I took her hands and kissed her forehead. ‘Oh, I assure you, daughter, I do have a plan.’ And I did – although using it might mean that I would never come back from Brundisium alive.
Part Two
Mars
XII
Horses were hard to come by. The best had been taken by those who fled the city in the first wave of panic or requisitioned by Pompey’s forces. Tiro promised to meet me outside the Capena Gate before dawn the next day with fresh mounts, but what could possibly be left in the stables? I had visions of myself atop a swaybacked nag with knobby joints and a hide worn to leather, but I underestimated Tiro’s resourcefulness. I found him waiting for me with Fortex, the bodyguard, both of them mounted. A third horse stood idly by, munching at the grass between two moss-covered funeral shrines alongside the road. All three beasts were as sleek and fit as any rider could wish.
We set out at once. The sun was no more than an intimation of fiery gold not yet cresting the low hills to the east. Patches of darkness lingered like vestiges of Night’s trailing shroud. In such uncertain light, there was something eerie about that stretch of road, flanked on either side by so many tombs of the dead.
The Appian Way itself is as smooth as a tabletop, with polygonal paving stones fitted so tightly that not a grain of sand could be passed between them. There is something reassuring about the solid immutability of a Roman road. Meto once told me of venturing on a reconnaissance mission into the wild woods of Gaul. Alien gods seemed to peer from gnarled roots. Lemures flitted among shadows. Unseen creatures scurried amid mouldering leaves. Then, in a place where he never expected it, Meto came upon a road built at Caesar’s instigation, a gleaming ribbon of stone cutting through the heart of the forest, letting in fresh air and sunlight.
The Appian Way is surrounded not by wilderness but by tombs for miles along either side. Some monuments are large and elaborate, like miniature temples. Others are no more than a simple marker, an upright stone pole with a bit of engraving. Some fresh-scrubbed and beautifully tended, surrounded by flowers and shrubbery. Others have fallen into disrepair, with columns knocked askew and cracked foundations choked by weeds.
Even in broad daylight, there is something melancholy about a trip down the Appian Way. In that tenuous predawn light, where unsettled spirits seemed to lurk in the shadows, the road beneath our feet meant more than Roman order and ingenuity. It was a path by which the living could traverse the city of the dead. Every clop of our horses’ hooves against the stones was a note of reassurance that we were just passing through.
We came to the shrine of Publius Clodius, set among those of his ancestors. The last time I had travelled any great length on the Appian Way, it had been to investigate the murder of Clodius. He had been the darling and the hope of the urban rabble. His assassination sparked riots in Rome; a mob with torches made the Senate House his funeral pyre. Desperate for order, the Senate had called on Pompey, and the Great One had used emergency powers to instigate what he called judicial reforms. The result had been the prosecution and exile of a great many powerful men who now saw in Caesar their only hope to ever return. The ruling class was irreparably fragmented, the rabble more disaffected than ever. In hindsight, was the murder of Clodius on the Appian Way the true beginning of civil war, the opening skirmish, the first casualty?
His shrine was simple, as befitted a patrician with pretensions to the common touch. Atop a plain pedestal sat a ten-foot-tall marble stele carved with sheaves of wheat, a reminder of the grain dole that Clodius established. The sun cleared the hills. By the growing light I was able to see that the pedestal was littered all about with humble votive offerings – burnt tapers and plugs of incense, bouquets of sweet herbs and early spring flowers. But there was also a pile of something that looked and smelled like human excrement, and a graffito smeared in the same stuff on the base of the pedestal: CLODIUS FUCKED HIS SISTER.
Tiro wrinkled his nose. Fortex barked out a laugh. We rode on.
A little farther, on the opposite side of the road, we passed the Pompeius family plot. The tomb of Pompey’s father was a gaudy, elaborate affair. All the gods of Olympus were crowded into the pediment, as if jealous of the honour, painted in lifelike colours and surrounded by a gilded border that glimmered red in the rays of the rising sun. The tomb looked recently painted and refurbished but lately neglected; weeds had grown about the base in the time since Pompey and his household had fled south. Otherwise, everything seemed perfect, until I noticed that heaps of horse dung, easy enough to collect on the road, had been deposited on the bronze roof. By midmorning of a sunny day, as this promised to be, travellers would smell the shrine to the elder Pompey long before they saw it.
