northerner saw recognition on the nondescript face under the hood. Without hesitation, the man turned and ran. In seconds he had reached the top of the stairs and, sheathing his sword, was gone.
Moments later, Maximus reached Ballista.
'Are you all right?'
'Never better. Like a slave at Saturnalia.'
'Sure, but you are a cruel man to be reminding me of my servile status.' Maximus grinned. 'Julia and the boy are safe enough for the moment with Calgacus down below. Want me to go up and look for him?'
'No, he will be long gone, and it's dangerous up there. I do not want you getting hurt by any rough men. Let's all get out of here.'
Maximus turned to go. Ballista paused.
'What is it?'
'Probably nothing,' said Ballista. 'It is just that the others wanted to rob and rape, and that one… I think that he was only interested in killing me.'
IV
Solid-looking shafts of light came through the windows of the great apse and shone on to the floor of the audience chamber. Ballista stared at them, his face carefully composed into a look of thoughtful attention. The glass of the windows gave the light a strange, underwater look. Thousands of motes of dust and the odd oily flick of incense smoke moved in it. Ballista thought about the paradox of Heraclitus: no man can step into the same river twice. The imperial council was ever changing, always the same. For some time, the praetorian prefect Successianus had been telling the members of the consilium a story they all knew, except for the ending.
The outrages of three days earlier had been confined to the island in the Orontes. As soon as the disgraceful scenes in the hippodrome had begun, troops had sealed off the five bridges that led to the city and the one that led to the suburbs. In fact, the unrest had been contained in only a small part of the island – as ever, the imperial palace had been well garrisoned, and a sweep by Batavian auxiliaries supported by Dalmatian cavalry had dispersed any looters, at the cost of only one burnt bath house and four burnt dwellings. In the hippodrome itself, the praetorians had promptly escorted the emperor and imperial party to safety. After his sacred majesty had left, there were scenes of the most appalling depravity – four equestrians had been killed, several beaten and robbed, and six women of the equestrian order raped. Much worse than all this, wooden pictures of the imperial family had been stoned, the mob jeering when they splintered, and a bronze statue of the ever-victorious imperator Valerian had been toppled from its pedestal, beaten with shoes, broken apart, before street children had dragged the pieces through the dirt. Although the people of Antioch had always been notorious for their unruliness and lack of respect for their betters, it was clear that the outbreak was the work of a handful of brigands – foreigners, for the most part. Selected squads of soldiers had been sent in to arrest the ringleaders. The unpleasantness had lasted just a few hours, having ended soon after dark. It was estimated that some two to three hundred rioters had been killed. All the surviving ringleaders were in custody – forty-five men, seven women and four children. They awaited the emperor's infallible justice.
Words are slippery things, thought Ballista, and these were weasel words. No one who had been there and had a less than blinkered view could believe that the riot had been instigated and carried on by only a few foreign brigands. How, in that seething mass of humanity, had the troops identified these supposed ringleaders? Above all, how in the name of the Allfather, could children have been involved its organization? These were the weasel words that one heard in the consilium. Free speech, freedom itself, the much-vaunted libertas of the Romans, the eleutheria of Greek philosophy – how could they exist when one man was all powerful? How could they exist when one man was, depending on your viewpoint, either the vice-regent of the gods on earth or a living, walking god himself?
In the silence that followed the praetorian prefect resuming his seat, all eyes turned to the emperor. Seated high above his councillors, Publius Licinius Valerianus remained immobile. He stared over the heads of all, into the distance. Eventually the heavy head nodded, the golden wreath rustling in the unnatural quiet. The emperor spoke.
'We are renowned for our clemency. But clementia must not be confused with weakness. It is a stern virtue. Severitas is its other face. We Romans did not win our empire by weakness. We have not held our empire for over a thousand years by weakness. In the beginning, the gods themselves charged us to spare the humbled but also to crush the proud.'
The emperor paused to let his words sink in. The heads of the councillors nodded approvingly at the echo – the so very apt echo, they might have said – of the Roman imperial epic, the Aeneid of Virgil.
'The unbearable superbia, arrogance, of Shapur the Sassanid threatens war. This is not a moment to show weakness. The wickedness of these malcontents, if not inspired by Shapur himself, would at the very least bring him joy, confirm him in his arrogance, were it not punished. An example must be made.'
Again Valerian paused. Again his councillors nodded. Belatedly Ballista thought it best to join in.
'We Romans are the children of the wolf. We are a hard race. When our soldiers betray cowardice we decimate them; one man in ten is beaten to death by his comrades. Justice demands that we must not be harder on our own men than our enemies. The prisoners of high status will be beheaded in the hippodrome, the scene of their depravity, and their heads exhibited on pikes across the river in the suburbs. Of the rest, some will be crucified outside the various gates of the city, some burnt alive in the agora, and some reserved for the wild beasts in the amphitheatre. The praetorian prefect will see to the arrangements. This is our judgement, against which there can be no appeal.'
Bastard, thought Ballista. You callous old bastard. You want to play the stern old Roman, the man merely following the ways of your ancestors, following the mos maiorum, yet surely somewhere in over a thousand years of Roman history there must be an example to follow which would allow you to spare at least the women and children.
The praetorian prefect got back to his feet, saluted and intoned the standard army response: 'We will do what is ordered, and at every command we will be ready.'
Successianus remained on his feet. He had a broad, flat face like a shovel. It was the face of the simple peasant turned soldier he had been a long time ago. No one on the consilium would consider that Successianus' face was a clear window on to his soul. The praetorian prefect cleared his throat and spoke again.
'There is something else that we must discuss. Yesterday, a messenger arrived from Aelius Spartianus, the tribune commanding Roman forces in Circesium. On the tenth of October, six days before the ides of the month, Sassanid cavalry appeared before the city.'
Ballista felt the air thickening around him. Whether they were looking directly at him or not, for every one of the other fifteen men in the imperial council, he was suddenly the centre of attention. To his discomfort, the northerner realized that this included the emperor himself. Make that sixteen men.
Ballista looked straight ahead across the chamber. The Count of the Sacred Largess, Macrianus, was impassive, but half-smiles seemed to play on the faces of his sons Macrianus the Younger and Quietus and, behind his carefully shaped beard, the young patrician Acilius Glabrio was openly exulting. It was all too easy for Ballista to imagine what thoughts were lighting up those smiles – Circesium is three days' march up the Euphrates from Arete. The Sassanids are before the walls of Circesium; they can set Mesopotamia ablaze, because a barbarian upstart like you could not even hold the well-fortified city of Arete. With this news your luck has run out. Today the imperial favour that you have inexplicably enjoyed will end.
There was nothing else for it: Ballista sat upright and set his face into immobility. He sensed a slight movement to his left. A hand touched his arm. The tough, close-cropped head of the young Danubian general Aurelian did not turn, but he patted Ballista's arm again, reassuringly. Ballista felt better to know that he was not without allies, was not totally alone in the consilium. And, across the room, did the long face of Cledonius momentarily betray a wink?
'Spartianus' report states that the Sassanids were not led by Shapur in person and did not appear to have siege equipment with them. He believes that it is not the main Persian field army but that, even so, it is a dangerous force of about ten thousand men.'
