King of Kings

by Unknown

  Turpio rode up to the imperial party. His helmet was gone. The front of his tunic was covered in blood. Grinning, he saluted. ‘Dominus, I am afraid we seem to have lost our dinner.’ Despite the arrows whipping past, most of the men around the emperor laughed.

  ‘Dominus.’ Quietus was not laughing. His face was grey with fear. ‘Dominus, we must send a herald, arrange a truce. It is our only hope.’

  ‘No!’ Valerian thundered, his voice dispelling his years. ‘I will hear no more talk of truces today.’ Then, seeing who spoke to him, the heavy face softened. ‘My boy, I know it is only the love that you, like your father, feel for me that makes you suggest it. It is not for today. Their blood is up. Today there is no choice. We must fight.’

  The emperor looked at Ballista. ‘How far to Edessa?’

  ‘Twenty miles.’

  Valerian glanced at the sun. ‘Several hours of daylight.’ He turned back to Ballista. ‘Is there water ahead?’

  ‘A stream, four or five miles ahead.’

  Valerian nodded. ‘We will march in square. We should reach the stream long before dark, but we will camp there under arms for the night. Gods willing, the Sassanids will withdraw for the hours of darkness. At first light, we will march on. The easterners will be waiting. But if we hold our positions, keep our disciplina, hold fast to our virtus, and if the gods favour us, we will win through to Edessa.’ He looked at the Praetorian Prefect. ‘Make the orders.’

  Successianus issued instructions and messengers hared off to all corners of the square. The Comites Augusti, with a subtlety intended to preserve the emperor’s virtus, closed ranks around Valerian, placing their shields and bodies between the Persian arrows and the old man’s body.

  Quietus wormed his way between Ballista and Valerian. The young man leaned over, his face close. The smell of fear was rank on his breath. He hissed with venom, ‘You barbarian shit, your usefulness is at an end.’

  The march to Edessa was hard. Many died. Many were wounded. But it fell out as Valerian had predicted. At dusk, at the stream, the Persians melted away. The Romans passed a hungry, sleepless night in formation. At least they had water and, crucially, they still had disciplina. At dawn they marched, and the Sassanids were on them, circling like fighting dogs, mastiffs with their hackles up, snapping at their heels, feinting charge after charge, and ever the whisp, whisp, whisp of the incoming arrows, ever the screams of pain.

  Fifteen long, agonizing miles, and the Roman field army of the east reached the white-walled city of Edessa. They found that the north gate, the Gate of Hours, had already been unblocked to admit the Roman cavalry. Inside, they located Pomponius Bassus and Maeonius Astyanax with their troopers.

  They had made it. They had not left a wounded man behind. But, as Turpio whispered to Ballista as they rode in, they had marched and fought and died for two days to be trapped in a besieged city.

  XXVIII

  On 17 May in the consulships of Saecularis and Donatus, each for the second time, the one thousand and twelfth year since the founding of Rome, eight days after the arrival of the bloodied imperial eastern field army, the inhabitants of Edessa, despite the siege, were intent on celebrating the Maiuma.

  Moralists of all persuasions – Roman, Christian and other – were as one in their condemnation of the Maiuma, the festival of lights, if in nothing else. For all their impassioned oratory, for all their long beards and evident earnestness, they were fighting a losing battle. Unless there was to be a seismic shift in morality – say something insane like a Christian becoming emperor – the spring festival would continue. It was everywhere in the east. Under one name or another, it was celebrated by most cities between Byzantium and the Tigris. It was hard to pin down. Many in Edessa thought it in honour of the deities manifest as the evening and morning stars, but others held the honorand to be Sin, the moon god, or Atargatis, the Syrian goddess, or none other than the lord of the heavens himself, mighty Ba’alshamin. The greatest stumbling block to the moralists was that the Maiuma, just like the Saturnalia, was a lot of fun.

  In the afternoon, the gates and streets of Edessa were adorned with cloths of many colours, and lamps and candles were suspended from cords from the porticoes and trees. When the evening star came out, it was joined by the citizens, dressed in white linen. The men had turbans on their heads, the women tall headdresses from which hung silk veils. To the horror of those with stern morals, there was not a belt to be seen. Both sexes walked out with their garments loose or, as a moralist might put it, with their loins ungirt.

