The Amber Road (8 page)

Boldly, Zeno announced it was as he expected. In the night Patroklos had appeared to him in a dream. The son of Menoetius had told him Achilles had gone to Thessaly, to roam the plains and hills of his childhood. Zeno had announced the goat must go free. The offerings would remain. They would please Achilles on his return. Before they sailed they would make libations.

The lie was so obvious. Sailors were among the most superstitious people in the world. Unhappily, they had trooped down to the bay, gone on board, made the
trireme
ready. Dark looks were cast at the eunuch, sure bringer of bad luck. Wine tipped into the sea with pious words lightened their mood not at all.

Yet the remainder of the voyage had passed well. The prevailing north-easterly wind had not reasserted itself. Argestes continued to blow, but gently now. The breeze on the beam or quarter, the
trireme
proceeded mainly under sail. Soon the rowers, lounging on their benches, sang and joked when not quieted by the officers. Like plebs or barbarians, sailors were quick to change, unthinking. The terrible anger of Achilles was out of their minds. Amantius had not forgotten the implacable anger of Achilles.

Lying in bed, waiting for Ion to return, Amantius brooded on the Island of Achilles. It was created by and for love. Achilles’ mother, Thetis, had asked Poseidon to make an island where her son and Helen could live together after sloughing off their mortality. The god of the sea had granted her petition, minded that it might also serve as a refuge for seafarers. Poseidon and Amphitrite, and all the Nereids and water spirits had attended the wedding. And there through the ages Achilles and Helen had made love and sung together. But it was also an island of blood. Apart from the hideous fate of the Amazons, there was the story of the Trojan girl.

A merchant was in the habit of putting in to the island. Achilles not only deigned to appear, but had entertained him with food and drink. When all was convivial between them, Achilles asked the merchant a favour. The next time he visited Ilion, would he buy him a particular girl who was owned by a certain man? Astonished at the request, and emboldened by wine, the merchant wondered why the hero needed a Trojan slave. Because, my guest, Achilles said, she was born of the lineage from which Hector came, and she is what remains of the blood of the descendants of Priam and Dardanos. Thinking the hero was in love, the merchant carried out the task. The next time he came to the island, Achilles praised him, and asked him to guard the girl overnight on his ship. The island was inaccessible to women. That afternoon Achilles feasted the merchant royally and gave him many of the things such men are unable to resist. The next morning the merchant put the girl ashore, and cast off. He had not gone much more than a hundred yards when he heard the screams of the girl. There on the beach Achilles was pulling her apart, tearing her limb from limb.

Ballista sat in the pool in the hot room of the
thermae
. They were the only public baths functioning in the town of Olbia. The water was not as hot as it should have been. Despite that, the sweat was lashing off him. It was to be expected when a man stopped after drinking for two or three days.

Through the gloom of the
caldarium
, Ballista looked at the wall painting by the door. It was a dwarf with a hunchback. From under its ridiculously short tunic poked an erormous erection. The artist had lavished care on the bulbous head, tinting it purple. Causing Ballista a certain disquiet, it brought Calgacus to mind. The memories remained vague shapes below the surface. Ballista’s head hurt and his chest was tight.

Ballista had seen many similar grotesques across the
imperium
: dozens of the deformed in mosaics and paintings, often negroes, with huge penises and testicles. Their very abnormality was intended to provoke laughter, and it was common knowledge that laughter scared away
daemons
. So the misshapen often performed their apotropaic function in doorways and in bathhouses. It was not just against
daemons
the Romans thought they needed protection. There was the danger of
invidia
, or
phthonos
as the Greeks called it, the very human malign envy that directs its ill will at others. Those who possessed the Evil Eye were said somehow to be able to penetrate their victims with invisible particles of grudging malice, causing illness, madness, even death.

