The Sword of Revenge

CHAPTER ONE

Those gathered for the dedication of the tomb were the relatives and closest friends of the deceased, men of station. Naturally this included Aulus’s childhood companion, Lucius Falerius Nerva, one of the two reigning censors and at present the most powerful senator in Rome. While most stood around, heads bowed, he looked about him with an air that bordered on the impious, as if examining each attendee to measure the depth and honesty of their respect, by his actions implying to Titus Cornelius, even if he did not intend it, that he was, himself, lacking in that attribute.

A thin man, with narrow features and thinning hair, the ex-consul was feared as much as he was respected. He had been Aulus’s friend since the time both learnt to talk and on the rare occasions when Titus’s father had mentioned the man it had always been with admiration for his abilities as an administrator, with reservations regarding his use of the power he wielded in the Senate. As the hazel eyes swung onto the widow, the Falerii face took on an expression of mild disdain. Claudia Cornelia, unable to see out of the side of her cowl, did not observe the look, but Titus did. Lucius had never quite accepted the second marriage of Aulus Cornelius, seeing it as a piece of gross foolishness that a man nearing forty, and as famous and wealthy as Macedonicus, should wed a slip of a girl who, at the nuptials, was a mere sixteen.

Titus had been twelve at the time of the marriage, but you could not move in a Roman street without seeing the lubricious graffiti, or hearing the ribald comments of the lower classes regarding the match; the views of his father’s peers were passed on as jokes to Titus by his gleeful contemporaries as they practised martial arts in the Campus Martius. Observing Lucius now, Titus saw a dry stick of a man who looked and acted as though sensual passion was something alien to his nature — hard to believe he had fathered a son of his own. Yet he had not been alone; Quintus had been dead set against the betrothal, and had let his younger brother know just how much he resented the replacement of his late mother by a girl younger than he, who he saw as a nonentity looking to bask in his father’s fame and fortune.

Lucius eventually looked from Claudia to Titus, the expression turning to a thin smile, tempered with a hint of curiosity, as if the older man was saying, ‘I know who you are, but what are you like?’ The stare was returned in a direct way that had the censor dropping his head into a reverential pose, this as Quintus began the prayers to Jupiter and Juno, the premier God and Goddess of the Roman pantheon. Titus, with a silent plea to Honos, God of chivalry, honour and military justice, looked up at the death-masks of his ancestors, lit from below by flickering oil lamps, with his father’s the most prominent in a line that stretched back hundreds of years. He felt a surge of pride, for in his world the family was everything — the means by which a man achieved immortality — and he prayed next to the Goddess of the Future, Antevorte, that one day his own deeds would elevate the Cornelii name and that when his descendants said prayers at this very altar before the mask of his own likeness, they would do so in the same spirit that he did so now.

The first ceremony was over quickly and the party, led by Quintus, moved out into the atrium. Gathered there were those who had come to pay their respects, but who were not of the Cornelii blood, or close enough for inclusion in the private family prayers. Cholon Pyliades stood off to one side in the line of the family slaves. He had been close to Aulus, even closer than Claudia, having served him as a body slave in Greece, Spain, here in Rome and in Illyricum. The Greek had been sent away from the debacle at Thralaxas by his master, given a codicil to the Cornelii will that would be read out that evening, a duty that had saved his life. Given how bound he had been to the man whose death they were commemorating, it was disappointing that Quintus had not seen fit to allow Cholon to attend the private ceremony at the family altar. That would have been fitting for such a loyal servant, but knowing his brother as he did, Titus suspected that such a thing, an act of pure nobility that would have been second nature to their father, would never occur to him.

Senators, magistrates and soldiers of legate, tribunate and centurion rank were assembled, all with their heads covered and all quick to bow to Quintus. There were members of the class of Equites present too, as well as representatives of the allied Italian provinces. Aulus Cornelius had never actually championed the cause of the knights and the allies as they sought a share of Roman power, yet he had been inclined to listen to their grievances without dismissing them out of hand. Other men were there for less respectful reasons; as the richest man in Rome, Aulus had lent money to support many a speculative venture. Those in his debt would now be wondering if his son and heir would call in such high interest loans.

As a younger son Titus received the odd sympathetic look, following on from those given to his stepmother. His brother was now head of the Cornelii household, and as such he was accorded the respect due to a man of huge wealth, great lineage and one who would in time surely rise to be a power in the land.

The funeral party emerged into the street to the odd shout, but mostly to a reverential murmur from those who lined the streets, and that continued as they descended from the Palatine Hill, their route taking them along the Sacred Way to the Porta Querquetulana. Outside that gate in the Servian Walls a sarcophagus had been erected which marked, in sculpted marble bas-relief and written text, the deeds of the great Macedonicus — only fitting as that was the gate that a triumphant general would use, having been given permission to lead his victorious legions into the city. Behind Quintus two priests from the Temple of Apollo carried a second death-mask and a small casket on a cushion.

