The Gods of War

CHAPTER THREE

Calpurnia, Demetrius’s daughter, was a delight; slim and graceful, she was the same age as Aquila. He had seen her that first day in the shop, covered in flour and sweat, which certainly did not do her justice, though the smile never changed. Washed, with her black hair properly combed, Calpurnia was a different girl. She had a happy disposition, which seemed to be at war with an interior sadness, and there was tension in the house, evident by the way conversations between her and her mother were abruptly terminated when their new ‘relative’ appeared. She treated her father with some reserve, and generally tried to be elsewhere when he was around.

Alone among the Terentius family, she welcomed Aquila without avarice, doing all she could to see to his comfort and seeking nothing in return, washed and repaired his clothes and even polished his battered leather armour with beeswax, restoring it to something that looked reasonably respectable. The charm intrigued her, but Aquila never found it easy to speculate about his birth, and the frown that greeted her first question was enough to ensure her future silence on that subject.

But she did seek him out, making a point of being around when he was at home. Typical of a youth his age, Aquila was unaware of how much she admired him; unaware he was so different, taller, with even the golden tone of his skin so unlike all the other young men she knew. Alone at night, she prayed that Aquila had come to rescue her, and the more she conjured up his image in her mind, the more fanciful her thoughts became. To Calpurnia he was like the son of a god, placed on earth to right the wrongs of mankind, and they were alone in the house the day she told him. That made him laugh and he was able to point out that such a notion was not just a Roman myth but existed in both the Greek and Celtic religions as well. That intrigued her even more, so he was forced to describe how he knew such things.

There was, of necessity, a care in his descriptions: of Gadoric, who had taught him about the beliefs of the Celtic religion; that the gods lived in the trees and in the earth; the same man who had taught him to hunt only to eat, never to merely display prowess. The Celt’s most abiding religious conviction was that a warrior dying in battle went to sit with the gods in a special place, where the tales of their heroic deeds became the stuff of legend. Gadoric had certainly achieved that; though he did not describe it to Calpurnia, as he talked, he had the image of his friend’s death in his mind, of him charging a line of Roman cavalry with no hope of survival, yelling the war cries he had learnt as a child.

When talking of the Greeks he was even more circumspect. Sicily, and his activities there under the tutelage of Didius Flaccus, could not be mentioned, but he had heard from many members of the slave army of the deities they worshipped, very like Roman gods but with different names, as well as the pantheon of heroes whose deeds were told and retold to inspire the timorous, the fearful, and most of all those brave enough to wish to emulate them. But there was another side to Greek belief; no man should seek too much, certainly no mere mortal should challenge the supremacy of the gods, which led to the sin of hubris, a transgression that would see a man humbled, or even destroyed.

And there were heroines too, for, if Zeus was male, there were enough female and powerful goddesses to make a woman feel equal to a man. Calpurnia was much taken with these Greek tales and made Aquila tell them over and over again. For a girl who rarely travelled outside her own close-by Roman streets, and would only rarely visit a temple, the stories he had learnt from the rebellious slaves brought an embarrassing light of hero-worship into her huge brown eyes, until, eventually, with much gentle chiding that it was a suitable adornment for a girl, he was persuaded to let her wear his charm. With great care Calpurnia put it on, shivering slightly as the metal touched her smooth olive skin.

‘I feel impious,’ she said, and immediately removed it. ‘It has a meaning, this eagle? I felt it when it touched my skin.’ The girl could see that she was making him uncomfortable and changed the subject. ‘You were never formally adopted, were you, Aquila?’

‘No.’

She gave him a dazzling smile. ‘Then we’re not truly related, are we?’

‘That pleases you?’

‘Oh yes. The relatives our Roman gods have given me do not inspire me to love the breed.’

‘I worry about Fabius. He’ll get into real trouble one day.’

She laughed. ‘Fabius will take one step sideways, then some innocent fellow, a bystander, will find he’s accused of something he knows nothing about.’

They sat in silence and she rubbed the golden eagle between her fingers. ‘I sense a darkness in you, Aquila, secrets that you will not tell anyone.’

