by John Stack
‘The loss of the fleet is a catastrophe that demands swift and decisive action,’ he exhorted. ‘We must confirm the loss of the consuls and act accordingly.’
Again voices were raised in agreement and Scipio stopped pacing to hold the attention of the Senate. Duilius took the opportunity to glance once more at Atticus, gesturing for him to leave. Atticus nodded, and he and Septimus quietly left the chamber.
Duilius watched them leave and turned his full attention back to his rival. The debate was now descending into a protracted discussion, with other senators standing in their seats in a bid to be heard. As Duilius looked on, the princeps senatus reasserted a level of control, calling out senators by name and permitting them to speak in turn. Scipio moved slowly to his seat, finally relinquishing the floor, aware that his moment had passed. Duilius shadowed his move, glancing surreptitiously at him as he sat down.
The political stakes had increased immeasurably with the loss of both the fleet and the consuls, and Duilius cursed the vital minutes that Scipio had held sway over the debate, knowing that many of the more fickle members of the Senate would remember that Scipio had stood before them when uncertainty reigned.
Septimus put his arm out and steadied Atticus, gripping his shoulder tightly as the two men stood at the top of the steps leading down from the Curia to the Forum.
‘Thank Fortuna Duilius turned up when he did,’ he muttered.
Atticus nodded in reply. ‘That bastard Scipio,’ he said, and glanced over his shoulder to the shadowed entrance behind him. The senator had totally outmatched him, backing him into a corner and then allowing no avenue of escape. He felt a fool, and was angry that he had not defended himself better. He turned abruptly and set off down the steps, Septimus following a pace behind.
The afternoon sun was warm on their backs and Septimus watched their shadows reach down the steps before them, seething at how his friend had been treated by the Senate, and in particular how Scipio had continued unchecked before Duilius arrived. He glanced at Atticus as they reached the bottom of the steps, noticing that his friend’s attention was drawn to the southeastern corner of the Forum and the Viminal quarter beyond.
Thoughts of what had occurred in the Senate fled from Septimus’s mind to be replaced with a forgotten anger. His sister, Hadria, lived at their aunt’s house in the Viminal quarter, and it was obvious that Atticus was thinking of going there. Time had not diminished Septimus’s resolve to prevent the affair between Atticus and his sister, but as he made to step forward and stand before his friend to bar his way, he hesitated.
He thought of how long it had been since either Atticus or he had set foot in Rome, how long it had been since he had seen his own family. He looked up at the Curia and remembered the danger Atticus had just faced and the many enemies he and his friend had faced together over the previous year. For an instant his pride reared up again and demanded he confront Atticus, but his friendship argued for a stay in his conviction.
‘I’m going to the Caelian quarter to see my family,’ Septimus said. ‘I’ll see you back at the ship?’
The question startled Atticus but he quickly recovered and nodded. Septimus slapped him once more on the shoulder and walked over to the contubernia of soldiers who had waited with their mounts. He took his horse and set off across the Forum. He did not look back.
Atticus stood still for a moment longer and then retrieved his horse, dismissing the soldiers as he did so. He mounted and looked to where Septimus had crossed the Forum but the centurion was lost from sight. Atticus spurred his horse and turned towards the Viminal quarter.
He reached the house with ease, recalling each corner of the familiar journey. As he tethered his horse outside Hadria’s house, the intervening year fell away. His knock on the outer door was answered by a servant Atticus did not recognize, and he saw suspicion in the servant’s eyes as he looked upon the tall stranger with a scarred face and intense green eyes. That suspicion was compounded when Atticus spoke, his unusual accent marking him as a non-native. The servant admitted him warily, leading Atticus to the open-roofed atrium that stood before the inner rooms of the house.
The servant asked him to wait. Atticus walked around the rainwater pool in the centre of the atrium. During his time away from Rome he had thought of Hadria almost every day, evoking her in his mind’s eye, placing her within specific memories to capture the essence of her beauty, but trying always to keep his emotions in check, never knowing for sure when he would see her again, the great distance between them an abyss that only fate could cross. Now, that moment of reunion was but seconds away and his feelings for her swept over him.
