Of Merchants & Heros

by Paul Waters

‘What does he say?’ asked Menexenos.

  I shook my head. ‘ “Zama’ . . . But I don’t know what he means . .

  . I think he’s drunk.’

  We sprinted down the track and caught him up.

  ‘Zama!’ he cried again when I asked him. And then, after a long belch, ‘Have you not heard? It’s over boy, though I don’t think you were born when it began . . . How old are you? Sixteen?’

  ‘Seventeen. What is over?’

  ‘General Scipio has hammered those Carthaginian bastards, right outside their own city. It is finished at last. The war is over!’

  Then he slapped the mule’s side and rode off, singing drunkenly to himself.

  Everyone has their own tale of how they heard the news. That is mine. Later I heard more.

  Scipio had done battle with Hannibal. He had entirely defeated the Carthaginian army and their allies, outside a village by the name of Zama. Hannibal had fled the field, and the elders of Carthage had sued for peace.

  When I got home I found Caecilius in his workroom, holding forth to his friends. He was a man who liked to have his say, even on matters he knew nothing about, and now he was telling them, ‘Of course I foresaw this long ago; that is why I have diversified my business. Well there is peace, and there will be consequences, I daresay; but we must press on as best we can. I met Scipio once, you know. An able man, though rather full of himself . . . Ah, Marcus, there you are. Where have you been? I hope you are not thinking of going off to join the foolish merriment.’

  Autumn drew on. It seemed to me I was aware of every turning leaf.

  The tang of woodsmoke hung in the air, and at the harbour the long- haul merchantmen put out for their final voyages before the winter gales began.

  Now, when Menexenos was leaving, I refused to be cast down.

  One day Eumastas came to me and said, ‘My father is having a dinner-party, a farewell – just a few friends – will you come?’

  I looked at him. This was the first time he had invited me to his house. I understood. He had his father’s honour to think of.

  Perhaps he read these thoughts in my face, for then he said, ‘If we have suffered misfortune, it is as much the fault of the Tarentine mob, who supported Hannibal, as it is of Rome. You are my friend.

  That is enough.’

  I thanked him, and accepted.

  Eumastas’s father, Aristippos, was a decent country gentleman.

  He behaved as if he did not deign to notice his straitened circumstances; but it was clear he had never managed to adjust to them. He had salvaged, I saw, his old furniture from the farm: great carved antique chests, heavy tables, and dark-wood couches with silver feet. Anyone could see it did not belong in that cramped town house. But, then again, neither did he.

  Seeing him constricted in his little prison like a caged bear I felt for him. He reminded me of Priscus, and of my own father; he was a man used to space, to walking out over the fields, tending to his animals, and regulating his life with the seasons. He never mentioned it. But one saw the loss in his eyes.

  Later a linkboy lit me home through the dark streets. I was almost at the gate, and was just about to pay off the boy, when I noticed the postern move and a girl slip discreetly out. She flashed her eyes angrily at the dazzling torchlight, pulled up her veil, and hurried away. But I had seen enough to recognize her. She was one of Caecilius’s night-time visitors, one of the most regular, a raddled shrew with a voice like a crow’s. Something must have happened, for her to be leaving before the dawn.

  I gave the boy his coin and went inside. The entrance hall was dark, after the light of the torch-flame, and I paused for a moment, waiting for my eyes to adjust. Then I heard the boards creak on the upstairs landing; and, from above, Caecilius’s voice called out, ‘Marcus, come here. I wish to speak to you.’

  He was waiting in his private sitting room upstairs. On the table a single lamp-flame glimmered dimly under a fretted cover. Beside it stood a wine-flask, and, I noticed, two cups.

  He sat down heavily on the couch and took up his drink. In the dim light his jowly face looked blotched and puffy. ‘I want to know,’

  he snapped, ‘who this youth called Menexenos is.’

  I paused. It was late, and I was tired. I had not been prepared for this.

  ‘He is my friend, sir,’ I answered.

  He lolled his head and guffawed. I realized he was very drunk.

  ‘Friend? ’ he drawled. ‘Is that what you call it? I hear he is more than that . . . or less.’

