by Jack Ludlow
‘In my capacity as consul and by order of the Senate of the Roman Republic, I hereby relieve you of all responsibility for the operations in this province.’
Mancinus had been sitting bolt upright; he now let his shoulders sag, as though finally relieved to hear the words. ‘I shall be glad to be back in Rome.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Titus evenly.
The seated man’s face took on a foxy look. ‘They won’t impeach me, Titus Cornelius. There are too many skeletons in the cupboard for that. If I go down, you can be sure that your brother will come with me.’
‘You’re right, Mancinus, no one is going to impeach you.’ He turned to Aquila. ‘Centurion, take this man into custody. He is to speak with no one.’
The man was halfway out of his chair. ‘You can’t imprison me, I’m a senator.’
‘No one is going to imprison you, Mancinus.’ The look of confusion did not last long, being swiftly replaced by a look of absolute terror as Titus finished giving Aquila his orders. ‘Take this scum to Pallentia under a sign of truce. Tell the inhabitants that he lied to them. Rome will not pay them an indemnity, but if they swear a treaty of peace we will leave them be.’
‘And then, General?’ asked Aquila, clearly intrigued.
‘Then hand him over as a gift from the Senate in Rome. They can do with him what they wish.’
‘It’s not envy,’ Marcellus insisted. ‘In fact, I’m full of admiration for your centurion.’
‘He’s a tribune now, remember,’ Gnaeus replied.
‘All right,’ sighed Marcellus. ‘Your tribune.’
‘You sound as though you don’t think he deserves it?’
‘Perhaps he does, then again perhaps not.’ Marcellus heard the exasperated intake of breath and spoke quickly. ‘He’s brave, yes. A good soldier…’
‘Brilliant.’
Marcellus merely nodded. ‘But it’s the manner of his speech that rankles. He showed Titus Cornelius scant respect.’
Gnaeus shrugged. ‘He has little time for senators. He’s seen too many who would steal the eyes out of your head.’
‘Are those his words?’
‘They are. He added that, having stolen the eyes, they’d likely come back for the holes.’
Marcellus had been quietly fuming since the conference, and he knew precisely why. Despite his anger at the way it was delivered, the advice that Aquila had given Titus was exceedingly sound. He knew the terrain, the language, and had a comprehensive knowledge of the Celt-Iberian tribes and knew how to fight them, as well.
‘They’ve learnt these last years. You’ll be offered no pitched battles in open country. Neither will you be allowed to march anywhere without being ambushed. Even the whole army’s not safe. They know they can’t defeat Rome in strength, but they can discourage us by drawing the legions into difficult and dangerous country.’
Marcellus cut in. ‘Perhaps with a little cunning we could trap them.’
His initial anger stemmed from the way the newly elevated tribune peremptorily dismissed his suggestion. Aquila made no attempt to hide the contempt in his eyes, remembering the elevated Marcellus Falerius better than the other man knew.
‘A waste of time! As soon as they feel threatened they retire to their forts, which we lack the ability to take, and if we do decide to invest them, then all the tribes gather to oppose us. If we are in one place, they will be there too. We’ll find ourselves up against the Lusitani, the Bregones, the Leonini and a dozen other tribes, all combined under the leadership of Brennos. You may come here from Rome thinking that the solution is easy, Marcellus Falerius, but you’ll discover that you’re just as fallible as the rest!’
‘We’ve taken fortresses in the past,’ said Titus, cutting across Marcellus, whose noble blood was plainly up. He looked set to try to put Aquila Terentius in his place.
‘Not with what you’ve got to hand. You lack siege equipment and the army is in a mess, General, more concerned with creature comforts than fighting.’
Titus dismissed that with a wave of the hand. ‘Most soldiers are.’
‘That’s rubbish, General, and you should know it. Mind, the shit starts at the top, then filters down. Properly led, these men are as good as any in the Republic.’