  A flower in one hand, a candle in the other, the men and women processed down to the river. Soon the banks of the Scirtos were lined with thousands of tiny lights, from the west where it flowed into the city near the Gate of Arches, to the eastern Water Gates by which it left. Incense was offered to the ‘Leaping River’. The flowers were cast on to the glittering, azure waters. Then men and women alike walked the streets of the city; singing, shouting, eating, drinking. Everywhere, there was music and dance. Everywhere, kohl-lined eyes flashed above silk. In the soft spring night, assignations were made. The Maiuma really was a lot of fun.

  This year, Ballista thought, there was an additional reason for the citizens of Edessa to celebrate. It was common knowledge that the imperial field army was leaving. It was a terrible irony that, after two hellish days of fighting on the march to get there, Valerian’s men had not been hailed as saviours but received as a considerable nuisance.

  The siege had not been lying heavily on Edessa. The walls were sound. The garrison was big enough, both regulars and local levies. There was plenty of fresh water, and an ample supply of siege engines. The governor, Aurelius Dasius, was a popular and capable man.

  Now, the imperial field army was within the walls. Soldiers were camped in every portico and open space. Others were billeted in private houses. Soldiers being what they are, free-born women and boys were roughly accosted not just in the streets but even in their homes; some were raped. It was not the gentle, once-a-year wooing of the Maiuma. And there was the looming problem of provisions. The supplies that had been got in for the garrison and the citizens now had to stretch to accommodate nearly twenty thousand more men and five thousand cavalry horses. But most worrying was the change in the strategic circumstances. While there had been a Roman army in the field, the Sassanids had remained ready to face it; they had not pressed the siege. With no likelihood of intervention, the easterners would sooner or later bring all the arsenal of scientific siege craft – mines, ramps, stone-throwing artillery, rams and mobile towers – against the walls.

  It was no wonder, thought Ballista, that the citizens of Edessa were glad to know the field army would march out on the next moonless night, in seven days’ time. He threw some bread into the sacred pool. The big carp came to the surface, a seething mass of bodies. There were so many, it looked as if you could walk on them.

  Unhappily, he thought back over recent events. Out on the battlefield, when the clibanarii had appeared, for a few moments Valerian had been like his old self. But any optimism Ballista had then felt had been crushed at the next council of war.

  Somehow, Anamu had reappeared. The untrustworthy Arab had joined with the creatures of Macrianus – the cavalry commanders Pomponius Bassus and Maeonius Astyanax, and his son Quietus – to persuade the aged emperor that a night march was the best way to start the retreat north to Samosata. Their arguments had been specious. Anamu knew a shortcut. The easterners did not care for fighting in the dark. They would get clean away. It would be as easy as a stroll in the Campanian countryside.

  It was as clear as day to Ballista that if the citizens of Edessa knew when the army was marching, so did the Persians. He was sure the Sassanids would overcome any inherited prejudices against night fighting. They would be waiting. Ballista smiled grimly as he remembered his own intervention: ‘Only a fool would follow an Arab on a short cut to Hades.’ Night marches brought chaos. Attacked in the dark, armies disintegrate. Ballista had noti
ced how counterproductive his blunt words had been. As soon as he had stopped speaking, Valerian had announced he would follow the sagacious advice of the amici of his beloved Macrianus.

  ‘Fuck it,’ Ballista said out loud. A line of one of Turpio’s favourite poems came into his mind: ‘Weep for those who dread to die.’ He threw the last of the bread into the pool.

  *

  Turpio walked out with the others: Ballista, Maximus, pretty, young Demetrius and ugly, old Calgacus. They passed a skin of unwatered wine from hand to hand. They had gone to see a pantomime in the grounds of the Summer Palace. They had chosen a performance to appeal to Maximus: Aphrodite, goddess of love, caught in adultery. The dancer had been good. In his own body he had brought the story before their eyes: the passion of Aphrodite and Ares, their discovery by Helius, the forging of the bronze net by the lame cuckold Hephaestus, the entanglement of the lovers, the lascivious gaze of the other gods.

