Hero of Rome

X

Two days before the dinner at Lucullus’s villa, Valerius visited the daily market beside Colonia’s Forum. It was here the local farmers brought their surplus and the craftsmen who plied their trade in the workshops on the hill to the west of the town came to sell their wares. Out of curiosity he had walked up the hill and found a bustling place of sparks and smoke, curious metallic smells and the clang of blacksmiths’ hammers. Among them he found Corvinus, which surprised him, for this was a place of artisans and the goldsmith now counted among Colonia’s elite. But the Twentieth’s former armourer explained: ‘I have my shop in Colonia, but our charter doesn’t allow manufacture within the walls.’ He pointed to a nearby smith’s glowing forge. ‘Too much risk of fire. The things I sell have to be made somewhere, so I set up my workshop here. I have slaves, of course, but I keep my hand in, and I do the special commissions myself.’

The memory of the encounter started a thought in Valerius’s mind, but he decided to leave it for another day. Now he walked among the stalls of vegetables, hanging joints of meat, bulging sacks of barley and spelt, arrays of duck and hen eggs, perhaps fresh and perhaps not, and fish silver-bright from the river and the sea, taking in the sights and pungent scents of home-grown herbs and exotic imported spices and ignoring the pleas and flattery of the vendors. For a while he carefully studied a basket of scrawny chickens, clucking and fussing among their straw, but none was quite right. The sound of bleating drew him. Perhaps? When he reached the farmer’s pen, he cursed himself for a fool. Of course, there would be no lambs at this season of the year. He imagined leading a ewe on a rope through the streets. No, it wouldn’t do. He returned to the chickens.

‘I’ll have the biggest one, with the white patch on its wing.’

He carried the squawking bird by the legs, its wings flapping impotently, along the main street until he reached the temple gates. Today a queue stretched from the temple steps and he had to wait his turn behind a wrinkled, elderly woman with a white scroll and a small leather bag clutched tightly to her chest. It was several minutes before she stood before the priest at a stone altar set in front of the marble stairway. The transaction should have been private, but the woman had a loud voice that reminded Valerius of the chicken’s squawking and he couldn’t help but overhear.

‘I wish the god to place this curse on whoever stole my sheets when they were drying. It was my neighbour, Poppaea, I’m sure, but I will know for certain when her feet and her hands turn black, the thieving bitch. In pursuance of my petition I leave this offering.’ The priest took the leather bag, opened it and studied the contents before accepting the scroll with a curt nod. The woman bowed and walked away, muttering to herself.

Valerius took his place at the altar while the priest noted something on a waxed writing block. Despite the authority with which he’d dealt with the woman and the earlier supplicants, the priest was little more than a boy, with narrow, pinched features and a nose that marked him out as Roman. At first Valerius was puzzled, but as he waited — a little longer than he needed to — he realized that the people who actually operated and managed the cult of Claudius were unlikely to be major benefactors like Lucullus. Every organization needed its fetchers and carriers, and he recognized one before him.

He coughed, and the priest looked up as if only just noticing his presence. Valerius wore a simple tunic over his braccae and he knew he’d been mistaken for an off-duty legionary or perhaps one of the farmers in town for the market.

‘I wish to make a sacrifice to the god,’ he said, holding out the chicken.

‘That?’ the boy asked, frowning.

‘Yes, that,’ Valerius agreed, aware of growing restlessness behind him.

The boy studied the chicken, and Valerius wondered if he had ever conducted a sacrifice. Probably the task was normally carried out by the more experienced priests.

‘Perhaps you might like some help?’ he ventured.

The boy looked at him seriously, then back to the chicken. ‘Oh, no.’ He paused. ‘Will you require an augury?’

Valerius thought for a second. Did he really believe this child had the gift? He was almost certainly wasting his money. Still, why had he come here, if not to find out whether the girl was part of his future?

‘How much?’ he asked, and was quoted a price that made his purse squeal in protest. At these rates the Temple of Claudius must be the most profitable enterprise in Britain. He handed over a silver denarius, which the boy placed in a basket beneath the altar, then the chicken, which the young priest expertly held down with one hand while reaching into the basket with the other and producing a lethal-looking house knife. With a flick of his wrist he slit the bird’s throat. The chicken jerked and its wings fluttered in an involuntary spasm. The boy studied its dying movements until it went still, then, with another expert flick of the blade, made a long cut in its belly and allowed the inner parts to spill on to the marble surface.

