The Philosopher Prince

by Paul Waters

  I took the folded bundle, and gazed down at the seal; but in my mind I was seeing the image of my father as I remembered him, standing tall against the windows of his sunlit study, on the day he sent me away. For all this time Julian must have known, without the power to act.

  I looked up to thank him. But I found my throat tightened, and the words would not come.

  ‘Tell me, Drusus, do you believe the gods speak to us in dreams, as it is often claimed?’

  I swallowed, and thought.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied, after a pause, ‘but it takes man’s reason to know the meaning of what they tell. We are not mere playthings of the gods, like chaff in a torrent.’

  He nodded and smiled.

  ‘A good answer. Only the well-ordered soul sees rightly. Last night, I dreamed of a tall tree, and, about its roots, a sapling struggling to grow in its shadow. The tall tree had partly fallen, its roots torn from the soil. But as I drew nearer to see, Hermes touched me on the shoulder and said, “Look and take heart; the sapling remains bound to the earth; it will grow up strong, and the other will die away.”’

  He gave a shy self-conscious laugh.

  I said, ‘But what does it mean?’

  He shrugged. ‘Perhaps this. The tall tree is Constantius; and though I did not ask for it, yet God has given me the chance to put right many evils that Constantius has caused.’ He nodded at the scroll in my hand. ‘This is a beginning. As for the rest, I do not know where it will lead. But I sense the gods are with me. If I refuse what they proffer, there will be no second chance.’

  EIGHT

  WE CROSSED TO BRITAIN in a fast single-banked galley, on a spring day of scudding clouds, blown in on a westerly breeze that rocked and pitched the boat. At Rich-borough fort we picked up horses and a military escort, and then rode west through the dew-fresh pastures of the coastal plain, taking the road to London.

  The road was familiar. The memories returned. In due course, at the turn-off to a southwards-leading pathway, I reined in my horse. The track was overgrown with brambles and whitethorn; violets and blue hyacinth showed on the grass bank. I pointed towards the tall avenue of limes in the middle-distance. ‘The house is there behind,’ I said to Marcellus. ‘All this was my father’s land.’

  ‘And now it is restored to you. The riders need a break; we should go and look.’

  I felt a pang of reluctance for which I had no easy words. But Marcellus had already dismissed the escort, telling them to ride on and wait in the next village. So shaking off my feeling I set off with him down the disused path.

  Ivy and tangled honeysuckle had grown up over the high stone arch of the gateway. We rode on through, and dismounted. Within the enclosure, the walls of the house still stood; but the roof was gone, and fire-charred beams lay fallen on the atrium floor.

  Inside, where there had once been a small square tiled pool, a rowan had taken root. Already it was tall as two men and branching out, taking possession. We stepped around it. The breeze stirred in an eddy around us. I paused, and rubbed the stirred-up soot from my eyes, and saw in the spangling darkness behind my eyelids the house as I remembered it, with its urns of trailing flowers, and painted walls, and marble inlaid floors. I scuffed at the floor with my toe. Below the layer of rubble the marble was still there: coloured strips of red and honey-white and serpentine.

  ‘I had supposed,’ I said, ‘that someone else would be living here. The bishop took it all, and for what? A bequest to the Church from my father, so he claimed, though everyone knew it was a lie. But I was a boy; and who would gainsay him? And now it is a wasteland. A man should own nothing he cannot put to proper use. It makes me angry.’ And I kicked hard at a blackened rafter.

  ‘Yet perhaps,’ said Marcellus, placing his hand on my shoulder, ‘it is better so; for at least there is no stranger here, demanding to know your business in your own house. That would be worse.’

  We walked on inside. The fire that had consumed the house had been set in my father’s study. The once-bright frescoes were blackened and cracked; great swathes of plaster had parted from the wall, exposing the brick beneath. In one of the high alcoves where he had kept his books, a martin had built her nest.

