Sea 'the hospitable sea', or the daemons of retribution 'the kindly ones'. From the most patrician consular in Rome to the lowliest slave in a far-flung province like one of the Britannias, the frumentarii were known and hated for what they really were – the emperor's secret police: his spies, his assassins, his knife men – at least, they were known collectively. They were a special army unit, its members transferred out of other units, its camp on the Caelian Hill. Individually, the frumentarii were seldom known at all. It was said that, if you recognized a frumentarius, it was because he wanted you to, and then it was too late.
'I don't know,' said one of the others. 'It might be a good idea. Barbarians are naturally untrustworthy, and often as cunning as you can imagine.' His voice summoned up the sun-drenched mountains and plains of the far west; the provinces of Further Spain or even Lusitania, where the Atlantic broke against the shore.
'Bollocks,' said the third. 'OK, they are all untrustworthy bashtards. They have been lying since they could crawl. But the northern ones, like this bashtard, are thick, slow as you like. Your northerners are big, ferocious and stupid, while your easteners are small, sly and shit sheared of anything.' The intermittent slurring showed that his first language was not Latin but Punic, from North Africa; the tongue spoken almost half a millennium ago by Hannibal, the great enemy of Rome.
All the men on deck and the crew below fell silent as Marcus Clodius Ballista, Vir Egregius, Knight of Rome, and Dux Ripae, Commander of the Riverbanks, raised his arms to the heavens to begin the usual ritual at the start of a voyage. The water was calm here at the threshold of the sea, where the sheltered waters of Brundisium harbour met the Adriatic. With its outstretched oars at rest, the galley lay like a huge insect on the surface of the waters. In good Latin, which nevertheless had a twang of the forests and marshes of the far north, Ballista began to intone the traditional words:
'Jupiter, king of the gods, hold your hands over this ship and all who sail in her. Neptune, god of the sea, hold your hands over this ship and all who sail in her. Tyche, spirit of the ship, hold your hands over us.' He took a large, finely worked golden bowl from an attendant and, slowly, with due ceremony, poured three libations of wine into the sea, emptying it.
Someone sneezed. Ballista held his outstretched pose. The sneeze had been unmistakable, undeniable. No one moved or spoke. Everyone knew that the worst omen for a sea journey, the clearest possible indication of the displeasure of the gods, was if someone sneezed during the rituals which marked the departure. Still Ballista held his pose. The ceremony should be over. An air of expectation and tension spread through the ship. Then, with a powerful flick of the wrist, Ballista sent the bowl flying through the air. There was a collective sigh as it splashed into the water. It glittered for a moment below the surface, and then was gone for ever.
'Typical fucking barbarian,' said the frumentarius from the Subura. 'Always the big, stupid gesture. It cannot take away the omen, nothing can.'
'That bowl would have bought a nice bit of land back home,' said the North African.
'He probably stole the thing in the first place,' replied the Spaniard, reverting to their previous topic. 'Sure, northern barbarians might be stupid, but treason comes as naturally to them as to any easterner.'
Treason was the reason the frumentarii existed. The old saying of the emperor Domitian, that no one believed a plot against the emperor was real until he was assassinated, most certainly did not apply to them. Their thoughts were suffused with treason, plot and counter-plot; their ruthless combination of secrecy, efficiency and obsession guaranteed that they were hated.
The captain of the warship, having asked Ballista's permission, called for silence prior to getting underway, and the three frumentarii were left to their own thoughts. They each had much to think about. Which one of them had been set the task of reporting on the others? Or was there a fourth frumentarius among the men of the Dux Ripae, so deep undercover they had not spotted him?
Demetrius sat at the feet of Ballista, whom in his native Greek he called kyrios, 'master'. Yet again he thanked his own daemon for guiding his recent path. It would be hard to imagine a better kyrios. 'A slave should not wait for his master's hand,' ran the old saying. Ballista had not raised his hand in the four years since the kyrios's wife had purchased Demetrius as his new secretary, one among many wedding presents. Demetrius's previous owners had had no such compunction about using their fists, or doing far worse.
