•••
At last, eighteen hundred land and sea miles and nine vials of bruise liniment from Rome, we could count days, not months, until we would arrive at the free capital of Roman Syria, Antiochia ad Orontem, Antioch on the Orontes. Here we would install its new governor and ever my master, Marcus Licinius Crassus. If only this had marked the end of our journey.
Was it I who had stood upon the lurching deck of Scourge of Ctesiphon watching the storm’s inevitable approach? Could I have been the one standing on the very ground where Alexandros of Macedon had tutored the young Aristotle? I could swear these memories belonged to someone else, for this head was stuffed with a lifetime of day after miserable day on the march with these odiferous Romans.
Truth to tell, the journey had taken only four and a half months, but I am trying to make a point.
Chapter XXVII
55 — 54 BCE — Winter, On the March
Year of the consulship of
Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus and Marcus Licinius Crassus Dives
At the sound of the scream, I jumped from my bedroll, ducked through my tent flaps and rushed to the command tent. As I ran, I heard Flavius Betto cry, “Bona Dea! What was that?!” from within his own tent just behind my own. Why couldn’t he be more like these stalwarts here? The guards let me pass unimpeded, doing their best to look as if they had heard nothing unusual. Then I remembered Hanno. I raced back, thrust my head through the opening and saw with relief that he was snoring softly, mouth agape. Back I went to the command tent, skirting the huge map table to throw aside the heavy drapes that hid my master’s bed. The proconsul was sitting up in his camp bed. (Do not be fooled-the name may be evocative of simplicity itself, but accommodation for the general’s rest had required its own ox cart to haul it from Italy.) His gray hair was mashed flat on one side and sticking straight up on the other.
“Bad dream,” Crassus replied to my questioning look. He mopped his brow and added, “Yes, the same one.”
“They’ll be here any moment. I’ll tell them it was I who cried out.”
“You’re a good man, Alexander. We’ll dine in Antioch soon, and have a proper rest.”
Crassus rose, and though the dream still clung to him like a grasping lover, managed to bid a fond good morning to his water slave, then waited patiently while he emptied and refilled the wash stand basin. While other nobles barely noticed the existence of their slaves, Crassus had a well-earned reputation for being courteous and gracious to all, regardless of their station. It was one of the qualities which he had used to good effect to win high office. And when he got there, the senate was frequently reluctant to oppose him because of his popularity with the people. I could never tell whether he was motivated by guile or genuine regard for the masses he represented, but I should like to think it was the latter.
Another slave, rudely roused by a swift kick as I flew to meet any who might have heard Crassus’ outburst, ran yawning to fetch the day’s clean uniform. I ignored the fact that I was as yet still barefoot in an unbelted tunic. When I returned, having placated a concerned Octavius and Petronius, a curious Antoninus and a skittish Ignatius in their turn, the general had donned tunic and sandals and sat before a small, spare field table waiting for the arrival of the barber. The rest of his armor was laid out neatly on the sleeping couch.
“You look worn out, dominus.”
“Keep that to yourself,” he said, looking up at me with a thin and fleeting smile. “It’s just the aftertaste of that dream. It always leaves me drained. I could manage it better if it were a normal dream, but this wretched nightmare is not some flight of nocturnal fancy. It is nothing more than a reenactment. My dreams, Alexander, will take no pity on me.”
Dominus reminded me of when I was a boy. Several times I dreamt that I could fly, but I was so immersed inside the wonder of this vision that I could not step outside myself to recognize that I was dreaming. It was not that I believed that what was happening was real. It was real. I ran down the dirt lane that ran from our farmhouse to the road and leapt into the air. My outstretched body dipped back toward the ground but I pushed with my mind and up I went. I swept over field and village and into the heart of the great city, past the Altar of the Twelve Gods, around the Temple of Hephaistos, back along the Panathenaic Way and up to the Acropolis. A hundred feet in the air I looked down at death smiling back up at me from that great height. But I could not fall! I banked into a cloud and felt the cool damp upon my face. I chased a hawk but my talent was crude. At last, it was time to meander back home. My feet made twin tori of dust that rose in the evening sun as I landed gently in our lane. When I woke to discover that this exhilaration, this ecstasy was a lie, I wept. Tears dampened my pillow and I shut my eyes tight, trying in vain to return to a place far more wondrous than the waking world.
Unlike my remembered fantasy, while he slept, some part of Crassus realized that he was dreaming, but that only increased his agony. Each time he walked down that darkened hallway in the hours before dawn, listening as the sounds of his wife and Caesar grew louder, he struggled to change the inevitable, alter what he had seen, be a man, die if he had to, for honor’s sake. But the outcome was always the same-his wife raped, his dagger bloodless, while he had watched and done nothing but slip back into the shadows.
•••
Lost in our own thoughts, we stared at the tent rug.
My lord heaved a sigh as the tonsor arrived; the forlorn expression on Crassus’ face was not lost on the compact, little man, who instantly made note of it. Everyone in the camp knew that their general’s days were better than his nights, and this they took to be an ill omen. They waited anxiously for news that Crassus rested peacefully, but my public relations efforts to improve morale on this issue were constantly undercut by an army of attendants who could see the truth for themselves. “Salve, proconsul!” The barber hurried to unroll the tools of his trade from his leather kit. Every part of him-calves, thighs, arms, torso, was short, fat and cherubic. Though he was middle aged, his hair having all but abandoned him except for a semi-circle about his ears and the back of his head, he still gave one the overall impression of a pudgy baby.
“Why is it, Tulio,” Crassus wondered idly, “that so many tonsores I have met over the years are either bald or balding?” As he said this, he removed a gold ribbon from about his neck and laid it and its painted ceramic pendant carefully on the pedestal table before him.
“General, with respect,” said Tulio in an affable and only slightly obsequious tone, “how many professions allow someone such as myself to approach important personages such as yourself with shears and razors.” With his scissors, he snipped the air rapidly several times for emphasis. “Worrying is the natural state for such a…with your permission…talented tradesman like me. No, my lord, if you see a barber with a full head of hair, it is likely he services the plebs.”
“I see your point.” Under his breath, Crassus added, “No wonder Caesar suffers the daily plucking of his facial hairs with tweezers.”
“Pardon, General?”
“Nothing. Just musing on the paranoia of my fellow senators.”
“Governor, forgive me, but may I ask why you wear a portrait of the noble Caesar?” Tulio tilted his chin toward the ribboned medallion.