Ship of Rome

by John Stack

  ‘And so my fellow senators,’ Scipio was concluding, ‘it is with trepidation in my heart that I tell you that the Carthaginians have blockaded the northern coastline of Sicily and effectively cut off our gallant legions from resupply. The Punici have placed a stranglehold on our campaign and, if it is not released, it will surely destroy our army in Sicily, placing the enemy in a position to strike at the very centre of the Republic: Rome itself!’

  There was an audible gasp from the entire chamber, followed by a moment’s silence before a cacophony of sound erupted, the senators giving full vent to their fears and anxieties. Many men wailed in voices of doom and defeat, Scipio’s final words mentioning a threat to Rome itself fuelling their concerns and heightening their apprehension. Scipio scanned the room slowly, his eyes passing over the sea of worried faces. He did not believe there was any immediate or even medium-term threat to Rome itself, but he knew that many of the senators had not served in the legions and did not fully understand the threat that a severed supply line meant to an army. He had needed to make the threat of the Carthaginians more personal to the rich, complacent, isolated men of the Senate. He had needed to formulate a threat to the city of Rome. As his eyes came to the position of Gaius Duilius, he was surprised to see the man calmly surveying the room himself, his face expressionless, as if Scipio had merely announced the yearly crop figures of grain from Campania. Scipio admired the man’s self-control and was about to move on, when Duilius suddenly turned and looked his way. Their eyes locked for a heartbeat, and Scipio thought he read a message in his rival’s eyes before their gaze was broken. Scipio picked up the gavel and began to pound it on the lectern, the chamber slowly coming back to order.

  ‘My fellow senators,’ he began, his voice now authoritative where before it had been conciliatory, ‘my fellow senators, Rome must counter this threat. We must defeat the Punici and wipe them from our seas.’

  ‘How?’ a voice called, the question echoed by a dozen others.

  ‘By building our own fleet!’ Scipio shouted, his voice rising above the questions. ‘By harnessing the power of the Republic to create a fleet that will overcome their blockade and sweep their galleys before us. By defeating them as we have every enemy who dared to challenge the might of Rome. By allowing me, your leader, Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio, to lead the fleet into battle for the glory of the Republic!’

  The chamber erupted in cheers as the senators clung to the line of hope and victory offered to them by Scipio. They were a mob, completely swayed by the play of their emotions. The senior consul had driven them down with the news of the seemingly unconquerable threat of the Carthaginians before suddenly raising them high with the hope of victory. The cheering lasted for five full minutes while Scipio stood motionless at the lectern, his expression imperious, his stature imposing, exuding strength and purpose. As the noise began to subside, Scipio prepared for the decisive moment of his strategy, when the entire Senate would vote overwhelmingly in favour of his plan and for him to assume the position of commander of the new fleet. As he raised his gavel to finally silence the crowd, a single voice caught his and everyone else’s attention.

  ‘My fellow senators,’ Longus announced, a slight tremor in his voice as the entire Senate fell silent, ‘we are blessed by the goddess Minerva, the wisest of all, to have as our leader the man standing before us, Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio.’

  Voices were raised in agreement from across the Senate, and Scipio nodded in gratitude, a sentiment he did not feel as his mind raced to understand the reason behind Longus’s speech, knowing he was a pawn of Duilius’s. The young senator raised his voice to overcome the noise.

  ‘Truly our senior consul has shown us the way to defeat the Punici. His intellect, guided by the goddess, has unlocked the solution that will save the legions and the fate of Rome itself. He is our leader and the centre of our power.’

  Longus paused once more as voices echoed his words. He waited for silence to reassert itself before continuing the scripted words that Duilius had given him prior to Scipio’s arrival, the rehearsed speech dictating his words.

  ‘It is precisely why Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio is our leader and our greatest senator that I fear the precarious position he would be put in should he lead the fleet into battle against the unknown strength of the Carthaginians. Without his mighty presence to lead the Senate, we would be surely lost against this new and powerful enemy. I therefore put it to you, my fellow senators, that the senior consul should indeed lead our naval campaign against the Punici, but he should do so from here, the Senate, the centre of Rome’s power. Command of the fleet should be delegated to the junior consul, Gaius Duilius.’

