Parthian Shot

5

I got my first taste of what I was in for as soon as the door slave opened up and we crossed the threshold. Normally, the vestibule of a house is pretty bare, with maybe some lamps on a portable stand so the evening guest can take in the host’s pricey floor mosaic and possibly a mural or two without squinting and avoid the embarrassment of groping his way through to the atrium. I’d never actually walked on a carpet before: you get them in Rome, sure, but mats aside they’re strictly wall decoration, and not that common, either. This one was big, covering practically the whole floor, and your feet just sank into it: a sort of woollen mosaic with a hunting scene worked into the pattern. In the wall-niche to one side was a perfume-burner which filled the lobby with what I’d reckon was the equivalent of several gold pieces-worth of very expensive smells.

‘Nice,’ I said to Vitellius. He didn’t bother to answer, just gave me a nasty look. Yeah, well: maybe diplomats on the job aren’t supposed to notice these things.

The door slave took our cloaks and outside sandals. I’d expected him to be locally-grown bought help, part of the furniture and fittings that came with the house, but he was some sort of easterner. Obviously the delegation had brought their own staff.

‘Drinks are being served in the atrium, sirs,’ he murmured in Greek. ‘If you’d care to go on through.’

We did; and if the lobby had been an eye-opener, the atrium was a real gob-smacker. Government guest-houses are generally pretty bare places, not least because statues and the more portable items of furniture tend to disappear pretty quickly into some of the rougher guests’ diplomatic bags and don’t get replaced. Neither Isidorus nor Vitellius had told me how the delegation had travelled to Rome, but judging by the amount and appearance of the furniture and fittings my guess would be they’d hired an Egyptian grain barge. ‘Travel fast, travel light’ obviously wasn’t a Parthian maxim; nor, for that matter, was ‘You can’t take it with you’. From the looks of things, these Parthian buggers had done just that, and they hadn’t skimped themselves, either. There were more carpets, on the walls too, this time; more perfume-burners; and the number of lamps burning would’ve powered Alexandria’s lighthouse.

‘Stop gaping, you fool!’ Vitellius muttered as we crossed the threshold. ‘Remember, you’re a fucking Roman diplomat!’

‘Ah…right. Right.’

The atrium was full, and just glancing round I could see that I’d been wrong about Vitellius’s mantle. If anything, he was underdressed. Most of the other men in the room — there weren’t any women — had on long, brightly-coloured embroidered tunics over silk trousers. Their beards — most of them were bearded — were curled and glistened with what was probably perfumed oil. What with that, the burners and the heat from the oil lamps I reckoned if I could get through the evening without keeling over I’d be one step ahead of the game.

‘Ah, Lucius Vitellius! Welcome, my dear! Welcome!’

One of the beardies had detached himself from a nearby group and was homing in on us like a gilded barge. Before I knew quite what was happening he’d grabbed Vitellius by the shoulders and planted a smacker on each of his pendulous jowls, then a third full on the mouth. I winced, but Vitellius didn’t seem fazed at all. Yeah, well: they do things different beyond the Orontes. Mind you, if he’d tried it in the Subura he’d’ve got himself decked.

‘Good evening, Zariadres,’ Vitellius said. Right; so this was the delegation leader, the smoothie from Ctesiphon. ‘You’re well, I trust. May I introduce Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus?’

Zariadres turned to me with a smile. I stuck out my hand quickly: diplomacy has its limits. We shook. His hand was soft, but not flabby: there was a strong grip there, and the eyes were sharp as knives. Right, then; scrub first impressions.

I hadn’t fazed him, either. Smoothie or not, I reckoned Zariadres could keep up with the best of them.

‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘Your aide, Vitellius. Prince Phraates did mention that you’d be bringing him.’ We were speaking Greek, of course, but I’d expected that, and after a few years in Athens it was no problem. Zariadres’s was standard Ionian: more liquid than the Athenian version, but completely fluent. ‘A pleasure to meet you, Valerius Corvinus.’

‘Likewise.’

Without turning, Zariadres snapped his fingers. A slave — another easterner — materialised with a wine tray. Jupiter! They must even’ve brought the ordinary house slaves with them!

‘Help yourselves to a drink and join us. We have a few minutes before dinner.’

I took a glass — they were Syrian, a matching set, and they must’ve cost a bomb — and sniffed the contents while Vitellius glared at me. In that company I was half-expecting date wine or some aberration with honey in it, but the stuff was Caecuban. Not quite up to Isidorus’s imperial standard, but pretty good all the same. I sipped appreciatively.

The other guys in the group Zariadres had left — there were two of them — had turned to us politely. The first was an old man in his late sixties, bearded, wearing a fetching embroidered tunic with a broad belt that dripped rubies and emeralds and made even Zariadres’s getup look dowdy. His hair and beard were oiled and curled, and he wore a headband with a single huge pearl at the front. That last was the giveaway. This just had to be Phraates. Only royals were allowed the diadem — even I knew that — and as prospective Great King the guy was obviously making a statement.