Fortex snickered.
‘Outrageous!’ muttered Tiro. ‘When I was young, men fought for power just as viciously as they do today, but nobody would have dared to desecrate a tomb, not even as an act of war. What must the gods think? We deserve whatever misery they thrust upon us. Here, you! Climb up there and get rid of that stuff.’
‘Who, me?’ said Fortex.
‘Yes. Do it at once.’
Fortex made a face, then dismounted, muttering, and looked about for something to use as a shovel.
While we waited, I let my horse wander idly along the edge of the road, looking for tender grass amid the tombs of the Pompeii. I shut my eyes, feeling the warmth of morning sunlight on my eyelids and enjoying the casual, uncontrolled movements of the beast beneath me. Behind me I heard the slave climb onto the brazen roof, then the sound of scraping, followed by the soft impact of dung hitting the road.
I must have dozed. The moment slid out of ordinary time. When I opened my eyes, before me I saw the tomb of Numerius Pompeius.
It was a simple stele of the ready-made sort, engraved with a horse’s head, symbol of death’s departure. It was a little way off the road, behind a row of more conspicuous tombs. Compared to its neighbours, it was small and insignificant. I would never have noticed it, passing by on the road. How strange that the horse should have brought me directly to it, and that the first thing I should see when I opened my eyes were the words newly chiselled in the narrow, five-line space reserved for personalizing the monument:
NUMERIUS POMPEIUS
GIFT OF THE GODS
WHO JEALOUSLY RECLAIMED HIM
AFTER TWENTY-THREE YEARS
AMONG THE LIVING
Those words would have come from his mother. Having no one else to blame for his death, Maecia blamed the gods. I felt a twinge of shame.
I looked down. It was not so inexplicable after all that my mount had wandered to this spot. At the foot of the stele someone – Maecia, of course – had planted flowers, not yet budding. The horse found the tender foliage to his liking and had already eaten most of it to the ground.
I pulled on the rein and scolded him. At the same moment I saw a movement from the corner of my eye. A figure emerged from behind a nearby monument.
My heart lurched inside my chest. The shadows had lifted with the dawn, but something uncanny seemed still to lurk amid the tombs. Perversely, it seemed somehow appropriate that the lemur of Numerius would emerge from the underworld to confront me just as birds began to sing and the whole world stirred to life.
But the ragged creature who emerged from behind the monument was not a lemur. Nor were the others, three at least, who quickly joined him. I wheeled my horse about in the difficult space between the crowded monuments. ‘Tiro!’ I shouted. ‘Bandits!’
Certain stretches of the Appian Way are notoriously unsafe. The area around the tomb of Basilius, situated far beyond the city wall and marking the true beginning of the countryside, is especially dangerous; I myself had been ambushed there once and kidnapped. But we had not gone nearly that far, and I had never heard of bandits this close to the Capena Gate. How desperate men were these, and how little order was left in Rome, that they should dare to attack travellers practically within shouting distance of the city! It was our own fault. Tiro sho
uld never have sent our single bodyguard on a fool’s errand to shovel horse dung. I should never have shut my eyes and allowed my horse to wander. The bandits saw us lower our guard and decided to strike.
I frantically attempted to guide my mount back onto the road. Just a moment before, I had been scolding him for eating Maecia’s flowers. Now he balked, confused. A hand gripped my ankle. I kicked and lost my balance. I swayed, nearly fell, and grazed my head against a stone obelisk. Another hand gripped my foot. I turned and saw an ugly, gap-toothed face glaring up at me. There is a certain look a man has when he’s worked himself up to kill, if necessary. I saw that look in his eyes.
An instant later, a scrap of dung, sun-hardened to make a suitable missile, struck the man square between the eyes. He gave a squeal and released his grip on me. Finally sure of himself, my mount galloped between the monuments and onto the road.
Tiro was wheeling about, a long dagger in his hand. Fortex gave a whoop, leaped off the roof of the shrine, and mounted his horse in a single fluid motion. One of the bandits came up behind him. The startled horse kicked the man in the chest. He flew through the air like a thrown doll, struck his head against the wall of the shrine, and crumpled lifeless to the ground.
