his beatific smile. But all the other councillors were up and shouting. Some were jeering, waving their fists, incensed.
Over the uproar Ballista shouted that, from now on, for ease of communication, his engagements would be posted up in the agora. No one seemed to be listening.
He turned and, with Maximus and Romulus covering his back, walked out into the sunshine.
X
Ballista thought it best to let the dust settle after his meeting with the boule. Syrians were notorious for acting and speaking on the spur of the moment and there was no point in risking an exchange of harsh, ill-considered words. For the next two days he remained in the military quarter, planning the defence of the city with his high officers.
Acilius Glabrio was smarting from losing 120 of his best legionaries to the new unit of artillerymen. And although they were not present, doubtless he was not pleased to think of Iarhai, Anamu and Ogelos, yet more barbarian upstarts in his view, being catapulted into command in the Roman army. He retreated into a patrician vagueness and studied unconcern. Yet the others worked hard. Turpio was keen to please, Mamurra his usual steady considered self and, as accensus, Demetrius seemed less distracted. Gradually, from their deliberations a plan began to form in Ballista's mind – which sections of wall would be guarded by which units, where they would be billeted, how their supplies would reach them, where the few – so very few – reserves would be stationed.
A lower level of military affairs also demanded his attention. A court-martial was convened to try the auxiliary from Cohors XX who had been accused of raping his landlord's daughter. His defence was not strong: 'Her father was home, we went outside, she was saying yes right up until her bare arse hit the mud.' His centurion, however, provided an excellent character statement. More pertinently, two of the soldier's contubernales swore that the girl had previously willingly had sex with the soldier.
The panel was divided. Acilius Glabrio, the very incarnation of Republican virtue, was for the death penalty. Mamurra voted for leniency. Ultimately, the decision was Ballista's. In the eyes of the law, the soldier was guilty. Quite probably his contubernales were lying for him. Ballista guiltily acquitted the soldier: he knew he could not afford to lose even one trained man, let alone alienate his colleagues.
Another legal case occupied him. Julius Antiochus, soldier of the vexillatio of Legio IIII Scythica, of the century of Alexander, and Aurelia Amimma, daughter of Abbouis, resident of Arete, were getting divorced. No love was lost; money was involved; the written documents were ambiguous; the witnesses diametrically opposed. There was no obvious way to determine the truth. Ballista found in favour of the soldier. Ballista knew his decision was expedient rather than just. The imperium had corrupted him; Justice had once more been banished to a prison island.
On the third morning after his meeting with the boule, Ballista considered that enough time had elapsed. The councillors should have settled down by now. Volatile as all Syrians were, it was possible they might even have come round to Ballista's way of thinking. Yes, he was destroying their homes, desecrating their tombs and temples, dismantling their liberties, but it was all in the cause of a higher freedom – the higher freedom of being subject to the Roman emperor and not the Persian king. Ballista smiled at the irony. Pliny the Younger had best expressed the Roman concept of libertas: You command us to be free, so we will be.
Ballista sent off messengers to Iarhai, Ogelos and Anamu inviting them to dine that evening with him and his three high officers. Bathshiba, of course, was invited too. Remembering the Roman superstition against an even number at table, Ballista sent off another messenger to invite Callinicus the Sophist as well. The northerner asked Calgacus to tell the cook to produce something special, preferably featuring smoked eels. The aged Hibernian looked as if he had never in his very long life heard such an outrageous request and it prompted a fresh stream of muttering: 'Oh, aye, what a great Roman you are… what next… fucking peacock brains and dormice rolled in honey.'
Calling Maximus and Demetrius to accompany him, Ballista announced that they were going to the agora. Ostensibly they were going to check that the edicts on food prices were being obeyed but, in reality, the northerner just wanted to get out of the palace, to get away from the scene of his dubious legal decision-making. His judgements were preying on his mind. There was much he admired about the Romans – their siege engines and fortifications, their discipline and logistics, their hypocausts and baths, their racehorses and women – but he found their libertas illusory. He had had to ask imperial permission to live where he did, to marry the woman he had married. In fact his whole life since crossing into the empire seemed to him marked by subservience and sordid compromise rather than distinguished by freedom.
His sour, cynical mood began to lift as they walked into the north-east corner of the agora. He had always liked marketplaces: the noises, the smells – the badly concealed avarice. Crowds of men circulated slowly. Half humanity seemed to be represented. Most wore typically eastern dress, but there were also Indians in turbans, Scythians in high, pointed hats, Armenians in folded-down hats, Greeks in short tunics, the long, loose robes of the tent-dwellers and, here and there, the occasional Roman toga or the skins and furs of a tribesman from the Caucasus.
There seemed a surfeit of the necessities of life – plenty of grain, mainly wheat, some barley; lots of wine and olive oil for sale in skins or amphorae, and any number of glossy black olives. At least in his presence, Ballista's edicts on prices appeared to be being observed. There was no sign they had driven goods off the market. As the northerner and his two companions moved along the northern side of the agora the striped awnings became brighter, smarter, and the foods shaded by them moved from Mediterranean essentials to life's little luxuries – fruit and vegetables, pine kernels and fish sauce and, most prized of all, the spices: pepper and saffron.
Before they reached the porticos of the western side of the agora the luxuries had ceased to be edible. Here were sweet-smelling stalls with sandal- and cedarwood. Too expensive for building materials or firewood, these could be considered exempt from Ballista's edict on the requisitioning of wood. Here men sold ivory, monkeys, parrots. Maximus paused to examine some fancy leather-work. Ballista thought he saw a camelskin being quietly hidden at the rear of the shop. He was going to ask Demetrius to make a note but the boy was staring intently over at the far end of the agora, once more distracted. Many of the things that men and women most desired were here: perfumes, gold, silver, opals, chalcedonies and, above all, shimmering and unbelievably soft, the silk from the Seres at the far edge of the world.
In the southern porticos, to Ballista's distaste, was the slave market. There, all manner of 'tools with voices' were on display. There were slaves to farm your land, keep your accounts, dress your wife's hair, sing you songs, pour your drinks and suck your dick. But Ballista studied the merchandise closely; there was one type of slave he always looked to purchase. Having inspected all that was on offer, the northerner returned to the middle of the slave pens and called out a short simple question in his native tongue.
'Are there any Angles here?'
There was not a face that did not turn to gaze at the huge barbarian warlord shouting unintelligibly in his outlandish tongue but, to Ballista's immense relief, no one answered.
They moved past the livestock market to the eastern portico, the cheap end of the agora where the rag- pickers, low-denomination money lenders, magicians, wonder workers and others who traded on human misery and weakness touted for trade. Both Ballista's companions were looking intently back over their shoulders at the alley where the prostitutes stood. It was to be expected of Maximus, but Demetrius was a surprise – Ballista had always thought the young Greek's interests lay elsewhere.
Allfather, but he could do with a woman himself. In one sense it would be so good, so easy. But in another sense it would be neither. There was Julia, his vows to her, the way he had been brought up.
Ballista thought bitterly of the way some Romans, like Tacitus in his Germania, held the marital fidelity of the Germans up as a mirror to condemn the contemporary Roman lack of morality. But traditional rustic fidelity was all very well when you lived in a village; it was not designed for those hundreds of miles, weeks of travel, away from their woman. Yet Ballista knew that his aversion to infidelity stemmed from more than just his love for Julia, more than the way he had been brought up. Just as some men carried a lucky amulet into battle, so he carried his fidelity to Julia. Somehow he had developed a superstitious dread that, if he had another woman, his luck would
