Scourge of Rome

VI

‘Lady?’ As they rode at the centre of an escort to the Chalcidean camp outside Apamea, Valerius couldn’t hide his curiosity about Tabitha’s reception from the leader of the mounted archers.

‘A figure of speech,’ she assured him. ‘Gaulan thinks he can win my heart by flattery. He will sometimes be overly deferential no matter how much I chide him for it.’

Her manner was so offhand and imperious that Valerius decided he pitied poor Gaulan. He’d find it easier to command his desert tribesmen than the woman he’d been entrusted with. ‘You must have many potential suitors,’ he teased her.

Tabitha looked at him from below curved lashes. ‘Or perhaps it is my lovely new clothes that deceived him?’ She pulled back her cloak so Valerius could admire the crimson stola.

‘It was fortunate the seamstress completed her work when she did.’

‘Gaulan’s men would have done you no harm, I’m sure. They are very disciplined.’

‘Nevertheless,’ the Roman smiled, ‘having been the focus of so many arrows I must give you thanks on behalf of myself and Ariston. What I don’t fully understand is how they managed to find us in the market place.’

Tabitha considered for a moment. ‘My lady was so incensed the caravan guards failed to protect me that she insisted Gaulan and his men stay behind until they found me. She can be very forceful and she left them in no doubt of the penalty if they failed in their task.’

‘She must value her servants very highly.’

Tabitha’s eyes searched for any sign that she was being mocked, but Valerius kept his face expressionless and she continued her explanation. ‘One of his riders came upon the bandits’ camp and found their remains, along with some scraps of my clothing. When they could discover no trace of me, they decided I must have been killed and my body thrown to the wild beasts. They deduced from the tracks that the bandits had some sort of dispute and the survivors had set off in the direction of Apamea. Since the only way they could save their own heads was to provide proof that all the bandits had been killed, they followed. Travellers on the road gave them descriptions of our mounts. When they reached Apamea it was a simple enough task to check every stable until they tracked down the horses and obtained a detailed description of the men who had brought them. Gaulan sent soldiers to scour the town and they found you quite quickly.’

‘What happens now?’ Valerius asked, as they approached the colourful cloth tents the cavalrymen had set up on one of the lush meadows outside the city.

‘We will continue our journey at first light.’ She paused, the white pearls of her perfect teeth nibbling at her lower lip. ‘It is my hope you will accompany us as far as Emesa. It will be safer and you will travel more quickly with the help of their remounts. Is that acceptable to you?’

Valerius bowed in the saddle. ‘I would be honoured to share the journey.’

‘Good.’ She kicked her horse ahead, smiling at him across her shoulder. ‘Serpentius assures me that despite your great age you are a warrior of repute among Romans. I have told Gaulan you will protect my honour should he prove incapable.’

Valerius was still trying to work out whether to feel flattered or insulted when Ariston appeared at his side. ‘I told you she would be trouble.’ The Syrian shook his head gloomily.

‘She may have saved our lives,’ Valerius reminded him. He explained Tabitha’s invitation to travel on to Emesa with the column and Ariston’s expression became even more lugubrious.

‘I suppose this means you will no longer need my services?’

Valerius had already given the matter some thought. He shook his head. ‘This land and these people are entirely unfamiliar to me,’ he said. ‘If I am to be of any use to Titus I need to understand how they think. How far from Emesa to Jerusalem?’

‘Twelve days, if the weather holds. Fourteen or fifteen if not.’

‘If you are willing to accompany us I will pay you for your knowledge of Judaea and for teaching me the rudiments of the language. You speak it?’

‘Of course,’ the Syrian bristled. ‘Hebrew is my second tongue.’

‘Then join us, and when we reach Titus you will have your reward.’

The Syrian considered for a moment and then nodded his acknowledgement. ‘I will be happy to ride with you, even among these Chalcidean hellhounds and their vixen.’ He frowned and his voice took on a tutor’s solemnity. ‘First, you must understand that Judaea is not one country, but an amalgamation of several. Galilee is in the north …’

By the time they reached Emesa two days later, Valerius had learned that the Judaeans were naturally rebellious, having previously fought both the Syrians and the Greeks. That despite their singular religion they were eternally divided, much as the tribes of Britannia had been and for all he knew still were. That the country wasn’t really a province at all, not being worth the attention of a governor of senatorial rank, but ruled by a mere procurator. ‘My knowledge of high politics is slight,’ Ariston had admitted. ‘But it seems to me that Rome’s only interest in the place is ensuring the Parthians have no influence there.’