Hadria appeared in a blur of movement, racing into the atrium, her head turning as she sought him out. Atticus looked at her intently, taking in every detail. She was different from the image that had sustained him over the previous year. Her brown hair was darker and shoulder length, framing her face to accentuate her sea-grey eyes. Her gaze possessed a steely determination, as if she was somehow more self-assured.
Hadria’s face lit up as she saw Atticus across the tranquil pool, and she skirted around its edge to run into his opened arms. She breathed in the smell of him, letting it fill her memories, and when she broke his embrace to kiss him, the intensity of the contact drew blood from her lip that mingled with the taste of him. She had lived moments like this before, when he had returned from other campaigns, but each time felt like the first, the surge of emotion overwhelming her. She drew him ever closer, not daring to trust her senses and believe that he had returned once more.
Hours later, Atticus sat at the edge of Hadria’s bed and looked out at the sun falling behind the Quirinal Hill. He felt a light touch on his lower back and he looked over his shoulder and smiled. Hadria was stretched across the bed, her hair cascading across her face, giving her a dishevelled look. He fell back into her arms. He kissed her tenderly, acutely aware of how fragile her naked body looked, but as she moved against him he felt the strength in her slender limbs.
‘The messenger will be here soon,’ he said, and she nodded. Septimus was home, which meant she would be summoned to see him. The anticipation of seeing her brother safe and well was coloured by having to leave Atticus.
‘Can you wait until I return?’ she asked.
‘There’s not enough time,’ he replied. ‘I will need to leave the city before they close the gates at sundown if I’m to return to Ostia.’
‘You could stay here for the night,’ she smiled.
‘But your aunt, is she not here?’
‘She is, but she knows of you,’ Hadria replied casually.
Atticus was shocked by the revelation. He had thought that Hadria was striving to keep their relationship secret until she felt the time was right to tell her parents.
‘I have been resisting my parents’ efforts to have me remarried,’ she explained. ‘That raised my aunt’s suspicions, and with so many servants in this house there are few secrets. She confronted me months ago and I revealed my love for you.’
‘Has she told your parents?’
‘No,’ Hadria replied. ‘She agreed to keep my secret as long as I agreed to tell my parents of our relationship when next you were in Rome.’
‘Then I must accompany you tonight,’ Atticus said.
Hadria shook her head. ‘My father is away from Rome for another week,’ she said. ‘When he returns we will stand before him, together.’
She smiled in anticipation and Atticus embraced her once more, not wanting her to sense the doubt he felt in his own heart. Hadria’s father, Antoninus, was a former centurion of the Ninth Legion, a Roman of the equestrian class. He had always treated Atticus with shifting levels of respect and contempt, his admiration of a fellow commander vying with his suspicion about Atticus’s heritage. Now Atticus would stand before him as his daughter’s suitor, and only Antoninus could decide which instinct would hold sway.
Scipio looked slowly around the candlelit walls of the dining room, studying t
he familiar murals, which told the story of Aeneas’s heroic flight from Troy and the journey that took him to the shores of Italy, a simple thread of history that led, generations later, to the founding of Rome. Scipio smiled, remembering how — as a child — this private room had been forbidden to him by his father. He had defied that prohibition many times, sneaking in to view the legend that enthralled him; but even now, although his father was gone, Scipio still felt echoes of the fear that had marked each secret visit to the room.
The sound of approaching footsteps caused Scipio to stir and he looked to the doorway. A moment later, his wife, Fabiola, entered. She was wearing a simple woollen stola and the modesty of the garment strongly accentuated her classical beauty, her dark brown eyes reflecting the candlelight that flickered as she glided on to her own couch. She held out her hand and Scipio took it, his thumb stroking the back of her tapered fingers. She smiled demurely, nodding indulgently at his offer of wine.
