Scourge of Rome

V

Her name was Tabitha.

When she woke the next day she possessed only a vague recollection of the previous night. Valerius offered to delay the journey until she’d fully recovered, but she insisted they keep to their normal schedule. Still, he watched her carefully for some reaction to her ordeal and saw her face grow pale as the memories returned. It surprised and pleased her that her injured hand had been bandaged so efficiently, and the oil Valerius applied reduced the pain to a dull throb. One thing puzzled her. A vague recollection of lying beneath a giant pig of a man who had bled copiously … Someone had roughly stitched together the remains of her dress. Her mouth dropped open and she stared at Valerius, her expression changing swiftly from dismay, to outrage, to devastation. When she finally realized what must have happened she burst into tears. Ariston and Serpentius exchanged a look and found something essential to do with the horses, leaving Valerius to explain the unexplainable.

‘We couldn’t leave you as you were.’ He chose his words with exaggerated care. ‘We didn’t know if the blood came only from him or if you had been injured also. I …’ She stopped weeping long enough to spear him with a look of open-mouthed incredulity and he hurried on. ‘I treated you as I would the body of a dead comrade fresh from the battlefield,’ he assured her. ‘With reverence and respect. To me you were just an empty vessel, as if I were washing a bowl or a cup.’ He stumbled, aware of his voice taking on a pompous solemnity as he fought the memory of skin with the texture of silk and intriguing curves and hollows and shadows. ‘I did not look upon you as a person.’

‘Truly?’ she said.

‘Truly,’ he lied, hoping the word didn’t sound as hollow in her ears as it did in his.

She frowned, unsure whether to be pleased his medical ministrations had been carried out with such professional detachment or dismayed that her charms had so little effect. ‘I do not know your name, though I would guess by your accent you are a Roman.’

‘Gaius Valerius Verrens, at your service, lady …?’

‘I am called Tabitha.’ She bowed her head with grave dignity. ‘It was fortunate you strayed so far from the road.’ The statement contained a question he found intriguing.

‘We are on the way to Emesa.’ He shrugged as if the journey were of little consequence. ‘Then perhaps I will continue on to Judaea. My guide,’ Valerius sensed Ariston’s ears twitch, ‘pledged to show me the wonders of the Orient, but he turns out to have poor eyesight and not much sense of direction.’

Tabitha explained that she was the servant of a lady travelling from Chalcis to Hamah with a caravan of five hundred camels laden with precious frankincense. ‘An escort of fifty mounted archers provided by the king rode with us and we were judged safe from any interference.’ She lowered her eyes. ‘I wandered away from our encampment … I did not like to … under the gaze of the soldiers and rough camel drivers.’ She sighed. ‘I was a fool. They must have been waiting.’

‘They must also have been eager to know the dispositions of the guards.’ Valerius nodded towards her injured hand.

‘Yes,’ Tabitha said too quickly. ‘They put me to the question before …’ A tear ran down her cheek and he placed a fatherly hand on her shoulder. The touch clearly surprised her and she raised her eyes to meet his. For some reason Valerius found breathing difficult. ‘If we make reasonable time we could reach Hamah before the caravan, or perhaps meet them on the road,’ she continued eagerly. Valerius must have looked doubtful because her expression turned downcast. ‘I promise I will not be a burden to you. I can ride as well as any man, and despite my foolishness my mistress will reimburse you for any inconvenience I have caused. Please.’

Valerius hesitated. He’d discussed the conundrum with Serpentius and Ariston during the night. In their opinion she would hold them back and his first instinct had been to leave her at the next village with enough money to see her home. Ariston had suggested returning to the river and hailing one of the boats carrying olive oil from the Syrian heartland to Antioch. But if she could ride …

‘I have seen a mouse put up more of a struggle against a cat.’ Ariston’s complaint to his mount travelled back to where Valerius rode beside the pack horse. Tabitha had forged a few yards ahead with Serpentius, the shapely form from the previous night engulfed in Valerius’s hooded cloak. ‘With one flutter of her eyelashes she has him doing tricks like a trained monkey. I once owned a camel with such eyes and she was the most wilful, vain, pernickety creature ever spawned. I sold her to a Bedou who was not so impressed by her looks and less inclined to spare the whip.’

‘If you’ve finished reciting the merits of your menagerie,’ Valerius gave him a sour look, ‘perhaps you could keep your eyes open for signs of the lady’s caravan and we’ll be able to dispense with our unwanted distraction.’

‘Unwanted? Hah.’ The Syrian dropped back to take station beside him. ‘A caravan of five hundred camels would leave a trail a hundred paces wide,’ he said soberly, ‘which would be visible even to a guide with poor eyesight. In addition, it would create a dust cloud that could be seen for ten miles. I see no dust cloud.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘Six men, or even ten, why would they risk raiding a caravan guarded by fifty bowmen?’

‘They might have been only the advance guard,’ Valerius suggested.

