A Mixture of Madness, Book II of The Bow of Heaven (49 page)

I
inspected this Syrian bed. It was raised off the ground, not much higher than a sleeping
lectus
, but much wider, with a thick layer of matting. It was held aloft by a golden frame, the sleeper guarded on each side by twin winged Assyrian bulls. A pale blue curtain no thicker than a cobweb dropped from the ceiling to surround the entire piece. I was not sure of its purpose, for I did not think it would give a mosquito more than a moment’s pause. The bath was a sunken oval whose far wall contained a diamond-latticed window so wide it required the support of three gilt columns. The view of the river and the city beyond was stunning.

“This room is obscene. I shall need a potion or at the very least a mask in order to sleep here.”

“I will have it ‘simplified’ after the ex-proconsul departs.” Sending the attendants below to begin unpacking and preparing a bath, I asked
dominus
to sit for a moment on a couch near the double doors.

“
I lied,” I said quietly. Crassus began unlacing his boots. A servant ran up the steps but
dominus
waved him off.

“I thought as much.” I waited.
Dominus
continued. “You never gave me a direct answer to my question as to whether or not you agreed with Cassius’ concerns. That is unlike you, at least when we are not alone.”

“As I recall, you never
asked
a direct question.”

“I attend, eager as ever.”

“I don’t trust either one of them, the Osrhoene king or the young Parthian.”

“We are agreed.
” I raised an eyebrow. “My father once told me, ‘if you arrive for a meeting with a man you do not trust, and the man you do not trust does not arrive, do not trust the man who first arrives at the meeting.”

“He told you no such thing.”

“Not precisely, no, but they were words to that effect. Go ahead, explain yourself.”

“What of Marcus Antonius?
He was among the ‘first to arrive.’”

“
Pff. He is a Roman through and through. I can smell it on him.”

“Agreed. The first reason I don’t trust either one of the others is something you said earlier today. Something about the bonds of friendship loosening with distance. Armenia and Parthia have been at odds for ages, and Osrhoene sits between them and wonders,
I am a dwarf caught between giants, and my ‘friend’ is far away. If I were Abgarus, I would not be motivated by friendship, but fear. Be cautious, my lord.”

“Agreed. And of the bowman?”

I pursed my lips. “With him it is strange. He is, there is something about him…”

“He is too likeable.”

“Yes! He is like a fragrant bowl of steaming soup you are compelled to taste knowing your tongue will burn. And his presence at our arrival was completely inappropriate. But there is more to distrust regarding the Aramean king. When you asked him when a Roman army was last seen in Syria, he hesitated.”

“Maybe he was traveling when Gabinius began his own invasion of Parthia.”

“It was less than three years ago! What reason could he have to hesitate?”
If Pompeius hadn’t called his dog off to (illegally) put Cleopatra’s father back on Egypt’s throne—with a bone of thanks from Ptolemy, a fortune of 10,000 talents of silver—Gabinius might have conquered Parthia and Livia and I would be safe at home with our son. I had as much reason to be as disaffected with Magnus my master.

“
Abgarus might have a hundred legitimate reasons. I see nothing there. However, here is how I shall play the Parthian. I shall take him into my confidence while at the same time removing you from it.”

“
Dominus
!”

“Patience. I shall keep the lad close. As I befriend him, I shall confide in him that I have reason to mistrust you.
”
My facial muscles felt as if they had begun to dance
. “I will ask him, while he is able, to keep watch on you and report back to me. He should decline the offer outright, for he has no business with us.”

“
If he accepts,” I said, my pitch and inflection straining for normal, “we have indication, if not evidence.”

“
And if he makes frequent excuse to go and return, there can be but one reason.”

“H
e reports to his Parthian overlords.”

“
Then, if we so choose,” said Crassus as he stood and smiled, it appeared in equal measure from his deceit as much as from the joy of wiggling his once again bare toes, “we may feed him a soup of our own choosing.”

•••

The man’s hair was in ringlets that fell to the back of his neck and halfway down his forehead. Each one was crimped with a narrow gold band. A fringed purple headband was tied tight at the top of his head. His face was rouged, but exertion had caused the paint to run. His matching robe was barely tied, beneath which his lean body was naked. Mercurius sat behind a rosewood table tucked diagonally up against the far corner of the room. He wrote furiously, his pen dipping in and out of the well, his eyes flicking from one piece of parchment to the next. Several players stood idly against the wall, fingering their instruments. Marcus Antonius sat on the edge of the long table. Draped over the back of his uniform, its paws tied beneath his neck, was a lion’s skin. The head, I am pleased to say, was not in evidence, but I am certain Antonius knew its whereabouts.

With a dozen
bewildered legionaries behind us, we had entered the grand gallery of the Regia, unwilling players upon a bizarre and foreign stage. Crassus was dressed in all his polished military finery save for his helmet, which was tucked under his arm. The hall was magnificent. Columns painted green and black were spaced every twenty feet and rose almost that high to the beamed ceiling. Birdsong vanquished the echoes of our footsteps on the polished tiles as we drew to a halt. The entire length of the gallery was open—through the columns we could see a covered portico and from there a quadrangle planted with rows of trees whose white, starry flowers perfumed the air. Green, misshapen globes, some having turned bright yellow, hung so large and plentiful they made of their branches two-color rainbows. Later I learned the thick-skinned, tart fruit was called citron, what the Hebrews call an
etrog
, and the Persians know as a
limun
.

“You must forgive my appearance,” said Aulus Gabinius, Roman statesman, general, tribune of the plebs, propraetor and proconsul.

“Why must I?” asked Crassus.

