False God of Rome

CHAPTER V

‘Statilius Capella! Statilius Capella!’ Magnus shouted over the wailing of the terrified female captives and the crying of their children as he, Vespasian and Corvinus wove their way through the tightly packed slave corral, carrying torches.

‘Over here,’ a voice eventually called out as they approached the centre.

‘Corvinus, release the freeborn and freed,’ Vespasian ordered, ‘but keep bound all those who were slaves before the Marmaridae caught them. And get some of your men to round up the camels; I’m going to have a little chat with the idiot who dragged us all the way out here.’

‘Does that mean you’re going to talk to yourself for a while, then?’ Magnus asked with a grin as Corvinus walked off.

‘Very funny. If you want to do something useful, make sure the townspeople are burying the dead and getting the corpses out of the lake; we should leave no trace of this camp. And then go and search what’s left of the chief’s tent; I imagine that there will be quite a bit of money stashed away there, Capella’s purse for a start.’

Magnus nodded to his slave standing a little way off in quiet thought; his face registered no emotion. ‘I won’t ask Ziri to help, considering the circumstances.’

‘How is he?’

‘He seems to be fine; as I’m sure we all would be having committed a double fratricide followed by a patricide.’

‘Well, there’s no doubting his loyalty to you and me after that.’

‘Yes, that’s true, but what a way to prove it. I don’t know what gods the Marmaridae have but it’s going to take a lot to appease them if he doesn’t want to live the rest of his life under a curse.’

Vespasian glanced at Ziri, taking in his youth. ‘Do you think that he’ll know how to do that?’

‘I don’t know; but he’ll have to find a way. What he did ain’t natural and nothing good can come out of something that ain’t natural.’

‘Apart from saving our lives, you mean?’

Magnus grunted and stalked off.

Vespasian made his way towards Capella, wondering just what sort of death Ziri would have suffered at the hands of his father and brothers, had they captured him, for him to have been able to kill them so easily and apparently without feeling.

‘I am Titus Flavius Vespasianus, quaestor of this province, and you, Statilius Capella, are an imbecile,’ Vespasian informed Capella upon finding him.

‘That’s a very quick judgement to come to about someone whom you’ve only just met, young man,’ Capella replied; he had his hands and neck bound to the post that he was sitting against. He was much older than Vespasian had expected, early- to mid-forties, but still with a good head of curly, black hair, a lined but handsome face and a trim physique. He was surrounded by a strong smell of faeces; he had been obliged to defecate where he sat.

‘Who else but an imbecile would go off into the desert with a small escort in search of a tribe of slavers in order to buy camels off them?’

Capella smiled. ‘Ah, you’ve been talking to Flavia. Well, release me then, seeing as she must have sent you all this way to rescue me; she’s very persuasive, I know.’

‘All in good time; first of all we have to discuss the terms of your release.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning that over a hundred men, expensively trained Roman auxiliaries, have lost their lives in finding you; not to mention the loss of over a hundred and twenty horses and another thirty mules and all the equipment that they were carrying. That amounts to a good few thousand denarii, which, seeing as you are the cause of all that financial loss, it would seem only right that you should reimburse.’

‘And you no doubt think that I’m also obliged to you personally?’

‘Naturally.’

‘And if I refuse?’

‘Then the whole enterprise would be a tragic and colossal waste of time and money. We came all this way and couldn’t find you.’

Capella burst into laughter despite the rope constricting his throat. ‘You’d leave me here?’

‘I wouldn’t leave you tied to that post, no; but yes, I would leave you in Siwa to make your own way back and more than likely fall into the hands of the Marmaridae again. What would give you the right to enjoy my protection on the journey back to Cyrene if you refuse to pay Rome for the damage that your reckless actions have caused?’

‘I see your point, quaestor, if you look at it that way and assume that my actions were reckless; which indeed they would have been had I really been trying to buy camels from slavers.’

‘You weren’t, then?’

‘Young man, if I’d wanted to do that, do you really think that I would have come all the way out here when I could have sailed a hundred miles along the coast from Apollonia to the Marmaridae’s grazing grounds and bought camels from them there, negotiating from the safety of a ship as I have done many times before? Of course not, that would be imbecilic.’

‘Then why did you tell Flavia that?’

‘Cut me loose and you may get an answer.’

Vespasian had little choice; feeling slightly stupid, he took his sword to the ropes. All around, the wails of the captives were turning to shouts of joy as Corvinus’ auxiliaries moved through the corral cutting the bonds of the free and freed; only the slaves were left sitting glumly against their posts to await their fate.

