Fire in the East (24 page)

‘Are there any Angles here?’

There was not a face that did not turn to gaze at the huge barbarian warlord shouting unintelligibly in his outlandish tongue but, to Ballista’s immense relief, no one answered.

They moved past the livestock market to the eastern portico, the cheap end of the
agora
where the rag-pickers, low-denomination money lenders, magicians, wonder workers and others who traded on human misery and weakness touted for trade. Both Ballista’s companions were looking intently back over their shoulders at the alley where the prostitutes stood. It was to be expected of Maximus, but Demetrius was a surprise - Ballista had always thought the young Greek’s interests lay elsewhere.

Allfather, but he could do with a woman himself. In one sense it would be so good, so easy. But in another sense it would be neither. There was Julia, his vows to her, the way he had been brought up.

Ballista thought bitterly of the way some Romans, like Tacitus in his
Germania,
held the marital fidelity of the Germans up as a mirror to condemn the contemporary Roman lack of morality. But traditional rustic fidelity was all very well when you lived in a village; it was not designed for those hundreds of miles, weeks of travel, away from their woman. Yet Ballista knew that his aversion to infidelity stemmed from more than just his love for Julia, more than the way he had been brought up. Just as some men carried a lucky amulet into battle, so he carried his fidelity to Julia. Somehow he had developed a superstitious dread that, if he had another woman, his luck would desert him and the next sword thrust or arrow would not wound but kill, not scrape down his ribs but punch through them into his heart.

Thinking now of his companions, Ballista said, ‘For the sake of thoroughness, perhaps we should check what is on sale in the alley? Would you two like to do it?’

Demetrius’s refusal was immediate. He looked indignant but also slightly shifty. Why was the boy acting so strangely?

‘I think I am qualified to do it on my own,’ said Maximus.

‘Oh yes, I believe you are. But, remember, you are just looking at the goods, not sampling them.’ Ballista grinned. ‘We will be over there in the middle of the
agora,
learning virtue from the statues set up to the good citizens of Arete.’

The first statue Ballista and Demetrius came to stood on a high plinth. ‘Agegos son of Anamu son of Agegos,’ read Ballista. ‘It must be the father of our Anamu - a bit better-looking.’ The statue was in eastern dress and, unlike Anamu, he had a good head of hair. It stood up in tight curls all around his head. He sported a full short beard like his son but also boasted a luxurious moustache, teased out and waxed into points. His face was round, slightly fleshy. ‘Yes, better-looking than his son, although that is not hard.’

‘For his piety and love of the city’ - Ballista read out the rest of the inscription - ‘for his complete virtue and courage, always providing safety for the merchants and caravans, for his generous expenditure to these ends from his own resources. In that he saved the recently arrived caravan from the nomads and from the great dangers that surrounded it, the same caravan set up three statues, one in the
agora
of Arete, where he is
strategos,
one in the city of Spasinou Charax, and one on the island of Thilouana, where he is satrap (governor). Your geography is better than mine’ - Ballista looked at his
accensus
- ‘Spasinou Charax is where?’

‘At the head of the Persian Gulf,’ Demetrius replied.

‘And the island of Thilouana is?’

‘In the Persian Gulf, off the coast of Arabia. In Greek we call it Tylos.’

‘And they are ruled by?’

‘Shapur. Anamu’s father governed part of the Persian empire. He was both a general here in Arete and a satrap of the Sassanids.’

Ballista looked at Demetrius. ‘So which side are the caravan protectors on?’

 

In the afternoon, about the time of the meridiatio, the siesta, it started to rain. The man watched the rain from his first-floor window while he waited for the ink to dry. Although not torrential like the first rains of the year, it was heavy. The street below was empty of people. Water ran down the inner face of the city wall. The steps which ran up to the nearest tower were slick with water, treacherous. A lone rook flew past from left to right.

