King of Kings wor-2

by Harry Sidebottom

  Quietus turned the ring bearing Alexander's likeness on his finger. 'I will not fail. The cells will be empty soon enough. I will kill the Christians in droves, and in the most diverting ways. While I triumph here in Ephesus, you must run back to Antioch in disgrace, like a dog with its tail between its legs, dreading the beating you will surely get.'

  Complacently, the young Roman turned in his hands the gilded ivory of his letter of appointment. 'If I were you, I would run back as fast as you can to Antioch. Now that hot-looking wife of yours has whelped another half-breed barbarian bastard, she looks more than ready for fucking again. I am sure the whore will find any number of men to fill her cunt while you are away. If I were there myself…'

  Forcing himself not to move, anger choking his words, Ballista stared at Quietus — at his weak chin, the pouched eyes, the lascivious mouth. Momentarily, the northerner had a vision — grabbing the voluminous folds of that fucking Roman toga, heaving the venomous little bastard off his feet; one heave and he was over the balustrade, pouched little eyes wide in realization and fear, filthy little mouth open in a despairing scream, arms and legs flailing hopelessly as he scrapped and smashed down the rocky slope and on to the hard, unforgiving stone seats of the theatre.

  Ballista mastered himself. Three angry words are three too many if spoken to a bad man. Lose control now and it would be the end — of him, of his familia, and of the last bold stroke he would pull as he left Ephesus.

  Ballista stepped very close. His voice was very low. 'One day, not today, maybe not soon, but one day, I will kill you.'

  Involuntarily, Quietus took a step back. Then his fury brought him up sharp. 'Oh no, you barbarian bastard, one day I will kill you,' he spat. 'When my father decides your usefulness is at an end. Then I will kill you. I will not need assassins. I will just order your death.'

  Ballista laughed in his face.

  Quietus' face flushed with rage. 'Laugh while you can, you barbarian cunt. Our beloved emperor Valerian is old. He is a fool. He relies on my father. Valerian's life hangs by a thread. And when that is cut…'

  Ballista laughed again. 'Valerian has a son. No one would follow a cripple like your father if he seized the throne.'

  Now Quietus laughed. 'Gallienus is far away on the Rhine. The east will welcome the dawn of a new golden age when my brother and I are invested in the purple.'

  Ballista was shocked. 'Your father is malevolent, but you are mad. When I tell…'

  'Tell who you like,' Quietus crowed. 'No one will believe you.' A couple of things surprised the telones as he stood in the lamplight outside the customs house on the quay. But it did not show. A customs official of the city of Ephesus, beloved home of great Artemis, had to deploy tact when dealing with the coming and going of the officials of the imperium.

  It was not in the least surprising that the ex-vicarius should sneak away like a thief in the night, and on the very day his successor arrived. He had not done well. Not one incestuous atheist had been burnt for months. Soft-hearted, some said. Barbarians were like women or children, soft-hearted, not fit for man's work. Others whispered worse things. Conversion. The big barbarian had been seen going into the prisons, talking to the atheists alone. It was all too easy to imagine — there, in the gloom, the Christian preachers whispering their seductive, empty platitudes into the witless, childlike ears of a barbarian. Was it not always the children and the women they preyed on first? Whatever, the ex-vicarius had not done well. He had not even managed to punish anyone for that disgraceful riot in the stadium, and that breaking out at the Saturnalia too.

  No, what the telones found worthy of comment lay in two other, lesser areas. He had a prosaic mind, filled as it was day to day with bills of landing and counting amphorae. This ship, the aptly named Tyche, The Fortune. It must have cost an emperor's ransom to hire the big 400-tonner. She was enormous. Gods below, when she had come in laden with grain from Egypt, there had barely been enough water under her keel at the jetty. Why squander money when the ex-vicarius could have travelled overland for free with the cursus publicus? Still, there was no explaining the whims of rich barbarians, or high Roman officials either, come to that.

