The Sword of Revenge (21 page)

The impression was strengthened when the boy collared him to ask about the wars in Spain. He had read the despatches avidly, as well as the private letters to his father from Titus’s commanders, so he knew most of the details already, but he showed a lively interest and a keen intelligence. The name Brennos engaged him, and he asked avidly about Celtic warriors in general, and the hill-forts in particular, with many enquiries as to how they could be subdued. Titus answered evenly and honestly, enumerating the problems, though careful not to lay any blame for the lack of any real success at any one person’s door.

Having asked more questions than were strictly polite, the boy suddenly halted, biting his lip as if gearing himself up for something. ‘Titus Cornelius. I wish to ask you a favour.’

‘Then do so. If it’s in my power to grant it, I shall.’

‘Three years from now, I will be of age to undertake my military service. Nothing would please me more than that I should do so under your command.’

Titus smiled. ‘You might do better to attach yourself to someone who’s going to be a successful general.’

‘But you are destined to be just that,’ said Marcellus, genuinely surprised.

‘And pray, young man, how do you know that?’

Marcellus pulled himself up to his full height, which was still a head shorter than his hero. ‘My father told me it would be so.’

It was the older man’s turn to be surprised. ‘When did he tell you this?’

‘This morning, but I knew that it was true years ago.’

‘Why?’

Titus was almost the last to leave and Lucius looked at him closely before answering. ‘You do not feel that you deserve my good offices?’

‘Only you would know that, Lucius Falerius, but you strike me as a man who never does anything without a purpose. Even the ceremony today was put to good use.’

‘Can I plead sentiment?’

Lucius was playing with him, but Titus refused to be drawn into an angry response. ‘Please don’t mention childhood oaths.’

‘Perhaps if you knew the circumstances that brought about that oath between your father and me, you’d be less of a cynic.’

Titus smiled, not sure why. ‘There’s a degree of effrontery in that, coming from you.’ The older man bowed slightly to acknowledge the truth of his words, while the younger man dropped the smile. ‘I have a worry, Lucius Falerius.’

‘Which is?’

‘You have done me a service today. You will want something in return. I worry that I will not perform it, either through a disinclination to do so or perhaps because I’ve no idea what is required of me.’

The old man put a thin hand on Titus’s shoulder, adding an encouraging squeeze. ‘I trust that you are your father’s son. When the time comes, you will know precisely what to do.’

‘No explanation now?’

Lucius shook his head. ‘Never fear, Titus Cornelius. When you are called upon to respond, it will be a duty you are happy to perform. It won’t feel like doing me a service at all.’

CHAPTER TWELVE

They were now riding along a good road, a proper, paved Roman affair, straight as an arrow. Mount Etna was well behind them, rumbling and smoking in the distance, yet they could not see much ahead, with most of the town of Messana blocked out; in the warm southerly wind, occasionally gusting to the east, it was easier to see the mainland across the narrow straits. Smoke rose, thick and black, with the orange strip of flame just visible at the base, sometimes blocking out the sun and rolling out slowly over the bright blue strip of sea. The entire coastline had been sown with wheat; now they were burning the stubble after the harvest and behind the raging fires the fields lay blackened and barren, as though some great plague had struck the land.

‘Look at that boy,’ said Flaccus, pointing eagerly through the smoke to the grain ships loading in the harbour at Messana. ‘There’s a fortune before your
eyes and a good part of it belongs to our lord and master.’ Aquila waited while another black cloud drifted out to sea, finally clearing enough to make the harbour visible. He could see the ships, their single square sails furled against the masts, with the long rows of ports for the oars. ‘Those are our proprietor’s own ships, too.’