‘They were Sicarii, I am certain of it. The Sicarii are killers, not thieves. They usually work alone. Six men would denote a particular mission.’

Valerius caught the hint. ‘You think our new travelling companion is not being open with us?’

Ariston shrugged; what did he know? ‘She has made a remarkable recovery.’

‘There was nothing false about what those men did to her,’ Valerius pointed out. ‘Maybe she is just a remarkable woman?’

The Syrian turned in the saddle. ‘Her beauty blinds you. I hope it is not the death of us.’ His eyes drifted to the man riding at Tabitha’s side. ‘Speaking of death, your friend with the wolf’s eyes makes me nervous.’

‘And so he should,’ Valerius said. ‘Serpentius survived a hundred combats in the Taurus amphitheatre. He has hands as swift as a cobra’s strike and has saved my life more times than I remember. It is your good fortune, Ariston, that he only kills who I tell him to.’

He kicked his horse ahead to where Tabitha had reined in to water her mount in a stream that joined the Orontes. ‘You ride well,’ he complimented her. ‘Is that a common skill among servants in Chalcis?’

‘Common enough in servants of the royal court.’ She gave him a searching look that made his cheeks burn. ‘My lady often hunts in the desert with King Aristobulus, either with hawk or hound. She expects her servant to be at her side in case of need. We are different from Roman women, who I understand avoid such strenuous pursuits.’

‘I know one Roman woman who could match you in the saddle.’ Valerius smiled, remembering Domitia Longina Corbulo’s fierce pride as they outrode their Batavian pursuers at Placentia. ‘But you’re right, it is not a skill of which many Roman ladies can boast. Your place at court would also account for your remarkable command of Greek.’

‘Latin too,’ she replied in that language. ‘And Hebrew, though Aramaic is the language of my birth. Is this an interrogation, Gaius Valerius Verrens?’

‘Let us call it a conversation,’ he smiled. ‘Ariston, our guide, is by nature a suspicious man. He thinks it is possible that the men who attacked you were members of a group of assassins who go by the name of Sicarii. Perhaps there is a reason other than the value of your frankincense why they were interested in you or your lady?’

‘What other reason would there be?’ Tabitha shook her head. ‘They were bandits. They wanted to know the layout of our camp and the position of the guards. Nothing more.’

As the sun reached its height they entered Apamea by the Antioch Gate beneath impressive city walls, and Ariston grinned at Valerius’s undisguised astonishment. The Roman had expected just another dusty provincial city. A working community with a meeting place for a market, perhaps a forum and a basilica, a few temples and a baths. Instead the city rivalled anything he’d seen outside Rome, in some places possibly even surpassing the capital.

‘This is the longest street in Syria, perhaps the world,’ Ariston informed him proudly. ‘I promised you wonders, is this not one?’

The main street, the cardo maximus, ran for at least a mile; a broad avenue lined with fluted columns of creamy white. ‘There are twelve hundred,’ Ariston continued, determined everything must impress. ‘I have counted them. Six hundred to each side and every one the height of five men.’

Serpentius rode a little way apart, ignoring the architecture. Instead, his restless eyes searched the street for any undue interest in their little party. The others forced their horses past carts shod with iron wheels that rattled over the rutted cobbles. Driven by labourers in dusty robes, they carried wood and stone and fought for space with dark-skinned traders leading heavily laden camels, which were in turn followed by slave boys vying to pick up their droppings for manure. Valerius noted men wearing the garb of a dozen cultures. Apamea, like Antioch, was clearly a crossroads between east and west. A bustling place that trade, natural resources – they had passed through ripening fields and lush pastures filled with sheep – and its location beside the river had made wealthy. Behind the columns lay myriad shops and basilicas, selling goods from all over the world. Some of the luxuries had been imported from Rome, but others were more exotic. Ariston insisted the intricately worked golden objects studded with jewels and pearls on one stall could only have originated in the Indus Valley and the Orient. Tabitha altered course to study the shops more closely and reined in her mare at the front of one festooned with multicoloured lengths of cloth. When Valerius joined her she was clearly wrestling with some decision.

‘Here.’ He held out his purse, solving her dilemma. The shop was a dressmaker’s and beneath the borrowed robe she wore only the hastily stitched, bloodstained remnants of her clothing. Of course she would want to replace it. ‘Take what you need and call it a gift.’

After a moment’s hesitation she accepted the purse, her face breaking into a pleased smile that made the bottom fall out of his stomach. Whatever he’d been going to say next vanished from his head. Fortunately, she saved him. ‘It will take me an hour,’ her head tilted and she studied the shop front with more care, ‘perhaps two. You could pass the time in the baths and we could meet later in the market place by the elephant fountain?’

Valerius looked to Ariston for confirmation and the Syrian shrugged. ‘There is merit in what she says. I prefer not to use the baths, but I would be happy to show you their location. I have business to conduct here, but the market is not far. I will take you there first and show you the meeting place.’