  And then there was the staff. The telones had been on duty that day last year when the ex-vicarius had arrived. Seventeenth day of August it had been, the festival of the Portunalia. And a serious nuisance too, him turning up on the day of the dock-hands' traditional holiday. The telones had a good memory, it was vital in his line of work. Not like most of the young men these days, hardly remember their own names, buggered if they were going to work on the Portunalia. But he had been there that night, keeping the drunks away from the official reception, standing at a respectful distance, listening to what he could hear of the speeches. Flavius Damianus, now there was a proper eupatrid: loved his Polis, openhanded, honoured the gods, could make a fine speech, maybe not as fluent as they said his ancestor the great sophist had been, but he had been on form that night, the high Attic pouring out of him like wine from a jug. The telones remembered it like yesterday. And what had struck him was that the big barbarian travelled light, no more than fifteen, twenty at most staff and familia lined up behind him. But watching them go on board just now, hoods up, muffled against the chill of a spring evening, there must have been at least twice as many. It was odd, since rumour had it that, in the seven months he had been in Ephesus, the ex-vicarius had not bought so much as one bum boy.

  The telones watched as the Tyche slipped her mooring. He had said nothing when the ex-vicarius had come to hand over the customary tip, just wished him a safe voyage. Only a fool got mixed up in the doings of those connected to the imperial court. This Ballista might be under a cloud now, but who could tell what the future held? Like Ixion bound to his wheel, one moment these people were down in the depths of disgrace, the next they were carried aloft on the emperors' favour. If you thought about it, the whole story of Ixion was a warning not to stick your prick where it was not wanted. Ixion had been eating at the table of the king of the gods himself, then he tried to fuck Zeus' wife and, before he knew it, he was spending eternity bound to a fiery wheel. No, the telones had not said anything then, and he was not going to in the future. It was a fine night: a bite to the air, a myriad stars wheeling overhead. Ballista watched as Maximus made his way to the stern of the Tyche. In the near dark, the tip of the Hibernian's bitten-off nose was strangely white against the deep tan of his face. They stood together in silence for a time, looking at the famous fifty lamps of Ephesus that lit the road up from the docks to the theatre slip away astern.

  'The gaoler?' Ballista asked.

  'Safely on a ship bound for Ostia, a big purse of our money at his belt, dreaming happy dreams of a new life in the eternal city. Sure, no one will ever find him in Rome. It is a city of strangers.'

  The Tyche was nearing the harbour mouth. Ballista looked to his right. Mimicking the stars above, there were lights from thousands of houses climbing the lower slopes of the mountain higher up, the dark outcrops of limestone loomed.

  'Still, it's all a horrible risk, even worse than organizing a riot,' said Maximus.

  'Yes, but what can you do?'

  'Maybe not feel you have to play the hero all the time.'

  'Only partly the hero. It is only the gaol by the civic agora.'

  'Gods below, don't you start brooding about the others.'

  The sailors shipped the huge sweeps that had propelled the Tyche out of the harbour. The sails were sheeted home, and the great roundship heeled as they filled. Soon the water was singing down her side and a phosphorescent wake stretching behind.

  Ballista took a last look at Ephesus and turned to Maximus. 'You might as well tell them they can come back on deck. Remind them: if they talk to the crew they are pilgrims going to worship at the famous shrine of Helios on Rhodes.'

  'You always had a bad sense of humour. The equestrian one was saying he wanted to talk to you.'

  'Oh, good,' said Ballista.

  Aulus
Valerius Festus, member of the Boule of Ephesus, knight of Rome and condemned Christian, was not a natural sailor. Gripping one hand hold after another, he stumbled precariously across the sloping deck to Ballista.

  'On behalf of my brothers and sisters in Christ, I wish to thank you.'

  ' "I am a Christian, and I want to die," ' said Ballista. 'You do not seem to share that view.'

  'It is written in the Gospels that our Lord Jesus Christ said, 'When they persecute you in one town, flee you into another." '

  'The ones who volunteered for martyrdom must have missed that passage.' Ballista gave no time for a reply. 'We will drop you in Rhodes. It is a busy port. You and the others can take passage from there where you will.'

  'One of our priests, a most learned and holy man called Origen — he joined Christ in paradise not long ago, during the persecution of the late emperor Decius — wrote that those pagans in authority who help Christians might not be irrevocably damned to hell. He considered the prayers of the faithful might rescue them. I will pray for you.'