Emesa lay forty miles downstream from Apamea, on the east bank of the Orontes at the edge of a flat plain enclosed by hills on three sides, with blank, sterile desert on the fourth. During the journey, Gaulan had described it as a great metropolis, but Valerius considered it vastly inferior to the sprawling glory of Apamea. A massive mound topped by a palace complex dominated the city. Tight-packed houses surrounded the hill, hemmed in by the city wall and a scatter of suburb slums that lined the roads converging on it. The hilltop complex and a large temple apart, it looked a poor little place, and he said as much to Ariston.

‘Do not be deceived,’ the Syrian assured him. ‘Emesa may not be as lovely as Apamea, but it is more important by far. The palace you see is the seat of Sohaemus, the powerful king who rules here, and the temple to the south is the home of Elah Gebal, the sun god. Thousands come to worship during the great festivals and tributes, even from as far as Palmyra, which Sohaemus covets but cannot move against without Rome’s sanction.’

Valerius was disappointed he’d had no opportunity during the journey for further contact with the mysterious Tabitha. He’d planned to impress her with the few Hebrew phrases he’d learned, but she’d ridden with the baggage train and he wondered if she was deliberately avoiding him. The feeling was strengthened as the soldiers set up camp and he watched her ride out towards the city with Gaulan and an escort, heavily cloaked and with a hood covering her dark hair.

Serpentius appeared beside him. The Spaniard watched the riders. ‘I wouldn’t trust the Syrian camel thief to water my horse, but maybe he’s right and we’d be better off on our own,’ he scowled.

‘You seemed happy enough to talk to her a few days ago,’ Valerius pointed out. ‘You’re not usually so communicative with strangers.’

The former gladiator gave a grunt of a laugh. ‘So she told you.’ He spat in the dust. ‘She asked and I answered, but only enough to make you sound interesting.’

‘Well, from now on keep your gossip to yourself. What do you think of our travelling companions?’

‘The cavalry? They’re well mounted and they can use those bows of theirs. I saw one of them put an arrow through a hare’s eye at a hundred paces. In fact the third squadron are getting ready to go hunting in the scrub along the river. A couple of them speak reasonable Latin. Maybe I should go along and see if I can find out a bit more. Not that it’ll make much difference. We won’t know if they have any fight in them until someone tries to kill us.’

‘Then let’s hope we don’t need to find out too soon,’ Valerius called after him. ‘And Serpentius?’ The Spaniard looked over his shoulder. ‘Stop giving Ariston your murderer’s stare. He knows his way around this country and I have a feeling we’ll need that knowledge. I don’t want him sneaking out on us one night because he thinks you want to kill him. In any case, I like him.’

‘Then he’d better look out for himself,’ Serpentius growled. ‘Because I’ve noticed that the people you like have a tendency to end up dead.’

An hour later one of the escort returned across the plain to announce that King Sohaemus demanded Valerius’s presence at his palace in the city. The summons came as a surprise and Ariston shot him a glance of warning that Valerius acknowledged with a barely discernible nod. ‘Very well,’ he told the man. ‘I will accompany you once my interpreter and I are ready.’

The cavalryman gave him a troubled look. ‘I was told to bring you immediately you were suitably dressed, lord, and to assure you that no interpreter will be required.’

Ariston shrugged and wandered off to ready Valerius’s horse. Valerius went to his tent and returned a few minutes later dressed in his best tunic. The Syrian came back with a green cloak of fine wool provided by Gaulan’s servant and pinned it at Valerius’s neck in the Roman style. ‘Be wary,’ he whispered.

‘Why?’ Valerius demanded.

‘Is it not said that the patronage of kings is like the desert storm? It passes swiftly and leaves victims in its wake. In truth, I do not know: I am not in the habit of meeting kings. But this is a strange honour for a simple traveller. I had hoped to acquaint you a little more with this king’s character on the way to the city, but now you must discover it for yourself.’