The kyrios had looked magnificent just now as he made his vows and threw the heavy golden bowl into the sea. It had been a gesture worthy of the Greek boy's hero, Alexander the Great himself. It had been an impulsive gesture of generosity, piety and contempt for material wealth. He had given his own wealth to the gods for the good of them all, to avert the omen of the sneeze.
Demetrius considered that there was much of Alexander about Ballista: the cleanshaven face; the golden hair pulled back, standing up like a lion's mane and falling in curls on either side of the wide brow; the broad shoulders and straight, clean limbs. Of course Ballista was taller; Alexander had been famously short. And then there were the eyes. Alexander's had been disconcertingly of different colours; Ballista's were a deep, dark blue.
Demetrius balled his fist, thumb between index and forefinger, to avert the evil eye, as the thought struck him that Ballista must be about thirty-two, the age at which Alexander had died.
He watched uncomprehendingly as the ship got underway. Officers bellowed orders, a piper blew shrill notes, sailors pulled on mystifying patterns of ropes and from below came the grunts of the rowers, the splash of the oars and the sound of the hull gathering pace through the water. Nothing in the great historians of the immortal Greek past – Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon – had prepared the bookish young slave for the deafening noise of a galley.
Demetrius looked up at his kyrios. Ballista's hands were un-moving, seemingly clenched around the ends of the ivory arms of the folding curule chair, a Roman symbol of his high office. His face was still; he stared straight ahead, as if part of a painting. Demetrius half wondered if the kyrios was a bad sailor. Did he get seasick? Had he ever sailed further than the short crossing from the toe of Italy to Sicily? After a moment's reflection, Demetrius dismissed such ideas of human frailty from his mind. He knew what oppressed his kyrios. It was none other than Aphrodite, the goddess of love, and her mischievous son Eros: Ballista was missing his wife.
The marriage of Ballista and the kyria, Julia, had not started as a love match. It was an arrangement, like all of those of the elite. A family of senators at the top of the social pyramid yet short of money and influence gave their daughter to a rising military officer. Admittedly, he was of barbarian origins. But he was a Roman citizen, a member of the equestrian order, the rank just below the senators themselves. He had distinguished himself in campaigns on the Danube, among the islands in the distant Ocean and in North Africa, where he had won the Mural Crown for being the first man on to the walls of an enemy town. More importantly, he had been educated at the imperial court and was a favourite of the then emperor, Gallus. If he was a barbarian, at least he was the son of a king, who had come to Rome as a diplomatic hostage.
With the marriage, Julia's family gained present influence at court and, with luck, future wealth. Ballista gained respectability. From such a conventional opening, Demetrius had watched love grow. So deeply had the arrows of Eros struck the kyrios that he did not have sex with any of the maidservants, even when his wife was confined bearing their son; a thing often remarked in the servants' quarters, especially given his barbarian origins, with all they implied about lust and lack of self-control.
Demetrius would try and provide the companionship his kyrios so greatly needed, he would be at his side throughout the mission – a mission the very thought of which turned his stomach. How far would they have to travel towards the rising sun, across stormy seas and wild lands? And what horrors would await them at the edge of the known world? The young slave thanked his Greek god Zeus he was under the protection of a soldier of Rome like Ballista.
What a pantomime, thought Ballista. An absolute bloody pantomime. So someone had sneezed. It was hardly surprising that, among the three hundred men on the ship, one would have a cold. If the gods had wanted to send an omen, there had to be a clearer way.
Ballista very much doubted that those Greek philosophers he had heard about could be right that all the different gods known to all the different races of man were really all the same just with different names. Jupiter, the Roman king of the gods, seemed very different to Woden, the king of the gods of his childhood and youth among his own people, the Angles. Of course, there were similarities. They both liked dressing up in disguise. They both enjoyed screwing mortal girls. They were both nasty if you crossed them. But there were big differences. Jupiter liked screwing mortal boys, and that sort of thing did not go down at all well with Woden. Jupiter seemed rather less malevolent than Woden. The Romans believed that, if approached in the right way,
