CHAPTER SEVEN

The house of Lucius Falerius Nerva was, once more, full of people. They stood, in groups, around the waterless fountain and burning braziers in the spacious atrium, their conversation setting up a steady buzz as they discussed the events of the previous two days; Tiberius Livonius cut down along with four companions garbed in his robes as a priest of the Cult of Lupercalia. This had led to serious rioting, as the people he represented, the poor and needy, poured out of their slums screaming for retribution, thus giving the patrician party an excuse to respond with their armed retainers, which in turn led to the massacre of Livonius’s adherents. Over three hundred had died as the patricians egged on their supporters to kill their political enemies.

Yet their deaths paled beside the effect of the initial assassination. The murder of a plebeian tribune, a hero to the dispossessed, whose person was held to be inviolate, was a heinous crime. All Rome was agog to know the names of the assailants, though few seemed to doubt that the author of the attack was the owner of this house. An angry crowd, defying the danger of another massacre, as well as the orders of the lictors to disperse, had gathered outside to yell obscenities. Those lictors, whose task it was to maintain civil order, were forced to mount guard at the gate. The noise swelled as the outer door swung open to admit another caller, and the room fell silent as Aulus Cornelius Macedonicus entered. A collective sigh rose from the throats of those with a slim chance of an interview with Lucius, for their prospects were so diminished as to have almost disappeared. Everyone else knew that the mere presence of this man would considerably extend the time they had to wait; Aulus would be admitted to the great man’s study just as soon as the host was appraised of his arrival.

Properly clad in his senatorial toga, with one fold acting as a cowl to cover his head, Aulus took up position on his own, at a point far away from the entrance to the study. Several men bowed in his direction, indicating that many a conversation was open to him. While courteously returning the bows, Aulus held himself aloof. Likewise those clients of Lucius, who would also wish to avail themselves of Aulus’s largesse, he being one of the richest men in Rome, were kept at bay by the look in his eye, which was not one to invite an approach. Lucius’s steward, ushering an elderly knight out of the study, failed to see Aulus and was just about to indicate that another man should proceed through the door when a hurried whisper made him spin round. It was like a scene from a comedy by Plautus. The steward’s hand shot to his mouth in a most unprofessional manner and he rushed into the study to tell his master. Seconds lengthened into a full minute before he returned, which had already heightened the tension, but when the fellow ignored Aulus, and indicated that the original supplicant should go through, the air became charged. For quite some time no one could speak; they just stared at Aulus to see what he would do.

The object of their curiosity did not even flick a black eyebrow; there was no reaction at all to this obvious slight, even though, inwardly, he was troubled. Aulus had come with three objects in mind; to celebrate a birth, to mourn a death and to expunge the dread that what the mob protested outside, that Lucius had been responsible for the assassination of Tiberius Livonius, was true. Ruminating in turn on all three, he stared back at his inquisitive audience as if daring one of them to mention what had just taken place; to state the level of the insult that had just been very publicly delivered. No one did and soon the conversation resumed, if anything louder than before, as the gathering tried to make sense of this unexpected shift in the political wind.

In the jumble of thoughts that coursed through Aulus’s mind the sight of the child he had exposed kept cropping up, unbidden, a bundle of white placed on the cold earth. He had avoided looking at it too closely, staying mounted on a horse suddenly skittish, not wishing to be haunted by the physical image, but all that meant was that he transposed, instead, the infant faces of his own two sons. Much as he tried to concentrate on the forthcoming meeting with Lucius, which was now bound to be difficult, he could not erase the memory of watching Cholon lay down the sleeping infant with a gentility that was at odds with what was intended. On a clear moonlit night the trees had sighed in the gentle wind, as if in sorrow. As he had gazed at the outline of the distant mountains, with the ghostly outline of an extinct volcano, Aulus had felt the chill in the air as the clear sky sucked what little heat the day had produced out of the earth, the chill that would ensure a slow but painless death.

Two more knights and one senator were admitted while Aulus stood waiting. All the while he kept trying to bring his thoughts back to matters at hand, or to the turmoil that had greeted him and his wife as they had entered the city he loved and had fought for; the sight of bodies in the streets; of armed bands passing him with swords already bloody, and a look in their eyes that promised more killing. The notion persisted that by being present he might have been able to prevent this, but the moonlit glade well away from the Via Appia kept intruding. The body would provide food for some predator, so that the little bones would be scattered. He wanted to shake his head, to destroy the image he had then – why was he so shaken by one death when he had participated in so many – but too many eyes were on him, too many people looking for some kind of reaction to what they had observed.

