by Paul Waters
‘Here,’ I said. I lifted a folded wooden tablet and handed it to him. He gave the document a cursory glance and set it down, then looked at me sadly.
‘You see? I shall miss you, my boy. Why not leave generalship and government to others? There is nothing to be gained from it, if I am any judge of such things—Yes? What is it?’ One of the new brash young clerks had entered to say the shipping agent was waiting. Balbus waved him away. ‘Still, Drusus, business will not wait, and I must press on and deal with Vibianus. I am expected at the docks.’
Lucretia sat basilisk-faced when I told her, as if even my leaving were a slight on her.
‘There is no money, if that is what you want.’
‘No,’ I said.
There followed an unpleasant pause. Her fingers tapped on the damask cushion of her couch. Then she said, ‘You always looked down on me. You think you are better. But you are nothing at all.’
‘I looked at her pinched, mean face and said, ‘No, madam.’ Beyond her, from behind the gaudy hangings, where a new myrrhine vase stood on a fluted ornamental table, I saw the image of the simple, sad youth gazing out at me.
Like a squirrel preparing for winter, burying his acorns for the day he would have need of them, I had stored up over the months and years many ugly words I wanted to say in return for her slights and petty cruelty. But now I realized, as I looked at her hard face and modish clothes, that I had left her far behind. She no longer mattered. She had allowed envy and bitterness to mould her; she had succeeded in bending her son to her will, and had crushed the life out of him. Her husband, as she surely knew, absented himself from her whenever he could. Only the slaves remained, and, though they could not leave, they were a torment to her as much as she to them. She was her own punishment, and I perceived that any words of mine would diminish me, not her. I was free. It was enough.
And then, for no reason that was clear to me, I found I was thinking of Marcellus.
Next day I washed and dressed and hurried out, not having thought to ask what time the Council met.
I arrived too early. The low winter sun was only now rising over the surrounding roofs, casting long shadows across the great porticoed expanse of the forum square.
The food merchants – always the first to market – were setting up their awnings and laying out their baskets and urns. I stopped at a baker’s in the colonnade, bought a warm honeycake, and watched the activity around me – fish sellers with racks of oysters and casks of swimming fish; grain merchants unloading sacks of wheat and barley and pulses; greengrocers; herb sellers; spice importers and men with stacked amphoras of oil and wine and piquant sauces. As Balbus liked to say, the market was better than any soothsayer’s scattered stones for telling the health of the province, and it was filling from one side of the colonnade to the other. Trade had been good since Gratian had driven out the Saxons.
I swallowed the last of my cake and made my way along the colonnade, past the offices of the lawyers and city officials, to the great basilica which fills the forum’s northern edge. Groups of clerks and rich men’s clients were already loitering among the tall granite columns, wrapped against the morning chill, clutching writing tablets or scrolls. I wandered among them. Marcellus was not there.
Litters began to arrive, carrying members of the Council. Decurions and magistrates stepped out and mounted the basilica steps; the waiting clerks and clients stepped forward. Then, turning away, I saw him, striding purposefully across the open area of the piazza, looking fine and handsome, dressed in a woollen cloak of dark green. His grandfather Aquinus was with him and they were deep in conversation, the old man making some point and gesturing as he spoke, and Marcellus nodding.
For a moment I wondered if he had forgotten me. But I need not have worried. As they approached he glanced up, scanning the steps. Seeing me his face brightened, like the break of dawn light. His grandfather turned to meet me.
‘So this,’ he said, ‘is what all the fuss was about. I am glad to meet you at last, Drusus, though I perceive now that we have met before, even if we did not speak.’
Behind me someone said, ‘Good day, Quintus Aquinus.’ Aquinus inclined his head in acknowledgement. Around me I could see others ready to step forward, waiting to speak to him.
