A Mixture of Madness, Book II of The Bow of Heaven (43 page)

“This
was written not long after we departed Brundisium.

Dearest husband,
I pray this letter finds you well and without care. You are barely gone, and I find that either I have shrunk, or this house has tripled in size. How larger-than-life is the man I have married! I never knew till now how Marcus Crassus could fill a room. And such a joyless void is left behind when he departs.

I must take lessons from our daughter-in-law. Cornelia is a delight.
She is full of optimism and gaiety and has made it her solemn duty to infect me with her cheer while we wait for the return of our victorious husbands and son. I fear her task is Herculean. My melancholy may be forgiven; not since you left to put down the rebel Spartacus have my bed and I spent so many nights alone. We are vexed.

Curio is a master of order, and the estate has never run more smoothly, but at least Alexander
was not an insufferable bore. Yesterday, I innocently asked Lucius if there were any women in his life and with a face as straight as an arrow he replied, “You are the only woman in my life, mistress.” When I laughed aloud, he took offense and retired. I haven't seen him since.

One of the peacocks has died, and I mourn alone. Cornelia wanted to eat it! And Curio lobbied to pluck its quills for writing pens. I told them such customs might be practiced in other houses, but here there is only one way beauty and the passing of all things wond
rous are honored—on the pyre.

Tell Livia that Eirene and I fight over Felix daily; he is the happiest, fattest baby I have ever seen. No wonder, with three girls offering their breasts every time he yawns. Send her my love and remind Alexander of his promise to me to keep you safe.

He had better, since it is
now he who pours your wine, who has discourse with you on all matters great and small, and when his work is done, it is he who may walk but a few steps to hold his Livia. He has you both while mountains and seas separate me from you. It is unfair beyond bearing, and if I did not love you so, I should hate the both of you fiercely. You must ignore this jealous old hen, and kiss me in your thoughts.

E
ternally, Tertulla

“She is the most magnificent forty-six year-old hen ever hatched, is she not?” Crassus asked, taking the letter and inhaling its perfume once again before I replaced it in its tin with the others.

“
In this tent, she is first among all women. In another, she is second only by the width of a hummingbird’s tongue.”

“
Love has made you a diplomat,” Crassus said. “Multiply that craft by three hundred, the issues by a thousand and behold, you are ready to take your place in the senate.”

No, I will not say
‘I am happy where I am.’
“Shall we answer this one before retiring?”

“Tomorrow.
Rest well, Alexander. Rest well.”

As I had so often before, I disobeyed my master, for m
y rest was uneasy.
Domina’s
letter had stirred a mind ever-intent on self-destruction, and ideas that should have remained quiescent began pecking at the interior of their shells.

•••

The way across Illyricum, Macedonia and Thrace is made almost bearable by a lovely bit of road some thoughtful Roman had built right across the entire northern peninsula. This twenty-foot wide paved and drained marvel made it clear why Roman planning is so vital to its empire: imagine an army tramping through the countryside day after day, negotiating rivers and mountain passes without them. These feats of engineering increase speed and reduce fatigue, taking soldiers, settlers and commerce swiftly to their goals—usually a conquered province. Romans’ chiseled sense of purpose is as wondrous as it is terrifying.

The road is the
Via Egnatia. It stretches 700 miles, from dreary Dyrrhachium all the way to where two seas press the land to the thinnest of strips, where the petals of so many peripatetic cultures had converged to form the rose of what, for six hundred years, we Greeks called Byzantion. You Romans know it as Byzantium. But we were not itinerant travelers, nor could we tarry. I whimpered as we marched past banners briskly snapping atop the city walls and crossed over into Asia Minor. That leg of our journey took over two months. And it was the easiest by far.

