25 Short Stories and Novellas Part 1

ROBERT SILVERBERG.

A HERO OF THE EMPIRE.

HERE I AM AT LAST, HORATIUS, in far-off Arabia, amongst the Greeks and the camels and the swarthy Saracen tribesmen and all the other unpleasant creatures that infest this dreary desert. For my sins. My grievous sins. "Get you to Arabia, serpent!" cried the furious Emperor Julian, and here I am. Serpent. Me.

How could he have been so unkind?

But I tell you, O friend of my bosom, I will employ this time of exile to win my way back into Caesar's good graces somehow. I will do something while I am here, something, I know not what just yet, that will remind him of what a shrewd and enterprising and altogether valuable man I am; and sooner or later he will recall me to Roma and restore me to my place at court. Before many years have pa.s.sed you and I will stroll together along Tiber's sweet banks again. Of this much I am certain, that the G.o.ds did not have it in mind for me that I should spin out all my remaining days in so miserable a sandy wasteland as this.

A bleak forlorn place, it is, this Arabia. A bleak disheartening journey it was to get here, too.

There are, as perhaps you are aware, several Arabias within the vast territory that we know by that general name. In the north lies Arabia Petraea, a prosperous mercantile region bordering on Syria Palaestina. Arabia Petraea has been an Imperial province Since the reign of Augustus Caesar, six hundred years ago. Then comes a great deal of emptiness -Arabia Deserta, it is called, a grim, harsh, barren district inhabited mainly by quarrelsome nomads. And on the far side of that lies Arabia Felix, a populous land every bit as happy as its name implies, a place of luxurious climate and easy circ.u.mstances, famed for its fertile and productive fields and for the abundance of fine goods that it pours forth into the world's markets, gold and pearls, frankincense and myrrh, balsams and aromatic oils and perfumes.

Which of these places Caesar intended as my place of exile, I did not know. I was told that I would learn that during the course of my journey east. I have an ancient family connection to the eastern part of the world, for in the time of the first Claudius my great ancestor Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo was proconsul of Asia with his seat at Ephesus, and then governor of Syria under Nero, and various other Corbulos since his time have dwelled in those distant regions. It seemed almost agreeable to be renewing the tradition, however involuntary the renewal. Gladly would I have settled for Arabia Petraea if I had to go to Arabia at all: it is a reasonable destination for a highly placed Roman gentleman temporarily out of favor with his monarch. But of course my hopes were centered on Arabia Felix, which by all accounts was the more congenial land.

The voyage from Roma to Syria Palaestina -- pfaugh, Horatius! Nightmare.

Torture. Seasick every day. Beloved friend, I am no seafaring man. Then came a brief respite in Caesarea Maritima, the one good part, lovely cosmopolitan city, wine flowing freely, complacent pretty girls everywhere, and, yes, Horatius, I must confess it, some pretty boys too. I stayed there as long as I could. But eventually I received word that the caravan that was to take me down into Arabia was ready to depart, and I had to go.

Let no one beguile you with romantic tales of desert travel. For a civilized man it is nothing but torment and agony.

Three steps to the inland side of Jerusalem and you find yourself in the hottest, driest country this side of Hades; and things only get worse from there. Every breath you take hits your lungs like a blast from an oven. Your nostrils, your ears, your lips become coated with windborne particles of grit.

The sun is like a fiery iron platter in the sky. You go for miles without seeing a single tree or shrub, nothing but rock and red sand. Mocking phantoms dance before you in the s.h.i.+mmering air. At night if you are lucky enough or weary enough to be able to drop off to sleep for a little while, you dream longingly of lakes and gardens and green lawns, but then you are awakened by the scrabbling sound of a scorpion in the sand beside your cheek, and you lie there sobbing in the stifling heat, praying that you will die before the coming of the fiery dawn.

Somewhere in the midst of all this dead wilderness the traveler leaves the province of Syria Palaestina and enters Arabia, though no one can say precisely where the boundary lies. The first thing you come to, once across that invisible line, is the handsome city of Petra of the Nabataeans, an impregnable rock-fortress that stands athwart all the caravan routes. It is a rich city and, aside from the eternal parching heat, quite a livable one. I would not have greatly minded serving out my time of exile there.