  Frowning and silent, I picked my way through the debris, pausing here and there to look. My father’s great onyx table remained, in the place where it had always been, between the tall windows. No doubt it had been too heavy for the looters to shift. Absently I traced my finger across the blackened surface, leaving a line of white stone. There was a stirring, and the martin came fluttering in, and sat chirping indignantly on her shelf. I glanced around the ruin of the room where I had so often stood as a child, waiting to be punished or rebuked. Though my father had been a stranger to me, he had been just, and was brought low by lesser men than he. I understood such things better now. I used to think he hated me; but he had loved me in his austere way. I had not seen it while he lived.

  I swallowed and turned. Marcellus’s grey eyes were upon me.

  ‘For years,’ I said, ‘this place has been in my dreams, somewhere forever lost. I never thought I should return; and in a way I wish I had not, for now it is this ruin I shall remember.’

  I took a last look, drew my breath, and walked over to where he was waiting by the door.

  ‘I am what I have become,’ I said. ‘There is no going back.’ And then, after a pause, ‘Time and change turn everything to dust.’

  He brought his hand up to my neck and easing me to him kissed my brow. It was something he seldom did.

  ‘Some things are forever, Drusus; and I am still here. You belong with me now.’

  We spoke no more. And presently we turned away, kicking through the black dust, to where the horses were waiting in the courtyard, chewing at the tall grass that grew up between the cracked untended pavings.

  Next day we came to London. After the ravaged look of Gaul, everything seemed prosperous. The Saxons had come raiding when I was a boy, spreading their usual terror; but the danger had been forgotten, and the villas and farmsteads in the spreading open suburbs south of the Thames had been rebuilt and even extended.

  Crossing the bridge I pointed to the barges tied two and three deep along the wharf and asked the escort nearest me, a good-looking black-haired Briton newly recruited and eager to please, why the port was so busy, seeing as it was still early spring.

  ‘Oh, sir, this is nothing at all,’ he cried. ‘Just wait till the sea-roads open with the fine weather, and the ships from the Rhine return.’

  I smiled to myself. Julian would be pleased to see his dream come real. I noted in my mind, to relate to him later, all the signs of activity and new wealth: the laden wagons beside the storehouses; the rows of amphoras and barrels and piled-up crates on the wharf; the lines of barges with their bright furled sails; and, everywhere, busy, well-dressed citizens hurrying about their business.

  Only the city walls had been neglected; and when I mentioned this to the young escort he just gave a civil laugh and said that Romans had nothing to fear from primitive Saxons. I smiled at his innocent courage and said nothing. I had heard the same words before.

  At the governor’s palace we were met by the new governor Alypius, Julian’s friend from Antioch. He was a middle-aged Greek with an intelligent, careworn face. We gave him letters from Paris, and told him something of what had occurred there. We were brief and discreet. It was not a time for too many words. When we had finished he frowned and said, ‘It is a difficult, unpleasant matter, to be sure; but I am surprised to see you so soon after the other, for only two days ago there was a courier from Paris, and I might have supposed—’

  ‘A courier, sir?’ I said, breaking in. ‘But what courier was this? No one was sent from Paris.’

  Alypius looked at me. ‘Are you quite sure? He was here only two days ago – an imperial messenger on his way to Lupicinus. How odd. He was from Paris – he said he had come from Paris – with urgent dispatches from the prefect Florentius.’

 
‘Then forgive me, sir, but that cannot be: Florentius is not in Paris. He has been absent from there all winter.’

  A deep frown settled on Alypius’s face. ‘I see; I see. Then I fear we have a problem. I did not meet the man myself, and so cannot give you my direct opinion; but the stable-master said he was oddly agitated when he learnt that Lupicinus was not here in London. I thought little of it at the time; but, now that I reflect, it does seem rather strange, for it is surely known in Paris that Lupicinus left London long ago.’

  ‘May we question the stable-master ourselves?’ asked Marcellus.

  ‘Why yes, of course.’ He signalled to a steward and told him to conduct us to the stables. As we walked with him to the door he said in a low, confidential voice, ‘I do hope Julian… I mean the Caesar – or rather the Augustus – will not think …’

  ‘The man lied to you, sir,’ I said. ‘You were not to know. But now we must make haste; we must overtake this courier, whoever he is, before he reaches Lupicinus.’