Judging that the ink was dry, the man lit a lamp from the brazier. He leant out of the window to pull the shutters closed. He secured them and lit another lamp. Although he had locked the door when he entered the room, he now looked around to check that he was alone. Reassured, he picked up the inflated pig’s bladder from where he had hidden it and started to read.

His moving finger stopped. His lips ceased inaudibly shaping the words. It would do. The rhetoric was pitched a bit high, but it was not part of his plan to discourage the Persians.

He picked up two oil flasks, one full and one empty, and placed them on the table. He untied the open end of the pig’s bladder and squeezed the air out. As it deflated, his writing became illegible. Taking the stopper out of the empty flask, he pushed the bladder inside, leaving its opening protruding. Putting his lips to the bladder and silently giving thanks that he was not Jewish, he reinflated it. Then he folded the protruding swine’s intestine back over the spout of the flask and bound it in place with string. When he had trimmed away the excess with a sharp knife, the bladder was completely concealed within the flask, one container hidden within another. Carefully he poured oil from the full flask into the bladder in the other. As he replaced the stopper in both, again he looked round to check he was still alone.

He looked at the oil flask in his hands. They had stepped up the searches at the gates. Sometimes they slit open the seams of men’s tunics and the stitching of their sandals; sometimes they stripped the veils from respectable Greek women. For a moment he felt dizzy, light-headed with the risk he was running. Then he steadied himself. He accepted that he might well not survive his mission. That was of no consequence. His people would reap the benefits. His reward would be in the next world.

In the queue at the gate, the courier would know nothing. The flask would arouse no suspicion.

The man took out his stylus and started to write the most innocuous of letters.

 

From the colonnade at the front of his house Anamu regarded the rain with disfavour. The streets were again ankle-deep in mud: the rains had put him to the expense of hiring a litter and four bearers to take him to dinner at the palace of the Dux Ripae. Anamu did not care to be put to unnecessary expense, and now the litter-bearers were late. He tried to smooth down his irritation by summoning up a half-remembered line from one of the old Stoic masters: ‘These four walls do not a prison make.’ Anamu was not sure he had it word perfect. ‘These stone walls do not a prison make.’ Who had said it? Musonius Rufus, the Roman Socrates? No, more likely the ex-slave Epictetus. Perhaps it wasn’t a Stoic at all - perhaps he had written it himself?

Warmed by this secret fantasy of other men quoting his words, men completely unknown to him drawing comfort and strength from his wisdom in their time of troubles, Anamu looked out at the rainswept scene. The stone walls of the city were darkened by the water running down them. The battlements were empty; the guards must be sheltering in the nearby tower. An ideal moment for a surprise attack, except that the rains would have turned the land outside the town into a quagmire.

The litter-bearers having eventually arrived, Anamu was handed in and they set off. Anamu knew the identity of the other guests due at the palace. Little happened in the town of Arete that Anamu did not quickly hear about. He paid good money - a lot of good money - to make sure it was that way. It promised to be an interesting evening. The
Dux
had invited all three of the caravan protectors, all of whom had complaints about the barbarian’s treatment of the town. Iarhai’s daughter would be there too. If ever a girl had a fire burning in her altar, it was her. More than one paid informer had reported that both the barbarian
Dux
and the supercilious young Acilius Glabrio wanted her. And the sophist Callinicus of Petra had been invited. He was making a name for himself- he’d add culture to the mix of tension and sex. With the latter in mind Anamu got out the scrap of papyrus on which earlier, in privacy, he had written a little crib for himself from Athenaeus’s
Deipnosophistae, The Wise Men at Dinner.
Anamu was widely known to be very fond of mushrooms and it was most probable that, as an act of respect, the Dux would have instructed his chef to include them in the menu. To be prepared, Anamu had lifted some suitably esoteric quotes from the classics about them.