  He brought up his cup and drank, like a parched man who has found water. Then, all of a sudden, he thrust his head forward and barked out, ‘Does he make love to you?’ He used the crude Latin barrack-term; deliberately, laying heavy emphasis on it, savouring it, rolling it with his tongue, investing it with as much filth and ugliness as he could.

  There was a silence. The word hung in the air between us, like some creature. Just then, a chance breeze from the window caught the lamp-flame, making it flicker and spit, casting wild shapes on the wall, and illuminating the bed through the double-doors beyond.

  The sheets were undisturbed still. I thought of the girl in the street. The subdued lighting was intended for an occasion different from this.

  My anger surged in me then, coursing through my veins, making my head throb with the beating of my heart.

  I took a step forward. Slowly, with a voice of steel, I said, ‘No sir, he does not. But if he asked me, I should do it gladly. Now is there anything else you wish to know? If not, then I shall go to my bed. I am tired; and, from the look of your state, you too need your sleep.’

  And then I turned and strode out of the room.

  Next day I went with Eumastas to the harbour to see Menexenos off. We stood near the gangboard, talking of this and that, while around us the stevedores finished the loading. Finally, all too soon, the captain called down from the deck that he was ready to put to sea.

  ‘Well, it is time,’ said Menexenos. He embraced Eumastas. Then he turned to me.

  As we held each other close I whispered in his ear, ‘There is power in longing . . . I have not forgotten.’

  ‘Make sure you believe it,’ he said, his breath warm on my neck.

  ‘There is no distance between us, however far apart we are, unless you make it so.’

  And then he drew me back, and kissed me.

  In the days and weeks that followed, I set myself to training hard at the palaistra, either with Eumastas or alone, not caring what others made of it. Once or twice, turning from my exercise, I caught sight of my stepfather’s agent, sly rat-faced Virilis, lurking in the shadows. I had already guessed it was he who had been spying on me. But let him spy. I had nothing of which I was ashamed, either before Caecilius or before the gods themselves, who see everything.

  I worked my body hard, using reason to perfect what, on the farm, I had acquired by chance.

  In part, this work at the palaistra was for Menexenos; for I missed him even more than I had supposed, and to run where he had run, and strive where he had striven, put me in mind of him.

  I asked Eumastas to tell me about Athens. He had been there once, when he was a boy; but mostly, he said, he had stayed out in the country, on the farm of Menexenos’s father Kleinias.

  Eumastas was never one to chatter, or to use many words when few would do. He would speak, answering one’s question, and then fall silent. When first I met him, I had taken his heavy-browed expression for brooding, or dislike. But it was not that. I think, in the end, it was just that he did not have much to say, and, being conscious of it, it made him awkward.

  The port was quiet, but eventually a late-season cargo ship put in. The captain asked for me, and when I came he handed me a letter from Menexenos. He had arrived safely. Athens was full of war-talk.

  He missed me.

  Then the winter gales set in, and there was nothing more.

  It was a time of changes. The war, which had gone on since before I was born, was
over; and now, Caecilius announced to me one day, his business in Tarentum was drawing to an end. Soon all could be left to his agents and managers. There were officials he had to see at the praetor’s residence, and, in one of the petty humiliations he inflicted on others to confirm his sense of self, he took me with him as a porter for his piles of documents, as if I were a slave.

  The residence was not only Titus’s dwelling, but also a large complex of offices and outhouses where officials worked. I had no reason to suppose, that day, that I should see Titus himself. But as I laboured with the burden of papers, following my stepfather, he emerged from a doorway at the far side of the wide square courtyard, attended by the tribune Verginius and a group of clerks.

  ‘Why Marcus, you look weighed down like a mule! Let me find someone to carry that . . . what is it all, anyway . . . was there no slave to help you?’

  He took some of the tablets and books and scrolls himself, and passed others to the clerks. ‘By God,’ he said laughing, ‘there is enough for two men here. What are you doing, training for the pankration?’ Then he looked up and saw Caecilius, some twenty paces ahead, under the portico by the offices, wagging his finger at one of the officials. ‘Ah,’ he said frowning. ‘Your stepfather.’

  Just then Caecilius turned with a cross look, to see where I was.

