King of Kings Read online

  There was a scuffle, and two soldiers propelled a youth into the court. They pinioned his arms. He was already bleeding from a cut to the head.

  ‘Name? Race? Slave or free?’ Ballista could feel his grip on his temper slipping. This was degenerating into farce.

  ‘I am a Christian, and I want to die!’ The youth was wild-eyed, shouting.

  ‘There are plenty of cliffs here, and I am sure ropes can be found down at the docks.’ Ballista waited for the laughter to fade before repeating: ‘Name? Race? Slave or free?’

  The youth did not answer. Instead, he jerked forward and spat at the images of the emperors. ‘The gods of the nations are daemons,’ he yelled. ‘It is better to die than worship stones!’

  ‘Which?’ Ballista said.

  Confused, the youth glared defiance.

  Ballista pointed to the imperial images. ‘Which? Stones or daemons?’

  The youth snorted his contempt. ‘I wish to be with Christ!’

  Ballista smiled a savage smile. ‘I will send you to him directly.’

  Laughter rang round the court. Ballista felt a strong wave of disgust; at the obstinate zealotry of the Christians, at the cruel, sycophantic laughter of the courtiers, at his own role in all this. ‘Enough,’ he shouted. ‘Take him away!’

  XVII

  The palace of the Proconsul had the best site in Ephesus: facing west, high on the central mount, perched above the theatre. If the view did not inspire you, there was something wrong with your soul. To the left, the neighbouring mountain range curled round towards the sea, slanting down before rearing up in a last, solitary peak topped with a bastion. The red-tiled roofs of close-packed houses climbed the lower slopes; above, the hard, grey limestone poked through the brush. Ahead, your eye soared down dizzily over the steep bank of the theatre to the wide, column-lined road that ran ruler-straight to the curved harbour with its toy-sized ships and on to the glittering Aegean beyond. Off to the right meandered the mud-coloured Caystros, through the broad, flat plain the river’s own silt had created, and, beyond, usually blue with distance, were more mountains.

  The best site in the city but, Ballista thought, everything comes at a price. The path down was steep. A close-laid buttress wall to the left, a vertiginous drop to the right; to start, the path ran above the theatre. Gesturing at the tiered seating, the northerner said that, long ago, a Christian holy man and wonder worker had been tried there. Despite being both an ex-tax collector and a notorious troublemaker, somehow the man had got off. His name was Paul, Saul… or something like that.

  Demetrius snorted with derision. For his own good, Ballista thought, I must give him his freedom soon, or rein him in.

  ‘Christians to the lion,’ said the Greek youth. ‘A real holy man performed a genuine miracle there. No Christian trickery. There was plague in the town. The Ephesians begged Apollonius of Tyana to come to them and be the physician of their infirmity. He led them into the theatre. There was an old blind beggar sat there, squalid, clad in rags, a wallet with a scrap of bread by his side. Apollonius spoke to the men of Ephesus: “Pick up as many stones as you can and hurl them at this enemy of the gods.” The Ephesians were shocked at the idea of murdering a stranger. The beggar was praying and pleading for mercy. But the man of Tyana urged them on. He was implacable. He cast the first stone himself. Soon, stones were flying. As the first ones hit, the beggar glared at them, his blindness gone. There was fire in his eyes. Then they recognized him for what he was – a daemon. He turned this way and that, but there was no escape. The stones flew thick and fast – so many they heaped a cairn over him. Apollonius told the Ephesians to remove the stones. With trembling hands, they did. And there lay a huge hound. It had the shape of a Molossian hunting mastiff, but it was the size of a lion. Pounded to a pulp, it was vomiting foam, as mad dogs do. The plague-bringer was no more.’

  ‘Great stuff,’ said Ballista. ‘Although I do not remember the holy man casting the first stone in Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius.’

  ‘My rhetoric may have overcome me,’ admitted Demetrius.

  ‘I do not believe it,’ said Maximus, ‘a Greek getting carried away with his own words.’

  ‘You know how it is.’ Demetrius grinned.

  ‘Me? Gods below, never in life,’ the Hibernian answered.

