A Mixture of Madness, Book II of The Bow of Heaven (36 page)

Chapter XXII

55 – 54  BCE   -   Winter, On the March

Year of the consulship of

Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus and Marcus Licinius Crassus Dives

Those of you with decent memories will recall that the tribune Ateius invoked the name of the same goddess of whom Melyaket the Parthian was so enamored. It is a s
trange coincidence, I grant you. Yet there are many wondrous things between the instant we perceive our own mortality and the final moment when, with our last exhalation of disappointment, we resign ourselves to death’s embrace, of which we have no understanding. Do I believe there exists a divine Peacock Angel (Melek Ta’us in the Parthian tongue) keeping a feathery eye on us, her mortal charges? I do not. You may do so if you choose, but with apologies to Aristotle, life among the Romans has caused me to edge closer to Epicurus on this issue:  the gods have no time nor interest in the comings and goings of man, and their reality is in all likelihood so far removed from ours that they are entirely unaware of our existence. If a divine peacock has somehow slipped its celestial confinement, someone ought to herd it back to its pen.

•••

The crossing from Brundisium to Dyrrhachium would have taken a single
trireme
less than a day and a night sailing under fair skies. Our passage took three times as long. Which meant we would have been very hungry and very thirsty, had we been able to think of such things without retching. Before our voyage was over, what food we did have in our bellies was heaved up on deck, washed overboard or onto the rowers below. The storms were relentless; not for even an hour was our captain able to raise the sails and grant the oarsmen a rest. Some were broad-backed free men, mostly Greeks from Syracusae working off their twenty-six year contract to earn Roman citizenship. From what I could hear of their labors through the decking, they earned every one of the four sesterces credited daily to each man’s account. Most, however, were our own legionaries, chosen from among those with the least seniority, to help man the 170 oars. There was room on deck for no more than a
century
, less if the
trireme
was carrying cargo or animals.

These
cedar ships were meant to sail along the coast for a single day, then dock and take on stores for another short journey, on
calm
seas.
Triremes
and other ships of war are not built to withstand winter storms. If you were an eagle soaring high over the Middle Sea at this time of year, your keen eyes would be shocked to find the white-capped waters filled with our frail centipedes, oars beating a desperate, funereal rhythm against the iron waves.

By the time
Scourge of
Ctesiphon
shipped its oars under clearing skies in Epirus Nova’s finest harbor, the last of our storm-battered fleet was barely halfway through their own ordeal. Never had the Adriatic done so much to dissuade so many from the Eastern journey. We arrived drained, drenched and shivering. And behind us, on an ever darkening horizon, lightning silvered the grey sea.

The bosom of Dyrrachium’s port may have been welcoming and blessedly unmoving, but its outstretched arms could only accommodate a fraction of the numbers Crassus had amassed. Weeks passed while thousands of men waited for their turn to disembark, steaming themselves dry in the cool air. Even at the rate of ten ships a day,
thousands spent over a month just getting themselves off those accursed boats. The town had to ferry food and water to the queued ships while the men gambled, sharpened their blades, and baled harbor water from their chastised transports.

I say this:  if man had been meant to ply the seas, the gods in their wisdom would have given him a stronger stomach. If destined to tread the earth, surely
he would have been created with the legs of a lion and the feet of a pachyderm. One must be forced to the conclusion that the unerring gods blessed man with a form best suited for contemplation, study, and a life undisturbed by travel.

(Even an atheist may invoke the gods by way of expression and turn of phrase. I defy you to deny it.
The supposition, I maintain, is nevertheless accurate.)

•••

Scanning back across the decades compresses time, like a length of string held taut in both hands, then slowly turned till it is looked at from one end to the other. How odd to think back on that time now. Events tumble one upon the other. A mere six years after we departed Dyrrachium for Parthia, Caesar would descend upon the port to face a resolute Pompeius. There would Magnus give Caesar such a thrashing that the war between them could have ended in Caesar’s defeat, had Pompeius not halted the rout before the final blow could be struck. Of his narrow and inexplicable escape Caesar would remark to his friends, “Today victory belonged to the enemy, if the enemy had only been led by a victor.” Of this and all that followed my master would be beyond caring.

Was it better for my lord that the Fates cut the thread of his life and dropped him into the black ignorance of death before learning of either of his rivals’ fate? Though the Spinner had been distracted and the Measurer had lost track of Time, though the wool of
dominus’
life wound round his life’s spool far more than most, I say it matters not. Like many blinded by their passions, clarity struck Crassus only when the hot breath of his mortality moved the hairs upon his neck, when the oiled, preparatory snips of the Cutter came close upon his ear. He saw, only at the last, the folly of his quest for vengeance. Too late, too late. A multitude would suffer; life would change in uncounted ways as shards from the collisions of his choices’ children spun off in all directions.

Time and the
world will rumble on without him, leaving brave Tertulla to grieve and go on. They will roll over each of us in our turn, as they had Pompeius and Caesar, Antonius and Cleopatra, as they will Melyaket, Livia, our son, me, you, your progeny and theirs, on into infinity until one or the other grows tired and decides to grind to a halt.

•••

Being assigned to Crassus as his non-military aide did have its benefits:  we were the first to disembark to anemic welcoming noises made by magistrates, citizens and manifestly amateur musicians. Never mind. I had to restrain myself to keep from embracing each in his turn. Romans, as you are probably aware, do not have the world’s finest reputation as sailors, and with apologies to the 300 oarsmen and 50 crew who got our flagship safely to port, as I stepped off onto the dock, my first thought was to ask myself how much longer it would take on the return trip to go the long way around on solid ground.