Finally, with his progress followed by the whole room, the steward made his way across the atrium towards the tall, imposing, but solitary figure. His whispered words brought a curt nod and Aulus, head high, looking neither left nor right, made his way towards the study, hearing the steward, behind him, announce that there would be no more business conducted that day. The study was much darker than the atrium, hardly surprising since what he had left was open to both daylight and the elements. Here the light came from a glowing brazier and oil lamps, with the bulk of their effect concentrated on the owner’s desk. It was only then that Aulus realised what was missing; Ragas, the warrior slave he had gifted to this house after his return from Macedonia, a fellow always with Lucius, who knew as well as anyone that, with the position he held, he could be the target of an assassination.

‘Greetings, Lucius Falerius,’ said Aulus.

He reached up to uncover his head as a mark of the genuine respect he felt for this man, but the hand froze in mid-air. Lucius Falerius did not even look up, but just kept on writing, his quill scratching across the rough papyrus and for one of the few times in his adult life, Aulus felt foolish, unsure of what he should do. To uncover his head while being blatantly ignored would be undignified.

‘It’s difficult to know what to do, is it not, Aulus, when you’re unsure who your friends are?’

Lucius still had not looked up, leaving Aulus trying to discern something from the voice; anger, guilt or was it just pique? He and Lucius had fallen out often enough – you could not be friends for thirty years with a man like him and not have the occasional spat, but they had been, in most cases, of short duration. Aulus was always willing to admit when he was at fault, while Lucius was gifted with the wit and words to eventually turn any dispute into an object of mirth. On the rare occasions when Aulus thought about their long attachment he would conclude that, though very different in many ways, they balanced each other, the uncomplicated warrior and the wily politician. This, Aulus knew, because of the way he had been left waiting in the atrium, was different.

Faced with such a welcome, kept waiting like some common supplicant, Aulus was forced to confront an unwelcome truth. It was no secret that Lucius had become more acid and less tolerant over the years as the burdens he undertook increased, just as it was known that he was inclined to outbursts which could only be ascribed to jealousy. Some of his comments on the marriage with Claudia, which had been repeated by gossipy tongues, had been far from amusing and Aulus had chided him, before departing for Spain, about the fact that he was prone to treat some of his friends with the same disdain he reserved for his enemies.

As he looked down at the thinning hair on the bowed head, it seemed such an attitude applied to him as well, and for the first time in his life and for all the years he had considered this man a companion, ally and confidant, he was unsure if the words he was about to use were wholly true. ‘I have never had cause to doubt that we were friends, Lucius.’

There was a trace of a growl in the Falerii voice as Lucius responded, which made Aulus really bridle for the first time since he had entered the house. ‘Then you are more fortunate than I!’

‘That is, until now,’ snapped Aulus, his black eyes blazing with anger. ‘No friend of mine has ever seen fit to humiliate me.’

The top of Lucius’s balding head shook slightly, the sheen of his pate catching the light from the nearby lanterns. ‘Again you are fortunate.’ The voice had softened now, to become almost silky, but still Lucius, as he continued, would not look at his guest. ‘A friend of mine did something very like that recently, someone bound to me by a lifetime’s companionship as well as the most solemn of blood oaths. Perhaps humiliation overstates the case somewhat, but this friend saw fit to be absent at a time when any true comrade, who has it in his power to be present, knows that he should be. I refer Aulus, to the birth of my son.’

That stung, for the blood oath they had exchanged as children was a covenant that meant a great deal to a deeply religious man like Aulus. He had known as soon as he heard of the birth and. death that an important obligation had been broken, just as he knew that his presence on Italian soil, so close to Rome, must have been known to Lucius. The man had cause to be angry. Suppressing his own annoyance at the way he had been treated, he responded in a deferential tone.

‘I came here to congratulate you on that joyous birth, Lucius, as well as to commiserate with you on the loss of the Lady Ameliana. Having lost a wife myself, I know how you must be feeling.’

Aulus snatched the cowl off his head at the mention of her name, using the excuse of his genuine grief, when speaking of Lucius’s dead wife, to solve an apparently intractable dilemma, while still retaining a measure of his dignity. As if blessed with a sixth sense, Lucius chose that precise moment to look up from the papers before him, eyes narrowed and lips disapproving.