The mask was the same as that above the altar, a very good likeness taken from one of the many statues that had been sculpted of the hero. The casket should have contained Aulus’s ashes, but they had been trampled into the dust at Thralaxas, as the victorious legions led by Vegetius Flaminus had chased the remnants of the rebel forces south through that same defile after the defeat of their main army. Instead it held earth from that place, brought back by Cholon, which would be placed in the sarcophagus, for somewhere in that would be a particle of the crushed bones of Aulus Cornelius Macedonicus, mixed in with the ash from the wooden palisade which he had set on fire just before he died, as well as traces of the men he had led.

Beside that sarcophagus lay a smaller, square memorial, topped by a pointed column, which listed the names of the legionaries who had died with him. Commissioned and paid for by Claudia, it was, she knew, something of which her late husband would have approved; he was a man who was fond of pointing out that however competent he was as a commander, he was only as good as the men he led into battle. Titus and Cholon stopped by that to read the names of the men listed, each of whose families would find, when the will was read, that the general who had led them to their deaths had not forgotten their dependants.

The mourners gathered by the sarcophagus, a rectangle topped by a heavy flat stone, with a panel on each side denoting some facet of Aulus’s life, set on the roadside between the city walls and the Via Tusculana, so that every traveller passing in and out of Rome could marvel at his deeds. His service as a consul and magistrate was shown on one of the smaller panels, the extent of his wealth, represented by abundant corn and toiling slaves, on the opposite. The two larger panels were reserved for his martial deeds, with that facing the Via Tusculana given over to his greatest accomplishment, the defeat of Perseus, the Macedonian king. It showed that monarch being led in chains behind the chariot of the victorious Aulus, as well as the huge amount of spoils that had come with the triumph, the last part of the panel with Perseus on his knees, Aulus behind him pulling hard on the rope with which he strangled his royal captive.

Lucius Falerius Nerva stood slightly aloof at the beginning, again watching not the ceremony but those attending: Cholon, the Greek body slave, with his smooth skin, carefully tended hair and effeminate looks; Quintus, all gravitas and pomposity, a coming man that Lucius knew he would now have to cultivate; Titus, so physically and morally like his father, which might prove a blessing or a problem; that he would have to wait and see. Then there was the Lady Claudia, now a widow in her late twenties, still strikingly beautiful. If Aulus had been a fool to wed her, Lucius suspected he would not be the last, for the added years and her position had given her presence as well as looks. He smiled, though not at Claudia but at the knowledge he had about her and her late husband.

Years before, as boys, he and Aulus Cornelius had sworn a blood oath which bound each to attend upon the other in time of need and to aid each other in pursuit of their careers, but Aulus had failed to support Lucius at a time when he should have been present, that being the birth of Lucius’s son Marcellus, on the night of the Feast of Lupercalia. Worse, with the whole edifice of empire in peril, an impious act, the bloody removal of a Plebeian Tribune, had been required to protect that imperium. Lucius looked to Aulus, of all people, for backing; his childhood friend had not met his obligations and neither had he offered an explanation for that failure, thus creating a suspicion that far from being a partisan of the faction that Lucius led, the Optimates, he had joined the ranks of his enemies, the Populares. Bad as that was, it was not as troubling at that which followed; Aulus, in front of the whole Senate, having defended Lucius against an accusation of murder, had gone on to declare himself independent of all factions. He had deserted Lucius and the Patrician cause at the very time when his support was vital to success.

Angry and hurt, Lucius had allowed a spy to be placed in the Cornelii house — indeed the slave was still in place — the aim to ensure that Aulus was a passive not an active enemy. Thoas, a tall and handsome Numidian, had been conjoined with Claudia’s handmaiden, which put him very close to the centre of the household and even closer to the lady herself, and it transpired that it was she who was the key to the mystery of Aulus’s failure to attend and say prayers at the birth of his son. It had taken several years to unearth, but eventually the truth emerged, now all written up in a scroll that Lucius kept locked in his strongbox, and if it vindicated Aulus from any hint of conspiracy, it did nothing to raise him in the estimation of the man he had failed.

On campaign in Spain, Claudia had been captured by the Celt-Iberian rebels. When found, two campaigning seasons later, she had been with child and plainly Aulus was not the father. No doubt she had been the plaything of her captors, to be used and abused at will, and though not a sensual man the thought produced, as it had in the past, a certain pulse of blood to the loins as he imagined her repeatedly taken against her will, perhaps by multiple participants. She must have been quite a prize, only seventeen and striking, so he assumed that whoever had fathered her bastard would have been from the higher reaches of the tribal society, a chieftain perhaps.

It made no odds; Aulus, who should have killed her on sight, had refused to set her aside, had, on the same night as Marcellus was born, overseen a secret birth in a deserted villa in the Alban Hills, before taking the child and exposing him in a place where death was certain. Lucius had to repress a thought that would have made him laugh out loud if he had pursued it. He was conjuring up another carved panel for the sarcophagus, one which showed the great Macedonicus adorned with a pair of cuckold’s horns.