But no, no, the letter of instruction from His Imperial Majesty that awaited me in Petra informed me that I needs must go onward, farther south. Arabia Petraea was not the part of Arabia that he had in mind for me. I enjoyed three days of civilized urban amus.e.m.e.nt there and then I was in the desert again, traveling by camel this time. I will spare you the horrors of that experience. We were heading, they let me know, for the Nabataean port of Leuke Kome on the Red Sea.

Excellent, I thought. This Leuke Kome is the chief port of embarkation for travelers sailing on to Arabia Felix. So they must be sending me to that fertile land of soft breezes and sweet-smelling blossoms, of spices and precious stones.

I imagined myself waiting out my seasons of banishment in a cozy little villa beside the sea, nibbling tender dates and studying the fine brandies of the place. Perhaps I would dabble a bit in the frankincense trade or do a little lucrative business in cinnamon and ca.s.sia to pa.s.s the time.

At Leuke Kome I presented myself to the Imperial legate, a sleek and self-important young popinjay named Florentius Victor, and asked him how long it would be before my s.h.i.+p was to leave. He looked at me blankly. "s.h.i.+p? What s.h.i.+p?

Your route lies overland, my dear Leontius Corbulo." He handed me the last of my letters of instruction, by which I was informed that my final destination was a place by the name of Macoraba, where I was to serve as commercial representative of His Imperial Majesty's government, with the special responsibility of resolving any trade conflicts that might arise with such representatives of the Eastern Empire as might be stationed there.

"Macoraba? And just where is that?"

"Why, in Arabia Deserta," said Florentius Victor blandly.

"Arabia Deserta?" I repeated, with a sinking heart.

"Exactly. A very important city, as cities in that part of the world go. Every caravan crossing Arabia has to stop there. Perhaps you've heard of it under its Saracen name. Mecca is what the Saracens call it."

ARABIA DESERTA, Horatius! Arabia Deserta! For the trifling crime of tampering with the innocence of his unimportant little British cup-boy, the heartless vindictive Emperor has buried me in this brutal netherworld of remorseless heat and drifting dunes.

I have been in Macoraba -- Mecca, I should say -- just three or four days, now.

It seems like a lifetime already.

What do we have in this land of Arabia Deserta? Why, nothing but a desolate torrid sandy plain intersected by sharp and naked hills. There are no rivers and rain scarcely ever falls. The sun is merciless. The wind is unrelenting. The dunes s.h.i.+ft and heave like ocean waves in a storm: whole legions could be buried and lost by a single day's gusts. For trees they have only scrubby little tamarinds and acacias, that take their nourishment from the nightly dews. Here and there one finds pools of brackish water rising from the bowels of the earth, and these afford a bit of green pasture and sometimes some moist ground on which the date-palm and the grapevine can take root, but it is a spa.r.s.e life indeed for those who have elected to settle in such places.

In the main the Saracens are a wandering race who endlessly guide their flocks of horses and sheep and camels back and forth across this hard arid land, seeking out herbage for their beasts where they can. All the year long they follow the seasons about, moving from seacoast to mountains to plains, so that they can take advantage of such little rainfall as there is, falling as it does in different months in these different regions. From time to time they venture farther afield -- to the banks of the Nile or the farming villages of Syria or the valley of the Euphrates -- to descend as brigands upon the placid farmers of those places and extort their harvests from them.

The harshness of the land makes it a place of danger and distress, of rapine and fear. In their own self-interest the Saracens form themselves into little tribal bands under the absolute government of fierce and ruthless elders; warfare between these tribes is constant; and so vehement is each man's sense of personal honor that offense is all too easily given and private blood-feuds persist down through generation after generation, yet ancient offenses never seem to be wiped out.

Two settlements here have come to be dignified with the name of "cities."

Cities, Horatius! Mudholes with walls about them, rather. In the northern part of this desert one finds Iatrippa, which in the Saracens' own tongue is named Medina. It has a population of 15,000 or so, and as Arabian villages go is fairly well provided with water, so that it possesses abundant date-groves, and its people live comfortable lives, as comfort is understood in this land.

