The Horse Changer (35 page)

We passed by one another, he to receive the fury of the men in my column, I to greet another iron mask charging me. I drew one of my swords and turned Hannibal into the flank of another rider, the way ships ram into one another. As we crashed into this animal, I swung my sword down across the rider’s arm. I could not cut flesh through Parthian chainmail, but bone was still vulnerable and the rider dropped his spear.

I pulled my second sword and spun Hannibal, looking for another fight. The enemy was everywhere, but so too were those who had ridden in my column. I hooked an arm about the head of a man in a fight with one of my Spartan auxiliaries. As easily as that, I pulled him from his mount. At my own flank a rider came closing in and swung his sword at Hannibal’s neck. I parried the stroke, then turned Hannibal into him, letting Hannibal’s superior strength drive him back. As we fought, swords clashing, I heard Hannibal’s scream. He reared above the smaller horse, striking with both hooves and biting the chainmail covering the enemy’s mount.

One of my men closed behind the fellow and knocked him to the ground. I spun Hannibal about and charged another rider, ramming into the smaller horse. The other horse cried out and shied away, leaving its rider struggling to keep his seat. I had no chance to grab this rider’s head, so I hacked at his wrist instead. His sword dropped, and I spun Hannibal on his haunches, looking for the next fight.

We lunged into another rider but were also hit by a man coming behind us. Hannibal gave another scream of rage and kicked at the animal with both back legs. The enemy’s mount shied from this attack and I was saved from a sword swung at my head.

There was no line, no order to any of it; the fight was everywhere. A melee of swords and shields. Horses rammed into one another, reared up or gave vicious kicks, fighting like the men on their backs, and for a long time it seemed that neither side could gain an advantage.

Then suddenly we saw Herod’s infantry wade into the fight. After that, melee turned to massacre.

The men on the ground came in pairs. One carried a shield and sword; the other a sword and dagger. These weapons slipped under the chainmail skirts of the Parthian mounts. Once a horse went down, the rider generally fell to the ground too. If by chance he landed on his feet, Herod’s infantry tackled him. In any event, after he was on his back, killing him as he struggled to get up was as simple as giving his head a hard kick or a quick turn.

Our cavalry continued to engage the enemy, knocking them from their horses if possible, but Herod’s infantry did most of the killing. I was turning, looking for another fight, when a wounded horse came backing away from a sword thrust and bowled broadside into Hannibal. Both animals went down with a scream of pain, but I was able to step free.

I was naturally worried for Hannibal but had no time to look for him. A Parthian rider came over me the moment I touched earth, swinging his long sword down toward my head. I parried the blow and then took his leg before he could swing at me a second time. Turning my back to his horse I pulled him from his saddle and down he crashed, nothing more than a heap of steel.

I kicked his head, breaking his neck, but when I turned from him, I saw another rider coming for me at a gallop. His sword was lifted, but he seemed determined to run me over. Caught between fights at either side, I had no chance to evade his attack. A stride before he struck me one of my own men collided with his mount. Both animals tumbled, but the Parthian himself came hurdling over the neck of his horse.

He struck me with his shield as he landed and sent me reeling back. I tripped over the legs of a corpse and went down. Sword lifted for a killing blow, the Parthian stepped over me. A horse came in behind him, the rider leaving his saddle and tackling my assailant. Only as the two men hit the ground did I recognise Herod.

Herod took the iron mask of the Parthian into the crook of his arm and gave it a hard twist. He then took my hand and pulled me to my feet. We turned now as an infantry team, playing out the remainder of the fight from the ground.

Plunge a blade into a horse’s belly or break its leg with a slashing wound. Catch hold of an iron man’s ankle. Pull and turn it. Get them on the ground and they were helpless: slow to rise, half blind, staggering like drunks.

The dust was so thick we were fighting shapes not colours. Everywhere came the shouts of men, the grunts and screams of horses colliding, the strident song of steel. And then suddenly our cavalry from Masada arrived. With fresh forces coming into the fray against them, the cataphracts abandoned the fight and sought only to break free of our circle. And breaking free, they raced back the way they had come, along with their archers. We let them go with only the Masada riders giving chase.

Looking about, I saw some five hundred horses had been brought down. Almost all of them still struggled. Of the cataphracts left behind, all were quiet, every man with a broken neck. I limped out of the centre of the fight, sore and worn out, but anxious to know how the battle had gone at the perimeter. My cavalry had taken the worst of it there. They had been the only targets the archers could shoot at. Most of the men in that position were wounded; some forty were dead or dying.

I found Hannibal standing off in the distance. I checked him for wounds, but he was fine, only very close to exhaustion, like every man and horse under that mountain. I led him back into Herod’s camp and passed him to the care of my secretary, who had waited out the fight with the civilians. Only then did I seek medical treatment.

Salome cleansed my wound with vinegar and salt; then she closed it with plaster to keep it safe from infection. After that, she wrapped the plaster in bandages. Herod was sending the wounded and all the civilians to Masada; we were fifteen miles from the mountain fortress and though it was tempting to take the shorter journey I needed to stay with what was left of my cavalry. How else could I promise the men who went to Masada I would get them free before the next summer ended? Accordingly, I arranged for a litter and made sure my wounded officers had litters as well. For the rest of our wounded, some four hundred Spartans, there was no helping it; they went off to Masada, there to wait for the rescue I promised them.

Herod’s mother’s family still lived in Petra, which the Nabataeans claim as their capital city. Because of this familial relationship, Herod had every confidence we would be received at the borders of the Nabataean kingdom. Our journey required two nights and most of two days, but that was only because we had already exhausted ourselves. The Parthian archers returned late in the day following our night march. Instead of fighting them in earnest, we sent out squads of cavalry lancers to keep them at a distance. So we trudged across the land shadowed by the enemy. We lost very few men on our march but the number of wounded continued to mount.