Flaccus’s eyes gleamed; they always did when he contemplated the prospect of wealth, his or someone else’s. The horses shied away from the heat as they rode past yet another band of flame, slowly eating its way across the stalks. Once through that, they were in the clear with the town now visible. White-walled, the Greek city still looked like the fortress it had been before the Romans took over the island. Inside the battlements, low buildings alternated with the numerous temples, each red tiled roof a slightly different shade, and at diverse angles. Stark against the blue sky, the row of crucifixes by the roadside stood out clearly. Flaccus reined in his horse as they came abreast and looked up at the men roped to the wooden crosses, examining them to see if they were dead.

‘Fresh today,’ he remarked, without emotion.

‘Who are they?’ asked Aquila, his eyes still firmly fixed on the ground. He had not enjoyed the thought of crucifixions on the farms and he did not want to acknowledge them now.

‘Runaways, most likely. They’ve had more trouble with slaves here than elsewhere on the island. Stands to reason, they can see what they’re missing more easily in a town.’ He pulled the horse’s head round and made for the low gate in the town wall. Halfway between the crucifixes and the entrance a series of stakes had been driven into the ground, each one with a man lashed to it. ‘There’s tomorrow’s batch, that is, if those already strung up are properly dead.’

‘What do they do with them when they’re dead?’

‘Easy, boy.’ Flaccus laughed, then coughed as a last puff of smoke filled his lungs. ‘They just lay them in one of the fields they’re going to burn.’

It was the laugh, followed by the cough, that made one of the trussed-up men lift his head. The hair was shorn, slave fashion, so that it formed only a grey stubble on the grime-streaked head and his gaunt face was a mass of bruising from the beatings he had already suffered, his smock torn open to reveal the bloody weals that were caused by repeated whipping. Aquila opened his mouth to say something, then shut it quickly, kicking his horse in such a way that it moved Flaccus on as well.

The single eye of Gadoric followed him, his parched lips open in surprise, the great scar across his face, a stark white against the burnt skin of the face. The boy’s thoughts were in turmoil as they rode under the arch of the gate, the horse’s hooves
echoing noisily in the confined space. He fought the temptation to look back, though he could almost feel that basilisk eye fixed on him, and his voice was slightly unsteady as called to Flaccus.

‘Those men at the stake will be crucified?’

The old centurion caught the tone, and as he replied, his voice echoed off the buildings that lined the narrow street. ‘You’re not squeamish, boy, are you? Don’t fret for a dead slave, lad. It makes the others work harder.’

The town was busier than any place Aquila had ever seen. As they approached the centre, an open space dominated by a large wattle and daub temple, the crowd increased so that forward movement became a struggle and Flaccus, to little effect, lashed out at those who blocked his path; they could not move out of his way because of the overall crush. Aquila could see the packed steps of the temple, full of people trading. In one shaded corner a teacher addressed a group of young men, his arms waving as he declaimed; in another moneylenders transacted their business, with a great deal of shouting and slapping of foreheads. Stalls lined the spaces between the tall columns, each with its own yelling vendor. Exceedingly colourful, little of what he saw really registered; he could not put aside the look of hate that had filled that single eye, the look of a man who feels betrayed.

Flaccus turned away from the temple and headed
down the incline towards the harbour, still struggling to make any headway. Once out of the square the crush eased, though it was still difficult for a mounted man to move with any speed until they emerged onto the wharves, full of carts laden with grain, each one with a trail of exhausted-looking men filling their baskets at the tail. Flaccus asked one of the sutlers for directions; the man took in the freshly tended gash on the horse’s flank, before pointing to a large warehouse.

The front was clear of carts, the slaves, instead, trudging in and out of the open warehouse doors. Armed men lined their route, with the occasional crack of a bullwhip or a vine sapling striking on a bare back, accompanying the loud exhortations that they should move faster. Down by the edge of the wharf a group of carpenters were working with great lengths of timber, which they had erected to form a triangle, now being threaded with ropes. Both dismounted and hitched their animals to the rail, and Flaccus stood for a moment watching the steady procession of labour: all men, all dull-eyed and every one looking undernourished. He nodded slowly, as if in approval, before walking into the shaded interior of the warehouse.

