Of Merchants & Heros Page 6

  Tarentum interested me well enough, for there was always something new to see. But I had not grown up with city life, and there were times when I was glad to escape to the hinterland, where the great farming estates were. Though I disliked the sour mistrustful bailiffs on the farms, who had grown hard and brutal as the slaves they oversaw, yet it was pleasant to ride out among the horse-farms and orchards and vineyards, and to be away from Caecilius for a while.

  It was a fine day of warm winter sun and clear skies, with a fresh breeze blowing in from the sea. Both agents – Florus and Virilis – were with me, riding beside me along a grassy track, chattering to one another over my head. We had already called on half a dozen farms, and had two more to visit before turning back.

  All of a sudden, from beyond a low ridge, there came the sound of men shouting. Florus, who just then was talking, broke off and stared. I jumped off my horse and scrambled up the ridge, keeping low.

  From the top, where the track joined the main route to Tarentum, I saw a troop of soldiers in Roman uniform. They were fighting off a band of wild, dishevelled bandits who had set upon them.

  The Romans were cavalrymen, dressed in short mail tunics and scarlet riding cloaks. They had dismounted, and were formed into a tight defensive circle. They were outnumbered by at least three to one; but they held their formation, while their attackers came at them like a pack of dogs.

  As I watched, a great rage surged up within me. For a moment, I could hardly breathe. And then I understood: I had seen such men before, and they had torn the heart out of my life. These were not Dikaiarchos’s men – but they were the same creatures, and I needed no more prompting than that. I had no armour, but we were all riding with short swords. I do not know what I intended; all I knew was that I would not stand by and do nothing while other men died.

  I looked back, to call one of the agents to bring my sword from my saddle. My horse was where I had left him, chewing at the grass.

  But the agents were no more than specks in the distance, flogging their mules for all they were worth. They had deserted me.

  I ran down and snatched my sword, then raced up over the summit of the ridge, yelling out a battle-cry at the top of my voice.

  The bandits, remnants of Hannibal’s army by the look of them, were facing away from me. At the sound of my voice they started, and jumped round in surprise.

  The first man I killed outright, with a blow to the chest. The next, who came running, I wounded, making him fall, and one of the Roman cavalrymen finished him off. I had never been in battle before. I was an untrained youth against bitter defeated veterans.

  They had their soldier’s training, and the sharp taste of defeat in their mouths. But I had my anger. It coursed through my veins like fire.

  Time slowed. I moved and ducked as swiftly as a darting swallow, yet my mind was cool and clear. There are things a man knows in his bones, and in his soul, before ever he has time to reflect on how or why. In such a way I knew the hand of Mars the Avenger was guiding mine. Not for nothing do the poets call battle a dance. That was how it felt, each movement and turn following on from what went before, a flowing sequence whose end was life or death.

  Yet soon the fighting was over. The man I killed must have been some sort of leader. When the others saw him dead they cried out to one another in their strange guttural tongue and fled. I paused. Near me an elderly man in Roman uniform had fallen. His horse was half on top of him, whinnying in pain. Two of the others dragged the creature off. I helped to sit the man up against a rock. His breath was laboured. Blood spilled out from under his corselet.

  Beside me one of the soldiers said, ‘Who are you, youth? Where are you from?’

  I gave some reply. I was coming to myself, feeling light-headed and somehow detached. Everyone was crowding round the old man.

  Between his breaths he hissed, ‘Stop fussing! Can’t you see the boy is about to collapse?’

  And then, just before I fell, I saw the welling blood, and the sword-gash in my thigh.

  They bound my wound, and took me back to Tarentum on a withy stretcher. The old man, who had grey cropped hair and a firm- boned, soldier’s face, was borne back next to me. I do not think I was properly conscious, but I remember him saying, ‘Those Carthaginians thought you’d brought the army with you. So did I. I have seldom heard such a battle-cry.’

  I should not have said it; but in my dazed state I turned my head and with a grin said, ‘You should mind yourselves. You are lucky I found you.’ And at this they all laughed.

  I must have passed out shortly after. The next thing I remember is waking on a bed in a strange room. The shutters were closed.

