Wolf Whistle

VII

Rome isn’t Babylon. No swaying date palms, no native willow, no light Euphrates poplar. No great wide streets to face the winds and blow the smells away, no glistening whitewashed houses. No scorching sun, no private bathtubs, no jugs fetched home on heads. No ale. No lard. No harems.

Here, on his lands below the Sabine Hills, Arbil was surrounded by all manner of dismal trees, home to all manner of verminous creatures, and he mourned the vast unbroken flatness that was Babylonia. Except Babylon was dying. The great metropolis sat back while other cities sniped at its trade, and found the price for complacency was slow obliteration. Soon it would be nothing but a ghost town, a shadow of its mighty past, and a man with sons must change or shrivel with it. Arbil was not a surrenderer. That gutless peacock, the self-styled Augustus, now there’s a defeatist, he thought, and he might fool Romans with his tales of his glory, but by Marduk he did not fool Arbil. He called it an empire, yet would not fight wars. What a prick. He fobbed his people off with temples paid for by other mens’ campaigns and sold it back to them as a ‘Golden Age of Peace’. He was nothing but a conman.

Which was all to Arbil’s good. As a result of those pacifist policies, the first thing to dry up was the hitherto steady stream of prisoners of war, the traditional source of slave labour upon which the Roman economy depended. When Arbil heard about the practice of leaving babies on midden heaps, he knew at once he had a goldmine on his hands, a perpetual source of income, and he’d hardly have to work at it. He’d chosen a site not too close to Rome, yet private enough, from which to operate, and naturally this was subject to Babylonian law and none of that namby-pamby stuff the Romans professed to enforce. If a wife kills her husband, she is impaled. If a son strikes his father, his hand is cut off. If a couple commit adultery, they are tied up and thrown in the river. Simple, but effective. There was never any trouble on Arbil’s property.

Even from a distance, a stranger approaching would see that this was not the standard design of four wings round a central courtyard. A short-toed eagle for instance, cruising for snakes and frogs and lizards, would have a better view, and he would see a shape not dissimilar to his own silhouette. A stubby head, the remains of the original building, with a garden as its eye, and beyond, a broad stocky body, the earliest of the many extensions. Splayed from the middle, he would see eight long blocks, huge ‘wings’ of wings either side and, finally, a splayed tail block at the end. However, there would be too many people milling around, quite literally hundreds, for the short-toed eagle’s comfort and he would move on, skimming the ridge of the hill in his search for juicy reptiles.

Arbil would not have been among the buzz of humanity caught in the scan of the eagle. The weather was invariably foul and he spent all of the winter and much of the spring closeted indoors, swaddled in a long woollen mantle over numerous ankle-length robes. There were times when he would have swapped half his fortune for a Babylonian drought, even the odd swarm of locusts would have been more comforting than this bloody damp. Why go out in it? He had men for that. Overseers. Physicians. Managers for the various wings. Eunuchs to look after the girls once they reached puberty. Arbil had enough to do without supervising the supervisors. In fact, his whole organization was structured round routine, and that included his personal life.

First he would summon his wife and make love to her (twice, if he could manage it). Next he would bow to the rising sun. Then he would pray to Marduk. So powerful was this patron god of Babylonia that Arbil’s bedroom was devoted entirely to his holy symbol, the dragon, and it was from the dragon Arbil drew his strength. He patted his ample girth and smiled. His stamina, now! That came from the goddess Ishtar, whose eight-pointed star he’d had inlaid with ivory over his bedhead and it was to Ishtar that he turned every morning. (Twice, if he could manage it.)

After breakfast, he would bathe, for without his body perfumed and massaged, without his rebellious straight hair crimped in the traditional style and his beard snipped and curled as he liked it, he was in no fit state to reel in one of the many tentacles of his organization and absorb the latest news from the city. After all these years away from the motherland, he still baulked at mingling with men who wallowed like hippos in communal bathwaters and who worshipped gutless pagan gods.

He must have been daydreaming, maybe he’d even fallen asleep, because the next thing he knew was his wife saying ‘Arbil, Arbil! Are you all right?’

‘What?’ His vision was fuzzy, his mouth was dry. ‘Of course, I’m all right.’ He looked round. How did he come to be in his office? Wasn’t he in his bedroom just now? He never came into this, his favourite room, painted blue like the night sky to show up the gold in the lamplight, before his ablutions were complete.

‘I brought you flowers for your desk. Marigolds.’ Arbil looked up. Apart from a mist around the margin of his vision, he could see her doe-like eyes, her blue-black hair swishing when she walked. How old was she now? Twenty-seven? Twenty-eight? After twelve years in the marriage bed, no blemish had yet marred her olive skin, no wrinkle, not so much as a droop to those delicious breasts. Yet today wasn’t the first time he’d not been able to get it up… Shit.

