Rome's Lost Son (26 page)

It was as he was mulling these things over in the shade of a mature almond tree on the last afternoon before the caravan departed that a worried-looking Gobryas approached him accompanied by another man, grey of beard and with dewy eyes.

‘Vespasian, this is Phraotes,’ Gobryas said, showing courteous deference to the stranger.

Phraotes stepped forward and gave him the Parthian greeting-kiss of an equal, on the lips. ‘Titus Flavius Vespasianus, the Light of the Sun, Vologases, the King of Kings, commands that you join him to enjoy the sport provided by the game in his paradise.’

Vespasian clung onto the side of the two-horse chariot with his left hand as its driver steered around a majestic Cedar of Lebanon; in his right hand he hefted a light hunting spear over his shoulder as he gauged the ever-changing distance between him and the Persian Fallow Deer doe that both he and Vologases were chasing. Both chariots were driven with prodigious skill over the smoothly manicured lawns of the royal hunting paradise; the speed at which they travelled was exhilarating and
Vespasian managed to forget the two horse archers following him with their bows ready to take him down should he threaten the Great King with his weapon. Vespasian had no intention of doing harm to Vologases but he understood the precaution; Vologases was showing him, as a Roman, a great deal of trust to allow him to bear both a bow and a spear in his presence.

The doe twisted to her left and Vespasian braced his knees as his vehicle swerved accordingly to keep the quarry to his right. He felt the wind pulling at his long beard and he smiled involuntarily at the thrill of the high-speed chase. As the chariot straightened up he glanced ahead to Vologases; the Great King stood tall on the platform of his chariot, ready to cast his spear; however, he looked back to Vespasian and with a small head gesture invited him to throw first.

Vespasian pulled his right arm back, his eyes fixed upon his prey, just thirty paces away, and hurled the spear with a mighty grunt, aiming a fraction in front of the doe. It flew true and the deer ran straight but the instant before impact it bucked and the spear just grazed under the beast’s belly and entangled in its hind legs, bringing it tumbling down in a flurry of thrashing limbs. Vologases’ driver hauled on his reins, slowing his team up, so that the Great King could jump clear. Vespasian joined him kneeling by the stunned creature; the doe breathed in fast, regular breaths as it lay on its side.

Vologases ran his hands over all four limbs. ‘None appear to be broken; she should be fine once she’s got over the fall. I shall hunt this pretty thing on another day and give her the death she deserves and not just skewer her as she lies helpless on the ground.’ Vologases got to his feet; he stood a full head taller than Vespasian. ‘Come, we shall eat.’

The main dish of rice with raisins, almonds, chicken and saffron had been exquisite and the accompanying platters of roasted meats and spiced vegetables had been equally pleasing. Vespasian sipped a chilled wine and settled back in his couch in the cool of the pavilion set on a lawn that sloped gently down to a reed-fringed lake alive with waterfowl.

Vespasian and Vologases were the only people dining; the rest of the party sat on blankets a respectful distance from the pavilion. Shadows lengthened as the sun disappeared into the west, torches were lit and Vespasian found it hard to comprehend that they were at the heart of one of the great cities of the East and not on some remote country estate.

Conversation had been polite and had not strayed onto any contentious subjects. It came, therefore, as no surprise to Vespasian when Vologases dismissed the two serving eunuchs and broached the real reason behind the invitation. ‘My enforced withdrawal from Armenia because of a lack of supplies after two frozen winters and then a rebellion in the east that needs my attention this summer have had the obvious consequence.’

Vespasian placed his goblet down; he did not need long to gather what that consequence was. ‘I assume that Radamistus has reinvaded?’

‘Of course; but it’s been unexpectedly fortunate.’ Vologases raised his brow. ‘Young pups like him don’t know how to rule: he’s executed every noble that he could catch, accusing them of betraying him. I think you’ll agree that’s very good for both of us.’

Vespasian stared in surprise at Vologases.

