Ballista and Hippothous swung down. Maximus said he would stay with the animals.
The entrance to the alley was narrow, largely overgrown. The old man was waiting some paces down on the left. He pointed to an open door.
Ballista’s hand went to the wallet on his belt. With an air of the greatest dignity, the old man demurred and returned the way they had come.
Hippothous followed Ballista into a courtyard. It was dusty and empty, with the sad air of neglected festivals. On the doorpost was an inscription: You shall enter this sanctuary clean and dressed in white . Hippothous noted that Ballista was wearing black.
A priest appeared from a doorway in the south wall. He walked unhurriedly. Disconcertingly, he gave the sense of having expected them. He welcomed them formally, talked briefly with Ballista and graciously accepted some money.
After the priest had left, they stood waiting. The courtyard was still, hushed. Ballista was not in the mood to talk.
In due time, the priest reappeared with a small boy carrying the offerings. They ushered the men towards a door in the north wall, into the sanctuary itself. The room was dark; three columns down the middle. In the north-east corner was a low platform. They mounted the steps. On the platform stood a marble table. On it were statues: Alexander reaching for his sword, Cybele, other divinities. The table stood over a crevice in the rock.
Ballista took the small cakes and placed them on the table. He took the unmixed wine he had requested and tipped it down into the crevice.
Alexander lives and reigns.
With no further ado, Ballista turned and left. Hippothous followed him.
Outside, a fresh wind had got up. The alley afforded a magnificent view out over the city walls, across the Maeander plain and the Aegean, to a range of hills. Misty and blue in the distance, the last of those had to be the peninsular of Miletus. Alexander, it was said, had gone from this very house to conquer Miletus. Hippothous did not know what Ballista was thinking, but he wondered if the bad omen had been averted.
VIII
Ballista looked at the moon. It was big, one night before full. Over the starboard bow was the small, three-humped island of Lade, dark and quiet. To the other side, no distance across the water, the lights of Miletus twinkled all over the slopes of the peninsula. The water ran down the sides of the boat, spun out behind, the wake bright on the dark sea.
It was late. Ballista was tired. They had ridden out of Priene, past the landlocked port of Naulochos, to a village called Skolopoeis. There they had sent one of the slaves back to Priene with the animals. Having hired the fishing boat, they had waited for the coming of the evening offshore breeze. Ballista stretched and yawned. It seemed an age since they had set out before dawn that morning to travel to Priene.
Seated in the bows, Hippothous was telling Maximus about Miletus. Like a good Hellene – like Demetrius, the previous accensus – Hippothous seldom missed an opportunity to parade his knowledge of distant Hellenic history. ‘The land here was ruled by a local, a Carian chief called Anax or something barbarous like that. Then warriors from Crete came. They were led by Miletos, the son of Apollo and Areia; although some say his mother was Deione or Acacallis.’
‘Strange,’ said Maximus. ‘It is usually the father a fellow is not so sure about.’
Hippothous ignored the interruption. ‘Of course, some say the founder was Sarpedon, but that is obvious nonsense.’
‘Obvious to the most benighted fool.’
‘Anyway, the Cretan newcomers settled down with the local Carians and things were fine between them. But things were very different when the Ionians came under Neileus, son of King Kodros of Athens. They killed all the men and took their women. And that is why, to this day, the wives of the Milesians will neither sit at table with their husbands nor call them by name.’
Maximus nodded admiringly. ‘Sure, these Milesians are on the right track, but imagine if they could get the women not to talk to them at all.’
It was strange how often Hippothous and Maximus talked. Of course, over their months together in the familia, they had shared salt, but much about them suggested that they disliked or even despised one another. Yet there was something that made each seek the other out. Now Hippothous was telling Maximus how the Milesian philosopher Thales thanked the gods for three things: that he was human, not an animal; a man, not a woman; a Hellene, not a barbarian. The teasing did not run all one way.
Ballista hoped the slave had got Pale Horse back to Priene safely. Allfather, he hoped he was right about the safety of Priene. He knew Calgacus would die before he let any harm come to Julia and the boys. Nothing melodramatic about it, he just knew it. If the Goths went there, the acropolis looked impregnable, and Tatianus struck him as capable. But Flavius Damianus was a very different case. The man had done well after the earthquake, but Ballista still mistrusted him from the previous time in Ephesus. Still, Julia and the boys staying there and him going to Miletus was the right thing.
The old fisherman was in the stern with the steering oar. The remaining slave was asleep in the bottom of the boat. Ballista unhitched himself from the mast and asked Hippothous what he knew of the defences of Miletus.
‘“Once, long ago, they were brave, the men of Miletus.”’ Hippothous recited the iambic verse. ‘The words of Phoebus Apollo have become a proverb. For twelve years, the army of the kings of Lydia invaded the land of Miletus. It did them no good; the city held. Since then things have not gone so well. The Ionians lost the naval battle off Lade and the Persians took the city. Alexander’s fleet anchored at Lade and the city fell. A later Macedonian king, the Antigonid Philip V, took Lade, and Miletus went over to him.’
‘So,’ Ballista said, ‘if the attacker has control of the sea, the city falls.’
‘The Goths have a few boats.’ Maximus laughed. ‘Well, that is grand. As Calgacus would say, we are all going to die.’
‘The men of Miletus are not what they were,’ said Hippothous. ‘By the time of the Romans, the Milesians had sunk so low that their island of Pharmakousa was overrun with pirates. Notoriously, they held the young Julius Caesar for ransom.’
‘Although,’ countered Ballista, ‘in the story, once released, Caesar raised boats from Miletus, returned and crucified his captors.’
‘That would be more down to him than the men of Miletus.’
Ballista shrugged. ‘All stories change in the telling.’
The boat drove easily through the slight swell. They were getting close. Moving to the stern, Ballista stood by the fisherman. He studied the city of Miletus. Here, in the north-west, the peninsula sloped steeply down to the sea. In the moonlight he could make out the walls. They appeared sound. So far, so good.
The fisherman tacked to bring the boat around into the narrow mouth of the Lion Harbour. On either side, crouching in the gloom, the large statues which gave the haven its name. By them were winches and chains. Once, they would have closed the entrance; now they lay in sad disrepair. The city walls continued into the harbour but ran out before the quays at the far end. To the left were ship sheds to house war galleys. They were derelict.
Ballista thought back to another arrival at another town, years earlier. He had been sent to defend Arete on the Euphrates. He had told the Boule what had to be done, told them of the necessary destruction and impositions as sympathetically as he could. They had not liked it. Cries of outrage – some of them shouting that it would be no worse being captured. Maybe in some ways they were right. Had he thought that then, or was it something fitting he now added? Memory was a slippery thing.
As the boat glided in, there was a stir on the quayside. A telones – something about them always betrayed them as customs officials – led a group of auxiliary soldiers to the edge of the water. There were no more than half a dozen soldiers; useful for arresting smugglers, less good for a hansa of Goths.