The Grass Crown (12 page)

“They bleed us dry,” he was told so many times he judged it to be the truth rather than the typical grumblings of men who grumbled only to hide their prosperity, as rich farmers and those running monopoly businesses did.

“How so?” he replied at first, and was asked where he had been since the death of King Attalus thirty years earlier.

So he concocted a tale of long wanderings to the north of the Euxine Sea, secure in the knowledge that should some fellow quiz him on Olbia or Cimmeria, he could indeed speak of these places as one who had seen them.

“In Rome,” he was told, “they have two very high officials they call censors. They are elected—isn’t that odd?—and they must previously have been consuls, which shows you how important they are. Now in any decent Greek community, the business of the State is run by proper civil employees, not men who might last year have been leading armies! Not so in Rome, where these censors are complete amateurs in business. Yet they have control of every kind of State business, and it is their job every five years to let contracts on behalf of the State.”

“Contracts?” asked the oriental despot, frowning.

“Contracts. Like any other contracts, except that these are between companies in business and the Roman State,” said the merchant of Pergamum whom Mithridates was entertaining.

“I fear I have been too long in places ruled by kings,” said the King. “Does the Roman State have no servants to ensure its enterprises are properly run?”

“Only the magistrates—consuls and praetors and aediles and quaestors—and they are solely interested in one thing, that the Treasury of Rome be full.” The Pergamite merchant sniggered. “Of course, friend, quite often their major concern is that their own purses be full!”

“Continue. I am fascinated.”

“Our plight here is all the fault of Gaius Gracchus.”

“One of the Sempronius brothers?”

“The same. The younger one. He legislated to have the taxes of Asia collected by companies of men specially formed for the purpose. That way, he reasoned, the Roman State could have its share without actually employing tax-gatherers. Out of his laws the Asian publicani were born, the men who farm the taxes here. The censors in Rome announce to the bidders for contracts the terms the State requires. In the case of the taxes of Asia Province, they announce the sum of money the Treasury wants paid in each year for the next five years—not the actual sum of money to be collected in Asia Province. That figure is up to the tax companies to decide, as they have to make a profit for themselves before paying the Treasury what they contracted to pay it. So a squadron of accountants sit down with their abacuses and calculate how much it will be possible to squeeze from Asia Province annually for the next five years, and then the bid for the contract is made.”

“Forgive me, I must be dense—how can it matter to Rome what amount is bid, if the sum the State wants has already been told to the bidders?”

“Ah! But that figure, my dear fellow, is merely the minimum the Treasury is prepared to accept! So what happens is that each company of publicani tries to calculate a figure that will be sufficiently higher than the minimum to make the Treasury very happy indeed—and also incorporate in it a fat profit!”

“Oh, I see,” said Mithridates, blowing through his nose. “The contract is let to the firm which makes the highest bid.”

“Correct.”

“But is the figure bid the figure to be paid to the Treasury, or the whole sum including the fat profit?”

The merchant laughed. “Only the sum to be paid to the State, friend! What sort of profit the company expects to make is purely company information, and the censors don’t ask any questions, believe me. They open the bids, and whichever firm has offered the Treasury the most is the firm awarded the contract.”

“Do the censors ever award the contract to a firm bidding less than the highest figure?”

“Not in my memory, friend.”

“And the result of all this? Are the company estimates, for instance, within the bounds of probability, or are they far too optimistic?” Mithridates asked, knowing the answer.

“Well, what do you think? The publicani base their estimates, as far as we can tell, on a set of figures obtained from a survey done in the Garden of the Hesperides, not Attalus’s Asia Minor! So when there’s a fall in production in the smallest district and in the smallest activity there, all of a sudden the publicani panic—the sum they’ve contracted to pay the Treasury is suddenly more than they’re gathering! If only they’d make their bids realistic, everyone would be better off! As it is, unless we have a bumper harvest, don’t lose a single sheep in the shearing or the lambing, sell every last link of chain, foot of rope, piece of fabric, hide of cow, amphora of wine and medimnus of olives—why, the tax-farmers start squeezing, and everybody suffers,” said the merchant bitterly.

