Читать книгу Silence & Lies - Harry Sidebottom - Страница 5

North of Rome, just past the Milvian Bridge, the road forked. The city behind them, the Via Flaminia now ran through a landscape ordered by the estates of great villas. Off to the right, sheep grazed on rich water meadows. Where the Tiber showed through a fringe of willows, its waters were green and placid. There were duck flighting over the river.

Julius Burdo looked out at the pastoral scene, but some of his attention remained on his companion in the carriage. He was past fifty, and a frumentarius did not live that long if he abandoned his mind to idle fancies. Not when he was on a mission.

The knife-boy Castricius sat in silence, looking at nothing, drawn in on himself. His left arm was bandaged, and he clutched a knapsack tight on his lap.

Burdo shifted his sword belt. It dug into his girth. He had got heavier with age. He was tired. His dreams had not been good. Last night he had dreamt he was young again, back on his father’s farm up in Pannonia, towards the Danube. A brood of quail had picked their way through the mud of the yard. That was bad. Quail signify unpleasant news from overseas. From across the seas because they come from abroad, bad because the birds are belligerent yet faint-hearted. In the case of partnerships, friendships, marriages, and business transactions, they are symbols of discord and contention. And they are bad in regard of foreign journeys. For they indicate traps, snares, and ambushes.

Castricius moved slightly, fingering the bandage. Burdo tensed, hand sliding towards hilt. Castricius put the knapsack next to him on the seat, leant his head back on the cushions, and shut his eyes. Burdo did not relax instantly.

With this mission, no wonder his dreams were bad. He had been summoned by the new Praetorian Prefect. In his office on the Palatine Felicio had not been alone. With the Prefect had sat the young Senator Menophilus. The knife-boy had stood in the corner. The Senator had issued the orders. That had been no surprise. Menophilus had arrived to orchestrate the acceptance in Rome of the Emperors proclaimed in Africa. Menophilus was known to be close to the new Augusti, both Gordian the Son and the Father. In the past few days, with his own hands, Menophilus had killed two leading opponents of their fledgling regime. One he had beaten to death with the leg of a chair. He was a man whose commands it would be unwise to disobey.

Burdo was to escort Castricius to the army in the north, to the camp of the tyrant Maximinus, somewhere beyond the Alps. Castricius carried a confidential message from Menophilus to the old Emperor. It should be enough to gain Castricius an audience. Once the youth had been admitted, Burdo was to see to his own safety. While the tyrant read the despatch, Castricius was to strike him down. Behead the snake, and end the civil war before it had begun.

Castricius lolled with the motion of the carriage. His breathing was regular. Burdo studied him. He was very young, little more than a child, and thin. His face was angular and pointed, oddly lined for one so young. The few words he had spoken indicated a certain education. Burdo wondered where they had found him, how they had induced him to undertake this suicidal task, why they thought him capable of such a desperate venture.

Castricius was snoring.

To dream of mud signified sickness and lewdness. It meant sickness because it was composed neither of pure water nor of pure earth, a mixture of both, without being either. It meant lewdness because it defiles. Moist and soft, it indicated a catamite. Burdo looked back out of the window.

Down by the Tiber, men were strolling along the bank. They were well dressed, leisured. They went from the bright sunshine into the shade of the trees. Burdo liked to read. The view reminded him of the opening of a Platonic treatise: the philosopher and his companions in some pleasant country place outside Athens, moved to unhurried discussion of the soul or the nature of truth. A world to which Burdo had always aspired.

*

‘Do you know why Italian vegetables are the best in world?’

Burdo said he did not.

‘Long ago, in its wisdom, the Senate banned all mining in Italy. The metals and the minerals have remained in the ground. They enrich the soil, enhance the flavour of everything that grows.’ Castricius grinned. ‘So my tutor told me, but I think it might be the climate.’

The dining room of the inn was crowded. Burdo and Castricius had official diplomata, and they had a table to themselves in a corner.

‘Or maybe the way they are cooked.’

Now Castricius had started talking, he seemed incapable of stopping. Burdo had seen it before, conveying condemned men across the empire. They seemed to think that if they established some rapport with the soldiers guarding them, they might ameliorate or even escape their fate.

