The Journey: How an obscure Byzantine Saint became our Santa Claus. David Price Williams
some thought. I had no idea
DAVID PRICE WILLIAMS
where he’d actually hidden it, but hoped he would react to what I’d said. I couldn’t do much more. Maybe he already suspected something was going on between Calista and Chronos. Maybe he’d heard talk about it, or he’d already felt something untoward was going to happen. Anyway, I’d done my bit. It was up to him.
As it transpired he did do something.
I learned later he had kept his gold pieces in a number of stout linen bags behind loose bricks in a soak-away just outside the kitchen. It seems that he took them out that night and replaced them with similar bags full of broken mosaic tiles from the garden at the back of the house. Where he then hid his hoard instead I didn’t find out until after he died.
THE JOURNEY
CHAPTER TWO
COMPLEXITIES OF THE EMPIRE
Chronos and Calista disappeared together that weekend, quitting our house without a word and leaving my father alone with me and our maid Irene. They took my father’s business books with them, with all the names of his contacts overseas, the people to whom he sold incense.
My father found out more of what happened after the pair had left by asking his friends in the port. They said that they had seen the two run-aways speaking to a Rhodian sea captain in one of the wine shops and had gone aboard his ship the same afternoon. An hour or so later the gangs pulled on the ropes and the ship was warped out of the harbour and with sails raised it made off around the headland into the gathering dusk to travel towards the open sea. The heavily laden craft must have tacked along the mountainous coast of southern Lycia in the strong winds and effectively no-one from Patara ever saw her again.
It was perhaps six months later that we heard more about the fate of that ship and its passengers. It must have sailed through the night, because the following morning some villagers down the coast to the east of us said they saw it pass near Bird Island
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and on towards the Great Cape some twenty miles away. It was tacking near a low rocky promontory which protruded aggressively from the mainland off its starboard beam. The boat reached towards it, but as it drew close to bear away from its cliffs a fiercely treacherous gust of wind from the high Lycian mountains must have caught the little vessel, because she span around and her stern cracked against the crags of the Cape. As the planking tore open, the heavy cargo must have dragged the hull beneath the waves because she sank instantly, seemingly with nearly all the crew. In a blizzard of expelling air bubbles, she would have plummeted downwards and presumably have come crashing to rest on the steeply shelving rocks deep below the surface.
As far as was ever discovered, there was only one survivor, a badly injured deck hand who told them what had happened. They had been carrying two passengers, so he had explained, a man and a woman, who had sat sullenly on the deck all night. Sometime after dawn the man had asked the woman for something from the bags she was carrying. She rummaged about in one of her baskets and had taken out one of number of small cloth sacks. She handed it to the man with a satisfied grin and he untied the closure strings and poured the contents carefully into his lap. It was a strange thing, said the seaman. The sack contained what appeared to be pieces of dusty old tesserae, used mosaic
THE JOURNEY
tiles, of no particular value. The sight of them had made the man so angry he began acting like a maniac. He hurled the tiles into the sea and stormed off to the stern of the ship where the captain was manning the steering oars during the difficult passage in what were really contrary and strong winds around the rocky promontory.
He shouted at the captain, telling him he had to turn the ship around there and then and sail back to Patara. A ferocious argument ensued followed by a certain amount of pushing and shoving. Suddenly, the seaman said, the man hurled the captain down onto the deck. He seized the steering oars and yanked them furiously in the opposite direction. As the ship lurched violently in response to this untoward movement, a particularly powerful down-draught struck the vessel beam on and forced it backwards against the Cape. The captain recovered his feet, but it was too late. With a terrifying splintering the stern planking was ripped out by the jagged rocks and the ship sank almost immediately. As the foaming waters surged into the vessel no one would have stood a chance, he estimated. As far as he knew, the ship and the others on board were lost. He had banged his head, sending him semi-conscious and it was hours later that he came to, washed up on the shore. He was so badly injured by the tragedy though that he didn’t survive more than a day or two, the villagers said. They buried him on the outskirts of their little settlement.
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My father seemed particularly satisfied by this account and retold it more than once to anyone who would listen as a cautionary tale of betrayal and retribution, his faithless wife receiving her just desserts. He was rather old fashioned that way, believing in a sort of primitive divine justice, and who was I to contradict him? But he changed for the better in some ways after that. Perhaps it was his release from such a fickle and feckless young wife that did it. Or maybe it was the fact that he had narrowly saved his fortune from the clutches of his deceitful and grasping apprentice, but whatever the reason, he became more circumspect, much more careful in some ways but more adventurous in others.
* * * * *
He’d been toying for some time with the idea of expanding his incense business into a more expensive product – maybe another aromatic, perhaps myrrh bark or even frankincense. In our city there wasn’t too much call for frankincense; it was too expensive for most of the establishments that made used of aromatics. But elsewhere he knew it was used in substantial quantities, especially in Rome, where all the major temples burned frankincense as often as they could afford to. It was his old friend and drinking partner Eugenios who tried to swing the balance in favour of branching out into a new line. He’d been in Rome once some years ago and had witnessed first-hand the vast amounts that were used there.
THE JOURNEY
They were sharing a pitcher of red wine in our garden one evening the following summer when Eugenios became quite enthusiastic about it.
“Have you any idea how much of this they buy, Aquila? Tons and tons of it! Do you know that during the reign of the emperor Trajan, the Roman tax collectors became so upset with the amount of money that was being wasted on frankincense they actually got the colonial service to intervene and reroute the traffic from the east to a different route just so that they could collect taxes from it. They actually built an enormous road south from Bostra, the capital city of our Syrian province, just to police its movement. It must have cost them a fortune.”
My father was not especially impressed by this. It was too long ago to be relevant. But Eugenios went on.
“And do you know how much they still spend on this frankincense every year? Well, I heard that at the last count it was over a hundred million sesterces. That represents a quarter of the money that Rome spends every year, on anything! It’s truly staggering. And that’s only in Rome. Imagine if you add all the other cities of the empire!”
“Yes, yes!” replied my father. “But believe me the sale of frankincense is all tightly sewn up. I know it can be hugely profitable, but there are some very well established firms in the market and they control the whole thing. There’s a family from