Valerius stared at the remains of the chicken but all he saw was a heap of feathers and a mess of entrails and watery blood. The priest used the point of the knife to move a curling clump of guts to one side and let out a prolonged sigh as he uncovered the liver. He sighed again as he found the gall bladder, which he studied intently. Valerius leaned closer as the signs were explained. ‘The path you follow is not the one you wish to tread,’ the boy said cautiously. ‘Yet there are many ways to reach the destination you seek. Not all are straightforward, but each, in its own fashion, will take you where you want to go.’ He paused, studying the entrails more closely still while Valerius attempted to decipher the message he was being given. Was the boy talking about his pursuit of the girl, or the path that would take him back to Rome against his will? Or both? Or neither? He raised his head to find the priest studying him, a curious look in his dark eyes. ‘You may face a great challenge, or you may turn away from it. Your fate is tied to that decision. It is not clear, but I believe you have much to gain but more to lose if you continue along the road you have chosen.’ He reached into the basket and his hand came out with the silver denarius. ‘Here. I have told you nothing you did not know.’

Valerius shook his head. ‘No. Keep it… for yourself if not for the temple.’

As he walked away deep in thought, he looked back to see the priest staring at him, ignoring the line of petitioners waiting to avail themselves of his services.

The villa of Lucullus was set high on the slope opposite Colonia and about a mile to the west of the city. It lay at the centre of his ‘estate’, which as far as Valerius could see consisted simply of another tract of British farmland, dotted randomly with patches of forest and the flea-infested, thatched roundhouses the tribesmen lived in. A Roman villa would have been identified by an ostentatious gateway and landscaped gardens, but he had only been able to find his way here because of the precise directions Falco had provided, passing through and by another dozen farms on the way. At first sight the villa was a disappointment: a simple, single-storey structure, with white walls, shuttered windows and a red-tiled roof — it could have been home to any subsistence farmer on the shores of the Mediterranean. Still, he approached along the narrow, hedged trackway with his heart thumping against his ribs. His mind conjured up conflicting visions of his coming meeting with Maeve and he found he could barely remember her face, which placed an icy orb of fear in his belly, yet her eyes were as familiar to him as his own mother’s. How would she be dressed? He remembered the slim form walking away from the temple. Perhaps not so slim; a narrow waist, but her hips and… His mouth went suddenly dry, and he licked his lips and forced the seductive memory from his head. Why did he feel more nervous now than when he had been about to lead the attack on the British hill fort? Was nervous even the correct word? No, it was more than that. He was afraid. Not afraid of dying, or failing, but of disappointing, or of being disappointed. Yet the fear was just as real. It didn’t matter that he had cast eyes on the British girl only once. All that mattered was that he should see her again.

He was not inexperienced with women, but that experience had tended to be with a certain type, or, more correctly, types. There had been servant girls, of course, perhaps prompted by his father — surely not his mother? — who had led him along the delicate path towards maturity. And when he had donned the toga virilis of adulthood his father had taken him into Rome on the obligatory visit to a brothel of the better class, where he had been introduced to delights that made his rough fumblings behind the kitchens somehow inconsequential. Then there had been the army and the soldiers’ women, many of them, readily available but only fleeting erotic experiences untouched by passion or tenderness. For the first time he realized he had never known love.

Lucullus stood smiling in the courtyard in front of the villa, along with a groom who took Valerius’s horse and led it towards the stables. ‘Welcome to my humble house,’ the little Celt said formally, but Valerius could see he was almost dancing with excitement, the way his father had sometimes been when some particularly auspicious guest was about to arrive.

‘You were very kind to invite me to dine with your family,’ he replied, with equal formality. ‘You have a fine estate, Master Lucullus.’

Lucullus waved dismissively, but his smile said he appreciated the compliment. ‘This? This is nothing. The best land is beyond the hill, land my ancestors have cultivated for generations — the gods thank them — and beyond it are my hunting grounds. You are sure you do not hunt? I must tempt you. A fine stag? Or a boar? Surely a boar would be a worthy adversary for a soldier?’

Valerius shook his head, and Lucullus laughed and led him towards the house, chattering about the animals he had hunted and killed. They entered through an arched doorway which led into a hall, where a slave surprised Valerius by ushering him to a bench so that he could remove his sandals and have them replaced by a pair of soft slippers. It was something he would have expected only in the most fashionable houses in Rome and seemed out of place in this rough provincial outpost. He looked up to find Lucullus watching him, seeking his approval, and he smiled his thanks. Suitably shod, he followed his host into a sumptuously furnished room lit by perfumed oil lamps. The room measured around thirty paces by ten and the plastered walls were painted a dramatic deep ochre made more striking by the broad gold horizontal stripe which divided them, and the colourful scenes that took up most of each end of the room. The floor was basic opus signum covered in rugs, apart from the centrepiece, a patterned mosaic of blue, red and white, with the familiar figure of Bacchus at its centre, surrounded by grapevines. Again, Valerius was impressed; clearly Lucullus took his culture seriously enough to lavish considerable expense upon it. Two men and a woman stood talking in front of a marble bust and he felt a sting of disappointment when he realized the woman was not Maeve.

