‘Very well, if you say so.’ King Izates studied Vespasian for a few moments before turning to a woman sitting on a lesser throne next to his own. ‘Tell me, with the heart of a woman, Symacho, my love: what would you do with this hostage to the honour of Radamistus, King of Armenia? Now that that Iberian liar has foresworn his oath of loyalty to my master, the Great King Vologases, the first of that name, and also now that Ummidius Quadratus, the Governor of Roman Syria, has sent a legion into Armenia, this man’s life should be forfeit.’ He pointed at Vespasian. ‘And yet Babak told him that he would only be cast into the deepest dungeon for the rest of his life should the treaty be broken.’
‘Then do that, my King.’ She looked at Vespasian and smiled. In the two months that he had been held hostage in Arbela, the royal capital of Adiabene, Vespasian had shared many meals with the royal couple and had found the ageing Queen’s company far more entertaining than that of her religion-obsessed husband or any of his twenty-four children from sundry wives. Izates showed all the tunnel-visioned fanaticism of a convert, always pontificating about his new religion and trying to apply it in all aspects of his rule, much to the obvious displeasure, Vespasian had noticed, of a fair number of his courtiers who clung, like Babak, to the old gods of Assyria. Symacho, on the other hand, did not flaunt her new beliefs and consequently was far more relaxed and convivial because of it. Vespasian almost forgave her for encouraging her husband to incarcerate him for the rest of his life; he would have preferred a quick death.
Another blow to the head stunned him momentarily; Izates had evidently ordered the beating to continue while he contemplated the issue from a religious angle.
This was a situation far removed from what he had encountered upon his arrival in Arbela; then he had been not exactly welcomed, but treated with a reasonable amount of courtesy.
‘I’m pleased that the Lord has sent you to me,’ Izates had said to him on the day of Vespasian’s arrival.
They were standing on the immense battlements that crowned the oval hill of four hundred and fifty by three hundred and fifty paces upon which Arbela stood and had been standing for over six thousand years. The hill rose steeply, one hundred feet on all sides, to an almost flat top so that it stood like a huge base waiting for a mighty column to be raised upon it by the gods; a column that would reach the heavens and prop up the sky.
For longer than memory Arbela had dominated the Assyrian plain that stretched out in all directions, irrigated and fertile, a farmland that had given power to the ancient Assyrian Kings before they had been subjugated by first the Medes and then the Persians and then by Alexander. His victory over Darius III at Guagamela, just eighty miles away, had heralded almost three hundred years of Hellenic rule during which time Adiabene had managed to become an autonomous kingdom. Now this city, one of the oldest on earth, was subject to Parthia and it was over Parthia that Vespasian had been gazing, only half-listening to his royal host who seemed to have very little conversation other than theological.
‘He has presented me with a way to solve a problem,’ Izates had carried on.
‘If I can be of service then I’d be only too pleased,’ Vespasian had replied absently. He had been led to think that his status was somewhat more than a hostage by the way that he had been greeted after his month-long journey south with the main force of Babak’s army. He had not been confined nor had he been guarded and the King had invited him on a tour of the battlements. Very soon he had bored Vespasian rigid with his talk of the Jewish god and rambling on about the prophet he had sent to save the Jews and those who feared their god by freeing them from the priests and all vestiges of human control on the most pure of religions – or something like that. Vespasian had not quite got to grips with the detail.
‘You can, Vespasian, by God’s grace you can.’
‘How?’
‘Do you think that Radamistus will keep his word? After all, he swore his oath by Ahura Mazda who obviously does not exist.’
Vespasian had carried on gazing at the vastness of the Parthian Empire. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘There is only one god, so it follows that the rest do not exist.’
‘I’ve seen gods manifest. I’ve seen the goddess Sulis and the god Heylel take over the bodies of the dead and live.’
‘Heylel? He who was cast from God’s grace for his arrogance? He was not a god but an angel.’
Vespasian had been bored by this continual theological discussion to which the King was subjecting him. ‘It’s the same thing: a supernatural being that has more power than a human obviously demands worship. Call Heylel what you like but I call him a god and I should know because I met him.’