‘Vitellius. How are you, my dear fellow?’ he said in Latin. Then he looked at me and his eyes narrowed briefly. ‘And Valerius Corvinus. A pleasure to meet you.’ He changed to Greek. ‘This is Callion.’

It seemed that Phraates wasn’t the only one making a sartorial statement here. The second guy looked as out of place as a duck next to a peacock; or maybe ‘swan’ would be better, because although he was wearing a plain Greek mantle it was the best, whitest Milesian wool with only its edges embroidered. Right; the Seleucian of the party, the definitely-not-Parthian descended from Alexander’s cavalry commander. He was tall — six foot, easy — good-looking in a sort of hard, chiselled way, late twenties, slim as a whip and clean-shaven, with his dark hair cut short as a wrestler’s and unoiled; serious, unsmiling. He nodded to Vitellius and held out a hand to me. Phraates, I’d noticed, hadn’t offered to press flesh: kings, even if they were only prospective ones, are above that sort of thing.

‘A pleasure to meet you, Corvinus,’ he said. I shook: a hard hand, this one, and there were muscles under that soft mantle. Wrestler was right, or maybe athlete, because his nose was intact. In any case, I’d bet he kept himself fit and that he was probably fanatical about it. ‘You’re Vitellius’s aide, so I believe. Strange; I haven’t seen you at any of our official meetings. Now why would that be, could you tell me?’

‘Valerius Corvinus isn’t directly concerned with the negotiations,’ Vitellius said smoothly. ‘He’s a newcomer to the service.’

‘But most welcome all the same.’ Phraates shot Callion a glance that carried a definite message with it. The Greek smiled.

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘That would explain it. You’ve been out east, Corvinus?’

‘Sure. I lived in Athens for a few years. And I spent a while in Antioch.’

‘A beautiful city. Then you know Daphni, of course? Just outside, in the hills?’

‘Yeah. Daphni’s okay.’

‘You’d like Seleucia, then. Seleucia-on-the-Tigris, I mean. My own city. It’s equally old, and just as beautiful as Antioch, if not more so.’ He glanced at Phraates. ‘We Greeks are very proud of Seleucia.’

‘I haven’t been there myself, naturally,’ Phraates said. ‘Nor indeed to Antioch. However, I quite understand your feelings, Callion. You have every right to be proud. Parthia owes an enormous debt to Greece and the Greeks — a fact which my cousin Artabanus doesn’t seem fully to appreciate. You’d say the same, Zariadres?’

‘Oh, yes, lord.’ Zariadres bowed his head. ‘Definitely. Where would we be without the Greeks?’

A man with his back to us talking to another group turned round. ‘Perhaps in the happy state of discovering that we were Parthians, with a perfectly good culture of our own,’ he said. His Greek, like Zariadres’s, was perfect, but his accent was thicker. ‘Or was the question rhetorical?’

I felt both Zariadres and Callion stiffen, although the man was smiling. Phraates didn’t blink, but something about him shifted. I had the impression of a steel blade drawn from a sheath.

‘Osroes,’ he said quietly, ‘I am sorry, but you’re being unreasonable. Greek culture and Parthian differ, certainly, but they’re complementary and always have been. We learn from each other, and the learning benefits both sides, don’t you think?’

‘Oh, yes, lord. When it goes equally both ways. Certainly.’ The new guy — he’d be Vitellius’s Magian — dipped his head as Zariadres had done, but although I might’ve been mistaken the bow was just a shade less deferential. ‘Achieving a balance, though, if you’ll forgive me, is sometimes difficult. That’s my view, at least. Up to now…well, living in Rome for so long, sire, you may not altogether appreciate the fact, but hitherto the balance has been more than a little askew. Personally, I think the Greeks have had it their own way for rather too long. No slight intended to my colleague, naturally.’ He bowed to Callion.

I’d been watching the to-and-fro carefully. Phraates’s expression didn’t change, not a whisker, but Callion coloured up and Zariadres looked like he’d swallowed a bad oyster. These two, the court politician and the Magian, were pure cat and dog, I could see that: Osroes didn’t even glance at Zariadres. And Callion was looking fit to be tied. Not that that was particularly surprising, mind.

‘Surely that’s a matter for the Great King to decide.’ Phraates was smiling too, but the tone slammed down hard-edged as an axe blade. ‘Also, a dinner party is no place for politics. Or this one is not. You’d agree, I hope.’ Osroes’s eyelids flickered. He half-bowed in acknowledgement but said nothing. ‘Now. We’ll leave the subject, if you don’t mind. Let me introduce you. Lucius Vitellius you know, of course, but you won’t have met Valerius Corvinus here. Corvinus, this is my very good friend Osroes.’