  We hurried outside and across the courtyard with its cascading Neptune fountain, where once, as an orphaned youth, I had sat and considered Gratian’s offer of a place in the army. ‘Yes,’ said the stable-master, ‘I remember the man well.’ He described him, adding, ‘He was not one of the usual relay-riders; I know them all. And he refused a relief-man, saying his orders were to deliver his message in person.’

  By then the first lamps of evening were being kindled. We asked about the route and other such matters; and then, leaving orders for horses to be ready with the dawn, we went off to wash and eat.

  Later, sitting at a tavern we knew, I said to Marcellus, ‘We may be too late. If he reaches Lupicinus then our game is up.’

  Marcellus nodded. ‘Yet it could be he does not know the message he carries. We may be able to persuade him.’ He hesitated and looked me in the eye. ‘But if we cannot, we shall have to kill him.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  I had thought of it already.

  We set out at first light and rode hard, changing horses along the way. Finally, at a drab settlement called Letocetum, we caught up with our courier.

  Rain had blown in from the west, and we arrived at the staging-inn cold and wet and aching. But there was work to do. I took care of arrangements with the inn-keeper, and Marcellus went off to make enquiries among the grooms at the stables.

  At each stop along the way we had slowly gained on our quarry. We travelled without an escort, and had removed our signs of rank; for no one will pause and gossip with a tribune, but any idle drinker will kill time with a common soldier, especially one who stands him a pint of wine.

  And thus it was that we discovered, over many a rancid cup, when we were dog-tired from riding and wanted nothing but our beds, that our man had a particular weakness, and indulged his pleasure in the small-town brothels along the way, at imperial expense.

  We learned too that after his evening’s entertainment, with no one to urge him on, he was allowing himself to sleep late; and each day we had gained on him. Even so, he had remained stubbornly ahead of us. But now, finally, at Letocetum, his horse had fallen lame, and there was no replacement.

  From the chamber-girl we found out that he was not presently in his room. We went off to check at the small bath-house next door, but the attendant told us there had been a problem with the piping, and the baths were closed. Next we wandered up the main street, looking in at the taverns and cheap eating-houses, of which Letocetum has a great many. At the last of them, just when I was starting to think we should have to trawl the stews, Marcellus touched my arm and nodded into an unlit corner. ‘There!’ he murmured.

  Casually, as if I were idly scanning the room, I turned my head and looked. In the shadows a figure in a heavy cloak was sitting alone at a table, with a cup and pitcher before him.

  We took our wine and ambled across the sawdust-strewn floor, halting at his table. ‘Greetings, friend!’ I said with a wide smile. ‘Have we not met before?’

  The man looked up and regarded me suspiciously. He was a little older than I, thin-built with poor skin and a mean, dissatisfied face. One of his hands rested on the rough, drink-stained table; with the other he was clutching his cloak about him as if he were cold, though the stale air of the room was warm enough.

  He shrugged. ‘I doubt it,’ he said, and looked away.

  We sat down anyway, heartily setting down our wine-cups next to his, smiling and laughing like a pair of idiot party-goers. I shouted across to the tavern-keeper for another pitcher; Marcellus, improvising, began talking about horses, the frustrations of travel, and the poor state of entertainment in such a dull, rain-swept outpost.

  ‘Yes indeed!’ I said. ‘What a place to be delayed! Already we are late, and our business with Lupicinus is urgent.’ I laughed merrily. ‘But enough of business! Here is the wine at last; let us drink, my friend, and enjoy the night – if such a thing is possible in this god-forsaken hole.’ And I made a great fuss of filling all our cups from the new pitcher, like a man who takes his pleasures seriously.

  ‘I’m Marcellus,’ said Marcellus, grinning and putting out his hand. The man looked at his hand and did not take it.

  ‘Firmus,’ he said warily.

  He had a gaunt, unfed look. His skin was grey and pocked, and there were blue lines about his bulging eyes. He had enough sense to realize there was nothing attractive about him; and he was clearly unused to the attention of friends.

  Marcellus carried on talking and laughing, laying it on thick, as if every moment with this man were a rare pleasure. I thought at first Firmus had not noticed the hook we had dangled before him. But then, abruptly, he asked, ‘Why are you going to Lupicinus?’