That made him more guarded. ‘I cannot think what they are.’

‘You have an aura about you.’

He smiled. ‘Only when the sun is at my back.’

His levity did not please her. ‘Perhaps because we’re not family, I can’t be trusted.’

‘I trust you more than anyone else in the house, Calpurnia, you know that.’

Her head dropped and she spoke softly. ‘That doesn’t rate me very highly.’

Aquila moved closer, lifting her chin. ‘It was meant to.’

Her upturned face lit up again, with that dazzling smile and she pushed the chain over his head. ‘I am too nosy for my own good.’

‘Nonsense. You say the charm means something. Why should it “mean” anything? It was wrapped round my foot when Clodius, your grandfather, found me. All it means is that one of my true parents wanted me to live, though not enough, it seems, to want to find me.’

Calpurnia sensed the bitterness in that last outburst and touched the charm again. ‘It’s very valuable.’

For the first time, Aquila voiced something that had only ever been a thought. ‘Perhaps it would have been better if Fulmina hadn’t kept it for me. Not that she handed it to me as you see it. She made a leather amulet to hide it, making me promise not to reveal it until I felt no man could harm me.’

‘How would you know when that would be?’

Aquila was thinking about the day he had unpicked Fulmina’s stitching; the day, on the way to Sicily, he had taken a spear to a beetle-browed bully called Toger, one of the band of ruffians Didius Flaccus had recruited to help him make money on the farms he was going to run for Cassius Barbinus. He had not confronted Toger for what the man had tried to do to him in his night-time cot, but because the ex-gladiator had killed the thing Aquila loved most: Minca, the dog he had inherited from Gadoric. A trained fighter, Toger had scoffed at the notion of a mere boy threatening him. He died with Aquila’s spear in his throat, pumping blood into the hard, packed earth at his feet.

‘I knew,’ he replied, but he did not reveal what he was thinking. ‘I could have left it in there and maybe people would stop asking me about it.’

‘It is better to wear it.’

Calpurnia said this with total conviction, and then she blushed at her own forcefulness.

‘Is it really? Your grandmother had dreams, which she told me about just before she died.’

‘What kind of dreams?’

He was even reluctant to answer a question like that, but having said that he trusted her he could hardly stop now, though in relating the notion he tried to make them sound like some kind of joke.

‘She saw me on a horse, being cheered by the crowds, as if I was celebrating a triumph. The Feast of Saturnalia probably, with me as the city fool. There was an old soothsayer she used to consult as well, a smelly old thing called Drisia. She kept yelling at me to come to Rome. I didn’t believe either of them.’

Aquila gave a small humourless laugh, though Calpurnia did not seem to be in the mood for too much jollity. He explained Fulmina’s dreams more fully, watching as the girl turned the charm in her fingers. All the time he spoke, her expression deepened, becoming sad.

‘Then you will leave here,’ she said, when he had finished.

‘What?’

‘Can I ask you for a favour? That I be allowed to wear it once more.’

Aquila reached for the chain, but Calpurnia held up her hand. ‘No, not now.’

‘Why are you sad, Calpurnia?’

There was a faint trace of a sob in the voice, even though she was trying to be funny. But he could not see her eyes because she was bent over. ‘Don’t ever let Fabius get his hands on it.’

‘I was just doin’ a favour for a friend,’ said Fabius.

Aquila sat up in his cot, wide awake enough to see by the tallow guttering in the lantern that his ‘nephew’s’ smock was covered in blood. The story tumbled out; he had told Aquila about some of the tougher criminal gangs in Rome before, and the toughest of the lot was led by a man called Commodus.

‘It was Donatus’s stuff in the first place, except the bastards took it off him. He knew it was in Commodus’s warehouse down by the docks and he set out to pinch it back again. I said I would keep a lookout for him.’

‘Surely they would have guessed who’d done it?’

‘They’d never think that Donatus had the nerve and he already had a buyer, so the stuff would have been shifted before dawn.’ It had not gone to plan, for the warehouse was better guarded than Donatus had supposed. ‘I had to leave him in a doorway a hundred paces from the warehouse. He had taken a knife in the guts. I got him away from the dockside, but I couldn’t carry him any more.’