‘That’s better,’ Capella said, rubbing his sore wrists and walking back towards the corral’s entrance. ‘Now I’m going to wash my arse in the lake and then I would appreciate a clean tunic, a loincloth and something to eat.’

Vespasian followed him. ‘You said that you’d answer my question.’

‘I said that I might, but fair enough; I told Flavia that I was buying camels because I couldn’t tell her what I was really doing. I told her that I would be back in forty days because I knew that if I wasn’t she would persuade someone like you to come and find me. And I was right because here you are; she is very hard to refuse, as you’ve evidently found out.’

‘I’m here because I was told that a Roman citizen had probably been taken as a slave,’ Vespasian replied airily.

‘Bollocks; you’re here because you wanted to impress Flavia.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, it was my duty,’ Vespasian blustered.

Capella smiled at him. ‘Don’t feel ashamed about it, I don’t blame you one bit and, who knows, if you impress her enough she might even leave me for you, and I wouldn’t blame her either.’

‘She struck me as being very loyal to you.’

‘Oh she is, and will continue to be so until someone else can command her loyalty. She likes to make sure that her loyalty is well rewarded, shall we say. Anyway, she’s done her job and saved me from a very unpleasant end to my life.’

‘Which you must pay for; as well as recompensing me for my efforts.’

‘Quaestor, I’m sure that my patron for this trip will be only too delighted to pay out a measly few thousand denarii, if you bring me back to Cyrene with what I’m carrying for him. As to what you want, you’ll have to ask her yourself.’

Vespasian frowned and glanced at Capella, wondering if he really had made his desire for Flavia so obvious. ‘You’d give Flavia to me; why?’

‘Because I’m tiring of her; she’s a big drain on my income and very demanding — although her charms go some way to making up for that. If you’re rash enough to take on the expense then you’re welcome to her, but I couldn’t give her to you; it would have to be Flavia’s decision. So let’s take that as agreed, then, and get going once your men have retrieved my possessions.’ Capella stopped by the corral’s entrance and proffered his forearm, smiling genially.

Vespasian took it, stunned that Capella would so easily give up such a woman. ‘You’re very generous, Capella.’

‘Am I?’

‘Quaestor, you’d better come and look at this,’ Corvinus called from over by the tents, interrupting them.

Vespasian turned and walked towards him. ‘What is it?’

‘Magnus has uncovered a chest buried beneath the chief’s tent.’

‘Ah good,’ Capella exclaimed, following, ‘that’ll be mine.’

They found Corvinus watching Magnus and Ziri heaving a small wooden chest out of a shallow hole in the sand.

Vespasian pointed at Ziri. ‘What’s he doing helping?’

‘He insisted; showed me where to look, as a matter of fact,’ Magnus replied as they put the chest down next to a pile of valuables retrieved from the tent; two keys were tied to a handle.

‘Yes, that is mine,’ Capella confirmed.

‘How can you prove it?’ Corvinus asked him, as Vespasian bent down and untied the keys.

‘That’s simple. I could tell you what’s in there and then let you open it, but I don’t think you’ll thank me if I did.’

Vespasian slipped the keys into the locks at either end of the chest. ‘Why not?’

‘Because the chest may be mine but the contents belong to my patron. I’d completed his business here in Siwa and was on my way back to Cyrene when the Marmaridae caught me. If my patron were to find out that you’d seen what I’m carrying for him, he would be obliged to kill you.’

Vespasian looked at Magnus. ‘What do you think?’

‘I think that it depends on who his patron is.’

Capella nodded his approval. ‘Your man is very wise, Vespasian; it’s always best to keep out of imperial politics, if you can avoid it. My patron is — how should I put it? — almost at the top of the imperial tree.’

Vespasian took the keys out of the locks.

Dawn was breaking and Vespasian surveyed the camp; the townsmen and released captives had worked hard overnight. All trace of the burned tents and dead bodies had been buried; areas of damper sand marked the positions of the pits, but they would soon dry out.

Everything salvageable had been loaded onto the camels and the hundred or so slaves had been roped into lines with their hands tied behind their backs. The freed captives and the townsfolk had formed up into a rough column; they were ready to move back to the town.

‘Lead off, Corvinus,’ Vespasian ordered.

With a sharp word of command from their prefect the auxiliaries leading the column moved forward.