Then, a ten-day caravan journey to the south, through somber th.o.r.n.y land broken now and then by jutting crags of dark stone, is the town our geographers know as Macoraba, the Mecca of the locals. This Mecca is a bigger place, perhaps 25,000 people, and it is of such ineffable ugliness that Virgil himself would not have been able to conceive of it. Imagine, if you will, a "city" whose buildings are drab hovels of mud and brick, strung out along a rocky plain a mile wide and two miles long that lies at the foot of three stark mountains void of all vegetation. The flinty soil is useless for agriculture. The one sizable well yields bitter water. The nearest pasture land is fifty miles away. I have never seen so unprepossessing a site for human habitation.

You can readily guess, I think, which of the two cities of Arabia Deserta our gracious Emperor chose as my place of exile.

"Why," said I to Nicomedes the Paphlagonian, who was kind enough to invite me to be his dinner guest on my second depressing night in Mecca, "would anyone in his right mind have chosen to found a city in a location of this sort?"

Nicomedes, as his name will have indicated, is a Greek. He is the legate in Arabia Deserta of our Emperor's royal colleague, the Eastern Emperor Maurice Tiberius, and he is, I suspect, the real reason why I have been sent here, as I will explain shortly.

"It's in the middle of nowhere," I said. "We're forty miles from the sea and on the other side there's hundreds of miles of empty desert. Nothing will grow here. The climate is appalling and the ground is mostly rock. I can't see the slightest reason why any person, even a Saracen, would want to live here."

Nicomedes the Paphlagonian, who is a handsome man of about fifty with thick white hair and affable blue eyes, smiled and nodded. "I'll give you two, my friend. One is that nearly all commerce in Arabia is handled by caravan. The Red Sea is a place of tricky currents and treacherous reefs. Sailors abhor it.

Therefore in Arabia goods travel mainly by land, and all the caravans have to pa.s.s this way, because Mecca is situated precisely at the mid-point between Damascus up north and the thriving cities of Arabia Felix down below us, and it also commands the one pa.s.sable eastwest route across the remarkably dreadful desert that lies between the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. The caravans that come here are richly laden indeed, and the merchants and hostelkeepers and tax-collectors of Mecca do the kind of lively business that middlemen always do.

You should know, my dear Leontius Corbulo, that there are a great many very wealthy men in this town."

He paused and poured more wine for us: some wonderful sweet stuff from Rhodes, hardly what I would have expected anyone in this remote outpost to keep on hand for casual guests.

"You said there were two reasons," I reminded him, after a time.

"Oh, yes. Yes." He had not forgotten. He is an unhurried man. "This is also a sacred city, do you see? There is a shrine in Mecca, a sanctuary, which they call the Kaaba. You should visit it tomorrow. It'll be good for you to get out and about town: it will make the time pa.s.s more cheerfully. Look for a squat little cubical building of black stone in the center of a great plaza. It's quite unsightly, but unimaginably holy in Saracen eyes. It contains some sort of lump of rock that fell from heaven, which they think of as a G.o.d. The Saracen tribesmen from all over the country make pilgrimages here to wors.h.i.+p at the Kaaba. They march round and round it, bowing to the stone, kissing it, sacrificing sheep and camels to it, and afterward they gather in the taverns and hold recitations of war poetry and amorous verses. Very beautiful poetry, in its own barbarous fas.h.i.+on, I think. These pilgrims come here by the thousands.

There's money in having the national shrine in your town, Corbulo: big money."

His eyes were gleaming. How the Greeks love moneymaking!

"Then, too," he went on, "the chieftains of Mecca have very shrewdly proclaimed that in the holy city all feuds and tribal wars are strictly forbidden during these great religious festivals. -- You know about the Saracens and their feuds?

Well, you'll learn. At any rate, it's very useful to everybody in this country for one city to be set aside as a place where you don't have to be afraid of getting a scimitar in your gut if you chance to meet the wrong person while crossing the street. A lot of business gets done here during the times of truce between people from tribes that hate each other the rest of the year. And the Meccans take their cut, do you follow me? That is the life of the city: collecting percentages on everything. Oh, this may be a dismal hideous town, Corbulo, but there are men living here who could buy the likes of you and me in lots of two dozen."

"I see." I paused just a moment. "And the Eastern Empire, I take it, must be developing significant business interests in this part of Arabia, or else why would the Eastern Emperor have stationed a high official like you here?"

"We're beginning to have a little trade with the Saracens; yes," the Greek said.

