False God of Rome Page 7

  With a grunt of acknowledgement Magnus ran off to the right, taking Ziri with him, leaving Vespasian pelting through the night on his own; his legs were beginning to ache with the exertion. His chest started to tighten and his heartbeat thumped in his inner ears. The shouts of the pursuers told him that they were following him and catching up.

  He burst out into a clearing, cursed himself for breaking cover and sprinted towards the far side.

  Ten paces before gaining the comparative safety of the palms an ear-splitting cry stopped him in his tracks; he fell to the ground, hands over his ears. The cry then turned into a wailing note, mid-range and wavering at first, like a beautiful, mourning hymn of the gods; it worked its way ever higher until it reached peaks of such a piercing intensity and clarity that all other senses retreated as Vespasian listened to the sublime sound. Gradually it started to slow and ease down in pitch, as if the singer, tired by the emotion of the song, had decided to bring the piece to a close with a series of exquisite notes, ever lowering, ever softening, until, after one final gentle breath, there was silence.

  Vespasian got to his knees, stunned by the aural experience that he had just been subjected to. He looked back; his pursuers were all grovelling on the ground on the far side of the clearing.

  A sudden, golden flash caused him to shut his eyes tight and lower his head; he felt a warmth on his skin that began to grow gradually. He opened his eyes; the clearing was awash with light, gaining in intensity as if it were imitating visually the song just sung.

  ‘Bennu! Bennu!’ the grovelling men cried.

  Vespasian looked up and, shielding his eyes, saw that the source of the light was a beacon perched implausibly on top of a tall date palm close to him on the edge of the clearing. Golden sparks fell from it, turning orange and then red as they floated to the ground to collect in an ever growing pile of glowing embers at the base of the tree.

  Burning with increasing ferocity the flame became pure white at its peak; heat from it scorched Vespasian’s face and hands as it bathed him, kneeling on the ground, in a pool of light.

  Cries of ‘Bennu! Bennu!’ filled the air.

  With a sharp crack, like a Titan crashing two boulders together, the fire was suddenly extinguished as if it had unexpectedly consumed all its fuel, leaving no morsels with which it could die down gradually.

  The last of the sparks fell to the ground and the light died.

  In the dark the mound of embers glowed softly, like an untended campfire in the cold hours before dawn.

  Vespasian turned to see his pursuers on their feet, still chanting ‘Bennu’, halfway across the clearing, walking towards him.

  As he turned to run a cloud of hot ashes exploded over him from behind; a cry rose to the sky. He swivelled to see the mound of embers gone and replaced by a mist of glimmering red dust.

  The cry ceased and the red mist started to swirl as if it were being wafted from above by a giant fan. Vespasian felt a wind beating towards him; it grew stronger with every pulse as if a great bird were swooping down on him from the dark. He ducked away from the unseen threat as a colossal gust caught him off-balance and threw him to the ground.

  The air went still.

  After a few moments Vespasian opened his eyes to see a pair of feet in front of him; he looked up.

  ‘You will not be harmed,’ Ahmose said, holding out his hand to help Vespasian up. His men surrounded him, looking at Vespasian with a mixture of fear and wonder. Ahmose’s eyes, wide with religious fervour, sparkled down at him in the moonlight. ‘You are blessed of Amun; you are safe.’

  ‘What about my comrades?’ Vespasian asked, getting to his feet.

  ‘They are still alive; we will sell them as slaves to the Marmaridae.’

  ‘Fuck your blessings,’ Vespasian spat, jabbing the priest with his right fist in the solar plexus. ‘We had a deal, you little shit.’

  Ahmose doubled over as a half a dozen restraining hands grabbed hold of Vespasian.

  After struggling a few moments for breath Ahmose looked up at him. ‘Do you really think that we could stop the Marmaridae picking off our people and sending them as slaves to Garama? We’re not warlike as they are, we are farmers; we have to sell them some slaves every year to keep them happy. Your friends will do nicely, but you won’t go; as a priest of Amun, it’s my duty to take you to His Oracle in the heart of Siwa where, if you are truly blessed by Him, you will, like Alexander himself and a few other chosen ones through the ages, hear His wisdom.’

  Vespasian looked at the treacherous old priest with loathing. ‘Why is it your duty?’

  ‘You have been touched by the Wind of the Bennu and have bathed in the light of its fire. Amun knows that I have witnessed it.’

  ‘What is the Bennu?’

  ‘The sacred bird of Egypt whose death and rebirth marks the end of one age and the start of a new. A man who has bathed in its light and has felt the wind of its beating wings as it flies to the holy city of Heliopolis to lay its nest on the altar of Ra is destined to play a part in the new age. You know this bird in your language as the Phoenix.’

  Vespasian was led east for the remainder of the night and all of the following morning. His sword had been taken from him but his hands were not bound; however, he made no attempt to escape, surrounded as he was by a dozen armed men. Even had he just been accompanied by the double-crossing Ahmose he would have followed willingly, saving his vengeance for another time, curious to hear what the Oracle of Amun would tell him; curious whether it would throw light upon the prophecy of the Oracle of Amphiaraos.

