Of Merchants & Heros Read online

  My anger drained from me, replaced by something worse. I looked up. She was still looking out through the window. Her back was straight, her face fixed and grave and full of pain. But for a moment I saw what she kept hidden best of all: her weakness, and my eyes stung with tears of impotent rage. She was like some great noble bird – a mighty she-eagle – old at last, broken by time, but proud to the end.

  I swallowed and blinked down at the floor. It was all I could do not to weep out loud, for the great injustice of the world. But I knew what she would have said: Tears do not stop the sun from rising, or make rivers run uphill. So I set my mouth firm as hers, and peered at the accounts spread out upon the desk, as if they meant something to me, and after a moment I said, ‘Whatever you do, Mother, you will always have my love.’

  An older man – or a wiser one – would have spared her such words at such a time. But I was young, and thought that feelings were all. I heard her catch her breath and saw her clutch at the window frame.

  ‘My dear, only son,’ she said, in a voice that cracked my heart.

  Later we talked of details, as, after a death, the members of a family might talk of arrangements for the funeral, concerning themselves with invitations and what to eat, while the body lies in the next room unmentioned.

  Caecilius was still in Rome, where his business, he said, had taken some months to complete. If his offer was acceptable, he had written that he would make the journey to Praeneste. She showed me the letter. I did not tell her it was not even in his own hand. He had got a secretary to write it.

  When all had been said, I went off into the hillside forest, up through the firs and stone-pines to a place I knew, a bare rock ledge that jutted out over the valley, where I could be alone.

  For a long time I stood, listening to the shifting wind stirring the branches, and the echoing cries of the mountain birds. I do not know what I had intended, other than to be away from people, and away from the house. But now, seized by rage, I punched my fist into the nearest tree trunk, and cried out long and loud, calling on Mars the Avenger to see me and remember.

  My lone voice echoed down the valley. The startled birds scrambled from the trees. And then the only sound was my breathing, and the beating of my heart.

  Caecilius arrived half a month later, in a lavish painted carriage with curtains of scarlet-dyed leather, drawn by two Gaulish mares with decorated harnesses, attended by liveried outriders.

  I waited outside the house to greet him, as my mother had asked, and beside me stood the assembled house-slaves and the farmhands, washed and got up in their best, standing primly with their hands folded in front of them, as they did at the shrine on the festival days when my father offered something to the gods. We had had plenty of time to arrange ourselves there, having seen an hour before the gaudy vehicle lumbering up the steep winding track from the plain.

  It might have been suitable for the easy roads close to Rome. It did not suit Praeneste.

  But in time the carriage drew up, and my uncle clambered out.

  He was wearing an expensive fine-combed woollen tunic, cream- white, bordered with leaping stags picked out in red; and on his feet new calfskin boots. He had put on weight, and his hair was blacker than I remembered, stark against his puffy white face, like a blackbird’s wing against marble.

  He looked along the line of waiting farmhands, passing over me until I remembered to step up and speak the formal words of greeting.

  He peered at me. I had pulled on a clean tunic, but otherwise I looked no different from the slaves and farmhands. But then he seemed to know me.

  ‘Why, Marcus,’ he cried in a booming voice, ‘look at you. Brown as a nut, and surely you have grown. I was expecting the same timid child, not a handsome youth.’ He laughed and glanced around. ‘But where is your mother?’

  I told him she was in the house, waiting to greet him.

  ‘Then let us go inside,’ he said. He snapped his fingers at one of the liveried outriders and said, ‘See to my things,’ and then, as we took the short path to the house, ‘I have done much useful business in Rome, and soon I hope—’ He broke off with a curse and swatted a dragonfly aside with an irritated swipe. From the corner of my eye I saw one of the young farmhands suppress a smile. Even they could see my uncle did not belong in the country. ‘Well,’ he continued, looking warily to where the hovering insect had relocated itself, ‘we can talk of all that in due course. And,’ he added, taking me confidentially by the elbow and pulling me to him, ‘you must learn to start calling me father now, not uncle.’

