Emperor of Rome Read online

  Magnus took a gulp of wine and then passed the skin across. ‘Yeah, well, I suppose you’ve got a point. Who’d have thought that one day I would be sitting on a beach, cooking fish for an emperor?’ He scooped a couple of the fish onto a plate. ‘Mind you, who’d have thought that when I stopped you to offer the brethren’s services, as your family entered Rome, all those years ago, that you would become emperor?’ He broke a hunk of bread from a loaf, put it on the plate and passed it to Caenis. ‘Not me, that’s for sure; I wouldn’t have even put money on you becoming a quaestor, a snotty youth like you, and yet here you are.’ He shook his head in disbelief, chuckling to himself as he served up Vespasian’s plate. ‘It really ain’t natural.’

  Vespasian took a long suck on the skin and then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘There, you see, Magnus, you’re enjoying yourself already.’

  ‘Six more hour,’ the Marmarides guide assured them, pointing ahead, across the flat desert floor, ochre and dun, broken here and there by outcrops, large and small, of rough rocks of the same hues. ‘Straight south.’

  ‘And you’re sure that there will be water at this well, Izem?’ Vespasian asked, his thirst growing as he goaded his camel with a stick to keep it going forward.

  Izem shrugged. ‘I no know. If dust storm has blocked it like last well, then no. If we lucky, yes.’

  Magnus grunted, dry-throated, and glanced up at the sky, burning bright, despite it being only the second hour of the day. ‘Best press on, then; another day of this without water and we’ll be having dreams of drinking each other’s piss again.’

  Vespasian turned to see the sixty riders of their escort still in column, two abreast. ‘At least we’re managing to stay together, no stragglers, as yet.’

  ‘But if we don’t find water at the next well,’ Caenis said, wiping the sweat from her brow with the linen towel she wore over her head, ‘we’ll run out tomorrow and we’ve still got at least two days to go.’

  ‘So, if the next well has also been blocked by the dust storm, the question would be: what is our best chance? Go forward uncertain whether we will find water again before Siwa, or go back because we know that there is a full well a day’s travel away.’

  ‘And then keep going for another four days back to the sea, my love, without doing what you came here to do? That would be a waste of time.’

  ‘Yes, but we would still be alive.’

  ‘We could survive another two days without water, surely?’

  ‘Not all of us; we’d lose some to the heat.’

  ‘Next well very big,’ Izem said, grinning and nodding. ‘Next well big enough for whole army to drink and fill waterskins.’

  ‘Well, I can’t imagine who would be foolish enough to lead an army through here,’ Magnus said, taking off his floppy-rimmed leather hat and wiping the top of his head. ‘Did Alexander, when he came?’

  ‘No,’ Vespasian replied, ‘he came with a small escort like ours for that very reason. No one has dared to bring an army through here since King Cambyses of Persia sent an army towards Siwa, to claim it for Persia; it was never seen again. A whole army just swallowed up by the desert.’

  Magnus replaced his hat. ‘Well, if the desert can eat an army, then, with the way things are going, I’d say it’s looking at us and considering us to be a tasty morsel, if you take my meaning?’

  Vespasian did, but did not want to admit to it.

  On they went, rocking to the camels’ ungainly stride, staring at the sharp line of the horizon where sky-blue met desert-brown, as the sun climbed towards its zenith, burning down in fury upon all below it. Vespasian pushed visions of a parched death from his mind, arguing with himself that he had had worse desert experiences the last time he had crossed this barren land to Siwa from Cyrene, and then again in Africa on his way back from the Kingdom of the Garamantes.

  ‘Now we stop,’ Izem, said, holding up his hand as the sun neared its maximum height. ‘Three hour then we go.’

  Vespasian coaxed his camel down, forelegs first, and dismounted as the escorts busied themselves rigging a canopy under which they would all shelter from the ravages of the midday sun.