‘Let’s hope that the Marmaridae come to the conclusion that their caravan was buried by the sandstorm in the desert and not by those townspeople in this place,’ Vespasian said to Magnus as they watched the column shamble forward, ‘otherwise they’ll be in the shit.’

Magnus shrugged. ‘Perhaps that’ll teach them to observe the laws of hospitality in future instead of getting their guests drunk and then selling them.’

‘Well, they’ll have all those slaves to sell next time the Marmaridae come calling; by rights I should try and reunite them with their owners but I think that would be virtually impossible, so I’ve given them to the townspeople in exchange for everything that we need to get back across the desert.’

‘I take it that you had a successful little chat with Capella, seeing as he seems to be coming with us.’

‘Yes, very successful, thank you.’

‘And?’

‘And he said that his patron would reimburse the loss to the province.’

‘And?’

‘And that he would let me have Flavia, if I asked her myself; and she so wished.’

‘As simple as that?’

‘Yes.’

Magnus started laughing.

‘What’s so funny?’ Vespasian asked, annoyed.

‘He’s sharp, that one.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘I’ll bet he said: take her if she wants to go, she costs me a fortune and I’m getting bored with her.’

‘Words along those lines, yes,’ Vespasian admitted, taken aback by the accuracy of Magnus’ guess.

‘You’ve been had.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You should have made him swear to repudiate her, then she wouldn’t have had much choice but to go with you or find herself alone in a strange province without anyone to protect her. Whereas what he’s done is say: go and ask her, I don’t care.’

‘And I will,’ Vespasian asserted through gritted teeth.

‘Come on, sir, don’t you get it? She’s going to take one look at you, a quaestor in one of the least prestigious provinces in the whole Empire, who’ll be lucky to finish his term with enough cash to keep a woman like her in jewellery and perfume for the next couple of years; and then she’ll look at her rich man who has the contract to supply wild animals to the circuses in Africa, probably owns his own ship and has contacts in high places. What is she going to decide?’

‘I am wealthy, I’ve got my estates.’

‘Yes, but that money is tied up in land, mules and slaves. She’s not going to want to go to the jewellers with you dragging a braying mule behind you to pay with, is she? Nor is she going to want to live on the estates surrounded by bumpkins; she’ll want a fine house on the Esquiline.’

‘I’ve got cash,’ Vespasian almost shouted; his voice had gone up in tone.

‘Not as much as Capella.’

Vespasian opened his mouth and then realised that it was futile to argue; Magnus was right. He put a hand to his forehead, massaging it for a few moments. ‘He’s offered me the chance to have her, knowing that she’ll say no; his obligation to me is then discharged without costing him a copper coin. Brilliant!’

‘I’d say so.’

‘The clever bastard; and I can’t now go back on the agreement we made.’ Trying but failing to hide the embarrassment that he felt for being so duped, he strode off, leaving Magnus with an amused look on his face.

Walking briskly up the column as it entered the palm forest, Vespasian reflected upon his naivety. He had been carried away by his own self-importance in everything that he had done since meeting Flavia, thinking that he was acting in his own interests; whereas he now realised that it had been Capella, a man older and cannier than he, who had played him all along. Now Capella was to deny him the prize that he had used to tempt him: Flavia.

Capella had been right: he was here solely to impress her.

He remembered his last conversations with his grandmother, Tertulla, and knew that she would be horrified at his recent behaviour. He had not been following an instinct in his heart that he deemed to be right but had been acting upon a base desire, using his power in an immature and rash way solely for his own ends, and all those men had died because of his arrogance. He had forgotten the ideals that he had espoused when he had beheld Rome for the first time — back when he had felt it wrong even to take a bribe — and he was heartily ashamed.

‘Quaestor!’ a voice from the heart of the column called, bringing Vespasian out of his damning introspection.

Vespasian turned to see a man in his early thirties push his way towards him through the ex-captives. ‘What is it?’ he asked, pleased to turn his mind to other things.

‘Firstly I must thank you for saving us from a living death in the desert,’ the man said as he fell into step beside him.

‘You should thank the men who died in doing so; not me,’ Vespasian responded, looking side-on at the man; judging from his features and headdress Vespasian supposed him to be Jewish.

‘It is the mark of a compassionate man to give such an answer,’ the Jew replied. ‘However, you led them to our rescue when you could have just remained in Cyrene and left us to our fate.’

‘If only you knew the truth of the matter,’ Vespasian said, almost to himself.

‘Whatever the truth may be it cannot change the fact that you are responsible for our freedom, so all the people here are in your debt; I for one will never forget that.’