When I say “we
marched,” or “our journey,” understand that these unassuming pronouns bear the weight of a multitude so vast that when I speak of it your imagination will stretch and tear to comprehend and contain it. Not since Alexandros swept through Persia and beyond had such a “we” been amassed by any conqueror. Oh, generals had and would command larger armies, but they were sanctioned, salaried and provisioned by the state. The army of Crassus was the army of Crassus. Tens of millions of his own sesterces, heaped upon the promise of untold plunder drew dismissed and disbanded veterans like bears to honey. They didn’t seem to mind at all that at the midway point of their journey they would be required to fight a war. Some of these men had been given land or taken retirement; others labored as laymen; a few, like Palaemon and Herclides, who could not or would not return to peaceful society, chose to live outside it as criminals. But none would ever, as the Hebrews falsely prophesied, “beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.” These fighting men turned farmers, tradesmen, husbands and fathers, leapt to sharpen their sheathed swords and polish their tarnished belts. By the thousands they sloughed off the trappings of lives lived as play actors and ran to answer the siren call of adventure, camaraderie and glory.

This was the juggernaut that Crassus led to Syria. I must warn you that to describe the spectacle of a Roman army on the march to one who has not seen it for himself is an undertaking as futile as depicting the breadth and majesty of the star-pierced heavens to a blind man. In truth, unless one grows wings and takes to the skies it cannot be done:  from the ground one has but a
dust-veiled inkling of the ferocious whole.

Why will you veer, Alexandros, from the narrative of your tale to take time and parchment to set down the size and nature of the army of Crassus? Why must you send your readers back to school, perhaps against their will? Why risk them wandering off to some other distraction, when there is so much more to tell?

The answer is simple:  to comprehend the scale of the tragedy, one must understand the magnitude of the undertaking. However, if you have no interest in the bowl, but crave only the pudding, then by all means, skip ahead, skip ahead.

•••

The column was preceded by scouts—archers, slingers and one
ala
, a wing of cavalry, about a thousand men all told. Then, still ahead of the main body ca
me a vanguard of one legion and another
ala
of cavalry. Our army was already diminished by the tragedy of our crossing from Brundisium. Casualties of a war that had not yet begun.

Behind the vanguard
came surveyors and engineers, marching alongside mules laden with their tools and instruments. Each night they built the fortified town that was the army’s camp. A day’s march averaged about eighteen miles, depending on the terrain and the roads, if any. The camp would be laid out and protected by the time the remaining legions began arriving some five or six hours after the start of the day’s march. If it could not be found within the camp’s boundaries, pasture would have to be found and secured for 25,000 horses and mules. Every night.

Crassus and his officers came after the survey teams, surrounded by a
n elite
cohort
of bodyguards, 450 legionaries, mounted to keep pace with the general. I had seen to the purchase of a most magnificent tent for the general:  it took five mules to bear the poles, leather and trappings. His personal gear was borne by twenty-five pack animals. It was my task to oversee his forty personal servants who followed at the back of the column with cooks, doctors, including the limping chief
medicus
, Darius Musclena, and a thousand other non-combatants. After the legates and other officers there then followed the mass of the army:  five legions flanked by cavalry. The baggage train, seven miles long of its own accord, was protected by the seventh legion and 1,000 auxiliary cavalry. The remainder of a total of 2,500 horsemen patrolled up and down the flanks of the column.

From the first scout to leave at dawn to the last mounted archer to arrive at the finished camp, the army of Crassus snaked through the landscape for over
fourteen miles! And that was marching six abreast. When the way was narrow, the length of this ophidian behemoth grew longer still.

•••

Now both Nature and man strove to impair our progress. The mountain ridges of Bithynia had either to be scaled or circumvented, and its rivers and streams, as many as three in a day, had to be forded. Once, the earth shook so violently beneath our feet, the steep hills dislodged a rocky attack upon our flanks. Many men were unbalanced and thrown to the ground, upsetting the military precision of our progress into jumbled, cursing chaos. Sometimes broad, sometimes narrow, often in need of repair, the Via Egnatia’s poorer country cousin pinched our ranks and caught at our feet. I am told that it is a Roman general’s duty to apply his engineers and legionaries to the health and recovery of these cobbled arteries to ease the passage of those who would follow. Not Crassus. He pressed forward, leaving this frivolous task to armies of the future, for whipped by the terrors that afflicted him by night, he was not to be impeded by day.

