Harry Sidebottom - The Caspian Gates

The man turned, dragging the body round to act as a shield. ‘This will not look like an accident.’ He spoke to buy time, to distract. Slipping his injured arm from the sling, despite the pain, he took the weight of the dead man with it. Out of sight, his right hand drew the dagger from his belt.

‘Indeed not, brother. It is no accident. You were waylaid by a band of Alani. A tragedy.’

Fifteen or so paces on either side of the speaker, two more hunters materialized up the hill out of the darkening wood, hoods up, menacing, like creatures from Hades. The three bowmen were well spaced. Grudgingly, the man recognized good tactics.

‘Who can say what happened?’ his brother continued. ‘Everyone knows those nomadic barbarians are irrational, bloodthirsty – eaters of flesh. Robbery, ransom – who knows what they were after? Perhaps you resisted: you always were the brave warrior, our father’s favourite. Whatever happened, they killed you. Shot you down like a deer.’ He smiled, gloating. ‘Have you noticed that the arrow in your arm was made by the Alani?’

The man did not answer the rhetorical question. While his body was perfectly still, his eyes flicked this way and that, measuring, estimating. He did not intend to die here, not at the hands of his brother.

‘We have more than enough Alanic arrows. Do you not admire my foresight? You were always the brave one. I was always the one with foresight. Do you remember how our old tutor always admired my disquisitions on the quality of pronoia? Odd how the old Greek’s philosophical idea seems so much more real here than it ever did in the classroom.’

The first snowflakes were falling, twisting and turning in the gusting wind.

The man grimaced through the pain in his arm. ‘And did the philosopher’s lessons in ethics not do you any good? Who should you love if not your brother?’

‘Oh, but I do, brother, I do. Both love and admire.’ The voice was unctuous. ‘Because I admire you, I think it certain you will follow the heroes to the Islands of the Blessed. And because I love you, I will send you there forthwith.’

‘My death will do you no good.’ The man’s thoughts were racing. The dialogue had to continue, had to win him time. ‘Our father will not name you his heir. If I am dead, he will turn to one of our brothers. Failing that, old Hamazasp of Iberia or whoever our sister marries. The council of three hundred would be happier with any of them than with you. The members of the synedrion will never willingly accept you.’

The darkness was gathering. Straight ahead, thought the man. Throw the dagger; kill or wound my brother. Run straight ahead. The bowmen on either side should be reluctant to shoot and risk hitting my brother or each other. Prometheus, Hecate, hold your hands over me.

‘Enough talk.’ A new voice: female. Out of the gathering storm walked their sister. Her face was very pale, her lips a deep red in the half-light. She too held a drawn bow.

The man knew then that it was all over.

‘Enough philosophizing.’ She addressed herself to the younger brother. ‘You are not now the least of four boys sat at a teacher’s feet. Stop your ears to clever words and remorse. Show yourself a man.’

It was all over with him, but the man was not going to go quietly, not like a sacrificial animal. In one move, he let go of the corpse, threw the dagger and launched forward. The dagger spun through the falling snow. The younger brother twisted his head. The dagger caught him in the face; opened up his cheek. He dropped his weapon, reeled away, howling.

The man had made three steps when the first arrow hit in the thigh. He managed another two steps before his leg gave way. The late-autumn grass rising up, bruising his face. The thump and searing pain as another arrow found its mark in his back. Fingers clawing in the turf, pulling him forward. Prometheus, Hecate… The pain of another arrow, and another, and another. The fingers stopped working. The darkness surged up.

The snow was falling heavily in the glade. It was settling in the sightless eyes of the corpse. The living siblings of the dead man stood close together, right hands clasped. One of the two hunters had tied their thumbs together. The brother had a knife in his left hand. Deftly he cut the tips of their thumbs.

‘Neither with steel nor poison,’ he said. Leaning forward, he licked the blood from his thumb then that of his sister. ‘Sealed and countersealed in blood.’

The girl repeated the words. She dipped her head, her red lips parted and her tongue curled around his thumb.

The Humane Land

(Ionia and the West, Spring AD262)

‘A snake,’ said Maximus. ‘A fucking big snake.’

Everyone looked to where the alarmed Hibernian pointed, out into the atrium.

It was a fucking big snake all right: long, scaly, brown. And – if you knew snakes at all – completely harmless. But it was agitated, obviously disturbed, twisting and writhing here and there in the lamplight that illuminated the big open space at the centre of the big house in Ephesus.

Ballista asked Hippothous to get rid of it. Seeing the reluctance on his secretary’s face, Ballista remembered that many Greeks and Romans kept the creatures as pets. Possibly, he suggested, the accensus might just put it out of the house. Certainly get it away from Maximus. Hippothous went off to find a slave or two to actually catch the thing.

Ballista sat down, and called for his new body-servant Constans to shave him.

It was odd, the attitude to snakes of these Mediterranean types. On their account, the creatures had a bad parentage, born from the blood of the Titans, enemies of the gods. And they kept bad company: the hair of the petrifying Gorgons was alive with them. And then there was unhappy Philoctetes, bitten by a snake on the island of Lemnos, the smell of the suppurating wound so bad the other heroes abandoned him there when they sailed on for Troy. Yet despite all that, often Greeks and Romans would feed the scaly things by hand, offer them cakes, twine them fondly around their necks and set them up as guardians of houses, tombs, springs and altars. The fools.

