After Calpe, Felix desired to see the small island of Apollonia, where Apollo appeared to the Argonauts, and which was called Thynias by Apollonius of Rhodes in his epic of the voyage. Fortunately, there was a harbour of sorts at the bottom of the island. Bruteddius close berthed the Armata for the night, lashing her tight with double cables. As the rowers relaxed on the beach, Felix took Ballista and the other emissaries off with him. They wandered the shore, searching for the altar of the god and the sanctuary of Homonia which Jason had founded, and the place where the heroes had danced. Felix was not to be disappointed. A few indigenous inhabitants blended out of the trees and provided with utter certainty locales for every detail of the Argonauts’ story; including several unmentioned by Apollonius. Furthermore, these sagacious guides encouraged the elderly senator to call for weapons and nets and set off after them, climbing the thickly wooded slopes to hunt the descendants of the very deer and wild goats pursued by the crew of the Argo.
At times like that evening, as, bow in hand, he strolled under the canopy of leaves, Ballista wondered if the education of the Roman elite really was the best training for governing their imperium. Some might consider expertise other than skilled rhetoric and an encyclopaedic knowledge of literature from or about the distant past might have more utility in holding together a far-flung empire threatened on all sides and from within in an age of iron and rust.
The second morning dawned bright and clear. At no particularly early hour, Felix led on to the trireme the envoys and their supernumeraries – friends, secretaries, servants and, in the case of the esteemed senator, who knew what else besides. The sailors and oarsmen had been waiting for some time. The members of the mission distributed themselves across the deck. Their numbers were such – no fewer than forty – that the galley’s marines perforce had been left in Byzantium. As Bruteddius had been heard to say, the Armata now scarcely fitted her name. There would be Charon to pay, if they ran into trouble.
There was more of a swell than before, the sea oilier, but still no airs worth speaking about. The rowers bent to their task. With the current still flowing strong to the east, the Armata forged ahead. They cruised past the mouths of the rivers Sangarios, Hypios and Lykos, past the trading posts of Lilaion and Kales. Bruteddius had intended to try for another long day of rowing, all the way to the harbour of Amastris. But, shortly after they passed the emporion of Kales, the day dulled. A line of dark clouds appeared to the north-east. Sharp buffets of wind started to catch the ship crosswise, outriders of the coming storm. As the trireme skewed, Bruteddius consulted the pilot, then spoke to Felix. The consular needed no persuading. Bruteddius ordered the rowing master make all speed, and the helmsman shape a course for Cape Acherousias and the port of Heraclea that sheltered beneath its high rocks.
They had cut it fine. No sooner had they run into the Soonautes than the river lived up to its name: the ‘Saviour of Sailors’. Walls of wind-driven rain screamed up the estuary and, in relentless succession, flailed across the ship. In the driving downpour, they made the trireme fast, wrestled the storm canvas into position, and huddled ashore.
The northern gale had no intention of relenting. Once, on the second day, Boreas teased them. The wind dropped, the sun even shone. They got as far as getting the rowers to their benches. The storm blew back in from the sea. Chastened, they all scrambled ashore again.
Heraclea was an ancient colony of the Megarians from mainland Hellas. It had all the amusements expected to be on offer in an ancient port city. Maximus and Hippothous, separately, and most of the crew of the Armata in groups, vanished into the backstreets near the wharves. After the abortive attempt to put to sea, Ballista had embarked on an epic drinking bout. He spent the subsequent day recovering. From then, Ballista decided to be more abstemious.
On the fourth day, bored, Ballista employed a local guide and ventured out of the town. On hired nags, the rain hard on their backs, they plodded inland up the road by the riverbank. The Soonautes river had once been called the Acheron. The entrance to Hades was a cave. As soon as he saw it, Ballista realized he had made a mistake. It was the narrowest of clefts in the rock. Inside, it was worse: a dark, twisting passage, slippery and descending precipitously. Sweating, heart racing, he forced himself to inch his way down. After an agony of time, they emerged into a great underground cavern. In the intervals when he managed to stop thinking about the pulverizing weight of rock above him and the narrowness of the passage back into the light, it was not too bad. There was a pool of water, statues, offerings of all sorts. The torchlight flickered atmospherically on the dripping walls. It was cold.
After the Mouth of Hades, they rode up to the tomb of Tiphys, the helmsman of the Argo. This was set high on Cape Acherousias, backed by a sacred grove of plane trees. The monument itself held little interest, but it commanded a magnificent view. Pummelled by the wind, leaning into it, Ballista revelled in the fury of the storm spread out before him, howling all around him. White-topped, great waves rolled down out of the murk. They crashed and roared on the rocks below. The spume, flung high, was snatched away. At the foot of the cliff, the sea had turned yellow. With some terrible, insentient anger, the wind scoured the headland and thrashed the plane trees, wrenching and torturing their branches, threatening to cast them down, god-loved or not.
‘We should go, Kyrios.’ The guide had to cup his hands and yell to be heard. Ballista laughed. The man was frightened. He was a coward. Ballista knew himself neither. He had descended to the Hades of the Greeks and Romans; had mastered his fear. Now, the reek of it was purged from him in the fierce embrace of this clean northern storm. At such rare times, his very own vitality made immortality, in Valhalla or elsewhere, seem certain.
‘ Kyrios, the trees, the horses… it is dangerous.’
Blinking the rain out of his eyes, Ballista smiled at the man, and turned to leave.
Like most towns, and many villages in the empire, Heraclea had an official rest house of the cursus publicus. In his room in the mansio , Ballista was drinking warm, spiced wine with Mastabates. The conditum tasted good. They had a brazier. It was snug, comfortably fuggy. Outside, it was still atrocious.
A tap on the door, and young Wulfstan’s head popped round. ‘That ferret-faced little fucker Castricius is here; big, ginger Rutilus with him.’ The boy spoke in the language of the Angles. He was much recovered.
‘They might understand,’ said Ballista.
‘These Romans and Greeks only learn each other’s language.’
‘Show them in.’ The boy had a point.
‘At once, Atheling.’
Ballista was finding it good to be addressed again by his title among his own people.
Mastabates bowed, blew a kiss to Castricius and Rutilus.
Ballista jumped up and embraced the newcomers. The northerner was glad to see them. Castricius was the older friend – all the way since the siege of Arete – and the more demonstrative. Yet Ballista owed much to both. At Zeugma, Castricius had saved Calgacus, Maximus and Demetrius. At Emesa, without the actions of the two, Ballista considered it unlikely that either himself or Julia and the boys would have survived. Such profundities aside, they were good company. Ballista was easy with them.
There were only two couches. Castricius got on one with Ballista. With just the faintest unease, Rutilus climbed on the other with Mastabates. Wulfstan brought more cups, more conditum.
‘Mastabates here was about to tell me something of where we are going,’ said Ballista.
‘In the Caucasus they live off roots and berries, and all fuck outdoors like herd animals,’ Castricius stated.
‘You have read your Herodotus.’ Mastabates’ words were smooth, complimentary.