killers, not thieves. They usually work alone. Six men would denote a particular mission.’

  Valerius caught the hint. ‘You think our new travelling companion is not being open with us?’

  Ariston shrugged; what did he know? ‘She has made a remarkable recovery.’

  ‘There was nothing false about what those men did to her,’ Valerius pointed out. ‘Maybe she is just a remarkable woman?’

  The Syrian turned in the saddle. ‘Her beauty blinds you. I hope it is not the death of us.’ His eyes drifted to the man riding at Tabitha’s side. ‘Speaking of death, your friend with the wolf’s eyes makes me nervous.’

  ‘And so he should,’ Valerius said. ‘Serpentius survived a hundred combats in the Taurus amphitheatre. He has hands as swift as a cobra’s strike and has saved my life more times than I remember. It is your good fortune, Ariston, that he only kills who I tell him to.’

  He kicked his horse ahead to where Tabitha had reined in to water her mount in a stream that joined the Orontes. ‘You ride well,’ he complimented her. ‘Is that a common skill among servants in Chalcis?’

  ‘Common enough in servants of the royal court.’ She gave him a searching look that made his cheeks burn. ‘My lady often hunts in the desert with King Aristobulus, either with hawk or hound. She expects her servant to be at her side in case of need. We are different from Roman women, who I understand avoid such strenuous pursuits.’

  ‘I know one Roman woman who could match you in the saddle.’ Valerius smiled, remembering Domitia Longina Corbulo’s fierce pride as they outrode their Batavian pursuers at Placentia. ‘But you’re right, it is not a skill of which many Roman ladies
can boast. Your place at court would also account for your remarkable command of Greek.’

  ‘Latin too,’ she replied in that language. ‘And Hebrew, though Aramaic is the language of my birth. Is this an interrogation, Gaius Valerius Verrens?’

  ‘Let us call it a conversation,’ he smiled. ‘Ariston, our guide, is by nature a suspicious man. He thinks it is possible that the men who attacked you were members of a group of assassins who go by the name of Sicarii. Perhaps there is a reason other than the value of your frankincense why they were interested in you or your lady?’

  ‘What other reason would there be?’ Tabitha shook her head. ‘They were bandits. They wanted to know the layout of our camp and the position of the guards. Nothing more.’

  As the sun reached its height they entered Apamea by the Antioch Gate beneath impressive city walls, and Ariston grinned at Valerius’s undisguised astonishment. The Roman had expected just another dusty provincial city. A working community with a meeting place for a market, perhaps a forum and a basilica, a few temples and a baths. Instead the city rivalled anything he’d seen outside Rome, in some places possibly even surpassing the capital.

  ‘This is the longest street in Syria, perhaps the world,’ Ariston informed him proudly. ‘I promised you wonders, is this not one?’

  The main street, the cardo maximus, ran for at least a mile; a broad avenue lined with fluted columns of creamy white. ‘There are twelve hundred,’ Ariston continued, determined everything must impress. ‘I have counted them. Six hundred to each side and every one the height of five men.’

  Serpentius rode a little way apart, ignoring the architecture. Instead, his restless eyes searched the street for any undue interest in their little party. The others forced their horses past carts shod with iron wheels that rattled over the rutted cobbles. Driven by labourers in dusty robes, they carried wood and stone and fought for space with dark-skinned traders leading heavily laden camels, which were in turn followed by slave boys vying to pick up their droppings for manure. Valerius noted men wearing the garb of a dozen cultures. Apamea, like Antioch, was clearly a crossroads between east and west. A bustling place that trade, natural resources – they had passed through ripening fields and lush pastures filled with sheep – and its location beside the river had made wealthy. Behind the columns lay myriad shops and basilicas, selling goods from all over the world. Some of the luxuries had been imported from Rome, but others were more exotic. Ariston insisted the intricately worked golden objects studded with jewels and pearls on one stall could only have originated in the Indus Valley and the Orient. Tabitha altered course to study the shops more closely and reined in her mare at the front of one festooned with multicoloured lengths of cloth. When Valerius joined her she was clearly wrestling with some decision.