He is advised by a council of three hundred they call the synedrion. There may be a problem at court. King Polemo’s daughter was married to the prince of Iberia you killed. As a widow, she has returned to her father’s domain – she is called Pythonissa.’ The eunuch gestured in a way that had regard for Ballista’s martial prowess in killing members of foreign dynasties while at the same time accepting the difficulties such behaviour brought.
‘The king and his nobles are said to command two hundred thousand warriors. The Suani control the heights of the Caucasus. They are the foremost people of the mountains for courage – and for treachery. There is nothing they do not know of poison. One of them, they dip their arrows in and even the smell makes men suffer.’
‘You are very well informed.’
Mastabates dipped his head. ‘I have read the Greek geographer Strabo with attention.’
‘I thought you were from those parts.’
‘Nearby. I am from Abasgia.’
Ballista laughed. ‘Let me guess, the imperial court has sent you with me to Suania, and one of the Suani with Felix to Abasgia.’
A shadow passed across Mastabates’ handsome face. ‘No, Kyrios, all four of us eunuchs are from Abasgia.’
No one else spoke. Mastabates continued. ‘Some time ago, the rulers of the Abasgi found a new source of income. They began to search among their subjects for the most beautiful young boys. They have them castrated, and sell them to you Romans.’
‘And how…’ Ballista’s question petered out.
‘We were young, very young. It was a long time ago.’
Ballista noticed Rutilus cross his legs.
Mastabates rallied, keeping his voice very neutral. ‘We know we are viewed as ill omened. If a man sees one of us first thing in the morning, he should return indoors, for that day will not go well for him. Composite, hybrid, monstrous, alien to human nature – many hold that eunuchs should be excluded from temples and public places.’
There was an embarrassed silence.
‘The very contempt in which we are held by the many is our source of strength. We look to each other. Rulers give us their confidence. They look to us for unalloyed loyalty. Unable to have wives and children, who should a eunuch lavish his affection on, if not the ruler, the one who protects him from common brutality?’
‘Yet is it not a life of regrets, without certain pleasures?’ Ballista spoke gently.
Mastabates smiled. ‘It is my pleasure to serve as Aphrodite served Ares.’
Rutilus moved slightly away.
‘But it would be wrong to think of us all as weaklings. A gelded horse is still fit for war; a castrated bull does not lose its might. Even if it is true that some of us may be a little less endowed with bodily strength, on the field of battle, steel makes the weak equal with the strong.’
XVII
At dawn on the fifth day, Boreas finally gave over. High above, ragged dark clouds still scudded south, vanishing inland over the mountains. Yet down in the port of Heraclea all was calm. Ballista watched a pale, washed-out sun glitter in the puddles on the dockside.
The crew of the Armata were sullenly preparing her for sea. Great sluices of water fell unexpectedly from the storm canvas as it was removed. Fat drops fell from the rigging on to the oarsmen as they settled themselves on their benches. If only, some muttered, she were a fully decked trireme. ‘Bugger that,’ others replied. ‘Easier to get trapped when she goes down.’ ‘Silence, fore and aft,’ roared her officers.
Felix made the libation to Apollo, protector of travellers. Bruteddius ran his eye over all. The bow officer, rowing master and helmsman were at their stations: prow, midships and stern. They indicated they were ready. Bruteddius gave the order. The cables slipped, the Armata was heaved off from the wharf. Oars outboard. Ready? Light pressure. Row! Slowly, the vessel gathered her way, turned, and pointed her bronze ram out to the Kindly Sea.
The storm had left the surface of the sea muddy, with a quantity of flotsam. There was a swell. It demanded a shorter than usual stroke from the rowers. They were slow to make the adjustment, poor at keeping time. A run of four days ashore had done them no good. Bruteddius had considered attempting the passage to Sinope in one sailing. He had talked to local skippers. It would be a long day, very long and very hard; from well before dawn to after dark, if not to the next dawn. Yet he was told it was not impossible. He had settled on Amastris instead, just sixty or so miles. There was but one good harbour in the long stretch between Amastris and Sinope, and his men were not in good condition. What could you expect? Volunteers they might be, soldiers notionally, but in origin they were nothing but a bunch of soft freedmen and easterners; Greeks and Egyptians. A few days’ drinking and whoring in a backwater town, and they were all out of sorts and as weak as women.
The voyage to Amastris passed without incident. No wind got up, so the men had to row all the way. No bad thing to knock them together again. They laboured hard past the tomb of Sthenelos. They took no more notice of the mouth of the river Kallichoros, where the god Dionysus danced, or that of the Parthenios, where the goddess Artemis bathed. They were unaware when they hauled the ship from the territory of the Bithynian Thracians to that of the Paphlagonians. And all the while the enormity of the sluggish sea stretched on their left.
Not long after the time for the midday meal, the Armata pulled into the neat, sheltered oval of the galley harbour at Amastris; pulled in most gladly. No one appeared happier to disembark than Felix. Ballista followed him down the boarding ladder. The elderly senator’s joy was palpable. True, Felix had not been doing physical work. Far from it: a comfortable chair had been provided for him to view the tomb of the hero as they went by. After that, he had retired to the tiny cabin in the stern, declining all invitations to see rivers associated with divinities – unless there were an epiphany, that day, they were just rivers to him. Nevertheless, he was evidently glad to be back on terra firma. Ballista imagined that the consular was looking forward to some food and a drink, then a relaxing afternoon. These, followed by a massage at the baths and a good dinner, should suffice to restore his spirits. Ballista had some sympathy with the general idea.
Felix stopped so abruptly that Ballista almost barrelled into his back. A man had run out from between two warehouses. He was thin, in thin clothes; both hard worn. He ran straight at the senator. Two men, better set up, ran out after him. Belatedly, it occurred to Ballista that social precedence had left Felix’s four bodyguards at the top of the boarding ladder. Ballista moved to intercept the thin man. He was too late. The man slid to his knees, and grabbed Felix around the thighs. The senator tried to step back; the man’s arms pinioned him. If Rutilus had not caught Felix from behind, he would have fallen.
‘Asylum, Kyrios, grant me asylum,’ the man pleaded.
‘Do not listen to him.’ His pursuers, overawed by the maiestas of Rome, embodied in the elderly ex-consul, had pulled up short.
‘In the name of Caesar, grant me a hearing, Kyrios.’ The man clung to Felix like a shipwrecked sailor to driftwood.
‘He is a slave, a runaway,’ one of the others said.
‘No, I am a free man, a Roman citizen, wrongly enslaved. Grant me a hearing, Basileus.’
Felix, his vanity flattered by being called a king, placed a hand, almost in benediction, on the cowering man. ‘I shall hear the case at the start of the second hour tomorrow. The plaintiff will remain in custody until then.’
One of the bodyguards, a legionary detailed from Legio II Parthica , had fought his way off the ship and now took the man away.
The second hour of the next day, the seventh day before the ides of May, found Ballista seated next to Felix, as one of his five assessors, in a pleasant portico overlooking the agora.
The thin man was asked the prescribed questions: Name? Race? Free or slave?
‘Melissus, son of Charillus, Kyrios; from Erythrinoi, a village in the territory of Amastris. I am a free man, unjustly taken into slavery.’
He was given a chance to tell his story.
‘I am a fisherman. I was out in my boat, the Thalia, when the Borani came. They captured me. The