The perspective of a man such as Ballista, born beyond the northern frontiers of the imperium in the misty forests and fens of Germania, was much more straightforward. There was not a snake in Middle Earth that did not share the old, cold malevolence of Jormungand, the world serpent who lay coiled in the icy darkness of the ocean waiting for Ragnarok, for the day when it was fated the serpent could return to dry land and the gods would die.

A snake without venom regretted it. Certainly, Maximus overdid things, but he was not a complete fool. Not about snakes anyway.

Constans came in carrying the shaving apparatus. He placed a heavy silver bowl of warm water on the table. Condensation ran down the side. Ballista repeatedly scooped the water up and splashed it on his face. He took his time; dousing his cheeks, admiring the bowl’s embossed images of the Persian king hunting a lion.

Constans busied himself with the whetstone, putting a fine edge on the razor.

At length, face glowing, Ballista leant back. Constans draped the napkin around his master’s neck. And, with just a little reluctance showing, Ballista offered his throat to the blade. Through the steam he could see his two freedmen, Maximus, with his short beard, and old Calgacus with his ugly face with its patchy stubble. Both were looking at him, and both were smiling. The bastards.

Constans leant over and got to work, skilled, diligent and slow. Schick, schick, the razor traversed the pulled-tight skin. Constans was a godsend. His dexterity meant that Ballista was spared visiting the public barbershops. It was not the expense, exorbitant though it could be, and it was not the idlers sat around on their benches, the endless gossip, or the enforced proximities that Ballista minded. His dislike of such establishments was more visceral. A shout, an accident in the street, a moment’s distraction, even a stone thrown by a mischievous youth or boy – it had happened – and you left minus an ear, or at best looking like a man with a bad-tempered wife with sharp nails.

Constans had repaid his purchase price in another way. A couple of years earlier, Ballista had freed Calgacus, along with Maximus and his then secretary the Greek boy Demetrius. After that, it somehow seemed wrong to have old Calgacus shave him. And, truth be told, the old Caledonian had never been much good with a razor. All too often recourse had to be made to spiders’ webs soaked in oil and vinegar to plaster the nicks, if not staunch the flow.

Out of Ballista’s line of sight, a caged bird was singing furiously. It was irritating. Hopefully it would not distract Constans.

Ballista knew it was ridiculous. A man such as himself. The first sixteen years of his life he had been brought up to be a warrior among the Angles, the tribe in which his father was war-leader. He had stood in the shieldwall when just fifteen. Killed his first man the same year. Most of the following twenty-four years, although technically a hostage, he had served in the Roman army. He had broken his ankle and jaw once, ribs twice, and his nose and the knuckles of his right hand more times than he could remember. There were scars scattered over the front of his body, and the back of his right hand was seamed with them, as you would expect of a swordsman. In Africa, he had won the mural crown for being first over the enemy wall. Again and again, he had stood with the front-fighters in hot battle. And yet he was nervous – no, be honest – he was scared of the barber.

Hippothous and two slaves appeared outside. The lamps were paling. Soon it would be dawn. The three men stood in a huddle, heads to one side, debating how to go about cornering the snake. The creature had plenty of room for manoeuvre. The atrium was big. The whole rented house was big. It was a house fitting the dignitas of a senior member of the equestrian order, the sort of house a sometime Praetorian Prefect would rent for his familia while waiting for the sixth day before the ides of March and the opening of the sailing season, waiting to start his voyage home to retirement in a comfortable villa in Sicily. Naturally, the Vir Ementissimus was paying a high rent. But that was of little concern to a man who two years earlier had defeated the Persian King of Kings at the battle of Soli and captured his treasures and harem. Of course, all such booty, legally, went straight to the emperor. But it was often striking how much never reached him.

Out in the atrium, the two slaves went to catch the snake.

‘You not going to help them?’ Calgacus asked Maximus. ‘A big strong bodyguard like you, ex-gladiator and all, quick on your feet; aye, very helpful you would be.’

‘I am not fucking scared of fucking snakes. It was just he was a bit fucking big.’

‘Aye, I know, and there were none of them where you grew up.’ Calgacus was enjoying himself. ‘You lying Hibernian cunt,’ he added amiably.

The slaves were not having an easy task of it. The snake did not want to be caught. It was probably long steeped in cunning. Certainly it was quick, slithering out of the questing hands. The slaves shouted at each other. Hippothous shouted at both of them.

Ballista hoped again that it was not going to distract Constans.

The slaves were running around like actors in a bad mime. The unholy row would have woken anyone – except the entire household was already awake: Ballista and the men in the andron; his wife, Julia, and her maids in the women’s quarters; the domestic slaves throughout the house wielding an arsenal of cloths, sponges, feather dusters, brooms, buckets, poles and ladders. A blur of sawdust tipped out, then swept up again, a cloud of chased dust; the usual frenzy of domestic economy.

Ballista had instructed the bell rung early this morning, with a good two hours of the night left. It was not a day to be late. It was the anniversary of the accession, one hundred and one years earlier, of the divine emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus. It promised to be a grand day: sacrifices, a procession, singing and dancing, all sorts of entertainment, more sacrifices, speeches and a feast. It was a day on which the imperial cult would be celebrated, on which the expression of loyalty and religious sentiment would meld together.