The Great King chuckled softly and sipped his wine. ‘Do you think that I cannot see that this crisis in Armenia has been manufactured? We have been provoked into an unnecessary war; but why? One look at Claudius’ age and health and the battle to succeed him tells me the real reason for this distraction. I do not know exactly who is behind it but I believe that you do, seeing that you just happen to have been in the right place at the right time. You, an ex-consul with an imperial mandate to act as ambassador to Armenia, come in from Cappadocia with an army led by a crippled idiot with no military experience, sack a peaceful town and then break the treaty between us by rebuilding Tigranocerta’s walls? Only the most obtuse of rulers would not see that there is far more behind this than meets the eye; especially as King Polemon of Pontus and his sister, the former Queen of Thracia, both sent Babak of Nineveh messages informing him exactly what was going to happen. How did they know?’

Vespasian retreated to the safety of his goblet.

Vologases inclined his head in recognition of his guest’s decision to remain silent rather than give the Lie. ‘The interesting thing was that Babak told his king but Izates never passed those messages on to me; it was almost as if Izates thought that Babak’s campaign in Armenia was about removing Radamistus for his own ends. Perhaps he felt that he could become king of that land as well? Fortunately Tryphaena sent me a very informative letter about my client king and I was able to have the royal army campaigning against Radamistus within two months of Babak’s arrival; the former satrap of Nineveh spent his final hours in much discomfort.’

Vespasian shuddered, knowing exactly what that entailed. ‘And Izates?’ he asked, hoping that the man who had robbed him of two years of his life had also ended up on the wrong end of a pointed stake.

‘He cringed and crawled and kissed the ground beneath my feet but I left him on his throne; I just didn’t leave him with the means to see it. Still, he has twenty-four sons and twenty-four daughters so I’m sure one of them will hold his hand and guide him about.’

Vespasian felt a surge of bitter joy at the justice of Izates’ fate. ‘That is very pleasing.’

‘I thought that would be your reaction.’ Vologases contemplated Vespasian for a few moments. ‘I will not ask you to tell me who you have been working for but I can guess. What I will ask you, Titus Flavius Vespasianus, is that, when you return to Rome to inform whomsoever, this unnecessary war of mutual convenience will be pursued with a modicum of vigour.’

‘Mutual convenience?’

‘Indeed. Tell them that the circumstances that have forced me to withdraw temporarily from Armenia will soon be dealt with; and next year I will return and we shall resume our sparring. I, like they, have political need of the distraction.’

‘To keep your subject races from contemplating too deeply their position?’

‘Amongst other things, yes; it also makes me look as if I’m defending my peoples’ honour and keeps my army sharp. War with Rome is a necessity, not a luxury.’

‘Yes, I’ve come to see that too, but from the opposite position.’

‘No wonder the powers behind the Roman throne only allowed you the bare minimum time as consul: too much insight into high politics is a threat.’

Vespasian made no comment; if the Great King of Parthia could make inferences from his two-month term of office, then he knew he had been right to read it as an insult.

‘So, my friend,’ Vologases continued, ‘I may call you that, mayn’t I?’

‘I am honoured.’

‘Because of Radamistus’ behaviour, when I go back to Armenia next year I will have the nobility on my side and I will sweep Radamistus from the country and reinstall my younger brother as king. It will take quite an army a few campaigning seasons to prise him out again once I’ve put him back. It will provide a very good distraction in Rome during the change of regime and will no doubt give young Nero his first victory in the Purple and thus secure him in power. From what my agents tell me he has the potential to make Caligula seem a sane and reasonable man. A man who gets pleasure from sleeping with his own mother on a regular basis will undoubtedly descend into unrestrained excess and depravity in search of new thrills.’

Vespasian nodded, smiling thinly. ‘And you think what I think?’

‘I think he will be the last of the line, which is why Parthia will do everything in her power to ensure that he inherits. We’ll let the war rumble on in Armenia, then come to some diplomatic solution, after which Nero will concentrate on glorifying himself and financially ruin Rome. His subsequent assassination will spark a civil war that will further deplete Rome’s coffers and whoever comes out on top will have such a financial crisis to deal with that he will find it hard to defend his borders. Then, if Ahura Mazda has spared me, I can decide how to treat with the new Emperor from a position of power.’

‘Why do you tell me this?’

‘I was just curious as to why you support Nero with its inevitable consequences.’

‘To rid Rome of the Julio-Claudians once and for all.’

