[Gaius Valerius Verrens 06] - Scourge of Rome (6 page)

‘What are you saying?’

‘Six men, or even ten, why would they risk raiding a caravan guarded by fifty bowmen?’

‘They might have been only the advance guard,’ Valerius suggested.

‘They were Sicarii, I am certain of it. The Sicarii are killers, not thieves. They usually work alone. Six men would denote a particular mission.’

Valerius caught the hint. ‘You think our new travelling companion is not being open with us?’

Ariston shrugged; what did he know? ‘She has made a remarkable recovery.’

‘There was nothing false about what those men did to her,’ Valerius pointed out. ‘Maybe she is just a remarkable woman?’

The Syrian turned in the saddle. ‘Her beauty blinds you. I hope it is not the death of us.’ His eyes drifted to the man riding at Tabitha’s side. ‘Speaking of death, your friend with the wolf’s eyes makes me nervous.’

‘And so he should,’ Valerius said. ‘Serpentius survived a hundred combats in the Taurus amphitheatre. He has hands as swift as a cobra’s strike and has saved my life more times than I remember. It is your good fortune, Ariston, that he only kills who I tell him to.’

He kicked his horse ahead to where Tabitha had reined in to water her mount in a stream that joined the Orontes. ‘You ride well,’ he complimented her. ‘Is that a common skill among servants in Chalcis?’

‘Common enough in servants of the royal court.’ She gave him a searching look that made his cheeks burn. ‘My lady often hunts in the desert with King Aristobulus, either with hawk or hound. She expects her servant to be at her side in case of need. We are different from Roman women, who I understand avoid such strenuous pursuits.’

‘I know one Roman woman who could match you in the saddle.’ Valerius smiled, remembering Domitia Longina Corbulo’s fierce pride as they outrode their Batavian pursuers at Placentia. ‘But you’re right, it is not a skill of which many Roman ladies can boast. Your place at court would also account for your remarkable command of Greek.’

‘Latin too,’ she replied in that language. ‘And Hebrew, though Aramaic is the language of my birth. Is this an interrogation, Gaius Valerius Verrens?’

‘Let us call it a conversation,’ he smiled. ‘Ariston, our guide, is by nature a suspicious man. He thinks it is possible that the men who attacked you were members of a group of assassins who go by the name of Sicarii. Perhaps there is a reason other than the value of your frankincense why they were interested in you or your lady?’

‘What other reason would there be?’ Tabitha shook her head. ‘They were bandits. They wanted to know the layout of our camp and the position of the guards. Nothing more.’

As the sun reached its height they entered Apamea by the Antioch Gate beneath impressive city walls, and Ariston grinned at Valerius’s undisguised astonishment. The Roman had expected just another dusty provincial city. A working community with a meeting place for a market, perhaps a forum and a basilica, a few temples and a baths. Instead the city rivalled anything he’d seen outside Rome, in some places possibly even surpassing the capital.

‘This is the longest street in Syria, perhaps the world,’ Ariston informed him proudly. ‘I promised you wonders, is this not one?’

The main street, the
cardo maximus
, ran for at least a mile; a broad avenue lined with fluted columns of creamy white. ‘There are twelve hundred,’ Ariston continued, determined everything must impress. ‘I have counted them. Six hundred to each side and every one the height of five men.’

Serpentius rode a little way apart, ignoring the architecture. Instead, his restless eyes searched the street for any undue interest in their little party. The others forced their horses past carts shod with iron wheels that rattled over the rutted cobbles. Driven by labourers in dusty robes, they carried wood and stone and fought for space with dark-skinned traders leading heavily laden camels, which were in turn followed by slave boys vying to pick up their droppings for manure. Valerius noted men wearing the garb of a dozen cultures. Apamea, like Antioch, was clearly a crossroads between east and west. A bustling place that trade, natural resources – they had passed through ripening fields and lush pastures filled with sheep – and its location beside the river had made wealthy. Behind the columns lay myriad shops and basilicas, selling goods from all over the world. Some of the luxuries had been imported from Rome, but others were more exotic. Ariston insisted the intricately worked golden objects studded with jewels and pearls on one stall could only have originated in the Indus Valley and the Orient. Tabitha altered course to study the shops more closely and reined in her mare at the front of one festooned with multicoloured lengths of cloth. When Valerius joined her she was clearly wrestling with some decision.

