by Peter Tonkin
‘I’m sure you would,’ said Quintus. ‘Like Marcus Licinius Crassus come back from the dead.’
Artemidorus shut everything out of his consciousness and leaned forward. ‘Who goes first?’
The old man brought up two clenched fists. ‘I hold a pebble,’ he said. ‘Right or left?’
‘Left,’ said Artemidorus.
The hand opened. It was empty.
‘And the other one?’ he demanded, keen to make sure all was honest – at this stage at least.
The old man opened it to reveal a pebble.
‘Fair so far,’ said Artemidorus. ‘You go first then.’
The old man was an excellent opponent, devious, practised in concealing attacks behind apparently irrelevant or mistaken moves, yet bringing his little soldiers forward with the relentless precision of Divus Julius himself. But, while his opponent had no doubt been studying mathematics at the Musaeum, Artemidorus had actually been serving with Divus Julius. And that made the difference in the end. He erected castra that his opponent’s troops could not break into. And when they tried, he launched counter-strikes of his own, just as Divus Julius had done at Alesia, Pharsalus and Munda. So at last the old man was forced to yield like Vercingetorix and Pompey.
*
Artemidorus handed his winnings up to Quintus, who went off to collect his own and Hecate’s as Artemidorus pulled himself to his feet. How much time had passed since he sat and went to war? He had no idea. Glancing around the room he saw new pugils beating the blood out of each-other, replacement cocks, cats, dogs and rats. Two of Herod’s entourage were trying to resist the naked girls’ techniques on the big bed. But Herod himself was still caught up in dicing egged on by the rest of his companions, Ferrata, and the remainder of Artemidorus’ contubernium.
‘I need a breath of air,’ he said to Hecate. ‘Wait here for Quintus then bring him to me; I’ll be just outside the door.’
Hecate nodded.
The street outside was busy. The air was scented and sultry – but still refreshing after the heat and humidity of the gambling den. Artemidorus hesitated. He turned, tempted to go back and invest some of his winnings in another glass full of that amazing Shedeh wine. Besides, he realised, he was very hungry indeed. What he saw when he turned put food and drink to the back of his mind. The two massive Macedonians were coming out of the main door and their eyes were fixed on him. He understood their mission in a heartbeat. ‘So, boys,’ he said, strolling back towards them, wishing he was armed with more than his pugio, ‘the house never loses, is that it?’
They looked a little confused, as though this had never happened to them before. They lifted the clubs they carried with just a hint of uncertainty.
‘The money you won from the old man,’ rumbled one. ‘He owed it to Spurius Arunculus.’
‘The oily one with the book, no doubt,’ nodded Artemidorus cheerfully. ‘If he owed it to Spurius Arunculus then he shouldn’t have gambled with it. And he certainly shouldn’t have lost. But he did. Fortuna pissed on him tonight.’
‘Spurius Arunculus wants it back. And he wants the money you wagered as well. The old man’s debt was very large. He sent us to collect payment.’
‘Well, Fortuna’s pissing on you too, boys. I gave it all to my friend for safe-keeping. I haven’t a sestertius on me.’
Just at that moment Quintus and Hecate came out. The legionary assessed the situation in the blink of an eye and stepped forward. ‘Everything all right Septem?’
The Macedonians swung round to face him, raising their clubs.
‘Fine thanks, Quintus. The boys and I were discussing the house rules.’
Hecate took one look at the situation and vanished.
‘Ah. The one where they want their money back,’ nodded Quintus knowledgeably. ‘I’ve come across that one.’
‘Spurius Arunculus is the man, apparently, the sly-looking oily bastard with the book full of lost wagers. And a purse full of gold almost as big as his belly.’
‘I noticed him. Shall we deal with him after we’ve seen to his gorillas?’
‘I think so. I think he owes us recompense for all the trouble we’re going to have to go to.’
vii
The Macedonians were slow, but not stupid. They understood the byplay was a calculated waste of time, so they leapt into action. In spite of the idle weeks in Cleopatra’s palace, both Artemidorus and Quintus were battle-fit. They had fought naked wild men in the black forests of Germania and knew that their lack of armour could be an advantage if they stayed quick enough to keep dodging the blows from those great clubs. ‘D’you think we should kill them?’ asked Quintus leaning sideways so that the first blow whispered harmlessly past his shoulder.