Vologases got to his feet. ‘And with whom would you replace them? I tell you, my friend, if you were my subject there would be very few extremities still attached to your body.’ He gave a friendly smile as Vespasian, too, rose. ‘I wish you a safe journey tomorrow. I have ordered a troop of royal camel archers to accompany the caravan; not too many so as not to draw undue attention to it but enough to see you safely back to your empire. I wish you luck; I doubt that our paths will cross again.’

CHAPTER XVI

‘Y
OU
’
VE GOT TO
be joking with me.’ Magnus stared in horror at the saddled camel, kneeling, waiting to be mounted; a grinning camel-wrangler held its bridle.

‘How else do you plan to travel across the desert?’ Vespasian asked, sizing up the beast that he was supposed to ride; it eyed him back with a haughty look, chewing methodically.

‘We had horses when we crossed from Syria.’

‘That’s further north and it wasn’t such a long journey. Mehbazu tells me that horses only stand a chance of making it across to Judaea in winter.’

‘Mehbazu should know; he’s made the journey at least a dozen times,’ Gobryas said. ‘It can take up to fifteen days to make the crossing once you’ve taken the ferry over the Euphrates.’

They were on the west bank of the Tigris having taken one of Gobryas’ boats across at dawn. The caravan had been ready, waiting for them along with the eighty royal camel archers that Vologases had promised. Mehbazu, the caravan leader, had greeted Vespasian with a degree of awe as the man to whom the Great King of Parthia had shown such honour in providing him with men from his personal guard.

The seven other merchants travelling in the caravan had touched their foreheads and bowed to Vespasian as a man in high favour with their monarch, and so it was with a fervent desire not to make a fool of himself in public that he approached the waiting mount that seemed to have the entire fly population on this side of the Tigris feasting in its nostrils.

A loud, bestial bellow announced Hormus’ successful mounting as his camel rose, hind legs first, almost unseating its novice rider. Hormus’ camel-wrangler then mounted his own
beast, showed him how to hold his legs to one side of the neck and then demonstrated how to use the goad to persuade the animal to move.

Vespasian and Magnus watched the lesson, which Hormus seemed to digest well.

‘His confidence has returned now that he feels you’ve forgiven him for our arrest,’ Magnus observed as Hormus managed to make his mount turn to the left.

Vespasian raised an eyebrow at Magnus. ‘But I did warn him that he would end up like Bagoas if he ever again jeopardised my safety with his desire to interfere with young lads’ bottoms.’

‘That should keep his mind focused and his cock in his loincloth.’

The lesson came to an end, Vespasian and Magnus looked at each other and shrugged and then, with differing degrees of confidence, climbed onto the saddles perched atop their camels’ humps.

Vespasian feared for his neck as his body was violently jerked by his camel rising to all four feet. The merchants and the eighty royal camel archers waited patiently as Vespasian, Magnus and Hormus practised starting, steering and stopping their novel mounts until they felt confident enough to embark on the five-hundred-mile journey to the Roman frontier.

‘May Ahura Mazda watch over you, Vespasian,’ Gobryas said in farewell.

Vespasian looked down from his high perch. ‘Thank you, my friend. And thank you for my life.’

‘It was given in payment of a debt; we are now equal.’

With a smile and a nod, Vespasian acknowledged the truth of the statement and urged his beast forward, giving a last wave to his saviour.

‘What did the Great King have to say?’ Magnus asked, drawing his mount level with Vespasian as behind them, with much bellowing, roaring and snorting, the hundred or so heavily laden pack camels were urged to their feet and into motion by their handlers.

‘Oh, he just proved what a good mind-reader he is,’ Vespasian replied, trying to settle into the rhythm of his camel’s gait.

‘What do you mean?’

‘He told me that if I had been one of his subjects, he would have me executed or mutilated for having treasonous intent.’

‘And have you?’

‘Not directly, Magnus, but Vologases taught me two things yesterday: first, that a ruler must be able to show mercy, otherwise his punishments mean nothing. And second, that nothing should ever be taken at face value, especially when you’re dealing with the motivation of an enemy; always ask yourself the question “why?”.’

‘Like: why am I on this camel?’

Vespasian laughed. ‘No, that was not what I meant. The real question in this case is: why did you let yourself be persuaded into mounting the camel?’

