Fire in the East

by Harry Sidebottom

  ‘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.

  The artillery magazine has been burnt. All stocks of ballistae bolts are destroyed. The northern barbarian is gathering stocks of food for the siege. When he has gathered enough, fires will be set against them. There is enough naptha for one more spectacular attack. He has announced that the necropolis will be flattened, many temples and houses destroyed, his troops billeted in those that remain. He is freeing the slaves and enslaving the free. His men strip and rape women at will. The townsmen mutter against him. He has conscripted townsmen into army units to be commanded by the caravan protectors. Truly the fool has been made blind. He will deliver himself bound hand and foot into the hands of the King of Kings.

  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.

  My dear brother, the rains have returned ...

  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 ar
e 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.’

  Iarhai started to rise from his couch and speak. Quickly Ballista cut him off.

  ‘Tribune, watch your tongue. There is a lady present.’

  ‘Oh, I am sorry, so very sorry, utterly mortified.’ His looks belied his words. ‘I meant to cause no embarrassment, no offence.’ He pointed at the porcus. ‘I think that this dish led me astray. It always puts me in mind of Trimalchio’s feast in the Satyricon — you know, the terrible obscene jokes.’ He gestured to the pike. ‘Just as porcus always leads me astray, this dish always makes me homesick.’ He spread his hands wide to encompass the three couches. ‘Do we not all miss a pike from Rome caught as they say “between the two bridges”, above Tiber island and below the influx of the cloaca maxima, the main sewer?’ He looked around his fellow diners. ‘Oh, I have been tactless again - being Roman means so many different things these days.’

  Ignoring the last comment, Ogelos jumped in. ‘It would be hard for anyone to catch a pike or anything else here in the Euphrates now.’ Talking fast and earnestly, he addressed himself to Ballista. ‘My men tell me that the fishing boats I own have all been taken by the troops. The soldiers call it requisitioning; I call it theft.’ His carefully forked beard quivered with righteous indignation.

  Before Ballista could reply, Anamu spoke. ‘These ridiculous searches at the gates - my couriers are kept waiting for hours, my possessions are ripped apart, ruined, my private documents displayed to all and sundry, Roman citizens are subjected to the grossest indignities ... Out of respect for your position, we did not speak out at the council meeting, but now we are in privacy we will - unless that freedom is to be denied us as well?’

  Again Ogelos took up the running. ‘What sort of freedom are we defending if ten people, ten citizens, cannot meet together? Can no one get married? Are we not to celebrate the rites of our gods?’

  ‘Nothing is more sacred than private property,’ Anamu interrupted. ‘How dare anyone take our slaves? What next - our wives, our children?’

  The complaints continued, the two caravan protectors raising their voices, talking over each other, each drawing to the same conclusion: how could it be worse under the Sassanids, what more could Shapur do to us?

  After a time, both men stopped, as if at a signal. Together they turned to larhai. ‘Why do you say nothing? You are as much affected as us. Our people look to you as well. How can you stay silent?’

  larhai shrugged. ‘It will be as God wills.’ He said nothing more.

  larhai gave an odd intonation to theos, the Greek word for god. Ballista was as surprised as the other two caravan protectors by his passive fatalism. He noticed that Bathshiba glanced sharply at her father.

  ‘Gentlemen, I hear your complaints, and I understand them.’ Ballista looked each in the eye in turn. ‘It pains me to do what must be done but there is no other way. You all remember what was done here to the Sassanid garrison, what you and your fellow townsmen did to the Persian garrison, to their wives, to their children.’ He paused. ‘If the Persians breach the walls of Arete, all that horror will look like child’s play. Let no one be in any doubt: if the Persians take this town there will be no one left to ransom the enslaved, no one left to mourn the dead. If Shapur takes this town it will return to the desert. The wild ass will graze in your agora and the wolf will howl in your temples.’

  Everyone in the room was staring silently at Ballista. He tried to smile. ‘Come, let us try to think of better things. There is a comoedus, an actor, waiting outside. Why don’t we call him in and have a reading?’

  The comoedus read well, his voice true and clear. It was a beautiful passage from Herodotus, a story from long ago, from the days of Greek freedom, long before the Romans. It was a story of ultimate courage, of the night before Thermopylae, when the incredulous Persian spy reported to Xerxes, the King of Kings, what he had seen of the Greek camp. The three hundred Spartans were stripped to exercise; they combed each other’s hair, taking not the least notice of the spy. It was a beautiful passage, but an unfortunate one given the circumstances. The Spartans were preparing to die.