‘Not unless we have to.’ Artemidorus ducked as the club went a hairsbreadth above his head.
‘Cripple them?’ Quintus opponent’s club was really too big for him. He swung again but signalled the move so clearly that Quintus once again was no longer there when the club arrived.
‘May have to.’ Artemidorus’ opponent was a little better at this. He changed course mid-blow, stabbing the head of his club into the centurion’s belly. Artemidorus leapt back, lessening the impact of the blow.
‘Right!’ Quintus’ pugio was in his right fist, its long blade gleaming in the torchlight. At the sight of the dagger, his opponent hesitated. The legionary moved forward, waving the wicked blade in his face. Taking his cue from his companion, the Macedonian stabbed with his weapon, its head thumping into Quintus’ shoulder. The legionary twisted and danced.
Artemidorus also slid his pugio out, leaping towards his opponent, ducking beneath another side-swipe as he did. His shoulder smashed into the Macedonian’s chest as though into a brick wall. The Macedonian brought the club down vertically onto the spy’s back. Any harder and the blow would have damaged his spine. Disregarding the pain, he drove his dagger into the Macedonian’s thigh, twisted the blade, withdrew and danced back.
There was a crowd circling the combatants now. As Artemidorus came free, so the wall of bodies nearest to the door parted. Ferrata appeared with Hercules towering behind him. Then came Kyros and Notus. Artemidorus glanced back at his opponent, who had been slowed by the wound bleeding down his leg, but by no means stopped. With his contubernium behind him, however, Artemidorus felt more confident. He prepared to throw himself forward once again.
It looked as though he was going to have to kill his opponent after all.
‘STOP!’
The contubernium parted in turn to reveal Spurius Arunculus with Herod immediately behind him, dagger at his throat. Behind Herod came Hecate and then the Prince’s companions – even the two from the bed at the back, dressed and without their seductive companions.
‘Centurion,’ said the Prince of Galilee, ‘Your slave-woman and I have talked things over with this person and he wishes to announce a decision we helped him reach.’
‘Keep it!’ screeched Spurius Arunculus. ‘Keep the fornicating money!’
‘And...’ prompted Herod. His hand shook slightly. A fat worm of blood began to ooze down the book-keeper’s throat.
‘Take my purse as well. In recompense for any annoyance my over-zealous guards may inadvertently have caused you. Take all of it.’
*
‘That was a good evening’s work,’ decided Herod. ‘But there is still plenty of the night left. We can’t go back in there, but I’m hungry. We need to find somewhere convenient to...’
His words were cut off by a sneering voice. ‘Well salve Canicula! hello Bitch! I see your new owner has a sense of humour. To dress an ugly animal like you as though you were handmaiden to Cleopatra herself!’
Hecate seemed to turn into a statue. That one voice seemingly undoing the weeks of careful work Artemidorus had invested in her. He swung round, searching for the man who had just spoken. And there he was. In his mid-twenties, with a woman on his arm whose wig and make-up could not conceal the fact that she was old enough to be his moth
er. Was his mother, calculated Artemidorus, recognising family resemblance in the narrow little eyes, bulbous nose and fat, flaccid lips. And she had given birth to him very late in life.
‘Still dumb as the dog I named you after, Bitch?’ continued the young man, whose every word made Artemidorus more certain that this was Titus Volumnius Elva junior, recipient, with the hag beside him, of his poisoned father’s fortune.
‘I own this woman,’ he said. Although he spoke quietly, his words carried across the entire forum. ‘But Queen Cleopatra’s handmaidens did indeed dress her. I am Centurion Iacomus Artemidorus, Primus Pilus of the VIIth legion, seconded to the staff of Triumvir and General Mark Antony. And I knew Marcus Tullius Cicero well.’
‘Cicero! You knew Cicero! Well done! What has that to do with anything?’ he jeered.
‘You may regret that he is not here to defend you, if I take the trouble to bring you to justice.’
‘Cicero! Why would I need Cicero even if you did?’
