Parthian Vengeance (69 page)

On the wooden bridge spanning the great moat that surrounded Hatra stood soldiers of the garrison, with more lining the route from the gatehouse through the streets to the royal quarter – men wearing bronze helmets with white crests, round shields faced with bronze, leather cuirasses fitted with iron scales and leather greaves. The soldiers had difficulty holding back the cheering crowds as our column made its way to the palace, Claudia and Isabella peering from the back of the wagon and waving at the multitude.

We finally arrived at the royal square that stood between the limestone palace and the Great Temple, also called the Sun Temple, dedicated to Shamash. We left the heaving crowds at the gates to the palace quarter, which like the Citadel at Dura was surrounded by its own walls. The difference was that at Dura the Citadel was squat and compact whereas the royal quarter at Hatra was grand and expansive. As well as housing the palace it also contained the mansions of the kingdom’s nobility – I knew that Lord Herneus had a great house here – the royal armouries, stables, barracks and granaries. It was no exaggeration to say that ten of Dura’s Citadels could easily be accommodated within the walls of Hatra’s royal quarter.

Today the square was filled with the nobles and their families as the king’s son and his friends came to a halt before the steps of the palace. Servants came forward to hold the reins of our horses as we dismounted. The stable hands assisted my children from the wagon and Dobbai passed a crying Eszter to Gallia and then stepped down from the rear of the wagon. The square echoed with polite applause as I walked beside Gallia to the foot of the steps, flanked by Orodes and Axsen on my right and Nergal and Praxima on our left. However, there were also murmurs as Dobbai, Claudia and a bashful Isabella clutching her hand, followed us immediately behind. I too was surprised, though not by Dobbai, as standing on the steps were several individuals I had not expected to see at Hatra. My father and mother stood in the centre of the group, Gafarn and Diana and the young Spartacus beside them. Then came Vata and Adeleh and Atrax and Aliyeh. Aschek and his wife Ona stood next to the rulers of Media and beyond them were Surena and Viper. If I was surprised to see the new governor of Gordyene I was astounded to see King Khosrou and his queen, Tara, standing on the other end of the line of royalty, alongside King Musa of Hyrcania and his wife Queen Sholeh. At the foot of the steps, to my right, stood Assur, high priest of the temple, with a dozen of his white-robed subordinates. Now in his mid-seventies, he was still tall though very thin and his beard, formerly bushy, was noticeably thinner. He glared at Dobbai as she bared her teeth at him and his priests as she walked up the stone steps.

After I had greeted my father and mother we walked with them inside the palace as our horses were taken to the stables. The voluminous palace with its marble floors and great stone columns was pleasantly cool as we made our way to our apartments, my mother continually glancing behind at Dobbai.

‘You have brought the sorceress, Pacorus?’

‘She insisted on coming.’

‘Why?’

‘I have no idea,’ I replied. ‘More to the point, what are Khosrou and Musa doing here?’

‘All will be revealed,’ answered my father.

I had nodded to Khosrou and Musa when I alighted the palace steps but I had no opportunity that day to speak to them. After our journey we were exhausted and spent the afternoon relaxing while nursemaids attended to our children. Dobbai demanded to be shown to her quarters, after which she locked the doors of her room and was not seen until the following morning.

The three days before the wedding were filled with inspections of the garrison, tours of the walls, archery competitions, banquets and visits to the mansions of influential nobles. All very tedious and which diverted me from my aim of speaking at length to Khosrou and Musa concerning their presence at Hatra. I did succeed in speaking to Surena, though, when I ordered him to my quarters on the first morning after our arrival in the city. He told me that he had received an invitation from my father to attend Vata’s wedding and that not to be present would be an insult to the man who had done so much to support his war effort in Gordyene.

‘The wording of the letter was most insistent, lord,’ he said.

‘I can imagine.’

‘It is wise to keep the King of Hatra happy, lord, I think.’

I smiled at him. ‘I think you are right, Surena.’

‘Does Hatra wish to rule Gordyene, lord? Is that why I have been brought here.’

‘You know, Surena, at this moment in time I am as ignorant as you are regarding this matter. How are the Armenians?’

He smiled. ‘Still licking their wounds. I have heard that their king….’

‘Tigranes?’

