by Ian Ross
‘I understand,’ Romulianus said. He was a dry-looking, unsmiling man with a stubbled jaw, who held himself with an impatient stiffness. ‘But I had hoped,’ he added, ‘that I might be permitted to join the field army myself. I have capable subordinates here, if it’s just a matter of holding the position. I believe my abilities would be better used in a more active role.’
Castus sucked his cheek. He knew that the task he had given to Romulianus and the other frontier duces lacked obvious opportunities for glory. But neither did his own. ‘No,’ he said, in a tone that forbade further argument. ‘Your place is here. The defence of the eastern frontier is critical, and I need a man with the rank and experience to take full command. And,’ he went on, lowering his brows, ‘to take full responsibility. You are to hold the cities and fortresses and prevent anything getting past you, nothing more. The enemy may try to draw you out with raiding parties or feint attacks. Resist them. You don’t have the strength for a field battle. Am I clear?’
‘Clear enough,’ Romulianus had said, unable to conceal his disappointment.
And with any luck, Castus thought as he sat beneath the awning, the dux and his men would have nothing to do but stare at an empty horizon. The emperor would be leading over sixty thousand men down the Euphrates, and the Persians would surely need all their forces to oppose him. Or so the plan went. Castus touched his fingers to his lips and raised them to the sky: May the gods be good…
The sound of a cleared throat behind him, and Castus turned to see Sollemnis, the chief of his military staff, waiting by the stairhead. The Gaul appeared more than usually sullen, although he was always so taciturn it was hard to be sure. Castus gestured for him to approach.
‘Today’s reports, dominus,’ Sollemnis said. ‘One from Barbalissos detailing the provision of river barges, another from Soura concerning your appointment of Quintianus as the new commander of the field detachments there…’
Castus grunted. Even trying to nod made his head hurt. He rubbed at his brow with finger and thumb.
‘And a confirmation of today’s meeting with the Curator Civitatis, Vorodes,’ Sollemnis went on, shuffling his tablets, ‘together with several written appeals from members of the council…’ He appeared almost to be relishing the scrupulous detailing of all the correspondence.
‘Yes, yes,’ Castus said, a little too loud. ‘There’s time enough for that later. Leave me for an hour or two.’
Sollemnis adopted a pinched expression, then bowed curtly and retreated.
‘Brother,’ Diogenes said, stepping from the stairs as Sollemnis made his departure. ‘You’ve only just risen? The day is long advanced!’
‘I’d have risen a lot later still,’ Castus said, grimacing, ‘if that fucking cockerel hadn’t woken me up.’
Diogenes widened his eyes, feigning a puzzled look. ‘Ah, yes!’ he said. ‘An extraordinarily rowdy fowl. Perhaps we could order it to be executed for disturbing the dignity of the Magister Equitum?’
Castus scowled at him. He was in no mood for levity. But once the idea had worked its way into his fogged mind he was forced to laugh. He ate a little more bread, washed it down with water, and began to feel restored. Diogenes had strolled to the edge of the roof. Trumpet calls drifted from the southern gate, and the sound of shouted orders from the barrack lines.
‘Can you believe,’ Diogenes said, ‘that I spent over an hour yesterday debating with a gymnosophist from the banks of the Ganga? I swear that neither of us had a word of any language in common, but in some miraculous way I seemed to understand everything he said, and he likewise!’
‘You amaze me,’ Castus replied flatly. ‘Where did you find this… gymnosy…’
‘In the agora, of course. I was observing discreetly, as you instructed me to do. Brother,’ he declared with enthusiasm, spreading his arms to the morning sky, ‘I’m so glad you brought me east with you! All those years I wasted in classrooms, sifting the dry dust of received knowledge… Out here I feel my intellect nourished as never before! In fact, for the first time in my life I’m starting to feel truly philosophical…’
‘What I meant,’ Castus said patiently, ‘was that you should observe the people, the city, try and find out something useful. Not that talking to strange foreigners in imaginary languages isn’t useful to somebody, I suppose…’
‘Yes, well,’ Diogenes said with a slight sniff. Shading his eyes, he gazed down at the castrum, the circling birds, the angle of the city wall. ‘What would you estimate the perimeter distance of the walls to be?’ he asked in a speculative tone.
