CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Lucius looked at the despatches that Aulus had sent him, unaware that they were, in one sense, out of date. His correspondent had been thorough, not merely listing Vegetius Flaminus’s various crimes but including a mass of attested evidence as well. In the seesaw world of the Senate, with its shifting alliances and constant battles, Aulus had provided Lucius with the political equivalent of gold dust. Impeaching a senator was a prospect often invoked, but rarely pursued; indeed Lucius disliked such actions, which only served to show senatorial shortcomings to the mob. Better to maintain the fiction of complete probity.

The impossibility of perfection, in anything, made him reach for another scroll, which his steward had given him just the day before. The man had been insufferably smug, hinting that he had surpassed his master in the way that his idea had paid off, many years after it had been initiated. The Numidian slave, Thoas, had done well, and he deserved his reward, but Lucius could not believe that the information he had garnered could have taken so long to acquire. It struck him now that in all the despatches that Aulus had sent from Spain there had been no mention of his wife. Had he cared about her at all, Lucius would have noticed at the time, but to him she was no more than a minor irritant, a distraction that could affect the judgement of the man who had the Spanish command. What she did, and when she did it, was within the realms of gossip, and not something to demand attention from a man so deeply immersed in serious politics.

His mind went back to the day his son had been born and he remembered how angry he had been at Aulus’s absence and wondered why. The childhood oath, taken in blood, of undying support, meant less to Lucius than it did to Aulus. He had known, even as he invoked it, that it was merely an excuse for his anger, not the cause. Then he recalled the turmoil of that day, with the Feast of Lupercalia in full swing, mingling with the tension in the streets. There were his own intentions in regard to Tiberius Livonius as well as the need to dispose of Ragas. He had been on edge, in need of Aulus, at a time when he still felt he could trust him. Perhaps he still could, despite the years of suspicion, now he knew for certain that Aulus had engaged in no conspiracy against him. The information in this scroll showed quite clearly that he had acted like a fool; why he should seek to protect an adulterous woman was beyond Lucius. The easiest solution would have been to toss Claudia overboard on the way back from Spain.

He allowed himself a smile; everyone knew the perils of an older man wedding a young, beautiful woman; indeed, he had made several jests in that vein himself. Idly, he wondered who had fathered the brat, considering if it was worth his while to find out. He was, very slightly, tempted to throw this information in Aulus’s face, if only to see a man who’s probity had become a byword stuck for a reply. But he put the thought aside and chided himself for such unkind thoughts. They had been friends once; perhaps they would be again. It all depended on how far Aulus wanted to take the matter about which he had written home.

Thinking about the two interconnected subjects made Lucius realise that they formed two parts of the prophecy he and Aulus had heard as children. Aulus, in humbling Macedonia, had tamed a mighty foe, while he, Lucius, had murdered Livonius. Was that ‘striking to save Rome’s fame?’ He was less inclined to welcome the only line that stood out clearly in his memory. ‘But neither will achieve their aim.’

‘I shall achieve my aim,’ he barked out loud, in a voice angry enough to make his steward step backwards.

‘Master?’ said the steward, totally confused.

Lucius looked up, realising that he had spoken aloud. He had been trying to remember the exact wording of the last part of the prophecy, something about birds that could not fly but it would not come, which was an annoying sign of age and to cover himself before his servant, he went back to examining his scrolls and ruminating on his old friend. He had always slightly envied Aulus, who had military prowess in such abundance where he had none, but that same onset of age meant Lucius was now old enough to examine that envy objectively. When young, he had been no different to anyone else; dreaming of a proper Roman triumph, with him in the lead chariot, face painted red and his brow garlanded with oak leaves, just like Aulus had been when he returned from Macedonia. To think that such a man, having achieved so much, should go to such lengths, should jeopardise his reputation, and for what? For a woman who was far too young for him in the first place.

His reaction to Aulus’s non-attendance at the birth of Marcellus had been nothing compared to the way he had nailed him about the murder of Tiberius Livonius. That had really rankled, forcing him to tell a blatant falsehood. Lucius afforded himself a smile, knowing that had not been his first evasion, nor would it be his last. He wondered at the naivety of people like Aulus Cornelius, deeply religious fools, who thought that the world could be run by simple truth, backed up by a few military conquests. It was nearly as bad as the venal and blatant theft of hypocritical senators like Vegetius Flaminus. All the while they claimed as populares to have the interests of the dispossessed at heart, but in truth they took every opportunity to rob the state blind. Yet that very lack of honesty could yield political dividends. He could repose trust in neither; the honest man was as likely to cause trouble as the thief. He weighed the two scrolls, one in each hand, aware that the possibilities they afforded him were endless. Knowledge was power and here were two instruments that, played properly, could produce a wonderful result. He could live without prophecies and as for triumphs, his son would achieve those.