  I paused and drew a breath, and made sure he saw me glancing at the neighbouring tables before I answered. Dropping my voice I said, ‘We carry a message from the prefect – his name is Florentius – a very important person …’ I tapped my nose with my finger, and then with a knowing nod went on, ‘But a still tongue makes a wise head, as they say.’

  I lifted the pitcher, intending to ply him with more of the cheap wine. But he brought up his hand and blocked the top of his cup.

  Then he leant forward and murmured, ‘I too carry a letter from the prefect.’

  ‘Is that so?… Well, what a thing! Then it seems we have more in common than I thought.’

  Not wanting to show too much interest, I filled my own wine-cup and, to change the subject, fell to talking some nonsense with Marcellus about the serving-girl; and we went on for a while like a pair of ham actors, pausing every so often to gaze and leer.

  Then, as I had intended, Marcellus said, ‘Hey Drusus; I was thinking. With us going to Lupicinus anyway, why don’t we do Firmus here a kindness and take his letter for him?’

  ‘Why not,’ I answered with a shrug. ‘Friends should help friends, after all.’

  ‘I can’t do that,’ said Firmus straightaway, in a dogged, wooden voice. ‘My instructions are to take the letter in person.’

  ‘Oh well, just trying to help,’ said Marcellus. He drank his wine, and returned his attention to the serving-girl, who fortunately for us had not noticed, for she was a drab miserable creature in need of a bath.

  In spite of all my efforts, Firmus remained stubbornly sober. Wine, it seemed, was not one of his weaknesses. He began looking about, as if preparing to leave. Quickly I said, ‘Anyway, Marcellus, time we moved on. The girls will be waiting.’

  ‘Girls?’ asked Firmus, suddenly alert.

  ‘Why, yes. A shame to pass them up.’ Marcellus, who was never crude, followed this with a vulgar gesture one sees used in camp by the common soldiers. It was so unlike him that for a moment I forgot my act and stared. He caught my eye and blushed, covering it with a sudden fit of coughing. ‘But I suppose,’ he went on, ‘that you’ll be wanting an early night, what with your long journey and all.’

  ‘Tell me about the girls,’ said Firmus.

  Between us we invented some story
. As we spoke, his eyes, which up to then had wandered, fixed on us with the keenness of a hunting dog who smells the fox. Then he became talkative, saying he had already tried at various of the taverns that kept whores. None were to his liking. He preferred young types, he said, giving us a significant look and licking his thin lips.

  ‘Ah yes; what else,’ I answered. I had heard of his tastes during our long pursuit from London. I sipped at my wine. It was suddenly bitter in my mouth.

  Marcellus scratched at his chin, pretending to think. Then he said, ‘Well why not come with us then?’ and when Firmus was looking away he gave me a quick secret look. We both knew what it meant. We paid and left.

  The rain had stopped. The night air was damp and chill, and low cloud obscured the stars.

  We walked on, taking a side-street. The close-built houses gave way to larger plots, and smallholdings with yards and walls; the cobbles ended, replaced by dirt track. Beside me Firmus slowed. I could sense his unease, which for a brief time had been suspended by the prospect of what lay ahead. He shifted and muttered. There was nothing courageous about him, even in his whoring.

  ‘Not far now,’ I said loudly, in a tone of voice I hoped Marcellus would understand.

  At the next corner Marcellus paused. ‘I think it’s this way,’ he said, ‘yes, this is where the man told us to go.’ He turned off along a grassy path behind the high wooden walls of a barn. We passed a derelict, windowless building and then an open yard. Somewhere in the darkness a dog began barking.

  Firmus suddenly halted.

  ‘What is this place?’ he muttered crossly. ‘Where are you taking me?’

  ‘Not far now,’ said Marcellus. ‘Wait, I think I see a light – yes; that is the place, just up ahead.’

  I had allowed myself to drop back, so that I was a pace or two behind. Now, while Marcellus chattered on, I drew silently near, and reached within my cloak.

  Perhaps some god or spirit touched Firmus on the shoulder then. Suddenly, for no reason, he swung round. His startled eyes met mine; and for an instant, standing close, I saw written on his face the knowledge of his own death. My knife flashed out. He gasped once, then choked and fell.