In the Shadow of the Wall (29 page)

Brude hesitated before answering. He saw Cleon watching him intently, waiting to see how he would answer.
Aquila
stared at him as well. He sensed that his answer to this question would decide what would happen next. “Everyone needs a bit of luck,” he agreed, “and yes, I had my share that day. But a man who relies on luck will not survive long in the arena. Hard work, and a lot of practice, helps outweigh bad luck. I took some risks and they paid off, for Fortune smiled on me.”

Aquila
nodded thoughtfully. He turned to Cleon, raising a questioning eyebrow. The balding man nodded and
Aquila
said to Brude, “You will have your own room and will become part of my family. I will pay you fifty sesterces a month over and above your food and board. You will train my son every day for at least two hours. I may have other duties for you, such as accompanying members of the family when they leave the house. Other than that, your time will be your own.” He looked hard at Brude. “Are these terms acceptable?”

Brude did not have to think about it very long. He still intended to leave for Britannia in a couple of months but there was no point in telling
Aquila
that. This was a way to escape Trimalchio’s suffocating clutches. Becoming a member of
Aquila
’s family was only a technical issue. All members of the household were members of the family, including the slaves, and the master of the house controlled their lives. Under Roman law he had the power of life and death over each and every one of them, although few men ever actually exercised that power in practice. It was a strange concept for Brude to understand but it did not affect his decision. “Thank you, sir. I agree.”

Aquila
’s thin lips twitched in what might have been a smile. “Excellent. Cleon has the contract already drawn up, so let us sign it. Then I will let Cleon show you around. You can begin training Lucius tomorrow.”

Cleon unwrapped a scroll, passing it to
Aquila
who carefully scratched his name with an ink-tipped, goose-feather quill. He passed the quill to Brude, who took it clumsily, making his mark beside, and just beneath,
Aquila
’s signature.

“You cannot read or write?”
Aquila
asked him.

“No, sir.”

“Yet you sign it anyway?” He seemed amused.

Brude looked him in the eyes. “I trust you, sir. Among my people, the spoken word is as binding as anything written in
Rome
.”

“Then welcome to the house of Vipsanius Aquila.”

Brude had intended to stay for two months but, somehow, he never quite managed to make the break and the two months stretched into two years.

He had his own room with a small window overlooking the street; the work he had to do was relatively easy, the food was good and Cleon quickly became his guide, mentor and friend. It was the happiest time he had experienced since leaving Broch Tava.

Cleon was a Greek, retained by
Aquila
as a tutor for his two sons but who had also acted as a personal secretary and book-keeper to
Aquila
since Trimalchio’s departure. Brude learned more about
Rome
from Cleon in six months than he had learned in eight years of slavery. As a Greek, Cleon had a healthy disdain for Roman culture, yet at the same he revelled in life in the imperial city. He would often walk through the streets with Brude, showing him the sights, explaining what the various buildings were and which emperor or other important person had built them.

Brude loved strolling through the forum of Augustus or the Campus Martius, outside the city walls on the banks of the
Tiber
. There, Augustus, the first emperor, had his magnificent mausoleum. He had also erected a huge Egyptian obelisk which acted as a sundial, casting its shadow on marks carved into the paved square around it. It was a simple concept yet, like so many things in
Rome
, the scale of it was stunning. Brude also spent hours walking round the gleaming white marble of the Ara Pacis, the Altar of Peace, another monument erected by Augustus. “He must have been a great man, this Augustus,” he said to Cleon one day.

“The Romans hold him up as the exemplar of what a good emperor should be,” Cleon agreed. Then, in his mocking way, he added, “Mind you, he only became emperor in the first place after he had slaughtered or murdered anyone who opposed him.”

Brude shrugged. Such was the way in
Rome
, as he was rapidly learning. The empire was at peace but the threat of violence was always there for anyone who stepped out of line. Emperors often came to power through violence and had no qualms about using more violence to hold on to that power once they had achieved it. Cleon told him that, years before, there had been one year when the empire had had no fewer than four emperors, three of whom had met violent deaths.

Brude also began to understand more about how
Rome
operated and why
Aquila
had hired him.
Aquila
was an
eques
, a knight, wealthy enough to become a senator but barred from doing so because he had made his money through commerce, and still did. He owned several ships which plied the sea between the port at
Ostia
and various parts of the empire around the
Mediterranean Sea
, carrying pottery and iron tools on the outward trip and bringing back olive oil or other, more exotic, foodstuffs on the return journey.
Rome
’s demand for olive oil was insatiable and while the imperial fleet carried huge quantities of it, there was always room for private enterprise to bring more. Aquila would have liked to have become involved in the transport of the grain that Rome needed to feed its citizens, but the imperial fleet had the monopoly on that; the emperor would take no chances that someone else could control the food supply for the citizens of Rome.
Aquila
also traded in precious goods throughout
Italy
and owned country estatin the hills of
Latium
where his family usually spent the hot summer months. He had high hopes for his son, Lucius, whose full name was Lucius Vipsanius Festus because he had been born on the day of the Saturnalia festival. Lucius,
Aquila
hoped, would one day become a senator, the first in the family to reach the rank. After a successful spell in the military, he would progress through the career of honour, perhaps even becoming a consul, after which fame and wealth beckoned if he could be appointed as governor of an imperial province. Under Cleon’s instruction, Lucius was being taught oratory as well as studying the works of Rome’s famous poets, and learning Greek, the second language of the empire, so that he could read Homer’s classic tales in their native tongue. These were all essential skills for a Roman senator. All he had to do was survive to inherit his father’s wealth, which was why
Aquila
wanted Brude to teach him how to fight.