“How do they squeeze?” asked Mithridates, wondering where the camps of soldiers were, as he had seen none in his travels.

“They hire Cilician mercenaries from the areas where even wild Cilician sheep starve, and they let them loose. I’ve seen whole districts sold into slavery, down to the last woman and child, no matter how old or how young. I’ve seen whole fields dug up and houses pulled down, searching for money. Oh, friend, if I told you everything I’ve seen the tax-farmers do to squeeze a drop more, you’d weep! Crops confiscated except for just enough to let the farmer and his family eat and plant the next year’s crop, flocks halved, shops and stalls rifled—and the worst of it is that it encourages people to lie and cheat—if they don’t, they lose the lot.”

“And all these tax-farming publicani are Romans?”

“Romans or Italians,” said the merchant.

“Italians,” said Mithridates thoughtfully, wishing that he hadn’t spent seven years of his childhood hiding in the Pontic forests; his education, as he had discovered since beginning his journey of exploration, was sadly lacking in geography and economics.

“Well, Romans, really,” explained the merchant, who wasn’t sure of the distinction either. “They come from special suburbs of Rome called Italy. But beyond that, there’s no difference as far as I can see. They all start rolling tides of Latin when they gather together instead of doing the decent thing and keeping what they say in honest Greek, and they all wear frightful unshaped and untailored tunics—the sort of thing a shepherd would be ashamed to wear, not a dart or a tuck in it to make it fit nicely.” The merchant plucked at the soft stuff of his own Greek tunic complacently, sure it had been perfectly cut to flatter his rather small and spare figure.

“Do they wear the toga?” Mithridates asked.

“Sometimes. On holidays, and if the governor summonses them,” said the merchant.

“Italians too?”

“Don’t know,” said the merchant, and shrugged. “I daresay.”

From conversations like this did Mithridates gather his information, mostly a litany of hate against the publicani and their hired minions. There was also another thriving business in Asia Province, again run by Romans; the lending of money at rates of interest no self-respecting borrower would agree to, nor self-respecting lender stipulate. And, learned Mithridates, these moneylenders were usually employees of the tax-farming companies, though the companies had no share in the money lending. Roman Asia Province, thought Mithridates, is a fat fowl the Romans pluck, they have no other interest in it. They come here from Rome and the suburbs called Italy, they pinch and squeeze and extort, and then they go home again with purses bulging, indifferent to the plight of those they leave behind, the people of Dorian, Aeolian, and Ionian Asia. And they are hated!

From Pergamum he journeyed inland to cut off the unimportant triangle called the Troad, and emerged on the southern shore of the Propontis Lake near Cyzicus. From here he rode along the Propontis Lake to Prusa, in Bithynia. Prosperous and growing, it lay in the lap of the vast, snow-covered mountain called Mysian Olympus; pausing only to note that its citizens were uninterested in the machinations of their octogenarian king, he went on to the capital of Nicomedia, where the octogenarian king kept court. It too was a prosperous and fairly large city, dominated by the temple precinct and palace atop a small acropolis, dreaming alongside its wide calm inlet.

This of course was dangerous country for a Mithridatid; it was even possible that on the streets of Nicomedia he might encounter some person who would recognize him, a priest of the far-flung confraternity of Ma or Tyche, or some Sinopean visitor. So he chose to stay in a foul-smelling inn well away from the better parts of the city, and muffled himself closely in the folds of his cloak whenever he ventured out. All he wished to do was to gain a feel of the people, test the temperature of their devotion to King Nicomedes, decide how wholeheartedly they might support their king in a war with—idle speculation though it was, of course—the King of Pontus.

The rest of winter and all of spring he spent wandering from Heracleia on the Bithynian Euxine to the remotest parts of Phrygia and Paphlagonia, observing everything from the state of the roads—more like tracks—to how much of the countryside was cleared for the planting of crops, and how educated the people were.