‘Yes, Angel, very nice,’ he said, shooing her out of the room with the back of his hand then tipping the pathetic little bunch in the bin when she’d gone. He mightn’t remember coming into this office, but by Marduk, he didn’t intend to start work without his hair being crimped. ‘Fuck me!’ His hair was crimped! Arbil peered into the mirror. And his beard? Curled in at the tip. He sniffed his forearm. It glistened with oil and smelled of pine and spice. His favourite unguent. What the fuck happened this time? Dazed and trembling, surrounded by the bulls of Adad, artefacts of gold, horses of stone, Arbil realized that the time he had lost must have been close to an hour. Sargon would be waiting… Hell, he’d have to wait a moment longer. He daren’t let his son see him like this.

His antiques orientated his befuddled mind, especially the free-standing zodiac tiled in lilypad green, which was his favourite. Money box excepted, of course! Above the locked chest and nailed to the dark blue plaster hung the calendar which, being Roman, told him that today was the Festival of Luna. Despite his aversion to the people who had, like the Assyrians and the Macedonians before them, defiled his native city, it was in his interests to understand their hollow cults. Arbil knew about Luna. Crescent moons framed Luna’s face like horns, but Arbil would have no knee bent here to poor imitations. For his army of child slaves, it was Zin who governed their moons. Adad sent their thunderbolts. Ishtar was the true goddess of love. He sighed. Maybe it was not she who’d let him down this morning, maybe it was something he ate? He’d have to check his diet, call his physician. Normally he went like a stallion…

Fuck these lapses.

‘Come in, boys, come in,’ he called.

They made a good team, did Sargon and Dino. Both had shown an aptitude for business, Arbil trusted them implicitly. Sargon was his son, his firstborn, but not always do sons turn out as you’d hope (by Marduk, they do not!) and Dinocrates, the orphan he’d picked up on Chios and whose potential he had spotted, was-well, if not a son, damn close.

‘Shut the door, there’s a terrible damp in the air.’ He indicated chairs. ‘Now sit down, take the weight off.’

The two young men exchanged glances of amusement.

Every morning between November and May they lingered in the doorway as a means of admitting fresh air into a room which boasted many heavy unguents but not a single open window.

His vision might have cleared, his mouth no longer felt dry, but until the shock of losing that hour had passed, Arbil was content to shuffle through his table deep in scrolls and tablets pretending to search for something.

Sargon waited patiently. Unlike his father, worship played no part in his life, neither the old gods of home nor the newer gods of Rome. His devotions were of a more personal nature, and any spiritual fulfilment he might require he sought at the tailor’s, the dice table, the drinking den among men of his own ilk. To his father’s dismay, he also embraced modern art and Roman ways, wearing the toga and attending whichever ceremonies amused him-and, radically for a Babylonian, he shaved his face. It was vanity, as opposed to ancestry though, which kept his hair halfway down his back, because the combination of mane, wolf and wealth made him a magnet to ladies in every stratum of society. If he hadn’t made a living out of slavery, Sargon could have made a fortune as a gigolo.

Arbil finally tapped the scroll he’d pretended to look for. ‘I have an approach here for thirty unskilled workers for a brickworks on the Via Tiburtina.’

Dino’s breath came out in a whistle. ‘That’s over 10 per cent of our annual output,’ he said. ‘You’ll need a new money box for that lot, Arbil.’

His employer nodded slowly several times, but his eyes remained fixed on his son.

Sargon folded his arms and pulled at his lower lip. ‘I’d offer him ten at 2,000 sesterces,’ he said at length. ‘Then tell him that if he wants the other twenty, he’ll have to pay skilled rate.’

Arbil’s eyes glittered.

‘But, Sargon,’ Dino protested. ‘We’ve got sixty unskilled boys for sale.’

Sargon smiled knowingly. ‘If this brickmaker has approached us, not the other way round, you can bet your fancy fringed boots he knows about our training policy.’

‘But-’ A flick of Arbil’s wrist cut the Chian short. ‘My guess,’ Sargon continued thoughtfully, ‘is that once he’s handed over his silver, he plans to sell them on himself as trade apprentices, pick up his brickmakers at public auction and then, when he tallies up his accounts, he’ll expect to see a healthy profit.’

Dino’s face creased into a slow smile. ‘You sly bastard! You’re planning to screw that old brickmaker?’

‘A matter of justice,’ put in Arbil. ‘Teach him not to go into business on his own.’ It was impossible to keep the smugness out of his voice. This was the first real test he’d been able to give Sargon, the boy came out with colours flying. Proof, if it was needed, that the business was in safe hands should anything happen to him.

‘Word will spread,’ added Sargon, ‘that you don’t mess with the Babylonians.’

No, thought Arbil, you do not. He thought back to the merchant from Pisae who’d refused to pay for his order, saying they were females, for gods’ sake, he wanted proper workers. For a while Arbil had been reasonable. The merchant wanted slaves to weave his linen, he gave him slaves to weave his linen. Cheerful, nimble-fingered girls who’d be quick to learn. Give them a chance, he had said. Then other customers started complaining, hoping to lower the price, squeeze a refund. So Arbil taught the linen merchant a lesson, and once people saw his ears pinned to the wall, they’d stopped quibbling.

