At the far end was a long windowless corridor with the doors to the men’s individual rooms down the side facing on to the stable yard. Titus made to enter one and then paused; although as the master of the household he had the right to go anywhere he pleased without asking he thought to honour a man who had served him for six years as his slave and a further ten as his freedman: he knocked.
The door opened and Chloe peered out. Surprise that the master should have knocked showed on her wrinkled, sunburnt face, which always reminded Vespasian of a walnut shell.
‘Masters, come in,’ she wheezed, bowing her head. ‘Master Vespasian, it’s good to see you conscious. How is the shoulder?’
‘It’s stiff and it aches but it’ll be fine. Thank you for what you did for me last night, Chloe,’ Vespasian replied, taking her hand in genuine affection. She had sewn up many cuts and dosed him with all sorts of potions a child, and he had come to think of her as a part of the immediate family.
‘You were lucky that it hit nothing vital,’ she said, beaming at him. The few teeth that remained to her were yellow or black. ‘I was able to clean and cauterise the wound. Not, alas, like poor Ataphanes; the arrow pierced his liver and he bleeds inside. He doesn’t have long.’
Vespasian nodded and stepped into the small whitewashed room. To his surprise, Artebudz was standing by the only window; behind him, in the stable yard, the business of loading the wagons continued apace.
Ataphanes lay on a low bed. His once-proud, sculpted Persian features seemed flaccid and grey. His breathing was laborious. He opened his eyes — they had a yellow tinge to them — and he gave a weak smile.
‘I am grateful that you have come, masters,’ he whispered.
‘The master knocked,’ Chloe piped up from the door; she was well aware that she was talking out of place but wanted Ataphanes to be aware of the fact.
‘Thank you,’ he said to Titus, ‘you do me honour.’
‘No more than you deserve after the long years of service to my family,’ Titus replied, taking his hand. He squeezed it gently and then looked quizzically at Artebudz.
‘I’m Artebudz, sir. Your son won my freedom for me; I owe your family a debt of gratitude.’
‘This is the man that shot me, master,’ Ataphanes informed Titus weakly. ‘It was a great shot; far better, Ahura Mazda be praised, than mine at Vespasian.’ He spluttered a faint laugh; blood appeared on his lips. ‘But my squat Scythian friend, Baseos, missed altogether. I have had my last archery competition with him and I won.’
‘Though, luckily for me, not with a bull’s-eye,’ Vespasian said, feeling his shoulder.
Ataphanes nodded and closed his eyes. ‘I have two favours to ask of you, masters.’
‘Name them,’ Titus said.
‘First, that you do not cremate my body but rather expose it for the carrion fowl to devour on a tower of silence as is the custom of my people who follow the teachings of the prophet Zoroaster.’
‘That will be done.’
‘Thank you, master. My second request isn’t so easy. I have saved a good deal of money, in gold; it’s in a box under my bed, along with a few personal possessions that I want my family to have. I had planned to use it to return to my homeland one day, but now that’s not to be. I would ask you to return it to my family with a letter telling them of my life; I’ve had no time to write one. They can read Greek.’
‘Gladly, Ataphanes, but how will we know where to send it?’
‘My family are from Ctesiphon; we are spice merchants. Being the youngest of five sons there was no place for me in the business so I was sent to pay my family’s feudal dues and serve in the army of our Great King. And here I am and shall remain. My family did a great deal of trade with the Jews of Alexandria; I would have thought that they still do.’ Ataphanes paused to catch his breath; his chest heaved irregularly. ‘There was one Jewish family in particular — they had received Roman citizenship two generations before from Julius Caesar, the man’s name was Gaius Julius Alexander. He would know where to send the money.’
Ataphanes’ breathing became increasingly sporadic.
Titus looked down at him, concern in his eyes. ‘No one of our class is allowed into Egypt without permission from the Emperor himself. How can we trace that family without going there?’
Ataphanes opened his eyes with a huge effort and whispered: ‘Write to the alabarch, he’ll know. Farewell, masters.’
He was gone. Artebudz stepped forward and closed his staring eyes.
They stood a moment in silence.
‘Get the box, Sabinus,’ Titus said after a while. ‘I’ll have Pallo get some men to deal with the body; we’ve got our other dead to cremate, the pyres are ready.’
Titus walked out, leaving the brothers looking at each other.
‘What’s an alabarch?’ Sabinus asked.
‘Fuck knows. We’ll worry about that later. Come on, get the box and then we’ll talk with Secundus after the funerals.’
Sabinus bent down and felt around under the bed. He pulled out a plain wooden box, one foot cubed; there was no lock on it, just a catch. He opened the lid. The brothers gasped; it was a quarter full of not just gold coins but also nuggets and jewellery.
‘How did he get all this?’ Sabinus asked, picking up a handful and letting it drop.
‘He saved everything your father ever gave him for his work,’ Chloe said. There were tears in her eyes. ‘Once a year he would go to Reate and buy gold.’
‘But that’s more than ten years’ worth, surely?’ Vespasian exclaimed. ‘Father’s not that generous.’
‘Baseos always gave him most of his money. He said he had no need of it; he had everything that he needed here and if he ever did go back to his home what good would so much money do him in the grasslands of Scythia? He thought it better to give it to his friend, who’d have some use for it.’
Sabinus grunted. ‘I suppose that makes some sort of sense,’ he said, heaving the heavy box up. ‘In future I’ll go out of my way to befriend Scythians.’
He walked out. Vespasian followed him, struggling with the concept that someone could have no need or desire for something that had always been very close to his heart: money.
With Titus officiating, the rest of the dead had been cremated on two pyres outside the stable-yard gates: one for the estate’s dead and the crossroads brother, Lucio, and one for the others. A coin for the ferryman had been placed in all their mouths, including, much to Vespasia’s disgust, Livilla’s men’s.
Vespasian now stood next to his father by the hastily constructed wooden platform, supported by four eight- foot poles, upon which Ataphanes had been laid. The estate’s freedmen and Artebudz were gathered behind them. Baseos, who was weeping freely, held Ataphanes’ bow, which he was keeping in memory of his friend. When Vespasian had asked him if he wanted to have any of his money back the old Scythian had said that he could get more food with Ataphanes’ bow than he could buy with all his money; he seemed very content with the transaction so Vespasian had let the subject drop.
As no one knew the Zoroastrian funeral rites Sabinus had decided to use the Mithraic, the religions being in some ways related. He said prayers to the sun for the dead man’s soul, whilst holding aloft a green ear of wheat. He then sacrificed a young bull and did some strange hand gestures above the fire before throwing the heart into it. It seemed all very weird and foreign, yet at the same time the sacrifice was familiar.
‘What was that all about?’ Vespanian asked his brother as they walked back through the stable-yard gates. It was the eighth hour of the day; the business of loading was almost complete and the mules were being harnessed to the wagons; Pallo had told them that they would be ready to leave in under an hour.
‘If I told you I’d have to kill you and then kill myself,’ Sabinus replied without a trace of irony. ‘If you want to know you have to be initiated into the lowest grade: the Ravens.’
‘How can I know if I want to be initiated if I don’t know a thing about the religion?’
‘Faith, brother.’
‘Faith in what?’
‘Faith in the Lord Mithras and the Sun God.’
‘And what am I supposed to believe about them?’
‘That they will guide your spirit and cleanse your soul in the transition from one life to the next.’
‘How?’
‘The mysteries are revealed gradually as you are initiated into the different grades.’
‘What grade are you?’
