Lion of the Sun wor-3

by Harry Sidebottom

  Demetrius saw Calgacus leap the divide. Demetrius found himself mouthing one of Ballista's sayings — Do not think, just act.

  As soon as he took off, the young Greek knew he had mistimed it. Arms flailing, he was dropping too fast. His stomach thumped into the edge of the roof, knocking the wind out of him. He was slipping back. His fingers clasped the corner of a tile. It came loose. He was slipping faster, legs thrashing in the void. Far below, the tile shattered.

  Demetrius clung to the final row of tiles. They began to shift. A hand gripped his wrist. Calgacus's face was contorted with effort; Demetrius's weight was dragging the old Caledonian with him.

  'Let go,' Demetrius screamed.

  Slowly sliding to his doom, Calgacus hung on. Sweat was pouring down his ugly old face.

  Another hand grasped Demetrius's other wrist.

  'One, two, three, pull!' Together, the guide and Calgacus managed to haul Demetrius up a little.

  'One, two, three, pull!' Demetrius's chest was over the lip of the roof. He clawed himself fully over. His saviours yanked him further up. Calgacus was doubled up, holding his injured arm. Maximus landed like a cat behind them.

  'This way, quick!' The guide was off again.

  Below, the streets and alleys echoed with shouts and the ringing of bells. Here and there shutters were thrown back, light spilling out.

  They raced around the opening of an atrium and across an unbroken span of roofs. Temporarily, they were out of sight from the ground.

  'Down there.' The guide pointed. 'Stay there until I come back.'

  One by one, they dropped into a dark space formed by four converging slopes. The guide's face appeared above them. 'Do not move,' he said. Then he was gone.

  A few moments later, there was a cacophony of yells. Demetrius could not resist peeping out. The guide had gone back the way they had come and was now standing over an alley, gazing this way and that, a picture of uncertainty. Then, as if spurred by the shouts from below, he set off. Moving fast, he passed the hiding place and ran off to the south. The sounds of pursuit followed him. With one hand, he swung up over a wall and was gone from sight.

  Slumping back down, Demetrius saw that Maximus was tearing strips from the sleeve of his tunic and binding Calgacus's arm. The old Caledonian's eyes were screwed shut. Dark blood was running from his wound.

  'Thank you,' Demetrius whispered.

  Calgacus opened his eyes. 'Think nothing of it.'

  They waited. The sounds of the chase faded. Immobile, they grew cold.

  Demetrius wondered what they would do if the guide did not return. Was the underworld like this? Cold, powerless, an eternity of unfulfilled waiting? One thing was certain: they could not stay here for long. They had to eat soon or else become too weak to flee. Demetrius could not stop shivering.

  There was a slight scraping sound and the guide was back. 'Good exercise, yes?' His thick eastern accent had returned. 'Now, you follow. Is easy now.'

  True to his word, the rest of the rooftop journey consisted of straightforward stages. Only one passage gave Demetrius concern. A beam jutting out from beneath the eaves held two leaning buildings apart. As he wriggled across, Demetrius looked down. An intricate pattern of washing lines ran across the alley. They would do nothing to slow a falling man. The young Greek kept his eyes on the wood in front of him.

  At long last, they reached the lowest level of houses. Via an outhouse, they dropped to the ground. Across the street was the inner side of the main city wall. At no great interval, the torches of sentries could be seen up on the walkway. The guide pressed them back into the shadow of the outbuilding. He hissed for them to wait. Calmly, he walked out into the open and around the corner.

  This time, the guide returned more quickly. Wasting no words, he indicated that they should follow. He took them towards one of the towers. On the battlements, the torches illuminated a standard bearing the eagle, lion and Capricorn of Legio IIII Scythica. Fortunately, the sentries were all on the other side. Under the tower, low in the wall, was a small postern gate. It was unlocked. The guide led them through and pulled it shut behind them.

  Keeping close to the wall, they moved south. Every time a sentry paced above their heads, they froze. Out in the night, a fox barked. They followed the wall as it curved round to the east. Before long, the low, gloomy structures that indicated a necropolis emerged from the darkness on their right. With a wave of his hand, the guide led them away from the wall into the city of the dead. Like ghosts, they flitted between the tombs. He stopped before one that had been cut into the living rock. The door opened easily. Once inside, he closed the door and pulled a curtain across its frame.