‘Today,’ he continued, ignoring them, ‘the Council deliberates on the subvention for municipal works, so it will be a long and tedious morning of listening to decurion after decurion explaining why he cannot pay.’ He nodded down the steps to where a rotund, balding man was climbing out of a sedan. ‘There is one. They come in clothes borrowed from their slaves and tell us they are poor; yet they arrive in gilded litters with a retinue of bearers and suppose we do not notice. And quite apart from that, have you ever seen a poor man who is so fat?’
Beside him Marcellus coughed and shifted. ‘However,’ continued his grandfather, ‘let us not dwell on such people; the world is full of them, and I shall not bore you with the city’s woes.’ He turned to Marcellus, raising his heavy white brows. ‘He is a good-looking boy. I see now why you were up before the house-slaves.’
Marcellus reddened, and pushed his hand uncomfortably through his mane of hair. His grandfather turned back to me with a glint in his eye. ‘I believe you are to join Gratian’s staff. Then I congratulate you. Perhaps, when you have time from your duties, Marcellus might bring you to visit us in the country. You will be welcome.’
I thanked him. At the high bronze door of the meeting chamber a gong sounded. ‘But now,’ he said, ‘the Council summons, and my clients here wish to address their petitions, so if you will excuse me . . .’ He nodded to us both and moved off. The crowd closed around him, chattering and importuning.
‘That,’ said Marcellus, frowning after him, ‘was my grandfather.’
‘I like him.’
‘Do you?’ he said seriously. ‘He is quite impressive really; he speaks his mind, and some people don’t like that, especially in the Council.’ He paused, and met my eye with a sheepish look. ‘And I wasn’t up before the slaves . . . well no, that’s not true: I was. But not just for you; I had other things to do as well.’
I could not help but laugh. After the tension of waiting, wondering if he would come, and of meeting Aquinus, it suddenly seemed funny. I said, ‘I’ve been here since before sunrise. I didn’t think to find out what time the Council met. I was afraid I might miss you.’
‘Really?’ He looked at me with concern. ‘But I thought you knew—’ Then our eyes met and he laughed too. ‘Still, it doesn’t matter now. What are you doing this morning?’
‘Nothing at all,’ I said.
‘Good. Then let us get away from all these people.’
I do not recall everywhere we walked, or everything we said to one another, for it seemed we ranged all over London and talked of everything. But I remember as if it were yesterday the intensity of that day. It was like a perfect note of music, like the clear voice of a flute breaking through the noise of my discordant life. We walked to the pleasant places in the city – up to the ramparts; out along the Walbrook, and west to the Fleet; through the open meadows around the hippodrome, and north beyond the wall to the high ground where we could look out from the grassy slopes at the city spread before us, with its walls and red-roofed houses, and archways and statues and painted columns. We talked of our lives, our pasts, something of our hopes, and delighted in finding what we had in common, as new friends do. Never in my life had I felt so easy in another’s company. I sensed, even then, that behind our words there was a matching of our souls, as if I had found by chance some missing half of myself, wandering apart and waiting to be reunited.
Before I knew it the light was fading. We wandered down to the bridge and leaning side by side on the balustrade watched the water ebb around the piers, and the orange sunset clouds billowing up in the west. On the riverside wall, the lamplighter was kindling the cressets in their tall standards. They flared up, one by one. Beside me Marcellus said, ‘The day has gone s
o fast; I hardly know how.’
I said, ‘Nor I.’
‘Yet there will be other days, if we choose it. Do you choose it, Drusus?’
I turned to him. The last of the sun had caught his face, reflecting like flame in his eyes.
‘Yes,’ I said, speaking what my heart felt, ‘more than anything.’
He smiled, and said, ‘I too.’
After that, we walked together up the hill, pausing here and there; but at the crossroads by the forum arch, where our paths took us different ways, we fixed a place to meet next day. And then we parted.
It was one evening not long afterwards that I nearly died, and this brings me to the subject of the gods.
After the night on the hilltop, and the girl beneath the yew tree, and the old woman who spoke in meaning riddles, I had thought again about what I had assumed I understood. I sensed the pull of some deep undercurrent, like form within chaos, or the patterns of the myriad stars.