  Brilliant bars of sunlight shone through the slits.

  I lay still, staring up at the ceiling. It was wooden – dark wood, oak or cedar. I must have slept again. When next I opened my eyes, a young man was looking down at me.

  ‘Here, drink this,’ he said smiling. And as I drank, ‘You bled white, but the wound is clean and will heal now.’

  I drank. The water made me feel better. ‘Where is this place?’ I asked.

  ‘You’re at the praetor’s house, in Tarentum. You are quite a hero here, you know.’ I suppose he saw my look of surprise, for then he said, ‘Did you not know, then? You saved the praetor’s life.’

  His hair was light-brown, carelessly unkempt, and curling at the brow. He had a frowning, sensitive mouth, but when he smiled his teeth showed broad and white. His beard was still a youth’s, thin and wispy on his cheeks. But what struck you most was the intense blue of his eyes.

  ‘Who are you?’ I said, propping myself on my elbow and rubbing my eyes.

  He laughed and gave me his hand.

  ‘I am Titus. The praetor is my uncle.’

  When I was well enough, I was taken back to my stepfather, and for a few days I rested. When the bandage was off, I saw the wound in my thigh healed cleanly, as Titus said it would; but it left a long pitted scar, which showed when I wore a short tunic. I examined it in private whenever I was naked, wishing it away, for it made me feel ugly and self-conscious.

  I needed no one to remind me of it. But when I was on my feet once more, and able to undertake some dreary paperwork for my stepfather, he would pull up my tunic and show my wound to the various business associates who came and went all day, saying with a shake of his head, ‘You see? The boy will have it till the day he dies.

  But he got it saving the praetor’s life – I imagine you have heard? – so perhaps some use will come of it.’ And thus, for Caecilius, my pain had value.

  In time the soreness and limping passed. But the shame of having my body exposed and prodded by uncaring strangers stayed much longer. I have often wondered, since, whether he knew quite how much he humiliated me, hauling up my tunic-hem so that he could show his ogling friends.

  The two agents, Florus and Virilis, had told him they had ridden off in pursuit of other bandits, whom they had seen bearing down on us. ‘Is that so?’ I said wryly when Caecilius told me this. But I remembered something my father used to say: Never demean yourself to argue with a liar. I said nothing more.

  One day soon after, when I was back on my feet and had been set to work at the makeshift trestle table in Caecilius’s workroom, the old Greek house-steward came hurrying. ‘Sir,’ he cried, ‘you have a visitor. It is the praetor’s nephew himself, Titus Quinctius.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Caecilius, pushing back his chair and straightening his tunic. He tossed a writing-tablet on my desk. ‘Finish these manifests, will you, Marcus. I may be some time and they must be completed by tomorrow’s sailing.’

  The old slave – a quiet, cultured man called Telamon – coughed and looked vexed. ‘Forgive me, sir,’ he said, ‘but it was the young master he was asking for.’

  Caecilius was already on his way to the door. He halted, then turned, doing his best to fix his face.

  ‘Why yes. How not? Well come along, Marcus, get to your feet.

  He is not a man
to keep waiting.’

  I stood, and for a moment old Telamon met my eye, and we exchanged a private look of intelligence and humour. Then, assuming once more his dutiful mask, he conducted us to where Titus was waiting in the high light-filled entrance hall.

  ‘Greetings, sir,’ said Titus, turning from the balustrade as Caecilius came bustling.

  ‘We are most honoured,’ cried my stepfather. He made a shooing gesture at Telamon. ‘Hurry along now, don’t just stand there, send to the kitchen for refreshments.’ And back to Titus, ‘Wine, perhaps, and some small thing to eat? I have a good Campanian vintage . . . Or perhaps something lighter, from Sicily, ah yes now, I have a shipment from Etna—’

  ‘Nothing, thank you,’ said Titus, cutting him off. ‘Your good steward has already asked me.’ There was a pause. Titus looked beyond Caecilius’s bulk and grinned at me. ‘In fact I have come to show your son a little of Tarentum, now that he has recovered. He has spent long enough cooped up with his honourable wound; I think he could do with some air.’