‘Of the whole city? No idea. Must be a few miles, I’d say.’
‘Three thousand, four hundred and forty-one double paces,’ Diogenes said. ‘Which is just over three miles in total circumference.’
Castus stared, bemused, a piece of bread raised his hand. ‘How in the name of Hades do you know that?’
‘I paced the distance myself,’ Diogenes said with a rather preening smile. ‘Earlier this morning, while you were sleeping off the effects of your, ah, military symposium. I woke a couple of hours before dawn, and as it was cool I thought I’d take a brief walk. But once I’d got up onto the ramparts I found the exertion quite beneficial.’
‘I see,’ Castus said, impressed despite himself. ‘Learn anything else?’
‘The walls are thirty-six feet high on average, ten to twelve feet thick, mud-brick on a rubble core – you can see they’ve been repaired in places. Towers every hundred paces or so. The defences are strongest to the west, north and south, of course: there’s a lower fore-wall on those sides, with a dry moat beyond it dug down into the bedrock.’
‘And to the east?’
‘The walls over there stand directly on the bluffs above the river. It’s little more than a stream at the moment, though I’m told that now the meltwater’s started coming down from the mountains the level should rise dramatically. But the bed’s deep, and the bluffs are high, so only a single wall is required. The suburb on the far side of the river only has a rough perimeter defence, although I didn’t get over there to study it further.’
‘You did well,’ Castus said. Diogenes was trying to conceal his glow of pride.
‘Well, since you’re paying me,’ the secretary said, ‘and I have an enquiring mind, I thought I may as well do something you might appreciate…’
Castus shrugged down a stir of guilt. It was true that he had been giving Diogenes little to do; his official staff handled most of the administrative work. But he had mainly brought the secretary along for company, and because he knew he could trust him. To act as an advisor too, although he would admit that to nobody.
‘I’m meeting the city leaders today,’ he said, waving away a persistent fly. ‘You heard anything about them yet?’
‘Not much,’ Diogenes replied. ‘The curator, Vorodes, is one of the wealthiest men in Nisibis, so I hear. He’s also High Priest of Baal Shamin. So, a follower of the traditional gods, unlike his Christian colleague Dorotheus, the Defensor Civitatis. The two of them detest each other, naturally.’
Castus gave a wry grimace. Clearly the religious divisions in the city were reflected in the leading citizens; he reminded himself that he needed to preserve his neutrality here. Drawing a deep breath, he stood up – a little too quickly. His head reeled, and pain stabbed behind his eyes. Rubbing at his temples, he stared out into the sunlight.
It was going to be a long day.
*
Three hours later, his hangover had still not shifted. He was getting used to the dull gnawing sensation at the back of his skull, but the curator Vorodes was doing little to ease his sense of fatigue.
‘Thirty years I’ve served this city, excellency,’ the curator said, raising an emphatic finger, ‘and now my son too has a seat on the Boule. I’m told that in the west men try very hard to avoid the duties of city council service, is that true? Here in the east, we still consider it the greatest of honours!’
Flavius Septimius Vorodes
, Castus thought to himself, must have been very young indeed when he first became a councillor; he looked barely older than forty now. A tall man, dressed in the Persian style of baggy white trousers and tunic, he had a clipped beard, a smooth olive complexion and a look of lively intelligence in his dark eyes. Vorodes radiated the kind of confident assurance that Castus had encountered often in the very rich. He was eager to impress though. Whether that was due to genuine pride in his city, or some deeper anxiety, Castus was in no mood to determine.
‘My family first gained Roman citizenship in the days of the deified Severus,’ the curator went on. ‘Back when Nisibis first became a colonia. But all of us regard that status as an inestimable blessing. See there, the statue of the great man himself, with Diocletian on the opposite side of the steps.’