‘Here.’ He held out his purse, solving her dilemma. The shop was a dressmaker’s and beneath the borrowed robe she wore only the hastily stitched, bloodstained remnants of her clothing. Of course she would want to replace it. ‘Take what you need and call it a gift.’

After a moment’s hesitation she accepted the purse, her face breaking into a pleased smile that made the bottom fall out of his stomach. Whatever he’d been going to say next vanished from his head. Fortunately, she saved him. ‘It will take me an hour,’ her head tilted and she studied the shop front with more care, ‘perhaps two. You could pass the time in the baths and we could meet later in the market place by the elephant fountain?’

Valerius looked to Ariston for confirmation and the Syrian shrugged. ‘There is merit in what she says. I prefer not to use the baths, but I would be happy to show you their location. I have business to conduct here, but the market is not far. I will take you there first and show you the meeting place.’

Tabitha dismounted and passed Valerius her reins. ‘The elephant fountain in two hours,’ she repeated. He watched the diminutive figure almost skip up the steps as Serpentius rode up to join him.

‘I will stay with her,’ the Spaniard said.

‘You think she’ll be in danger in a dress shop?’ Valerius smiled.

‘Why take a chance?’ Serpentius growled. ‘Who’s to say those men last night are all there was? Besides,’ his savage features broke into a grin, ‘I might see something I like.’

‘We should leave her here,’ Ariston interrupted the Spaniard. ‘There is something not right about this.’

Valerius laughed. ‘Am I travelling with an old woman who feels threatened by a pretty girl?’

‘A pretty girl who is much too familiar with this place for a servant who has spent the bulk of her days in Chalcis,’ Ariston scowled. ‘You will see.’

Valerius ignored the dire prediction and spent a pleasant hour in the baths. He hadn’t removed the leather socket covering his stump for days and it was a guilty pleasure to have the mutilated limb massaged and oiled by a slave girl. He tried to recall if Tabitha had noticed the wooden fist. If she had, she hadn’t reacted and she was clearly too diplomatic to mention it. Later, when he lay face down to have the oil removed from his back by a metal strigil, an image of Domitia Longina Corbulo swam into his mind. Should he feel guilty that he hadn’t thought of her for days now? She had sacrificed her future to save him, but the moment she’d made her decision she had reconciled herself to a life without him. His recollection of that last day was of a woman utterly remote, as if his existence were no longer of any consequence to her. He still felt the pain of the realization. Yes, it might have been partly to dull the terrible emptiness of their parting, but he sensed there’d been something else. As if she could only endure her new life if she expunged the memories of the old. Whether Domitian’s assassins succeeded or not, he was already dead to her. They would never meet again.

When he’d dressed, he walked south towards the market, stopping occasionally to look at a shop or a stall, but with one eye on the people around him. It seemed unlikely he’d been followed, but the cruel reality was that he wouldn’t see the dagger that killed him. Even with Serpentius by his side, one day there’d be someone who was faster or more cunning than those who’d tried before. A troop of exotically uniformed cavalry rode past, hooves clattering on the stone slabs. Valerius kept his head down and his wooden hand covered.

Ariston waited by the fountain, which, as its name implied, was dominated by a statue of an elephant standing in a pool with water streaming from a lead pipe in its trunk. The fountain was at the centre of a paved square surrounded by columns. Beyond the columns houses and villas clung to a hillside where another pillared roadway snaked its way to a magnificent temple that reminded Valerius of one he’d seen in Athens.

Ariston stared at him. ‘You have lost your charm?’ He pointed to the Roman’s neck where the wheel of Fortuna had hung.

Valerius’s hand instinctively went to his throat, but he smiled. The slave girl had been delighted with her unexpected gift. ‘I decided I didn’t need it any more. Sometimes a man must make his own luck.’

Ariston’s expression said he must be mad, but the Syrian shrugged. ‘You like Apamea?’

‘It’s very civilized.’ Valerius smiled. ‘But perhaps a little brash for my taste.’