  As they travelled deeper into the oasis they passed more bodies of water, much larger than the lake that he had bathed in only the day before. Irrigation channels had been dug to siphon the precious liquid to the smallholdings cultivating olive groves, chickpeas and vegetable gardens that clustered near them; sheep and goats grazed on rough pasture around the shores. People grew more numerous. Men in headdresses worked in the fields, tilling, picking fruit or loading their produce onto carts; women washed clothes and children at the lakes’ shores, fetched water in earthenware pots that they carried on their heads, or cooked over open fires outside their mud huts. It looked far more prosperous to Vespasian than the tax receipts from Siwa had led him to believe; evidently a quaestor had never visited to make a proper tax assessment. Making a mental note to review the demand on his return to Cyrene as part of his revenge on the people for so barbarously abusing the laws of hospitality, he calculated that the wealth of the oasis would go far to improving the province’s struggling finances.

  Shortly before midday they came to a mud-brick wall and passed through a wide gate into a town brimming with life. His escort was forced to push its way through the crowded streets lined with farmers selling their produce on blankets or palm-frond mats laid out on the ground. The smell of exotic spices and human sweat filled the air.

  On a hill at the town’s centre stood a temple, built of sandstone, with a tapered tower protruding from its northern end. As they approached it Vespasian could see that rows and rows of tiny figures were carved into the stone walls.

  ‘What are they?’ Vespasian asked Ahmose, his curiosity outweighing his antipathy.

  ‘They are hymns to Amun, lists of priests and records of kings who have visited since the temple was built over seven hundred years ago.’

  ‘That’s writing?’ Vespasian was amazed that these strange depictions of animals and curious signs could be strung together to form coherent sentences.

  Ahmose nodded as they mounted the steps leading to the temple’s door together, leaving their escort at the bottom.

  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 residu
e of incense and the cloying smell of ancient, dry stone replaced the fresh scents of woodland in bloom. The clatter of Vespasian’s hobnailed sandals resounded off the flagstone floor.

  A raised, disembodied voice in a language that Vespasian did not understand stopped them by the first row of columns.

  ‘Ahmose, your fellow priest of Amun,’ Ahmose replied in Greek so that Vespasian could understand.

  ‘And who accompanies you?’ the voice continued, switching to the same language.

  ‘The Bennu flew last night.’

  ‘We do not understand the reason for its coming here. We heard it pass over the temple and have checked the records; it is exactly five hundred years to the day since it was last seen in Egypt but it is five times that number since it was seen so far in the west here in Siwa.’

  ‘This man felt the heat of its fire and the downdraught of its wings.’

  There was silence.

  Vespasian looked around; there was no sign of the source of the voice.

  Presently he heard the soft patter of unshod feet on smooth stone and two priests appeared in different directions from the depths of the forest of columns. Both were dressed similarly to Ahmose except that they each had two long feathers stuck into the tops of their tall hats.

  Walking side by side down a straight, columned path they stopped in front of Vespasian and examined him closely with wide-eyed wonder. He felt very uneasy under the close scrutiny of the priests, one of whom was, now that he could make out their features in the gloom, very old indeed; yet he had the bearing of a young and healthy man. The second priest was in his twenties.

  The old priest who had spoken spread his hands, palms up and called to the air. ‘Thou wilt find him who transgresses against Thee. Woe to him that assails Thee. Thy city endures, but he who assails Thee falls. Amun.’

  ‘Amun,’ intoned the second priest and Ahmose.

  ‘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.’

  ‘If this man did not indeed feel the Wind of the Bennu and bathe in the light of its fire, Amun, the inapparent and apparent, the omniform, will not speak to him and he will be banished from His sun and see no more the dawn. And you, Ahmose, will share his fate.’

  ‘I saw it with these eyes, may they be taken from me if what I say is not true. He knelt in the light of the Bennu’s fire and then was blown by a wind so strong as the Bennu passed over him that he was cast down into the sand. Amun, whose name is not known, will speak to him.’

  ‘Very well,’ the second priest said, ‘we will prepare for the Oracle.’

  CHAPTER IIII

  ‘HAIL TO YOU, who brought Himself forth as one who created millions in their abundance. The one whose body is millions. Amun.’

  Vespasian knelt before the surprisingly small statue of the god set upon an altar in a chamber, lit by two flaming sconces, at the heart of the temple; the three priests surrounded him chanting their hymn. The statue represented Amun seated; in his right hand he held a sceptre, in his left, an ankh; his face was that of a man, the mouth was open and hollow. Across his legs was laid a sword in a richly decorated scabbard of great antiquity. The smoke of pungent incense wafted through the room making Vespasian feel very light-headed and euphoric.

  ‘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.’

