The Silk Tree (6 page)

‘He will naturally resist any Roman attempt to break his hold over the silk trade and if your party is armed, as it must assuredly be, then it will mean war. The Emperor is sorely distracted by the loss of Rome and would never contemplate another Persian war, no matter what the advantages. I cannot readily see how you will overcome this, gentlemen.’

‘We’ll go around them.’

‘March a small expedition into the very lair of the Goths? I rather think not.’

Nicander replied hastily, ‘Then we go in disguise! Just we two, honest merchants about our business.’

‘And be instantly taken up as Roman spies? Your Persian is an epicure in the arts of torture – the very least you might expect is to be impaled through the anus and raised on high as a caution to us all.’

John the Cappadocian smiled serenely. ‘However, I like the conceit of disguise, on reflection it merely needs refinement. I can well see how it might be handled.’ He steepled his hands.

‘Please go on, sir,’ Nicander said.

‘Then it is this. A brace of devout and intrepid gentlemen of god, of whatever species they may be, might without excessive hindrance pass through the lands of Zoroaster about their holy mission.’

‘Be buggered to that! I’ll not prat about like a poxy monk for any man!’ Marius burst out.

‘Did I say you must? You asked me for advice, I’m laying out the alternatives, wherever they might lead …’

‘Yes, yes, please continue, sir!’ Nicander spluttered, glaring at Marius.

‘So, you do not propose to go in the nature of a military expedition. This will greatly reduce expenses and will be looked upon favourably.’

Nicander brightened.

‘Yet the sum needed will remain substantial.’

‘For our travel needs?’

‘Not so. You will be begging your way in the usual fashion and, of course, living frugally. No, I was more thinking about far kingdoms and strange peoples. I would find it singular, indeed, should your way be not greatly eased by the judicious laying out of inducements.’

‘Bribe our way out of situations.’

‘That is not the customary term, but it will serve. And naturally when in the fabled land of the Seres, will not your persuasion to loosen their grip on a trifle of seeds be in the nature of things golden?’

For the first time it was all looking possible. ‘It does appear we have a basis for moving ahead on the project,’ Nicander replied. ‘What do you think are our chances – with Emperor Justinian, that is?’

John the Cappadocian eased into an oily smile. ‘Why, I would have thought
quite positive. The idea will, without a doubt, attract his interest and a few hundred thousands to him is neither here nor there. With my considerable help you will gain his attention in this.

‘You will, of course, be presenting a costed estimate based on a comprehensive plan with distances, timing and good evidence of your knowledge of the impediments to be encountered. Whether he will consider you yourselves as suitable for the expedition will depend on your credibility, otherwise you will be thanked with a pittance for your suggestion and others will be appointed.’

‘I understand, sir. We’ll begin work on it immediately! There is the question of gaining audience with His Imperial Majesty. How …?’

‘The usual sanction is to petition for a hearing, but this requires you state your business first with the referendary regulating such access. I do not recommend this course if you desire discretion in the matter of your idea.’

His flabby brow furrowed. ‘The Master of the Offices is the untouchable Peter the Patrician, who would never countenance private access, still less the wooden-headed Marcellus, Count of Excubitors and not a man to cross.’

He reflected for a moment. ‘I fear our greatest obstacle, however, will be the cunning and entirely corrupt Peter Barsymes, whose reptilian hide is as slimy as his manner. You will know him as the Count of the Sacred Largesse – Emperor Justinian’s privy treasurer.’

The ‘our’ triggered a sudden thrill in Nicander.

‘No! Leave this to me. The matter is too delicate for precipitate action. Do prepare your plan, return with it and we shall discuss it together. I will ensure it reaches the ear of the Emperor, do not doubt it.’

Heaving himself upright he leant across, holding their eyes. ‘Meanwhile – trust no one! Speak not to a soul, distrust the very walls. The palace is an evil place, where behind a genial manner every man’s hand is set against his brother, where a father sells his daughter for power and gain, and worse that I cannot speak of it. Go now, we’ll meet again when your plans are ready …’

Nicander fought down his exhilaration. From utter despair to the situation now – when anything seemed possible!

‘I really do believe we’re on to something. I reckon at the very least Justinian will reward us handsomely.’

Marius merely grunted in reply.

Nicander allowed his thoughts to roam. Their spoils would probably be vast: this was no less than the saving of a king’s ransom in gold at a time when the Byzantines needed all the wealth they could find to preserve the country’s borders against the tidal surge of barbarians.