  Ballista rounded on him, eyes flashing. 'I do not need your prayers. I did not do it for you. I did not do it for your Christians from that gaol.'

  Involuntarily, Aulus took a step back, and grabbed a rope to recover his balance. 'Then… why?'

  'I do not know; something compelled me. Maybe it was hubris, that vice of the Greeks, a pride that expresses itself in humbling others. Maybe I wanted to prove to myself that I am a better man than you and your Christians, or the emperor and his courtiers.'

  Aulus looked doubly shocked.

  Ballista laughed at his discomfort. He looked up at the expanse of pale canvas and the stars above. 'Maybe philanthropia, love of mankind. My wife gave birth to my second son at the end of last year. I have not seen him yet. I hope there is enough love in my heart to love him as I love his brother. When I see him, I am sure I will.'

  'I am sure you will.'

  Ballista looked at Aulus as if surprised to find him still there. 'And how do you know my soul?'

  'I can tell you are a good man.'

  Ballista reached out to touch the backstay of the ship. It was taut. The Egyptian sailing master of the Tyche knew what he was about. 'If I became a Christian, and a man such as I was until today, a man with imperium, arrested me, tortured me, confiscated my property, and burned me, what would become of my sons?'

  'God's love would provide for them. And I am sure the local Christian community would help. We are commanded to give to the needy.' Aulus' words were charged with an unlikely hope.

  'You think it would be right for me to put my love of your unnamed and unknowable god above my natural love for my sons, my wife, family and friends?'

  'The love of God must be above all. If you cared, I could instruct you in the ways of the Lord. I could help you on the path to conversion.'

  Ballista laughed, a short, mocking laugh. 'You do not understand. Any religion that demands its followers love a distant, probably imaginary god more than those they should love — their family, friends; above all, their children — is cruel and inhuman. So, you see, I do not think I am the sort to convert to your crucified god. As far as I can tell, the ideal adherent of your cult is an ill-educated, half-starved virgin, not much given to independent thought but especially keen on self-harm.'

  'I will pray for you.'

  'If, as you say, your god is all-knowing, why would he need guidance from you? But do as you want. I suppose it cannot do any harm. Now, if you would not mind leaving me. There is a long journey ahead, but I want to think about my return home.'

  XXIII

  The baby was lying on the threshold of the house. Ballista was not surprised. There had been a message waiting for him when he landed at Seleuceia. In it, Julia had told him what she intended. The small figure lying there did not surprise him, but he still felt deeply shocked. It looked so much as if the child had been abandoned, left to die. Ballista had never got used to the custom of the Romans, and the Greeks, too, of exposing unwanted children. Wherever you went in the imperium, all too often you saw them — on the steps of temples, at crossroads, even on dung heaps, the pathetic little bundles of humanity wailing for a mother and father who would not return. It was not the way of Ballista's people. In Germania, all children were raised. And they have the audacity to call us barbarians, thought the northerner.

  As Ballista walked across, the baby kicked its feet in the air before thumping its tiny heels down on the mat. Good. Julia had at least respected his instructions that the child was not to be swaddled. Ballista remembered the epic struggle when he had said that Isangrim was not to be swaddled. Julia had been horrified. All Roman infants were tightly wrapped. It was the way to ensure they grew straight and true. But Ballista had been adamant. In Germania, children were not constricted. Nobleman or slave, they started naked and free on the same floor. How else did his people develop the strength of limb and tall stature which even the Romans admired? No son of his would be swaddled. Eventually, Julia had given way on this. But on feeding at the breast she was immovable. A wet nurse had been hired for Isangrim as now one had been for the new child. It was the custom of the Roman elite, and it was her body. Ballista had found no answer to her double argument.