Yeah, sure, and I was Cleopatra’s grandmother. If this guy was very good friend to anyone, least of all Phraates, then I’d eat my sandals. I could see he’d be a real bastard; not old — he was barely into his thirties — but he’d a mouth like a rat-trap, a nose so aquiline any self-respecting eagle would’ve curled up and died for it and eyes like flint chips. And he was sure of himself as hell. That came across in spades. Osroes might take a put-down from a future Great King of Parthia, but that’s what it would need. I’d bet that anyone else trying it on would have to watch their back.

‘Pleased to meet you,’ I said.

I got a nod that was barely polite, and Vitellius didn’t do much better. Whatever else he approved of, Osroes evidently didn’t have much time for Romans, and he didn’t much care who knew it.

‘I must compliment you on how you’ve fixed this place up, Zariadres.’ Vitellius turned to the embassy’s leader.

Zariadres shrugged: an elegant lift-and-fall of the shoulders. ‘This is nothing,’ he said. ‘When you dine with the Great King’ — he bowed again to Phraates — ‘in his palace at Ctesiphon you’ll see real splendour. You Romans despise luxury, or you embrace it and let it dominate you, which is equally a mistake. Appreciating softness without becoming its slave is something that you can learn from us.’

‘True. That, Zariadres, is very true indeed.’ Phraates smoothed his beard and I caught the sudden, strong whiff of perfume. My nose must’ve wrinkled because he smiled at me. ‘Don’t fall into the trap, Corvinus, of thinking that we Parthians are soft just because we wear silk and jewellery and like fine scents around us. We can do without them if we have to. And the Parthian warrior is the finest of his type on earth. You wouldn’t disagree, Lucius?’

‘Certainly not, Prince,’ Vitellius grunted. ‘Your mounted archers are superb. Joined with our legions they’d make an army that would be invincible.’

Phraates laughed. ‘As we’ll see, no doubt, before too long. To my cousin Artabanus’s discomfort.’ A gong sounded quietly. ‘Ah. That’ll be dinner. You’ll now have an opportunity, Corvinus, if you haven’t experienced it before, of sampling Parthian luxury in another form. I hope you enjoy eating. Perhaps we can discuss your opinion later. I’d be very interested to hear it.’

Osroes shot me a dark look; Callion, too, although his was more considering. Yeah, right; well, I hadn’t made any bosom friends there. I stepped back politely and Phraates moved towards the dining-room.

I thought for a moment I’d walked into some sort of up-market club. The couches were laid out in the usual horseshoe arrangement, sure, but there were more of them, they were shorter than normal and separated off by clear space, and instead of a big central table each pair of guests had their own smaller version. The whole layout faced a sort of stage at the far end of the room beside the serving door. Odd, but perhaps this was standard Parthian practice; I didn’t know. In any case, Phraates had already reclined in the centre, with Zariadres on his right. A slave led Vitellius and me to the couch immediately left of centre; Callion had his back to us beyond, at the left-hand tip of the horseshoe, while Osroes was at the opposite tip on the extreme right, next to the serving door. As I reclined and another slave poured scented water over my hands I looked round the room at the faces I hadn’t seen yet.

Vitellius held out his own hands over the slave’s basin so our heads were close together. He nodded towards the couch to our right, past Phraates’s and Zariadres’s. ‘Okay, Corvinus,’ he murmured. ‘Just so you know where we are here. The nearest man to us is Tiridates. Phraates’s nephew. His couch-mate’s the Iberian.’

I glanced across. Tiridates was a comparative youngster, mid-twenties, in full Parthian fig, with a short curled beard. He had his back turned to his uncle — understandable, sure, given the seating arrangements, but there was something about the way he was lying that suggested his positioning was deliberate. Phraates hadn’t so much as looked in his direction, either, even before the dinner, or not that I’d noticed. I doubted there was much love lost there, which didn’t come as all that much of a surprise given what Vitellius had told me about the relationship between the two. He was holding his own hands out to be washed, ignoring the slave and talking volubly to Vitellius’s Iberian, the future king of Armenia…

I gave the guy the once-over, and straight off I felt the ice bunch in my guts. Mithradates was a bad-’un, a real bad-’un. I could tell that from just one look. He reminded me straight off of Aelius Sejanus, and you didn’t get much worse than that long-gone bastard; not so much physically as by the set of his body and the expression on his face. Mid-thirties, black-bearded but with the beard uncurled and unoiled, hair tied back in a pigtail, bare arms thick and muscled and hairy as a gorilla’s, and a sneer that said to the world: ‘I can take you any time I like. Want to see me do it?’

‘Nice,’ I said. ‘Mithradates, I mean.’