‘You can blame my forefather, Seleucas Nicador.’ Ariston ignored Valerius’s look of disbelief at his unlikely claim to royal blood. ‘He was Alexander’s most successful general and named the city for his fourth wife, a Bactrian with the nature of a bad-tempered crocodile. He loved her despite this, and to prove it Apamea must be bigger and more impressive than Antioch and Palmyra. He ordered a channel constructed that brings sweet water all the way from Salimiye.’ He rose and reached out to slap the elephant’s enormous behind. ‘This was where he kept his five hundred fighting elephants, and those fields we passed with the sheep would once have trembled beneath the hooves of forty thousand horses.’

Valerius looked up at the sun. ‘She is late.’

‘What do you expect?’ Ariston’s laughter echoed round the market place. ‘A girl in a dress shop, of course she’s late.’

A few men and women appeared and began setting up stalls for the next day’s market. They worked quietly and efficiently, laughing and joking amongst themselves. Valerius noticed the moment several heads looked up in alarm, like deer sensing the approach of a wolf. A heartbeat later he heard the sound of approaching hooves and as he leapt to his feet cavalry troopers funnelled into the square from every side. Squat, narrow-eyed men with fish scale armour, pot helmets and strung bows tensed and ready to loose. Every viciously barbed arrow was aimed at the two men by the fountain.

‘It would be unwise to allow your hand to get any closer to your sword.’ Ariston glanced nervously as the circle of arrows edged ever closer. All it would take was one careless movement and …

‘Unstring your bows, unless you want to provide another reason for the king to take your stupid heads.’

The order caused consternation among the mounted ranks as a familiar figure in a voluminous cloak forced its way through the ring of horses. Tabitha threw back her hood and glared until the bow strings loosened. Serpentius stood at her side, surveying the scene with a look of sardonic amusement on his haggard features.

A cavalryman in a prefect’s sash dropped to the ground and ran to kneel at Tabitha’s feet.

‘My lady.’

‘Lady?’ As they rode at the centre of an escort to the Chalcidean camp outside Apamea, Valerius couldn’t hide his curiosity about Tabitha’s reception from the leader of the mounted archers.

‘A figure of speech,’ she assured him. ‘Gaulan thinks he can win my heart by flattery. He will sometimes be overly deferential no matter how much I chide him for it.’

Her manner was so offhand and imperious that Valerius decided he pitied poor Gaulan. He’d find it easier to command his desert tribesmen than the woman he’d been entrusted with. ‘You must have many potential suitors,’ he teased her.

Tabitha looked at him from below curved lashes. ‘Or perhaps it is my lovely new clothes that deceived him?’ She pulled back her cloak so Valerius could admire the crimson
stola
.

‘It was fortunate the seamstress completed her work when she did.’

‘Gaulan’s men would have done you no harm, I’m sure. They are very disciplined.’

‘Nevertheless,’ the Roman smiled, ‘having been the focus of so many arrows I must give you thanks on behalf of myself and Ariston. What I don’t fully understand is how they managed to find us in the market place.’

Tabitha considered for a moment. ‘My lady was so incensed the caravan guards failed to protect me that she insisted Gaulan and his men stay behind until they found me. She can be very forceful and she left them in no doubt of the penalty if they failed in their task.’

‘She must value her servants very highly.’

Tabitha’s eyes searched for any sign that she was being mocked, but Valerius kept his face expressionless and she continued her explanation. ‘One of his riders came upon the bandits’ camp and found their remains, along with some scraps of my clothing. When they could discover no trace of me, they decided I must have been killed and my body thrown to the wild beasts. They deduced from the tracks that the bandits had some sort of dispute and the survivors had set off in the direction of Apamea. Since the only way they could save their own heads was to provide proof that all the bandits had been killed, they followed. Travellers on the road gave them descriptions of our mounts. When they reached Apamea it was a simple enough task to check every stable until they tracked down the horses and obtained a detailed description of the men who had brought them. Gaulan sent soldiers to scour the town and they found you quite quickly.’

‘What happens now?’ Valerius asked, as they approached the colourful cloth tents the cavalrymen had set up on one of the lush meadows outside the city.

‘We will continue our journey at first light.’ She paused, the white pearls of her perfect teeth nibbling at her lower lip. ‘It is my hope you will accompany us as far as Emesa. It will be safer and you will travel more quickly with the help of their remounts. Is that acceptable to you?’

Valerius bowed in the saddle. ‘I would be honoured to share the journey.’