Nisibis was laid out in the familiar grid of streets, with two broad colonnaded avenues, like the ones Castus had seen in Constantinople and Antioch, meeting at the centre beneath a four-sided processional arch. But Vorodes had arranged to meet him outside the Tychaeion, the temple of the city’s presiding deity. Castus had Sabinus with him, and two of the Protectores, Iovinus and Victorinus. The curator was accompanied by a dozen bodyguards and as many slaves, who formed a cordon all around them. They stood at the base of the steps, gazing up at the statues of the emperors and the huge ornamental façade of the Tychaeion beyond.
‘Some of our more passionate Christians campaigned to have the statues removed,’ Vorodes said in a hushed voice. ‘The image of Diocletian particularly – they regard him as a persecutor and an oppressor, as you know. But since they refuse to enter the precincts of the temple anyway, except for public meetings, it seemed an obtuse argument.’
They climbed the steps, and Castus almost gasped with relief as they passed into the cool shade of the temple. Together they gave sacrifice before the image of the city Tyche – only wine and a pinch of incense, as blood sacrifices were banned by imperial order. The emperor’s new religion, Castus thought sourly, had succeeded in imposing its will here too.
‘You’ve got a lot of Christians in Nisibis?’ he asked as the two of them were descending the steps once more.
‘Oh yes,’ Vorodes replied. ‘We have a saying here. Out of every ten people in the city, one is a soldier, another is a Jew and another a foreigner. Of the rest, three are Christians and three follow the old gods.’
Castus counted quickly on his fingers, frowning, and reached the stub on his left hand. ‘What about the tenth person?’
‘About the tenth person,’ Vorodes said with a smile, ‘nobody knows, and nobody asks!’
Despite his instinctive distrust of civilian officials, Castus found that he liked the curator. He sensed a forthright honesty in the man, although he did not doubt that could change under pressure.
‘The Christian bishop’s a powerful man here then?’ he asked.
‘Iacob, yes,’ Vorodes replied, his smile fading. ‘You might say his voice is as loud as the whole council combined. A strange man. He eats no meat, you know, and drinks no wine, and he seldom bathes. I asked him about that once, and he told me that those who’ve been washed in the blood of Christ need no further washing… He dislikes women too. I do wonder, myself, why somebody should devote so much time to thanking and praising their God when they deny themselves all the good things of the earth!’
‘I should speak to him,’ Castus said.
A flicker of dismay passed across the curator’s face, quickly erased. ‘Are you certain that’s necessary?’ he asked.
Castus nodded. In truth he would rather do nothing of the sort, but if the bishop was a person of influence in the city he needed to determine his loyalties.
‘Well, you must visit him in his church then – he refuses to leave its precincts so soon after their Paschal festival… But here we have the main granaries…’
All around the margins of the Tychaeion courtyard, behind the porticoes, were long buildings with massive buttressed walls. Inside, the curator led Castus and his party along pillared aisles lined with huge clay storage jars.
‘Enough grain can be stored here to feed the whole city, fifty thousand mouths, for four months,’ Vorodes explained with a swell of pride. ‘And we can fill to double the present capacity once the harvest’s gathered in. There are cisterns beneath the city, cut into the bedrock, holding sufficient water for the same period, on a limited rationing. Anyone attempting to reduce the city by thirst or hunger would be in for a very long wait!’
‘Strong walls too,’ Castus said as they emerged once more into the sunlight.
‘Yes,’ the curator said. ‘But do you know the real strength of Nisibis, excellency?’ He glanced at Castus, eyes narrowed.
Castus shrugged, shaking his head.
‘Do you mind walking a short distance? No? Then follow me…’
They left the temple precinct and crossed the wide central avenue, the curator’s bodyguards pushing a way through the crowd. They were attracting a small throng of followers now, men and a few women calling out to Vorodes, or even to Castus himself, with petitions of grievance. Both men were content to ignore them.