‘Yes, lord. I have heard that he is sick.’

‘He will recover,’ I told him, ‘and when he does he will be looking to retake Gordyene.’

‘We are ready, lord.’

I did manage to avoid any appointments the morning before the wedding and took myself down to the poor quarter of the city where once Byrd had briefly lived, making a living by selling pots before I had persuaded him to accompany me to Dura. I stood before the one-roomed shop he had rented that fronted the grubby square. A wooden bench still stood before the room, though instead of Byrd’s pots it was piled high with sandals. There were around fifty people in the square inspecting and haggling over the products on display around its sides. I walked over to the sandal seller, a man in his early twenties with lank hair and sores on his hands who was arranging his goods. Behind him was a woman who looked twice her early years holding a naked infant with a dirty face. I picked up a pair of sandals as the man watched me, obviously confused why someone who wore expensive leather boots would be looking at poorer quality footwear. His wife looked at me with sorrowful eyes.

‘How much?’ I asked.

‘Three obols, sir,’ he replied.

Half a drachma – the daily wage of an unskilled worker.

‘I’ll take them.’ I took the leather pouch hanging from my belt and emptied a hundred drachmas on the table.

‘A fair price,’ I said.

He looked in disbelief at the pile of money on the table.

‘It is too much, sir.’

I looked at his miserable hovel and impoverished family and thought of the rich food and wine that would be consumed tomorrow at Vata’s wedding and of the great wealth that existed in this city, just a short distance away.

‘I knew the man who worked here once. I am forever in his debt. This is a way of repaying but a small part of it. But for an accident of birth our positions might have been reversed. How strange is fate do you not think?’

‘Sir?’

‘It does not matter. Keep the money.’

The wedding of Vata and Adeleh took place in the temple, the great building packed with kings, queens, nobles and their wives, and afterwards there was a huge feast in the palace. It was good to see Vata’s big round face wearing a smile again and I was genuinely happy for him and my sister. So now all my parents’ children were married. I had thought that Adeleh, being in her thirties, would remain single but now she went with her new husband back to Nisibus to begin her new life as the wife of Hatra’s northern governor, who had been created Prince of Nisibus in honour of his entering the royal family. I watched my mother wipe tears from her eyes as she bid her daughter farewell the day after the wedding.

With the marriage out of the way I was determined to finally speak to Khosrou at length about his campaign against the northern nomads, but I was again thwarted when Gallia and I received a summons from my father to attend him in his throne room that afternoon. My curiosity was aroused when Nergal and Praxima informed me that they had also been requested to attend my father. When we arrived I discovered that in addition to the dais upon which my father and mother sat as the rulers of Hatra, seven other temporary platforms had been erected in the great chamber in two lines extending from the permanent dais. Behind each one hung great banners carrying the symbols of the kings who would sit on each one: the red griffin of Dura, the double-headed lion sceptre crossed with a sword of Mesene, the horned bull of Babylon, the sun symbol of Margiana, the Caspian tiger of Hyrcania, the
Shahbaz
, the mythical bird of Atropaiene, and the white dragon of Media.

My father and mother were already on their thrones when Gallia and I were shown to our places along with Surena and Viper who sat down behind Gallia and me. Next to my father sat Gafarn, who nodded to me, and flanking my mother was Diana who smiled and waved at Gallia. Kogan’s guards stood every five paces around the walls while others stood in front of the great doors at its entrance. As Khosrou and his wife took their seats on their dais there was a commotion at the doors and I recognised the voice of Dobbai haranguing the guards. Kogan also heard it and left his place beside my father’s dais to see what was going on.

‘I will have entry,’ I heard Dobbai shout to the four guards who barred her way with spears.

‘Get the old witch out of here,’ ordered Kogan.

‘No,’ I shouted, ‘let her pass.’

Kogan stopped and turned to look at my father. I walked across to where the guards stood before Dobbai.

‘Put down your weapons and let her through,’ I commanded.

They knew that I was the heir to Hatra’s throne and yet they hesitated to move out of the way. They took orders from Kogan and my father, not from me.

‘Do not force me to draw my own sword,’ I threatened them.