Brude liked Lucius. He was a serious boy, of average build but with a quick mind. He spoke well and Cleon always praised his oratorical skills. He reckoned the boy had the makings of a fine senator. As a fighter, though, he was no better than average although he tried hard and listened carefully to Brude’s advice, doing his best to put the tips into practice.

Brude went back to Lentulus’ school to buy some wooden swords from Curtius. The old lanista was pleased to see him, as was Kallikrates, but something in the relationship had changed so Brude did not stay long. While he was there, though, he learned that Pollio had been killed. His leg had never properly healed and had slowed him enough to allow a Retiarius to snare him. “The crowd were in a bloody mood that day,” Curtius complained, “and the emperor’s son, who was hosting the games, wanted to please them, so he let Pollio die. Bastard!”

Before leaving, Brude went to see Tygaeus. He obtained the name of a pharmacist who imported the various herbs and oils that the physician used. Brude found the man in a narrow side street in the city and spent a portion of his wages stocking up on some basics. He wasn’t sure why he did that but his time working with Tygaeus had sparked an interest in healing and he felt a strange impulse to keep a supply of medicines handy.

Lucius was delighted with the wooden swords. He trained hard with Brude, using the peristyle garden as their training ground. Brude could not use the brutal training methods of the gladiatorial school and he rarely worked with Lucius for more than two hours each day, but the boy was slowly improving his speed and anticipation and was working at building up his muscles. They practised every day, often with
Aquila
looking on, as well as other family members who would lean out of the windows from the rooms overlooking the garden. The slave who tended the garden was not pleased at the treatment it suffered but did not complain at the occasional damage done to his plants, at least not out loud.

f his wagher family members Brude came to know were Agrippina,
Aquila
’s second wife, and Vipsania, his youngest child. He had two daughters, and both, in the Roman fashion, were called Vipsania. Being female, they did not warrant proper names themselves. To tell them apart, they were simply called Vipsania Prima and Vipsania Secunda; the first and second daughters of the family of Vipsanius. Brude thought that incredibly odd. For such a civilised race, the Romans treated their women like second-class citizens, a point of view quite alien to one of the Pritani. To Romans, of course, the fact that the Pritani traced their lineage through the female line, and even sometimes had women rulers, was simply a sign of their barbarism. Even Cleon struggled to follow Brude’s explanations. “You mean your kings are not the sons of kings, but the sons of the sisters of kings? How strange!”

“At least our women are not treated like breeding cows,” Brude retorted. “They are equals to men in most things.”

“Equals to men?” Cleon was aghast. “My dear Brutus, women can never be the equal of men. As well as being physically weaker, their brains are smaller so they cannot possibly have the same mental capacity as men. This is a well known scientific fact.”

Brude knew better than to argue with Cleon when he got onto science. Cleon was very proud of the Greek traditions of science and mathematics. “The Romans may be great engineers,” he would frequently say, “but their philosophy is entirely borrowed from
Greece
and there is not a single Roman mathematician to match Pythagoras, let alone Archimedes. The Greeks are unmatched when it comes to science.”

Now that Cleon had pronounced his verdict on women, Brude knew he would never win an argument about it. He supposed his friend must be right, but he could not help wondering whether Cleon would dare voice his opinion of women’s abilities in front of some of the women of the Boresti that Brude had known. His mother, for one, would have had a few words to say about it.

As for the women of
Aquila
’s family, Vipsania Prima was a year older than Lucius and had been married to the second son of a senator, only two months before Brude had joined the household. It was a good marriage and
Aquila
was delighted at the match, even though he had had to pay a large dowry.

Vipsania Secunda was only thirteen years old. She was quiet and pretty, saying little but with eyes that suggested a quick and alert mind, whatever Cleon thought about the limitations of the female brain. Brude learned that
Aquila
’s wife had died when Vipsania Secunda was born. He had remarried several years later, his new wife Agrippina being more than twenty years younger than him, and still only in her early thirties. A strikingly attractive woman, she was a typically demure Roman wife who ran the household with quiet efficiency and who obeyed her husband’s every word. Brude soon learned that Vipsania Secunda hated her.