  As soon as he saw Titus his face changed, and he came hurrying across the cobbles, all smiles, his mantle swishing to and fro about his bulk. ‘My dear Praetor, what an honour, why I was just saying to my son here . . .’

  He talked on – flattering nonsense – until Titus eventually cut in with, ‘I believe you are leaving us, Aulus Caecilius? Have you decided yet where you will be going?’

  ‘Back to my estate in Praeneste,’ he answered. ‘At least for the winter . . . As for afterwards, who can say? I have interests in Greece, as, indeed, you may have heard; and elsewhere too. But as I often say, the world is full of opportunity, and—’

  ‘Quite. Then I wish you success.’ And then, turning to me, ‘I hear a ship put in from Athens last week. Is there word from Menexenos?’

  Before I could answer, Caecilius burst in with, ‘Ah Menexenos! An excellent young man, for a Greek.’ He paused and frowned to himself, perhaps remembering that Titus had a reputation for being a friend of Greece.

  Titus looked at him. ‘Yes, excellent indeed; and a person I count as a particular friend . . . But you must have a great deal to do, Aulus Caecilius, and I am keeping you from your business . . . Marcus, why don’t you give all this rubbish to the clerk’ – stubbing his thumb at the pile of documents – ‘I want to show you something – if, Caecilius, you can spare him?’

  ‘Oh yes, yes, of course; yes, certainly,’ blustered my stepfather, giving me what he supposed was a private conspiratorial nod.

  ‘Good. Come then, Marcus. And good day to you, sir.’ He put his arm through my elbow, and led me off towards the main house.

  ‘I shall miss you,’ he said as we walked. ‘Verginius says you have been practising sword-work at the barracks. What is it? Will you be enlisting next?’

  I laughed. ‘A man ought to know how to defend himself. He must know how to fight.’

  ‘Indeed. Well, if Verginius is any judge, you already fight better than many men. You move well, he says; and you are fast.’

  We passed under the long colonnade beside the gardens. Further off, slaves were busy raking the lawns, or tending the low ornamental hedges. ‘We shall meet again,’ he said, ‘but mind you come for one last dinner before you leave . . . just some close friends, Xanthe, Mimas, perhaps Verginius too . . .’ We came to the table that stood on the terrace, and here he paused. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘to business. That friend of yours you told me about, the one with the horse-farm.

  What was his name?’

  I said, ‘Eumastas.’

  ‘Ah yes, Eumastas.’ He picked up a scroll from the table. ‘I wanted to do this long ago. It has all taken far more time than it needed. But I had some unexpected opposition to overcome.’ He frowned at the scroll, then handed it to me, adding, ‘. . . not least from your stepfather, who insisted I went through the formal channels at Rome. Still, it is done at last, and here is the deed to show it. You may tell Eumastas his farm is restored to him.’

  I stared at the document, written in the broad clear hand of hieratic Roman officialdom. I swallowed, then remembered to thank him.

  He waved my thanks aside. ‘It is justice,’ he said. Then, seeing my hesitation, ‘But what is it?’

  ‘Just this, Titus: I’d rather not tell him myself. You see, his farm was never my gift to give, and I should not want him to think it was, after so long.’

  He nodded. ‘I understand. I’ll send Sextus. He will handle it well.’

  ‘And my stepfather?’ I said, thinking how he had mentioned none of this to me.

  His blue eyes flashed, and with a grin he replied, ‘The clerks will be informing him, even as we speak.’

  SEVEN

  PRAENESTE IN WINTER. MIST hung in the valley like a silk veil; but when we mounted the track that led up into the foothills and started to climb, we left the mist beneath us, and the morning air was sharp, and clear as crystal.

  My mother was waiting on the step, proud and straight-backed, and at her side stood Mouse, my stepsister. A group of the farmhands had gathered; and, with them, but carefully apart, the new bailiff my stepfather had brought in – a black-haired, staring, uneasy-looking man.

  I stepped up, and my mother greeted me and took my hands in hers. ‘Why, you are a man now,’ she said smiling. ‘I see the reflection of my own father in you . . . You see, Caecilia’ – to Mouse – ‘how broad and strong he has become.’