‘Because it was Cicero who defended Sextus Roscius in the year 673 when young Roscius was also charged with arranging his father’s murder.’
‘That was good,’ said Herod later as, replete and exhausted, they sat in his barge being rowed back to Alexandria. ‘We won a fortune, won a fight, scared the life out of a murderous bully and his hag–mother – well Artemidorus did all of these things – and enjoyed one of the most satisfying dinners I can recall. The honeyed heron stuffed with perch and dates was unforgettable.’
Everyone fell silent after this summation of their evening, which in its precision was worthy of Cicero himself, thought Artemidorus.
He turned to the silent woman sitting close beside him and dropped his voice to little more than a whisper. ‘That was the name they gave you?’ he asked. ‘Bitch?’
‘It was. Because I come from lands far beyond the Great Sand Sea, and looked almost nothing like other women they knew. They called me Bitch and beat me like a dog.’
‘But what were you called in the lands beyond the Great sand Sea?’ asked Artemidorus. ‘What is your real name?’
She hesitated. ‘I am content to be Hecate,’ she answered. ‘To give you my real name is to give you great power over me and my ori inu spirit. Such power should be given carefully and rarely.’
‘Very well then, you are called Hecate, goddess of magic.’
She hesitated for a moment then whispered so quietly that he strained to hear, ‘Lolade. My true name is Lolade.’
XVIII: Alexandros
i
Alexandros was ready for sea-trials by the feast of Pachons, just as Keelan the chief shipwright promised. She was painted, gilded, and rigged. Her sail was made of double-woven flax, oiled, edged with the leather of chamois goats from Macedonia and decorated with a portrait of Isis in her form as Goddess of Kingship and the Protection of the Kingdom. Her figurehead was the face of Alexander himself, cast in gold, and her massive ram had been covered in bronze which had been gilded. Her oarsmen were trained and ready. Her navarchus commander and senior officers appointed. Her gubernator helmsman and sailhands were in place. All that was left were her sea-trials.
‘She is very beautiful,’ observed Hecate who had watched the great ship come into being as she herself had moved from her defensive silence towards a lively intelligence, no longer afraid to speak her mind. Unaware she had been the subject of a carefully-planned strategy, like Gaul or Britannia being invaded by Divus Julius. With much less rape and slaughter, thought Artemidorus. Though, to be fair, Herod’s visit had resulted in them missing the finishing touches – the laying of the deck, the stepping of the mast, the rigging of the sails and the turning of the oars. ‘In my country we have war canoes that can carry a hundred warriors up the Great River or out into the sea,’ she had announced unexpectedly. ‘But we have nothing like this,’ she continued, ‘nothing with masts and sails.’ She was standing at his shoulder on the quayside of the Royal Docks with the rest of his men behind them now. All watching as the great vessel rode the incoming rollers like a swan made of gold.
‘We have been invited aboard,’ Artemidorus said to her. ‘So you will get a chance to see how everything works.’ He turned to the others, raising his voice, ‘Her commander, Admiral Minnakht has apparently heard that we’ve been watching her being built. Prompted, by Cleopatra who I know is getting worried that we are all bored now that Herod has gone home to Galilee.’
‘Five minutes with Alexander’s corpse is enough for anyone,’ said Ferrata. ‘And you can only go round the Menagerie so many times. Though some of us, I know, are trying to talk with every person in the Musaeum and read every book in the Library…’
‘The admiral wonders whether we would like to be there for her first sea-trial,’ continued Artemidorus. ‘It will be a short voyage, designed to test the oars, the sails, the rigging. Everything is of the latest design, incorporating ideas from thinkers and designers such as Archimedes and Philo. The underside of her hull is sheathed in lead. There is even, I understand, a pair of devices like water-wheels at sea-level either side of her stern to measure her speed, designed by the engineers in the Musaeum.’ He could scarcely keep the excitement from his voice.
His enthusiasm was contagious. Hecate was keen, fascinated by the masts, spars, sails and rigging as were the rest of the contubernium, including Crinas for once and, remarkably, Quintus. Perhaps Cleopatra and Ferrata were right about the boredom.