‘The litters are ready, master,’ his steward said. ‘Shall I fetch Master Marcellus?’

‘I doubt you’ll have to. The way he was hopping from foot to foot this morning makes me think he will already be aboard.’

There followed a stream of instructions as Lucius made his way to the front gate: the need to ensure that mounted messengers knew his route to Aprilium, the location of the post houses in which he would be staying on the two nights of the journey; that all he needed had been packed in the spare litter. The steward replied in the positive, even though he had been asked and answered all these questions a dozen times, reflecting that his master had grown more fractious over the years, and not for the first time wished he had remarried, for a man with a wife was so much more amenable than a crabbed widower.

As he watched the caravan head off down the Palatine Hill he recalled with some affection the Lady Ameliana, dead these ten years. She had been a plump good-natured woman, much given to tolerance, who had made life in the Falerii house pleasant. Her death in childbirth had passed almost unnoticed in the joy over the birth of Master Marcellus: that had blanked out everything else, including, the steward ruminated, the disappearance of the Dacian body slave Ragas. They talked in the slave quarters of that fellow occasionally, though no one in the servants’ quarters had liked him; he was arrogant and inclined to bully, not shy of waving those great fists of his to win an argument. There was no doubt he was, like all barbarians, capable of extreme violence, so when they talked, it took no great stretch of the imagination to add his disappearance to the death of Tiberius Livonius, and see there a connection.

The steward made a silent obeisance to Jove, hoping that the impious thought that accompanied this train of thought was untrue. If Ragas had killed the plebeian tribune and his fellow worshippers of the Cult of Lupercalia, then it could only have been on the instruction of his master. If true, such a thing would curse this house and all who resided in it.

Gafon needed a drink badly, but there was nothing unusual in that these days, for it was the only way he could get any peace, the only way he could forget that he had once been somebody. He would tell them that often, his fellow imbibers, tell them of his gladiator school, of the gold he had taken off senators and how he had fooled them into thinking the fights they were paying for would be worth the money, when in fact he had sold them flabby sods who could scarce lift a weapon, never mind use it, or fixed the results in advance to his own advantage. Then he would hint at secrets, at deeds that could never be more than a finger to the side of the nose to imply to his listeners that it was information that would keep him out of the gutter. He would hint that there was a noble senator who would pay dear for this, but never would he mention the name. Occasionally, as proof, from inside his tunic, the ivory handle of the scroll he had taken from Ragas would appear, grubbier and grubbier from frequent handling, accompanied by the words that what lay inside would see him to a life of milk, honey and endless wine. Boasters themselves, as all drunks are, none of those companions who spent all day with him in the wine shops believed a word of it, too busy relating their own fantasies to give much credence to that of another.

He was angry too, for he had tried to trade the scroll for wine, his last possession offered up for a pittance compared to what it was worth, but two tavern owners had turned him down already, and the third one had offered him no more than one flagon, reckoning that the papyrus was used and worthless, though the holder might fetch something from one of the scribes who occasionally dropped in for a drink. There had been a time when Gafon could fight, a time when he had trained good gladiators with enough skill to make them fear him, but now his body was without muscles and his brain, addled with the effects of years of wine, could not tell his wasted arms what to do. To try to fight the tavern keeper he was certain had insulted him was a bad idea anyway, to try to hit him with one of his own empty amphorae was fatal.

For the price of the drink he had refused Gafon, two of his regular customers took the body, with the blood still streaming from the shattered skull, out into an alley. Let the watchmen find him. With nothing on the body to identify him, Gafon would be just another of those unfortunates who packed Rome, some country bumpkin fleeced by one of the gangs who made their living by robbery and murder or who got beaten up by a roving gang of rich, drunken youths. They would burn his body, along with dozens of others, without ceremony. The scroll, picked up off the floor, was thrown into a drawer, and forgotten.

As the sun began to dip, Aquila, grazing the sheep on the slope between the rear of the stables and the water cistern while hoping for a sight of Sosia, put on his cloak to ward off the evening chill. The house was busier than usual, and he guessed, because he had seen it before, that Cassius Barbinus was in residence. With him around everything that needed to be done was accomplished with an air of bustle, and if there had been any doubt, the fountain that stood in the centre of the courtyard was on, sending a spout of water high into the air. From his position high on the hill he saw the caravan coming down the road from the north; several litters, two curtained, decorated and personal, another plain bearing metal-bound chests, and a heavily armed escort, some mounted and lictors out in front to clear the way, which indicated that whoever was travelling was an important official heading south towards Naples, not an uncommon sight on the Via Appia. That it turned to cross the bridge over the culvert that separated the road from the villa was less common.