Gabinius tilted his head to the side. The gold in his ringlets made a pretty sound. “I should think professional courtesy.” Marcus Antonius hopped off the desk and offered his pelt to Gabinius. As this would have been useful only had he donned the garment backwards, the ex-governor declined.

“Professional courtesy would be the last thing to raise between us, I should think,”
dominus
said pointedly. He looked around him. “What has been going on here?”

“When I could
not access my rooms, I took my exercise.” Crassus waited, uncomprehending. “I dance. To music.”

“You
are
the same Aulus Gabinius who suppressed the recent revolt in Judea?”

“Who welcomes you to Antioch.”

“Our welcome, Gabinius, was notable only due to your absence. I trust you’re packed?”

“With your permission,” he said, bowing deeply, “I shall leave for Rome directly after the games. You and I have much to discuss. About Syria. About Parthia?”

“I will not deny the people their games, but you will be gone and on your way back to Rome before the last team has been unharnessed, bandaged and brushed.”

•••

People had been streaming across all five bridges onto the Regia’s island since sunrise. The racing track had been completed thirteen years earlier, built so that the governor and his guests could take a short stroll through his gardens, under guard of course, and enter the broad red and black arch of the Proconsul’s Gate into the arena. Every one of the 80,000 seats in the hippodrome was occupied, though defended might be a more appropriate word. The Circus Maximus may have taken twice as many Romans to its bosom, but these clumps of blue and green flag-waving Antiochenes expressed an even greater joy to be held there. The track itself was an oblong almost 1,500 feet long by 220 feet wide. Down its center ran an 850 foot long by 24 foot wide
spina
only a few feet tall around which the chariots ran. Bronze statues of rearing horses reared thirty feet in the air at both ends, and in the center a red granite obelisk, forty feet tall and just delivered from Alexandria lay on its side waiting to be erected. I cocked my head, but the gold-painted hieroglyphics engraved up and down its spine made as much sense to me either way. Feeling for a moment like a schoolboy, I half-wished that the Egyptians had covered their gift with execrations and scatological humor at the Romans’ expense.

We had just taken our seats in the governor’s box; the noise
became so loud at our arrival it precluded conversation. I took note that at our approach the volume of cheers increased in equal proportion to the number of boos. Somewhere high above us, Livia must be laboring mightily to restrain Hanno from leaping into the aisle to tumble twenty rows to the railing for a better view. After gaining
dominus’
permission, the only way we had agreed we would allow the sixteen-year-old to attend was if we tethered the two of them together. What with the unbridled—I beg your pardon—enthusiasm of the crowd, I was relieved that Malchus and Betto had graciously agreed to be their escorts.

For this special occasion, Crassus looked particularly resplendent, wearing a laurel wreath upon his brow and a gold-bordered purple cloak over a double tunic of black and gold. I was w
earing my best tunic, which was simple and black with no ornamentation, but I was very fond of it. Marcus Antonius, Octavius, Petronius and Cassius joined
dominus
and Gabinius in the box, and Melyaket had been included at Crassus' insistence, but King Abgarus was curiously absent. Cassius was miserable, as usual, and
dominus
had thought it best to leave him out of his plans for the Parthian to keep his reactions natural. They were very ‘natural’ this morning. Mercurius and I sat behind our masters among the wine and food servers. Luckily for the generals we were outside the
pomerium
, for the heat of this climate and the strict tradition of the toga would have undone many a noble. Lucky for all, Gabinius, though ostentatious, was at least fully clothed.

Gabinius stood to give the signal for start of the games, but as soon as the masses saw him, whe
ther green or blue, a throat-swelling of disapproval rose all around us. Crassus shouted up at him, “It would seem you’ve stolen one
denarius
too many from this province, Aulus.”

Unfazed, Gabinius made an exaggerated
show of pointing to the new governor of Syria sitting next to him, motioning for him to stand. When Crassus rose, the cheering grew louder than the noise from any triumph. It was clear that
dominus
was deeply moved. There was no speech he could give that would be heard, but he greeted every corner of the stadium with broad smiles and raised arms. Every time he turned, that section of the hippodrome went wild. Was it this sound he had been waiting for all his life? I hoped it would never end.

And then he ruined it.

“They don’t know me,” he shouted, taking his seat. “They simply have had quite enough of you.”

Gabinius flicked a hand and horns draped with the red and black of Antioch were raised on either side of us. Their fanfare announced the parade of charioteers. From the red granite arches of the starting gate at the south end of the track came five blue team chariots and five green. Four matched beauties pulled what could only be called an insane driver, for in any contest of speed, power, inertia or stress, the horses were likely to win out over the frailty of the two-wheeled platform on which he balanced.

Gabinius stood
. Mingled with the cheering for their favorite drivers, several dozen knights in the best seats above us started booing again. “Let’s take a walk through the shops in the colonnade,” he said, ignoring them. “We’ll be able to talk there. The chariots parade twice around. It will take the cleanup crew half an hour to rid the track of garlands and curse tablets, not to mention the odd fish head and sow’s nose.”

“That’s why the teams are all drifting toward the center island,” Mercurius added helpfully.

“After that there’s the procession of the gods. If we’re lucky, no one will miss us.”

Everyone rose. Crassus said, “Melyaket, I’m afraid I must ask you to stay here with Cassius Longinus. I’ve given it some thought, and well, we mustn’t take chances, must we?”

“I completely understand. It’s an honor to be invited here today. May the legate and I share a cup of wine while we wait?”

“I insist,”
dominus
said, staring meaningfully at Cassius, who was wrestling with looking both disappointed and gratified simultaneously. “Get to know each other. We shan’t be long. The races cannot start without the dropping of an
orarium
, and I’ve already seen how this crowd reacts when they are angry.”