Magnus was surprised. ‘You mean there’s a whole city full of Greeks in the middle of the Parthian Empire?’
‘Yes, and most cities have a sizable Greek or Macedonian minority. Thousands of colonists came out in the wake of Alexander and most of them stayed. There are Greek speakers all the way to India. Parthia is not an empire just comprising Persians, Medes and Assyrians; there are many different peoples and all owe allegiance to the King of Kings, who, incidentally, is the son of the previous incumbent, Vorones, and a Greek concubine.’
‘They get everywhere, the Greeks,’ Magnus said, shaking his head in disapproval.
‘What have you got against the Greeks?’
‘What, apart from being liars and cheats with an uncommon desire to be buggered and a penchant for sleeping with close relatives?’
‘Yes, apart from all that.’
‘Well, nothing, I suppose, other than the fact that Pallas and Narcissus are both Greek and look at how much trouble they’ve piled upon us in their lives. Tryphaena turns out to be Greek and it would seem that she’s responsible for us being, without any obvious allies, in the middle of the Parthian Empire, which is ruled by some bastard who happens to be half-Greek. Do you want me to go on?’
‘No, no, fair enough; fucking Greeks, eh? Anyway, what we have to remember is that most Greeks are completely loyal to the regime …’
‘As loyal as any Greek can be, you mean?’
‘Yes, and as such it would be best not to let on that we’re Romans even to a Greek.’
‘Especially to a Greek; he’d sell that information faster than his sister once he’d taken her virginity. Did you hear about the Greek who took his new bride back to her family because he found out on their wedding night that she was a virgin?’
Vespasian frowned. ‘No.’
‘Well, he did, telling them that if she wasn’t good enough for her brothers then she wasn’t good enough for him.’
Vespasian laughed, long and loud; at first it was at the joke but then it became much more about the joy of freedom.
It was truly magnificent. Walls of stone, painted blue and yellow, decorated with animal motifs and studded with towers soaring to the sky, encasing a city almost the size of Rome; and that was just on the east bank of the Tigris. On the west bank, just before the river split in two to pass either side of a fortified island, there was another city, less old, set out in a grid pattern: Seleucia, the former capital of the Macedonian Seleucid Kingdom, built just over three centuries before. Equally as impressive in scale but without the painted walls, Seleucia’s ordered streets made it feel like it was purpose built; whereas the higgledy-piggledy maze of Ctesiphon’s layout showed a city that had grown slowly from nothing over the centuries. These two monuments to human achievement sat half a mile apart, either side of the Tigris, swarming with life, feeding off the great river that at the same time joined and separated them. Crafts of all sizes ploughed through the gently flowing water, browned by sewage, back and forth between the two cities as they supported each other in a symbiotic relationship of trade.
And it was because of trade that Vespasian, Magnus and Hormus had come, or, at least, to follow a lead based upon trade, and, as they steered their boat into the harbour just to the south of Ctesiphon’s walls, Vespasian realised that it would be a daunting task to find Ataphanes’ family: not even in Ostia had he ever seen so many mercantile ships. The quay was a mass of merchants and slaves; the merchants haggling and bargaining, the slaves lifting and humping. Sacks, bags, crates, baskets, amphorae and bales, all containing the produce of scores of exotic lands, were loaded onto and off-loaded from the traders in an endless cycle of commerce fuelled by greed and coinage.
‘Where are we going to start looking amongst all this?’ Vespasian said as Hormus slipped the boat into a free berth.
‘Spice merchants must congregate somewhere,’ Magnus observed, throwing a painter up to a young lad of thirteen or fourteen who seemed to have taken it upon himself to assist with their mooring.
‘Smell the air, it’s drenched with spices; there must be thousands of spice merchants here.’
‘Ah, but how many deal with the Jews of Alexandria?’ Magnus studied the activity for a few moments, watching a trail of slaves lug wicker baskets from a ship straight into one of the scores of warehouses lining the harbour. ‘I imagine all this is coming in from the East because I know from looking at that map that the Tigris flows out into the sea and then that sea will take you all the way to India. What we need to do is find the merchants who trade the other way; the merchants who take the goods out of the warehouses and then send them on caravans west.’
It seemed to Vespasian, as he clambered out of the boat, to be a decent point and as good a starting place as any. Hormus followed him out, eagerly accepting the help of the boy, who did not seem to mind the slave’s hands resting on parts of his anatomy that were not strictly in the way nor of much use for helping people out of boats.
‘Does he speak Aramaic?’ Vespasian asked as the boy looked with goggle-eyes at a silver coin that Hormus had extracted from the purse on his belt.
After a brief, unintelligible conversation, Hormus confirmed that his new friend did indeed speak Aramaic, which, judging from his expression, pleased the slave immensely.
‘Ask him whether the spice merchants who deal with exporting goods to the West have any guild or regular meeting place or whatever.’
A short conversation ensued, during which Hormus seemed to find it necessary to emphasise a point by gently stroking the Persian boy’s arm; the slave looked back at his master. ‘Bagoas here says that there are many associations of traders throughout the city and over in Seleucia as well.’
Vespasian thought for a few moments. ‘Ataphanes was Persian, I believe; not Median, Babylonian or Assyrian or any of the other sorts. Ask him where I should start to look for a Persian spice merchant.’
Another conversation followed involving a lot of eye contact, some shy smiles and, it seemed to Vespasian and Magnus, an unnecessary amount of stroking. ‘We need to go to the agora near to the royal palace,’ Hormus said, briefly dragging his eyes away from his informant.
‘Good, tell him there is a drachma in it for him to show us the way there and then act as our guide for the rest of the day.’ Vespasian paused before adding with a smile, ‘And night.’
‘You shouldn’t encourage him,’ Magnus grumbled as Hormus translated Vespasian’s wishes. ‘This is what I meant; he just can’t help himself. Everywhere we went it was the same thing; I wouldn’t have minded so much had all the grunting and groaning not kept me awake on so many nights.’
Bagoas whistled and another couple of boys emerged from the crowds on the quay; both were a year or two younger than him and, judging by their looks, were either his brothers or cousins.
Hormus eyed the boys with interest as Bagoas pointed to them and explained their presence. ‘He says that they will look after the boat for a drachma each now and another on your return in the morning.’
Vespasian shook his head. ‘Tell Bagoas that if he helps us find the people we’re looking for we won’t need the boat and he and the boys can keep it.’
After they had settled their account with the inevitable harbour official demanding mooring fees as well as a small donation directly into his own purse based on the number of people arriving in the boat which seemed to be in lieu of any goods in their possession worth stealing, Bagoas led them towards the city.
One look at the buildings lining the wide thoroughfare that dived, straight as an arrow’s flight, from the harbour gate, bisecting the maze of streets, into the heart of the city was enough for anyone to realise that Ctesiphon was the heart of power. Only the dwellings of the noble or the immortal were allowed in such a prime position; consequently it was a succession of brightly painted palaces and temples interspersed with paradises — areas of manicured cultivation whose beauty exceeded the Gardens of Lucullus. Wide, splendid and rich and lined with many varieties of trees and flowering shrubs, the thoroughfare had been designed to mask the haphazard planning and the nonexistent sewage system of the rest of the ancient city so that the Great King saw only beauty and grandeur and breathed nothing but sweet air as he made his way to his main palace at Ctesiphon’s centre. But today the Great King was not using his way in and out of the city so the population were graciously allowed to promenade up and down and stare at its wonders.