  I do not know what decency dictated, or what passed for right behaviour in Rome. I had assumed he was only paying a short visit, for the sake of form. But next day wagons loaded with his possessions came labouring up the hill-track: caskets, chests of clothing, even ornaments and furniture. I realized he had come to stay.

  The marriage took place before month end. There was a brief ceremony. No guests came. I was glad of that, for in my mind it was no marriage, just a contract, and a sordid one at that.

  That night I lay in bed and pictured him with my mother. I drove the thoughts away, fearing madness. I rose before dawn, and went climbing on the hillside. I sat on the rock ledge, and watched the sun rise over the mountains.

  The formal adoption happened soon after. The words were spoken, and I became, as far as the law was concerned, Caecilius’s son and he gained the power of a father over me.

  How true it is, that one perceives what one has only by losing it.

  At once he began to make changes. The little festivals and banquets we held for the farmhands and their families to signify the motions of the seasons and to honour the local gods – the field-spirits, the guardians of the boundaries, the nymphs and dryads and gods of the spring – he cancelled, saying, when I asked him, that too much time was spent on superstitious foolery when there was a farm to run. He employed the men to work; if they would not, he would find others.

  I listened as he discoursed on such things and said nothing, not out of fear of him, for I felt none, but because I knew no words of mine would sway him, and because the farmhands, whatever he said, would no more ignore the gods of the place than they would cease to breathe the air. The sacred spirits were as real to them as the trees and streams.

  Quickly enough I began to understand that to Caecilius everything was merely a question of good or bad business. He talked of it with reverence, as a philosopher might talk of truth. He had a conception in his head, and expected the world to conform to it. Yet I never quite understood what it was that he did. When I asked him, he told me he traded; or, at other times, that he bought and later sold, and knowing how and when and where was the key. He was fortunate, he said, for he had a nose for a good deal. This was a favourite saying of his, and he would tap his nose with his finger, and peer at me with his small eyes as if he were imparting to me something of great significance.

  Despite his vagueness, I soon came to understand, though, that he had profited, in ways he never quite explained, from the war against Carthage, which at that time was nearing its end. I had lived with the war since my first breath. But now, little by little, town by town, our great general Scipio was at last driving Hannibal out of Italy. I think Caecilius was the only person who spoke of the war’s end with regret.

  Though my father had distrusted the city, he had always talked of sending me to Rome when I was old enough, to be educated by one of the new professors from Greece, who were setting up schools in the city. At the time I did not like the idea of leaving home, and had asked him, if he did not care for the city, why he wanted to send me there. To this he had answered that the city was one thing, and knowledge was another. It was not for him to withhold knowledge from me, without which there could be no wisdom. I must make my own choices, and to do that I must know something of the world and what wise men said about it. Besides, he had said, it did a man good to know the life of the city, even if he later rejected it.

  But Caecilius had no t
ime for such things. ‘What is it you want to know?’ he would say, and when I could not answer he would wag his fat finger and say, ‘There! If you cannot tell me, then you have no need of it. Better to learn business than waste your time – and my money – on those talking heads in Rome.’

  So Rome was forgotten.

  It was soon after this, one hot day in high summer, when I was working with a group of farmhands in the orchard, that the swineherd came running from the house.

  He was a hulking boy called Milo, rather simple, who had a habit of blurting out whatever came into his head, however indiscreet.

  Usually he made the others laugh with his observations, but now he came bounding down the terraces to where I was standing halfway up a ladder and cried at the top of his voice, ‘Marcus, sir, you must do something: he is sending old Postumus away!’

