Here we go.
“If I tell you,” said Balthazar, slumping against the opposite wall, “you’ll think I’m a liar.”
“I already think you’re a fool. Any man who turns down food and water in favor of a priest is a fool.”
What difference does it make? I’m a dead man. Let these two spend their last night on earth thinking I’m a liar.
“I’m the Antioch Ghost.”
This was followed by a considerable silence, as it always was.
“Nice to meet you,” said Gaspar. “I’m Augustus Caesar.”
Melchyor guffawed.
“Believe me or don’t believe me,” said Balthazar. “It doesn’t change the fact that we’ll all be dying together in the morning.”
“If you’re the Antioch Ghost,” said Gaspar, “how was it you were captured? I thought he had the strength of ten men.”
“I heard he was eight feet tall,” said Melchyor.
“Eight feet tall,” said Gaspar, “and faster than a horse. And yet here you are with us, a man who needs the comfort of a priest in his final hours.”
“Look, if you don’t mind, I’d like to just… think for a while.”
“By all means. You’re going to need your strength to knock down the dungeon walls and free us.”
As Melchyor guffawed again, Balthazar stared through the iron bars on the eastern wall and at the unusually bright star that hung in the sky. A plan was a plan.
Even when it was a stupid plan with virtually no chance of succeeding.
3
The Unspeakable Idea
“People do not despise a thief if he steals to satisfy his hunger when he is starving.”
I
There were plenty of ways to pick a pocket.
There was the Bump, wherein your accomplice “accidentally” collided with your target on a crowded street. And while he apologized profusely, you made the lift. The Beggar, wherein your accomplice — or even better, accomplices — mobbed the target with requests for money in the front, while you took his coin purse from behind. The Fight, wherein two or more accomplices pretended to brawl in the street, and you picked the pockets of the men who stopped to watch. The False Arm, the Switch, the Victim, the Prophet. But no matter the method, the steps were always the same: distract, act, and disappear.
The first part was easy. A few pigeons taking flight, a faraway yell, a beautiful woman passing by — any one of them could distract a man long enough to part with his money. And disappearing was easy, too, since most victims didn’t know they’d been victimized until minutes — even hours — later. But the lift. The lift was the thing. That was the element that required skill and practice. That was the art, and Balthazar was an artist. There were plenty of ways to pick a pocket, sure. But no one in Antioch could pick them quite as well as he could.
And he was only twelve years old.
Already a man by any standard of the day, and already a seasoned criminal — the best pickpocket in the Eastern Empire, by his own reckoning. He’d helped make his first lift at the age of four, acting as an accomplice for the older boys. By six, he could pick the pockets of easier targets — namely drunks and the elderly — by himself. By eight, he had accomplices of his own, most of them older than he was.
Over the next four years, Balthazar had honed his craft. Developed his own methods for setting up lifts and tricking targets into revealing the location of their coin purses. One of his favorites was also the easiest:
“Be careful, sir,” he would warn an intended victim. “There are pickpockets all over this forum.”
And lo and behold, nine times out of ten, the target would instinctively reach for his money to make sure it was still there. Later, Balthazar learned that he could simply put up a sign that said Beware of Pickpockets in any public place and get the same result.
An aspiring pickpocket couldn’t have asked for a better place to hone his craft. Antioch was a mere 300 years old, still in its infancy compared to the other great cities of the world. But in that relatively short time, it had experienced explosive growth and become what many called “the Jewel of the East.” A city to rival the greatness of Alexandria, with some 300,000 free men and 200,000 slaves.
The vast majority of the population was Greek, but it was also a melting pot of Macedonians, Jews, Chinese, Indians, native Syrians, and Romans — who, as usual, were the all-powerful minority. With the Romans had come all the attendant innovations: an amphitheater; an aqueduct to deliver abundant fresh water; and a circus for horse races, one of the largest in the empire, with seating for up to 80,000.
But of all the Roman upgrades, the feature that really defined Antioch was its Colonnaded Street. Its scale was almost unimaginable: a cobblestone road, thirty feet wide and four miles long, with covered walkways (or “colonnades”) running on both sides for the entire length. It cut a straight line, north to south, through the center of Antioch, parallel to the Orontes River, which ran along the city’s western border. Beneath these covered walkways, merchants sold food and wares of every variety, some from permanent shops, others from movable stalls. At night, the entire four-mile stretch was illuminated by torches, and the crowds would continue shopping, eating, and socializing into the early hours of the morning. The north and south halves of the Colonnaded Street met in a huge, round marketplace, which would, centuries later, be rebuilt into a forum by the Eastern Emperor Valens.
Though he had four miles of busy colonnades to choose from, Balthazar liked to work the forum. It was the heart of Antioch. A place where meetings could be arranged, where merchants could be heard haggling, political debates could be heard raging, and caravans of camels could be seen arriving with exotic goods from the East at all hours. The forum also happened to offer the most pockets to pick and the greatest number of escape routes. But the privilege didn’t come cheap. There were kickbacks to be paid. Tips to be rewarded. Accomplices to be cut in. As with any business, it took money to make money. And as in real estate, prime locations came at a premium.
Balthazar liked to hang out on the perimeter of the forum, near the money changers. He would spend hours watching the men line up in front of their tables, waiting for the right target. Patience was the all-important virtue of the pickpocket. Balthazar had seen too many of his colleagues undone by hastiness, too many boys his age walking around with stubs where their hands had been. You needed patience. You needed a plan.
Sometimes the money changers would give him a tip — in exchange for a hefty kickback, of course. But Balthazar hadn’t needed a tip today. He’d spotted the target himself: a tall Greek businessman who looked to be in his forties, with hair to the middle of his back and a chinstrap for a beard.
A good target was a combination of three things: distracted, alone, and carrying a lot of money. Today’s scored two out of three. He was carrying quite a bit of money, and he was certainly distracted — his eyes darting around, his sandals tapping impatiently as he yelled at the money changer to hurry up. He was a man who clearly needed to be somewhere, and that was always a plus. The problem was, he wasn’t alone. There was another Greek with him. Slightly younger, and slightly less distracted.
Pairs were bad. Mathematically, they doubled your chances of getting caught. But there were ways to make them work in your favor. Balthazar gave a signal to his two accomplices — a pair of younger boys waiting on the other side of the money changers. When he was sure they’d seen the target, he gave them another, using his right hand to mimic the carrying of a handle.