It was hard to imagine there was much to envy here, certainly nothing about either the looks or characters of Ballista’s three companions. They were all naked in the pool. The scar where the end of Maximus’s nose should have been gleamed white through the steam. His small eyes were screwed shut against the pain of his hangover. If anything stirred behind them, most likely it involved some unfeasible combination of women, alcohol, cannabis and extreme violence. Castricius moved an arm now and then, but the lined, pointed features of his face remained in repose. The little Roman was not one to be afraid of supernatural threats. He never tired of recounting the power of the
daemon
that always accompanied him; the very
daemons
of death were terrified of the two of them. His looks were equally unprepossessing, but Tarchon the Suanian was a different case.
Thermae
were still strange to him. Perhaps it was some perception of threat – physical or mental, human or
daemonic
– or merely the unaccustomed proximity of naked men, but there was no relaxation in the tribesman from the Caucasus. He shifted this way and that, trying not to brush his legs against those of the others. Continually, he peered around into the shadows. Ballista felt a surge of affection for all three, even as the loss of Calgacus pierced him yet again.

Following Tarchon’s gaze, Ballista doubted the
thermae
themselves could induce much envy. An old-style moralist who inveighed against the luxuries of contemporary bathing would find little for complaint. The hot room was small, dark and dingy. There appeared to be mould on the ceiling. Apart from the
caldarium
, there was only a changing room. A cold plunge pool had been wedged in a corner of the
apodyterium
. The four of them were the only bathers, yet it was still cramped. It was as well they had not brought a single slave with them. The baths in Ballista’s home in Sicily were bigger and better equipped.

In his tired and weakened state, the thought of home threatened to overwhelm him. He wanted nothing more than to be with his boys, with Julia. He loved the villa high on the cliffs of Tauromenium, loved sitting in the shaded garden looking down at sun shining on the Bay of Naxos. But was it really home? The villa had come with Julia as part of her dowry. It had been in her family for generations. Ballista had added his own touches to it; some trophies and weapons hanging on walls, an expanded library, the odd work of art. But it was not his in the way it was Julia’s, in the way it was his sons’. They had always known it. For him it was a brief sunlit interlude. It had been years since he had been there. The place had assumed a mythical status, like Alfheim or the Islands of the Blessed.

The sweat was stinging his eyes. He rubbed it away, along with his maudlin thoughts. There was no point in dwelling on Tauromenium now. He was bound for the far north, Angeln, his original home, and there were no bathhouses there. A line of Tacitus came into his mind. The Britons rushing to embrace togas and baths; mistaking those signs of servitude for
humanitas
. In which case, his journey should be a flight from slavery into freedom. Somehow he doubted it.

A man moved quietly past the dwarf into the room. There was no sound of clogs protecting his feet from the heated floor. In his hand there was a gleam of metal. The water erupted as Tarchon surged up out of the pool. Ballista slipped and struggled to his feet. Maximus and Castricius were up, knives magicked out of their towels.

The newcomer screamed as Tarchon slammed him against the wall. A bucket rolled away and a strigil scraped across the tiles. Tarchon had his hands around the man’s throat.

‘No!’ Ballista shouted. ‘Leave him. It is just a bath attendant.’

The slave fled when Tarchon let him go.

Ballista smiled at the Suanian. ‘You were quick, but more killings would not be good. We still have the two dead sailors from the waterside hanging over us.’

The drinking had to stop, the guilt reined in, discipline reasserted. Ballista knew he and his
familia
were a danger to themselves as well as any who crossed their path. This had to stop.

IV

Olbia

Aulus Voconius Zeno,
Vir Perfectissimus
, special envoy to the far north of the Augustus Gallienus, Pius, Fortunate and Invincible, sat in the seat of honour, such as it was, in the council house of the city of Olbia. Light came from the open door and windows. There was no glass in the windows. Obviously, the building, high on the acropolis, had once been the
praetorium
of a Roman army unit. The
Boule
must have moved into the officer’s quarters when, after the disaster at Abritus thirteen years before, the new emperor Gallus had withdrawn the troops from the north of the Euxine. By the look of it, the council had spent nothing on repairs or decorations since.

