An older male slave mixed and poured out a tawny wine.
‘A Lesbian,’ said Montanus.
‘The wine or him?’ Maximus laughed.
Montanus looked disapproving — although Ballista was uncertain whether this was a result of the implication of oral sex or at the temerity of a freedman speaking out.
‘He does not look like a cocksucker’ — Castricius addressed Maximus — ‘and being a Lesbian is no worse than being a Phoenician, and I am sure you have been down on more than a few women in your time.’
This was not playing well with the Olbians. Montanus looked more than ever like the bust of some stern old Roman from the days of the free Republic — Cato the Censor, or whoever, returned to upbraid modern frivolity and loose ways.
Ballista took a long pull at his drink. He was tempted to dismiss the censoriousness as backwoods prudishness. But had his familia been irrevocably coarsened by all the years in the army, or by the last two years among extraordinary barbarians? What did the Olbians think of them? Castricius would be none too unsettling, unless, as now, he was speaking in the language of the barracks, and provided they did not know that in his youth he had been condemned to the mines. But the rest of them were a different story: a Hibernian ex-slave with the end of his nose missing, a tribesman from the High Caucasus who mangled both Greek and Latin, often in the same sentence, and himself, a big northern barbarian with a veneer of civilization. Then — in one of those instantaneous flashes of insight — he knew that all that was only a minor part of the unease they created. How many men had they killed between them? Killing changes a man. It does something to the eyes. It was not always the same thing. Ballista had seen killers with eyes like cats in the sun, others with eyes like flat pebbles under water. He had no idea what his own eyes betrayed.
‘The wine is good, both hot and dry on the palate.’ Ballista spoke merely to move the talk on to less uncomfortable ground.
Montanus inclined his head at the compliment. ‘You may not be familiar with the fish. It is only found in our northern rivers.’
Ballista laughed. ‘And in the rivers further north of my youth.’
Montanus looked vaguely put out, more at Ballista’s origins than any lack of tact on his own part.
‘I read somewhere that carp are neither male nor female.’ Castricius now spoke smoothly, in formal Attic Greek, no longer the rough soldier but the man of paideia.
‘Indeed.’ Montanus recovered enough to sketch a smile. ‘They become so when in captivity. My own fish tanks are on the other side of the river.’
Conversation for a time became general on the subject of fish: the catching and keeping of, those good to eat, those less so, and the positively harmful varieties.
Bion, the young deputy strategos, cleared his throat. ‘May I be so bold as to ask our honoured guest to tell us of his victories over the Persians? An opportunity to hear how you made the Persian king flee the field at the battle of Soli is not to be passed up.’
Ballista had no wish to talk about Soli, or the subsequent fight at Sebaste. He remembered little of them. It had been a bad time. He had been near out of his mind, believing his wife and sons dead.
‘There was not much to them.’ Ballista said no more.
The somewhat strained silence was broken by Callistratus. ‘I wonder if we could prevail on you to put aside your becoming modesty and tell us instead how you saved Miletus from the Goths. It is a subject dear to our hearts. Miletus was mother city to Olbia, and many of us have connections there. I myself have the honour of being guest-friend of Macarius, the stephanephor of that great polis.’
That was a happier time, and Ballista acceded to the request. Apart from the Goths’ lack of skill at siege works and the undoubted courage of those serving under him — Macarius notable among them — Ballista put it down to managing to cause panic among the attackers. The unexpected will often bring this about, and two stratagems had worked at Miletus: hidden stakes which the Gothic ships ran on to in the two harbours, and two hastily constructed siege engines unexpectedly raining down inflammable missiles. It was a carefully edited account, which omitted the underhand — if not treacherous — killing of the Tervingi leader Tharuaro.
The uncomfortable memory of his Loki-like trick made Ballista’s final words less diplomatic than they might have been. ‘Looking at the defences coming here, I was wondering how Olbia fell to the Goths.’
The brusque change of subject, on to what obviously was a delicate topic, seemed to instil a certain embarrassment among the Olbians. First Montanus, then Callistratus sought to remove their fathers from any blame. Both had been away. They had been campaigning across the estuary on Hylaea. Most of the fighting men of Olbia had been with them, the fathers of Dadag and Saitaphernes among them. The grandfather of Bion had been in Athens. A band of Goths had sacked the sanctuary of Hecate. It had been a cunning ruse to draw the militia out of the city. Olbia had been retaken almost at once.
To everyone’s relief, the servants brought in the main course.
‘Spring lamb, roast in the Parthian style,’ Montanus announced. ‘My grandfather served in the eastern wars of the divine Septimius Severus.’
As host, Montanus clearly thought it right he should hold centre stage, and guide the conversation back to where it reflected his family in a better light. Ballista was happy enough for it to be so. In this vein, he asked how they had become landowners and councillors in Olbia.
‘My grandfather was a centurion with the XI Claudia. He was posted here after the Parthian wars. When those with the eagles were allowed to marry, he took to wife a woman of good local family.’
As Montanus’s family history unrolled, Ballista enjoyed the lamb. It was in a pepper and onion sauce with damsons. There were peas in cumin, too, one of his favourites.
The peace of the afternoon was broken by noises from the other side of the courtyard. A man in armour burst from the passageway. He sought out Montanus.
‘Strategos, the barbarians are in the old town!’
VII
Olbia
After his Lesbian joke fell flat, Maximus concentrated on eating. The lamb was good, and the unfortunately named wine had been replaced with a local vintage. The drink tasted of elderberry, but Maximus had got used to that. Montanus, the local pretend general, was droning on about his family.
Maximus was not listening, his thoughts wandering with no idea of a destination. It was good they grew hemp here. He had grown to like inhaling cannabis the previous year out on the Steppe. He had missed it during the winter in Byzantium. There had to be a better way of smoking it than putting it between two knives, and you could not be building a tent every time like the nomads did.
Montanus appeared to be listing every individual who had ever been related to him by blood or marriage; and fine people they were in the telling. There was something about this meal that reminded Maximus of another occasion in another backwater, the town of Priene in the province of Asia. They had left that place to go to fight at Miletus. They had left Calgacus behind with Ballista’s wife and sons in Priene. Maximus was surprised how much he missed the ugly old Caledonian. While he had been alive, Maximus supposed he had been fond of him — although not as fond as he would have been of a good hunting dog. But now it was different. In many ways, Maximus thought it would have been better if he had been the one killed. Calgacus had left the Jewish woman Rebecca and the small boy Simon. The old bastard had loved her, loved the slave boy like a son. It had seemed returned. There was nothing like that in Maximus’s life. He must be getting old: he had begun to wish there was.