My immediate objective, after finding suitable lodgings for
dominus
while the engineers laid out our first temporary camp to the south of the city, was to locate Livia. It is good to have objectives, for they are the ropes by which we pull ourselves through this life from one milestone to the next. I advise, however, moderation in this task of setting goals, or else risk becoming tangled up in a Gordian knot of life’s many disappointments.

By way of example, take my desire to find
my wife. Frantic to know if she was safe, I longed to hold her and to hear every detail of how she had weathered the crossing. Then, having secured a room adjacent to and almost as fine my lord’s, I intended to sup with her, bed her, and assure her that I would stand by her and protect her until we were safely returned to our home and our son. And I cannot claim to have had, by way of excuse, even a solitary cup of watered wine.

I dined alone that first night, while Crassus met with his legates. The next day, I waited on my master, and when dismissed, dove into the confusion of the docks in search of my lady. This I repeated each day of the first week, and again on every day of the second. A ship came into port carrying Musclena, the chief
medicus
, but Livia was not on board. I found Octavius, legate of Legion I, and second-in-command. He could not say for sure, but he thought the remaining two
triremes
carrying the field hospital and the rest of the medical supplies and personnel would be another week at sea. In spite of being pulled in a hundred directions, the commander took the time to put a hand on my shoulder and reassure me that now that the weather had eased, the rest of the fleet would arrive safely.

And they did, but was “the rest of the fleet”
all
of the fleet? There were rumors. Before they could be substantiated, Crassus' patience ran out, even as a dozen sails crawled over the milky horizon. I begged my lord to allow me to tarry in Dyrrachium, but his deteriorating handwriting sentenced that hope to an early death.

Even before we left Rome, Crassus had been finding it more and more difficult to hold a pen. Once we had departed the city, he wrote more than ever, composing at least one letter to my lady each day without fail. I offered to assign a scribe to him, but he would not hear of it. I was the only one he would entrust with the intimate details of his dictation. I made two copies:  one would accumulate to be sent home by courier in a bundle at the end of each month; the other I would secure as
insurance against the original failing to reach its destination. When I asked him how this cramping might affect his sword arm, he assured me it was only the narrow grip of the writing instruments that troubled him.

“If we fought with pens,” he said, “I would be forced to fall upon mine.”

That evening, I sat wearily in my master’s tent, scrawling listlessly to Tertulla of the weather, the scenery and varied matters of equal import. We were to learn later that of the original 36,000 souls that left Brundisium, two thousand legionaries, five hundred auxiliaries and five hundred cavalry would be lost at sea, twelve ships sacrificed to Poseidon. Or to Crassus. Since I have never seen the water god, where else can the blame lie but at the feet of the mortal?

•••

As soon as one of the grain ships was offloaded, we broke camp with four legions; Octavius stayed behind to await the remainder of the army; Crassus himself led our troops. I left the port, turning in my saddle as we rounded the last hill that would put the sea from view. There were many more sails now sitting upon the water with stripes of red and cream, and from their number I took hope. I turned from the sight and whispered a brief appeal to no god in particular to bring her safely to port.

Strange, is it not, how
even those of us who scoff at divine intervention will fall to our knees and clasp our hands the moment we realize our futures are defined by uncertainty and hazard. A thoughtful man would never leave his knees. A wise man would never drop to them. In any case, it wasn’t really a prayer, but one does like to follow convention now and then.

•••

Two weeks later, still ignorant of Livia’s fate, Crassus dismissed me until after the evening meal. He wanted to have a bath. If I hurried, I ought to have sufficient time. It was only an hour’s ride south of camp, a place unknown to me as a child, then denied to me as a man. Yes, I had been given permission to ride rather than walk all the way to Syria! There was no prestige in it—it was the only means of keeping pace with my master and his wants. Apollo was a reliable, if sedentary dark brown bay, but to me he was Pegasus. On the march, from my equine elevation, the endless sight and oceanic sound of thousands of men marching men six abreast almost made me feel guilty. (You may be interested to know that I named my horse for the statue at whose feet Livia and I first kissed. Yes, I have a romantic nature; it is a character flaw which should be viewed with pity, not derision.)

The engineers had chosen a field between a sloping cherry orchard and a rushing stream that lay a mile to the east of Edessa. Fresh
water and decent grazing—these were the two most important criteria for camp selection. In the distance came constant thunder from an unseen cascade whose waters raced past us with a jubilation I did not share. A light rain was falling. It was early afternoon and legionaries were still tramping into the unfinished camp from the morning’s march. My tent lay between my master’s magnificent structure—you could hardly call it a tent—and those almost as grand assigned to the army’s legates. There was my humble goatskin shelter, the standard ten feet on a side, a bug caught between giant hands. But then I didn’t have to share it with seven other coarse, foul-mouthed, reeking soldiers, did I? No sharing, but no sleeping either. For the first few nights, this blessed oblivion proved all but impossible to achieve, curled up in my cloak on the straw-strewn floor, save for a few nightmare-encrusted moments.

Do I sound unaccountably bitter? Perhaps, but I can account for the sentiment, I assure you. I mentioned this once. You may have forgotten, but I never shall. When I had first become a slave, dragged with Sulla’s army back from Athens, a boy of nineteen, it was in a tent just such as the one which I now called home where I had catered to every need, imaginable and unimaginable, of eight men indistinguishable from the thousands surrounding me now. I recoil as I remember their callous indifference to my suffering, their almost bored creativity as each day they subjected me to some new indignation. I served at their pleasure for over a year. The decades had helped me push those memories into a corner of my mind where I shuddered to look. There it was never quite dark, but always illuminated by the same dim, yellow light that filtered down through my tent’s hide to settle on my shoulders like a shroud. Now, they came again, bright and raw and new. Old friends.