The Gods of War (9 page)

‘If the conditions don’t improve for the Sicilian slaves, we’ll have another bloody revolt.’

The older man smiled, deciding that he needed to be emollient. He was not yet supreme in the Senate; Lucius had left him strong, but not as formidable as he needed to be. Insulting patricians, even those barely grown up, was a luxury he could not afford.

‘I imagine they’re rather chastened by what happened. They certainly seem to have gone back to their labours with the minimum of fuss. I should think, by now, with the overseers back in charge, they have had any notion of rebellion beaten out of them.’

Marcellus had to stop himself from saying how important Sicily and the grain grown there was to the security of Rome – Quintus knew as well as he that sustaining the distribution of the corn dole which kept the Roman mob from riot depended on steady supply. Nor was there any point in underlining that his father’s tactic, of suborning the slave army leaders by bribery instead of fighting the whole mass, had been based on that one fact; nothing would interfere with the grain convoys more than a protracted
conflict and a mass of dead slaves at its conclusion.

‘They have gone back to the farms in peace because of the promises my father made on their future rights, and I would point out it is the beatings they suffered which caused them to revolt in the first place. Please remember, Quintus Cornelius, I was there and I saw what I saw. If you doubt me, ask your brother. Titus, you will recall, was there too.’

‘I have my own sources to consult, and they tell me matters are settled. The slaves are cowed.’

‘I suppose the kind of information you have comes to you from people like Cassius Barbinus, whose sole guiding principle is profit. I am shocked, knowing the man as you do, that you give it credence.’

Quintus cracked finally, the veneer of diplomacy tearing wide open. He was soon to be elected consul, not some nonentity to be lectured by this boy. ‘You will not insult Cassius Barbinus in my hearing, Marcellus Falerius, and you will show the proper respect due to my dignity. Lucius is dead and his ghost holds no sway over the Senate. But I, and those who share my views, do.’

He stood up, intending to intimidate the boy by towering over him, but Marcellus forestalled the senator by standing too, and, being much
taller, he reversed the situation, so Quintus’s admonishing tone lost some of its effect by being delivered upwards.

‘You must make your way in the world, Marcellus. I am bound to assist you by the vows I made to your father, but the most compelling oath I swore, in his presence, was to uphold the power and majesty of Rome. Do not thrust scrolls at me which ease the lives of slaves, and demand laws that could fracture the fragile structure that holds the entire state together.’

‘I am concerned for my father’s honour.’

‘And Rome?’

‘Rome’s honour is at stake here too.’

Quintus laughed at that. ‘Honour? Rome has power, Marcellus. We are absolved of the need for honour. Surely your father taught you that.’

Marcellus pulled himself fully upright, as if standing to attention. It was bad enough that his father had died before he could complete his life’s work, but to have this, his last act as a senatorial commissioner, set aside, like the work of a freedman clerk, was intolerable.

‘To have heard one of the leading magistrates at Rome utter such words makes me ashamed.’

Quintus, who was thinking that for all his height he was a pious little shit, brushed aside the approbation. ‘You are young. It is right that you
should have high ideals. I held to the same tenets, myself, at your age, but I am now older and wiser, just as your father was. He didn’t let honour stop him when he needed to protect the Republic.’

Marcellus made to speak, but Quintus silenced him, pointing to the pile of scrolls held by one of the lictors.

‘Look at those, Marcellus. Every one is a plea from the Governor of Hispania Citerior, Servius Caepio, asking for legions to quell a new revolt. I helped to get him appointed. Servius is clever. He managed one thing few of his predecessors achieved by bringing some order to the frontier in Spain. It seems only days ago that he looked set to bring about a more permanent peace, but now, all that is changed. The place is on fire again, if anything, worse than before, which is only one problem amongst many that I must face in my consular year.’

Quintus paused, looking worried, as if the weight of all those responsibilities was a burden too heavy to bear, but he recovered and fixed Marcellus with a hard, unyielding look.

‘When your affairs in Rome are settled, you must take up your duties. I have enough honour to remember mine, to recall the vows I made in this very room. You need a military posting by
which you can advance your career. You will soon have your orders, appointing you as one of my tribunes. We march for Spain in a matter of days. When you have held your funeral feast, received the contents of your father’s will, and put the affairs of the house of Falerii in order, then join us.’

‘And the agreement with the Sicilian slaves?’

‘Let us be successful in the field, Marcellus.’ He pointed to the scroll, still open in the young man’s hand, with Lucius’s seal at the bottom – the agreement he had made to ameliorate the lot of the slaves in return for their passive surrender. ‘Then we can return, so potent that no one would dare block any motion we put to the house, even one as hare-brained as that.’

That last, careless remark betrayed him: Quintus would do nothing. The aspiring consul departed and Marcellus was left with his last words, delivered in that mock-jolly tone, accompanied by the kind of playful punch an adult uses to impress a child.

‘We’ll go to war and show them what we’re made of, eh?’

Quintus was thinking, as he walked down the street, that an impetuous young man like Marcellus could get into some very dangerous situations, but the boy, no doubt, craved success.
As his commanding general, and his patron, he felt he should do all in his power to aid him. If Marcellus succeeded, he would be grateful, and if he died a glorious death, he, Quintus Cornelius, would be spared a future thorn in the flesh.

Marcellus watched him go, aware for the first time of just how naked his father’s death had left him. The argument he had just had with Valeria was a blessing, and it was at that moment he decided to go ahead with his marriage to the Claudian girl. He would need her dowry in the future, if he were to have any hope of standing against men like Quintus. She would have to wait a while, till he came back from his first campaign, but he would reassure her father this very day. The second decision he made was just as important; he put aside all thoughts of burning any of the documents in the cellar.

