Knight of Rome Part I

by Malcolm Davies

  Aldermar laughed.

  “He’ll probably ignore them and piss in your fishpond. Thanks for leaving the wine,” Aldermar shouted cheerily to the retreating back.

  Two days later he was called out of the stables by one of his men.

  “Look at that,” he said.

  Otto was riding a tall grey gelding, deep-chested with a flowing white mane. He made the horse turn in a figure of eight to show off its paces and then leaped out of the saddle at Aldermar’s feet. He held the reins and patted its neck while the horse tossed its head and snorted puffs of steam into the crisp morning air.

  “Boxer gave it to me. We go to feast with his people until spring,” Otto told him, beaming with pride.

  Lucius stood to attention in front of Legate Quadratus’ desk. Otto, also at attention, was a respectful distance away by the door.

  “You will begin your journey to Luca at first light tomorrow. A column of men recruited out of your own district will be following. When they arrive, they will be in holiday mood but they are still soldiers and subject to military discipline.” He handed Lucius a scroll in a leather tube. “This letter is to the city magistrate. It informs him that should any matters arise involving men of The Second Lucan, Tribune Lucius Taurius Longius is to be consulted. Use your judgement. Don’t put the civilians’ backs up but don’t let them cheat and swindle our lads. Is Otto to go with you?”

  “He is, sir,” Lucius replied, taking the scroll and pushing it under his belt.

  “I am glad. You are a professional soldier now, Lucius. Comradeships on which you can rely should be valued above everything… and everyone.” He gave the tribune a piercing glance. “Our truest friends in the legion would not always be acceptable outside of the military but you must make your family appreciate how priceless they are within it. Do you understand me?”

  “I think I do, sir,” Lucius replied.

  “Very good,” the legate told him then commanded Otto to stand forward. He looked the young German up and down and nodded his approval.

  “You are very different from that wild boy who chased the slave to my Praetorium steps last year. You have grown and filled out. How well can you speak our language?”

  “More better than before, sir,” Otto said in his thick accent.

  “I hear the improvement but you must continue with your studies. Learn from Tribune Longius, or Tribune Boxer, as everyone seems to prefer. Over this summer you have marched with my soldiers and been of service to them in the field. You are not of the legion yet you have cheerfully shared the fatigues and dangers it faced. However, legionaries are paid for their efforts and you have not been rewarded, as yet. So here is a gratuity in recognition of all you have done.” Quadratus handed over a soft leather purse. “It contains one hundred and fifty silver denarii. That is about half a year’s pay. You are not entitled to the full amount since you cannot give your oath under the eagle.”

  Otto’s mouth dropped open. He had some idea of the value of money after his time in the camp but had never dreamed of owning such a fortune.

  “Thank you, sir, thanks to you,” he said, his words coming out in a rush.

  “On what will you spend it?” Quadratus asked.

  Otto had no hesitation in replying. “A helmet and a long sword; I have horse.”

  “Oh no, that will not do,” the legate said and shouted for a clerk who stuck his head around the office door. “Write me out an indent for a cavalry helmet and sword for this young man,” he ordered then turned again to Otto. “You must take another name, you know. We Romans have two or three and it’s awkward you having just one…”

  “I believe it may be right for him to take my family name, sir. As if he were a freedman acknowledging his patron…” Lucius suggested.

  “Exactly so, Otto Longius it shall be.”

  They left at dawn; their horses fresh and newly shod and leading two pack mules. It would take them a month to ride to Luca if all went well. They would stay in the established military roadhouses where they and their mounts could expect good food and care and, above all, security overnight. The roads could be lonely, particularly at this time of year, and even two well-armed men would be in danger from robbers when darkness fell. The infantry column encumbered with wagons would travel at a slower rate and could be expected to arrive after fifty days on the march.

  Lucius and Otto rode south-east, the low sun in their eyes, both of them excited in their own ways to be free for a while, on the road and answerable to no-one.

  Chapter 15

  Although they had spent a year in each other’s daily company, Lucius and Otto had not spoken much because they had no common language. Later, Lucius was occupied with his duties, Otto was busy learning and training and when they were in the field there was no time. Now they had thirty days or more of being together with no-one to distract them. Otto was happy to ride on in silence, frequently drawing his long cavalry sword and swishing it through the air to practise different cuts and slashes.

  “It’s called a spatha, that type of sword,” Lucius remarked as one whistling downward slice came too close to his leg for his liking.

  Otto held the weapon upright and examined the blade as if knowing its name called for a closer examination. He sighed and sheathed it, to the relief of Lucius.

  “It is a blade only for king or high warrior. Legionaries are better armed and armoured than the highest born of us,” Otto said wistfully in response.

  “Do you miss them, your people?”

  Otto thought for a while then shook his head.

  “It would be good to know my mother and sister still live. They were not in village when you fell on us.”

  This was a subject that they had never mentioned. Lucius was uneasy about speaking of the day they had first met. It was like a boil he did not want lanced; better to let it fester than to be told a truth he did not want to hear. He still could not completely understand why Otto had offered his loyalty in the middle of all that smoke and blood and anguish. Surely he must harbour some resentment, some desire for revenge. He looked back over his shoulder and then ahead. The track they were on was empty in both directions. If Otto had vengeance in mind, this would be his ideal place and time.