Aquila looked at the blood on Fabius’s smock; he did not have to ask if Donatus was badly hurt. ‘He may be dead by now.’

‘What if he isn’t,’ Fabius protested, jerking his ‘uncle’. ‘I can’t just desert him.’

Aquila shook his head slowly, but he was on his feet and dressing as he did so. ‘I should leave you to your fate.’

‘If they find him and get him to talk, he’ll tell them about me. My life won’t be worth much then.’

That was a final plea, a tug at Aquila’s feelings; Fabius would go back for him anyway. ‘Get hold of something to bandage him with.’

‘Why the sword?’ asked Fabius, as Aquila strapped it on.

‘Perhaps if you or your friend had learnt to use one of these, you wouldn’t be in so much trouble.’

He had added his knife and his spear by the time they emerged into the street, coming out through the bakery. The ovens were fired up, full of loaves of bread, the great table covered in dough and flour.

‘Where’s Demetrius?’ asked Aquila, pausing.

He had always been asleep when the morning bread was made. Fabius gave him a funny look, and indicated that they should hurry. They found Donatus, still alive, but in considerable pain, in the doorway where Fabius had left him. Aquila examined him swiftly, but the darkness made any proper assessment impossible.

‘We can’t do anything here. We must get him to a place with some light.’

‘We’d better not take him back to his house. His wife is worse than Commodus.’

‘The bakery,’ said Aquila, strapping his spear to his back.

Donatus gasped with pain as they lifted him, but he did not scream. Fabius picked the route, staying to the alleyways, and they stumbled a lot, for Donatus was no lightweight and his legs were forever giving way beneath him. Demetrius was still absent in the bakery, though by the look of the loaves cooling on the racks he had been and gone. Aquila put his weapons aside and they laid Donatus on one of the tables and started to cut away his smock.

‘Fabius Terentius! Well I never,’ said the voice from the doorway.

Aquila guessed this to be Commodus, just by the look of fear on Fabius’s face. He was a real hard horse, with a broken nose and scarred cheeks, carrying a sword in one hand and a heavy club in the other. The two men behind him, likewise armed with clubs, looked just as evil, with the kind of low foreheads that reminded him of the fellow called Toger, the first man Aquila had killed.

‘We wondered who’d been with him.’

‘You followed us?’

‘Who’s this?’ said the visitor.

‘Who’s asking?’ said Aquila, edging closer to his spear.

‘It’s Commodus’s brother, Scappius,’ said Fabius quickly. ‘This is a friend from the country. I asked him to come and help carry Donatus. He had nothing to do with breaking into the warehouse.’

The man looked Aquila up and down, puzzled by his height, the sword and the colour of his long hair. Then his eyes lit on the charm, opening greedily as he realised it was gold.

‘Is that so?’

The spear was up, which caused Scappius to take a pace back. Demetrius walked in, his face red and sweating, as though he had not moved an inch from the front of his oven. He looked and sounded guilty, instead of surprised. ‘What’s goin’ on?’

‘Nothing, Demetrius,’ Aquila replied, in a voice devoid of emotion. ‘These men were just leaving.’

Scappius looked at the spear, then into the stranger’s bright blue eyes and he realised that being the brother of one of the most frightening men in Rome meant nothing, since there was no fear in them. He knew that he would die if they started anything right away, so he smiled, sure in the knowledge that time was on his side. There was no threat as he walked slowly toward the nearest table, where he picked up a thick round loaf and sniffed at it appreciatively, then smiled at Aquila and Fabius.

‘We’ll see you both another time.’ Then he looked at Donatus, flat on the other table. ‘Don’t expect I’ll see him though.’ Both Aquila and Fabius looked at the same time. Fabius, less experienced, was unsure, but Aquila knew. Donatus was dead. Scappius grinned and turned to leave. ‘You should have left him where he was.’

‘What have you done,’ snapped Demetrius, breaking the silence that followed the trio’s departure.

‘I ain’t done anything,’ said Fabius angrily, and in a very liberal interpretation of the truth.