  As it neared the main thoroughfare, the path became so steep that it was cut into steps. The three men walked carefully, in single file. As they emerged on to the Embolos, the sacred way, Ballista looked to the left, towards the civic centre and the scene of his distasteful judicial duties of the day before. By one of those quirks that can happen even in the most populous of cities, there was not a soul in sight. Between its columns and honorific statues, the road ran away up the slope, broad and white, beneath a sky of intense blue.

  Turning to the right to face downhill, Ballista now saw the people. Above their bobbing heads, just beyond where the Embolos appears to end but actually turns sharp right, was the library of Celsus. He and the others walked down to it and stopped in the square in front.

  The library was not just a memorial to Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus, benefactor of Ephesus, magnate of nearby Sardis, consul of distant Rome, it was also his final resting place. His son, Aquila, had had it designed so that Celsus could be buried somewhere beneath it.

  Ballista had never really studied it before. Now, between yesterday’s unsettling task and the one he would soon have to undertake, he paused and studied the library-tomb. On either side of the steps were statues of Celsus on horseback. In one he was dressed as a Greek, in the other as a Roman. There were four standing statues on each level of the two-storey façade. Ballista moved closer and read the inscriptions on the lower ones. Sophia, Arete, Ennoia and Episteme – female personifications of wisdom, virtue, good sense and knowledge – all most suitable qualities for a member of the Greek elite. Craning his head back, Ballista looked at the upper storey. Up there were three more versions of Celsus, clad as a Roman general, a Roman magistrate and a Greek civic dignitary. The final statue was the dutiful son Aquila, also in the guise of a senior Roman military commander.

  It was odd, thought Ballista, how these rich Greeks who prospered under Roman rule clung to their Greekness. Even those such as Celsus, who entered into the heart of the imperium, commanding Roman armies, holding the highest Roman offices, being counted a friend of emperors, wished to be remembered as much as a Greek as a Roman. Read in a certain way, the façade almost seemed to say that all the Roman worldly success of Celsus was underpinned by his possession of distinctively Greek attributes. Ballista smiled as he thought how all of them, Greeks and Romans alike, would have him forget his own northern roots – except, of course, when they wished to despise him for them.

  At a right angle to the library was the southern gate of the agora, its stones light pink in the sunshine. Again, Ballista read the prominent inscriptions. They proudly boasted that the agora had been built by two freedmen of the imperial family of the first Roman emperor Augustus. They had been called Mazeus and Mithridates. Ballista wondered how the local Greek worthies would have reacted to its construction. Here was the new order in stone. Right in the heart of an ancient Greek city was a monument dedicated to the glory of the house of the Roman autocrat, paid for by two ex-slaves, whose very names revealed their eastern origins. Being Greek under Rome seemed always to involve many, necessary compromises.

  A thought struck Ballista. He turned round. There, on the other side of the square, was a grandiose monument to a Roman victory over Parthia, the eastern power that had preceded the Sassanid Persians. The Parthians were sculpted to look suitably barbaric, the Roman warriors rather like Greeks. Perhaps if you were Greek, there were always ways to make yourself feel better about reality.

  Ballista walked through the gate. They followed the course of the sun round the agora, walking in the cool of the shady porticos. Everything you could imagine appeared to be available for hard currency. Apart from the usual foods, oil and
wine, both essential and luxurious, the Ephesian agora seemed to specialize in colourful clothing transported from Hierapolis and Laodikeia and locally produced perfumes and silverware.

  As they passed a line of shops, each with a silversmith on a stool outside industriously tapping out souvenirs of Great Artemis of the Ephesians, Ballista thought he recognized another shopper. The man – his clothes proclaimed him a local notable – took one look at Ballista and hurried off diagonally across the agora. In moments he was lost from view behind the equestrian statue of the emperor Claudius which stood in the middle of the open space.

  It was odd behaviour. Why had the man scurried away? It was most unlikely the man was a Christian. The zeal of the scribe to the Demos, Flavius Damianus, would not have left a prominent citizen who belonged to the cult free to stroll the agora. Flavius Damianus – there was a man with a fire for persecution. Then Ballista half-remembered something. What was it that Flavius Damianus had said in court? The emperors demanded the sternest measures; those around them urged the same. Those around them? Who could it mean except Macrianus, the Comes Sacrarum Largitionum et Praefectus Annonae? Macrianus must have communicated with Flavius Damianus. Why? Ballista had publicly insulted Macrianus. He had hit one of his sons. Then the sons had three times tried to kill him. Macrianus was a powerful man who, on any count, should be numbered an enemy. Why had he urged that Ballista be sent to Ephesus in the first place? And now it seemed that Macrianus was communicating with the most important magistrate in Ephesus. What deep and sinister game was Macrianus the Lame playing? Again, Ballista felt like an ordinarius in a game of latrunculi – picked up and dropped by an unseen hand.