  ‘Sure, that was very fine,’ said Maximus. He threw the wineskin to Turpio. ‘But I always say that a god-fearing man should heed what the deities show him. Now, brothers, will be the time for us to be putting on our own pantomime.’

  ‘I know a place,’ said Demetrius. ‘It is a local speciality.’

  They followed the young Greek across a small bridge over the Scirtos, the myriad lights reflected in the waters on either side, past the winter baths and up a side street. Turpio remembered a morning a long time ago when Demetrius had sent Maximus and him cross-quartering the city of Emesa on a wild-goose chase for upper-class girls supposedly waiting to fulfil their duty to the local god by letting strangers take their virginity. Gods below, Maximus had been angry when he realized he had been tricked. But, still, the Hibernian had found them some girls in the end, although very far from virgins.

  They reached the end of another alley. Demetrius spoke to two burly men on the door, money changed hands, and they were admitted to a dimly lit courtyard. Surrounded by other men, they sat on cushions and were served wine. One lamp burned at the front of an open space backed by a blank wall. The scents of incense, wine and the audience’s perfumes were strong in Turpio’s nostrils. Suddenly, all the other lights were dimmed. There was a flash of steel in the near-darkness.

  As their eyes became accustomed to the gloom, they could see the figure of a youth lying on the ground behind the lamp. The sword was by his side. He appeared to be asleep.

  A loud drumbeat made everyone jump. The youth woke and grabbed the sword. High, ululating singing, eerie to their western ears, came from somewhere. Tap, tap – drums began an anxious rhythm. Gracefully, the youth rose to his feet. He mimed searching for a hidden foe. He lit two candles from the lamp. With the sword balanced on his head, he looked high and low. Just three points of light, one fixed and two moving. As he turned, the sword flashed like the pharos that guides ships to port.

  The drums thundered. The candles vanished from the hands of the youth. The sword arced through the air. Jagged chords were struck from stringed instruments as the youth leapt, twisting and turning as he fought off unseen assailants. Faster and faster the sword flickered. Smooth, brown, oiled flesh in the lamplight, muscles flexing; the sword moving too fast to see, just glimpses of light on the blade, the blur of a scarlet tassel on its hilt.

  Then the sword was out of his hand, skittering across the stone floor. The youth was overpowered. He sank to the ground, face down. The music stopped. He lay still. Then, slowly at first, the music started again. The youth began to move. His hips rose and fell to the rhythm, faster and faster to the climax. A cymbal clashed. He lay still again. The lights came up. It was over.

  There was an audible sigh from the audience, then they applauded. The youth sat up.

  ‘Not bad,’ said Maximus, ‘but I will not be jumping the fence.’ He finished his drink. ‘Brothers, I think we should be continuing our search for earthly pleasures. I will be finding us a place.’

  Demetrius was smiling at the youth, who was smiling back. ‘I think I will stay here.’

  ‘Of course you will,’ said Maximus, rising to his feet. ‘Just be careful what he does with that sword.’ He ruffled the Greek’s hair.

  Outside, Turpio and the other two followed Maximus north past the basilica. True to his word, the Hibernian found a place soon enough. It was a broad, well-lit courtyard. Tables and couches, men and women, serving girls. In no time at all, they had a corner table. They were served rounds of thin bread topped with spicy lamb and strong local wine.

  Turpio noticed Ballista was taking more than usual care eating and drinking. It was a sure sign that the big man was feeling the effects of the drink. Certainly, they had consumed enough.

  Turpio leaned on his elbow and surveyed the courtyard; there were a few soldiers, but mainly locals. Four respectable women were at a nearby table. One of them looked back. Her eyes smiled above her veil. He turned to the other men. ‘It is an odd thing,’ he said. ‘According to the laws of the Edessenes, not only is an adulterous wife killed, but even one suspected of adultery. And then, once a year, there is the Maiuma.’ He raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Not that strange at all, amicus,’ said Maximus. ‘There is no end to the strangeness of people. The other night, I was talking to a most philosophical local – huge beard he had, you should have seen it, a most impressive thing – and he was telling me that, away to the east, among the Seres, there is not a fornicator to be found. Now, among the Indians, while your Brahmans will not be indulging in the pleasures of the flesh – no, not even if Venus were in conjunction with Mars at the moment of their birth – the rest are at it like knives. Whereas, among the Bactrians, who are called Kushanians, the women dress like men and consider it the height of hospitality to fuck any stranger who comes to their country.’ He paused for a drink. ‘And, brothers, you are wondering what is the moral of this story?’