Lucullus introduced them. ‘My cousin Cearan, and his wife Aenid. They are of our northern neighbours, the Iceni.’ Valerius bowed politely. Cearan and Aenid were one of the most striking couples he had ever seen, with looks so similar they might have been brother and sister. Cearan’s features had the perfectly balanced symmetry Valerius remembered from statues of Greek gods, only with a sharper edge. His golden hair fell to his shoulders and his eyes were a startling, delicate blue. Aenid was blessed with her husband’s high cheekbones and full mouth, but she wore her hair long, cascading to the middle of her back. Their clothing somehow managed to bridge the cultural divide between Roman and Briton without offending either; Cearon was in a plain cream tunic and braccae, with a thin gold torc at his throat, while Aenid wore a long dress of pale blue that covered her neck and arms. It took a second glance to realize that they were older than they appeared, probably only a few years younger than their host.

Valerius was still staring at them when Lucullus introduced the second man. ‘Marcus Numidius Secundus,’ he said. ‘Numidius constructed the Temple of Claudius.’ His eyes twinkled as if to say, See, I recognized your interest and this is my gift to you. It seemed that everything with Lucullus came at some sort of price.

Numidius nodded, and Valerius noted that, although he was standing beside Cearan and Aenid, he couldn’t be said to be with them. He held a silver cup in both hands with his arms tight to his sides as if to avoid any inadvertent contact with the two Britons. Dark, watchful eyes peered myopically from a thin, almost malnourished face, but they lit up, indeed almost caught fire, when the engineer realized he had found a fellow Roman citizen. He marched across the room and took Valerius’s right arm like a drowning man grasping at a piece of passing flotsam. ‘Come, Lucullus tells me we have a common passion. You must sit by me.’

He steered Valerius towards a low table at the far end of the room surrounded by comfortable padded benches. Lucullus’s face took on the same fixed smile it had assumed when Petronius mentioned the Brittunculi. ‘Yes, it is time to dine. Cearan, Aenid?’ He ushered the Iceni couple towards the benches, which Valerius noted with a flutter in his stomach numbered six. Lucullus placed Valerius and Numidius on one side of the table, opposite Cearan and Aenid on the other. He took his place to Numidius’s right, leaving the couch next to Valerius vacant.

When they were settled, he called out something in his own language and Valerius though the caught the word Maeve amongst the burst of unintelligible syllables. He looked up, hoping to see the British girl, but Numidius tugged at the sleeve of his tunic.

‘Lucullus tells me you are interested in the temple?’

‘I am interested in all architecture,’ Valerius admitted. ‘I think the Temple of Claudius is a fine example. The workmanship, if not the scale, stands comparison with anything in Rome.’

‘Anything in the Empire,’ the engineer said complacently. ‘I worked to the instructions of the architect Peregrinus, who was sent from Rome by Claudius himself to oversee the construction. We had previously completed the temple in Nemausus together, but this was an altogether different task.’

Valerius nodded politely, torn between genuine interest and hope that Maeve was about to walk into the room and take the seat next to him.

‘It was the foundations, you see,’ Numidius explained in a voice as dry as an empty amphora. ‘The site chosen was entirely inadequate, but they insisted because a shrine to one of the heathen Celtic gods once stood there. Peregrinus did not think it could be done, but I discovered the answer. Foundations so strong they could bear the Capitoline Hill itself. It took two hundred slaves to dig the pits and we had to face them with timber or they would have collapsed on the men working in them. When they were completed we poured mortar by the ton into them, then more in a thick layer over the area between them, so that when the material hardened we had created four huge earth-filled vaults of astonishing strength. Even then, Peregrinus had his doubts until the priests sacrificed a fine bull to Jupiter and predicted the temple would stand for a thousand years.’

Finally.

Today, she wore white, and from the chestnut-brown hair swept into a fashionable pile on her head to the handmade shoes that cradled her delicate, manicured feet she looked every inch a Roman. Her dress was long, the diaphanous material clinging to her body, its folds full of shadows and promises, but it left her shoulders bare and her pale skin shone in the yellow light of the lamps. Valerius noted that she had used powder to turn the healthy glow that flushed her cheeks to a subtle pink, and today her lips were the colour of ripe strawberries. He wondered how old she was and a voice inside his head answered. Eighteen.