‘Sabinus!’ Vespasian shouted, his voice so commanding that it stopped his brother in his tracks. ‘I need to hear it. You will do this for me.’
‘Why should I, little brother?’ Sabinus shouted back, spinning around to face Vespasian.
‘Because I have as much right to hear it as you have to refuse, but if it is not read out we will never know which one of us was right. So if you walk away now I swear to you, Sabinus, that all the wrongs you have done to me throughout our lives will seem as nothing to the wrong that you do me today, and I will hold a grudge in my heart against you until my grave.’
The fire in Vespasian’s eyes caused Sabinus to pause and think for a moment. Vespasian could see that he was wrestling with an inner turmoil. He was not just resisting out of pigheadedness; he was genuinely afraid.
‘What are you scared of, Sabinus?’ Vespasian demanded.
Sabinus glared at his brother. ‘Of being left behind.’
‘By whom? Me?’
‘I’m the elder brother.’
‘Age has nothing to do with this, Sabinus, nor does our individual ambition. It’s our duty to raise our family’s dignitas within Rome and in that we’re both equal. Whatever is in this prophesy is for both of us and we should listen to it for the sake of the house of Flavius.’
‘As you wish, Vespasian,’ Sabinus said eventually. ‘Let’s hope that I’m wrong and it’s just a load of meaningless twaddle.’
‘Thank you, brother.’
‘If you have decided then I will read it out to both of you,’ Antenor said placidly. Behind him the other priests sat expectantly on their chairs, gnawing on bones.
‘Yes, Antenor,’ Vespasian said.
Sabinus grunted his assent.
Antenor lifted the scroll and read out loud:
‘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.’
Vespasian frowned and looked at Antenor. ‘So what does it mean?’
‘That I can’t tell you.’ The old priest rolled up the scroll and placed it back into its box. ‘We do not interpret these things, we are-’
‘Just conduits?’ Sabinus chipped in.
Antenor smiled benevolently at him. ‘Precisely. Now, if you’ll excuse me I have done my duty by you and must return to Rhaskos. I have his mutton to eat.’
‘Thank you,’ Vespasian said, turning to go.
Sabinus nodded his head and followed. ‘For the first time I’m happy to concede that you were right, Vespasian, there was nothing to fear in that prophecy, it did no harm to hear it and it made an old lunatic very happy because he now thinks that he’s done his duty by his god or whatever Amphiaraos is.’
‘I was hoping that you might be able to add something to it, Sabinus.’
‘Like what?’
‘The prophecy at my birth. I know that you know about it.’
‘Then you will know that I’m forbidden to speak of it.’
‘Not if you go by Father’s oath.’
‘But that is relevant only if one of us is unable to aid the other because of a previous oath and I don’t see you in need of help at the moment.’
‘There must be something that you can tell me.’
‘Look, I was very young, my memory of it is hazy; what I can tell you is that there was no prophecy as such, it was just the auspices that caused a fuss.’
‘What were they?’
‘I can’t tell you any more, I’m sworn against it. Anyway, I was four; I barely remember them and I didn’t understand them — just as I didn’t understand the prophecy that you were so keen to hear just now. None of these things ever makes sense unless you look back with hindsight, and what good are they then, eh?’
‘But surely that defeats their point; they’re not hindsight, they’re foresight so you’ve got to work out how to interpret them,’ Vespasian said as they walked out into the burning midday sun. ‘The only part that seemed to have any relevance to us was “the truth from a brother”. Would you tell me the truth if I was an eastern king?’
‘I certainly wouldn’t just tell you what you wanted to hear, if that’s what you mean. Anyway, I don’t see either of us becoming eastern kings; and as for all those tyrants, who are they?’
‘Perhaps Sejanus does succeed in becoming Emperor and the other three are his successors.’
‘Then what relevance would the prophecy have to us in those circumstances? We’d be as dead as these,’ Sabinus said, pointing to the long row of statues that lined the path to the colonnaded walkway.
‘Well, I’m glad to have heard it even though it does seem to make no sense,’ Vespasian muttered.
‘What was that all about then?’ Magnus asked from the shade of the colonnade.
‘Nothing, it seems,’ Sabinus replied.
‘Where’s Rhaskos?’ Vespasian asked.
Magnus grinned and pointed to the sleeping form further along the colonnade. ‘Gone to receive a message.’
Sabinus looked up — and then stared in disbelief. A huge ginger-haired brute of a man, with a missing left eye, was walking towards them.
‘What’s wrong?’ Vespasian asked, ‘you look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
Sabinus turned away as the man passed and waited until he was out of earshot.
‘That’s exactly what I have seen.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Vespasian asked, thinking that his brother was rambling.
‘That man,’ Sabinus replied pointing at the receding figure, heading out of the complex towards the coast. ‘Remember I told you about the pirate attack on my way here?’
Vespasian and Magnus both nodded.
‘Well, he was the trierarchus. He should be dead; the ships were only thirty paces apart, I saw him get an arrow deep in his left eye.’
Magnus was unimpressed. ‘You must’ve been mistaken. Perhaps he had a brother.’
Sabinus shook his head. ‘No, that was him, all right; you saw how his left eye was missing?’
‘He must have survived then,’ Vespasian said, ‘and his crew brought him here for healing.’
‘It couldn’t have been far, I suppose,’ Sabinus conceded, ‘no more than a few days. But even if he did survive the journey I saw enough of those wounds in Africa to know that there is no way that he could have been healed.’
‘Perhaps there is more to this place than we thought,’ Magnus said with a trace of reverence in his voice.
‘More than meets the eye, you mean?’ Vespasian quipped.
‘Don’t laugh, Vespasian,’ Sabinus said quietly. ‘If they can heal a man who should be dead then there must be real power here, a power older than Mithras, and it should be taken seriously.’
CHAPTER VIIII
By the time they got back to the ship it was early evening and too late to sail. Rhaskos had slept most of the afternoon away but had not looked at all refreshed upon waking. He had refused to tell them what reply he had received from Amphiaraos; all he would say was that he had been spoken to in his dream by the Hero and that he was now contemplating the meaning of the message. Whereas that morning they would all have found some amusement in the situation, now even Sabinus was taking Rhaskos seriously; not because they believed in the curse but because they were curious to see if the slave fever would disappear through Amphiaraos’ intervention.
After a mild night lying on the open deck beneath a swathe of stars, thickened by the early setting of the moon, Vespasian awoke to a turquoise dawn sky feeling refreshed. He had been lulled asleep by the gentle sound of water lapping against the hull but now this had been replaced by a more strident sound: waves breaking on the rocky cove. He felt the ship swaying beneath him and sat up immediately; a cool breeze blew in his face.
All around him the ship was coming to life. Half of the forty-man crew were bending the main- and foresails on to their respective yards, then furling them ready to be hauled up the masts, whilst the rest were preparing to weigh the fore and aft anchors. Rhaskos moved around the deck like an excited hound, barking at everyone and baring his teeth and growling at the slightest error or sign of slacking, such was his anxiety to be under way as fast as possible.