Much of this business I missed because I was on my back, though I did find an arrow in my blanket when two slaves lifted me from my litter one evening. When we had finally arrived at the Nabataean border, I thought the worst of it was over. Instead, the border guards turned us away. King Malichus had lost a kinsman – also named Malichus – to Roman swords quite recently. Besides, he had no desire to risk a war with the Parthians.

Having no choice in the matter, Herod turned west. We were two hundred miles from the Nile Delta, half of the journey over or around mountains, the rest across the scorching sands of the Negev desert. It took three weeks for us to cross, but at least our escort of Parthian archers abandoned us.

We ran low on food and water and feared for our lives until Herod engaged the services of a nomadic tribe. He spoke their language but, all the same, the terms he arranged were to their considerable advantage. They took his gold and most of our horses into the bargain. In return they provided us with camels and food and a guide who would lead us to water as we travelled.

By the time we had made the first of the tributaries of the Nile, I was walking again. With the last of our gold, Herod and I negotiated permission from a local magistrate to build a camp on Egyptian soil. Here, Herod’s army and the remnants of my cavalry, three hundred Spartans, would wait together until we could summon them. From there Herod and I moved on with only a few of his officers and a squad from his guard for escort and a few servants, including my secretary. A month after our flight from Jerusalem had begun, we entered the Jewish district of Alexandria and stayed the night with friends of Herod’s family. From there we sent word to the palace that Herod, Tetrarch of Galilee, came to the queen as a supplicant.

I stood with Herod and several other men while he spoke to the queen. After he had told his tale of escape from Jerusalem, Cleopatra offered him command of her armies. She did this on the sole condition that he led them south into Ethiopia, not east across the border into Nabataea and Judaea. In Ethiopia there were riches to be harvested, and she did not mind starting a war in the south if Herod led the campaign.

The offer was generous and apparently extended to the Roman eques standing beside him, but Herod refused her. He had no choice, he said, for he had not abandoned his family in Jerusalem and would not now leave them to perish at Masada. He begged only a passport and permission to leave the queen’s harbour in a merchant ship. This she gave him, along with the loan of some gold, which Herod gratefully accepted. Nobody had seen a payday in over a month.

But that was all the queen gave him, no matter what she claimed some years later.

Herod ordered his officers and Guard to return to our camp with the gold Cleopatra had provided; the men needed their pay. He and I then boarded ship with only our servants and horses. We set sail for Cyprus, where Herod had several friends with large fortunes. From these gentlemen he arranged letters of credit, which he used at once to purchase a large ship and crew.

While we waited, word came on the wings of a carrier pigeon that Phasael was dead; Hyrcanus yet lived, but his nephew, Antigonus, had cut off his nose and ears. These deformities disqualified him from service in the Temple; I assume that, for the sake of their blood relationship, Prince Antigonus let his uncle live. Herod suffered terribly at the news of Phasael’s death; I believe his older brother was also his best friend.

Still quite young, I did not know how to console him and left him alone in his grief. One day, however, after we had set sail for Rome in Herod’s new ship, he came to me as I watched the oars ply the waves. ‘I count you as a true friend, Dellius.’ He said this in the same tone a man uses to discuss the weather. I had no response for such affection, except to answer in kind, but I was obviously taken by surprise.

‘The moment you left Jerusalem,’ Herod explained, ‘there were men under my command who laughed at me. They said you had left and weren’t coming back. Phasael and I told them they didn’t know you as we did. But I must confess, I wondered if I would see you when we came out of those sewers. I thought: if he has any sense, he will be a hundred miles away. But there you were. Because of you, my brother’s sacrifice means something. Our family still lives.’

I have always marvelled that Herod insisted on arriving in Italy with his own ship, but I think he understood better than an Italian-born Roman that in Rome money is all. If a man has no money he had better pretend it isn’t so; no one assists a penniless exile, no matter what title he used to own. He was a beggar, like Ulysses after one of his shipwrecks. And like Ulysses, he carried on as if his flight from Judaea were only a minor inconvenience.

We sent a messenger ahead to Antony as we neared the city and Antony, in turn, sent an escort of friends to find us while we were still on the road. It would have been a finer gesture had he come in person, but no matter – we were received. And that is the first necessity of dignity.

Antony’s home had formerly been the residence of Pompey Magnus. It was the very largest house on the Palatine in those days and had been decorated with plunder from the orient, both Pompey’s and Antony’s. For all his show of wealth and power Antony seemed a changed man. He was, by then, already married to Caesar’s sister, Octavia. That alone might explain some of his docility. Octavia was a delicate flower like her brother, as cold and heartless, too. Quite contrary to custom, Octavia waited at Antony’s side to receive us. I could not help but recall the court of Cleopatra, where young Caesarion was honoured as Pharaoh alongside his mother but it was Cleopatra who made all the decisions. Antony was wretchedly sober and miserable on the morning we arrived. Every morning afterwards, for that matter. Gone were the louts he liked to keep at his side: dwarfs, actors, retired gladiators and certain ancient legionaries whose last skill was to drink until dawn without fading.

Missing too was Antony’s morning hangover. He looked flush with good health but chastened and mournful for the sake of it. Of course he had recently lost a wife for whom he had great affection and the second of his two brothers as well. Or maybe his sorrow was all about losing northern Gaul with its eleven legions. Or the companionship of Cleopatra. Then too it could not have been easy to leave behind the adoration he had so lately enjoyed in the orient; in Rome, after all, Antony was still the subject of several awful tales of debauchery. Defeat in Syria and the loss of the Jewish provinces weighed heavily too. But then Bacchus is nothing if not a creature of extremes: glorying in celebration one moment, wailing and broken the next.