Tabitha dismounted and passed Valerius her reins. ‘The elephant fountain in two hours,’ she repeated. He watched the diminutive figure almost skip up the steps as Serpentius rode up to join him.

‘I will stay with her,’ the Spaniard said.

‘You think she’ll be in danger in a dress shop?’ Valerius smiled.

‘Why take a chance?’ Serpentius growled. ‘Who’s to say those men last night are all there was? Besides,’ his savage features broke into a grin, ‘I might see something I like.’

‘We should leave her here,’ Ariston interrupted the Spaniard. ‘There is something not right about this.’

Valerius laughed. ‘Am I travelling with an old woman who feels threatened by a pretty girl?’

‘A pretty girl who is much too familiar with this place for a servant who has spent the bulk of her days in Chalcis,’ Ariston scowled. ‘You will see.’

Valerius ignored the dire prediction and spent a pleasant hour in the baths. He hadn’t removed the leather socket covering his stump for days and it was a guilty pleasure to have the mutilated limb massaged and oiled by a slave girl. He tried to recall if Tabitha had noticed the wooden fist. If she had, she hadn’t reacted and she was clearly too diplomatic to mention it. Later, when he lay face down to have the oil removed from his back by a metal strigil, an image of Domitia Longina Corbulo swam into his mind. Should he feel guilty that he hadn’t thought of her for days now? She had sacrificed her future to save him, but the moment she’d made her decision she had reconciled herself to a life without him. His recollection of that last day was of a woman utterly remote, as if his existence were no longer of any consequence to her. He still felt the pain of the realization. Yes, it might have been partly to dull the terrible emptiness of their parting, but he sensed there’d been something else. As if she could only endure her new life if she expunged the memories of the old. Whether Domitian’s assassins succeeded or not, he was already dead to her. They would never meet again.

When he’d dressed, he walked south towards the market, stopping occasionally to look at a shop or a stall, but with one eye on the people around him. It seemed unlikely he’d been followed, but the cruel reality was that he wouldn’t see the dagger that killed him. Even with Serpentius by his side, one day there’d be someone who was faster or more cunning than those who’d tried before. A troop of exotically uniformed cavalry rode past, hooves clattering on the stone slabs. Valerius kept his head down and his wooden hand covered.

Ariston waited by the fountain, which, as its name implied, was dominated by a statue of an elephant standing in a pool with water streaming from a lead pipe in its trunk. The fountain was at the centre of a paved square surrounded by columns. Beyond the columns houses and villas clung to a hillside where another pillared roadway snaked its way to a magnificent temple that reminded Valerius of one he’d seen in Athens.

Ariston stared at him. ‘You have lost your charm?’ He pointed to the Roman’s neck where the wheel of Fortuna had hung.

Valerius’s hand instinctively went to his throat, but he smiled. The slave girl had been delighted with her unexpected gift. ‘I decided I didn’t need it any more. Sometimes a man must make his own luck.’

Ariston’s expression said he must be mad, but the Syrian shrugged. ‘You like Apamea?’

‘It’s very civilized.’ Valerius smiled. ‘But perhaps a little brash for my taste.’

‘You can blame my forefather, Seleucas Nicador.’ Ariston ignored Valerius’s look of disbelief at his unlikely claim to royal blood. ‘He was Alexander’s most successful general and named the city for his fourth wife, a Bactrian with the nature of a bad-tempered crocodile. He loved her despite this, and to prove it Apamea must be bigger and more impressive than Antioch and Palmyra. He ordered a channel constructed that brings sweet water all the way from Salimiye.’ He rose and reached out to slap the elephant’s enormous behind. ‘This was where he kept his five hundred fighting elephants, and those fields we passed with the sheep would once have trembled beneath the hooves of forty thousand horses.’

Valerius looked up at the sun. ‘She is late.’

‘What do you expect?’ Ariston’s laughter echoed round the market place. ‘A girl in a dress shop, of course she’s late.’

A few men and women appeared and began setting up stalls for the next day’s market. They worked quietly and efficiently, laughing and joking amongst themselves. Valerius noticed the moment several heads looked up in alarm, like deer sensing the approach of a wolf. A heartbeat later he heard the sound of approaching hooves and as he leapt to his feet cavalry troopers funnelled into the square from every side. Squat, narrow-eyed men with fish scale armour, pot helmets and strung bows tensed and ready to loose. Every viciously barbed arrow was aimed at the two men by the fountain.

‘It would be unwise to allow your hand to get any closer to your sword.’ Ariston glanced nervously as the circle of arrows edged ever closer. All it would take was one careless movement and …

‘Unstring your bows, unless you want to provide another reason for the king to take your stupid heads.’

The order caused consternation among the mounted ranks as a familiar figure in a voluminous cloak forced its way through the ring of horses. Tabitha threw back her hood and glared until the bow strings loosened. Serpentius stood at her side, surveying the scene with a look of sardonic amusement on his haggard features.

A cavalryman in a prefect’s sash dropped to the ground and ran to kneel at Tabitha’s feet.

‘My lady.’