They came at us from both sides of the road, a gang of ten men at least, maybe more. In the next instant they might have swarmed over us and pulled us from our horses. But they seemed to have no leader, and the sight of one of their number lying dead caused them to hesitate. As one, the three of us turned our horses and set off with a great clattering of hooves.
Some of the bandits ran after us. One of them managed to grab Tiro’s ankle. I saw a glint of steel, felt drops of blood strike my face and heard a scream that rapidly receded. I turned my head. The stricken man stood clutching his arm. Several of his companions kept running after us. None of them seemed to have weapons, except stones, one of which struck Fortex’s mount on the rump. The beast neighed and lurched, but never slowed its pace.
One by one the men gave up the chase. I watched them grow distant and dwindle, like the Capena Gate beyond them, like the shrines of Clodius and the elder Pompey. The stele of Numerius Pompeius was lost amid so many others.
Alongside me, Fortex suddenly laughed and gave a whoop. A moment later, Tiro broke into a grin and did the same. What excuse had they for joy? What had just occurred could be read as an omen, and a very bad omen at that. Only moments into a journey of many days, we had let down our guard and very nearly lost our lives. The gods had pointed me to the tomb of Numerius Pompeius and then unleashed a desperate horde upon us. It had been a grim episode, ending in bloodshed and death.
But the exhilaration was contagious. A moment later I began to laugh and whoop along with them. It was the morning of a new day, the sun shone brightly across the fields, and we were alive! Not only alive, but putting Rome behind us – leaving behind Numerius’s mourning mother and his pregnant lover, leaving behind my weeping daughter and scolding wife, leaving behind the glum shopkeepers and the daily panics in the Forum, shaking off the chilly gloom of the city and galloping into the future with the bracing wind in our faces.
I knew that such a feeling of freedom couldn’t last; it never does. But I knew, too, that it might be the last time I ever tasted such exhilaration. I urged my horse to gallop even faster. I drew ahead of Tiro and Fortex, until I had the illusion of being alone on the road, a single rider, invincible, unrestrainable. I threw back my head and cried out to heaven.
Past the tomb of Basilius we slackened our pace to rest the horses. As the plain began to slope upwards into the foothills of Mount Alba we came to the village of Bovillae, and passed the spot where Clodius had been killed. The terrain grew hillier, the way less straight. We passed the road leading up to Clodius’s fortresslike mountain villa, never to be finished now, the place where I first met Mopsus and Androcles.
In the town of Aricia we obtained fresh mounts at the local stable, where Tiro produced an official document, a diplomatic courier’s passport signed by Pompey himself and stamped with the Great One’s seal ring. The piece of parchment entitled the bearer to exchange horses at no charge, by order of the Senate’s Emergency Decree. While Tiro haggled over the quality of horses the stabler offered in exchange, I heard my stomach growling and noticed there was a tavern across the way. Crossing the road, I looked towards the hills and caught a glimpse of the villa of Senator Sextus Tedius, where the secret of Clodius’s death had been revealed to me. Over stale bread and mutton stew, I struck up a conversation with a local freeholder. I asked him what old Senator Tedius was up to.
‘Gone off to fight with Pompey,’ the man said.
‘You must be mistaken,’ I said. ‘Sextus Tedius is far too old and feeble. The man’s a cripple.’
‘No mistake, citizen,’ said the man, laughing. ‘He’s left his spinster daughter in charge of the villa and gone off to war. I know that for a fact, because before he left, he called everyone together at the town forum and made a long speech saying we all ought to do the same, and shame on any man who stayed behind. And us no more than farmers, and the planting season almost on us! Who does he think feeds the soldiers? Crazy old coot!’ The man shook his head and lowered his voice. ‘Maybe things will be different when it’s Caesar in charge. What do you think, citizen?’
Past Mount Alba, the way sloped steadily downward. As twilight was falling, Tiro led us off the main road to a trading post called Forum Appii on the edge of the Pontine Marshes. I thought he intended to seek accommodation for the night; the courier’s passport entitled its bearers to room and board as well as fresh horses. But we rode past several inns and didn’t stop until the road ended at the terminus of a broad canal, where a cluster of buildings included warehouses, stables, a tavern, and a boarding platform for the canal barge.
Tiro explained that the canal ran through the marshes with an elevated road alongside it. The barge was a long, flat vessel with a waist-high railing all around. It was pulled by a team of mules on the road, guided by boatmen with stout poles.