On the far side of the avenue they passed between the stalls in the portico and through a pillared gateway. The crowds were thicker here, and Castus sensed Sabinus and the two Protectores drawing closer to him, watching the faces around them. He felt a warm prickle of anxiety himself; since leaving Antioch he had relaxed a little, but now the threat of an attempt on his life was once more possible. Keeping his hand on his sword hilt, he followed Vorodes through the gloom of the gateway and out again into the sunlight.
‘Welcome to the wazar!’ the curator declared. ‘Or the emporium, you might say.’
Castus had seen markets all over the empire, but seldom had he encountered a scene like this. What at first seemed a formless chaos of packed bodies emerged, as Castus moved slowly through it, into an intricate network of stalls and trading pitches: a town in miniature. Some of the stalls resembled large shacks or tents, others were a mere blanket spread on the ground.
Vorodes led him through the centre of the market, between towering stacks of amphorae and bales of cloth, stalls selling everything from ceramics to fish sauce to camels and slaves. There were entertainers too: dancers and singers, and high above the heads of the crowd a child walking on a stretched tightrope. Smoke drifted from charcoal fires and incense burners, and the air was rich with spices, mingling with the stink of dung and human sweat. And everywhere was the sound of commerce: the clink of coin, the rapid gestures of negotiation, the hustle of profit. Yes, Castus thought, this was the strength of Nisibis.
‘As you know, excellency,’ Vorodes was saying over his shoulder, ‘Nisibis is one of only three cities where trade is permitted between the Persians and the empire, and certainly the most important. And via the Persian domains, we have traders coming from much further away. Sogdiana, Transoxiana, Gedrosia… other places you’ve perhaps never even heard of!’
‘Hm,’ said Castus. He had never heard of Transoxiana, or Gedrosia either. An array of mirrors in silvered bronze and smoked glass caught his reflection, and he looked quickly away.
‘The caravans arrive in the eastern suburb, on the far side of the river,’ the curator explained. ‘There are lodgings for them there, and other… amenities for travellers. Their goods are checked by the customs agents, and they pay the usual tax of an eighth part of the value. We take a portion of that, and the rest goes into the imperial coffers. Only then can they cross the river, enter by the Gate of the Sun, and sell their goods here. So, you see, everyone profits!’
Castus turned his attention to the crowds once more. Sure enough, in one glance he could pick out men from all across the empire; and many of the faces and costumes were alien even to him. But all had been drawn here, to this crossroads of the world’s commerce.
‘And here,’ Vorodes said, leading Castus up a short flight of steps into the cool shade of a portico, ‘is the finest of all our emporia.’<
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The stalls here looked more permanent, and Castus noticed the grim-faced men standing guard all around them. The wares displayed in this part of the market were only for the wealthiest buyers.
‘Look,’ the curator said, lifting a bolt of cloth from one of the tables. ‘This is the real thing. All the way from Seres, across the deserts of Bactria. You’ll seldom find silk this fine in Rome.’
The cloth flowed in a liquid wave as Vorodes unrolled it. A shimmer of green and gold, like sunlit oil on water. The curator passed it to him, and Castus felt the brief caress of the silk across his scarred hands. Only one woman he had ever known had worn cloth of such quality, and she had died in a bathhouse in Rome. He stepped away, suppressing a shudder.
‘Take it, please,’ Vorodes said. ‘A gift, from the Boule of Nisibis. For your wife, perhaps?’
Castus smiled tightly and shook his head, passing the silk back. He knew a bribe when he saw one.
‘You must be keen to maintain good relations with Persia then, I expect,’ he said. ‘If the borders close, so do your trade routes.’
‘Indeed they do,’ Vorodes said, dropping the bolt of silk back onto the table with a brief gesture to the merchant. ‘War is the enemy of all our prosperity!’
They walked together along the portico; Castus noticed that the curator’s slaves were clearing the route ahead of them.
‘I know it’s not my place to ask,’ the curator said quietly, ‘but, as you can see, the situation between the emperor and the King of the Persians concerns us directly. I appreciate that you can’t disclose anything of your plans, or the emperor’s, but I wondered if you could give me, in confidence, any assurance that this city would not be directly affected by… whatever those in Constantinople might be discussing?’
