vegetables – just some cabbage and garlic – but more flat bread, and more, much more, goatskin-flavoured wine.
Ballista rallied a little. Pythonissa had asked him about the battle at Soli where he had defeated the Sassanid king. Ballista explained the overall strategy and the specific tactics in some detail. She gave every sign of being interested. Although warmed by the wine, he knew he was being humoured and led. But, far from minding, he felt grateful.
A burst of laughter from the Suani followed Maximus telling the inevitable joke about the young tribune at a remote fort and the camel. Things were going well. They were enjoying themselves. Even Ballista was beginning to relax. Then she asked him, with what might have been an arch look, about his capture of the Sassanid royal harem – was it very opulent, very decadent? She put a certain emphasis on the last. His words dried up.
Ballista preferred not to think about the things he had done in the purple shadows of that silken pavilion. Tipping wine on the altar to extinguish the sacred flame. The two servants – eunuchs – killed on a whim. His treatment of Shapur’s favourite concubine Roxanne. Afterwards, slumped half naked on the throne of the house of Sasan, drinking, the girl crying. Even Maximus, when he came in, looking aghast. Of course, Ballista had thought his wife and boys dead; he had not been in his right mind. But the memory was painful – his complete loss of self- control, his descent to what any Greek or Roman would see as his true bestial barbarian nature.
Seeing something was wrong, Pythonissa took up the conversational running. She talked to him confidingly about the ghastliness of her ex-father-in-law Hamazasp; his ignorance, alarming table manners, and extraordinary taste in women and not just boys but men. The latter was a subject Ballista did not want to dwell on, but he appreciated her flow of talk.
After some pears poached in wine – with an unusual aftertaste of goat – the serious food was over. Just some walnuts, cheese, honey, dried apples, roasted broad beans and yet more bread were put out to soak up the serious drinking.
The talk flowed around and over Ballista. He knew what was troubling him. It was her proximity. The way she spoke and smiled and moved; everything made him intensely aware of her physical proximity.
Eventually, Ballista was relieved to call an end to things. He stood, slightly unsteadily, wished them goodnight. The guests left. Ballista went to the top floor, which he had taken as his quarters. Wulfstan helped him out of his best tunic, put out a bowl of water, and left. Ballista was washing when Calgacus stuck his head around the door.
‘The woman has sent you a gift.’
The two eunuchs entered. Between them they carried a strangely heavy-looking roll of silk carpet. Carefully, they placed it on the floor. One stood forward, bowed. ‘Our kyria said we were to open the gift only when you were on your own, Kyrios.’
Ballista gave Calgacus a look which said that, even naked with an injured shoulder, he had nothing to fear from a couple of court eunuchs. The Caledonian made a strange face – possibly a smile – and withdrew.
The eunuchs gently unrolled the soft, embroidered material. A tangle of white limbs, a mass of blond hair. They helped her to her feet. She was naked. She was biting her thumb to stop herself laughing out loud. The eunuchs bowed to her, to him, and backed from the room.
She took her arms away so he could see her. She was smiling. A necklace, a bangle or two, nothing else. ‘Just like Cleopatra to Caesar,’ she said.
He walked across. She put her arms around his neck, careful to avoid his injured shoulder. He put his around her waist. She tipped up her face. He leant down. They kissed, her tongue in his mouth. He slid his hands down to the small of her back, pulled her to him. Her breasts pressed against his chest. She was tall. He smelt her perfume, her body. She leant back, looking up at him. Her blue-grey eyes were shining. He felt the familiar surge of powerful lust. It was going to be all right, more than all right.
Ballista woke in the early hours of the morning. A feeling of dread was on him. He was sweating, heart racing. The girl was asleep beside him. Moonlight slanted in from the narrow arrow slits. Ballista forced himself to sit up, look across the room at what he knew he would see. There by the door, as he knew it would be, was the tall, hooded figure. The huge, pale face, the grey eyes full of hatred.
‘Speak,’ Ballista said.
‘I will see you again at Aquileia.’ Maximinus Thrax spoke, although he had been dead these more than twenty years.
Holding his courage tight, as he had every time before, Ballista replied. ‘I will see you then.’
Pythonissa stirred, put her arm across him. Ballista looked down at her. She opened her eyes. He looked back towards the door. The daemon was gone, just the odour of the waxed canvas of its cloak lingering.
‘What is wrong?’ She suddenly was very awake. She quickly scanned the room for threats. Seeing nothing, she relaxed. ‘You look as if you had seen Hecate herself.’
Ballista tried to smile, to speak – he could do neither. He lay back.
‘Tell me,’ she said.
He told her – the centurion who had taken him from the hall of his father to be an imperial hostage, the siege of Aquileia, the conspiracy, the wild fight, stabbing the iron stylus deep into the throat of the emperor, the decapitation of Maximinus, the desecration of his body, the daemon that walked by night, the threat of Aquileia – told her all of it.
Pythonissa listened until he was finished. She kissed his chest.
‘You think it is more than a dream?’ he asked.
‘It could be a dream, but of course the dead walk.’ She kissed his chest again. ‘Avoid the Italian city of Aquileia and nothing more will happen.’
Now he could half smile. ‘Unless it is another place of that name, or Aquileia is something else – a state of mind.’
Her blue-grey eyes regarded him. ‘Does the daemon ever return the same night?’
‘No.’
She kissed his lips, then his chest. He felt her hair slide down his body, her tongue licking. She started doing what will take almost any man’s mind off his troubles. At least while it lasts.
Her eunuchs returned an hour before dawn. She told them to wait, turned to him.
‘I am not a young man any more.’
She took no notice.
After she had gone, he had to endure the sly smiles of Wulfstan, Calgacus and the others as he washed, dressed, had breakfast. Maximus kept tiresomely remarking how tired he looked. Ballista wondered what it would be like to live in a culture where you had privacy. In Germania, in the imperium – everywhere he had been it was the same. The poor lived many to a room. The houses of the rich were packed with servants. As some satirist had written, ‘When Andromache mounted Hector their slaves stood with their ears glued to the door, masturbating.’ It would be good to live somewhere where you could have sex with reasonable certainty that no one was listening. Despite such thoughts, Ballista found himself smiling a smile he would have found smug and annoying on someone else. It was interesting that Hector had liked his wife to get on top.
Someone came to say the kyria was leaving. They crossed the river by the stepping stones, arriving only moderately damp at the other side. Pythonissa walked her horse forward from her entourage. Ballista bowed, blew a kiss; wished her a safe journey. Very formal, she returned the proskynesis; asked the gods to hold their hands over him. He had a sudden vision of her naked, on her hands and knees, of him taking her from behind. He had to have her again. She smiled, full of mischief, as if she could tell what he was thinking. She leant down from the saddle, passed him something.
It was an ice-white gem hung on a golden chain. ‘From the peak where Prometheus was chained,’ she said. ‘A cure for nightmares.’ He thanked her, slipped it around his neck. She turned her horse and rode away to the south.
They got back to work. There was a change in the Suani. While they would never labour like helots promised their freedom, they were better than they had been. It might have been connected to the visit of Pythonissa, or possibly to Ballista saving Tarchon. Whatever the reason, they were a little more assiduous.
Within a few days, progress was apparent. Once the scaffolding was rebuilt, the gate on the track began to take shape. The new piers in the Alontas were put in place, and the first tentative spans of timber began to connect them. The final finishes were made to the tower of Cumania.