‘Don’t give me that, you good-for-nothing bugger. People like Scappius don’t go calling for no reason.’ Demetrius prodded the dead man on his table. ‘And who is this?’

Aquila explained, trying to minimise Fabius’s role and maximise his courage in going to the rescue of his stricken friend, but it was having no effect on the father, whose face grew darker at every word.

‘I want you out of this house,’ he said, pointing at Fabius as soon as Aquila had finished.

‘What?!’

‘You heard. What do you think Commodus and his gang are going to do. Forget you? And if you stay here, they’ll take it out on me, too. I haven’t spent all these years building a business to see it burnt out on your behalf.’ He stepped forward, poking his son in the chest. ‘You’re no good, d’ye hear?’

Fabius put a hand on his father’s ample belly and pushed him back. ‘If I’m no good, I get it from you. Don’t you walk in here getting pious with me, especially after what you’ve been doing.’

‘Shut up!’ snapped Demetrius, throwing a worried glance at Aquila.

‘Why should I?’ asked Fabius, with a sneer. ‘You don’t think it’s a secret do you? Go on, Aquila, ask him what he’s been up to.’ Fabius looked like a man who had gained the advantage, while Demetrius held up his fat hands, imploring his son to be silent. Aquila just looked from one to the other, confused. ‘Ask him why a daughter of Calpurnia’s age and looks isn’t married.’

Demetrius turned his frightened eyes towards Aquila. ‘I need her to help my wife in the shop.’

‘And at night, Papa. What do you need her for then?’

Aquila dropped the spear, so that the point was close to Demetrius’s huge belly. The man started to tremble and Fabius drove home the final nail.

‘You’ve ruined her life, you fat slob. He won’t give her a dowry and without that she can’t get a decent husband. Not that too many would want her after what you’ve done.’

‘Get out!’ Demetrius cried, but the words had no force.

She sobbed in his arms as he held her gently, letting her spill out her grief. The sun had come up and in the bakery below they could hear the noise of the first customers. The pressure from her arms, wrapped round him, seemed to increase with each revelation. It had been going on since she was a child, originally something playful, just touching, but it had grown stronger as her mother’s health had deteriorated, and, like every child in the world, she was her father’s property.

‘Shall I take you away from here?’ he asked.

She looked up at him then, through tear-stained eyes, but she managed a smile and her hand ran over the eagle at his neck. ‘You have a destiny, Aquila, remember.’

‘All I have are dreams and prophecies. I’ve seen people blinded by those and die because of it. To me it is of no consequence.’

‘But it is. Fulmina knew. I think I do, too. Perhaps I’ve inherited her gift. You’re not meant for a life in the back streets of Rome.’

‘From what I’ve heard of this Commodus, I’m not destined to live at all.’

She gripped his arms and shook him. ‘Then get out of Rome.’

Aquila smiled, thinking that if Calpurnia did have second sight, it ran totally counter to the advice he had been given by Drisia. ‘Where to? Besides I’ve barely been here two months.’

Calpurnia looked at him closely, her wet eyes narrowing slightly. ‘You’ve already made up your mind to leave, haven’t you?’

He tapped her on the nose, which produced that smile he liked so much. ‘You’re too clever.’

She kissed him suddenly, taking him by surprise, then with her hands round his neck and her eyes full of pleading, she spoke. ‘Once, Aquila. Just once.’

He knew what she meant and shook his head.

‘It would make me happy. I will ask for no more, I promise.’

He shifted uncomfortably, to try and hide the fact that though his mind considered it a bad idea his body did not.

‘I cannot have more, I know that. I have told you how I’ve suffered. Perhaps, now that it’s out in the open, my father will give me a dowry and I’ll find a husband, but once, Aquila, just once, it would be nice to hold someone I love inside me.’

Her kisses took away what little resistance he had, leaving her with no need to exert much strength when she pulled her conquest down onto the bed.

‘Go to Commodus.’

‘What do I say?’ asked Demetrius. He was plainly afraid of Aquila, his great fleshy jowl shaking even as he listened.

‘You will tell him that Fabius and I have left your house.’

The small eyes brightened as Fabius interrupted. ‘Where are we going?’