  The abrupt end to Longus’s speech was followed by a moment’s silence before, once again, the chamber was filled with raised voices, many debating Longus’s speech. Scipio tore his furious eyes from the young senator and whipped them around to Duilius who, as before, sat impassively in the centre of the lower tier, directly opposite the lectern. His gaze was on Longus, and the junior consul nodded slightly before turning to see Scipio watching him. A slight smile formed on his lips as the voices in the chamber called for Duilius to speak. He stood slowly to address the frenzied chamber.

  ‘I concur with the words of the senator and I humbly accept his proposal for me to lead the fleet into battle.’

  Duilius sat down once more, his simple statement reigniting the debate raging across the chamber. Scipio pounded his gavel on the lectern to try to regain control of the Senate, but he already knew that his moment of victory had been snatched by the junior senator’s unexpected speech. His mind reached back to the knowing look that Duilius had given him at the announcement of the Carthaginian blockade, and he now recognized it for what it was: a look of defiant triumph. He had been outmanoeuvred and the realization made his anger flare up to an intensity that caused him to viciously hammer the gavel on the lectern even as the last voice was silenced by the aggressive blows.

  ‘My fellow senators,’ Scipio shouted, his raised voice unnecessary in the silence. He heard the pitch of his own words and immediately fought to bring his emotions under control. He paused and drew a deep breath before continuing.

  ‘My fellow senators. I am humbled by your concern for my safety and the safety of my position as leader of this chamber. But I say to you, the real power of this Senate lies with each individual member. As senior consul I will lead the fleet, knowing that the power of Rome is safe within your hands.’

  Scipio watched as many heads shook in disagreement. He gambled one last time, praying that the residual confidence in his proposal would carry the day.

  ‘I therefore call for a vote on my proposal, confident in your sound judgement,’ Scipio continued with all the conviction he could muster. ‘I put it to the floor that we build the fleet and I command her into battle.’

  Whereas before, when Scipio had first announced his intention to lead the fleet, he had been cheered in universal support, now only a smattering of debate could be heard. Within a minute voices were raised in conflict and the Senate stood divided. Scipio’s faction followed their leader, as did Duilius’s. The undecided majority wavered between the two, the indecisive calling for more debate, unsure of which proposal to accept. Their voices prevailed and the vote was postponed, Scipio’s moment swept away to be replaced with the tedious slog of debate. The senior consul surrendered his place at the lectern to the princeps senatus, who would head the discussion. It took all Scipio’s willpower to contain his rage and walk steadily back to his position amongst the senators.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Septimus was awakened from his light doze by the approaching steps of a guard detail. The familiar sound and unfamiliar surroundings meant he was instantly awake and on guard. Atticus was already standing in the middle of their quarters, his eyes locked on the door. He had never relaxed. The door was flung open and Scipio’s guard commander was framed in the entrance. He looked from one man to the other.

  ‘You are free to g
o but I need to know your whereabouts should the consul need to summon you.’

  His abrupt statement caught the two men off guard and Septimus took a second to form his reply.

  ‘We will be at the Capito house, my family home, in the Caelian quarter,’ he said.

  ‘Or at the castrum in Ostia with our ship,’ Atticus added.

  The guard commander nodded and stepped back from the door before leading the guard detail away.

  ‘So!’ Atticus said as he turned to face Septimus, happy at the order of release, ‘we’re going to your family home?’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Septimus with a smile, ‘just as soon as I’ve shown you some of the sights of Rome.’

  The centurion stood up and began to walk out into the late evening sunshine.

  ‘And if the consul comes looking for us while we’re out seeing the sights?’ the captain asked.

  ‘There’s no way he’ll look for us tonight; not if he’s just ordered us away.’