Vespasian grunted his acknowledgement. ‘And secondly?’

The Jew looked at him quizzically. ‘What?’

‘You said “firstly”, so I assume that there’ll be a “secondly”.’

The Jew carried on staring at him for a few paces as they walked along. ‘Forgive me for asking, quaestor, but you look very much like a man I met in Judaea, a good man: Titus Flavius Sabinus.’

‘He’s my elder brother,’ Vespasian confirmed, wiping the sweat from his brow as the sun and the temperature both rose higher.

‘Then I am doubly in your debt because he hastened the death of a kinsman of mine on the cross; he had his centurion finish him cleanly with a spear rather than break his legs and let him die in agony. He then returned the body to us.’

‘Why was this kinsman crucified?’

‘That is something that no one has ever really understood.’

‘He must have been found guilty of some crime.’

‘The priests wanted him stoned for blasphemy because he preached that we Jews should put aside our ten commandments and follow just one new one: love your neighbour as you love yourself.’

‘But if he was crucified he must have been judged according to Roman law.’

‘Yes, and yet no reason for the sentence was ever read out. But what is done cannot be undone. His teachings live on among my people, beyond his death, through those who were closest to him and admired his compassion, although we are now persecuted for doing so.’

‘We?’

‘Yes, I am one of those who preach his words.’

‘Then why aren’t you back in Judaea doing so?’

‘Because there’s no place in his vision of Judaism for the priests and they wish to hold onto their power, so they hound us relentlessly.’

‘And so you ran away.’

‘No, quaestor, I’m a merchant, I trade in tin; I have to earn a living as well as preach and so I preach to the Jewish communities in the ports that I pass through. I was on my way to the tin mines in southern Britannia, outside of the Empire, when the Marmaridae captured me and two companions as we filled our water caskets between Alexandria and Apollonia; which brings me to the “secondly”.’

‘Which is?’

‘After I was captured my ship must have sailed on to Apollonia to take on fresh supplies and to drop off a friend of mine who was returning to Cyrene; but after that I don’t know whether it carried on west or whether it turned back to Judaea because the crew were afraid of going on without me, as only I among them have made the voyage to Britannia before.’

‘So what do you want me to do about it?’

‘I need a small favour from you, quaestor, although I’m aware that I’m already heavily in your debt.’

Vespasian looked at the man; there was no guile in his eyes. ‘Name it.’

‘To know which way they went, so that I can follow them, I need you to look at the port aedile’s records; I assume that he sends you a copy every day.’

‘He does; come and see me when we get back to Cyrene.’

‘Thank you, quaestor,’ the man said, visibly pleased. ‘My name is Yosef; I’ll ask for you at the Governor’s Residence.’

‘I’ll make sure that you are expected, Yosef.’

The column arrived at the town shortly after midday and Vespasian slept for the remainder of the day and right through the night. It was his first decent period of sleep since arriving in Siwa and not even the constant hammering and sawing of carpenters constructing the sixty sleds that he had ordered could disturb his slumber.

‘You should wake up now, sir,’ Magnus said, shaking Vespasian’s shoulder. ‘It’s almost dawn and the column is forming up.’

Vespasian roused himself, feeling much rejuvenated and as ready as he would ever be to face the arduous three-hundred-mile return journey to Cyrene.

He tied on his army sandals, belted his tunic and then followed Magnus out into the torch-lit agora. The camels stood in three rows of twenty; each had a sled attached to it, piled high with full water-skins. These, Vespasian hoped, together with the skins loaded onto the camels’ backs, would provide them with sufficient water to make the crossing without having to rely on the Marmaridae’s wells. He planned to give these a wide berth, if at all possible, for fear of his ill-protected column falling prey to the slavers. The sleds would also carry the weak, whose numbers would grow during the long trek as the skins were emptied and discarded. Forty or so of the freed captives of Egyptian origin had elected to stay in Siwa to await the next caravan to Alexandria; the rest, just over eighty, were bound for Cyrene, knowing only too well the hazards of the journey.

With a harsh word to the headman of the town reminding him that those staying behind were his companions and therefore under Amun’s protection, Vespasian mounted one of the twelve horses that they had been able to exchange, in addition to the water-skins, food and sleds, for all the slaves and a few camels, and gave the order to move out. The first rays of the sun, now cresting the eastern horizon, cast long shadows before them as Vespasian led the slow-moving column from the town and ventured out once more into the unforgiving desert.