Rome's Lost Son(101)

‘Then why don’t they just come close and ask us?’

‘Perhaps they don’t like the idea of coming so close to eighty archers,’ Magnus said, his head going back and forth out of time to his beast’s lumbering gait; he had not got the knack of riding camels and it was not looking hopeful that he ever would, even with the splint off his now mended arm.

‘That’s a fair point, I suppose. What do you think, Mehbazu?’

Mehbazu looked south to the riders and shook his head as if they were of little import. ‘They want what everyone wants: money. They’re just trying to work out the best way of extracting some from us.’

‘Will they?’

‘Inevitably; the Nabataeans are notorious thieves, blackmailers, extortionists and murderers. Somehow they’ll leave here richer and there’s nothing we can do about it.’

Vespasian decided not to concern himself any more about the Nabataeans until they posed a less distant threat; instead he turned his mind back to the question that had occupied him for the last eleven days since leaving Ctesiphon: how would he get Pallas to protect him from Agrippina? Could he even guarantee that Pallas could still be in a position to protect him from Agrippina? A lot would have changed in politics during his absence and Pallas may well now be out of favour with the Empress. What he did know was that just before he had left for the East, Pallas had managed to secure his younger brother Felix the procuratorship of Judaea. Marcus Antonius Felix had been Antonia’s steward for her considerable property in Alexandria; she had freed him in her will and he had remained in the city after her death, looking after her affairs for her son, Claudius. It had been Felix who had helped Vespasian and Magnus steal Alexander the Great’s breastplate from his mummified corpse in his mausoleum. If anyone knew the current situation back in Rome it would be Felix, the one-time slave who now ruled a Roman province. Vespasian decided that once they crossed the border, in a couple of days, he would head straight for Caesarea, the administrative capital of Judaea. There he could consult with Felix; indeed, if he found him still in position as procurator that in itself would tell him much about Pallas’ standing back in Rome.

If Felix was not still the procurator and Pallas had fallen from favour, Vespasian would find out from his replacement whether Narcissus had now been reinstated as Claudius’ preferred freedman. As long as one of them was in a position of power, Vespasian hoped that he could use his knowledge either to protect himself from Agrippina if he imparted it to Pallas, or to help bring her down if he imparted it to Narcissus

What Vespasian was sure about was that if Pallas or Narcissus still remained unaware of what Tryphaena was trying to achieve and how she was going about it, then his information would be of great value to one of them. What was more was that the conversation that he had had with Vologases on the day before his departure from Ctesiphon would be of much interest to either of the Greek freedmen; at least the part about being willing to continue a manufactured war to help secure Nero in power would be – he would not be mentioning anything about the Great King’s real motivation for doing so, the motivation that was identical to his own: the end of the Julio-Claudians.

It was with these thoughts going round his head that the sun faded and the caravan halted for the night on a stony knoll, a barren island in the midst of a flat sea of desolation.

Vespasian lay with his hands behind his head just gazing up at the stars. Although it was their eleventh night sleeping out in the open he was still in awe of the vastness of the sky and the multitude of tiny points of light; the heavens seemed far bigger and fuller here, out in the desert, than they had anywhere else. ‘How many people have lain on their backs, gazing up at the night sky and been overwhelmed by its splendour, do you think, Magnus?’

Magnus, lying next to him, contemplated the question for a few moments. ‘Not as many as will do.’

Vespasian frowned to himself. ‘That’s remarkably philosophical for you.’

‘What do you mean “for me”? And anyway, why are you accusing me of being philosophical? I’m just being logical.’

‘Logical?’

‘Yes, taking the facts as we know them and following them through to a conclusion based solely upon those facts without the influence of sentiment, wishful thinking or exaggeration.’

‘Oh, I really have caught you on an evening of deep thinking. So, give me the benefit of your logic, if you will.’

‘Well, it stands to reason, don’t it, sir. If, despite all the efforts we make to the contrary, people are continually being born and then survive infancy, it follows that no matter how many people have already been born, that number will be topped by those yet to be born.’