‘When you registered me with our tribe, so that I could vote, which class did you put me in?’

‘The fourth class, like Fabius, not that he deserves it. On his own he would never qualify to vote.’

‘Good!’ said Aquila, who was not interested in anything but Demetrius’s initial statement. He turned to Fabius. ‘You and I are off to join the legions, “Nephew”.’

Fabius shuddered. ‘Never.’

‘Thanks to the foresight of your father, we will be required to apply as hastarii, taking our own equipment.’

‘You go,’ replied Fabius with a dismissive sniff. ‘I’ll stay here.’

‘You’ll be dead in a week. Commodus will see to that.’

Fabius went pale, but Demetrius spoke. ‘You still haven’t told me what I am supposed to say to that robber and thief.’

‘You’re to tell him to leave you and your family alone.’

‘He’s not going to listen to me.’

‘He will, because you will say that in the next week, I will deliver him a message, one that will remove whatever desire he has for revenge on you, Fabius, or me. If, in seven days, he’s not satisfied, and prepared to say so publicly, then he can do what he wishes. That is, as long as he’s prepared for the consequences.’

Demetrius scowled. ‘You seem pretty sure of yourself.’

‘You have two choices, Demetrius. Either wait here for Commodus, with his brother, to visit you, or go to him and deliver my message.’ The older man nodded, aware that there was no choice. ‘The other thing you’ll have to do is dig under your floorboards and get out some of that hidden money.’

The fat man was too frightened to ask how Aquila knew about that. ‘Why?’

‘To pay for our equipment, Demetrius. You wouldn’t want anyone from your family turning up for service in the legions improperly dressed.’

Demetrius puffed up angrily, as if he was about to explode in protest, but he saw the look in Aquila’s eye and the words died in his swollen throat. The young man walked over to him, towering over the fat baker.

‘Lay another hand on Calpurnia and I’ll castrate you personally. I’ll make you eat you own balls, d’you understand?’

The fat face held a look of absolute terror and his hands had, involuntarily, gone to cover the top of his portly thighs.

‘I want you to have the choice, Calpurnia.’ She moved her naked body closer to him, thrusting with her pelvis. The eagle slipped round her neck, brushing over her breast.

‘Again Aquila, please?’

He laughed. ‘Just once, you said, and that was two days ago.’

The vibrations of her words tingled on his neck. ‘That was before I knew it could be so nice. And I don’t want your money.’

He pulled himself away, pushing up on his elbows. ‘If Demetrius gives you a dowry, he can make it conditional on you marrying someone of his choice. If I give it to you, then you can decide for yourself.’

She lay silently, her head in the crook of his arm, and Aquila sensed she was crying. ‘Perhaps the gods will be kind.’

‘You deserve their kindness. Use the money to find somewhere else to live. Get out of here. When I’m not around, how can I be sure that Demetrius will keep his hands to himself?’

The wheel fell off Commodus’s cart the first day, tipping him into the street. He was still aching from the bruises the following morning when he woke to find the stone-cold body of Donatus in his bed. That day, as he walked through the streets, on his way to tell Demetrius that he was a dead man, a whole pile of wooden scaffolding cascaded down. Commodus was as aware as anyone that the shout, coming from nowhere, had saved his life, giving him just enough time to duck into a doorway. He screamed and cursed at his men, especially his brother, for their inability to protect him, but he stayed away from the bakery. What finally convinced him were the three arrows that arrived the following day. They came through his open warehouse window, one near his right arm and another near his left, with the third thudding into the desk right in front of him. He went personally to see Demetrius, swore on all the gods that he would not take revenge, and even paid for his bread.

‘I’m enjoying this,’ said Fabius as they watched Commodus making his way home, surrounded by bodyguards, his eyes darting around the buildings.

‘I think it may be over,’ Aquila replied.

The vengeful look was quite gone from Commodus’s face, to be replaced with one of fear, as the gang leader’s head swept from side to side, to seek out his invisible attackers. Demetrius, who reluctantly handed over the funds they needed to buy their equipment, confirmed that Calpurnia had taken lodgings with Donatus’s widow and that was their last port of call. She was brave; no tears or tearing of garments, and she even kissed Fabius on his podgy cheek.