And thus in early summer he returned to Sinope feeling all-powerful, vindicated, brilliant, to find his sister-wife Laodice shrill-voiced and prone to feverish chatter, and his barons too quiet. His uncles Archelaus and Diophantus were dead and his cousins Neoptolemus and Archelaus were in Cimmeria, a state of affairs which left the King aware of his vulnerability, and that upset his mood of triumph, made him suppress his impulse to sit upon his throne and regale the entire court with every detail of his odyssey to the west. Instead, he dowered everyone with a breezy smile, made love to Laodice until she cried for quarter, visited all his sons and daughters and their mothers, and sat back to see what would happen next. Something was going on, of that he was sure; until he discovered its nature, he resolved to say not a word about where he had been during his long and mysterious absence, nor about his plans for the future.

Then came Gordius his Cappadocian father-in-law to see him in the night marches, a finger upon his lips, a hand indicating that they should meet upon the battlements above the palace as soon as possible. The air was silver-drenched by a great full moon, a wind blew glittering skitters across the surface of the sea, the shadows were blacker than the deepest cave, the light beneath the still orb in the sky a colorless parody of the sun. Sprawled across the neck of land which connected the mainland with the bulbous promontory whereon stood the palace, the town slept easily, dreamlessly; and the dense darkness of the walls enveloping all human habitation loomed stubby-toothed against the sheen of a low-lying cloud bank.

Midway between two watchtowers the King and Gordius met, hunched themselves down below the parapet of the battlements, and murmured too softly for sleeping birds to hear.

“Laodice was convinced that this time you would not come back, Great One,” Gordius said.

“Was she?” asked the King, stony-voiced.

“She took a lover three months ago.”

“Who?”

“Your cousin Pharnaces, Great One.”

Ah! Clever Laodice! Not a nobody lover, but one of the few males of the line who could hope to ascend the Pontic throne without fearing that eventually he would be displaced by one of the King’s brood of underaged sons. Pharnaces was the son of the fifth king’s brother—and also of the fifth king’s sister. The blood was pure on both sides; he was perfect.

“She thinks I won’t find out,” said Mithridates.

“She thinks those few who know will be too afraid to speak,” said Gordius.

“Why then are you speaking?”

Gordius smiled, teeth reflecting the moon. “My King, no one will best you! I have known it from the first time I saw you.”

“You will be rewarded, Gordius, I pledge it.” The King leaned back against the wall, and thought. Finally he said, “She will try to kill me very soon.”

“I agree, Great One.”

“How many loyal men have I got in Sinope?”

“More by far, I think, than she has. She is a woman, my King, therefore crueler and more treacherous by far than any man. Who could trust her? Those who follow her have done so for great promotions, but they rely upon Pharnaces to ensure promotion. I think they also rely upon Pharnaces killing her once he’s well established on the throne. However, most of the court was proof against their blandishments.”

“Good! I leave it to you, Gordius, to alert my loyal people as to what is going on. Tell them to be ready at any hour of the day or night,” said the King.

“What are you going to do?”

“Let her try to kill me, the sow! I know her. She’s my sister. So it won’t be knife or bow and arrow. She’ll choose poison. Something really nasty, so I suffer.”

“Great One, let me arrest her and Pharnaces at once, please!” whispered Gordius frantically. “Poison is so insidious! What if, in spite of every precaution, she should trick you into swallowing hemlock, or put an adder in your bed? Please, let me arrest them now! It will be easier.”

But the King shook his head. “I need proof, Gordius. So let her try to poison me. Let her find whatever noxious plant or mushroom or reptile she thinks will suit her purpose best, and let her administer it to me.”

“My King, my King!” quavered Gordius, appalled.

“There’s no need to worry, Gordius,” said Mithridates, his calm unimpaired, no atom of fear in his voice. “It is not generally known—even to Laodice—that during the seven years when I hid from the vengeance of my mother, I rendered myself immune to every kind of poison known to men—and some no one has yet discovered, except me. I am the world’s greatest authority upon the subject of poisons, I can say that with truth. Do you think all these scars I bear are the result of weapons? No! I have scarred myself, Gordius, to make sure that not one of my relatives can succeed in eliminating me by the easiest and least impeachable method we know—by poison.”

“So young!” marveled Gordius.

“Better to stay alive to grow old, say I! No one is going to take my throne from me.”