It seemed so unreal: this wretched squalor and the talk of gold and empires in which he was a central player.

He glanced at Marius, who now had a brooding expression.

‘I do think that notion of going as monks makes a lot of sense, don’t you? On the way back we can even hide the seeds in a holy relic or some such.’

There was another ill-natured grunt.

Nicander sighed; he was not going to let Marius’s mood spoil the moment.

‘So. A plan. It’s got to be a good one, credible and appealing to an emperor. How do we start?’

Marius sat unblinking, a scowl now darkening his face.

‘We’ve first got to work out a route that takes us past the Goths and other
foul heathens. And to make us sound credible we have to know in detail what we’re talking about. This will, as well, tell us what’s ahead so we can plan for it, put it in the costings. Where do we get such information? It has to be from impeccable sources and as comprehensive as we can manage. Of course! The library, right here in the city! All the knowledge of Serica and the East … it must have everything.’

There was still no response from Marius and Nicander was beginning to be irritated by his sullen attitude. Did he not see the scale of the task?

‘Be in classical Greek or legal Latin, naturally,’ he went on, ‘Shouldn’t be too much of a problem. Only thing is, so much to get through.’

Suddenly Marius got to his feet with a venomous glare and stormed out.

The next morning Nicander was vexed to see Marius’s mood was still there but he decided to let whatever was riding the man pass in its own time.

He took up his satchel. ‘I’ve had a few thoughts about topics to investigate. I don’t have to tell you that I have to be disciplined in this or I’ll not cover the ground in time. So I’ll be off, then. Don’t know how long I’ll be.’

But just before he reached the door Marius thrust himself across it, barring his way. ‘You don’t fucking need me now, do you!’

Nicander stopped in his tracks, taken aback by the outburst.

‘Admit it!’ Marius snarled. ‘All your grand plans, prancing off to a library – you don’t want an old caligatus getting in the way, spoiling your pitch! I’m no fucking use to you any more, right?’

‘Why—’

‘So what do I bloody well do? Hey?’

‘Well—’

‘See! I saw you with that scumbag John the Cappadocian. He only spoke to you, didn’t he? Didn’t say shite to me. You’re going off to speak to Emperor Justinian yourself – can you see him giving me the time o’ day? No way!’

‘It’s not like that—’

‘I’m a shame to you! To drag about and act dumb all the time – you don’t have to fling it in my face, I know.’

‘Marius—’

‘You’re going to dump me. But have the guts to tell me first!’

Nicander sat down slowly. So that was what was goading him.

‘I’ve no intention of getting rid of you, Marius. In this venture you’ve equal shares with me.’

The legionary breathed deeply. ‘Listen to me, Greek. Don’t you dare patronise me. You go out of that fucking door without you swearing on all that’s holy that you’ll not betray me … you won’t find me here when you get back!’

In a rush of feeling Nicander realised that he was about to challenge fortune for the greatest stakes of his life yet he had not a single one to trust, any to whom he could safely open his heart, lay out troubles and frustrations, share the burdens – except this bear of a man with his strong, uncomplicated views.

He stood and clasped Marius’s hand. ‘We’ve gone through so much together …’ He paused, aware that a lump was forming in his throat. ‘And in what lies ahead I want you with me. I’ll swear, if you insist, but I allow before all that you’re my true friend and … I could never let you down.’

At first there was no reaction. Then the other big hand came out and a smile surfaced. ‘Friends. Yes. You and me, Nico – that is, Nicander,’ Marius added with a self-conscious chuckle.

‘No, m’ friend, it’s Nico.’ He grinned. ‘But only from you!’

In a haze of excitement Nicander stepped out along The Mese. His destination was the public library of the Emperor Julian of two centuries before – since the destruction of the Library of Alexandria, the acknowledged centre of learning of the civilised world.

Their great venture was now under way!

At the Forum of Theodosius he turned right towards the arched aqueduct of Valens. Where it met the rise of a hill there was a modest basilica, opposite the grander buildings of the university and overlooked by the Praetorium.

A number of stalls outside sold knick-knacks: stylus and wax tablet sets, finger guards and offcuts of parchment. One of the industries in the library was the copying of decaying papyrus documents to vellum, prepared from more long-lasting animal skins. With a few of his precious remaining coins, Nicander purchased several small pieces on which to make notes.

The library had the reek of ages past. He made his way inside through an old-fashioned columned doorway passing rhetors, grey-and-black robed learned scholars. An open space filled with desks stretched ahead to an apse and a dais with a pulpit-style desk where the stern literary steward sat.