  Sparks flashed as the guide worked a flint on a steel. He lit a small clay lamp. Their shadows danced grotesquely on the walls. Demetrius looked around. A table and three couches stood in the centre of a large room cut from the rock itself. On the wall opposite the door were relief sculptures of eagles, wicker baskets, swags of flowers. In the other two walls were arched recesses; inside them long, low piles of broken roof tiles. The air was still, with a strong odour of mould and decay.

  'You wait here. Your friend will come.' The guide's eastern tones were now thick to the point of parody. 'I go now. You wait.' He indicated for Maximus to shield the lamp and slipped behind the curtain. They heard the door open and close again. They were alone in the house of the dead.

  Exhausted, Demetrius sat on one of the couches. With a wince, Calgacus sat beside him. Maximus put the lamp on the table and busied himself. First, he checked for any food that may have been left behind from a funeral feast. There was none. Then he started sorting through one of the mounds of tiles in one of the recesses. He came across with three shards, handily shaped and razor-sharp.

  Demetrius gazed at the recess from which Maximus had emerged. In rooting about, he had disturbed the tiles. A hand stuck out from the wall now, yellow-black with decomposition. How could people use these places for sexual assignations, thought Demetrius. He could understand a low-class prostitute maybe, with no place of her own to go. You often saw them hanging around the tombs outside city walls. But others — free men and women? It was unthinkable. No wonder that, in the famous story, the shade of Philinnion left her tomb to visit her lover in her old house.

  Maximus pointed to the curtain and the door behind it. In his most serious tone, he said, 'Sure, but you have to ask, just who the fuck was he?'

  'No idea,' said Calgacus. 'But he could climb the shite out of a wall, just like a monkey.'

  'Do you remember,' said Maximus, 'when we were in Arete, there was a woman that fucked a monkey?'

  Demetrius found himself laughing with the others. 'I think you will find,' he said, 'it was just a woman who gave birth to a child that looked like a monkey.'

  'And how did that happen?' Maximus sounded indignant, before adding thoughtfully, 'Unless of course she happened to look at a monkey just at the moment love reached its true, destined end.'

  A sound from outside stopped their laughter. Men with horses. Several of them, reining in by the door; dismounting.

  Quick as lightning, Maximus and Calgacus were either side of the curtain, the shards of tile to the ready. Maximus blew out the lamp. Unsure what to do, Demetrius rose from the couch. Feeling foolish, he adopted an approximation of the fighting crouch of the others.

  There was the sound of the door being opened. The curtain moved slightly as the night air caught it. Demetrius held his breath.

  'I am a friend.' The voice from beyond the curtain was pitched low, the Latin words muffled. 'I am coming in alone. Do not attack.'

  The curtain was drawn back. Pale moonlight flooded into the tomb. In the opening was the black silhouette of a man. He stepped over the threshold and stopped, his eyes taking their time to adjust. He did not flinch as Maximus noiselessly put the shard to his throat.

  'Welcome back from the dead, boys.' As he spoke, the man turned to look at Maximus and the moonlight fell on his face — a strange-
looking face, all lines and points.

  'Castricius, you little bastard!' Maximus hugged him. Calgacus slapped him on the back. Demetrius shook his hand. The centurion's palm was gritty.

  'Shite, I hoped our saviour would turn out to be the eupatrid whose son we rescued.' Calgacus shook his head in what seemed genuine sorrow. 'He would have given us a fine reward.'

  'And if it had to be you, Castricius,' Maximus joined in, 'there was no need to leave us there so long.'

  'And it's lovely to see you too,' said Castricius. 'You are lucky I'm here at all. I only got back tonight from a tour overseeing the quarries up the road at Arulis. Nasty, dirty, dangerous work — by Silvanus, the legionaries hate it — very tiring. I thought about getting a good night's sleep, maybe rescuing you tomorrow.'

  'Certain, I imagine the new governor thinks your life history fits you for the quarries.' Maximus was grinning.

  'Quite possibly — Piso is a cunt.' The centurion's voice changed. 'I was very sorry to hear Ballista was taken.'