Titus took that statement better than Marcellus. He flushed angrily to see a Roman consul talked down to in such a disdainful manner; on top of the way Aquila had treated him, it was intolerable. Titus was far from pleased himself, but he did keep any hint of that out of his next question.
‘Do you often address your superiors like this?’
Aquila looked Titus right in the eye, unblinking. ‘I do.’
Titus looked grim. ‘Then it’s a wonder you’re still alive, Aquila Terentius.’
‘Not really, General, the wonder is that all those turds they sent us from Rome got back in one piece. I’ve been sorely tempted to intervene and lop off their heads. Rome would be better served by the public piss-gatherers than senators with ox-dung where they should have a brain.’
Those around the table gasped. The coarseness of his speech was understandable, after all the man was an illiterate peasant, but the bearing, and the way he spoke, was downright mutinous. Titus and Aquila were staring at each other, neither blinking.
‘I shall make you apologise for speaking to me like that,’ said Titus coldly.
Aquila’s voice was as unperturbed as his look. ‘I don’t know how, General.’
‘I was sent here, by the Senate, to finally put an end to the fighting in Hispania and that I intend to do. I’ll take your rabble and remould them into fighters. Then you can forget the other hill forts; we will attack and subdue Numantia.’
‘In a year?’
‘No, Soldier. I will be here for as long as it takes, and before you tell me that I don’t know what I’m talking about, I was here in this province for quite a few years myself. I have fought the tribes and competed with several of their leaders in peaceful games, and at one time I could have truthfully said some of them were my friends. You are not the only one who knows a thing or two about this frontier. I wrote a report for the Senate on Brennos, and in it I said that he was a menace whom we would one day have to remove, because we would never have peace as long as he lived. And my father, who fought him and beat him, said exactly the same thing before me. So don’t presume to offer me advice in that tone of voice again, because even if it causes a mutiny, I’ll break you at the wheel, then decimate the 18th Legion to show them who is really in command.’
Aquila smiled for the first time since the conference had started, and it made an enormous difference to his battle-hardened face. The blue eyes ceased to appear icy, instead becoming warm, the creases on the tanned face looked welcoming instead of threatening.
‘Maybe I will apologise, at that, General,’ he said. ‘Who knows, if I get to see Italy again, I may even say thank you.’
Gnaeus was still talking about his ‘tribune’, annoying Marcellus by the way he passed on the fellow’s radical notions verbatim. ‘You can’t blame him, Marcellus. He’s been here for nearly twelve years, and all he’s seen is dead bodies and a succession of men, already wealthy, trying to enrich themselves even more.’
‘So he would happily see the whole system, which made Rome great, cast aside for the bad behaviour of a few rotten apples.’
‘Don’t underestimate Aquila, Marcellus,’ said Gnaeus. ‘You said he was an illiterate peasant—’
‘He is,’ snapped Marcellus, interrupting. ‘And I might add his manners are a disgrace. I remember him being just as rude to Quintus Cornelius years ago.’
Gnaeus knew that story – after all it was part of the Terentius legend. He rarely subscribed to the generally held view that Marcellus was a stuck-up prig, but he did now and his voice, when he spoke, was unusually sharp. ‘Believe me, Marcellus, if Aquila is proud of anything, it is his Roman citizenship.’
‘Then he should learn to respect it properly, and avoid insulting men w
ho are consuls. If he were still on his farm, any noble landowner he addressed like that would flog him through the district for insolence.’
‘I rather like the fact that he’s not very refined,’ said Gnaeus.
‘I think I already referred to his illiteracy. It’s a disgrace that someone who can’t read and write properly is a tribune.’
‘But he can speak Greek.’
‘The accent is appalling.’
Gnaeus was now genuinely shocked; such condescension was most unlike his oldest friend and he just had to put him in his place. ‘That was unworthy of a Roman, Marcellus.’