‘I look forward to the day when you celebrate your triumph, Aquila.’

He wanted to argue, to tell her he was a mere mortal and point out that legionaries were not awarded triumphs, but the look in her eyes precluded that, so he bent and kissed her softly.

‘Take care, Calpurnia.’ Then he spun round to face Fabius, slapping him on his spreading stomach. ‘Come along, “Nephew”. Time to get some of that weight off you.’

His ‘nephew’ insisted on one last sweep through the rich houses on the Palatine Hill, certain that the gods would not let him go off to war empty-handed, and he was right. They caught a vintner delivering ampoules of wine to the Cornelii villa, a man foolish enough to leave his cart unattended while he lifted the clay containers into the rear of the house. Not that his eye was off his possessions for more than two seconds, but that was enough for Fabius. He was spotted, of course, which led to a commotion, as well as a hue and cry.

‘Remarry?’ asked Quintus Cornelius, ignoring the noise of shouting that suddenly erupted from just outside the kitchens.

Claudia thought that his eyebrows were arched in a rather theatrical way. Quintus was like that, always behaving as if there was part of his personality outside his body observing his actions. They had been at loggerheads ever since the day she had married his father, not least because he esteemed his own dead mother, but also as she had been younger than her prospective stepson at the time of the nuptials. Quintus could never accept that Claudia had loved his father, as well as admiring the most famous general in the Roman world, and, after his conquest of Macedonia, one of the richest men in Rome. The twenty-year age gap had not made any difference to their relationship either; that had changed after she had been taken prisoner by the Celt-Iberians.

It was Quintus who had found her, and he was one of the few people who knew her secret. Not that he would say anything; the Cornelii name and his political ambitions meant too much to him. She did not doubt that her intention to remarry had surprised him. On top of that, he had the air of a man who was anticipating the pleasure he could gain from a negative response. Time to disabuse him of that notion!

‘I am aware that I don’t really require your permission.’

‘Oh, I think you do, Claudia. I am the head of the Cornelii household.’

‘Which your father saw fit to place me outside.’

Quintus bristled. ‘As long as you reside under this roof…’

Claudia cut him off sharply. ‘I can move today if you wish it, Stepson, and buy a house of my own.’

‘I will not let you do this, Claudia!’

‘Yes, you will,’ she said softly.

The eyebrows shot up again; he was unused to that tone of voice from his stepmother. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Not even if you were to have a hand in my choice of husband?’

There was nowhere left for his face to go, being shocked and surprised already, so it seemed as if her words had failed to register. But she knew her stepson too well for that; he was not stupid, despite his manifest faults. He would have covered all the possibilities relating to his personal advantage in a split second. After all, he was, since the death of Lucius Falerius Nerva, the titular leader of the optimates, the faction that Lucius had led, but he lacked the authority of his predecessor. His hold on power was shaky and his position, to his mind, was perilously assailable.

‘I am aware of my responsibilities to the family, just as you are.’

Quintus treated that remark with a mocking smile. ‘Then it is a sudden and somewhat overdue conversion, Lady.’

Claudia let the insult pass; her goal was far too important for that. ‘You may draw up a list of candidates, Quintus, men who stand to gain by an alliance with the Cornelii. I will not let you choose, but I shall certainly take a husband from the names you provide.’

‘I find this hard to believe.’

‘Why? I want to remarry, preferably without a public fuss.’

‘Which I could most certainly cause,’ said Quintus coldly.

‘So let it be a person who will give you something in return, like more vocal support in the Senate.’

They stood, eyes locked, for what seemed an age, while Quintus ran through the pros and cons in his mind. Finally, he nodded abruptly. ‘I agree, but on one condition.’

Claudia’s heart was pounding fiercely; she was afraid he had guessed her motives and would make her swear an oath that would block them off. ‘Which is?’

‘That you make a will, returning, on your death, all the money my father left to you to the Cornelii family coffers.’

Claudia felt, and heard, the breath she had built up escape from her body. ‘I agree!’