The riders had appeared from the south, shimmering wraiths in the heat haze, and had shadowed the caravan for the last few hours. Every time the officer commanding the camel archers sent out a patrol to investigate them, the riders fled; once the patrol had been recalled they would return and take up station again, always two or three miles distant. Like the caravan, they were mounted on camels, but unlike the caravan they were not hampered by heavily laden beasts of burden.

Vespasian gazed south, shading his eyes against the glare of the sun that burned down on the wasted land. ‘I can still only count twenty or so; they’d be foolish to try and take on four times their number.’ He looked back down the caravan; it was a quarter of a mile long. It comprised almost one hundred camels, loaded either with goods or water-skins, strung together in groups of five, each led by a mounted slave. Mehbazu and the seven merchants to whom the camels and goods belonged rode, along with Vespasian, Magnus and Hormus, at the head, while to either side it was guarded by Vologases’ archers. It was not a large force but a formidable one in this parched desert that could barely support life and certainly could not support a large body of men and beasts, unless they brought their own water and knew the locations of the very few wells and oases that were scattered
about this unwanted buffer zone between the Parthian and the Roman Empires. Nobody lived here except the riders. ‘So the gods alone know what they think they’re doing.’

‘Fucking Arabs!’ Magnus opined, trying to adjust his position on his camel’s saddle; he had not been comfortable for eleven days now.

‘Nabataeans,’ Vespasian corrected.

‘You told me that they were called Nabataean Arabs.’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘Well, I ain’t going to waste my breath saying all that, so, fucking Arabs.’

‘Have it your own way.’ Vespasian pushed his white linen headdress away from his eyes and looked back out at the riders. ‘I’d still like to know what they want.’

‘Perhaps they want to trade?’ Vahumisa, one of the merchants, suggested hopefully; as Gobryas’ representative in the caravan its success was a matter of acute financial interest to him.

‘Then why don’t they just come close and ask us?’

‘Perhaps they don’t like the idea of coming so close to eighty archers,’ Magnus said, his head going back and forth out of time to his beast’s lumbering gait; he had not got the knack of riding camels and it was not looking hopeful that he ever would, even with the splint off his now mended arm.

‘That’s a fair point, I suppose. What do you think, Mehbazu?’

Mehbazu looked south to the riders and shook his head as if they were of little import. ‘They want what everyone wants: money. They’re just trying to work out the best way of extracting some from us.’

‘Will they?’

‘Inevitably; the Nabataeans are notorious thieves, blackmailers, extortionists and murderers. Somehow they’ll leave here richer and there’s nothing we can do about it.’

Vespasian decided not to concern himself any more about the Nabataeans until they posed a less distant threat; instead he turned his mind back to the question that had occupied him for the last eleven days since leaving Ctesiphon: how would he get Pallas to protect him from Agrippina? Could he even guarantee
that Pallas could still be in a position to protect him from Agrippina? A lot would have changed in politics during his absence and Pallas may well now be out of favour with the Empress. What he did know was that just before he had left for the East, Pallas had managed to secure his younger brother Felix the procuratorship of Judaea. Marcus Antonius Felix had been Antonia’s steward for her considerable property in Alexandria; she had freed him in her will and he had remained in the city after her death, looking after her affairs for her son, Claudius. It had been Felix who had helped Vespasian and Magnus steal Alexander the Great’s breastplate from his mummified corpse in his mausoleum. If anyone knew the current situation back in Rome it would be Felix, the one-time slave who now ruled a Roman province. Vespasian decided that once they crossed the border, in a couple of days, he would head straight for Caesarea, the administrative capital of Judaea. There he could consult with Felix; indeed, if he found him still in position as procurator that in itself would tell him much about Pallas’ standing back in Rome.

If Felix was not still the procurator and Pallas had fallen from favour, Vespasian would find out from his replacement whether Narcissus had now been reinstated as Claudius’ preferred freedman. As long as one of them was in a position of power, Vespasian hoped that he could use his knowledge either to protect himself from Agrippina if he imparted it to Pallas, or to help bring her down if he imparted it to Narcissus

What Vespasian was sure about was that if Pallas or Narcissus still remained unaware of what Tryphaena was trying to achieve and how she was going about it, then his information would be of great value to one of them. What was more was that the conversation that he had had with Vologases on the day before his departure from Ctesiphon would be of much interest to either of the Greek freedmen; at least the part about being willing to continue a manufactured war to help secure Nero in power would be – he would not be mentioning anything about the Great King’s real motivation for doing so, the motivation that was identical to his own: the end of the Julio-Claudians.