‘Before you ask,’ said Quintus truculently, ‘I reckon something that big will be as solid as dry land in any case. No more upsetting than standing on this jetty.’
But he had forgotten the fact that they would need to go out to her in a skiff.
*
Alexandros’ deck did indeed seem as solid and still as dry land when they came aboard, climbing a ladder hanging from the bow, well to the fore of the first rowing box, stepping through a gap in the deck-rail into an area that was still being worked on. ‘It looks like they’re putting a companionway here which can be raised or lowered – for people too important to shin up a role ladder,’ said Ferrata.
Quintus’ queasiness in the skiff passed off almost at once as they walked admiringly down the length of the vessel. She was not yet fully fitted. The deck was bare – no fighting towers or other battle-ready equipment was yet in place. Nor was her company of marines. But some modern touches were: winches for raising and lowering the anchors, for instance, pulley blocks, invented by Archimedes, for tightening the rigging and, no doubt, for raising and lowering the companionway when it was finished. Artemidorus scanned the rigging as the little group waited for Admiral Minnakht to arrive and call for the vessel to get under way.
‘These are the ropes that will control the raising and lowering of the sails,’ he explained to Hecate. ‘And these pulley blocks control their tension.’ He patted the nearest one as he spoke. The simple grooved wheel that captured and guided the line to the sail was set in a cradle of wood held together by tightly woven rope. The line running through it was lashed to wooden pins in the deck rail. The wooden sections of the simple device were made of ebony. They looked functional but also decorative.
‘Even watching Alexandros being built did not prepare me for how complicated such things can become now she is afloat,’ she said.
‘It has taken centuries to work out, I think. Minoans, Phonecians, we Greeks, the Carthaginians, the Cilicians, the Romans, and the Egyptians. Alexandros is the result of all that history – with all the wisdom of the Musaeum added to it.’
‘But how do you know so much about such things?’ she asked.
He looked down at her, raking through memories. ‘I have sailed with Cilicians and against Cilicains; with Pompey the Great and against Pompey the Great; with Divus Julius, but never against him. You might be surprised how many legions get put aboard ships,’ he said.
No sooner had Artemidorus finished speaking than Admiral Minnakht came aboard. He had been rowed out from Cleopatra’s main palace, following a formal b
riefing from her. Artemidorus watched as the Egyptian commander briefed his officers beneath the incurving sternpost. There was a moment of stasis, then they all hurried to their stations. One team ran to the bow to winch in the anchor. As soon as it was clear of the water, the officer in charge waved a flag. The Admiral gave an order. With a thunderous rumble two thousand oarsmen ran out twelve hundred oars, six hundred in three ranks a side, the topmost – longest – controlled by two oarsmen – sometimes more. The rowers pushed them past the leather flaps designed to keep the water from flooding the vessel in battle or foul weather. Seated at the stern, facing them, the pausator began to beat out a steady rhythm. The Egyptian version of Artemidorus’ rowing song rang out and the great ship was in motion.
‘Not long now,’ said Ferrata.
‘Not long ‘til what?’ asked Quintus.
‘Not long ‘til we’re heading home,’ answered the legionary. ‘It’s all well marching across the world, even as far as Alexandria. But there’s no place like Rome.’
ii
Alexandros swiftly gathered way as the oars fell, pulled, and rose in unison. Almost as though the vessel were like the mechanical wonder Antony had sent to Cleopatra all those months ago. The admiral stood with his officers, the captain and the pilot cum helmsman at the rear of the ship, watching as she followed the course he dictated, out through the narrow entrance to the Royal Harbour then into the Great Harbour beyond. Artemidorus, Hecate and the rest stood entranced as the huge vessel surged onwards, gathering pace ever more swiftly as the pausator raised the rhythm and the rowing song grew faster.
The Island Palace fell swiftly astern. Wise seamen that they were, the admiral and the captain took the eastern course through the entrance to the Great Harbour, staying well clear of the rocks and reefs that ringed Pharos Island at the foot of the lighthouse and lay dangerously downwind. Then they were out into the sea proper.
Here the waves were taller and the wind seemed stronger out of Cape Lochias’ shadow. But still Alexandros ran straight and true, heading northwards across the set of the sea.