  With care, he took a couple of sips from his almost-empty waterskin, swilling the warm liquid around his mouth in the hope that it would stay moist for at least a short while. Idly looking south for want of anything better to do as the shelter was set up, he squinted as something caught his eye. ‘Are those hills, Izem?’ he asked, pointing at what seemed to be a series of bumps on the line of the horizon now shimmering with the haze of the building heat.

  ‘No, master, no hills between here and Siwa; just flat, hard desert and then a sea of sand dunes. No hills.’

  ‘Then what is that?’

  The Marmarides peered into the distance, shading his eyes from the almost vertical sun. He frowned as he saw the rise in the otherwise flat landscape. ‘No hills,’ he said, in a questioning tone more to himself than to anyone else. ‘No hills.’

  ‘Well, there are now,’ Vespasian said. ‘Quite big ones, by the look of it, and directly in our path. How far away would you say that is, Izem?’

  Izem scratched his full beard, thinking for a few moments; as he did so his face fell and he turned to Vespasian. ‘It not good, master; they must be big sand dunes made by dust storm. They about three hours away; they by well. Maybe they on well.’

  It was with a sense of dread that the column approached the dunes as the sun fell into the west; news of the sighting and the probable location of the dunes had spread quickly through the men and the desire to know their fate had caused them to leave the rest stop half an hour early.

  ‘That has to be the height of the Pharos,’ Vespasian said as the true magnitude of the phenomenon became clearer the closer they came. ‘Have you ever seen such enormous ones, Izem?’

  The Marmarides shook his head, his eyes wide in awe. ‘Never, master. I never dreamed there was so much sand in one place.’

  ‘And we have to go up and over?’ Caenis asked.

  ‘Yes, mistress; if well still there, it on other side.’

  ‘But more likely underneath,’ Magnus complained as the ground began to rise.

  Up they went, traversing the steepening dune in a series of long diagonals, climbing ever higher above the desert floor. Behind them, to the north, the desert grew in volume as their altitude pushed back the horizon, so that they had a sense of diminishing in size in relation to the huge mound they ascended and the vast, ever expanding vista in which it was set.

  With increasing hardship the camels pressed on, their hoofs sinking further and further into the sand as it became looser towards the summit; drifts of it cascaded down in mini avalanches, forming irregular waves down the otherwise smooth side of the dune. Snorting their displeasure, the beasts were goaded on; their heads held high as they looked imperiously around them as if trying to understand just what the objective of such a hard climb was.

  But the objective was the summit in order to see what lay on the other side and that summit was reached as the sun was no more than an hour from setting. Vespasian drove his camel on, accelerating now that the terrain had evened out more. Three, four hundred paces he rode across the top of the dune looking for the edge to see back down to the desert floor and to know one way or the other whether the well was still viable.

  It was with a sense of confusion that he registered an anomaly as the further side of the dune came into view. For a few moments he could not process what he saw below as he approached the dune’s lip: a dark shadow spreading across the land at least a mile into the distance. And yet it was not constant, there were lighter patches within it. He brought his mount to a halt on the very edge of the summit and gazed down at what should not have been there; and then his brain recognised it for what it was: a huge gathering of people, thousands of them, some sitting, some lying, and with them were camels and horses, they too lying down, mainly on their sides, and all were motionless, as if frozen in time.

 
And it was then that Vespasian realised that they were, indeed, frozen in time and his mouth opened as he understood the enormity of what he was looking at. ‘The army of Cambyses,’ he whispered to himself.

  ‘What did you say?’ Magnus asked as he and Caenis drew their mounts up to either side of him, eyes agog at the sight before them.

  ‘The army of Cambyses,’ Vespasian repeated. ‘That’s the army that disappeared five hundred years ago. It must have been buried by a dust storm like the one that struck a few days ago. Buried alive they were, just like we nearly were on our way to Siwa last time. Buried for all those years until four days ago.’ Vespasian whistled softly.

  Magnus spat and clutched at his thumb to avert the evil-eye.

  ‘Shall we ride down to them?’ Caenis asked, her voice breathless.

  ‘Of course, my love; I’ll not miss a sight such as this.’

