Inured though they were to the glories of great civilisations — coming from Rome and having visited Alexandria — Vespasian and Magnus still found themselves staring in admiration at the architecture, the scale and the human endeavour that it had taken to create this avenue.
‘That’s a stable!’ Magnus exclaimed, looking at a three-storey palace built around three sides of a courtyard in which horses were being exercised. A ramp led up to a wide balcony that ran around the first floor giving access to scores of individual stalls; a further ramp ran up to the second floor, which replicated the first. The stalls in the ground floor, however, were twice the size of those above. ‘Those horses have more room than most families back in Rome, or anywhere else for that matter.’
‘Easterners have always loved their horses,’ Vespasian pointed out, ‘and having seen the way that they whip their conscript infantry to almost certain death, does it really surprise you that the Great King’s horses are more valuable to him than his people?’
‘I suppose not; he seems to have plenty to replace the ones he loses and lots of different sorts.’
‘That’s an understatement,’ Vespasian said as Bagoas steered them through the crowds, mostly attired in the Persian and Median manner but many other styles of dress were on display reflecting the diversity of the huge empire of which this was the hub: the flowing robes and headdresses of the desert dwellers to the south, the leather of the horsemen from the northern seas of grass, dark-skinned Indians from the East in long-sleeved tunics and baggy trousers, Bactrians and Sogdians in leather caps, sheepskin jackets and embroidered trousers, Greek, Jewish, Scythian, Albanian, everything that could be imagined; but amongst them all there was not one toga. Although he knew that with their eastern clothes they blended in well, Vespasian felt conspicuous, foreign, and he wondered what Caratacus must have thought when the Britannic chieftain had been brought in chains to Rome, seeing such an alien place and alien people for the first time. Here he saw what he realised was the Rome of the East: the empire that had subjugated as many, if not more, races. He recalled Caratacus’ words to Claudius: ‘If you Romans, in your halls of marble, who have so much, choose to become masters of the world, does it follow that we, in our huts of mud, who have comparatively little, should accept slavery?’ That was evidently as true for the peoples of the East as it was for those in the West. Here, therefore, was the balance to Rome; here was the empire that would always rival her, fight her but never dominate her because no empire could comprise both East and West. Both would stay strong through fear of the other; both needed war to take their conquered peoples’ minds off their subjugation; both knew that to destroy the other would mean death because a super-empire with nothing to fear would break apart under its own weight.
And Armenia was the natural battleground on which Rome and Parthia could flex their martial muscles every generation or so, safe in the knowledge that it would prove fatal for neither side; Tryphaena had chosen her war well. He smiled to himself; Parthia was not a threat but, rather, a thing to be embraced. Conflict with this empire was a natural state of affairs; the skill was to know how to benefit from it.
He began to relax and feel less alien now that he had understood that this empire was a necessary part of Rome’s existence; entwined in a symbiotic dance of war — much like Ctesiphon and Seleucia with their trade — both empires strengthened each other.
His mind wandered and he barely noticed the royal palace, set in a paradise surrounded by high walls, as they turned to the right off the thoroughfare and twisted through some narrower, sewage-reeking streets, one of which opened into an agora that made the Forum Romanum look like a provincial marketplace in a backwater of the Empire. At least twice the size of its Roman counterpart it was equally as crowded; thousands of merchants thriving on commerce, bought, sold, bartered and haggled in a tooth and claw contest to extract the largest possible amount of profit from even the smallest item of trade.
Vespasian took one look and any last hope of success withered. ‘How are we going to find anyone in amongst that lot?’
Magnus looked equally as gloomy. ‘I’ve a feeling that an offering to Fortuna would be appropriate.’
Hormus set down his sack and laughed and then said something to Bagoas, who did not seem to share his amusement but looked puzzled instead.
‘Well?’ Vespasian asked. ‘Does he know where to start looking, Hormus?’
Another conversation in Aramaic ended with Hormus shaking his head. ‘He says that the only way to find these people is to go around the agora in one circle and ask people at random; but if the people that we’re looking for send caravans west then this is where they trade.’
Vespasian sniffed the air. ‘Well, at least the smell of spices is fending off the stench of sewage.’
*
But it was a hopeless task.
They sweated and cursed as they pushed their way through the swirling mercantile mass with Hormus asking the same question about a family with a youngest son named Ataphanes every few paces. And always, once the interviewee saw that Hormus wished neither to buy nor sell, he was met by uninterested looks and treated to dismissive words and hand gestures.
The sun westered, trade dropped off and the crowds thinned, but even so people were not interested in helping three foreigners and a boy find a family with only the clue of a long-dead youngest son, and by the time the light began to fade remaining in the agora was pointless.
‘Ask Bagoas if he knows of a clean inn nearby,’ Vespasian ordered Hormus.
The slave’s eyes brightened at the prospect of bed and dutifully asked the question. ‘He says that a cousin of his has a place a few streets away; we can find rooms and a meal there. He says that we’ll get a special price.’
‘I’m sure we will,’ Magnus muttered, ‘specially high.’
‘That can’t be helped,’ Vespasian said, nodding to the Persian boy to lead on. ‘It’s better than walking around, not knowing where to look. At least if it’s a member of Bagoas’ family they may well prove more trustworthy than a complete stranger.’
‘What? In that they’ll only charge us double and give us the smallest rooms and the toughest gristle in the thinnest of soups?’
Vespasian had a nasty feeling that his friend was close to the mark.
The clatter of boots on stairs and the splintering of wood jerked Vespasian from an uneasy sleep; he sat up, looking around in the dark, wondering for a moment where he was. Hormus’ shouts from the room next door instantly reminded him that they were in Bagoas’ cousin’s inn where their welcome had been falsely friendly and all of Magnus’ predictions had come true. He reached for his sword and then remembered that it remained hidden in Hormus’ sack; with a curse he jumped out of bed as the door to his room crashed open and three silhouetted figures rushed in.
With nowhere to retreat to, Vespasian barrelled forward into the lead man with his shoulder, flooring him and knocking the wind from his lungs while ramming his fist into the groin of the attacker to his left, doubling him over with a strangled grunt. The surprise at the ferocity of the counter-attack by quarry that should have been, if not asleep, then at least off-guard caused the third assailant, to the right, to step back and shout for help; it was the moment of indecision that Vespasian needed. With the flat of his hand he struck up into the man’s chin, cracking his jaw closed and his head back with a slop of blood as his teeth severed the tip of his tongue mid-shout. He fell to the ground gurgling in agony, clasping his hands to his damaged mouth as Vespasian barged past him out to an ill-lit landing.