  I waited for Caecilius to object; but he pressed his hands together and cried, ‘Why yes! An excellent idea! Come along, Marcus, don’t keep the man waiting, when he has so generously put himself to such inconvenience for your sake.’ And to Titus, ‘It will do the boy good to venture out a little more often. Do you notice his limp? Show him, Marcus. Exercise will help it along, though of course I fear it will never be gone entirely.’

  Titus looked with concern. ‘Why I shouldn’t have noticed it at all .

  . . But Marcus, if you had rather not . . .?’

  Before I could answer, Caecilius cried, ‘Nonsense! Nothing would suit him better.’

  ‘Then good. Let us go then. We need not wander far. Tell me, have you seen the library and the gardens?’

  Winter in Tarentum was warm compared with high Praeneste.

  The sky was a deep, cobalt blue, and the sharp sunlight glittered on the bay. As we walked – with me slightly limping – along the colonnade beside the marketplace, I asked how Titus’s uncle Caeso was recovering from his own wound.

  ‘Oh, he is well enough,’ Titus answered with a shrug. ‘He has an excellent Greek doctor from Syracuse; but he would be better still if he would only take the man’s advice and rest a little. But he shouts at him to stop fussing. He says he has lived fifty years without doctors, and does not need them bothering him now . . . Ah, this way.’

  We came out in the precinct in front of the library and climbed the smooth marble steps. Inside were row upon row of scroll-niches, rising up among tiered columns. Here and there men were reading, sitting at tables or standing by the racks. Sunlight shafted in from high windows.

  ‘You smell that?’ said Titus, sniffing the air. ‘It’s cedar. They use it to preserve the books.’ I sniffed. I remembered the smell from my father’s small library at home, which Caecilius had cast away. I looked about. I had never imagined there could be so many books.

  We walked about for a while, and greeted the librarian. Then went into the courtyard garden behind. The street outside had been busy – as, it seemed to me, all streets in Tarentum were – but the garden, high-walled, with a long shaded pathway and urns of lavender, was a haven of peace. We found a sunny alcove and sat down on a bench.

  Titus stretched, drew in his breath, and considered the great building with its sculpted, painted pediment and coloured marble.

  ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ he said, ‘and all this was made by men. How I long to see Athens, or Pergamon, or Alexandria! We have so much to learn from them.’

  His blue eyes shone. Touched by his enthusiasm, and by the grandeur, and wanting to show him what I felt, I said, ‘My father would have loved this place. I wish you could have met him.’

  ‘But what do you mean?’ he said, looking at me. ‘Surely I met him no more than an hour ago.’

  ‘What, him?’ I cried, jolted out of my shyness and staring. ‘Oh, no! He is not my father; you must not think it.’

  And then I explained.

  He listened in silence, occasionally nodding and frowning. When I had finished he said, ‘Truly that is a hard thing to bear. It would have been an honour to meet such a man. And, now I think of it, Caecilius did not have your look at all.’

  He smiled, and I knew he was trying to put me at my ease.

  ‘You know, Marcus, there is something about you that sets you apart from the common run of men. I can see it in your eyes, like fire.’

  At this I blushed and looked down. The memory of Epeiros had stirred my anger, and it is a strange thing when a man can see your private thoughts in your face.

  ‘But now I am embarrassing you,’ he said with a pleasant laugh.

  ‘Come on, let’s walk some more.’

  He stood, and pausing met my eye. ‘One thing though. Don’t let anyone quench that fire. It is the forge of your soul.’

  We left the library gardens and walked on, down past the theatre, pausing for a while at the sanctuary of Persephone, with its porch of tall columns, and its row of painted terracotta statues on the roof.

  He told me how, before he had come to Tarentum, he had served as a tribune under the consul Claudius Marcellus. He had fought, he said, against Hannibal in Italy, and had been nearby on the day that Marcellus was ambushed and killed by Hannibal’s cavalry.

  ‘That was a dark day,’ he said. ‘It is easy to forget how it felt, now Scipio has driven them out of Italy.’

  He paused and shook his head.