  The roadhouse they reached that evening was nearly empty apart from half a dozen soldiers scattered around the dining room where a fire blazed in the great stone hearth. After a hot meal and two cups of spiced wine with very little water, Lucius felt relaxed and expansive. He broached the nagging question.

  “Do you hate us for what we did to your village?”

  Otto looked at him with his pale, cold eyes a puzzled expression on his face.

  “It was will of the gods; soldiers were their instruments. If I hate you, I hate the gods who sent you. That is great sin. In any case, you know I am fated to follow this path….”

  “But your father…?”

  “…Was mighty warrior. He died sword in hand; that I know. You are soldier of Rome. If you are killed in battle, your family will not hate enemy who brought you low. They understand that it is end of road you set your feet on when you joined the legion.”

  Lucius laughed. “I’m sure my mother would be annoyed.”

  Otto looked scandalized. “Boxer, do not say things disrespectful to mother!”

  They travelled at a steady thirty miles a day resting on every sixth day to give their horses and their own backsides time to recuperate. Well south and east of their starting point, Otto saw his first building constructed entirely of masonry. It was a u-shaped three storey roadhouse with a screen wall enclosing a stable yard. The walls were built of dressed stone blocks in-filled with brick around the windows and door frames. The roof was covered with red pantiles.

  Lucius rode straight into the yard but Otto turned his horse to the right and slowly circled the perimeter, gazing up at the walls. When he finally came into the stables, Lucius was already unsaddling his horse. Otto looked apprehensively at the underside of the roof above his head but
was reassured by the sight of the rafters holding it up. They were made of wood; a material he knew and understood. Before they went inside, he pushed a corner stone. It did not budge.

  “Why it isn’t it falling over?” he asked.

  Lucius pointed at the thin line of mortar visible in the joints of the stonework.

  “The builders make a paste of sand, lime and water and rest the blocks on it. When it dries, it grips them together.”

  Otto looked at him sceptically then scratched at the mortar with a fingernail. None came away; he grunted, satisfied but only for the moment. Lucius spent the rest of the evening explaining what he knew of building techniques. Every answer seemed to bring a fresh query out of Otto and he had exhausted his sketchy knowledge by the time they went to their beds.

  They travelled through Germany, the Belgic lands and deep into Gaul with the mountain ranges well to the east of them. Each stage displayed new and unheard-of wonders to Otto and generated an endless flow of questions. Lucius answered them as best he could. He soon grew bored with dredging up scraps of information to feed into his companion’s hungry mind. Then it occurred to him to use Otto’s curiosity to improve his Latin. If he did not frame a query with correct grammar, Lucius refused to answer until he did. Lucius had to supply vocabulary as well; Otto had never seen an aqueduct, did not know its function and could not fairly be expected to know what one was called. The improvement was startling. But nothing they had seen so far had prepared Otto for his first sight of a Roman city.

  They were now travelling on new, well-paved roads which were easier on the horses but did mean that their shoes wore out faster. They smelled Lugdunum, the Roman trade and military hub, long before it came into view. A faint scent of smoke, of animals, of metal and of humanity drifted on the easterly breeze. It intensified as they walked beside their horses up a long incline, reached the top and saw the city for the first time. Otto was astounded. From their vantage point they could see the defensive walls with gate and corner towers surrounding the innumerable roofs of houses, factories, barracks and warehouses. The facades of temples rose up in stone dominating the other buildings. It was home to thousands of permanent residents, swelled by itinerant traders in every type of goods imaginable and legion after legion marching through from north or south. Otto was frightened as they rode through the heaving streets looking for an inn, although he would never admit it. His heart was hammering and his breath came short. Such noise, such stink, so many people; the sensations bearing down from all sides panicked him. But he could see that Lucius was taking it all in his stride and forced himself to go on as if unconcerned.

  At dinner, Otto asked if Luca was as crowded and reeked as badly.

  “No,” Lucius laughed, “it is a quieter place and the sea breezes keep the air sweet, most of the time.” Otto did not completely understand what he had been told but decided to ask no more, for once. He remained subdued until they left after two days, to his great relief.

  They were now riding down the Via Agrippa; part of the network of military roads connecting Lugdunum with the Atlantic, the Mediterranean and strategic strongholds in the recently conquered territories. There was more traffic in these parts. They gave way to imperial couriers galloping between relay stations where they could change horses, they moved off the carriageway to let columns of soldiers pass by without hindrance but disdainfully forced civilians aside. Eventually they turned east onto the Via Antonia on the final few stages heading towards Italy and home.