  In the north-east corner of the agora, beyond the temporary wooden livestock pens, were permanent stone cells for the instruments with voices. Ballista’s enjoyment of the colour and bustle of markets was always tainted by this area, but something always forced him to go there, always forced him to do what he was about to do.

  Men with broad faces and brutal eyes lounged about. They watched Ballista and his companions approach. One of the men stepped forward.

  ‘Good day, Kyrios,’ he said, in heavily accented Greek. ‘What are you looking for – a girl, a boy?’

  Ballista looked at him, the disgust rising in his throat. Behind him, he sensed Demetrius’ fear and Maximus’ hostility.

  Realizing he was on the wrong tack, the slave dealer flashed an oily smile. ‘A maid for your wife maybe? Very clean, very trustworthy? Or another well-educated Greek boy to keep your books? Another pair of strong arms to guard your treasures?’

  ‘I will know what I want if I see it,’ said Ballista.

  ‘Of course, of course.’ The slave dealer grinned ingratiatingly. ‘It is always an honour to serve a kyrios of discrimination, a man who knows his own mind. Please feel free to inspect the goods.’

  Ballista stepped past him and regarded the huddled, downtrodden humanity there. Then, in a voice pitched to carry, he called out in his native tongue. ‘Are there any Angles here?’

  Faces pinched with misery looked at him with blank incomprehension. Ballista felt a wave of relief and turned to go. Corvus was striding purposefully towards him. The eirenarch of Ephesus was followed by a couple of burly Men of the Watch carrying clubs. Between them was a skinny old man in rags. Not another fucking Christian, thought Ballista. They brought it on themselves, but he had not realised until yesterday just how distasteful it was to act as a persecutor.

  ‘Vicarius, we need a word with you in private.’ Corvus led them to the centre of the agora. The few people promenading there gave the Watch a wide berth. Corvus stopped under the equestrian statue of Claudius. Cast in bronze, the emperor looked nothing like the slobbering, twitching simpleton described by Suetonius.

  ‘This is Aratos.’ Corvus indicated the man in rags. ‘He is a fisherman from out of town. Has his hut on Pigeon Island. It is in a bay not far south of here.’ The eirenarch turned to the fisherman. ‘Tell the vicarius what you saw.’

  Ballista realized that the fisherman was on the verge of tears. ‘I was out in the boat last night – a good catch, plenty of…’ Corvus gestured without impatience for him to get to the point. ‘Sorry, Kyrios. I was bringing the boat in at first light. I knew something was wrong. My wife…’ He paused, fighting down the tears. ‘My wife is always down by the water waiting. She worries. We live on our own on the island. She was not there. I saw them in time. Took the boat out again. Barbarians. Lots of fucking northern barbarians. My wife, my children…’ Now he cried.

  Ballista gently put his hand on the man’s shoulder. ‘How many boats?’

  The fisherman mastered himself. ‘Just one – a big longboat, about fifty rowing benches.’

  ‘Does anyone else know they are there?’

  The man wiped his nose on the sleeve of his tunic. ‘Their boat was almost out of sight up under the trees. We keep to ourselves. I should not think so.’ The fisherman dropped to his knees and clasped Ballista’s legs, the classic pose of a suppliant. ‘Kyrios, my wife, my children…’

  ‘We will help.’ Disengaging himself, Ballista indicated for Corvus to step out of earshot with him. ‘Is he reliable?’ Corvus shrugged. ‘You are the local man,’ Ballista continued. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I have not spoken to him before. I think he is telling the truth.’

  Ballista considered this for a moment. ‘Are there any warships in harbour?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How many troops are there in Ephesus?’

  ‘Just a detatchment of about a hundred auxiliary spearmen and fifty bowmen.’

  ‘How many Men of the Watch do you have under your command?’