Scipio called out to the doorway and immediately servants swept into the room bearing fresh fruit and cooked meats, each placing their platter in turn on the low square table between the couches. As they left Fabiola began to talk of inconsequential matters, keeping her tone light and sweet, pausing in her conversation only to refill her husband’s wine goblet, her words carefully chosen to relax and amuse.
As Fabiola spoke she felt a keen sense of expectation rise within her. That Scipio had chosen to have dinner in the private dining room could only mean that he wished to seek her counsel, and she longed for her husband to put an end to her idle chatter and reveal his inner thoughts. In the past, their discussions within the house had been overheard by servants who had been paid spies of Duilius’s, a betrayal that Fabiola had exposed. She remembered how he had had those spies brutally tortured and put to death. She paused for breath, and as she did so Scipio spoke.
‘In response to the deaths of Paullus and Nobilior, the Senate has voted to hold emergency consular elections next week.’
Fabiola nodded in reply but remained silent.
‘This may be my opportunity,’ he mused, and he looked intently at his wife.
Fabiola took a moment to gather her thoughts. ‘I agree there may never be a better time,’ she said.
Scipio nodded. ‘But I had not thought to run for the consulship for at least another two years,’ he cautioned. ‘If I strike now and fail, it will cost me any future chance.’
‘Now or in the future, a protracted electoral campaign would be difficult.’ Given your past disgrace, she almost said, but she continued seamlessly. ‘The senators who are allied to you are weak men, subject to their passions. The loss of the fleet is a crisis that favours your oratorical skills. If you fan the flames of their fear and uncertainty, they will support you.’
Again Scipio nodded. He had surmised as much, but to hear Fabiola’s endorsement strengthened his resolve. He gazed at her over the rim of his wine goblet, filtering her words through his own thoughts, and found no flaw in his plan, although it was fraught with risk. Duilius was sure to oppose him, perhaps with a ‘new man’ candidate of his own, and there was still a large block of undeclared senators between the two existing factions in the Senate. He looked at his options again, examining them from every angle, slowly spinning the goblet in his hand, creating a tiny vortex in the deep red wine.
Fabiola watched Scipio in silence, confident that her words had been of use to her husband, sensing that he was close to a decision. The struggle of the past year had been exhausting for both of them, the countless evenings entertaining political guests in the main dining room of the house, each banquet carefully orchestrated to persuade and cajole senators into Scipio’s camp. Fabiola recalled how often she had fawned over men who were but a shadow of her husband in order to secure their support. That struggle had borne fruit in the partial resurrection of her husband’s political strength, but it was insufficient compensation for Fabiola: she yearned for the time when Scipio would once more take his rightful place as the most powerful man in Rome.
CHAPTER SIX
Lentulus, the master shipbuilder, stroked the threadlike grey hairs of his beard as he listened intently to the debate raging around the table. He glanced at the Greek sailor at the head of the table, recalling the crucial elements of his report, and looked down at the notes he had made, at the brief scribbled words and crude diagrams that represented his initial thoughts.
He glanced at the sailor again, remembering when he had first met him years before. In many ways he was the same man; still tall and lean with an intense restlessness that often infected those around him — as it did Lentulus’s apprentices now — but in other ways he had changed. The scar on his face was an obvious difference, but Lentulus noticed more subtle changes. His previous openness had been replaced by wariness, and his eyes now seemed to search beneath the skin of every man he looked at, as if trying to discern their inner thoughts.
‘We have to try and rebalance the design,’ an apprentice said, and Lentulus’s thoughts returned to the conversation.
‘We can’t,’ another said. ‘If we counter-balance the weight of the corvus on the stern, then the draught of the ship will be compromised.’
‘You’re ignoring the increased ballast of the quinquereme,’ the first said. ‘The corvus was originally designed for a trireme. The larger ship can take the weight.’
‘It can’t,’ Lentulus interjected, and he looked to the Greek sailor. ‘Tell us again, Prefect, about the Strenua and how she foundered.’
Atticus restated what he had witnessed. As before, the four apprentices were enthralled by the report, particularly when Atticus described the speed at which the galley had been lost in the storm.