  ‘Actually, no, I am not,’ said Ballista.

  Maximus ignored him. ‘The moral is an important one for any man. It would be a sad thing to be born a Brahman or a Seres, but the height of good fortune is to be on the road to Bactria.’

  A horrible wheezing sound rattled around the table. Calgacus stopped laughing long enough to say, ‘Your philosophy for life – wherever you are, pretend to be a stranger in Bactria. You should write your memoirs: A Stranger in Bactria. A great title, far better than Marcus Aurelius’ To Himself.’

  Over the laughter, Ballista asked, ‘Did it not cross your mind that this bearded local might have been less than serious?’

  Maximus held up his hand. ‘Not for a moment. I have never heard a man in greater earnestness.’ A sly look came across his face. ‘And let me tell you, he knew a thing or two. For example, did you know that, among the peoples of Germania, among whom I believe your own people, the Angles, stand very high, the men will be taking the handsome boys for wives, with a proper wedding feast and no shame at all?’

  ‘Bugger,’ said Ballista. ‘I thought we had managed to keep that quiet.’

  Maximus stretched. ‘Anyway, all this talk of physical passion is, as Demetrius might say, threatening to undermine the rational part of my soul.’ He got up, only a little unsteadily, and went off to strike a deal with a serving girl.

  ‘I am for my bed. I cannot take the drink any more,’ Ballista said. After they had stood to bid him goodbye, Turpio and Calgacus exchanged a look.

  ‘It is a fetish that has grown on him the last few years,’ said Calgacus. ‘The idea that, the next time he is in combat, he will die if he fucks another woman.’

  ‘Well, that woman of his is a likely-looking piece.’ At Calgacus’ sharp glance, Turpio went on, ‘Oh, do not come on like Maximus. I am only talking. Drink talking.’ As Calgacus’ thin mouth twisted into what was probably intended as a smile, Turpio got up. ‘It is the Maiuma. If you do not mind holding the table, I hear the irrational part of my soul calling too. Do not worry – as many women have told me, I do not take long at all.’

  Afterwards, Turpio rearranged his clot
hing. He slapped the girl on the arse and gave her a small tip. The actual fee had been paid downstairs, to the owner. Leaving the narrow room, Turpio stood for a moment or two leaning on the rail of the first-floor gallery. Below, he could see Maximus gesticulating as he explained something to Calgacus.

  The Hibernian was still talking when Turpio reached the table. ‘Clitoris like a slingshot, I tell you.’

  ‘That is me done. I am going back.’ After saying goodnight to the other men, Turpio left.

  Outside in the alley, it was quieter than before. It was getting late. Strange, he thought, how not only Ballista but his two slaves had become close friends. Still, they had all been through a lot together. A turn of the stars, and who knew what you would be. ‘A Stranger in Bactria.’ He smiled and realized he was quite drunk.

  Turpio had no trouble in retracing his steps. Crossing the Scirtos, he saw that most of the lights on the banks had gone out. After passing the fish ponds, he gathered his strength for the steep climb up the northern face of the citadel to their quarters in the Winter Palace of the old Kings of Osrhoene.

  When he reached the entrance to the courtyard, he stopped to get his breath back. Immediately he knew something was wrong. The waning moon lit the empty space. There was no sentry at the foot of the stairs. Turpio looked around. Nothing. There was no sound. Suddenly, he felt very sober.

  The sentry might have just gone to relieve himself. Turpio half thought he had heard footsteps as he approached. He wondered whether to draw his sword. He would look foolish if the sentry wandered back. Turpio drew his sword anyway. It came free with a rasp that sounded loud to him in the quiet building. As silently as he could, he crossed the cobbles to the stairs that ran up the inner wall of the courtyard. He stopped to look and listen. Nothing at all out of the ordinary. Along the first-floor veranda, bars of golden light gleamed out from behind the shuttered windows where the night lamps burned in the outer rooms of their sleeping quarters.