One rotund fellow, with a leather apron over his white smock, and a wax tablet in his hand, stood by a large set of scales. As each basket was filled from the grain store it was put on the scales. He then
noted its weight before indicating that it should be removed. Nodding to Flaccus, and without interrupting his work, he pointed to the rear of the building with his wooden stylus. The air was full of fine golden dust, which covered everyone and everything, giving the slaves, with their bare ribcages sticking out, the appearance of skeletons rather than human beings.

Aquila followed Flaccus up a narrow staircase, through dampened screens, carefully placed to contain the dust. The top floor of the warehouse held the cargo that the ships had fetched in from Ostia: bales of cloth, large ampoules of wine, weapons and a whole stack of hardwood tree trunks, grown specially so that one branch at each end formed the point of a plough. At the front, overlooking the wharf, a table had been set up, laden with food and wine, with bales arranged to provide seating, so that the overseers of the various properties could take their ease and feed themselves, all the while able to watch the fruits of their farms being loaded onto the ships. One of them, a fat fellow with a bald white head, was talking loudly and Aquila had a vague feeling of recognition, without being able to place why. Better dressed than his companions, he had the proprietary bearing of a man who owned the place and he was busy explaining to the others his plans for the future.

‘Every time you shift grain you lose a bit. Some ends up on the ground when you’re loading your carts, more when they’re bucketing along some of the interior roads. Now, that’s our money dribbling out. Remember we get paid on the weight that arrives in Ostia, not the weight of what we grow.’

He turned to greet Flaccus and the boy could see that for all his well-fed, carefully barbered look, the round face was hard, the eyes calculating rather than friendly. He greeted them effusively, ran his eyes up and down Aquila, before he bade Flaccus to eat and take his ease. The ex-centurion returned the greeting, acknowledged the others present, then filled a platter for the boy, gave him a cup full of wine and sent him to sit on a bale well away from the table, before looking to his own needs. Aquila accepted with glum ill-grace, his mind still on the sight outside the gates, which earned him an enquiring stare from Flaccus. The look the large fat fellow gave him was different; more to do with his lithe young body than his mood. Aquila ignored him and he turned back to the table, eager to expound his theories. Flaccus, caught between two thoughts, had no time to enquire of the boy what was amiss.

‘And every one of you complains to me about the weight I record, since it never tallies with your own.’ Heads nodded at that, and despite the
friendly tone of the meeting, many a black look was aimed in his direction. ‘I lose too, friends. Just cast your eyes over that trail of grain between the warehouse door and the ship. That’s mine, every bit of it. There’s a trail just like it at the unloading, with half the folk of Ostia fetching their chickens down to the wharves to feed for free, and it all adds up to a pretty denarius at the end of the day.’

He stopped to top up the goblets of those nearest him, turning as he did so to look at Aquila again. The boy, slouched across a bale, did not notice; he was looking at the sun, coming in through the open doors, turning the stream of poured wine bright red, which made him think of Clodius. He had seen that very effect as his adopted father had held the wine gourd above his head on a hot day, expertly aiming the contents into his open throat, and the sight further served to take him back to a world he thought lost forever.

‘You have something in mind to solve this, Cassius Barbinus?’

That wiped any thoughts of Clodius and his past from his mind as a flash of hate coursed through his body, because suddenly he knew where he had seen the fat man before. It had been the day the supposedly tame leopards had attacked Gadoric’s sheep. The animals had been intended as a gift for some important visitor, one of them, a scented prick of a boy his own age, who had been just as
responsible as Cassius Barbinus for the fact that the leopards had been let loose within sniffing distance of the set of prey animals he was shepherding. The results were all too predictable, though Gadoric had pointed out, when Aquila told him of what had happened, the sheep belonged to Barbinus. If he wanted to feed them to a pair of big cats that was his right.