This truly is a terrible place.
I had guests at my dinner tonight. The wine came from my private purse and was brought from the vineyards of Heptanomia. The food I also prided myself in choosing, and was dealt with reasonably well by the cook. There were dates and figs. Capons stuffed with rice flavored with caraway. Fish baked in the aromatic leaves. A side of pig done in a charcoal bed. Fresh if somewhat gritty corn bread. A round of green-veined cheese. Roasted wild duck garnished with lemon. Soured cream with herbs. Decently flavored honey cakes. Nuts and hot pomegranate.
For company, alas, I had to make do with my assistants Taracus, Konchab and Alathn, and also Kaliphus, the local pagarch, with his robes and his rings, his weak attempts to assume the manners of Rome, his disgusting habit, as he talks, of physically touching you. Those who abuse him, it is said, are speared alive on the giant reeds that grow in the silted canals around his palace.
Such is the balance of power here that none who were gathered this night could fully trust the other—nor yet act independently. Taracus knows that, despite his legionnaires, he relies on Kaliphus to collect the taxes that pay his and their salaries, whilst the wealth of Kaliphus and his fellow Egypto-Greeks would be nothing without the might of Rome. As local slave master, Konchab relies upon them both for the threat of force and the provision of his slaves: whilst Alathn, who supervises the counting and weighing, seeks their security in the tricky business of monitoring the traffic of the rock that will eventually yield gold. I, whilst supposedly in overall command, hold a post that is changed yearly so that its occupant may gain no upper hand. Thus, even in this empty place, are the calculations of power that assure the everlasting greatness of Rome.
The wind, for once, rose less strongly than usual, and at first we were able to eat with the shutters open and the doors drawn wide to the courtyard, where the pool had been cleared of its slime and refilled from the cisterns of a nearby slave village. My servants, well-briefed for once, laid out scented vials to keep the insects at bay, and the lanterns were well-filled with oil. The tapestries that I had had hung to disguise the peeling decay of these walls drifted and flowed, bringing life to scenes of cool forests, white pavilions, gods and animals. I would not have chosen my companions, yet for a while I could almost imagine that I was back amid the pines of Rome.
Alathn, the chief scribe, showed his lack of breeding by raising a matter of work; some small discrepancy in the records of the sweepings of the counting house floors. Almost a dwarf, foul-breathed and toothless, with his shoulders hunched sideways, Alathn has an obsessive proficiency with numbers, and seemingly no interest in the wealth they record. Taracus suggested that such problems were easily enough dealt with by the application of the brand or the bastinado by his soldiers.
The local pagarch Kaliphus at least provided me the favor of listening to my opinions when I tried to improve the conversation. I was speaking of gods by the fourth course when the hot night wind began to rise, and the doors and shutters were closed that they might cease their banging. I opined that there were so many gods now, so many faiths, that no sane man should be expected to honor them.
“Perhaps,” Kaliphus said in his high, poorly accented voice, “the universe truly is filled with many conflicting deities. Not simply those of Olympus, but also Baal-Hadad and the new- and old-style Jehovah and Ahura Mazda and Isis. Perhaps they all—and many others whom we have forgotten about or not yet learned to fear—exist in their different realms…” He smiled. “Would that not explain the chaos and conflict in this world? The fact that we are trapped between them in their fight for dominion…?”
Taracus, of course, disagreed. He is a plain soldier who doubtless makes his tribute to the Jupiter and dabbles his finger in a bowl of blood before he orders the slaughter of some local tribe. Yet I, who choose to worship no gods and view the world as a mere interaction of the elements, somehow found Kaliphus’s ideas persuasive.
“Romans such as you, Lucius Fabius,” Kaliphus continued, “have always portrayed your Gods in madness and conflict, and have added ever more—even your own Emperors—to their list.”
Full by now with the wine, we all ended up bidding the servants help us from the table to inspect the villa’s wooden cupboard-shrine, as if it might offer some proof. I confess that, in my days here, I had not even looked at the thing. Clearly old, and yet cheaply made, the dry leather hinges creaked with neglect as we opened them. Yet I admit I felt a small twinge of anticipation; the vague hope that a devout predecessor might have left some tribute of value behind. In that, I was disappointed. Yet, as the five of us breathed in the oddly sour air that seemed to emanate from inside, we all seemed to forget for a moment what argument it was that this inspection was supposed to settle.
The contents of the shrine were ordinary enough. A small statuette of a dancing boy, with his head broken off. A blue glass bowl that held the sticky residue of some kind of offering. A dried-up piece of salt-cake, a few mundane prayers on wax tablets, and a five-pointed star of greenish soapstone. The latter was new to me, and clearly of some age, chipped and worn, marked with odd dots and signs, yet well-made, almost warm. As I held it in my hand, Kaliphus backed away and seemed to mutter something, making an odd protective sign. I cannot imagine that the thing has any real value, but I will take it with me when I return to Rome.
As we reclined back on our couches, and on the pretext of continuing the discussion, I asked Kaliphus if he knew of any remains in this area from the great Egyptian dynasties. He replied that there was nothing more than a few carvings in dangerous and otherwise empty caves, and pillars and blocks that were more probably the work of the wind.
“After all,” he shrugged, “these hills have been empty in all the time of man. No one would ever come here but for the gold.”
There is little else to record of my evening. Now that the guests have left, I am glad of my solitude again. Even civilized company always leaves me feeling thus. Sometimes, a panic rises in me as I lie at a well-stocked table and realize that I am surrounded by the flesh of other bodies.
Still, the occasion went passably, and in Kaliphus I must seek an ally. “You have done a splendid job tonight, Fabius Maximus,” he said to me as his entourage rode up. “And with such servants—so old, I couldn’t help noticing. Yet in a man there are also other needs…Here, he made an unfamiliar yet disgustingly obvious gesture. “Perhaps I will send to the markets at Pathgris for you, and see what can be obtained.”
I took the offer without comment.
Now, the night draws long. The servants are abed. A few of Konchab’s dogs are howling, and the wind howls and screams with them. But for the lantern-lights of a few sleepy sentries, all of Cul Holman lies dark beneath me. Whilst I still have energy to hold back sleep, I must make my final inspections.
This afternoon, I mounted and rode alone but for Konchab to inspect the mines. In truth, I needed to escape Cul Holman after being required by the ever-punctilious Alathn to confirm that a few precious scraps of papyrus, ink, and a writing implement were missing from one of the scribe rooms, and to authorize the required punishment. Knowing that the four scribes in question had been chosen as an example rather than for any responsibility, I settled for the bastinado rather than the brand. I had never seen it used before, and had wrongly imagined that wounds to the soles of the feet, whilst scarring, would be less damaging than a hot iron applied to the face.