Marcellus had never been this far from Rome and so had, on the road south, constantly pulled aside the curtains set to keep out the dust to look upon the route they were taking. There was much to see, not just in those using it but in the changing nature of the landscape. Sometimes it was flat marsh, at other times deep dark forests and here, close to their destination, good farmland mixed with woodland, the hills rising to the east to the white caps of the distant Apennines. His father was in the front, working as usual, a scribe walking alongside his litter reading correspondence that had just been brought to them by messengers from the city. Tonight, no doubt, he would dictate replies and these, signed and sealed by the reigning consuls, would be sent all over the empire by those very same messengers, riding on Roman roads and staying at Roman post houses holding a ready supply of fresh horses. This so that a governor as far away as Spain could write to the Senate and receive a reply within ten days. The soldiers fought to gain territory, but it was the system of consular messengers that kept it secure.

As they turned into the Barbinus villa, Marcellus closed the curtain tight, for his father would not be happy to see that a Falerii had allowed his dignity to be overcome by his curiosity. Staying on the right side of the parental temperament was important to Marcellus, given he was rarely allowed to accompany his father on the few occasions when he left Rome. Just being away from his teacher was a bonus; not being at school at all doubled that enjoyment. The protocol was strict, with a slave given the task of informing both master and son that it would be proper for them to alight; that the owner, his wife and family, as well as his senior servants, were arrayed in a manner befitting the rituals necessary to greet such an elevated person as Lucius Falerius.

Barbinus himself came forward as the curtain was drawn back on Lucius’s litter, his arms outstretched, the face wreathed in a broad smile. Marcellus examined him; fat, with a waddle of a walk and a gross head with features to match. The nose was big and so were the thick lips; only the eyes, deep in the puffy cheeks, seemed too small for their host.

‘My good friend, I bid you welcome,’ Barbinus cried, clasping the arm of the now upright Lucius. ‘That you should come to me instead of summoning me to attend on you in Rome does me great honour.’

The words his father had used before leaving came to Marcellus. ‘Barbinus is not the kind of person I wish to be seen with in the streets of Rome, nor do I want him knocking at my door. He must be one of the greediest men I know, with the morals of a snake. His family are poor stock, more Volscian than Roman, yet he is a senator, rich, without any power of his own and in need of a sponsor. He also knows that I have the power, and enough information on his peculations, to remove him from the Senate roll.’

‘So you will attach him to you?’

‘That I will decide, Marcellus, when we have concluded our business.’

The business was the sale of the last far-flung property that Lucius owned, farms in Sicily that had been a drain on his time and money, rather than an asset. They had been hard to sell, but Barbinus, who owned other Sicilian properties, had looked them over on his last visit then indicated that he would give Lucius a fair price. Lucius was not fooled; he suspected that Barbinus was buying a way into his favour, not farms from which he could make a profit.

‘You must be fatigued after your journey. The bath house is ready for you.’

Marcellus looked around for a bath house but could see nothing resembling the public baths in Rome. Barbinus, he realised, must have one of his own, which was real luxury, even in a country villa.

‘My son will need it, certainly,’ Lucius replied, ‘since his long nose, poking out endlessly from his litter, has covered him in the dust of the roadway. I prefer to get straight down to business, Barbinus. Let any bathing take place after that.’

‘As you wish, Lucius Falerius.’ Barbinus tried to click his fingers, but they were too fleshy to make much sound. It mattered little; his steward stepped forward immediately. ‘Nicos, take young master Marcellus to the bath house.’

Everyone else – lictors, scribes and escort – was sent to an empty barn, while Lucius was shepherded into the atrium of the villa, a substantial space with a smaller fountain playing in the middle. Marcellus, walking behind, heard his host snap at his steward, ordering him to get a rider on the road to find out what had happened to something, but he was unable to quite catch what it was as he was led down a corridor to his destination. With a plentiful supply of water from the mountain streams, and plentiful wood, Barbinus had made full use of what nature provided, so both room and pool were steaming hot. Feeling grubby after his journey he was happy to strip and plunge into the latter. When he emerged there was a masseur waiting to knead whatever strains he had suffered from his muscles and a very pretty girl with long brown hair to pour small drops of warm, scented oil onto his sweating flesh, which she then scraped to clean the pores. Such indulgence would never have been allowed in the Falerii household; Lucius, though often to be found at the public baths, frowned on such display, ever ready to accuse those who delighted in such luxury as vulgar and un-Roman.

At that time, Lucius was being very Roman indeed, trying to gauge just how much Barbinus was prepared to pay to get into his good offices. Like most rich men, the host hankered after more wealth and he had in his house a man who could not only secure his standing but provide him with more opportunities for profit than anyone else in the Senate. But Barbinus also craved respectability; he had reached his senatorial status because of his money, but had never served in any of the offices that fell to men of that rank and that left him vulnerable. Too old to begin the cursus honarium he still craved the eminence that went with such service to the Republic. Lucius Falerius was in a position to satisfy those desires.