‘Business? I know the biggest there is!’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes! With my own eyes, I saw it. In charge of the fore-escort to Ankara.’ His brow furrowed in concentration as he recalled the details. ‘Four carts, eighty men, all on the quiet. I asked my centurion, he said it was gold – payment to the Persians. Over a ton! Told me it was to pay the bastards for silk as can only be got from them. Each year, six loads o’ gold go to Nisibis and gets handed over. Just think about it, Nico – tons of gold because the poxy priests and royal court can’t do without their silk!’
‘And you want us to lift a shipment!’
‘Listen, Greek! You asked about a big business, I’m telling you one! You’re the mighty money man – let’s see you make something out of this silk thing!’
Nicander tried to throw off the wine’s fuddle. Maybe there was some little corner which they could ease into. ‘Ah, I grant you, if we get into it, why, we’ve chance for a good earner… but there’s always going to be need of capital.’
‘But what about those damn Persians?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Got a stranglehold on the whole stinking silk trade. Can’t get past ’em to buy directly, demands we pay in gold, nothing else will do.’
‘Ah. So if we can get around them, we can set up a business deal?’
‘Not a hope. I tell you, they have the lot in their hands. I heard about it! The ships, the border, those caravans o’ camels, they control it all. How? Because they has an arrangement with the seller, takes their entire lot for cash in hand. Are they going to listen to a piddley three-obol dealer? Forget it, Greek!’
Nicander glowered at Marius as though it was all his fault, but it was obvious that while the Persians were sitting astride all the trading routes there was no chance of importing on his own account.
Then an idea floated into his mind. A beautiful, magnificent idea. Yes, it truly was!
He smiled. ‘I’ve had a thought!’
‘May we be blessed to hear it, O Master?’
‘Marius – it’s simple. We grow our own! Silk, that is. Start in a small way, sell smart, build it up. Only need to get a peasant to lend us his farm until…’ He tailed off in wonder at the scope of his great plan.
‘How?’
‘What do you mean, how?’ Nicander slurred, resentful at anything said against his precious idea.
‘Well, where do we-’
‘Simple! I read somewhere silk grows on trees. What can be easier than we go and help ourselves to a load of seeds? Buy ’em, steal some if we have to – and if we can’t sling a bag of seeds over the shoulder and tramp across the mountains with it, we’re… we’re…’
‘Hump back and plant in the farm? Yes!’ enthused Marius.
‘I think we’ve got something!’ Nicander crowed. ‘Let’s drink to it!’
CHAPTER SIX
The next day they left the bedlam and distractions of Constantinople behind and sat together on rocks warm with the sun high above the shore of the Bosphorus.
‘We need to think,’ Nicander managed to croak. ‘Think and plan!’ He was feeling a little better after Marius had come up with an old legionary restorative but, in future, he swore, the wine would be well watered.
Marius turned to him. ‘Answer me this. If your idea’s so fucking good, why hasn’t anyone else come up with it?’
‘You have to understand the business mind, Marius. Men of finance want as little risk as they can arrange, no daring plans for them. You see, what they’re always after is to squeeze better deals on import, sharpen up percentages, margins, build on things as they are. What we’re going to do is to get around the whole damned thing, cutting out everybody in the middle. But now, we’ve bigger problems. Like… for instance, how do we get a handle on the costings?’
‘You tell me,’ grunted Marius.
‘Well, there’s nothing simpler than to walk away with a bag of seeds. It’s getting there in the first place. Why, Sinae where the Seres live, it must be thousands of stadia off – across Persia, over the mountains somewhere. How do we-’
‘A march across Persia will take you a month at least, Greek. I heard there’s Huns beyond – with surprise we’d get through them in, say, another month, if we leave off attacking the bastards. Mountains? Always tough going. And then the other side – the Seres might not take kindly to so many boots on their soil.’
‘Boots? What the hell are you talking about!’
‘Come on, Mr Businessman, where’s your thinking now? An expedition into hostile territory; I’d not feel secure without we have at least a cohort of pedes and cavalry to match. I’m no officer but even I can see we’d need camp support to the same numbers. Say a thousand or so?’
‘Do you know what you’ve just said?’
‘I suppose if we have to go around the Persians then it’ll add at least another month – or so. A tight expedition, and I’ll agree the numbers might be a bit thin for what we’re thinking.’
‘Marius – you’ve just put paid to the whole thing!’
‘Wha-?’
‘Where are we finding the money for that? We can’t afford a couple of serving slaves, let alone half an army!’
Marius replied huffily, ‘Those Huns are mad bastards – I should know – where we’re going we’ll surely need a hell of a stout force to keep ’em off our backs.’
‘Can we find our way around them?’
‘No. Maybe we can dodge the Persians for a while but then we have to go east – this means right through the buggers.’
‘So what this is now saying is we’ll need to be funded, get some sort of investment capital into our venture.’
‘Right, so we do that.’
‘Heaven give me patience. Marius – if an investor puts more money into this than we can, he gets control. And profits in proportion. We take all the hard stuff, he sits back and piles it up.’ He shook his head. ‘Come to think of it, what’s to stop the bastard liking the plan and then ditching us entirely for his own operation?’
‘So no money man can be trusted!’ Marius paused. ‘But there may be a better way.’
‘Tell me.’
‘Who’s to get the biggest kick out of what we’re doing? Remember what I said about all that gold – it’s the Emperor! Six tons of it a year going out of the country – if we can stop that, he’ll be so happy he’ll put up statues to us both!’
‘State funding. I can see how it’ll work. In return for the subvention we undertake a perpetual contract to supply. On exclusive terms, naturally.’
Marius rubbed his hands. ‘Yes, that. Get him to pay!’ He stood up impatiently. ‘Hey, now – what are we waiting for? Let’s move!’
Nicander’s mind raced. It was too easy…
‘Marius. Sit down. Spare a minute to consider what we’re thinking of. We two, not quite in the front rank of the citizens of the greatest city in the world, do knock on that great bronze gate of the Grand Palace and demand to see His Top Highness, the Emperor of Byzantium, Justinian, because we’ve a good idea we want to share with him, and him alone.’
A fleeting memory of the vision at the hippodrome came. He shivered – their impertinence verged on the sacrilegious and the palace was a byword for intrigue and betrayal. To enter without a friend or guide, into that labyrinth… ‘On second thoughts don’t think that’s such a good move. Perhaps we…’
‘We get someone to speak for us!’
‘And lose our idea? I don’t think so.’
‘All right, then we’ve got to go in ourselves, for fuck’s sake!’
‘Who do we see first? Come on, just who do you know in the Grand Palace has the ear of the Emperor? Will not let on to others, will-’
‘So we find a bastard who knows!’
‘Who?’ But even as he spoke, it came to him. ‘I supply Sarmatian grapes to that villain Messalia. And he’s got one very picky customer out in the country.’
‘So?’
‘John the Cappadocian!’
‘Who?’
‘Count of the Sacred Largesse – or was.’
‘What’s the point of this, Greek?’
‘Well, I got it all from Messalia, the gossip. John the Cappadocian’s a legend – the most grasping and cruel tax collector of all time. Spared none, high or low, however hard they squealed. Justinian relied on him to pay for his wars and he didn’t fail him. It’s said he handed over fourteen times his own weight in gold every year, rain or shine.