Though I possessed no clear words for what I felt, yet I found my mind returned there, as a creature turns to water, or a plant to light. And so, as I have told, I had taken to visiting the little temple of the Huntress, up by the northern gate; for she, it seemed, was my particular god.
One would scarcely notice the shrine, and perhaps, for this reason, the Christians had left it alone. The entrance lay behind the low spreading branches of an oak that filled the square outside. Above the lintel, hidden from view unless one craned one’s neck to look, was carved in relief a scene of hunting dogs, their noses hugging the ground, running with the goddess. Within, the shrine was larger than it seemed, having been built between two houses, so that beyond the door one came into an atrium half open to the sky, and from there through a row of sturdy columns to an inner room with the fresco that so moved me.
Though I had never met another person there, I always found a lamp alight within the sanctuary, flickering in the draught behind the plinth, so that the statue itself seemed to shimmer and move. Here I would wait a while, sometimes leaving a small offering, sometimes merely standing in the presence of the god. It was my own private communion with a reality I could not name.
I had wondered at first who tended the lamp; for no one ever came, and in time I began to think of the place as my secret domain. So I started back with a cry when, that evening, a figure suddenly leapt out from the shadows.
‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded. He was a spindly, sharp-faced youth with aggression etched on his features like dirt. For a moment I wondered if he was the keeper of the lamp; but there was nothing priest-like about him, and I had seen his type before, loitering among the stalls and gambling dens, waiting for trouble, or looking for it.
‘What business is it of yours, stranger?’ I said.
He hawked and spat at my feet. ‘Has no one told you not to worship devils?’
So that is it, I thought. If he did not care for the old gods he could have kept away; yet instead he had lain in wait. I had heard of such people.
Durano had taught me never in battle to allow anger to cloud my judgement. He had said that in an ambush one can tell by watching him whether a man has hidden accomplices. But feeling my very soul was being defiled my temper rose within me and I forgot. I said, ‘If you do not like it here, then leave and mind your business.’
His thin mouth twisted in a sneer. ‘But it is our business. People like you are vermin.’ He snapped his fingers, and from the shadows behind the pillars stepped five grim accomplices. They looked gaunt and weak; but each was brandishing a weapon – an iron bar, a broken chisel; the one nearest held a rusted barber’s blade.
‘So, devil-lover,’ he said, ‘it seems you have forgotten that pagans are not wanted here. So we must teach you to remember.’ He laughed at his eloquence. The others grinned and grunted.
I knew there was no point humiliating myself by trying to reason with them. Words they would take only as weakness. They intended to hurt me, probably kill me. That they were in the sanctuary of a god counted for nothing. So much for their outraged piety. Six to one, I thought grimly; well, I shall make sure they pay a high price for it.
I forced myself to think, clearing my mind, pushing fear aside. This too I had learned from Durano. And I recalled another of his lessons: make sure, he had said, that you have an escape; but if you do not, then bark louder than your bite, for you have nothing to lose by it.
Forcing calm and menace into my voice I said, ‘You are in a holy shrine. Get out now; this is your last chance before I kill you.’
The pallid accomplices looked at one another; so I added, for good measure, ‘The god will pursue you. Do you not fear her? You will never sleep easy.’
The grins faded from their faces. But the ringleader merely laughed. ‘Don’t listen, idiots. He is trying to scare you.’
I could feel my sweat beneath my tunic, and my own heart beating. I had won a moment with this ruse, but the moment was passing. So before their attention returned I sprang, leaping forward and smashing my shoulder into the leader’s midriff. His breath rushed out and he doubled over, grasping at my hair and pulling me down with him. I shoved him and wrenched free. Then something hard struck my thigh. It hurt, but it had not hit home: whoever had struck had been aiming for my head. I rounded and kicked out, and caught someone a heavy blow in the groin.