  Vespasian felt himself being lifted to his feet; oil was poured on his forehead and left to trickle down his face. He felt 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 found himself repeating.

  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 around the god’s face.

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

  ‘You come too soon,’ a voice whispered, billowing the smoke around the statue’s mouth.

  Vespasian’s eyes widened in surprise; he leant forward slightly to assure himself that the voice came from the mouth.

  ‘Too soon for what?’ he asked, wondering if some elaborate trick was being played on him.

  ‘Too soon to know your question.’

  If the smoke had not moved again Vespasian would have sworn that the voice was in his head.

  ‘When will I know?’

  ‘When you can match this gift.’

  ‘That gift?’ He looked down at the sword placed across the statue’s knees.

  ‘Equal it.’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘A brother will understand.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When you need him to.’

  ‘How will I…’ he began.

  A whistling drawing of breath sucked the smoke into the statue’s mouth in one continuous funnelling gulp; the flames sprang back to full strength.

  The spell was broken.

  Vespasian looked around; the three priests suddenly convulsed as if coming out of a trance. As one they recommenced their incantation.

  ‘Everything that comes from His mouth the gods are bound by, according to what has been decreed. When a message is sent it is for the giving or taking of life; for life and death depend on Him for everyone. Nothing exists which He is not. Everything is Him. Amun.’

  ‘Amun,’ Vespasian repeated as the priests turned and walked away from the altar; with a brief, quizzical look at the statue, he followed.

  ‘What did that mean?’ Vespasian asked as they re-entered the forest of columns.

  ‘We cannot tell you,’ the first priest replied, ‘we heard nothing. What He said was for you alone. All we know is that you were spoken to by the God and that you are blessed by Him. No one can harm you now in His sacred land of Siwa; you and those who travel with you are under His protection.’

  ‘It’s too late for that; this man has sold my travelling companions into slavery.’

  ‘Then to atone he will have to buy them back,’ the younger priest stated.

  ‘Good, and while you’re about it, Ahmose, you can buy back the man we came to rescue, a Roman by the name of Capella.’

  ‘I will,’ Ahmose said with a touch of nervousness. ‘You should thank me for bringing you here.’

  ‘I’ll do no such thing,’ Vespasian snapped, finding himself hating the man almost as much as his now dead enemy, the Thracian chief-priest Rhoteces, ‘you said it was your duty.’

  ‘And so it was,’ the older priest confirmed, ‘he would have been cursed by the God if he’d failed to bring one touched by the Bennu before Him.’

  ‘He will take you back safely, Roman, and reunite you with your friends; he will also return your sword.’

  ‘Who gave the god that sword?’

  ‘That was a gift from the great Alexander, he left his sword in thanks for the counsel that he received here.’

  Vespasian walked out of the temple wondering how he could ever match such a gift and, even if he could, what question would possibly make him want to make the arduous journey across so much sand to Siwa again to deliver it. Sand? He recalled the prophecy of Amphiaraos:

  Two tyrants fall quickly, close trailed by another,

  In the East the King hears the truth from a brother.

 
With his gift the lion’s steps through sand he should follow,

  So to gain from the fourth the West on the morrow.

  Bearing a gift across sand in the lion’s steps; a gift suggested by a brother to match that of Alexander, Alexander, the lion of Macedon. But if he was to be the bearer of that gift he would be the King of the East; how could that ever be?

  Vespasian did not say a word on the journey back to Ahmose’s town; his mind was at first busy with contemplating the prophecy and what he had just heard from the mouth of the god: tyrants, kings, brothers and gifts to gain the West; where did he fit in to all that and why would a question drive him to return to this place?

  After rolling these thoughts around his head and getting nowhere he turned his mind to the rescue of his comrades and Capella and whether the duplicitous priest who walked ahead of him would keep his word. Ahmose had indeed given him his sword back with fawning apologies to a favoured one of Amun and had promised to purchase Capella’s freedom as well as buying back his men for what he had been paid for them. Vespasian doubted that the Marmaridae would go for such a deal.

  The following afternoon, as they approached Ahmose’s town, a familiar voice shouting cheered Vespasian’s heart.

  ‘Hold it there, priest, or by Pluto’s dark realm I’ll skewer you and send you down to him.’ Magnus appeared through the palms with Ziri, both with raised spears.

  Ahmose’s men drew their swords and turned to face the threat.

  ‘It’s all right, Magnus,’ Vespasian called back, ‘things have changed; it would seem that I’m blessed by Amun; none of us are in any danger here.’

  ‘We just watched Corvinus and the lads being sold to the Marmaridae yesterday; I call that fucking dangerous.’

  ‘And this little shit is going to get them back for us, aren’t you?’ Vespasian glared at Ahmose who nodded unhappily. ‘Good; we’d better get going then.’

  ‘But first I have to get what’s needed to buy your men back.’

  ‘You’ll need far more money than they bought them for.’

  ‘I won’t be buying them with money; it’ll be a straight swap.’