He could not know that his companion, as he spoke, could have bitten his tongue and was prepared to curse himself for such a remark. Had Gnaeus known how much this Aquila had got under Marcellus’s skin then perhaps he would have been more forgiving. What was most galling was the way the centurion, now tribune by order of Titus Cornelius, had, in the time they had spent with him, suborned his friends.
‘I withdraw the remark and apologise,’ he said, stiffly.
They walked on in silence, Gnaeus wishing that Marcellus would just spend some time with Aquila, as he had before, during and after the siege of Pallentia. Perhaps then he could be brought to see how rotten the system had become, where poor people lost their land to men already too wealthy to know what to do with their money, where the rich hogged all the power to themselves and, when they were forced to hand some on, only let it slip so far. Not all senators were filthy rich, of course, but these men, in their purple-bordered togas, raised armies and led them either to disaster, or used them as a private band of robbers. They called on the whole of Italy, who had little to gain from the power of Rome, and forced them, as subject peoples, to provide the Republic with yet more blood to spill, denying those same people the rights of Roman citizenship. After two months with Aquila, Gnaeus had ended up ashamed to be rich or associated with the senatorial class.
‘You must understand, my friend,’ Marcellus insisted, ‘what Rome needs is a stronger ruling class, not a weaker one. If we once allow decisions to be made by a mob, then Rome will fall apart.’
‘That’s only part of Aquila’s argument. I think he’s more in favour of one man having the power to sort out the mess first.’
Marcellus’s voice was like a whip. ‘A dictator, is that what he wants? No prizes for guessing who he sees in the role. Well, thank the gods that he’s only a military tribune, so none of these wild notions are likely to get very far.’
‘I cannot come with you, Lady,’ said Cholon. ‘I am already committed to join Titus in Spain.’
‘Then I shall just have to redouble my efforts with Sextius, though I fear some of his friends have quite undermined my attempt to paint a rosy picture of Sicily.’
‘You have yet to tell me why you are so keen to go there?’
Valuing Cholon’s friendship, Claudia hesitated, but set against her desire to find her son that was as nothing. The question, once posed, would open a breach between them, one that could perhaps never be closed. She had undertaken, many years ago, not to ask where he and Aulus had exposed her son, yet she had no choice but to probe and the answer was vital. If it was affirmative, she would go to Sicily on her own and if Sextius baulked at this, he would have outlived his usefulness, so since they were not married in the strict form, she would offer him a divorce.
‘As you know, I travel everywhere with my husband.’
‘It has always amazed me that you do,’ replied Cholon smoothly.
He failed to add that, to him, the act of journeying was less mysterious than the person she chose to journey with. The Greek had suffered many an evening in Sextius’s company, purely for Claudia’s sake. The man was a bore, forever preening his perfect Roman countenance and his attempts to hide his true inclinations behind a façade of Roman virility were risible. Sextius was locked into the past, unaware that times had changed, that with the increasing influx of Greek ideas into the Republic, no one in Rome gave a damn these days about a man’s sexual orientation. Claudia stood up and went to a chest set against the wall, opened it and took out a number of lined scrolls, before turning round to face her guest.
‘What have we here?’ he asked.
‘You must have wondered, once or twice, why I chose to marry Sextius?’
Good manners fought with veracity in Cholon’s breast and throat. The result was a sound that was neither affirmative nor negative, but it would have been recognisable in a man with a heavy cold trying to clear his windpipe.
Claudia smiled. ‘I’ve always admired your eloquence, Cholon.’ He just pointed to the scrolls in her hand, not trusting himself to speak. ‘Sextius owns land all around Rome. It is an added advantage that he is friendly with all the other landowners.’ Cholon bowed his head, acknowledging the truth of what she said. ‘That is why I married him.’
The Greek was as devious as he was clever, so she waited to see if he would make the connection. He shook his head slowly, like a man who has hold of only part of an idea. ‘I asked you a question once, which you declined to answer.’ Claudia let fall one of the linen scrolls. ‘I have here a survey I have undertaken, which Sextius will present to the Senate in his name, detailing the incidence of infant exposures in Rome and the immediate surrounding areas of Latinum.’