  There was no stench of death hanging in the cooling air above the countless lifeless bodies as Vespasian led the column down the far side of the dune, just the sweet smell of warmed leather. In silence they descended; even the camels seemed to sense the sombreness of the sight and kept their snorting complaints to a minimum. As they came down to just fifty feet above the desert floor the army filled their whole vision, such was its magnitude. Still, apart from the occasional cloak or plume, fluttering in a soft breeze, the army of Cambyses lay where it had been smothered five hundred years previously, men and beasts together exposed to the elements for the first time in half a millennium.

  The bright reds, blues, yellows and greens of the men’s trousers and knee-length tunics as well as the caparisons of the horses and camels were still vibrant after so long kept from the sun. Tanned, black or red leather boots, cuirasses, harnesses and headgear, whose warm smell thickened the closer they came, shone as if freshly polished and metal gleamed in the setting sun, burnished bright by infinitesimal grains of sand. As Vespasian rode between the first clumps of bodies it seemed to him that they were but freshly deceased as the appearance of their uniforms and equipment was next to immaculate. Beneath that it was a different story: all had suffocated seeking shelter beneath their cloaks whether lying flat on the ground or crouching or, even, kneeling over, and most remained like this, covered; but here and there the breeze had dislodged their protection and hands and faces were exposed, revealing the husks of men. Dry and stretched was their mummified skin; hollow were their eye sockets and their gaping nostrils were set above the thin-lipped rictus grins that were their mouths. Claw-like hands clutched at cloaks as if still attempting to keep the swirling sand from building up around their bodies. Horses, camels and mules shared the fate of their masters, lying on their sides or bellies, now little more than parchment-covered skeletons. An army of the dead both physically and literally and through the dead Vespasian rode with Caenis and Magnus to either side of him, followed by the guide and his escort.

  Regiment upon regiment they passed, all frozen in the moment of their death, thousands upon thousands as well as the slaves who attended them. After a mile or so the volume of bodies began to increase as they neared the heart of the army. The richness of the men’s costume and lavishness of their horses’ decoration grew as their status increased the closer they were to the satrap commanding the doomed expedition. But high status or low, they had shared the same fate, entombed in a mountain of sand, suffocated and desiccated; the shrivelled husks of the army of the dead, dehydrated and frozen in time.

  On they travelled through the silent host towards a large outcrop of rocks, saying not a word, for what comment could be made that did not sound trite in the face of such mortality, such serenity, such history and, yes, such beauty? And it was a beautiful sight in that it stirred Vespasian’s heart as he witnessed first hand how the might of man can be defeated by an act of the gods; hubris would never be forgiven by deities.

  And so they approached the outcrop at the heart of the camp; at least thirty feet wide and as tall as a man, it stood as the focal point of the army.

  ‘Would this have been the well, Izem?’ Vespasian asked, turning to the guide.

  ‘I no know, master; the well I look for is buried under dune. Maybe this was well before sandstorm buried army years ago. I look.’

  ‘There’s no need to look,’ a voice said as Izem coaxed his camel down. ‘The well is here and has been preserved by Amun.’

  Vespasian struggled for a few moments to make out the source of the remark; it was not until he moved that the man could be discerned. He stood wearing nothing but a white kilt, belted, and a tall hat with a long feather stuck in its crown. ‘Welcome back, Vespasian, Amun is expecting you.’

  Vespasian frowned and then, after a pause, recognised the man as the younger of the two priests from the Temple of Amun in Siwa when he had been taken there by the treacherous Ahmose all those years ago. ‘I have come to consult the Oracle of Amun.’

  ‘And Amun awaits.’ The priest extended his arm all around. ‘Amun has given you a demonstration of his power. “Amun, Thou wilt find Him who transgresses against Thee. Woe to him that assails Thee. Thy city endures, but he who assails Thee falls.” Thus Amun defeated the army sent against his temple to claim it for Persia and now he shows you, Vespasian, the proof of it. “The hall of him who assails Thee is in darkness, but the whole world is in light. Whosoever puts Thee in his heart, lo, his sun dawns. Amun!”’

