with Maximus, angry that Ballista should trust that ignorant Hibernian and not his accensus.
The messenger left. Ballista and Maximus came back, and they all mounted. Ballista played with the ears of his pale horse. ‘Time to go.’
They rode west, the ordered columns of the Sacred stoa on their right, the agora to the left. The half-witted Hibernian was singing a song about a woman with five accommodating daughters. They passed the steps up to the great blue and red temple to Athena and Augustus. The street fell away before them.
The full decline of Priene was evident. Shops on one side, houses the other; most ruined, roofs fallen. It was not recent. Tall pines thrust up through some of the broken buildings. There were very few people about.
Hippothous had no idea why Ballista had taken this dangerous course. There was little in his physiognomy that suggested the hero. His eyes were very dark blue, almost bluish-black. Often, they caught the light, shone like the rays of the sun. It was a combination that suggested caution about everything, if not cowardice and fear, as well as an unseemly companionship with the poor. Still, one single sign will not suffice.
Yet, no matter how illconsidered their expedition was, the sun was shining, swallows cut through the air, the pines gave shade. Life could be worse.
A black man suddenly walked out from one of the sheer, stepped alleys to the right. In the lead, Ballista’s horse shied. It backed, rear hooves stamping dangerously close to the broken slabs covering the drain on the left of the street. Hippothous could not suppress a shudder. A bad omen. Black was the colour of the underworld; of ghosts and daemons, of triple-faced Hecate and the terrible Eumenides. Before the battle of Pharsalus, Brutus’s men had come across an Aethiopian. They had run him through with their swords. They had lost the battle.
Ballista got his grey under control, spoke soothingly to it. The Ethiopian bowed, blew a kiss to the mounted men. Ballista nodded and moved on. The others followed. The Ethiopian watched them go.
They rode on slowly, in silence. Even Maximus was quiet. Hippothous thought that some of the warmth had gone out of the afternoon.
They were nearing the West Gate when Ballista reined in and spoke to an old man squatting by the side of the street. Was the Alexandreum nearby? The ancient unfolded himself and shuffled to an alley off to the left. He gestured: come, come.
Ballista and Hippothous swung down. Maximus said he would stay with the animals.
The entrance to the alley was narrow, largely overgrown. The old man was waiting some paces down on the left. He pointed to an open door.
Ballista’s hand went to the wallet on his belt. With an air of the greatest dignity, the old man demurred and returned the way they had come.
Hippothous followed Ballista into a courtyard. It was dusty and empty, with the sad air of neglected festivals. On the doorpost was an inscription: You shall enter this sanctuary clean and dressed in white . Hippothous noted that Ballista was wearing black.
A priest appeared from a doorway in the south wall. He walked unhurriedly. Disconcertingly, he gave the sense of having expected them. He welcomed them formally, talked briefly with Ballista and graciously accepted some money.
After the priest had left, they stood waiting. The courtyard was still, hushed. Ballista was not in the mood to talk.
In due time, the priest reappeared with a small boy carrying the offerings. They ushered the men towards a door in the north wall, into the sanctuary itself. The room was dark; three columns down the middle. In the north- east corner was a low platform. They mounted the steps. On the platform stood a marble table. On it were statues: Alexander reaching for his sword, Cybele, other divinities. The table stood over a crevice in the rock.
Ballista took the small cakes and placed them on the table. He took the unmixed wine he had requested and tipped it down into the crevice.
Alexander lives and reigns.
With no further ado, Ballista turned and left. Hippothous followed him.
Outside, a fresh wind had got up. The alley afforded a magnificent view out over the city walls, across the Maeander plain and the Aegean, to a range of hills. Misty and blue in the distance, the last of those had to be the peninsular of Miletus. Alexander, it was said, had gone from this very house to conquer Miletus. Hippothous did not know what Ballista was thinking, but he wondered if the bad omen had been averted.
VIII
Ballista looked at the moon. It was big, one night before full. Over the starboard bow was the small, three- humped island of Lade, dark and quiet. To the other side, no distance across the water, the lights of Miletus twinkled all over the slopes of the peninsula. The water ran down the sides of the boat, spun out behind, the wake bright on the dark sea.
It was late. Ballista was tired. They had ridden out of Priene, past the landlocked port of Naulochos, to a village called Skolopoeis. There they had sent one of the slaves back to Priene with the animals. Having hired the fishing boat, they had waited for the coming of the evening offshore breeze. Ballista stretched and yawned. It seemed an age since they had set out before dawn that morning to travel to Priene.
Seated in the bows, Hippothous was telling Maximus about Miletus. Like a good Hellene – like Demetrius, the previous accensus – Hippothous seldom missed an opportunity to parade his knowledge of distant Hellenic history. ‘The land here was ruled by a local, a Carian chief called Anax or something barbarous like that. Then warriors from Crete came. They were led by Miletos, the son of Apollo and Areia; although some say his mother was Deione or Acacallis.’
‘Strange,’ said Maximus. ‘It is usually the father a fellow is not so sure about.’
Hippothous ignored the interruption. ‘Of course, some say the founder was Sarpedon, but that is obvious nonsense.’
‘Obvious to the most benighted fool.’
‘Anyway, the Cretan newcomers settled down with the local Carians and things were fine between them. But things were very different when the Ionians came under Neileus, son of King Kodros of Athens. They killed all the men and took their women. And that is why, to this day, the wives of the Milesians will neither sit at table with their husbands nor call them by name.’
Maximus nodded admiringly. ‘Sure, these Milesians are on the right track, but imagine if they could get the women not to talk to them at all.’
It was strange how often Hippothous and Maximus talked. Of course, over their months together in the familia, they had shared salt, but much about them suggested that they disliked or even despised one another. Yet there was something that made each seek the other out. Now Hippothous was telling Maximus how the Milesian philosopher Thales thanked the gods for three things: that he was human, not an animal; a man, not a woman; a Hellene, not a barbarian. The teasing did not run all one way.
Ballista hoped the slave had got Pale Horse back to Priene safely. Allfather, he hoped he was right about the safety of Priene. He knew Calgacus would die before he let any harm come to Julia and the boys. Nothing melodramatic about it, he just knew it. If the Goths went there, the acropolis looked impregnable, and Tatianus struck him as capable. But Flavius Damianus was a very different case. The man had done well after the earthquake, but Ballista still mistrusted him from the previous time in Ephesus. Still, Julia and the boys staying there and him going to Miletus was the right thing.
The old fisherman was in the stern with the steering oar. The remaining slave was asleep in the bottom of the boat. Ballista unhitched himself from the mast and asked Hippothous what he knew of the defences of Miletus.
‘“Once, long ago, they were brave, the men of Miletus.”’ Hippothous recited the iambic verse. ‘The words of Phoebus Apollo have become a proverb. For twelve years, the army of the kings of Lydia invaded the land of Miletus. It did them no good; the city held. Since then things have not gone so well. The Ionians lost the naval battle off Lade and the Persians took the city. Alexander’s fleet anchored at Lade and the city fell. A later Macedonian king, the Antigonid Philip V, took Lade, and Miletus went over to him.’
‘So,’ Ballista said, ‘if the attacker has control of the sea, the city falls.’
