The Tyche was nearing the harbour mouth. Ballista looked to his right. Mimicking the stars above, there were lights from thousands of houses climbing the lower slopes of the mountain higher up, the dark outcrops of limestone loomed.
'Still, it's all a horrible risk, even worse than organizing a riot,' said Maximus.
'Yes, but what can you do?'
'Maybe not feel you have to play the hero all the time.'
'Only partly the hero. It is only the gaol by the civic agora.'
'Gods below, don't you start brooding about the others.'
The sailors shipped the huge sweeps that had propelled the Tyche out of the harbour. The sails were sheeted home, and the great roundship heeled as they filled. Soon the water was singing down her side and a phosphorescent wake stretching behind.
Ballista took a last look at Ephesus and turned to Maximus. 'You might as well tell them they can come back on deck. Remind them: if they talk to the crew they are pilgrims going to worship at the famous shrine of Helios on Rhodes.'
'You always had a bad sense of humour. The equestrian one was saying he wanted to talk to you.'
'Oh, good,' said Ballista.
Aulus Valerius Festus, member of the Boule of Ephesus, knight of Rome and condemned Christian, was not a natural sailor. Gripping one hand hold after another, he stumbled precariously across the sloping deck to Ballista.
'On behalf of my brothers and sisters in Christ, I wish to thank you.'
' "I am a Christian, and I want to die," ' said Ballista. 'You do not seem to share that view.'
'It is written in the Gospels that our Lord Jesus Christ said, 'When they persecute you in one town, flee you into another." '
'The ones who volunteered for martyrdom must have missed that passage.' Ballista gave no time for a reply. 'We will drop you in Rhodes. It is a busy port. You and the others can take passage from there where you will.'
'One of our priests, a most learned and holy man called Origen – he joined Christ in paradise not long ago, during the persecution of the late emperor Decius – wrote that those pagans in authority who help Christians might not be irrevocably damned to hell. He considered the prayers of the faithful might rescue them. I will pray for you.'
Ballista rounded on him, eyes flashing. 'I do not need your prayers. I did not do it for you. I did not do it for your Christians from that gaol.'
Involuntarily, Aulus took a step back, and grabbed a rope to recover his balance. 'Then… why?'
'I do not know; something compelled me. Maybe it was hubris, that vice of the Greeks, a pride that expresses itself in humbling others. Maybe I wanted to prove to myself that I am a better man than you and your Christians, or the emperor and his courtiers.'
Aulus looked doubly shocked.
Ballista laughed at his discomfort. He looked up at the expanse of pale canvas and the stars above. 'Maybe philanthropia, love of mankind. My wife gave birth to my second son at the end of last year. I have not seen him yet. I hope there is enough love in my heart to love him as I love his brother. When I see him, I am sure I will.'
'I am sure you will.'
Ballista looked at Aulus as if surprised to find him still there. 'And how do you know my soul?'
'I can tell you are a good man.'
Ballista reached out to touch the backstay of the ship. It was taut. The Egyptian sailing master of the Tyche knew what he was about. 'If I became a Christian, and a man such as I was until today, a man with imperium, arrested me, tortured me, confiscated my property, and burned me, what would become of my sons?'
'God's love would provide for them. And I am sure the local Christian community would help. We are commanded to give to the needy.' Aulus' words were charged with an unlikely hope.
'You think it would be right for me to put my love of your unnamed and unknowable god above my natural love for my sons, my wife, family and friends?'
'The love of God must be above all. If you cared, I could instruct you in the ways of the Lord. I could help you on the path to conversion.'
Ballista laughed, a short, mocking laugh. 'You do not understand. Any religion that demands its followers love a distant, probably imaginary god more than those they should love – their family, friends; above all, their children – is cruel and inhuman. So, you see, I do not think I am the sort to convert to your crucified god. As far as I can tell, the ideal adherent of your cult is an ill-educated, half-starved virgin, not much given to independent thought but especially keen on self-harm.'
'I will pray for you.'
'If, as you say, your god is all-knowing, why would he need guidance from you? But do as you want. I suppose it cannot do any harm. Now, if you would not mind leaving me. There is a long journey ahead, but I want to think about my return home.'
XXIII
The baby was lying on the threshold of the house. Ballista was not surprised. There had been a message waiting for him when he landed at Seleuceia. In it, Julia had told him what she intended. The small figure lying there did not surprise him, but he still felt deeply shocked. It looked so much as if the child had been abandoned, left to die. Ballista had never got used to the custom of the Romans, and the Greeks, too, of exposing unwanted children. Wherever you went in the imperium, all too often you saw them – on the steps of temples, at crossroads, even on dung heaps, the pathetic little bundles of humanity wailing for a mother and father who would not return. It was not the way of Ballista's people. In Germania, all children were raised. And they have the audacity to call us barbarians, thought the northerner.
As Ballista walked across, the baby kicked its feet in the air before thumping its tiny heels down on the mat. Good. Julia had at least respected his instructions that the child was not to be swaddled. Ballista remembered the epic struggle when he had said that Isangrim was not to be swaddled. Julia had been horrified. All Roman infants were tightly wrapped. It was the way to ensure they grew straight and true. But Ballista had been adamant. In Germania, children were not constricted. Nobleman or slave, they started naked and free on the same floor. How else did his people develop the strength of limb and tall stature which even the Romans admired? No son of his would be swaddled. Eventually, Julia had given way on this. But on feeding at the breast she was immovable. A wet nurse had been hired for Isangrim as now one had been for the new child. It was the custom of the Roman elite, and it was her body. Ballista had found no answer to her double argument.
The big northerner went down on one knee and looked into the face of his new son. Huge, dark-blue eyes looked back. Long, black eyelashes. The first, light-blond curls. The tiny boy gurgled quietly. Ballista found himself softly cooing back. He felt a strange hollowness in his chest. He went to pick up his new son, then stopped. It was ridiculous. Isangrim was only seven, but Ballista was struggling to remember how to hold a baby. You had to support the head. Gently, very gently, he slid his large, scarred right hand beneath the boy, spreading his fingers to hold the head and shoulders. His left hand under the boy's bottom, Ballista rose to his feet and raised the innocent child in his man-killing hands. The baby wriggled, not unhappily. Ballista kissed the top of his head, smelling that distinctive, clean-baby smell.
Ballista looked up. He took in the laurel wreathes on the door, the benches in the street laden with food, the crowd of onlookers.
'This is my son, Lucius Clodius Dernhelm.'
There was applause. Then three men emerged from the crowd and walked to the house. The door was shut. The first man carried an axe. He lifted it above his head. He struck the door. Wood splintered. He freed the axe and stepped back. The second man carried a pestle. He, too, struck the door. There was a dull thud. The third man had a broom. Ceremoniously, he swept the threshold.