  I climbed down from the ladder and set aside my basket, and told Milo to sit down and tell me all he had heard. He spilled out his words in his usual rambling way and I listened, though I scarcely needed to, for I had guessed already. But at least the pause allowed me to master my rising anger. Postumus was the oldest of the hands on our farm. He had grown slow of late, and forgetful, and already I had had to intervene with Caecilius, who thought him inefficient and a waste of money, though Postumus was old enough to be his father.

  I heard Milo out, then left him in the orchard and went up to the house.

  I found Caecilius in my father’s old study, which he had made his own. I avoided the room if I could. He had removed my father’s books, replacing them with a matching set of painted vases he had imported from Greece, of rampant satyrs chasing nymphs. He looked up sharply when I entered. He expected people to knock, even me and my mother. I was dusty from the orchard. In the cool interior I could smell my sweat.

  ‘Yes?’ he snapped. ‘What is it?’

  ‘You are sending away old Postumus,’ I said.

  He set aside his papers and sat back, as if he had been waiting for this. ‘Yes, I am. He is a hired hand, not a slave, and I have no more use for him.’

  ‘No one has thought to tell you, sir, with all that has happened lately, but Postumus has been with us all his life, and his father before him. He has nowhere else to go.’

  ‘And I have a farm to run.’

  ‘But sir!’ I cried. ‘What else will he do? He is part of the family almost, not some old shoe to cast out on the midden.’

  He stared at me and there was an awkward pause. No doubt I had gone too far. But I was angry.

  ‘Is this the way your father taught you to speak to your elders?’

  he said pompously.

  ‘My father would never have dismissed a man like Postumus.’

  His thick lips tightened into a harsh line. ‘I will not speak ill of the dead, Marcus. Your father had his merits, I daresay. But he was too indulgent by far, and such men are taken advantage of. These workers’ – with an angry wave towards the window – ‘are paid to work. One day they will all be old and useless. What then? In my opinion you are much too close to the farmhands; it is bad for discipline to think of them as ‘family’ as you call this man. And now I see they have you dancing to their tune. I suppose they put you up to this, or do you deny it?’

  I began an indignant answer, but he silenced me. ‘No, do not speak. Listen. Out of consideration for your mother I will find something else for this old man to do, though God knows what. But do not come to me again with such a request, unless you intend to pay for it with your own funds. I hope that is clear.’ He reached out and pulled a letter from a pile of scrolls, saying, ‘And while you are here there is something else. I have decided to appoint a bailiff here: there are useful men all over Italy – discharged servicemen, landowners down on their luck – who will accept what they are offered. My business will soon take me away, and it is clear to me I cannot leave things to run themselves.’

  This was his revenge. The expression on his face told me so. He was not a man to be crossed, even in the smallest thing. Everything was a battle, and every battle had to be won.

  I said, ‘But sir, I can manage.’

  ‘Oh? I do not think you can. But either way I do not intend to leave you here, wasting your time picking apples and threshing corn like some land peasant. You are more useful to me elsewhere; I need help, and now you are my adopted son it is time you earned your way.’

  He paused – a significant, self-satisfied pause to let me know who had triumphed and who had lost in this exchange. For a few moments our eyes locked, mine full of anger; his challenging me to say more. Eventually I looked down at the grey-stone floor; I was powerless, and he knew it, and he wanted to make sure I knew it too.

  Then with a contented grunt he went on, ‘So. I am awaiting news from Rome that will determine my future plans. When I am ready you will be told.’ He fluttered his hand. ‘Now you may go and tell old-man Postumus of his good fortune.’

  Before long my new stepfather had another surprise for me. I knew he had been married once. But I did not know, until the day before a carriage arrived bearing her, that he had a daughter.

  She was twelve years old. Her name was Caecilia, but her father called her Mouse. It was not a term of endearment. It was his way of mocking the way she looked.

  He spoke to her like a servant, ordering her to fetch things, telling her to pull her chin up, and not to drag her feet, and not to whisper, and not to sulk. She had flat brown hair, hacked short with no care for how she looked; she had a pale, round face, and dull eyes that never met yours. I might have hated her, for being his daughter, and for moving in to the house I still thought of as mine. But she was too pitiful to hate. Seeing his bullying, and how he put her down, I felt sorry for her.