‘Are you thinking of running?’ Burdo said.

‘Should I take that as an offer?’

‘No,’ Burdo said. ‘I like to know where I stand.’

‘A pity. I thought you might be open to reason.’

Burdo said nothing.

‘From where I stand, there seems no point.’ Using just his right hand, Castricius wrapped a hard-boiled egg in spring greens, and ate. ‘Where would a man run? Across the Rhine or the Danube? The northern barbarians would hand you in chains to the first centurion they saw. And, anyway, in the gloomy forests would it be a life worth living? I was brought up in the cultured city of Nemausus, and have spent the rest of my days in Rome. I would not thrive in a mud hut, with no baths, no conversation. Think of the barbarians’ huge, pallid women, and a diet of nothing but milk and roast meat.’ Castricius dabbled his right hand in the fingerbowl. He never used his left. His table manners were impeccable.

‘The Euphrates?’ Burdo said.

‘Too far. You would be caught long before you got there.’

Burdo dipped an egg in fish sauce, and ate it before he spoke. ‘You know those men who pretended to be Nero miraculously saved or returned from the dead or whatever? Back in the reign of the Emperor Titus, one of them got over the river, and the King of Kings refused to hand him back.’

Castricius considered this.

‘When I was young,’ Burdo continued, ‘I served on Caracalla’s winter campaign in the East. There was a Cynic philosopher with the army. When we were dispirited by the cold, he would take his clothes off, and roll naked in the snow. After a time he deserted to the Parthians. They did not give him up, not even when the Emperor demanded.’

When Castricius smiled his face was yet more lined, but still alive with the freshness of youth. ‘I do not pretend to be either a philosopher or an imperial prince, and I do not care to expose myself in the streets. Philosophers are different. Dio of Prusa was often bothered by people wanting to be his students. When they would not leave him alone, he threw stones at them. If they still did not go, he used to stand naked on the public highways, and so prove that he was no better than any other man.’

The serving girl brought their next course. She was short, slatternly but pretty. Castricius said something indecent to her. She smiled wearily as she walked away. Working in the inn, she might as well go around with her skirts turned up.

‘Not that long ago,’ Castricius said, his eyes still on the girl, ‘an Emperor ordered the execution of a man called Julius Alexander. Somehow this Alexander heard that the frumentarii were coming, and he murdered them.’ The knife-boy looked significantly at Burdo. ‘After that he killed all his enemies in his native city of Emesa. Then he set off for the Euphrates.’

‘Emesa is not far from the border,’ Burdo said, his voice very neutral.

‘But he never got there.’ Castricius took a drink. ‘Although he was a fine horseman, he had a boy with him. The boy got tired, and Alexander could not bring himself to leave him behind. When they were overtaken, Alexander killed the boy, then himself.’

Burdo shook his head. ‘You should never travel with a catamite.’

*

At Narnia the Via Flaminia divided. They took the easier, westerly road to Fulginae, across the foothills.

In the carriage Castricius relapsed into silence. It put Burdo in mind of a crow or some other bird which quit its talking or singing when a cloth was put over its cage. Castricius was a problem. He was not a prisoner. Sitting there dressed like an off duty soldier, he was armed, had a knife at his belt, and the concealed blade destined for Maximinus. Yet he was not a colleague. He had to be delivered to the North, watched every step of the way. At least now he was dozing.

Burdo regarded the countryside. The vineyards and olive groves were giving way to upland meadows and woods. Where the incline was too steep for vegetation, the exposed stone was light grey and crumbling. On hillocks were stands of pines, their trunks straight and tall and bare, foliage fanning out above. Burdo remembered it all well. Thirty years before he had cross quartered these ranges again and again, just one man in a huge army hunting Bulla Felix. Endless forced marches, raids, ambushes, none of it had caught the bandit chief. It was a woman who had brought Bulla down in the end, like so many men. Easier to admire the brigand from a safe distance, but he had courage, that and a ready wit. Before they threw him to the animals, the Praetorian Prefect had asked him, ‘Why did you become a bandit?’ Bulla had replied, ‘Why are you Prefect?’