"Just a little." And he filled my gla.s.s yet again.

The next day -- hot, dry, dusty, like every day here -- I did go to look at this Kaaba of theirs. Not at all hard to find: right in the center of town, in fact, standing by itself in the midst of an empty square of enormous size. The holy building itself was unimposing, perhaps fifty feet high at best, covered completely by a thick veil of black doth. I think you could have put the thing down in the courtyard of the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus or any of Roma's other great temples and it would utterly disappear from view.

This did not seem to be pilgrimage season. There was no one around the Kaaba but a dozen or so Saracen guards. They were armed with such formidable swords, and looked so generally unfriendly, that I chose not to make a closer inspection of the shrine.

My early wanderings through the town showed me very little that indicated the presence of the prosperity that Nicomedes the Paphlagonian had claimed was to be found here. But in the course of the next few days I came gradually to understand that the Saracens are not a people to flaunt their wealth, but prefer instead to conceal it behind unadorned facades. Now and again I would have a peek through a momentarily opened gate into a briefly visible courtyard and got the sense of a palatial building hidden back there, or I would see some merchant and his wife, richly robed and laden with jewels and gold chains, climbing into a shrouded sedanchair, and I knew from such fitful glimpses that this must indeed be a wealthier city than it looked. Which explains, no doubt, why our Greek cousins have started to find it so appealing.

These Saracens are a handsome people, lean and finely made, very dark of skin, dark hair and eyes as well, with sharp features and prominent brows. They wear airy white robes and the women go veiled, I suppose to protect their skins against the blowing sand. Thus far I have seen more than a few young men who might be of interest to me, and they gave me quick flas.h.i.+ng looks, too, that indicated response, though it was far too soon to take any such risks here. The maidens also are lovely. But they are very well guarded.

My own situation here is more pleasing, or at least less displeasing, than I had feared. I feel the pain of my isolation, of course. There are no other Westerners. Greek is widely understood by the better cla.s.s of Saracens, but I yearn already for the sound of good honest Latin. Still, it has been arranged for me to have a walled villa, of modest size but decent enough, at the edge of town nearest the mountains. If only it had proper baths, it would be perfect; but in a land without water there is no understanding of baths. A great pity, that. The villa belongs to a merchant of Syrian origin who will be spending the next two or three years traveling abroad. I have inherited five of his servants as well. A wardrobe of clothing in the local style has been provided for me.

It all might have been much worse, eh?

But in truth they couldn't simply have left me to s.h.i.+ft for myself in this strange land. I am still an official of the Imperial court, after all, even though I happen currently to be in disfavor and exile. I am here on Imperial business, you know. It was not just out of mere pique that Julian s.h.i.+pped me here, even though I had angered him mightily by getting to his cup-boy before him. I realize now that he must have been looking for an excuse to send someone to this place who could serve unofficially as an observer for him, and I inadvertently gave him the pretext he needed.

Do you understand? He is worried about the Greeks, who evidently have set about the process of extending their authority into this part of the world, which has always been more or less independent of the Empire. My formal a.s.signment, as I have said, is to investigate the possibilities of expanding Roman business interests in Arabia Deserta -- Western Roman, that is. But I have a covert a.s.signment as well, one so covert that not even I have been informed of its nature, that has to do with the growing power of Romans of the other sort in that region.

What I am saying, in ordinary language, is that I am actually a spy, sent here to keep watch over the Greeks.

Yes, I know, it is all one empire that happens to have two emperors, and we of the West are supposed to look upon the Greeks as our cousins and co-administrators of the world, not as our rivals. Sometimes it actually does work that way, I will concede. As in the time of Maximilia.n.u.s III, for example, when the Greeks helped us put an end to the disturbances that the Goths and Vandals and Huns and other barbarians were creating along our northern frontier.

And then again a generation later, when Heraclius II sent Western legions to help the Eastern Emperor Justinian smash the forces of Persia that had been causing the Greeks such trouble to the east for so many years. Those were, of course, the two great military strokes that eliminated the Empire's enemies for good and laid the foundations for the era of eternal peace and safety in which we live now.