It was with these thoughts going round his head that the sun faded and the caravan halted for the night on a stony knoll, a barren island in the midst of a flat sea of desolation.

Vespasian lay with his hands behind his head just gazing up at the stars. Although it was their eleventh night sleeping out in the open he was still in awe of the vastness of the sky and the multitude of tiny points of light; the heavens seemed far bigger and fuller here, out in the desert, than they had anywhere else. ‘How many people have lain on their backs, gazing up at the night sky and been overwhelmed by its splendour, do you think, Magnus?’

Magnus, lying next to him, contemplated the question for a few moments. ‘Not as many as will do.’

Vespasian frowned to himself. ‘That’s remarkably philosophical for you.’

‘What do you mean “for me”? And anyway, why are you accusing me of being philosophical? I’m just being logical.’

‘Logical?’

‘Yes, taking the facts as we know them and following them through to a conclusion based solely upon those facts without the influence of sentiment, wishful thinking or exaggeration.’

‘Oh, I really have caught you on an evening of deep thinking. So, give me the benefit of your logic, if you will.’

‘Well, it stands to reason, don’t it, sir. If, despite all the efforts we make to the contrary, people are continually being born and then survive infancy, it follows that no matter how many people have already been born, that number will be topped by those yet to be born.’

Vespasian was surprised by his friend’s insight. ‘Provided that the world doesn’t end, of course.’

‘I can’t see how it will.’

‘The Jews believe that it will; and those who follow Paulus or his rival sect that worship Yeshua believe that it will end very soon. Remember him going on about the End of Days which is at hand, or some such thing; so if he’s right, your theory, however deeply thought, is wrong.’

‘Yes, but who can believe him? He also believes that Yeshua’s mother was a virgin.’ Magnus chuckled. ‘Really? A virgin in Judaea after our lads had been marching up and down it for a few decades since Pompey conquered Jerusalem?’

‘It had reverted to being a client kingdom at the time when Yeshua would have been born so there would’ve been hardly any of our boys stationed there.’

‘Yeah, well, the only virgins I’ve ever heard getting pregnant were Vestal ones and they ended up being buried alive with a jug of water and a loaf of bread.’

Vespasian sat up and looked over to Hormus who was roasting slices of meat over a smoky, camel-dung fire. ‘You’re our expert on this, Hormus; have you heard people say that Yeshua’s mother was a virgin?’

Hormus looked up from his cooking and grinned. ‘No, master; no one would say that if they wanted people to believe the rest of the things that are spoken about Yeshua.’

Vespasian smiled back at his slave. ‘I can see that we’re all thinking deeply this evening; it must be the scale of the sky inspiring us to greater things.’ He lay back down and returned to his contemplation of the vastness above him and was about to make an observation concerning the whereabouts of the gods amongst all those stars when a series of shouts disturbed the peace of the camp. Men, clustered around other cooking fires, sprang to their feet and grabbed their weapons. But there were no sounds of conflict. Vespasian unsheathed his sword and stood cautiously, looking towards the direction of the disturbance. From out of the blackness of the desert a darker shadow emerged; none of the Royal Guards made any attempt to stop it – in fact, quite the reverse: they backed away from it. As the shadow came within range of the glow of the fires it resolved into a group of men, almost two dozen, Vespasian estimated. They came unarmed and made no threat to any man. In their midst were a couple of the royal archers who had been on sentry duty out in the darkness; they were unharmed and released in full view of everyone to show that the newcomers came in peace.

The party then stopped and one man stepped forward and looked around. Eventually his eyes rested on Vespasian and he smiled the smile of a man who had just had his suspicions confirmed. ‘Greetings, Titus Flavius Vespasianus, former Consul of Rome. My name is Malichus; I am the second of that name to rule the Kingdom of the Nabataeans. I have come to inform you that you are trespassing on my land.’ He hefted a full goat skin, his smile growing ever broader beneath his bush of a beard. ‘However, I am willing to overlook that for a little while and share my wine with you.’