  She mooned about the house, or sat with my mother, or alone under the shade of the rowans on the sloping lawn outside.

  At first she was so shy of me as almost to be mute, and if I was around she would keep her eyes downcast like a slave. But one afternoon I had occasion to speak to her. It was some days after she arrived, when, returning from some business on the farm, I found her sitting alone on the terrace, peering intently at a scroll which lay open on her lap. Seeing me she set it quickly aside. ‘Hello Mouse,’ I said. ‘What is it you’re reading? Has he set you to work on his accounts?’

  Her big round face flushed to the ears. Reluctantly she picked up the book and proffered it, as if I had caught her doing something forbidden. I looked at the edge of the scroll and immediately recognized it. It was a book of Homer, which recently I had rescued from its exile in the outhouse. I was trying to master the Greek, having decided I must educate myself as my father would have wished. I had left it lying in the house.

  ‘Homer, is it?’ I said, somewhat dryly. ‘I suppose you read Greek then?’

  To tell the truth, I had intended this as something of a putdown.

  It irked me that she had helped herself to my book. Who did she think she was, to come to my house and take my private things without asking? But in her hesitant voice she replied, ‘I can read a little of it, but I am not really very good at all.’ She flushed once more and looked down. ‘You are cross with me. Here, take it; I should have asked you first, but Father said you had gone to the fields, and I was going to put it back before you noticed.’

  I had a sharp reply ready. I was still smarting from the dressing- down Caecilius had given me, and Mouse was an easy target. But each of us has the power to pass pain on, or let it stop with us. I thought of Caecilius. That was enough to make me swallow my harsh words.

  ‘Well never mind,’ I said instead. ‘Read it if you like. Anyway, you are right, I have work to do.’

  She looked up then. I saw the beginnings of tears in her eyes, and for the first time since she had arrived she smiled. She reminded me of the timid little birds I used to coax to my hand in winter with the promise of food, when the snow was on the ground and they were hungry. I said, ‘There are other books too, you know. They’re hidden away at the back o
f the barn there, but I can show you, if you want.’

  ‘Oh would you!’ she cried.

  I laughed. ‘Why not? Anyway,’ I added, kicking at the grass, ‘I shan’t have time to read them. Your father is taking me away.’

  At this her face fell once more. ‘Yes, Marcus, I heard. That is what he is like, always moving, never still. It’s like a sickness. But I wish you were staying.’

  From that day we were friends.

  Next morning, before work, I took her up to the barn. On the way I said, ‘I suppose, if you can read, you must have books at home.’

  ‘I have no home,’ she answered straight away.

  ‘Well you must have somewhere. Where were you before you came here? Rome, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, Rome for a while. And before that Cales in Campania. Then Sicily; then Cales again. And now I am here.’

  ‘Doesn’t he keep you with him?’

  She shrugged. ‘He does sometimes, when it suits him. But business comes first.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ I said. I was beginning to learn that for myself.

  We clambered through the bales and casks and assorted implements to the dark corner at the back of the barn where Caecilius had dumped my father’s library. When I had first found them there, the books were cast into a heap, piled up with no care for the order of the volumes, food for the rats. Knowing what they had meant to him I had picked them up and placed them out of reach of the damp, thinking thereby to preserve some part of his memory.

  Now, seeing them, Mouse reached out and touched them reverentially one by one with her stubby fingers, turning the fluttering labels and whispering, ‘Oh, oh,’ to herself. In the dusty halflight the happiness shone in her face. It touched my heart. Her unselfconscious joy made her seem almost beautiful.

  Presently, after we had spent some time picking through the scrolls, I said I must go; the farmhands would be waiting. But before I left I said, ‘Mouse?’