But an excess of peace and safety, Horatius, can bring niggling little problems of its own. With no external enemies left to worry about, the Eastern and Western Empires are beginning to jockey with each other for advantage. Everybody understands that, though no one says it aloud. There was that time, let me remind you, when the amba.s.sador of Maurice Tiberius came to court, bearing a casket of pearls as a gift for Caesar. I was there. "Et dona ferentes,", said Julian to me under his breath, as the casket was uncovered. The line every schoolboy knows: I fear Greeks even when bringing gifts.

Is the Eastern Empire trying to put a drawstring around the midsection of Arabia, and by so doing to gain control over the trade in spices and other precious exotic merchandise that pa.s.ses this way? It would not be a good thing for us to become altogether dependent on the Greeks for our cinnamon and our cardamom, our frankincense and our indigo. The very steel of our swords comes westward to us out of Persia by way of this Arabia, and the horses that draw our chariots are Arabian horses.

And so the Emperor Julian, feigning great wrath and loudly calling me a serpent before all the court when the matter of the little cup-bearer became known, has thrust me into this parched land primarily to find out what the Greeks a.re really up to here, and perhaps also to establish certain political connections with powerful Saracens myself, connections that he can employ in blocking the Eastern Empire's apparent foray into these regions. Or so I do believe, Horatius. So I must believe, and I must make Caesar believe it himself. For it is only by doing some great service for the Emperor that I can redeem myself from this woeful place and win my way back to Roma, to Caesar's side and to yours, my sweet friend, to yours.

THE NIGHT BEFORE last--I have been in Mecca eight days, now -- Nicomedes invited me once again for dinner. He was dressed, as I was, in white Saracen robes, and wore a lovely dagger in a jeweled sheath strapped to his waist. I glanced quickly at it, feeling some surprise at being greeted by a host who wore a weapon; but instantly he took the thing off and presented it to me. He had mistaken my concern for admiration, and it is a Saracen custom, I have learned, to bestow upon one's guests anything in one's household that the guest might choose to admire.

We dined this time not in the tiled parlor where he had entertained me previously but in a cool courtyard beside a plas.h.i.+ng fountain. The possession of such a fountain is a token of great luxury in this dry land. His servants brought us an array of fine wines and sweetmeats and cool sherbets. I could see that Nicomedes had modeled his manner of living after the style of the leading merchants of the city, and was reveling in that.

I had not been there very long when I got right down to the central issue: that is, what exactly it was that the Greek Emperor hoped to accomplish by stationing a royal legate in Mecca. Sometimes, I think, the best way for a spy to learn what he needs to learn is to put aside all guile and play the role of a simple, straightforward, ingenuous man who merely speaks his heart.

So as we sat over roast mutton and plump dates in warm milk I said, "Is it the Eastern Emperor's hope to incorporate Arabia into the Empire, then?"

Nicomedes laughed. "Oh, we're not so foolish as to think we can do that. No one's ever been able to conquer this place, you know. The Egyptians tried it, and the Persians of Cyrus's time, and Alexander the Great. Augustus sent an expedition in here, ten thousand men, six months to fight their way in and sixty days of horrible retreat. I think Trajan made an attempt too. The thing is, Corbulo, these Saracens are free men, free within themselves, which is a kind of freedom that you and I are simply not equipped to comprehend. They can't be conquered because they can't be governed. Trying to conquer them is like trying to conquer lions or tigers. You can whip a lion or even kill it, yes, but you can't possibly impose your will on it even if you keep it in a cage for twenty years. These are a race of lions here. Government as we understand it is a concept that can never exist here."

"They are organized into tribes, aren't they? That's a sort of government.

He shrugged. "Built out of nothing more than family loyalty. You can't fas.h.i.+on any sort of national administration out of it. Kinsman looks after kinsman and everybody else is regarded as a potential enemy. There are no kings here, do you realize that? Never have been. Just tribal chieftains -- emirs, they call them.

A land without kings is never going to submit to an emperor. We could fill this entire peninsula with soldiers, fifty legions, and the Saracens would simply melt away into the desert and pick us off one by one from a distance with javelins and arrows. An invisible enemy striking at us from a terrain that we can't survive in. They're unconquerable, Corbulo. Unconquerable."

There was pa.s.sion in his voice, and apparent sincerity. The Greeks are good at apparent sincerity.

I said, "So the best you're looking for is some kind of trade agreement, is that it? Just an informal Byzantine presence, not any actual incorporation of the region into the Empire."