That is until some fifty miles northwest of th
e Galatian capital of Ancyra his way was blocked at a wide crossroads by Deiotarus. He rode at the head of a hundred chariots disturbingly reminiscent of the Celtic variety that had drained the pink from my cheeks when Publius had returned to Rome. The memory was fresh enough to produce the same effect, and I instinctively turned to search for Livia in the haze of men behind me. At least no severed heads dangled from the charioteers’ belts or harnesses.

Deiotarus, like Culhwch, was an ally, but unlike Brenus’ father, this cunning ruler with ruddy complexion and braids of white was no prince, but a king. It was the source of his crown that rankled
my master. Deiotarus, a tetrarch of Galatia, had assisted Pompeius a decade earlier in his fight against the obstreperous Mithridates, king of Pontus. As a reward, Pompeius had given him sovereignty over the other Galatian tetrarchs and lobbied the senate on his behalf to bestow upon him the honorific of King of Lesser Armenia. Reluctantly, at the urging of Cassius and Octavius, who recognized that a hundred thousand sore feet could do with a day of rest,
dominus
tarried at the king’s invitation to admire the construction of the king’s new fortress at Blucium.

Supper in the impressive but unfinished dining hall was as lavish and varied as the conversation was not. At least the roof over our heads offered protection from the elements. Though a huge fire hissed and popped in the grate, we were none of us warmed by the chill spread by my master’s sullenness. Standing behind him at my customary wall-bracing post, my stomach churned with embarrassment at his ill manners. He made no effort to engage his host in conversation, answering his inquiries with little thought and fewer words. My lord had hardly touched his food, but his wine cup was well-caressed.

“So,” the king said, swallowing a mouthful of roast lamb and wiping his fingers on a square of cloth, “on your way to pay a social call on King Orodes, are you?” They sat next to each other at the high table.

“The business of Rome is none of yours.”
Dominus’
stare followed a fly’s spasmodic progress across his plate. “Highness,” he added reluctantly, in lieu of an apology.

“
’Not what I heard.” Deiotarus waited for a response, got none and said, “My sources tell me you’re not
on
Rome’s business. How could you be, when you left the city shy of one blessing:  the auspices of the senate.
”

“Let me rephrase
, then:  my business,”
dominus
said, stifling a belch, “is none of yours.”

“Fair enough,” said the king. “You could just be taking up your post in Syria…” Crassus
tilted his cup to his lips and emptied it. “…with an invasion force, to govern a province? If I could raise an army this great—”

“If you could raise an army this great by even a third,” Crassus interrupted,
this time belching in earnest, “I might find the need to suffer your impertinence.”

I winced. From where he sat at Crassus' right hand, Octavius whispered a caution.

“Calm yourself, legate,” said the king. “We are all friends here. The proconsul knows I have no wish to offend. Cursed with a curious nature, I am. No harm meant.” Some men simply refuse to appear insulted. But then, having felt the sting from the slap on their cheek, know just where to slip the knife, their smile never fading.

“Oh, of that I am certain,” Crassus said. “For why, with my
invasion
army at your gates, would you risk my ire.”

“Now there, proconsul, is something I am certain I do not risk. Why waste your time on a people your good friend Pompeius has already subdued?”

Crassus smacked both hands to his armrests and made to rise from his seat, but was undone by the wine in his belly. Before he had gained his feet, the Galatian vintage was arguing persuasively for a second airing. He sank back in his chair and instead of making response, drank half a cup of water. Octavius rose instead, and Athena be praised, Crassus' second in command wisely took that moment to call Brenus and Taog forward from where they waited by the great doors at the end of the hall. Crassus did not, or could not object to the interruption; I could tell by his drooping shoulders that he had grown weary. The legate had invited the Gauls, thinking the king might wish to trade tales of their common Celtic ancestors. Deiotarus had as much in common with these Petrocorii as he did with Crassus' forebears, but decided that he, too, would welcome a change in the direction of the conversation.