I backed and crouched, and took in my surroundings. The others were advancing in an uncertain line; the ringleader was still clutching his stomach and gasping for air. I grabbed the edge of his tunic and heaved him round, and sent him falling into the others; then, using a wrestling move I knew, I ducked down to the floor, seized the ankles of the nearest youth and snatched them from under him. He fell back with a cry, crashing between the pillars and striking his head on the stone torus of the column. It stunned him. He dropped his weapon – a long, turned mallet handle. I lunged in the shadows for it, then standing to my full height I brought it down on the head of another.
As we fought we had dropped back, out of the glow of the lamplight. The thick columns loomed about us. In the noise and confusion it was hard for my attackers to discern friend from foe, and it slowed them. As for me, I knew each one I struck was an enemy.
From the direction of the atrium a glimmer of moonlight showed between the columns. Beyond, some way off, was the door to the street. I considered making a run for it, but anticipating this they closed to block my exit. A movement flashed in the corner of my eye. I ducked; but even as I moved I knew it was too late. The youth with the iron bar had taken a swing at my head. I avoided the worst of it; the end of the bar went crashing into the pillar behind me. But on its way it caught me a heavy blow on the back of the neck.
I staggered. My sight went dark; my head swam. I tripped on something, and fell forward onto the flagstones. Then they were upon me, like hounds on a hare, beating and kicking. They pulled me to my feet, twisting my arms behind me, laughing as I cried out in pain.
The ringleader came swaggering up and planted his hands on his hips. He tried a sneering grin, but winced instead, and I saw with cold satisfaction that he had taken a heavy blow on the forehead and was bleeding. I drew myself up, and waited for the death blow.
But before I died he wanted to crow his petty triumph, and see me suffer, and quake, and beg for my life. So when he was sure I was held fast and could not strike him, he stepped up and spat hard in my face.
‘You spit bravely,’ I said.
‘Shut up!’ he yelled, and I could tell from his voice that he was badly shaken. Then he launched into a tirade of commonplace insults mixed with threats. I hardly listened. My head was reeling. I closed my eyes.
Suddenly he ceased. I thought, ‘So now I die; but at least I have given him something to remember me by.’ Then I thought of Marcellus, whom I had arranged to meet. He would wait, and once more I should not come. I felt a wave of grief for what might have been, and wished it swiftly finished.
Yet it was not to be. I became aware that the pause was lengthe
ning. I opened my eyes. The youth was still standing before me, but his face had gone vacant. Then I saw the long knife-blade pressed tight to his throat.
I blinked and stared, for an instant as confused as he. He moved, but it was not of his own volition. Someone had shoved him from behind; and I saw then who held the blade.
It was an old man. But old as he was, he held the youth in a grip of iron. Hard sinew showed in his lean forearm, like a ploughman’s, or a soldier’s. ‘I should like,’ he said slowly, ‘to slit the throat of this dog and offer his blood to the god. But I will not insult her with such a worthless sacrifice, and so I shall kill him for myself.’
His grip tightened; the blade moved.
At this the youth began to whine and mewl, like some bitch’s pup. Water sounded on the stone floor; he had pissed himself.
His accomplices stared, their appalled gaze moving from the gathering puddle to their leader’s face. They looked away in disgust.
‘Rah!’ the old man shouted at them. They jumped and fled, stumbling and flailing in their haste to reach the door. Then he returned his attention to the ringleader. ‘Where is your courage now, brave one?’
But the youth was too far gone to answer. He just carried on snivelling, snot and tears dribbling down his trembling face.
In disgust the old man cried, ‘What sort of man is it who will take another’s life, but lacks the courage to lose his own?’ And then, with a sudden slap, ‘Shut up! Or I’ll cut your throat to silence you.’
The youth swallowed his whining and stared forward.
‘Well?’ said the man, glancing at me. ‘Will you kill him or shall I?’
I shook my head. It hurt. I could smell my own sweat. I felt dazed and sick. ‘Let him go,’ I said. ‘There has been enough defilement here.’
He looked at me, and I looked back. I saw a weariness in his old eyes. He took a long breath and slowly exhaled the air.
‘As you wish,’ he said.