I turned to look at Kogan who in turn looked at my father for guidance. A disapproving Assur leaned on his staff as all eyes in the hall fell on me. Orodes was frowning and Khosrou seemed mildly amused. My father nodded to Kogan.

‘Stand down and let her through,’ he ordered.

The guards moved away from Dobbai as she shuffled into the chamber and held up her arm for me to take.

‘I hope the chairs are comfortable,’ she said loudly enough for everyone to hear as I escorted her over to my platform. ‘The conversation of kings can be long and tedious and my back is old and frail.’

I gave her my large wicker chair that was stuffed with cushions as I stood next to her and waited for another to be brought. Assur went over to my father and said something into his ear, pointing at Dobbai as he did so, but my father shook his head and waved him away. Directly opposite us sat Atrax and Aliyeh, my sister curling her lip at the ugly old woman she now had to look at during the meeting, while Aschek and Musa were busy grinning at each other and pointing at Dobbai as she rearranged the cushions and settled herself in her chair. Fortunately there was room on our crowded dais to accommodate another chair and the five of us sat and waited for my father to speak. Normally only kings would have been invited to such gatherings, but he knew that Gallia would not have countenanced being excluded and neither would Praxima, and in any case Orodes would have been loathe to exclude Axsen from the proceedings so besotted was he with her. And in any case she had been the ruler of Babylon before their marriage. Thus all the wives of the kings had been invited though none was expected to contribute.

The doors were closed and my father rose from his throne and stepped from his dais. He stood on the tiled floor and looked at each of the kings in turn before he spoke.

‘My friends, I asked you here because the empire is in great peril. The days of the eighteen kingdoms under the great King of Kings Sinatruces are long gone, and with them the peace, stability and respect for the law that his reign brought and which made the empire strong. Now we have unending war: war with external enemies and war within the empire itself. Last year King of Kings Mithridates launched a war against those of us who sit in this chamber, rulers who had hitherto been loyal and true towards Ctesiphon.’

He held out a hand to me.

‘Others among us have been banished from the empire and their kingdoms traded with our enemies like cheap goods in a market. Only because of the King of Dura’s battlefield skills does his kingdom remain Parthian.’

I smiled at my father.

‘Now Hatra refuses to pay any tribute to Ctesiphon in retaliation for the aggression waged against it by the high king. My fellow kings from Atropaiene, Babylon, Mesene and Media adopt a similar stance.’ He tipped his head at Musa and Khosrou. ‘My brothers the rulers of Margiana and Hyrcania have just returned from a long campaign in the northern wastes against the steppe nomads whom formerly they were at peace with. How bitter must have been the news that gold from Ctesiphon had paid the nomads to attack them.’

I was saddened but not surprised by this revelation; after all, Mithridates had encouraged the Romans to invade Dura. He had now done the same with the northern nomads.

My father continued. ‘The mighty armies of Margiana and Hyrcania have, after more than two years of bloody and constant fighting, cowed the northern barbarians and once more their borders are quiet.

‘But I ask all of you this: how long will it be before our kingdoms are once again attacked, by the Armenians, the Romans, the northern barbarians or by King Narses acting on the orders of Mithridates? An empire that is divided encourages external enemies to be bold. But an empire that is united earns respect and deters aggression.’

‘What you say is true, King Varaz. But how do you propose to remedy the dire situation the empire finds itself in?’ asked Khosrou.

‘How, Khosrou? The removal of Mithridates,’ he replied before retaking his throne.

I reached over to grip Gallia’s arm.

‘Finally,’ I whispered.

‘Stay silent, son of Hatra,’ hissed Dobbai, ‘lest you appear too keen on further bloodshed.’

I kept my counsel as the hall fell silent. Orodes shifted nervously in his seat and Atrax appeared thoughtful while Nergal looked solemn. It was Musa who spoke first. Everything about the King of Hyrcania was large – his round face, his frame wrapped in a great white robe edged with red and gold and his bear-like hands. He rose from his chair and spread his paws out wide.

‘When I received your invitation, Varaz, I knew that I was not coming to Hatra just for a wedding feast, agreeable though it was I have to say. Hyrcania has always been a loyal kingdom to the empire but now that loyalty has been repaid by treachery. Therefore Hyrcania will stand with Hatra in this matter. Let us be rid of Mithridates and make the empire strong again.’