The first part was easy. A few pigeons taking flight, a faraway yell, a beautiful woman passing by — any one of them could distract a man long enough to part with his money. And disappearing was easy, too, since most victims didn’t know they’d been victimized until minutes — even
And he was only twelve years old.
Already a man by any standard of the day, and already a seasoned criminal — the best pickpocket in the Eastern Empire, by his own reckoning. He’d helped make his first lift at the age of four, acting as an accomplice for the older boys. By six, he could pick the pockets of easier targets — namely drunks and the elderly — by himself. By eight, he had accomplices of his own, most of them older than he was.
Over the next four years, Balthazar had honed his craft. Developed his own methods for setting up lifts and tricking targets into revealing the location of their coin purses. One of his favorites was also the easiest:
“Be careful, sir,” he would warn an intended victim. “There are pickpockets all over this forum.”
And lo and behold, nine times out of ten, the target would instinctively reach for his money to make sure it was still there. Later, Balthazar learned that he could simply put up a sign that said
An aspiring pickpocket couldn’t have asked for a better place to hone his craft. Antioch was a mere 300 years old, still in its infancy compared to the other great cities of the world. But in that relatively short time, it had experienced explosive growth and become what many called “the Jewel of the East.” A city to rival the greatness of Alexandria, with some 300,000 free men and 200,000 slaves.
The vast majority of the population was Greek, but it was also a melting pot of Macedonians, Jews, Chinese, Indians, native Syrians, and Romans — who, as usual, were the all-powerful minority. With the Romans had come all the attendant innovations: an amphitheater; an aqueduct to deliver abundant fresh water; and a circus for horse races, one of the largest in the empire, with seating for up to 80,000.
But of all the Roman upgrades, the feature that really defined Antioch was its Colonnaded Street. Its scale was almost unimaginable: a cobblestone road, thirty feet wide and four miles long, with covered walkways (or “colonnades”) running on both sides for the entire length. It cut a straight line, north to south, through the center of Antioch, parallel to the Orontes River, which ran along the city’s western border. Beneath these covered walkways, merchants sold food and wares of every variety, some from permanent shops, others from movable stalls. At night, the entire four-mile stretch was illuminated by torches, and the crowds would continue shopping, eating, and socializing into the early hours of the morning. The north and south halves of the Colonnaded Street met in a huge, round marketplace, which would, centuries later, be rebuilt into a forum by the Eastern Emperor Valens.
Though he had four miles of busy colonnades to choose from, Balthazar liked to work the forum. It was the heart of Antioch. A place where meetings could be arranged, where merchants could be heard haggling, political debates could be heard raging, and caravans of camels could be seen arriving with exotic goods from the East at all hours. The forum also happened to offer the most pockets to pick and the greatest number of escape routes. But the privilege didn’t come cheap. There were kickbacks to be paid. Tips to be rewarded. Accomplices to be cut in. As with any business, it took money to make money. And as in real estate, prime locations came at a premium.
Balthazar liked to hang out on the perimeter of the forum, near the money changers. He would spend hours watching the men line up in front of their tables, waiting for the right target. Patience was the all-important virtue of the pickpocket. Balthazar had seen too many of his colleagues undone by hastiness, too many boys his age walking around with stubs where their hands had been. You needed patience. You needed a plan.
Sometimes the money changers would give him a tip — in exchange for a hefty kickback, of course. But Balthazar hadn’t needed a tip today. He’d spotted the target himself: a tall Greek businessman who looked to be in his forties, with hair to the middle of his back and a chinstrap for a beard.
A good target was a combination of three things: distracted, alone, and carrying a lot of money. Today’s scored two out of three. He was carrying quite a bit of money, and he was certainly distracted — his eyes darting around, his sandals tapping impatiently as he yelled at the money changer to hurry up. He was a man who clearly needed to be somewhere, and that was always a plus. The problem was, he wasn’t alone. There was another Greek with him. Slightly younger, and slightly less distracted.
Pairs were bad. Mathematically, they doubled your chances of getting caught. But there were ways to make them work in your favor. Balthazar gave a signal to his two accomplices — a pair of younger boys waiting on the other side of the money changers. When he was sure they’d seen the target, he gave them another, using his right hand to mimic the carrying of a handle.
He’d decided on the Spill. It was his go-to move for pairs. Balthazar would follow closely behind the two Greeks as they made their way across the crowded forum, waiting for his accomplices to strike. If everything went as designed, the boys would emerge from nowhere, hurrying along with a jug of wine. They would clumsily run into the two Greeks, spilling its contents all over their robes. And as the men examined themselves — as they cursed and yelled and threatened to beat the boys for their clumsiness — Balthazar would make the lift: passing behind the target, slipping a small knife imperceptibly toward the Greek’s coin purse, cutting the small leather strap that held it to his belt, and snatching it away without breaking his stride in the slightest. The target would never know what hit him, other than a jug of wine. When it worked, it was a thing of beauty.
When it didn’t? You ran.
Balthazar went as fast as his spindly legs would carry him — which was, it seemed, only a fraction faster than the Greeks chasing him. It had been a bad lift from the start. The Spill had been clumsily delivered, spilling onto their feet instead of their robes. Worse, the Greek’s companion had clearly been a victim of pickpockets before. Once the initial shock of the spill had worn off, the younger Greek immediately checked his own coin purse and began looking around. Balthazar had made the lift despite the botched spill. Unfortunately, he’d gotten only a few feet away before he heard the dreaded, “Hey! You!”
So here he was, pushing his twelve-year-old legs well beyond their intended use, with two much bigger Greeks chasing him — their feet stained red with wine, yelling, “Stop that boy! He’s a thief!”
If they caught him, it would mean the loss of both hands, at a minimum. More likely, he’d be put to death, either by stoning or by beheading. Pickpocketing had become an epidemic all along the Colonnaded Street and in the forum, and the Romans were cracking down. There was no place for rampant crime in a Roman city. Just as there seemed to be no place for its native Syrians.
He ran east along one of the canals that carried fresh water into the center of the city — part of the network of channels, tunnels, and pipes that made up the aqueducts built by the Romans. This particular canal was dry at the moment, littered with dirt and sticks and garbage. And that was
There were dozens of small villages packed together on the outskirts of Antioch, so dense that they formed a sort of second wall around the already walled city. There were incredibly rich sections, marginally rich sections, middle-class sections, and poor sections. And then there were the Syrian slums. The slums toward which Balthazar now ran with death nipping at his heels.
“Syrian filth!” he heard one of the Greeks yell behind him. “I’ll tear your arms out of their sockets myself!”
Balthazar knew every inch of the four square blocks that made up the section called Platanon — a maze of tiny, tightly packed houses and narrow, unpaved streets where most of the city’s native Syrians lived. He knew every face on those streets, every name of every resident of every house. And he knew that he could rely on any one of them to keep him safely hidden from the Greeks. But first he had to get there — and that was going to take