CHAPTER FIVE

‘Are you sure this is the right list, Quintus?’ asked Claudia, waving the scroll she had just read at him.

‘What do you mean?’

‘If we were in a stable I would say you’d assembled, for my edification, all the spavined nags and blown stallions in the whole of Italy.’

Actually, for her purpose, the list was perfect. The last thing she wanted was some stalwart husband, full of ardour; she wanted someone meek, malleable and preferably stupid. In her opinion, finding such a creature should be no problem in the Senate. Like her list, it was full of them.

‘I have complied with your own wishes, Lady.’

She nearly laughed. He was so serious and stiff, forever striking a pose in his new consular toga, fiddling with the thick purple stripe along the edge, but she fought back the temptation. ‘We
must invite them to dine then, so that I can look them over.’

‘There’s no time for that, Claudia. I march for the north within the week and I do think it will be difficult for you to invite anyone to the house with no men around. It would cause a scandal.’

Cunning swine!
she thought.
He’s got somebody picked out already
. But there was no hint of that thought in her reply, more a feigned anxiety. ‘North? I thought you were sailing for Spain, and not for at least a month.’

Quintus threw his head back slightly, as though he were being sculpted for a marble bust. ‘There’s trouble on all the borders. We march to Massila, effecting a demonstration for the tribes of Cisalpine Gaul, a reminder that they should stay on their own side of the border.’

‘Then should I wait till you return, Quintus?’ Claudia asked in a meek voice.

‘No!’ He snapped, reacting too quickly, which he tried to cover with a winning smile; all it did was to make him look like a thief. ‘It’s up to you, of course, but you did give me the impression that it was a matter of some urgency.’

Claudia put as much sensuality and longing into her reply as she could, causing her stepson to blush. ‘Oh, it is, Quintus. You’ve no idea how I long for a man to take care of me.’

‘Yes, well, as you say,’ he stuttered, reaching for the reassurance of the edge of his toga.

‘Perhaps then we could go through the list and see who you think will be suitable.’

That restored him; indeed he could hardly contain his eagerness. ‘There are one or two on there who I think would be eminently so.’

Her silent thoughts were again in total conflict with her smiling face. Putty in your hands, you mean. Well that suits me, pig, for if they’ll grovel to you, they’ll very likely grovel to me as well.

‘I chafe for action.’

Titus smiled at his stepmother, mightily amused by Cholon’s words, as well as the languid wave of his arm. ‘One campaign in Sicily, without bloodshed, and you’ve become a warrior.’

‘I cannot see myself armed,’ Cholon replied, quite missing the irony, ‘but being in such danger, surrounded by the threat of imminent war, excited me.’

‘I should write a comedy about it, Cholon,’ said Claudia. ‘After all, no one ever has.’

The Greek sat up suddenly. ‘You have hit on a brilliant idea!’

‘Interesting, Cholon, hardly brilliant,’ said Titus.

Claudia looked at him with mock-seriousness.
‘Can you not see your stepmother as brilliant?’

‘Radiant, perhaps, Claudia,’ replied Titus gallantly.

‘Not a play,’ said Cholon, still lost in his reverie. ‘Something more substantial.’ Both his fellow diners looked bemused. ‘Plays are ephemeral, not meant to last.’

‘I doubt Euripides would agree,’ Claudia chided, with a smile.

‘He stuck to the eternal verities and, between them, my Greek forefathers quite used them all up. There’s little serious left to write about, especially for the theatre, but what of a history?’

Titus gave Claudia a perplexed look before replying. ‘A history?’

Cholon was excited, so much so that he passed up the usual sarcastic riposte that would normally have followed from Titus repeating what he had just said. ‘Of course, the proper account of a real campaign, like Herodotus and Ptolemy. Who fought and where, the numbers involved, with none of that exaggeration that so plagued the likes of Homer.’

‘Are there any Greek writers you admire?’ asked Claudia, who was unusual in many ways, not least in that, for a woman of her class, she was well read.

‘Of course there are,’ replied Cholon, with an
arch expression, but he didn’t go on to name them. ‘You will go on campaign, Titus, will you not?’

‘To do what you suggest would be better realised at the side of a general.’

‘Which you will be in three years.’

Titus shrugged. ‘That is in the lap of the gods, and, of course, my brother. Quintus wasn’t too keen on my being a magistrate at all. I don’t know if he’ll back me for the consulship.’

‘Lucius Falerius’s death hasn’t helped you,’ said Claudia.

The Greek cut in, practically snorting with indignation. ‘You can’t rely on him, I agree, but you do yourself no favours, Titus. For instance, you could cultivate important people, instead of snubbing them, which, I may say, is your usual way.’

‘I promise you, Cholon. If I get a command, you can come with me.’

‘Good,’ replied the Greek, eagerly, ‘but you will forgive me if I take a few precautions, just in case you don’t.’

‘Then you agree, Lady, to marry Lucius Sextius Paullus?’

His impatience grated on her. Quintus would never have dared to treat another man this way,
however dull his wits, but her stepson suffered from the same natural prejudice as most of his gender; he assumed that all women were stupid. In the case of his silly wife, he was right, which made the final condition she intended to extract all the more pleasurable, but first she must seem reluctant, a poor woman who needed to be persuaded.

‘Is he not much older than me?’

It was delicious to see how shocked he was. ‘You would not wish a husband younger than you, Claudia. That would be most improper.’

She dropped her eyes in submission. ‘Of course, how silly of me.’

‘Besides, he’s a fine figure of a man. What dignity he has. How many men can boast such a noble profile? That mass of silver hair makes him stand out from any crowd and he is rich, Lady, so you’ll want for nothing.’

He’s also as supine as a cub and as dull and pompous as you, she thought, but she smiled again when she spoke out loud. ‘Do you think he’ll agree?’