He nodded. "That's about right. Is your Emperor bothered by that?"

"It's drawn his attention, I would say. We wouldn't want to lose access to the goods we obtain from this part of the world. And also those from places like India to the east that normally s.h.i.+p their merchandise westward by way of Arabia."

"But why would that happen, my dear Corbulo? This is a single empire, is it not?

Julian II rules from Roma and Maurice Tiberius rules from Constantinopolis, but they rule jointly for the common good of all Roman citizens everywhere. As has been the case since the great Constantinus divided the realm in the first place three hundred years ago."

Yes. Of course. That is the official line. But I know better and you know better and Nicomedes the Paphlagonian knew better too. I had pushed the issue as far as seemed appropriate just then, however. It was time to move on to more frivolous topics.

I found, though, that dropping the matter was not all that easily done. Having voiced my suspicions, I thereby had invited counterargument, and Nicomedes was not finished providing it. I had no choice but to listen while he wove such a web of words about me that it completely captured me into his way of thinking.

The Greeks are d.a.m.nably clever with words, of course; and he had lulled me with sweet wines and surfeited me with an abundance of fine food so that I was altogether unable just then to refute and rebut, and before he was done with me my mind was utterly spun around on the subject of East versus West.

He a.s.sured me in twenty different ways that an expansion of the Eastern Empire's influence into Arabia Deserta, if such a thing were to take place, would not in any way jeopardize existing Western Roman trade in Arabian or Indian merchandise. Arabia Petraea just to the north had long been under the Eastern Empire's administration, he pointed out, and that was true also of the provinces of Syria Palaestina and Aiguptos and Cappadocia and Mesopotamia and all those other sunny eastern lands that Constantinus, at the time of the original division of the realm, had placed under the jurisdiction of the Emperor who would sit at Constantinopolis. Did I believe that the prosperity of the Western Empire was in any way hampered by having those provinces under Byzantine administration? Had I not just traveled freely through many of those provinces on my way here? Was there not a mult.i.tude of Western Roman merchants resident in them, and were they not free to do business there as they wished?

I could not contest any of that. I wanted to disagree, to summon up a hundred instances of subtle Eastern interference with Western trade, but just then I could not offer even one.

Believe me, Horatius, at that moment I found myself quite unable to understand why I had ever conceived such a mistrust of Greek intentions. They are indeed our cousins, I told myself. They are Greek Romans and we are Roman Romans, yes, but the Empire itself is one ent.i.ty, chosen by the G.o.ds to rule the world. A gold piece struck in Constantinopolis is identical in weight and design to one struck in Roma. One bears the name and face of the Eastern Emperor, one the name and face of the Emperor of the West, but all else is the same. The coins of one realm pa.s.s freely in the other. Their prosperity is our prosperity; our prosperity is theirs. And so on and so forth.

But as I thought these things, Horatius, I also realized gloomily that by so doing I was undercutting in my own mind my one tenuous hope of freeing myself from this land of burning sands and stark treeless hills. As I noted in my most recent letter, what I need is some way of saying, "Look, Caesar, how well I have served you!" so that he would say in return, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant," and summon me back to the pleasures of the court. For that to occur, though, I must show Caesar that he has enemies here, and give him the way of dealing with those enemies. But what enemies? Who? Where?

We were done with our meal now. Nicomedes clapped his hands and a servitor brought a flask of some rich golden brandy that came, he said, from a desert princ.i.p.ality on the sh.o.r.es of the Persian Gulf. It dazzled my palate and further befogged my mind.

He conducted me, then, through the rooms of his villa, pointing out the highlights of what even in my blurred condition I could see was an extraordinary collection of antiquities and curios: fine Greek bronze figurines, majestic sculptures from Egypt done in black stone, strange wooden masks of barbaric design that came, he said, from the unknown lands of torrid Africa, and much, much more.

He spoke of each piece with the deepest knowledge. By now I had come to see that my host was not only a devious diplomat but also a person of some power and consequence in the Eastern realm, and a scholar of note besides. I was grateful to him for having reached out so generously to me in these early days of my lonely exile -- to the displaced and unhappy Roman n.o.bleman, bereft of all that was familiar to him, a stranger in a strange land. But I knew also that I was meant to be grateful to him, that it was his purpose to ensnare me in the bonds of friends.h.i.+p and obligation, so that I would have nothing but good things to say about the Greek legate in Mecca should I ever return to my master the Emperor Julian II.