‘Yet you uncover yourself, Aulus. Can I therefore assume that my anger is misdirected?’

Lucius was addressing him as though he was an errant child, but Aulus again decided, for the sake of their long association and the death just alluded to, to let that pass. ‘If I could have been here, I would. You must know that!’

Lucius frowned deeply, as if such a statement smacked of improbability. ‘Perhaps if I were to hear why you were delayed, my hurt would be lessened. For be assured, Aulus, I was hurt. And disappointed.’

The silence lasted for several seconds for Aulus had no intention of lying to Lucius, since nothing could reduce him more in his own estimation than that he should adopt such a course. Yet neither was he prepared to tell the truth: only he, his wife and Cholon would ever know that secret and a true friend, to his mind, would not ask for an excuse if none were volunteered. Again he felt it necessary to suppress a rising sense of anger, found that he needed to fight to control his voice and keep it gentle.

‘It ill becomes you to demand explanations from me, Lucius.’

Lucius jerked backwards in his chair. ‘I agree, Aulus. One would hope that the companion of your youth would not be required to demand.’

‘I came to congratulate and commiserate,’ hissed Aulus, pulling himself up to his full, imposing height, his restraint shattered in the face of such arrogance, as well as his own deep sense of guilt. ‘I came as a friend, as well, ready to apologise to you for my absence, but my apology will have to suffice. There is no man born that can demand an explanation from me. You go too far!’

The host rubbed a hand over his forehead as though weary. Other people faced with someone as physically impressive might have flinched, but not Lucius Falerius: his response was smooth.

‘Perhaps I do, my friend, perhaps I do,’ he said, seemingly now intent on being emollient, his voice becoming full of warmth, tinged with hurt and concern. ‘But can you not see how our enemies perceive such behaviour. They are always on the lookout to drive a wedge between people like us.’

The word ‘us’ jarred, for Aulus suspected that Lucius used the word to refer almost entirely to himself. Besides, what had these supposed enemies to do with what was a purely personal matter? The voice was still cordial as Lucius continued. ‘If you tell me that you were delayed, and for an honourable purpose, I will enquire no further.’

It was with a tight feeling in his throat that Aulus responded, for he knew that the gods would judge him for what he would say, and that made for an uncomfortable sensation. ‘I was delayed, and the purpose was one that I could not, as an honourable man, avoid.’

‘Then enough said, my friend,’ said Lucius, standing up to come from behind his desk, holding out his forearm. ‘Let us join hands, as of old, and put the matter from our minds.’

Aulus stepped forward with relief, clasping Lucius’s arm just below the elbow, grateful that he had abandoned his icy hauteur. The man he had come to see, the friend he remembered, responded, and at the same time treated him to a warm smile. ‘I fear the burden of my tasks makes me a poor host. It was wrong of me to make you wait, wrong of me to allow my resentment to spill over into so public a response.’

‘You do too much,’ Aulus replied, with genuine feeling. He wanted to say that Lucius should stop, take time to himself, let others bear the burdens of leading the patrician cause. He did not because he suspected he would be wasting his breath.

Lucius shook his head as if confused. ‘I do what I must, my friend, though your concern touches me.’

There was a moment then when Lucius changed, and a sight of that once-known, engaging youth, resurfaced; the smile, which seemed to draw him in, added to the expression in the dark brown eyes that, when concentrated made you feel as if you were at the very centre of his thoughts. This was the congenial Lucius that could seduce people to agree with him, so far from the cranked one that had existed when Aulus entered, a mood change which he felt allowed him to ascertain something of which he was curious.

‘Where is Ragas? I can barely recall ever seeing you without him.’

‘I freed him on the birth of my son, Aulus, and do you know he upped and left within an hour, swearing that he would return to his homeland, and get away from Rome, which he hated. He was quite spiteful in his condemnation. A pity, I think he could have had a great future here.’

‘Then I must provide you with another, Lucius.’ Lucius laughed out loud, rare for him. ‘Must Rome start another war just to gain me a body slave?’

‘You know I have many on my estates, more than is needed to work the land.’

Jabbing with a gentle and friendly finger, Lucius replied, ‘I know you harbour them carefully, Aulus, and only bring them into the city to sell when prices are high.’

‘I sell them, Lucius, when I can recover the cost of feeding them.’

Lucius tugged slightly at a sleeve to lead his friend from the room. ‘Come, Aulus. I must show you my son. He is as lusty a little fellow as you’re ever likely to encounter.’