  Mouse smiled, and when I embraced her she whispered, ‘Welcome home, Marcus.’

  Her hounded look had gone; her modest, attentive face showed a new confidence.

  In the days that followed, I wandered about my old familiar haunts – the tracks among the oak trees; the stream and apple orchard and the high grove with its ancient grey-stone shrine where my ancestors lay. I saw straight away that the bailiff had made changes.

  He was a fussy, garrulous man, ingratiating with my stepfather and me, but sharp with everyone else. The reason for his nervousness became clear after a morning touring the meadows and terraces with him. He had learned whatever knowledge of farming he possessed in the fertile lowlands of Campania. It could not have taken him long to discover that his methods did not suit high Praeneste, where the conditions were different. But he was not the kind of man to take advice, and when the farmhands tried to set him right, he had rebuffed them with anger.

  So he had sown too late; he had planted new vines on north- facing terraces where they would not grow; he had left the water conduits until they had silted up, and, ignoring the farmhands’

  warnings, he had neglected the hay harvest so that there was not enough winter fodder for the livestock.

  I do not think Caecilius noticed any of this. But one thing he could not fail to notice, and shortly after our return I was passing the door of my father’s old study when I heard his snappish complaining voice coming from within. He had been reviewing the accounts. I could hear his abrupt questions, and the bailiff’s complicated evasive replies, blaming the land, and the farmhands, and the weather.

  It seemed unjust, and I was on the point of bursting in to put him right, and, indeed, I had already put my hand onto the great iron latch, when from behind me I heard my mother’s voice say sharply, ‘Marcus!’ and when I turned in surprise, for I had not known she was there, ‘Please come; I should like to speak to you.’

  She led me to her sitting room before she spoke again. She asked me to close the door. Then sat down and looked at me. ‘You have taken a look at the farm, I suppose?’

  I said, ‘Yes,’ and was about to go on, but she raised her hand, silencing me. ‘Then you have realized,’ she said, ‘that this bailiff’ – his name was Retius – ‘is a fool.’

  ‘I
ndeed, Mother!’ I cried, and began detailing the chaos on the farm.

  She listened for a short while, but when I paused she said, ‘All this I know, Marcus; or do you think I learnt nothing from my own father, and from yours? But what do you think will happen if you tell Caecilius?’

  ‘Happen?’ I said staring. ‘Why, I hope he sends him away. What else?’

  She nodded. ‘And then,’ she said, ‘he will bring in some other hireling, and I shall have to begin again with him. At least this man Retius perceives in some dim way that he has failed. And that,’ she said, pausing and meeting my eye, ‘is where I want him.’

  I began to understand. Caecilius had seen nothing wrong with the farm, other than the accounts, which was the only thing he understood about farming. He had misjudged Retius, and if he were to seek another he might find an even greater fool. My mother, in her way, had found the lever that enabled her to manage him herself.

  I could not but smile. My mother, seeing I had understood, nodded once, then turned away.

  Soon after I arrived, Mouse said coyly that she had something to show me, and led me through to the back of the house, where her own small room was.

  ‘Why Mouse!’ I cried laughing, ‘you have built yourself a library!’

  There were carefully fashioned shelves against every wall; indeed there was scarcely room for the bed any more.

  She looked at me with big eyes. ‘You are not angry then?’

  ‘Angry? How could you think so? Why, this is wonderful.’

  Immediately her nervousness left her. She sat down on the bed and happily explained how she had rescued my father’s old books from the damp outhouse, and had asked Milo the farmhand to help her build the shelves.

  I went over and cast my eye over the books. Each volume had been sorted, labelled with new tags written in her careful hand, and stacked. I asked her how many she had managed to read.

  ‘Why, all of them,’ she answered, her eyes bright. She looked so proud, and so happy, that I crossed the room – no more than a pace or two in that little space – and hugged her.

  When I stood back I saw she had blushed. But she did not avert her eyes, as she would have done before; and now, being sure of my reaction, she told me more. She had discovered, she said, that some of the books were old and worn, so she had begun to make her own copies. Shyly she took a scroll from a casket beneath the bed and showed me. She wrote in a fine, clear hand. I nodded and smiled, and told her so, and could see that she was pleased.