‘Ah, here you are,’ said Ballista. ‘As they say, “Seven makes a dinner, nine makes a brawl.”’ Since his rather impressive rhetorical display at the gates, Ballista had gone down and down in Anamu’s estimation. The northerner’s bluff welcome did nothing to restore the position. ‘Let us go to the table.’

The dining room was arranged in the classical
triclinium,
three couches, each for three people, arranged in a U-shape around the tables. Approaching, it became clear that at least the
Dux
had had the good sense to abandon the traditional seating plan. The northerner took the
summus in summo,
the highest place, at the extreme left. He placed Bathshiba on his right, then her father; on the next couch were Callinicus the Sophist, then Anamu and Acilius Glabrio; and on the final one reclined Ogelos, Mamurra and then, in the lowest place, imus in imo, Turpio. Traditionally, Ballista would have been where Ogelos now was. The problem would have lain in who would have reclined on the northerner’s left, imus
in
medio, the traditional place for the guest of honour. As it was, the caravan protectors were each on different couches and none of them was either next to the host or in the place of honour. Anamu grudgingly admitted to himself that this was cleverly done.

The first course was brought in: two warm dishes - hard-boiled eggs and smoked eel in pine resin sauce and leeks in white sauce; and two cold - black olives and sliced beetroot. The accompanying wine was a light Tyrian, best mixed two to three with water.

‘Eels. The ancients have much to say about eels.’ The voice of a sophist was trained to dominate theatres, public assemblies, thronged festivals so Callinicus had no problem in commanding the attention of those gathered. ‘In his poetry Archestratus tells us that eels are good at Rhegium in Italy, and in Greece from Lake Copais in Boeotia and from the River Strymon in Macedonia.’ Anamu felt a surge of pleasure to be part of such a cultured evening. This was the right setting for one such as himself, one of the
pepaideumenoi,
the highly cultured. Yet at the same time he experienced a pang of envy: he had not been able to join in - so far, there were no mushrooms.

‘On the River Strymon Aristotle concurs. There the best fishing is at the season of the rising of the Pleiades, when the waters are rough and muddy.’

Allfather, it was a terrible mistake to invite this pompous bastard, thought Ballista. He can probably keep this stuff up for hours.

‘The leeks are good.’ A caravan protector’s voice might not be as melodious as that of a sophist but it was accustomed to making itself heard. It broke the flow of Callinicus’s literary anecdotes. Nodding at the green vegetables, larhai asked Ballista which chariot team he supported in the Circus.

‘The Whites.’

‘By god, you must be an optimist.’ Iarhai’s battered face creased into a grin.

‘Not really. I find continual disappointment on the racetrack philosophically good for my soul - toughens it up, gets me used to the disappointments of life.’

As he settled to talk racehorses with her father, Ballista noticed Bathshiba smile a small, mischievous smile. Allfather, but she looked good. She was more demurely clothed than in her father’s house, but her dress still broadly hinted at the generous body beneath. Ballista knew that racing was not a subject which was likely to interest her. He wanted to make her laugh, to impress her. Yet he knew he was not good at such small talk. Allfather, he wanted her. It made things worse, made it still harder to think of light, witty things to say. He envied that smug little bastard Acilius Glabrio, who even now seemed to be managing a wordless flirtation across the tables.

The main course arrived: a Trojan pig, stuffed with sausage, botulus, and black pudding; two pike, their flesh rendered into a pate and returned to the skins; then two simple roast chickens. Vegetable dishes also appeared: cooked beet leaves in a mustard sauce, a salad of lettuce, mint and rocket, a relish of basil in oil, and garum, fish sauce.

The chefflourished his sharp knife, approached the Trojan pig and slit open its stomach. It surprised no one when the entrails slid out.

‘How novel,’ said Acilius Glabrio. ‘And a good-looking
porcus.
Definitely some
porcus
for me.’ His pantomime leer left no doubt that when he repeated the word he was using it as slang for cunt. Looking at Bathshiba, he said, ‘And plenty of
botutus
for those who like it.’