  'He will get back,' said Calgacus. 'Always does.'

  'I do not doubt it.' Centurion Castricius became businesslike. 'The last watch of the night is almost over. There are three horses outside, tacked up, weapons to hand, food and water in the saddlebags, even a little money. Which way will you go?'

  'Do you think it unwise just to ride down the main road west — Regia and Hagioupolis to Antioch?' Calgacus asked.

  Castricius considered for a time. 'Piso will be annoyed you have escaped. Of course, you three are of no importance, and Piso is naturally indolent. But he is desperate to appear competent in the eyes of his Macrianus the Lame. He might be so keen to suck his dominus's cock that he will send a troop of horses down the obvious route.'

  'I have a friend in Hierapolis — well, a man I met on the journey out…' Demetrius's words trailed off.

  'There is no direct road,' said Castricius. 'It must be about forty miles as the crow flies, tough going, but it still might be best to go south.'

  Outside, a legionary was holding the horses. In turn, the fugitives thanked Castricius and mounted up.

  'One thing,' said Maximus. 'Who was the easterner who led us over the roofs?'

  The small centurion laughed. 'That was no local. One of my boys from Legio IIII — a scaenicus legionis. If you had to talk your way out of something, I thought it would be useful to have an actor to help you.'

  As they rode away, Demetrius reflected on life's absurdities. Most legions, especially those stationed out in the east, contained a troupe of soldier-actors. It helped pass the time. A scaenicus legionis had appeared to save them like the deus ex machina he must have so often played.

  Ballista was standing in the governor's palace in Samosata. He was watching the Sassanid envoy trying to control himself. Garshasp the Lion might have first won his cognomen in some battle in the east, but presumably it had stuck because it suited him. Unusually for a Persian, his hair had a reddish tinge. Long and thick, it invited comparison with a mane. When angry, as he certainly was now, his eyes flashed.

  They had been in Samosata for nine days. Finally granted an audience with Macrianus the Lame, they had been left waiting in the basilica for over an hour. If you thought the Sassanid King of Kings the equal of a Roman emperor, the twin eyes of the world, the two lamps in the darkness of mankind, as Ballista had heard Garshasp put it, this was a studied insult.

  Ballista himself had relished the delay. Every night that passed took him further away from the nocturnal apparition of the daemon of Maximinus Thrax. Ballista needed recourse to his familiar mantra — the daemon cannot physically harm you, avoid Aquileia and all will be well — less and less frequently There were other reasons Ballista welcomed the delay. Every day in Roman territory was a day he did not have to return to Sassanid captivity. Here in Samosata he could indulge the fantasy that all he had to do to be reunited with Julia and the boys was call for a horse and set out on the road to Antioch. And he wanted to be far away from the memory of the cell in Carrhae. Rolled face down, limbs stretched out, tunic hauled up; Allfather, that had been close. The assault had shaken the northerner more than he cared to admit.

  To break the run of his thoughts, he looked around the basilica. The last time he had been here, there had been plague. It was long gone, but the ends of some of the swags of laurel — their scent considered a preventative of disease — had not been removed. The floor was unswept. If one were planning a coup, as Ballista was convinced Macrianus was, such incidentals might well be overlooked. Valerian's imperial throne had gone from the dais at the end of the long room. Instead, six seats adorned with ivory stood in a row — the curule chairs symbolic of high Roman magistracies.

  The doors swung open. A herald announced Marcus Fulvius Macrianus, Comes Sacrarum Largitionum, Praefectus Annonae, holder of maius imperium in the Oriens. The titles rang out sonorous and impressive: the treasurer of the whole empire, its supply-master, with overriding military authority in its eastern territories.

  Click, drag, step. Macrianus advanced down the aisle. Click went his walking stick, his lame foot dragged, and his sound one took a step. He was followed by two more youthful versions of himself. His sons had the same long, straight nose, receding chin and pouchy eyes, but Quietus and Macrianus the Younger walked easily, with a confident swagger.