Valerius frowned. He’d suffered the accusing stares of emperors, but he’d never stood before a king. ‘Should I bow or kneel?’

‘You are a Roman.’ The Syrian’s eyes twinkled as Valerius pulled himself one-handed into the saddle. ‘He will be happy as long as you don’t take away his throne.’

The closer they approached the city walls the more Valerius understood just how the great palace compound on the mound dominated Emesa. Massive fortifications and multi-columned buildings towered over the city like a giant sentinel. His mind automatically approached it as a military problem. First, any attacker would have to take Emesa’s walls, which were sturdily built and high. Even so, they’d pose no problem to any competent legionary commander equipped with catapults and siege towers. His problems would begin when they were breached. From the little he could see, beyond them lay a rat-trap maze of interlinking streets and alleys, many of them barely wide enough to allow passage to more than two or three men at a time. By the time the walls fell the defenders would have created two or three further lines of defence and those watching from the citadel would see the direction of attack. Their commander would use his interior lines to focus his men and resources on the most vulnerable areas. As long as the defenders could wield a sword or loose an arrow they’d be able to hold the attack at bay. Casualties would be high. And that was before the attackers reached the citadel itself. From his vantage point the entrance wasn’t visible, but the sides of the mound were near vertical and formed of smooth stonework. Anyone attempting to climb them equipped for battle would be swept away by a hail of spears and the slingshots he knew the Syrians delivered so lethally.

His suspicions were confirmed when they passed through the city’s north gate. The gates themselves stood twenty feet high, were faced with copper and iron-bound, and wide enough to admit two carts at a time. A squad of guards clad in helmets and armour in the Greek fashion watched the riders pass, but had obviously been warned not to hinder them. Beyond the gate they entered a warren of narrow streets that wandered and twisted between two- and three-storey mud-brick buildings. Valerius would have lost his bearings within moments if it hadn’t been for his escort, who forced his horse through the crowds, ignoring the protests of beggar and merchant alike. The heat between the flat-topped houses was stifling and the usual street smells seemed multiplied in the confined space, cesspit and unwashed body vying for supremacy with bittersweet horse and musky camel, heavily spiced stews and the odd welcome waft from a stall selling jasmine and lavender. It was a relief when they began to climb the winding road to the citadel, always under the watchful eyes of the guards on the walls above.

Away from the streets the air was clearer, though the heat from the mid-afternoon sun had a fiercer quality than that among the houses. As the road climbed, Valerius looked out across a panorama of flat roofs to an enormous building that stood out like a jewel in a handful of pebbles. Despite its scale it had been hidden by the shoulder of the mound. Now he could see it had the pitched, tiled roof and marble columns of a Roman temple and the sun glittered on the golden statuary that surmounted it. To the north, the silver ribbon of the Orontes snaked through the plain, flanked by the dusty emerald of fertile fields and meadows. To the east, across his left shoulder, the air shimmered like a living thing over the golden carpet of the desert. The hill reminded him of the Palatine in Rome and he stifled a shiver at the memory. How many nervous journeys had he made up the Clivus Palatinus to appear before Nero, any one of which could have ended up with him dead? Which brought him back to the question that had been plaguing him since they’d left the Chalcidean camp: why was he here? As far as this Sohaemus was concerned he was just another traveller on the dusty road from Antioch.

Unless this was another of Domitian’s tricks.

Ariston had hinted that Sohaemus sought Roman support for his ambitions to take control of Palmyra and its revenues from the eastern caravans. Could word have reached Emesa that a certain one-handed Roman might be travelling this way and should be stopped at any cost? Even as the thought occurred he decided he was starting at shadows. If that was the case, the deed would have been done somewhere down in the shadowed streets below: a rush of bodies and no escape; a struggling figure dragged into a workshop and his throat cut, ready for disposal. Discreet and tidy. Why take him to the palace where the arrival of a Roman would be noted, and no doubt reported? Domitian wanted him dead, but as far as Valerius knew he still had the confidence of Titus and Vespasian. No, Domitian wanted him to disappear with as little fuss as possible. He was safe enough for now.