  ‘So we’ll be at your family home tomorrow. Will that leave us enough time to see the sights?’

  ‘Trust me, Atticus: when it comes to the sights I’m going to show you, one night is never enough – but one night is all most men can handle.’

  Scipio stormed into the tablinum, the master bedroom of his home, ripping off his toga as he went. He roared for wine to be brought and an instant later a slave entered and proffered the senator a golden goblet. Scipio snatched the drink and downed it in one, the tannic acidity of the wine only exacerbating the burning sensation of rage in his chest. The slave held up the amphora to refill the goblet, but Scipio grabbed the flask himself and ordered the slave to be gone. As the slave left the room, Scipio’s wife, Fabiola, entered. Her face was a mask of concern at the sight of her enraged husband. Scipio wheeled around and saw her standing by the now-closed door.

  ‘Fools!’ he spat. ‘Feeble-minded, incompetent fools.’

  Fabiola knew better than to question the source of his rage. She had seen this before, although never so intense. Everyone who was aware of the intimate workings of the Senate knew it to be a ponderous, frustratingly conservative beast. With three hundred of the city’s greatest egos confined within one chamber, it was common for the plans of one man, or even one group of men, however well-meaning or well thought out, to be thwarted by the sheer verbosity and squabbling of the Senate. It was plainly obvious that the plans they had earlier discussed had been undone. To question the reason would only give Scipio a focus for his rage and, although he had never struck her, Fabiola had long since realized that her husband had a barely contained violent streak.

  ‘Three hours!’ he continued. ‘Three hours the fools debated. Like a gaggle of chattering slave women in the market. Three hours and they failed to even vote on the creation of a fleet, never mind its commander.’

  Scipio emptied another goblet of wine, again in one swallow. It did nothing to calm his emotions.

  ‘That bastard Duilius. It was his doing. He had one of his pups question my proposal. Just a simple question. But a perfect blow. It was almost as if he had prepared in advance; as if he knew about the blockade before I announced it. His little thrust exposed a chink, just a tiny chink.’

  Scipio continued pacing, his fist clenched by his side, his knuckles white from the pressure. ‘But it was enough. Enough for the indecisive old men to pause and debate. Before long they weren’t even sure if a fleet was necessary, and if it was they debated over who would bear the cost. Now it will be a week before we go to vote. A week instead of a minute – all because of Gaius Duilius.’

  Fabiola, her mind agitated by the mood of her husband, could only watch Scipio vent his rage. As he raved, her mind picked up something he had said: something about it seeming that Duilius had known what Scipio was going to announce before he did. She calmed her emotions and partially faded out the voice of her husband in order to think the point through.

  The more she considered the possibility, the more she believed it to be true. Someone must have informed Duilius. But who? And when? Of course the galley that had escorted Scipio from Sicily was full of people who knew of the blockade, but it was docked in the castrum in Ostia, a twenty-five-mile round trip on busy roads, and not an easy place for a civilian to enter. She discounted that and focused on the more obvious sources: Scipio’s praetoriani guard, the captain and centurion of the galley, and the household slaves. It became more and more obvious that the leak had come from among their number.

  She continued to watch her husband in silence, waiting for him to calm down. Only then would she approach him and offer her advice and comfort. When he was soothed and once more himself, perhaps tomorrow she thought, she would inform him of her suspicions. If there was a spy within the walls of her husband’s house, Fabiola was sure that, once found, she would witness the full fury of the violence she always suspected her husband was capable of.

  Septimus led Atticus to a bathhouse as the dying sun in the western sky was touching the taller buildings of Rome. The bathhouse was no more than a hundred yards off the main piazza of the Forum Magnum, and yet Atticus was struck by how different the surrounding area was from the vaulted temples and soaring statues of the city’s central forum. Here the streets were narrow and the apartment buildings towered eight storeys high, while underfoot the laneways of the plebeian quarter were strewn with human and animal filth, creating a stench that rose to infuse the very walls of the surrounding houses.