There were three open floors with an endless warren of scroll nooks in the lower, broader shelves for the codices in the upper.

Nicander found an empty desk and looked about at the scores of students perched on stools working silently. They took no notice of a newcomer but an assistant steward quietly appeared at his side. In low tones he explained the structure of the library and Nicander was soon at a well-thumbed index.

The first thing he wanted to equip himself with was all there was to be known about silk. The ancients would have what he sought!

He asked for a well-remembered tome of his youth – the
Naturalis Historia
of the elder Pliny, who had lost his life on the seashore of Pompeii as the volcano rained destruction.

Several volumes of the work arrived. Sections on geography, nature, more.

In a dissertation about silk at origin, Pliny’s view was that it was nothing more than an insect’s lidle weaving of a cocoon. A commentary below by another declared that it was in fact the hair of the sea-sheep.

Nicander asked for a further volume. It got worse: this one mentioned that in far Sinae gigantic spiders were held prisoner in cages and spun silk while being fed on condemned criminals. Yet another reference stated that silk was scraped from the underside of the common mulberry.

It was deeply unsettling. How could the ancient scholars disagree so?

He found his eyes focusing on the literary steward. Taking his courage in hand, he threaded his way between the rows of desks.

‘Learned gentleman, I have a question.’

The august figure frowned.

‘Sir, I’m engaged in the writing of a paean to beauty, in particular to that of man-wrought silk, and I rather thought it would lend a pleasing turn to the conceit if I were to make reference to its origin.’

The man’s face cleared, apparently satisfied that he was to be troubled for no less a reason than the sublimity of a poem’s creation. ‘Why, surely you’re aware it grows upon the silk tree?’ he replied in ponderous tones. ‘The authorities are clear on this.’

‘As I thought, sir. But Pliny and some others would have it otherwise.’

‘Your minor scribblers are never reliable. As to the good Pliny, there have
been instances where regrettably he has been found to be in error and his observations in this case are not to be relied upon. The more substantive of the classical authors are the authorities you will wish to consult. The Virgil
Georgics
spring to mind – as does the
Phaedra
of Seneca the Younger.’

In a wash of relief Nicander found among the heavy-going homilies of Virgil that silk did indeed originate from trees, and in fact there was a mention of a fine-tooth comb of special design used by the Seres to harvest the precious substance from the leaves.

He then turned to the
Phaedra
, a gruesome play of taboo love, suicide and a cruel man’s relentless will, persevering until he came across a reference to silken garments won from the silk tree in far away Serica.

He could now move on to the next objective: where was Sinae and how to get there.

Accounts by travellers would no doubt reveal what he needed and he busied himself at the index. The first he decided to consult were the reports of the envoys of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to the mysterious Seres. They would be a logical beginning to his reading, even though they had been written a good three centuries earlier, in the period before the Roman Emperor Valens had been slain by the Persians and their entire access to the East cut off.

The assistant steward brought the work. While filled with exotic details of impossible beasts it was written neither by merchants with an eye to the practicalities nor a geographer, or even a military man concerned with where they were. And it was plain that this was not an official mission, only a half-hearted attempt to open communications, which was admitted to have failed.

Nicander pored over more accounts. The revered historian Ammianus Marcellinus was the most detailed. He had compiled a picture of Scythia – and Serica beyond – but it was a wild tale of Syziges and Chardes, Alitrophages and Annibes, in wearisome succession, together with dogmatic assertions on climate and terrain that made no sense. But Marcellinus did confirm the production of silk originated from a soft fine down spun into thread,
gathered from the trees while the leaves were continuously moistened.

The rest just spoke of dragons and gryphons. Nothing on the location of the land of Serica.

Once again Nicander made his way up to the pulpit. This time he was awarded a look of benevolent indulgence.

‘Sir, you were entirely correct in the particulars concerning the source of silk. Yet my enquiring mind thirsts to know more – where in the world is this Sinae, that gifts man with such beauty?’

‘Quite so. It is to your credit, young man, that you so ardently seek after such knowledge in this crass commercial world. And in furtherance of a work of literary art I believe I will help you.’

He wrote something on a slate and handed it over. ‘Go to the Chamber of Apollo and present this.’

Nicander anxiously waited in the small room. Shortly the attendant returned with a single sheet.

It was a map by Pomponius Mela in the reign of Claudius Caesar, from a time of empire and conquest. Nicander examined it carefully; he knew maps of the mercantile kind which detailed market areas but this was different. It was of the entire known world, the
oikoumene
. The centre was dominated by the Mediterranean, with the continents radiating out from it, the whole surrounded by a boundless ocean.