He led the way out of the rear of the study and down the colonnaded walkway by the side of the garden. The sound reached them soon enough, and lusty was the right word for it.

The child is yelling fit to wake the dead, thought Aulus.

He immediately regretted his impiety, for the body of his friend’s wife was likely somewhere nearby. This, in turn, made him wonder at this unbridled joy, which should surely be mixed with a deep sorrow for that passing, yet there was no sign of grief in Lucius’s manner. Indeed, Aulus had been surprised on entering the house to see so many people present, as though this was just a normal day in an important man’s life. Never mind what had happened on the streets of Rome, what had occurred within these walls was enough; the place should have been deserted. No one could blame a man, however elevated his status, for refusing to conduct business after such a loss.

The wet nurse, her child on her lap, stood up as they entered. Lucius waved her away, and taking his companion’s arm once more, led him over to the cot. They gazed down at the wailing infant. ‘Look at him, Aulus. Is he not a fine fellow?’

Again there was the feeling of years dropping away, because Lucius was excited and made no attempt to disguise it. Over time he had, of necessity, become the most reserved of men, consummate at disguising his feelings, ever the politician. It was a telling thought that Aulus harboured then, one tinged with regret; his friend was for once behaving like a normal human being.

‘I have sent to Greece for a list of tutors. I wish him to learn Greek as his first language. He shall have the finest pedagogues available in all subjects, no expense spared. He’ll learn better than anyone the twin pillars of Rome, the power of the law and the use of the sword. He will be more handsome than his father, and may the gods make him as tall and straight as you.’ The child yelled on, oblivious to the enthusiasm of his already doting parent, who babbled on in an animated fashion, arm securely linked to that of his guest. ‘I have already consulted the priests, Aulus, and the auguries are excellent. Look at the date of his birth, for instance, the Feast of Lupercalia. What better day could a Roman ask to enter the world? He shall be a great magistrate and a great soldier, my friend. He has been bred to plead in the courts and to command armies. Intime he will come upon his just inheritance, and another Falerii will stand as consul in the Forum Boracum.’

The father’s eyes were alight, gleaming at the prospect of future greatness for his son, and it was an inadvertent thought that made Aulus allude to the boy lacking a mother.

‘To spoil him you mean!’ snapped Lucius, looking up with a return of his previous sour expression. ‘To make him soft like a milksop.’

‘Come, Lucius. Mothers can teach boys a great deal. If you do not believe me, ask my sons.’

Lucius permitted himself a half smile. ‘Perhaps so, Aulus. Perhaps I shall wed again, like you, but this time I shall require more comfort than this boy’s mother ever gave me.’

Lucius had always had within him a callous streak – it was not out of place in the world they inhabited – but to speak so ill of a loyal wife, who had just performed her duty by producing this infant, when she was barely cold, was deeply shocking.

‘Take care, Lucius, to avoid blasphemy.’

Lucius actually grinned, for he was always ribbing Aulus about his piety. ‘You worry about blasphemy, while I worry about Rome.’

‘How do you intend to arrange the ceremonies?’ Aulus asked, bemused and slightly at a loss as to how to react.

The response was vague, as though the thought of his twin responsibilities had never crossed Lucius’s mind, and there was an element of confusion on the plural nature of the word he used. ‘Ceremonies?’

‘Custom demands that you bury your wife on the ninth day. That is also the day you’re supposed to celebrate the birth of your son and name him.’

‘I shall do both, Aulus, never fear.’

‘On the same day?’

‘Of course,’ Lucius insisted. ‘But all Rome shall know at what ceremony I have set my heart.’

The wet nurse was called forward to lift the child from his cot. This she did, and prepared to offer the infant her breast to feed.

‘Stop!’ cried Lucius. ‘Let him wait until the appointed time. It does no harm for a Roman soldier to go hungry.’

‘Hardly a soldier yet, Lucius?’

That remark was greeted with a look that contained a gleam of fanaticism. ‘Let us start as we mean to go on, Aulus. This boy, whom I intend to name Marcellus, is a Roman. He will be taught to behave like one from the very moment of birth. He will know, as soon as he can understand the nickname Orestes, that his birth itself on such a feast-day was so potent that his mother had to be sacrificed to achieve it. That will be the benchmark for his future aims in life.’

‘Then he’s in for a hard upbringing, Lucius.’

No hint of the inherent cruelty in his words seemed to dent Lucius’s certainty. ‘He is that, Aulus.’