Julia was waiting for him. Her face, mask-like, gave nothing away as she spoke the formal words of welcome then told her maid to get the dominus a drink and prepare him a bath and food. She stood very straight and still as her maid served the drink. She did not speak again until the servant had left the room.
'It is very late.' Her voice was tight, angry.
'I thought I should report the attempt to Censorinus and the frumentarii straight away. Otherwise it might look suspicious, as if I had something to hide, as if I were fighting a private war or something. Then Censorinus suggested I go on to the headquarters of the Epimeletai ton Phylon in the agora. The earlier the local police came to hear of it, the more chance of them catching him.' Ballista stemmed his defensive flow of words. 'I asked Aurelian to tell you I was all right.'
'Oh yes,' Julia snapped. 'Your friend turned up eventually. Some time after lunch. He was so drunk it was a miracle he did not fall off his horse and kill himself. The Danubian peasant said your shoulder was wounded.'
'It's nothing, just bruised.' It always irritated Ballista that she did not like his friend, let alone that she despised his origins.
'Well, I have not been idle while you have been out.' To avoid replying, Ballista took a drink. Julia continued. 'Someone wants to kill you. They may want to harm your family. I will not let anything happen to my son.' She had never liked the barbarian name that Ballista had insisted their son carried. At times like this, Isangrim always became my son.
'I have hired three ex-gladiators. They will guard the house. One of them will accompany my son whenever he goes out. I suggest you keep Maximus with you.'
Julia spoke with the icy self-possession that came with two hundred years of senatorial birth. The Julii of Nemausus in Gallia Narbonensis had been given that exalted rank by the emperor Claudius. Roman citizenship had come one hundred years earlier still, from Julius Caesar. By contrast, Ballista was very aware that his own entry into the citizen body of Rome had been just eighteen years ago. Although the reason was not made public, the emperor Marcus Clodius Pupienus had given it to the young northerner as a reward for killing Maximinus Thrax. Pupienus had been one of the very few who knew Ballista's role in the desperate coup before the walls of Aquileia. Less than a month after enrolling Ballista in the ranks of the Quirites, Pupienus had taken the secret to his grave.
'That is good,' Ballista said, 'if they are reliable.'
Julia made a sharp, dismissive gesture. 'They are the best. My family has never been mean.'
To hide his annoyance, Ballista turned away, on the pretence of putting his drink down. Money was a delicate subject between them. When in his twenties, on his return from Hibernia, Ballista had been given equestrian status, the emperor Gordian III had included a gift of 400,000 sesterces, the property qualification for that order. To the vast majority of the inhabitants of the imperium, it was wealth beyond the dreams of Croesus. To the daughter of an old senatorial house such as Julia, it was a pittance. Although it was seldom mentioned, much of their lifestyle was funded by his wife.
Ballista unbuckled and took off his sword belt. He reasoned it was just her concern for Isangrim, and even for himself, that was making her so waspish.
'What are you smiling at?' she said testily
'Nothing, nothing at all.' He sat down wearily. 'Who do you think hired him?'
Julia shook her head, as if freshly amazed by her husband's obtuseness. 'Gaius Acilius Glabrio, of course. He hates you for leaving his brother to die in Arete. He has publicly sworn to avenge him. Patricians of Rome keep their oaths.'
'He is not the only enemy I have in Antioch,' Ballista said. 'Valerian has kept Videric at the imperial court as a hostage for the good behaviour of the Borani. There is bloodfeud between us.'
Julia actually snorted with derision. 'Your drunken oaf of a friend said that the attacker told you he had been hired by a eupatrid.'
'Yes,' said Ballista. 'He shouted "The young eupatrid sends you this." Videric's father, Fritigern, is king of the Borani.'
'No one in the imperium would consider the son of some hairy barbarian king well born, a nobleman.' As Julia spoke, Ballista wondered if she realized the implication of her words.
'The sons of Macrianus do not care for me.'
Julia sighed. 'Oh, Quietus and Macrianus the Younger are vicious and repulsive. They both loathe you since the fight at the palace, and they are certainly underhand enough to hire an assassin. They are rich, but they are hardly eupatrids. Their equally repulsive father started out as a mule driver.'
'Acilius Glabrio it is then,' said Ballista. In truth, he was far from convinced. He very much doubted that a hired knifeman from one of the slums of Antioch would be quite as aware as his wife of the subtle distinctions of class among the very rich. The irritation was draining out of him. Even Julia was looking less angry.
The maid stuck her head around the door, announced the bath was ready and ducked out again. Ballista got up and went over to Julia. He put his hand on her shoulder.
'Gods below, you stink.' She wrinkled her nose. 'Sweat and horse. Go and get in the bath.' He turned to go. 'Are you really all right?'
He stopped. 'I am all right.'
She smiled. 'I will come through in a while.' It was Saturnalia, the greatest festival of the Romans and one the hedonistic Antiochenes had taken to heart. Seven days of pleasure, of eating and drinking. Seven days of licence, of open gambling and illicit sex. The normal rules of society were loosened, if not completely inverted. Slaves roamed at will. In some households, they were served by their masters. Everyone relaxed their dignitas and let their guard down at the festival of Saturn.
Ballista raised his eyes from reading when Demetrius came into the room. The Greek youth looked worried. He had looked that way since the attack on his kyrios in the charcoal burner's clearing. Forty-seven days of apprehension were taking their toll. This evening he appeared at the end of his tether.
'It is Lucius Domitius Aurelian.' The words tumbled out of Demetrius. 'He is hurt. Badly hurt. A fall from his horse. On his way back from hunting. In the Kerateion district. Near the Daphne Gate. He wants to see you. There is a boy outside to lead us.'
By an act of will, Ballista forced down his rising panic. He put the papyrus roll down on the table next to his couch, carefully placing paperweights to keep it open at the passage he had reached in Lucian's little treatise The Dance.
Ballista followed Demetrius from the room. To avoid thinking about his friend, he forced his thoughts to run over his reading. It was 18 December, the second day of the Saturnalia, so he had decided to read Lucian's work on the festival. He had enjoyed it. But then he had started reading The Dance. He was not enjoying that as much. It was always the way with Lucian. You read one satire and it was splendid. You went straight on to another and it seemed less good. You read three in a row and you were sick of them.
In the lodge were the porter and Cupido, one of the ex-gladiators that Julia had hired. Most of the servants, including Maximus, Calgacus and the other two ex-gladiators, were on leave. It was the Saturnalia, after all. Ballista did not much care for Cupido. He was a large, brutish man, his muscles turned to fat. He was lazy, and he drank. He smelled like the taste of a copper coin carried in the mouth.
When Ballista had put on his boots, buckled up his sword belt and slung a heavy cloak over his shoulders, he saw that Cupido had done the same.
'Demetrius, you stay here. Tell the kyria where I have gone.' At Ballista's words Demetrius started to wrestle his boots off again, hopping on one foot. Ballista smiled at him. 'Keep an eye on the house until I return. Oh, and if you can find a slave that is sober, send him to tell Maximus and Calgacus what has happened. They are in Circe's Island.'