  Reaching out to pick up the carcass of one of the chickens, Turpio spoke for the first time that evening. ‘Don’t the Greeks call this bird a Persian Awakener?’ he asked of no one in particular. ‘Then we will treat the Sassanid Persians as I treat this.’ And he pulled the carcass apart.

  There was a smattering of applause, some murmurs of approval.

  Unable to bear another, let alone a rough ex-centurion, getting even such muted praise, Callinicus cleared his throat. ‘Of course I am no expert in Latin literature,’ he simpered, ‘but do not some of your writers on farming refer to a valiant breed of fighting cock as the Medica, that is to say the bird of the Medes, who are the Persians? Let us hope that we do not meet one of those.’ This ill-timed scholarship was met with a stony silence. The sophist’s self-satisfied chuckle faltered and died away.

  The desert that now appeared consisted mainly of the usual things - fresh apples and pears, dried dates and figs, smoked cheeses and honey, and walnuts and almonds. Only the placenta in the centre was unusual: everyone agreed they had never seen a larger or finer cheesecake. The wine was changed to the sort of forceful Chalybonian said to be favoured by the kings of Persia.

  Watching the Persian boy Bagoas anointing Mamurra with balsam and cinnamon and placing a wreath of flowers on his head, a gleam of malevolence shone in Acilius Glabrio’s eyes. The young patrician turned to Ballista, a half-smile playing on his face.

  ‘You are to be congratulated, Dux Ripae, on the close way in which you follow the example of the great Scipio Africanus.’

  ‘I was not aware that I followed directly any illustrious example of the great conqueror of Hannibal.’ Ballista spoke lightly, with just a trace of reserve. ‘Unfortunately I am not favoured with nocturnal visits from the god Neptune, but at least I have not been put on trial for corruption.’ Some polite laughter greeted this display of historical knowledge. At times it was too easy for people to forget the northerner had been educated in the imperial court.

  ‘No, I was thinki
ng of your Persian boy here.’ Without looking, Acilius Glabrio waved a hand in his direction.

  There was a pause. Not even the sophist Callinicus said anything. At length, Ballista, suspicion in his voice, asked the patrician to enlighten them.

  ‘Well... your Persian boy ...’ The young nobleman was taking his time, enjoying this. ‘Doubtless some with filthy minds will provide a disgusting explanation for his presence in your familia’ — now he hurried on - ‘but I am not one of those. I put it down to supreme confidence. Scipio, before the battle of Zama which crushed Carthage, caught one of Hannibal’s spies creeping round the Roman camp. Rather than kill him, as is normally the way, Scipio ordered that he be shown the camp, taken to see the men drilling, the engines of war, the magazine.’ Acilius Glabrio left time for this last to register. ‘And then Scipio set the spy free, sent him back to report to Hannibal, maybe gave him a horse to speed him on his way.’

  ‘Appian.’ Callinicus could not contain himself. ‘In the version of the story told by the historian Appian, there are three spies.’ Everyone ignored the sophist’s intervention.

  ‘No one should mistake such confidence for overconfidence, let alone for arrogance and stupidity.’ Acilius Glabrio leant back and smiled.

  ‘I have no reason to mistrust any of my familia.’ Ballista had a face like thunder. ‘I have no reason to mistrust Bagoas.’

  ‘Oh no, I am sure that you are right.’ The young officer turned his blandest face to the plate in front of him and delicately picked up a walnut.

  The morning after the ill-starred dinner given by the Dux Ripae, the Persian boy walked the battlements of Arete. In his head he was indulging in an orgy of revenge. He completely slid over such details as how he would gain his freedom or find the tent-dwellers who had enslaved him, let alone how he would get them in his power. They stood already unarmed before him - or rather, one at a time they grovelled on their knees, held out their hands in supplication. They tore their clothes, tipped dust on their heads, they wept and begged. It did them no good. Knife in hand, sword still on hip, he advanced. They offered him their wives, their children, begged him to enslave them. But he was remorseless. Again and again his left hand shot out, his fingers closed in the rough beard and he pulled the terrified face close to his own, explaining what he was going to do and why. He ignored their sobs, their last pleas. In most cases he pulled up the beard to expose the throat. The knife flashed and the blood sprayed red on to the dusty desert. But not for those three. For the three who had done the things they had done to him, that was not enough, nowhere near enough. The hand yanked up the robes, seized the genitals. The knife flashed and the blood sprayed red on to the dusty desert.