  ‘Amun,’ Vespasian found himself repeating.

  ‘The well in these rocks has been covered for five hundred years and is still plentiful. Drink and fill your skins and then follow me to the Temple of Amun.’

  CHAPTER XV

  WITH THE PRIEST leading the way the people parted for them as they walked, having left their camels at the gate, through the crowded streets of Siwa’s main town, after two days’ easy travel. Lined with farmers selling their produce on blankets or palm-frond mats laid out on the ground and with the smell of exotic spices and human sweat filling the air, the main thoroughfare made its way up a hill towards a temple built of sandstone, with a tapered tower protruding from its northern end, at the town’s centre. As they approached it Vespasian recalled that the rows and rows of tiny figures carved into the stone walls were lists of priests and records of kings who had visited since the temple was built over seven hundred years before.

  ‘It don’t look like much,’ Magnus said as they mounted the steps to the temple doors.

  ‘Perhaps not,’ Vespasian replied, clutching the bag that contained his gift to the god, ‘but it contains a great power.’

  ‘Yeah, well, anything that can bury an army and then dig it up five hundred years later has to be respected, I suppose.’

  ‘You suppose right,’ Caenis remarked as the priest opened the doors.

  The temperature drop was considerable as they entered the building. Symmetrical rows of columns, three paces apart, supported the lofty ceiling, giving the impression of an ordered stone forest. From a few windows, cut high in the south wall, shafts of light, with motes of dust playing within them, sliced down at a sharp angle through the gloom of this interior, petrified grove. The musky residue of incense and the cloying smell of ancient, dry stone replaced the fresh scents of woodland in bloom. Through the temple the priest led them, never looking back to check they still followed, until they came to the chamber at the heart of the building; within was the surprisingly small statue of the god set upon an altar, lit by two flaming sconces, that Vespasian had knelt before on his last visit. Representing Amun seated, the statue showed him bearing a sceptre in his right hand and an ankh in his left; his face was that of a man, the mouth open and hollow. Across his legs was laid a sword in a richly decorated scabbard of great antiquity: the sword of Alexander the Great left here by him when he had come for the god’s counsel three hundred and eighty years previously.

  ‘Hail to You, who brought Himself forth as one who created millions in their abundance. The one whose body is millions. Amun,’ the priest intoned as he halted before the statue.
/>   ‘Amun!’ the other three priests replied.

  ‘No god came into being prior to Him. No other god was with Him who could say what He looked like. He had no mother who created His name. He had no father to beget Him or to say: “This belongs to me.” Amun.’

  ‘Amun!’ the priests and Vespasian replied.

  Again, the smoke of pungent incense wafting through the room began to make Vespasian feel very light-headed and euphoric. He turned to see Caenis and Magnus standing towards the rear wall of the chamber; Caenis smiled and nodded in reassurance.

  Vespasian turned back to the god, taking Alexander’s breastplate from its bag. He knelt and placed it leaning against the god’s legs, beneath the sword, reuniting for the first time since his death the weapon that Alexander had used against his enemies and the armour that had defended him from them.

  Vespasian held up his arms and raised his head to the god; the incense was becoming more intense and his vision began to swirl. He felt himself being lifted to his feet; oil was poured on his forehead and left to trickle down his face. He remembered how that had made him feel at ease and smiled.

  ‘You who protect all travellers, when I call to You in my distress You come to rescue me. Give breath to him who is wretched and rescue me from bondage. For You are He who is merciful when one appeals to You; You are He who comes from afar. Come now at Your children’s calling and speak. Amun.’

  ‘Amun,’ Vespasian repeated.

  The word echoed around the room.

  Then silence.

  Vespasian stood staring at the god; around him the priests were motionless.

  The room became chill. The smoke hung, still, in the air. The flames in the sconces died down.

  Vespasian felt his heartbeat slow.

  He heard a soft breath emanate from the statue’s mouth and in the dim light he could see the smoke begin to swirl about the god’s face.

  Another breath, more rasping this time, moved the smoke faster; the low flames flickered.