He quickly found familiar territory: Africa to the right with his birth town of Leptis Magna in tiny script, Europa to the left, Constantinople among the densely packed legends in the middle. He eagerly scanned the map, searching for Serica. It was right at the top.

Nowhere on the map, however, was there a marking to show north or south, nor any indication of distance. At the edge of the land mass, there was on one side, the burning Ethiopian Sea, on the other the frigid Hyperborean regions. Hispania was at the bottom limit.

Having found Serica was as maddening as it was enticing, for the entire region existed without a single notation, neither town nor river. The only information he could draw from the map was that by comparing relative sizes,
the distance to reach the Seres was nearly as far as the entire length of the Mediterranean!

The next item that was brought was a fat roll of vellum, a foot broad, twenty feet long, infinitely detailed. An
itinerarium
, used within the Roman world when travelling between one town and another along public roads, it listed distances and inn stops. This particular one claimed to record
every
road and town that existed.

There was no pretence at scale or topography; it was simply a lengthy skein of routes originating from Rome to the furthest reaches of Empire. At one end was the outermost extremity of the west, the now-lost province of Britannia, and at the other were the last outposts of civilisation to the east, tailing off with a tantalising reference to the legendary island of Taprobane and a bewildering confusion of barbaric names beyond Scythia that had no meaning to him.

Nicander rubbed his eyes, determined to persevere.

A third item arrived, a map of the world by the famed geographer Ptolemy of Alexandria, his
Geographia
.

Along the base of the map and its sides was a series of numbered lines. The accompanying gloss explained that these were real-world degrees of latitude derived from observations of the sun’s altitude, the longitude degrees arbitrarily assigned to make a regular square with the latitude. The entire land mass therefore was distributed under a grid of these lines which had been said to have been taken from actual measurement and should thus at last give a true picture of distances and directions.

Finally here was both a scientific and practical map! It looked much different to the others: Rome and indeed Italia seemed impossibly small against the vast expanses of Asia and Africa and Constantinople was almost lost over to the left.

Nicander concentrated, trying to take in how it all related. The frigid regions in the north were at the top and the burning deserts at the bottom. He’d heard that the limits to the world were impassable snow and ice in the north, warming by degrees until in the far south the heat reached the
point where the sea itself boiled. He could see how the mass of Africa curved down and around to connect with south-east Asia on the other side, enclosing a vast inland sea with Taprobane in the centre.

The Seres. They were over to the right, past mountain ranges, deserts and vast empty spaces. Over one hundred and twenty of Ptolemy’s longitude degrees, which when brought to real terms was a distance to be measured in thousands of miles!

The steward pointed out that in addition to this world map there were separate regional descriptions on other sheets.

Fighting weariness, Nicander took in the one of the extreme Orient. There indeed was Serica, the land of the Seres, the other side of an impassable desert. Before it was Scythia, the inner home of shadowy tribes so savage and bloodthirsty that it was said the Huns and Goths were fleeing before them to fall on softer civilised peoples.

This map divided the Scythians into the Western
hippophagi
, the horse-eaters and the Eastern
anthropophagi
, the man-eaters. The rest of the sheet was vacant space – was it because travellers never returned from there to tell the tale?

Nicander was about to give up when the literary steward entered the room holding a large, brightly coloured map. ‘I came to bring you this,’ he said with pride. ‘It is lately produced and contains all we know of our place in creation.’

It was the work of the cartographer Cosmas Indicopleustes. His map was apparently constructed on an entirely new theoretical principle. Nicander tried to show enthusiasm as the steward explained that this was based on a sensible flat earth and was in the form of a rectangle with raised corners supporting a curved heaven. And modelled after the design of the tabernacle of Moses and being divinely inspired, it could obviously be relied upon.

But it completely contradicted all other sources.

Night was drawing in as Nicander headed back, bitterly disheartened. His meagre notes offered virtually nothing on which to begin laying down detailed
plans for an expedition and he’d seen little to suggest there was anything of value left to discover.

As he passed by the Nymphaeum, several prostitutes waved gaily at him but he had no taste for playful banter and trudged on, ignoring the insults that followed him.

In effect he had established three things only: that silk was indeed harvested from the silk tree, that the land of the Seres was all but unknown and that it was at a staggering distance, in an uncertain direction through barbarian hordes of unimaginable ferocity.

Now he would have to face a trusting Marius waiting for answers.