The Greek’s eyebrows were up now, and he shifted his position, adopting a more guarded pose as she continued. ‘It’s incomplete of course. I’ve naturally been constrained in what I can ask. Only a properly empowered praetor could demand answers, but, as you will see, my survey is quite comprehensive.’
‘I thought you had put that matter out of your mind,’ he said.
She ignored that and pointed to the scroll, but her eyes never left the Greek’s face. ‘There’s a place near Aprilium, right by the River Liris. A child was exposed there, on the night of the Feast of Lupercalia, which, as you know, is the exact time my son was born.’
Cholon kept his face as stiff as a thespian’s mask, but he could not stop the flicker in his eyes, which was enough to satisfy Claudia.
‘I must go,’ he said standing up.
‘Yes,’ his hostess replied. ‘You’d better, before I’m tempted to break a promise.’
Cholon was afraid that his resolve would weaken, so the farewell was as hurried as it was unpleasant. Her words had taken him back to that night, so many years before, when he and his master, Aulus, had ridden many leagues from the empty villa where Claudia had just given birth to a bastard son. The child had lain in the saddlebag beneath him as he rode, and still he could recall the eyes that had stared at him in the reflected moonlight, bright blue as he had seen by the candles which illuminated the actual birth.
They had placed the child where he could not be found; Aulus wanted no disgrace of his name, but, noble as always, he was not prepared to bring opprobrium on the head of the woman he loved. Many times he had wondered what became of that little body in the swaddling cloth; many times he had prayed to his gods to forgive him for what had to be a sin. And, loyal to his late master, when pressed, not that he knew precisely, he had declined to tell Claudia the area in which the child had been exposed.
There had been a river gurgling in the woods where they had lain him down, that he recalled, and a mountain-top silhouetted in the moonlight, it being a cold, clear night, with a strange cap shaped like a votive cup. He had asked a surgeon about death by cold, and had been assured that, as the body cooled, the person dropped into a slumber from which they did not wake, so the child would have felt no pain.
It was only when he was in the street outside Claudia’s house that he realised that he had forgotten to ask her why, when she had mentioned the River Liris and Aprilium, in his mind likely locations, she was so intent on going to Sicily.
Titus knew that he had to split them up. They were not working together – just the opposite – and if he left Aquila and Marcellus together too long, one of them would kill the other. It seemed as if the differences in bir
th and background somehow served to compound the mutual antipathy. Marcellus could not accept the new tribune as his equal. Aquila, aware that Marcellus Falerius had little battle experience, took every chance he could to remind him of the fact. It was as hard to know who to blame as it would be to find the seat of their quarrel, but Titus knew that a decision had to be made. Yet the most simple one, of sending Marcellus back to Rome, was debarred to him and not only because it would break a commitment; it would be a dishonourable thing to do.
He needed Aquila Terentius to help him retrain the legions, as well as the Iberian levies he had raised from the coastal plains. Not only that, the whole army, except those men he had brought to Spain himself, knew him. Titus was the kind of general who talked to his troops, so he heard repeatedly how much both Aquila and that charm he wore round his neck were seen as lucky symbols. There was an element of legend about the tales they told; even the men who had passed under the yoke before Pallentia credited his new tribune with saving their lives. And his elevation to what was a rich man’s rank made every man in the army proud, leaving him in no doubt that they would feel more comfortable attacking Numantia with this man by his side.
Yet he was bound to Marcellus by a tie of loyalty that went back a long way, to a time before the young Falerii had donned his manly gown. Quintus always claimed he was doing something, but he seemed to want Marcellus to take on his first magistracy without ever having spilt blood, something that would hamper the young man’s future career. The solution came to him through Aquila, who, at a conference, asked the general what steps he was going to take to ensure that the Lusitani, more numerous than any of the other tribes excepting the Duncani, could not interfere with his operations around Numantia.