  Atticus’s mind was instantly transported back to the city of Locri and the backstreets he had called home for the first fourteen years of his life; the long summer days when he fished with his father and his stomach was full, and the hard, cold winters when the storms kept the fleet bottled up and the poorer inhabitants of Locri teetered on the brink of starvation. On those dark winter days, Atticus would escape the hovel he shared with his family and spend his days scavenging on streets no different from those that now surrounded him, and he marked the distance he had travelled since his childhood.

  ‘After dark I wouldn’t march a squad of ten legionaries through these streets,’ Septimus remarked with a wry smile, and Atticus caught a hint of disdain in the centurion’s voice.

  The main door of the bathhouse was flanked by two large thuggish men, but they allowed Septimus and Atticus to pass unchallenged while inside Septimus was immediately recognized by an older woman who greeted patrons as they entered.

  ‘My older brothers, Tiberius and Claudius, first brought me here on my sixteenth birthday,’ Septimus explained with a smile, ‘and I’ve come back at least once a year since then.’

  Septimus produced the requisite amount of silver and both men were ushered into an antechamber, where slaves quickly stripped them of their kit before they were led to the caldarium, a large tiled room dominated by a central bath of steaming, scented water. Atticus groaned loudly in content as he slipped into the bath, the hot water quickly infusing his muscles pleasurably and chasing all tension from his limbs. The sensation was amazing, and he sweated stoically before the near-unbearable heat forced him to rise. He was immediately led to a low table where a female slave rubbed oil into his skin before removing it with a strigil and, with a sense of cleanliness Atticus had never felt before, he was shown to the tepidarium chamber, where Septimus was already immersed in the lukewarm bath. Again Atticus groaned as he entered the water and Septimus laughed loudly.

  ‘Well,’ he asked, ‘what do you think?’

  ‘By the gods, Septimus, this is the way to live,’ Atticus laughed as two beautiful young women entered, carrying trays of food and a large amphora of wine. Septimus followed his friend’s gaze.

  ‘There are many bathhouses in Rome, my friend, but this particular one offers one other additional service.’ Septimus smiled as a goblet of wine was placed in his hand.

  The two women moved quickly and efficiently around the room, bringing food and wine at every summons, and their light and carefree conversation instantly put the men at ease. Within thirty
minutes Atticus was consumed by an overwhelming sense of wellbeing and his mind, fogged by the numbing effect of wine, drank in the hushed feminine tones that seemed to fill the air. He raised his goblet to have it refilled, but this time it was taken from him and he was led from the bath by one of the young women to a small room off the tepidarium chamber. She quietly closed the door and turned to Atticus, slipping off her tunic as she did so. Atticus gasped involuntarily, her beauty and the potent aphrodisiac of youth combining to stir his desire. He became awkward in his haste, but the experienced young woman immediately took the lead and she guided him to a low cot in the corner of the room. She stroked his upper body and wound her fingers through the dense hair of his chest, skilfully controlling his desire before laying him down and straddling him, allowing him to relax completely, her movements slow and hypnotic.

  Afterwards the two lay entwined on the cot, her hands once more gently caressing his body with languid strokes. Atticus had never felt so sated and he drifted off into a deep sleep, every outside thought banished from his mind and the world beyond the walls of the bathhouse forgotten for the night.

  Septimus arched his back to stretch the muscles in his spine as he walked through the busy streets of Rome. They had both risen at dawn, both finding themselves alone in their respective rooms in the bathhouse. After dressing, Septimus had bidden a farewell to the woman who had first greeted them – with promises of a return – and they had walked, once more, out onto the bustling streets. Atticus could scarcely believe that the serene world of the bathhouse existed behind the walls of the building he had just left, so different from the dilapidated, frantic streets surrounding it, and the thought sobered him as they walked the short distance to the Forum Magnum, stopping a street vendor to buy some food, their appetites sharpened by the remains of the wine in their stomachs. They continued on in silence, each lost in his own thoughts.