‘It is not a question of weight,’ Lentulus said in the silence that followed. ‘It is one of balance.’
He stood up and began to pace one side of the room, his hands clasped lightly behind his back. He began to explain his conclusions, partly for the benefit of those in the room, but also to clarify his ideas by voicing them aloud.
‘Neither the original trireme of the Roman coastal fleet,’ he said, ‘nor the Tyrian-styled quinquereme of the Carthaginian fleet, which we adopted, was ever designed with the corvus in mind. Each was built with a finely balanced hull; a balance the dead weight of the corvus corrupted.’
‘But we addressed those concerns when we adopted the corvus,’ one of the apprentices contested. ‘It was built within the design tolerances of the galley. Perhaps the fault lies not with the ship but with the crews and their seamanship.’
Atticus’s eyes darkened. ‘So you believe the crews are to blame for their own deaths?’ he growled.
The underlying violence inherent in Atticus’s words was not lost on the apprentice, but he held his ground, not wanting to lose face in front of his master.
‘I meant no disrespect, Prefect,’ he said, a slight tremble in his voice. ‘But the design cannot be wrong. It was rigorously tested.’
‘Your designs were tested in the confines of coastal waters,’ Atticus argued. ‘They were never fully tested in open seas, or in battle, or in a storm. Those sailors you speak so ill of lost their lives proving that point.’
Chastened by Atticus’s words and his conviction, the apprentice looked down at the table. Atticus continued to stare at him, his impulsive annoyance refusing to abate. The apprentice was a young man, no more than a boy, probably little older than Atticus himself had been when he’d joined the navy, and Atticus suddenly realized his anger was not directed at the apprentice but at himself. He remembered the day he had rushed to this very room with the seeds of the idea that would become the corvus. How he had stood before Lentulus and expounded on his plan for a boarding ramp, and how he had been filled with pride when that idea had become a reality and been proved in battle at Mylae. Although it seemed a lifetime ago, it was but a few years, and Atticus conceded that he had hidden that memory from himself to suppress his own culpability, knowing he had once been the greatest advocate of t
he corvus.
‘The prefect is right,’ Lentulus said, taking control of the meeting once more. ‘In our haste and hubris we ignored the fundamental attributes of a galley, ballast and balance, and we failed to fully appreciate the effect the boarding ramp would have on those.’
The apprentices nodded in silent agreement and Lentulus dismissed them from the room with instructions to begin work on finding an answer to the problem.
‘So you believe there is a solution?’ Atticus asked.
Lentulus looked to the initial thoughts he had sketched out. ‘No,’ he replied after a pause, ‘not if we need our galleys to compete with the speed and manoeuvrability of the Carthaginians.’
‘We cannot fight the Punici on their terms, we need the advantage the corvus gives us,’ Atticus said, his defence of the boarding ramp sounding treacherous in his own mind.
‘We may not have a choice, Prefect,’ Lentulus said, pacing the room once more. ‘Everyone in Fiumicino knows how and why the fleet was lost. Already crews are refusing to sail on any galley with a corvus, and with good cause. They will not, and we cannot, take the chance of such a loss occurring again.’
The conversation continued, but Atticus found it impossible to focus. He had been back in Rome over a week and this was not the first time he had had this argument, albeit with other men. That the master shipbuilder had asked for his report in person was evidence of the enormity of the problem the fleet now faced, trapped between the opposing forces of the Carthaginians and the weather, one threat calling for the retention of the corvus, the other for its rejection.
The meeting ended an hour later and Atticus left the barracks at Fiumicino to walk down to the shoreline to clear his head. The slips and scaffolding that dominated the beach were quiet in the noon heat, and he picked his way through them, the soft repetitive sound of waves crashing on the black sand allowing him to calm the voices of frustration. He turned his back on the beach and found his horse in the stables of the barracks, mounting it in one fluid movement as he set off for the city, his thoughts now focusing on the evening ahead, a smile creeping on to his face in anticipation. Hadria’s father had returned to Rome and it was finally time for Atticus and Hadria’s love to emerge from the shadows.