  The big northerner went down on one knee and looked into the face of his new son. Huge, dark-blue eyes looked back. Long, black eyelashes. The first, light-blond curls. The tiny boy gurgled quietly. Ballista found himself softly cooing back. He felt a strange hollowness in his chest. He went to pick up his new son, then stopped. It was ridiculous. Isangrim was only seven, but Ballista was struggling to remember how to hold a baby. You had to support the head. Gently, very gently, he slid his large, scarred right hand beneath the boy, spreading his fingers to hold the head and shoulders. His left hand under the boy's bottom, Ballista rose to his feet and raised the innocent child in his man-killing hands. The baby wriggled, not unhappily. Ballista kissed the top of his head, smelling that distinctive, clean-baby smell.

  Ballista looked up. He took in the laurel wreathes on the door, the benches in the street laden with food, the crowd of onlookers.

  'This is my son, Lucius Clodius Dernhelm.'

  There was applause. Then three men emerged from the crowd and walked to the house. The door was shut. The first man carried an axe. He lifted it above his head. He struck the door. Wood splintered. He freed the axe and stepped back. The second man carried a pestle. He, too, struck the door. There was a dull thud. The third man had a broom. Ceremoniously, he swept the threshold.

  After Isangrim's birth, Ballista had asked the meaning of this ritual. He had received various answers. It was the stages of first life: cutting the umbilical, checking for soundness, cleansing. It was to scare away evil daemons. Ballista suspected the Romans had no real notion. It was just something they did.

  Demetrius was next to Ballista. He handed over a golden pendant containing a protective amulet. Ballista slipped the cord around Dernhelm's neck. Fat little fists closed on the bulla. Ballista smiled as the boy tried to cram the thing into his mouth and eat it.

  As was only right, the friends of the new father approached in order of status to pay their respects. Solemnly, the General Tacitus intoned a prayer of thanks to the goddesses of childbirth, Juno Lucina and Diana Lucifera, for bringing the boy safely into the light. The close-cropped head of Aurelian bent over the infant. He prayed for Sol Invictus to hold his hands over the child. Straightening up a little unsteadily; he announced that the boy looked tough; he would make his father proud when he came to take his place in the battle line. Turpio asked to take the boy. For once, his smile was not sardonic. His ostentatious Persian bracelet flashing, Turpio held the boy up and began to recite in Greek. As your first little gifts, child, nature herself Will give trailing ivy, berries, Lilies of the Nile mixed with bright acanthus. At milking time the goats will troop home on their own, The herds will not fear the majesty of the lion; Your cradle itself will grow flowers to gentle you. There were fewer well
-wishers than there might have been. It was common knowledge that Ballista's mission to Ephesus had not worked out well. Not everyone around the imperial court wished to be too closely associated with a man who might be out of favour with the emperor. This part of the proceedings was soon over.

  Julia came forward and, as a Roman matrona should, formally welcomed the return of her husband. By her side was Isangrim. His face was reserved. As he clearly had been schooled to do, he equally formally greeted his dominus. Ballista felt a stab of irritation. He had never liked the way senatorial families such as his wife's wanted sons to refer to their fathers as Dominus.

  Ballista handed his new son to Julia. He knelt down and opened his arms for Isangrim to embrace him. With a quick glance at his mother and only the slightest hesitation, the boy stepped forward and let his father hug him. Ballista buried his face in the boy's blond curls, breathing in the smell he loved so much.

  After a time, Ballista leaned back. Isangrim regarded him steadily. Ballista took a purse from his belt. He opened it and showed the contents to the boy. It contained the dried, crumbled remains of a leaf. Isangrim made no reaction. Ballista reached behind himself, and Demetrius placed a package in his hand. Ballista gave it to his son. Isangrim unwrapped it, and his face split into an enormous smile. He lunged forward and hugged his father close. Laughing with unalloyed pleasure, he thanked his papa for the best present ever. He disengaged himself and drew the miniature sword. He swung it this way and that through the air, only pausing to admire the sunlight playing on the colours in the steel.

  Ballista took Dernhelm back from Julia and nestled him on his shoulder. Standing on the threshold, he gave his permission for the feast to begin. There was a cheer. The majority of the crowd surged forward to the benches. Soon, stable boys jostled with gardeners and all types of tradesmen rubbed elbows with porters in a good-natured crush to get their hands on the rare treat of cooked meats and honey cakes, to drink the health of the new child in free wine.