Would I ever return, though? That was the question.

That is the question, yes. Will I ever see Roma of the green hills and s.h.i.+ning marble palaces again, Horatius, or am I doomed to bake in the heat of this oven of a desert forever?

HAVING NO occupation here and having as yet found no friends other than Nicomedes, whose companions.h.i.+p I could not presume to demand too often, I whiled away the days that followed in close exploration of the town.

The shock of finding myself resident in this squalid little place has begun to wear off. I have started to adapt, to some degree, to the change that has come over my existence. The pleasures of Roma are no longer mine to have; very well, I must search out such diversion as is to be found here, for there is no place in the world, humble though it be, that does not offer diversion of some sort to him who has eyes for finding it.

So in these days since my last letter I have roamed from one end of Mecca to the other, up and down the broad though unpaved boulevards and into many of the narrow lanes and byways that intersect them. My presence does not appear to be greatly troublesome to anyone, although from time to time I do become cognizant that I am the object of someone's cold, gleaming stare.

I am, as you know, the only Roman of the West in Mecca, but scarcely the only foreigner. In the various marketplaces I have seen Persians, Syrians, Ethiopians, and of course a good many Greeks. There are numerous Indians here as well, dark lithe people with conspicuous luminous eyes, and also some Hebrews, these being a people who live mainly over in Aiguptos, just on the other side of the Red Sea from Arabia. They have been resident in Aiguptos for thousands of years, though evidently they were originally a desert tribe from some country much like this one, and they are not in any way Aiguptian in language or culture or religion. These Hebrews have in modern times begun to spread from their home along the Nilus into the lands adjacent, and there are more than a few of them here. Nicomedes has spoken of them to me.

They are unusual people, the Hebrews. The most interesting thing about them is that they believe there is only one G.o.d, a harsh and austere deity who cannot be seen and who must not be portrayed in images of any sort. They have nothing but contempt for the G.o.ds of other races, deeming them wholly imaginary, mere creatures of fable and fantasy that possess no true existence. This may very likely be the case, certainly: who among us has ever laid eyes on Apollo or Mercury or Minerva? Most people, however, have the good sense not to make a mockery of the religious practices of others, whereas the Hebrews apparently cannot keep themselves from trumpeting the virtues of their own odd species of belief while denouncing everybody else most vociferously as idolaters and fools.

As you can readily imagine, this does not make them very popular among their neighbors. But they are an industrious folk, with special apt.i.tudes for the sciences of agriculture and irrigation, and a notable knack, also, for finance and trade, which is why Nicomedes has paid such attention to them. He tells me that they own most of the best land in the northern part of the country, that they are the chief bankers here in Mecca, and that they control the markets in weapons, armor, and agricultural tools everywhere in the land. It seems advantageous for me to get to know one or two important Hebrews of Mecca and I have made attempts to do so, thus far without any success, during the course of my ramblings in the marketplaces.

The markets here are very specialized, each offering its own kind of merchandise. I have visited them all by now.

There is a spice-market, of course: great sacks of pepper both black and white, and garlic and c.u.min and saffron, sandalwood and ca.s.sia, aloes, spikenard, and an aromatic dried leaf that they call malabathron, and hosts of other things I could not begin to name. There is a camel-market, only on certain days of the week, where those strange beasts are bought and sold in heated bargaining that goes to the edge of actual combat. I went up to one of these creatures to see it better and it yawned in my face as though I were the dullest of rogues. There is a market for cloth, which deals in muslins and silks and cotton both Indian and Aiguptian, and a market where crude idols of many kinds are sold to the credulous -- I saw a Hebrew man walk past it, and spit and glare and make what I think was a holy sign of his people -- and a market for wines, and one for perfumes, and the market of meat and the one of grains, and the market where the Hebrew merchants sell their iron goods, and one for fruits of all kinds, pomegranates and quinces and citrons and lemons and sour oranges and grapes and peaches, all this in the midst of the most forbidding desert you could imagine!

And also there is a market for slaves, which is where I encountered the remarkable man who called himself Mahmud.