They reached another massive gate and rode into an inner courtyard where the leader of the escort took Valerius’s reins and nodded for him to dismount.

‘You are to wait here to be called, lord,’ the commander informed him.

Valerius nodded distractedly and studied his surroundings. To one side stood a guardhouse where a few Emesan soldiers studied him with unguarded curiosity. They were plainly relaxed in the presence of Gaulan’s cavalry troopers, who joined their comrades in the shadow of a stables at the opposite end of the cobbled square.

A tall figure appeared in the doorway of a substantial honey-stone building that ran the length of the fourth side of the courtyard. The man affected a braided beard that reached to his chest, but the intricate golden diadem encircled a scalp entirely devoid of hair. Beady, deep-set eyes stared at Valerius from above a long nose. He wore a flowing robe of shimmering azure dotted with golden sun symbols. At first Valerius thought he might be in the presence of Sohaemus himself, then he noticed the familiar courtier’s expression that sent the unmistakable message: ‘you are beneath my contempt until you prove to me otherwise’. The man introduced himself in fluent Greek as Helios, the king’s chamberlain.

Inside the door two young slave boys held silver bowls and towels. Valerius looked on perplexed as one bent to wash his feet. The other offered a bowl for his hands, struggling to keep his face impassive as the Roman dipped his single hand into the water and held it out to be dried.

Helios sniffed and led the way along a marble-lined corridor with a short, almost feminine stride. As he walked, he talked in staccato bursts. ‘You will prostrate yourself in the king’s presence. You will only speak when you are spoken to.’ He twisted his head and grimaced at Valerius’s rustic military cloak. ‘If we had time my slaves would find you something more suitable.’

‘Perhaps you could explain why I am here.’ Valerius reflected that the loss of his rank was a drawback when dealing with royalty. How much more at ease would he have felt in helmet and armour, draped in the pristine white cloak of a tribunus laticlavius. A soldier of the Empire, instead of an outcast in a borrowed cloak, living on borrowed time.

‘That is for the king to decide,’ Helios snapped. ‘Just remember you are on his ground and subject to his justice.’

‘Yet he bends the knee to Rome.’ Valerius came to a halt, forcing the other man to stop and glare at him. ‘And I am a Roman citizen. So do not dare to threaten me, chamberlain, lest you bring down Rome’s wrath upon you and your master.’ He saw something in Helios’s eyes and his lips formed a cold smile. ‘I wonder if King Sohaemus knows how his doorkeep treats his honoured guests?’

The look changed to one of pure hatred and the chamberlain swept on. A few minutes later they reached a doorway guarded by two armoured men. Helios glided through and stood to one side, beckoning Valerius forward. ‘Prostrate yourself before his majesty, mighty Sohaemus, High King of Emesa, protector of far Commagene and Sophene, commander of the Blue Guard, slayer of thousands, Foremost Priest of Elah Gebal and Guardian of the Black Stone, may the sun for ever shine on his countenance.’

Valerius almost had to shield his eyes as he strode into the room to meet the Sun King. Frescoes covered in gold leaf lined the walls and every ornament shone with the same buttery glow. A cunningly sited opening in the high domed ceiling allowed the sun’s rays to illuminate a golden throne and its occupant. A bull of a man in the prime of life, King Sohaemus was dressed more simply than his chamberlain in a robe of golden silk, but looking into his dark eyes was like staring into an empty tomb. They glared from coarse, pitted features, deep-set beneath a heavy brow. He had a beard of oiled black ringlets in the Parthian style, and a beaked nose hung threateningly over a mouth like a bear trap.

‘Advance five paces and throw yourself upon the Sun King’s mercy,’ Helios commanded.

Valerius marched forward the required distance, a soldier in bearing if not in uniform. He met the obsidian eyes and kept his face emotionless as he bowed his head in a nod of respect. Helios emitted a hiss of outrage, but Sohaemus’s features broke into a broad smile that seemed out of place on the fearsome mask.

‘So this is your protector,’ the king said to the room’s only other occupant, who sat in a chair behind a screen to one side of the throne, at the outer limit of Valerius’s vision.

‘I owe him my life and my honour, majesty,’ a familiar voice replied quietly.

Tabitha.