The meeting had been in session for an hour or more. A lifelong career in imperial service had equipped Zeno with deep reserves of patience. After lengthy prayers to the gods, a magistrate titled the
agoranomos
had taken the floor, and showed no signs yet of relinquishing it. First he had set out, in bad Greek and exhaustive detail, the grain shortage afflicting the town. The public granaries were virtually empty, prices rising steeply; there were dark rumours of hoarding and profiteering. A citizen of Olbia now resident in Byzantium had donated a shipload of wheat. The
Boule
had decided to recommend the assembly vote this man a statue at public expense. Given the straitened circumstances of city finances, an old statue should be rededicated. Despite this godlike generosity, the
agoranomos
had continued, much more was needed. With no overt reluctance, two councillors had announced they would provide grain from their private stores. More fulsome praise had followed, and two more forgotten benefactors of an earlier age lost the dedications on their statues.

The
agoranomos
now was talking about temple treasures. Zeno’s thoughts drifted towards the baths and dinner. At least one of the baths was still operative, diminutive and foul though it was, and he had instructed one of his boys to buy oysters and bream. Seafood was wonderfully cheap in this backwater compared with Byzantium, let alone Rome. Raised voices with uncouth accents brought him back. Apparently, the previous year the
Boule
had authorized the priests of Apollo to pawn some sacred vessels of gold. The foreigner who held them was threatening to take them abroad and melt them down. The somewhat acrimonious apportioning of blame continued for some time, growing steadily more heated, until the first
archon
Callistratus announced he would reclaim them with his own money. The loan would be for a year, interest free. The members of the
Boule
then had to endure Callistratus launching into an extempore oration on
homonoia
; did they not realize civic harmony was the greatest treasure a
polis
could possess?

There were only twenty members of the
Boule
. Zeno studied them. They were all dressed in native style: embroidered Sarmatian tunics and trousers, small black cloaks, long swords on their hips. Zeno thought of the story of Scyles in Herodotus. Scyles had been king of the nomadic Scythians in these parts, but his mother had been a Greek woman. She had taught him that language, and brought him up to love all things Hellenic. When Scyles had come to Olbia he had left his army outside the walls and entered the gates alone. Inside, Scyles had changed his Scythian clothes for Greek. He had a home in the city, in which he kept a woman he treated as his wife. Maybe they had children; Herodotus did not say. Each time, he had stayed for a month or more. This state of affairs had persisted for a number of years. In the end a citizen of Olbia had told the Scythians, who could say for what motive. Rejected by his people, hunted and finally betrayed, Scyles was decapitated.

Looking at the councillors of Olbia, Zeno thought the cultural influences now ran strongly the other way. They had done so for a long time. The citizens of Olbia had been wearing nomad garb over a hundred and fifty years before when the philosopher Dio of Prusa had come to the town. Yet Dio had judged them Hellenic, had found merit in them. They were brave, knew Homer by heart, some of them loved Plato, and – always an important factor with Dio – they had listened to his philosophizing and honoured him. Dio had been a slippery man, often saying more or less than was true about himself and others. Zeno knew one thing which Dio had suppressed about the Olbians. Many of them carried barbarian names, like this
agoranomos
Dadag, or Padag, whatever he was called.

At long, long last the Greek magistrate with the Sarmatian or Persian name ceased talking. The floor was taken by the
strategos
in charge of the defence of the city. The name of this one was entirely Roman. Marcus Galerius Montanus Proculus, like many in the
Boule
, was clean-shaven. Zeno smiled at the recollection of Dio claiming only one man in the whole town had shaved – in flattery of the Romans; and all his fellow citizens had reviled him for it. Maybe fashions had changed, or maybe again Dio had played with the truth. Many intellectuals were not to be trusted.

Montanus told another story of woe. A group of slaves had run. They had stolen a boat and made their way to somewhere called Hylaea. Evidently, this place was nearby, somewhere in the great marshy estuary where the rivers Hypanis and Borysthenes came together. There were altars and sacred groves there, which the slaves had violated. The heavily wooded terrain was blamed for the failure of the Olbian militia under Montanus to kill, capture or dislodge them. Lately, the runaways had turned to piracy.