‘There’s a pen for livestock at the back of the barge, so we can bring the horses with us,’ Tiro explained. ‘We’ll pay our fare, get settled on board and set out at nightfall. We’ll eat dinner at our leisure and travel while we sleep. In the morning we’ll be almost to Tarracina, rested and ready to push onto Formiae. It’s the most civilized way in the world to travel.’
It sounded reasonable enough. There were only a few drawbacks that Tiro failed to mention, such as the exorbitant price of bread and wine at every nearby tavern (provisions sold on the barge turned out to be even more expensive, and doubled in price after it started moving); the crammed conditions (the ticket seller kept loading more and more passengers until the head boatman finally drove away some of the latecomers, saying they might swamp the vessel); the incompetence of the mule driver (who took an hour to hitch up his team after the last passenger was boarded); the near impossibility of eating amid the combined smells of swamp and barnyard (the animals were penned at the rear, and the wind was at our backs); the invisible, buzzing insects (gnats in the nose, midges in the eyes); the torturous sleeping conditions (everyone side by side and head to toe, like corpses laid out after a battle, except that corpses do not fart, snore, or drunkenly sing all night); and the sheer perversity of the boatmen, who seemed to think it amusing if they could jolt everyone awake every few minutes by banging the barge against the side of the canal, and even better if they could get us well and truly snagged, which meant an hour of hammering, banging, and yelling back and forth in the darkest hour of the night.
I managed to get about an hour of sleep that night. When we docked the next morning, I stumbled off with everyone else to bathe at a spring in a nearby grove sacred to the nymph Feronia, patron goddess of freedmen. The water revived me a little. Then we were off again.
At Tarracina we rejoined the Appian Way. I felt the pains of the previous day’s ride in my buttocks and thighs, and so did Fortex, I think, for I kep
t seeing him wince and scowl. Perhaps he was simply testing ferocious faces, in case we encountered more bandits. Tiro, well broken in to the rigours of travel, was in high spirits. In a matter of hours he would see Cicero.
We arrived at Formiae that afternoon. Tiro, not wanting to be observed, avoided the town and the main road to Cicero’s villa. Instead we took an alternative route through uncleared woodland. The road dwindled to a bridle path, the path to a trail, the trail to a faint trace amid briars and brambles. Twilight was falling. Shadows gathered in the woods. I feared we might become lost, but Tiro knew the way. Just as the sun was sinking, we emerged from the woods into a vineyard. Beyond the vines I caught glimpses of a handsome villa with white walls and a red roof.
There was a little covered porch along the back of the house, where a man in a long white tunic sat with a scroll on his lap. He was turned sideways in his chair with a hand raised, instructing a young slave where to hang a lamp so that he might continue reading. The slave saw us approaching through the vineyards. He gave a shout and pointed. The man turned about and rose with a start. The scroll tumbled to his feet and unfurled.
I had never before seen such a look of panic on any man’s face, nor such a complete transformation when he recognized his visitors. He smiled and laughed and strode out to greet us, leaving the slave to gather up the scroll.
We had arrived at Cicero’s retreat.
XIII
After the travails of the night barge, the simple accommodation at Cicero’s villa seemed luxurious beyond measure.
I suspected that our host and his family, left to themselves that night, would have eaten only casually; but for our arrival, a formal dinner was hastily prepared. We dined on couches in a spacious room off the central garden, and Cicero gave me the place of honour to his left. Cicero’s wife, Terentia, seemed to be in a foul mood and said little, except to give orders to the serving girls. Young Marcus, not quite sixteen, had been out hunting all day with the manager of the estate and ate ravenously; the years of my increasing estrangement from Cicero had coincided with the boy’s growth to manhood, and I would hardly have recognized him. Tullia’s appetite was as voracious as her younger brother’s, and Cicero made a joke of it, saying his daughter was eating for two; her pregnancy was beginning to show, and Cicero seemed rather pleased to show her off. A grandchild is a grandchild, his expression seemed to say, even if the marriage had taken place behind his back and the father was a dissolute wastrel and a partisan of Caesar. Every time I looked at the girl, with her beaming face and gently swollen belly, I thought of Aemilia back in Rome.
Rubicon Page 13