Vitellius grunted. ‘Right,’ he said quietly. ‘He’s a proper bastard, born and bred. Tough as hell and twice as nasty. Got the young prince dangling from his little finger. Tiridates may put on the high-and-mighty Parthian Prince act but he’s soft as butter underneath. The two of them run around together.’

My eyes shifted to the couch nearest ours. ‘Who’s the lad next to Callion?’

Vitellius lowered his voice even further. ‘That’s Damon. Phraates’s son by his Greek mistress. You remember? Him I wasn’t expecting. Why he’s rated an invitation tonight I’m not sure.’

I did a quick recap. Yeah; Isidorus had mentioned Phraates had an unofficial family on the Janiculan. I looked more closely. Damon was a watered-down version of Tiridates. Half-Greek or not, he’d chosen to come in Parthian dress, but even at first glance I could see he wasn’t comfortable in it; or maybe it was the typical Roman wide-boy’s short trimmed beard with no moustache that didn’t quite fit in with the rest. That was a mistake, for a start. The guy was no youngster, not even close; I’d put him late thirties at best, twenty years too old for that style, although his sulky face practically yelled ‘spoilt teenager’ over the wine-cup he was already swigging from. I noticed by the way that one of the fingers of the hand he held the cup with was missing.

‘Who made the seating arrangements?’ I asked Vitellius.

‘No idea. Why the hell should you want to know something like that?’

‘Just curious.’

He shot me a look from under his brows, but I didn’t elaborate: now wasn’t the time, and it probably wasn’t all that important, anyway. I carried on with my inspection of the room. There was only one name I hadn’t fitted to a face, and only one face to fit it to: the second man at Osroes’s table, on the extreme right tip of the horseshoe. ‘That’s the eunuch?’ I said, pointing discreetly.

Vitellius looked, screwing up his piggy eyes: he must be short-sighted. ‘Peucestas. Yes, that’s him.’

Jupiter! I hadn’t had much experience of eunuchs, but that guy didn’t measure up to the little I had at all. Forget your smooth-cheeked effete priests of Cybele: Peucestas had a full beard and even reclining I could see he held himself like a soldier. He wasn’t fat, either: solid, sure, but I’d reckon it was beef and muscle, not fat.

‘He looks normal enough,’ I said.’

‘I told you, Corvinus. There’s nothing effeminate about Peucestas. He’s all right.’

‘But the beard. It’s a fake?’

‘Not that I know of, although I wouldn’t risk tugging it to find out myself.’ Vitellius chuckled. ‘He would’ve already had it when he was castrated twenty-odd years back for choosing the wrong bloody side.’

I stared at him. ‘That’s when it was done?’

‘Of course. When did you think? That’s Parthians for you.’

Oh, shit! I didn’t answer, feeling the ice in my own balls. The guy must’ve been in his twenties at the time; thirty, maybe. Sweet holy gods! No wonder he hated Artabanus!

The slaves brought round the starters, one set for each table. Most of them I recognised, even if they were at the luxury end of the market like peahens’ eggs and larks’ tongues in aspic. One or two, though, were strange, like the bowls of what looked like curdled milk with green bits.

‘What’s that stuff?’ I asked Vitellius, pointing.

‘Yoghurt with salt and mint. You eat it with the flat bread.’ Vitellius was digging in to the quails: you didn’t get his size on salad. ‘It’s the traditional Parthian beginning to the meal; a sort of — ’

‘Curdled milk.’ So; I’d been right. Yeah, well; that particular delicacy I’d pass on. Definitely one for Mother’s chef Phormio. ‘And how about these?’ I pointed to a collection of amber-coloured lumps artistically arranged on a small silver platter.

‘Deep-fried locusts in honey.’

‘Is that so, now? Ah…someone told me once that locust was also the name of a fruit.’

‘Maybe. Not in this case, though.’

‘Got you.’ Feeling slightly queasy, I reached for the jellied larks’ tongues. At least they were decently Roman. I hadn’t forgotten my promise to Meton, sure, but crispy-fried insect was one Parthian recipe that we could safely give a miss.

I was helping myself to the tongues when I realised that everyone was looking behind me at Phraates’s table. Or looking but trying not to be caught looking, rather, if you know what I mean. I dropped my napkin off the side of my couch and leaned down to pick it up, allowing me the chance to eyeball the prince myself.

A guy — obviously a slave — was leaning over his shoulder, tasting each of the dishes while Phraates sat smiling, waiting until he’d finished. Meanwhile Zariadres was looking on, not saying anything but with an expression like he’d had a very long poker inserted in his rectum.

I straightened, clutching the retrieved napkin, brain buzzing. Not only had Phraates very carefully refrained from telling the delegation what my particular job was, but he’d brought a food-taster with him.

Interesting, right?