Arbil leaned back in his chair, the signal that the meeting was over. Sargon and Dino stood up.

‘I received a report from Rome,’ the slave master said casually, ‘saying another girl was killed last night.’

Two Adam’s apples tensed. ‘Rough districts, some of them,’ said Sargon.

‘Real no-go areas,’ added Dino.

‘Mmmm.’ Arbil’s eyes fixed themselves on the green-tiled zodiac scorpion. ‘I’m told this girl died of twenty-seven cuts with a knife.’

Dino glanced up sharply. ‘Twenty-seven?’

Arbil’s eyes moved to the lion, symbol of courage. ‘That makes three girls who have been killed from exactly twenty-seven wounds. Odd, don’t you think?’

No one answered. Drips from the eaves splashed into puddles of mud beneath the window. Arbil’s spicy unguents seemed to cloy, especially the cade which clashed with the cedarwood scent from his hair oil.

‘The authorities are too busy wetting their pants over his Imperial Majesty’s health,’ he said, pulling his long woollen mantle more snugly over his ankles, ‘to be concerned about slaves.’

Sargon and Dino stared straight ahead, and pretended they didn’t notice the heat in this dark blue room of antiquities.

‘But I am,’ the slave master said quietly. ‘Especially when they could be traced here. Do either of you have information on these killings?’

The word ‘No’ came in unison.

‘Then that’ll be all for this morning.’ Arbil’s hirsute cheeks bunched into a smile as he chafed his hands together. ‘The shipment that’s due out-those three boys for the bakery-I’d like to check it over personally, could you see it’s brought to the house, Dino?’

Two jaws relaxed visibly.

Arbil waited until the two men had reached the door. ‘Oh, and boys.’

‘Father?’

‘I can take it as read, can I not, that the five of you in no way disbanded last night?’

Neither Sargon nor Dino so much as blinked, but it was Dino who first found his voice. ‘Absolutely not, sir.’

‘Good. Good. Then I’ll see you later.’ Arbil stood up and admired the rings on his short, stubby finger joints. ‘Dino.’

‘Sir?’

‘You’ll be going to Rome?’ He buffed up a band set with chalcedony.

‘With the shipment, yes. I’m also looking for buyers for those copyists, now the deal with old Nerva fell through.’

‘Quite.’ Who’d have thought Nerva would fiddle the books? ‘Well, while you’re in town, see if you can find out the name of the dead girl.’ He spat on the precious white stone. ‘And Dino?’

‘Sir?’

‘Let’s make sure this stays within the three of us. Eh?’ When he was alone once more with his Mesopotamian treasures, Arbil walked round his table and picked up the thin-bladed knife which he used for breaking the seals of his letters and studied it carefully for several seconds.

‘Neat.’ A young man in a long grey cloak stepped out from behind the green-tiled zodiac and smiled a lazy, lopsided smile. ‘Very neat.’

Arbil let out a soft snort that was part irritation, part amusement but, it had to be said, principally admiration. He didn’t bother to enquire what it might be that this visitor was complimenting. ‘How long have you been standing there?’ he asked.

The cloak was what he’d have expected the man to wear on a day when the clouds were so low you were part of them, a colour to render its wearer invisible.

‘Long enough to prove a point.’

‘Which is?’ Even as he asked the question, Arbil knew the answer.

‘To remind you that your investment in my training wasn’t wasted.’ He plucked the knife from Arbil’s manicured fingers and, with an exaggerated wink, dropped it down the top of his boot.

Arbil sighed resignedly. ‘I suppose you heard?’

‘The acoustics in this room are really quite remarkable,’ the visitor replied, running his fingertips over the relief of Adad’s sacred bulls. ‘You know, Arbil, you and your son have much in common.’

‘I am very proud of Sargon,’ the Babylonian said stiffly. Not once had his eyes left his visitor’s face.

With an extravagant flourish, the man in grey shook Arbil’s paper knife down the sleeve of his cloak and sent it twanging into the maplewood desk. ‘Oh, but I was referring to your other son,’ he said slowly. ‘Shannu.’

‘Shan-?’ The colour drained from Arbil’s face to leave two bright spots of rouge above the beard line. ‘Shannu?’ Before he could recover his powers of speech, the visitor had unhooked the shutter and had his long leg halfway over the sill. ‘Magic,’ he laughed, twirling his cloak.

Within seconds, his camouflage was complete and, as Arbil poured a glass of strong, fermented date liquor with a hand which trembled badly, he was left wondering whether he had imagined the entire episode. The same way he couldn’t get it up and hours blanked out, his mind, also, played tricks.

Then Arbil saw the knife, quivering upright in the wood.

When he shivered, he was not sure whether it was from the cold coming in through the open window or from the spectre of his youngest son. Shannu.

Wringing his hands, Arbil fell on his knees and thanked Marduk for his daily round of schedules.

Only his schedules kept him sane.