  ‘Fifty.’

  ‘It will have to be tonight. If they are still there. We do not have much time. We need a plan.’

  The lantern at the top of the mast swung gently against the night sky. Ballista watched it from where he lay, next to Maximus, in the bottom of the small fishing boat. Both men were completely naked but it was a warm August night, and they had thought to bring blankets. Apart from the strong stench of fish, Ballista was quite comfortable.

  Above them, Corvus, the old fisherman and an auxiliary soldier, all clad in rags, worked the boat. To give an air of normality, they talked quietly in Greek as they fished. The little boat edged south into the bay towards Pigeon Island. Corvus sat down on a bench next to Ballista’s head. ‘Not far now,’ he said, ‘about half an hour.’

  The old fisherman had sketched a map of Pigeon Island. It was roughly oval, with two tiny bays to the south. All its coasts were rocky, except the eastern, where there was a narrow band of sand. The barbarians had beached their vessel at the extreme southern end of the sand, drawing it up the few yards to the tree line. Careful observation from the fishing boat had revealed a large campfire up on the highest point of the island and a smaller one halfway up the slope from the longboat.

  The plan was straightforward. Ballista and Maximus were to swim ashore with short swords and combustibles in waterproof packs strapped to their backs, kill any sentries and fire the longboat. Once it was well ablaze, they would swim to safety on the southern headland of the bay. The mainland here was only a couple of hundred paces away to the south. With luck, as the barbarians rushed to fight the fire, they would be slow to notice the two large merchant galleys, crammed with one hundred and fifty soldiers, bearing down on the beach. The galleys were a worry. Coming down from the north, there was no headland close enough for them to hide behind. Now they were lying with no lights aboard about a mile off in the open water. To lessen the chance of a barbarian spotting them, Ballista had arranged for another half-dozen fishing boats with bright lanterns to ply their nets between the galleys and the island.

  All depended on the barbarians being unsuspecting. Local pirates would have had contacts ashore who may have warned them of the preparations. It was unlikely anyone in Ephesus would want to aid the barbarians – although, to be on the safe side, Corvus’ Men of th
e Watch had been stopping any unauthorized person leaving the city by land or sea since midday.

  Corvus had argued vehemently that it was madness for Ballista to swim ashore – let a couple of the auxiliaries do it. Overruling him, Ballista had pointed out that it might be necessary to lull the suspicions of barbarian sentries, and none of the soldiers spoke the language of Germania. But now, as he lay in the boat, he knew the real reason he had insisted on going himself: the excitement that for a time would free him from thinking about his unpleasant task as a persecutor.

  Almost as if reading his thoughts, Corvus spoke. ‘Great Artemis, this is better than grubbing about at the beck and call of Flavius Damianus.’

  ‘You do not like him?’ Ballista’s words were barely a question.

  Corvus smiled in the gloom. ‘I became eirenarch of Ephesus to chase savage bandits over wild hillsides, not to pursue Christians through slums.’

  ‘I had the impression there was ill feeling between the two of you.’

  Corvus smiled again. ‘Oh, there is. Our beloved scribe to the Demos – how many times has he told you that he is the descendant of the famous sophist? – Flavius Damianus thinks I showed less than commendable zeal a few years ago during the persecution instituted by the emperor Decius.’ Sensing Ballista’s interest, he continued. ‘Seven young men of respectable families were informed against. Of course, I arrested them. Put them in the prison off the civic agora, ordered them to have the best cell, by the door. They escaped. The jailor vanished. I assume they bribed him to disappear. The imperium is big enough. Anyway, Flavius Damianus considers I did not put enough manpower into searching for them.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘I detailed a couple of men to it. There were many things to do.’

  Ballista thought for a moment. ‘You do not approve of the persecution of Christians?’

  ‘It was not why I became an eirenarch. Yes, I understand the logic of it. The open atheism of the Christians may well anger the gods. If the gods are angered they may well turn against us and, as everyone is now saying, the coming war with the Sassanids may end in disaster. But there is something inhuman about the persecution. Most of the Christians are merely foolish, like those young men. There is something disgusting about tearing families apart, torturing and killing the weak and misguided. Anyway, I incline to an Epicurean view – the gods are far away and take no notice of mere mortals.’