  ‘Too many have died – at Cannae, and Baecula, and Metaurus; a whole generation lost, and we must not let any nation do this to us again. Soon Scipio will have chased them all the way back to Carthage – if the gods are willing, and his enemies in the Senate do not thwart him first. The world is only safe for those who make it so.

  There are men always and everywhere who will enslave the weak and the unwary. A man must make himself strong: without that there can be no other freedom.’

  I gazed up at the temple with its sculpted pediment, but in my mind I saw the rocky crags of Epeiros, and my anger stirred within me. ‘But who are these traitors,’ I said, ‘who work against Scipio even as he fights for our safety?’

  He smiled. ‘You are not the only one who is frustrated by them.

  But they are not traitors. They are leading men in Rome – senators, even ex-consuls some of them. But they are wrong. They suppose that if only we remove the Carthaginians from Italy, we will be left in peace. “Let us stay secure within our own borders as before!” That is what they say. They are old men, and they yearn for the past, when things were simpler – or seemed so. But there is no going back.

  Twice Carthage has made war on us. That is enough. There must not be a next time.’

  Before we parted he took my hand and said, ‘Well, Marcus, I am glad to see you healed – and don’t worry about that limp’ (he had spotted my frustration with it as I walked), ‘it is nothing, it will be gone in a few days.’ He paused, considering, then went on, ‘But listen, I am holding a small dinner-party – just a few friends – why don’t you come? I’m sure your stepfather is too busy to do much entertaining. I will show you a side to Tarentum you have not seen.’

  Caecilius was waiting with a host of questions when I returned. Had I seen the praetor? Had I been to the residence? What had we talked about? My answers did not satisfy him.

  ‘Always think, boy,’ he said, ‘in everything you do, what there is to be gained. A conversation with important people is never a conversation merely.’ He tapped his temple with his little finger.

  ‘Gain, gain, gain. Always look for gain.’

  Two days later, I returned from the harbour, where I had seen off a cargo of Tarentine pots and ironware, and was passing through the entrance hall, when old Telamon beckoned me aside with a quick worried wave of his hand.

  ‘Oh, Marcus sir,’ he said, keeping his voice down, ‘while you were out a note came from the praetor’s residence, and a box with it. Your name was written on it.
Really, it could not have been clearer.’

  I glanced at the cypresswood table in the corner, where such things were usually left. But except for the tall vase of green glass that always stood there, which Telamon kept stocked with herbs and flowers from the garden, the table was empty.

  ‘Then where is it?’ I said. But even as I spoke I had guessed.

  Poor Telamon. Whoever the previous master of the house had been – and he was too discreet to speak of him to me – he had clearly been a man of breeding and fine manners. With Caecilius, he was at a loss. Seeing this I thanked him, and said, ‘No matter; I understand.’ And then we both looked round as Caecilius’s summoning voice came from his workroom.

  The note, as I had already guessed, was from Titus. It lay open on the desk, an elegant papyrus scroll with the name ‘Marcus’ in a bold hand in black ink.

  ‘It seems, after all, that you have made a favourable impression,’

  said my stepfather, looking up. ‘Now Caeso the praetor is sure to be at this gathering: you must do your best to persuade him to grant me the supply-contract for the garrison. At the moment that fool Mummius has it; but I can offer a better price. Make sure you tell him so. Shall I write it down, with the figures? Or will you keep them in your head? And don’t forget to tell him I am already supplying the fleet in Kerkyra – though I expect he has heard that already . . .’

  He talked on, but he must have seen my eyes stray to the note, for he broke off and said, ‘What now? I receive many messages each day, and of course I did not notice your name till I had opened it.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  He peered at me and sniffed. ‘Anyway, you are my son by adoption. You are under my authority and I may do as I please.

  Here, read it yourself.’

  He pushed the note across the desk at me.

  It said: ‘Titus to Marcus, greetings. Come the day after tomorrow, at sunset. Meanwhile here is a small token, from uncle Caeso, who fares well, and from me. Something Greek. If you like it, wear it.’

  The box – a small, painted gift-box – sat on the desk. The seal was broken and the cord had been undone. Caecilius must have been busy at it when I arrived.