  Behind the family came three more men. All had deserted the setting sun of Valerian in time to rise high in the newly emerging regime. There was the elderly nobilis Pomponius Bassus, recently appointed governor of Cappadocia, the senator Maeonius Astyanax, as ever clutching a papyrus roll as evidence of his intellectuality, and, most sinister of all, Censorinus, commander of the frumentarii. Emperors came and went, but there was always a feared Princeps Peregrinorum like Censorinus in charge of the imperial secret service.

  On the dais, Macrianus handed his stick to one of his sons. He pulled a fold of his toga over his head and poured a libation of wine. Raising his hands to the heavens, he said a prayer to the immortal gods of Rome. His tone was imbued with the fervour of true belief. This was a man who had caused untold suffering to his fellow citizens with his persecution of Christians. Few could be more dangerous, more inhumane than an active and shrewd politician guided by burning religious certainty.

  Once everyone was settled in their seats, Macrianus the Lame indicated that the embassy should begin.

  Garshasp spoke briefly. Avoiding Greek, the diplomatic language of the east, he used his native tongue. Having captured Valerian in battle, Shapur, King of Kings, would now accept a ransom for him. Cledonius and Ballista had been brought here to arrange it. Knowing Persian, Ballista noted that the interpreter filled out the phrases to make them less brusque.

  Cledonius took the floor. Having served for many years as ab Admissionibus to Valerian, he was well versed in courtly etiquette. His speech was full and round in its Latin orotundity. He moved seamlessly between high-flown sentiments and hard details.

  The words slid off Ballista's mind like rain off a tiled roof. No one expected this embassy to succeed; not Shapur or Valerian, and none of the men in this room. Macrianus the Lame had exercised great ingenuity and foresight in order to betray Valerian to the Persians. The very last thing he would want was the return of the aged emperor. Instead, as Quietus had told Ballista in a moment of fury, Macrianus intended that his sons take the purple. Cledonius's speech ran on. As the historian Tacitus had revealed long ago, the rule of the emperors had created a gulf between words and reality.

  Suddenly, with a flourish, Cledonius produced a document from his toga. He began to read. It was a letter from Valerian to his loyal servant Macrianus. It was a direct order to the Count of the Sacred Largess to leave Samosata and come to the emperor in Carrhae.

  In the silence that followed Cledonius's rhetorical device, Macrianus rose to his feet. He came to the edge of the dais and leant on his stick.

  'Is anyone so insane that he would willingly become a slave and prisoner of war instead of being a
free man?' Macrianus shook his head, as if overcome by the folly of it all. 'Furthermore, those who are ordering me to go from here are not my masters. One of them, Shapur, is an enemy. The other, Valerian, is not master of himself, and thus can in no way be our master.'

  It was in the open. Macrianus had publicly denied that Valerian was emperor any longer. Although Ballista knew the devious Count of the Sacred Largess had been working towards this for at least a year, he still felt vaguely shocked. The northerner looked around to see how everyone else was taking it. Up on the dais, all heads except one nodded in solemn agreement. Quietus was smiling in exultation. Again, through the main body of the basilica, there seemed much muted approval. Ballista noted that the audience contained a significant percentage of those high-ranked senators who had followed Valerian to the east.

  Macrianus pointed to Garshasp. 'You will return to your master tomorrow morning.'

  When the translator had finished, the Sassanid warrior turned and, without a word, left the room.

  Macrianus gestured with his walking stick. Its silver head of Alexander the Great flashed. 'Cledonius and Ballista, you will remain here to serve the Res Publica.'

  Cledonius spoke up clearly. 'I will not.' His thin face was a mask. 'I am bound by the sacramentum I took to Valerian Augustus and by a specific oath to return to Shapur.'

  'And you, Ballista?' Macrianus betrayed no emotion.

  'The same.'

  The lame man leant on his stick, thinking. 'The sacramentum is a personal oath to an emperor,' he said at length. 'When a man ceases to be emperor — he dies or is taken prisoner — the oath ceases. Any oath you made to Shapur was under duress and so is invalid. The gods of Rome would want you to remain and give your service to the imperium.'

  'Sophistry,' said Cledonius. 'No emperor has ever been held captive by barbarians before. Who is to say Valerian is no longer emperor? In any event, there was no duress when I gave my oath to Shapur. I will return.'

  Macrianus pointed at Ballista.