  They had the mountains to their left and the sea to their right as they made their way to the port of Forum Julii. Otto spent one entire day riding with his head twisted to one side marvelling at the troubled sea, rolling and heaving as far as the horizon. He woke the next morning with a stiff neck. But if he had been impressed with his first sight of the Tyrrhenian Sea, it was as nothing to his delight at the sight of the harbour of Forum Julii. Roman warships, huge triremes and sleek, fast liburnians, bobbed in the choppy swell and fretted at their mooring ropes, huddled behind the shelter of the stone breakwater. Fishing craft moved among them, dwarfed in comparison. One three-decker was hauled up onto a slipway with its enormous hull exposed while the barnacles and weed were being scraped off it. Otto saw squid and octopus for sale on the dockside for the first time. He was repulsed and thought Lucius was joking when he said they were good to eat. He also learned that the sea was salty after trying to drink from it using his cupped hands. Lucius had sat back to watch his companion’s experiment without warning him, looking forward to the inevitable result. Otto choked and spat and without thinking, tried to wash his mouth out with even more seawater. The disgusted look on his face made Lucius laugh out loud, which earned him a reproachful stare.

  Their coastal path led them north and east now, around the head of the Tyrrhenian, always with towering cliffs and defiles inland, until they turned south again and through the Apuan Alps. On the fourth day out of Forum Julii, Lucius reined in his horse at the crest of a pass and pointed to the funnel shaped valley below. Two rivers split around a compact city surrounded by farmlands and protected from the north and east by the forested foothills of the mountains they had just traversed. The sun shone, making the roofs and temples glow in the golden light and the indigo sea sparkled away to the far horizon where it merged with the paler blue sky.

  “Home,” said Lucius. “This is Luca; we have arrived.”

  Otto stared down for a while then turned to his companion with a concerned look on his face.

  “I have seen many new sights and I now understand how ignorant I am. Nor do I speak good. I hope I will not shame you in front of your family, Boxer.”

  Lucius remembered his legate’s words on the value of comradeship.

  “You won’t, Otto you won’t. Remember you have been honoured by First Spear Centurion Attius and by Legate Publius Quadratus. You’ve stood by me on the march and in the field. I will not forget that as soon as I walk in my father’s house,” he said and saw the young German break out in a faint smile but he still seemed nervous.

  Mid-afternoon, they entered the city by one of the landward gates and rode through the forum with its temples and magistrate’s court before turning right and moving up a steady incline. The shops and commercial premises grew fewer as they climbed; the houses farther apart. They came to a suburb where nothing could be seen except high blank walls pierced by stout, solid gates. There were no pedestrians on the streets, no pedlars or street-vendors calling their wares. Lucius had taken the lead and turned up a side street until he reached a black gate reinforced with iron and indistinguishable from any other. He stopped his horse and kicked out with his boot instead of dismounting and knocking. A panel opened and a face peered up at him.

  “Greetings Janus,” he said to the porter. “Open the back gate and tell the stable boy I’m home.”

  He moved off without waiting for a reply. They turned again down a narrow alley and stopped at a pair of wider gates which were hauled open by unseen hands. Lucius, followed by Otto holding their mules’ lead ropes, walked their horses into a paved yard where a boy was busy unlatching the double doors of a stable large enough for half a dozen animals. They dismounted and stretched; their journey was over.

  Otto looked around. A grid of crushed seashell paths ran across a large garden divided into flower and herb beds. Fruit trees were planted in what seemed a random display but had been carefully placed to give the effect of a natural grove. Shrubs growing in carved marble urns were dotted about and a stone fish spouted water up through its mouth to fall back into a pool in which carp glided. A small building stood under the shade of a trimmed cypress and beyond it the main house. It was a single storey structure. The external walls were rendered with mortar and painted a warm buff colour. Vines were trained up the sunniest aspect on a trellis. They were far south of the Rhine but it was still early November and winter, although not a winter such as Otto had ever experienced. To him, it seemed as if they had travelled back through the seasons
to summer. They walked around the side of the house to the main entrance. Two steps led to a terrace under a portico and the front door. It stood open revealing a long rectangular hall painted with scenes of forests and huntsmen. The death masks of Lucius’ ancestors stared out of niches in the walls. The central floor area was taken up with a shallow pool lined with a mosaic of sea creatures. They stepped inside.

  The family stood in a formal group, smiling and waiting to greet the son and heir. The smiles slid off their faces as they saw the bulk of an enormous blond stranger looming over their Lucius who stepped forward and shook hands with his father, Vitius.

  “It is very good to have you home safe and well, my son,” he said. “I did not know we were expecting you to be accompanied by a guest…” he added in an enquiring voice looking directly at the tall German blocking the light in the doorway.

  “Oh, this is Otto, father,” Lucius replied and waved him forward.

  “Greetings noble father of the Tribune Lucius Taurius Longius,” he said and held out his right hand.

  Vitius looked at it, glanced quickly at his son who was smiling and took the proffered hand. Otto shook it warmly, causing the older man to gasp at the pressure.

  A very young woman in the family group giggled until she was nudged into silence with a reproving glare from what was clearly her mother. The last of the party was an older lady who shared a strong facial resemblance with Vitius. Otto was introduced to all three in order.

  “This is my sister Poppaea,” Lucius said, “and my mother Sabina Pulchra…” Sabina looked at Otto like the doe cornered by the hounds painted on the wall behind her, “and finally but not least in importance my grandmother Aelia Clodia…”

  Otto had towered over Poppaea and Sabina when he greeted them but he knelt to Aelia and gently took her hand.