Titus had moved to the other side of the tomb as the priests began their prayers, prior to the sacrifice of a goat, to look at the panel that represented that Iberian campaign as well as his father’s heroic death in Illyricum. Lucius Falerius joined him there to examine those same images, curious and slightly troubled to note on the neck of the man Aulus had fought in Iberia a device, which on close inspection looked like an eagle in flight. Standing beside Titus he could not resist alluding to both it and the wearer.

‘Brennos, chieftain of the Duncani.’

‘You’ve seen the device?’

‘No. Only heard about it from a hundred different throats. No one mentions the man without a reference to his talisman.’

Lucius nodded, as if something obscure had been made plain. ‘Your father ranted to me about this Brennos after their first encounter, and by the Gods he hated him. He said the man was the greatest threat to Rome since Hannibal.’

‘I judge by your tone you did not agree with him?’

‘I thought him obsessed.’

‘Then I too must be that.’

‘I have read all the despatches from Spain these last three years, Titus. They are alarmist to say the least and I know you had a hand in the compilation of many of them. I showed them to Aulus before he left for Illyricum and he backed up everything you said.’

‘My father did not exaggerate, and neither did I. Brennos is a serious threat to Rome.’

Lucius’s gesture was one of uncertainty; he did not want to openly disagree with the younger man on such a day and in such a setting. ‘I am apprehensive enough to ensure that I know what the fellow is up to. He is spied on constantly, as you well know.’

Titus was tempted to insist that the Senate should do more, but it was not his place to talk in such a manner to the leading man in Rome. Brennos was probably a menace greater than Lucius would grasp; the censor had not fought the man, both Titus and his father, at different times, had. A Druid from the northern islands, the man preached a message that, if implemented, would indeed make him more dangerous than Hannibal, and his name alone was a warning. Another Brennos, at the head of a great Celtic confederation, had ravaged Greece and burnt half the city of Rome hundreds of years before. His namesake was intent on uniting that same confederation, his aim not to partly burn the city but to destroy the whole empire. The carving on the sarcophagus showed him defeated, yet Brennos was far from that. Yes, he had lost a campaign, had been beaten by Aulus, but that had seemed to do no more than inspire him to continue. If anything, he was more powerful now than he had been years before.

‘I came across Brennos in my last action, just before I was informed of my father’s death.’

‘Really,’ Lucius responded absentmindedly, his eyes still fixed on the carving and quite specifically on that eagle device on his neck.

‘He led a raiding party into the area of my command. A fool of a centurion, who should have known better, with a full cohort, chased them deep into the hills, ignoring strict instructions to avoid such a thing. He got them trapped in a defile from which there was no escape. The right hand of every soldier was cut off and they were sent back to us.’

‘And the centurion?’

‘Was hacked to pieces by Brennos, before my eyes.’

‘This device around his neck, what do you know of that?’

What was it about Lucius’s voice? Titus could not quite place the tone, but it lacked the assurance with which the censor had previously expressed himself. ‘It is some kind of talisman. I have been told that it came from the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, taken by his namesake when he sacked Greece, and that he wears it because of a prophecy.’

There was a definite tremor in Lucius’s voice as he repeated the word. ‘Prophecy?’

‘It is said that one day, a man wearing that will stand in the Temple of Jupiter Maximus and that man will have conquered the city of Rome.’

All that Titus noted was the quiver in the voice; with Lucius looking so intently at the sarcophagus, he could not see the man’s face. If he had he would have been made more curious, because it was a countenance drained of blood, and behind that was a mind in turmoil and a heart beating too fast for comfort. As children Lucius and Aulus had made an illicit visit to a Sybil, wrong because it was something barred to mere boys. Right at this moment Lucius was recalling the events of that night — the fearful stench of the dank cave, the bones of dead creatures at their feet, made more gruesome by the indifferent torchlight, the dark wrinkled face of the old crone of a seer who had not been fooled by their purloined manly garments. She had known them for what they were, yet she had spoken a prophecy to encompass their joint futures, the words of which were burnt into Lucius’s brain…

One will tame a mighty foe, the other strike to save Rome’s fame.

Neither will achieve their aim.

Look aloft if you dare, though what you fear cannot fly.

Both will see it before you die.

The Sybil, without any hint of ink or stylus, had executed on a piece of papyrus the blood-red drawing of an eagle in flight, before throwing it to Lucius. As she intoned those words, and without any sign of physical contact, the drawing had burst into flames in his hand. Try as he might to laugh it off, that prophecy still affected Lucius; he had even questioned those who came back from Illyricum to see if there were any eagle signs connected to Aulus’s death, yet here was one before his very eyes. The censor put a hand out, touching the cold stone of the sarcophagus to steady himself. He felt Titus’s arm on his and heard, through a rushing of blood to his head, the words the young man said.

‘Are you all right, Eminence?’

Lucius loosely waved his other hand; what could a carved stone eagle do to him? He could not die now, his work was unfinished. The prophecy was false; he had convinced himself of that in the past and he must hold on to his scepticism now. Seers were unreliable, prophecies couched as riddles were too obscure to claim to be absolute truth.

‘I am, I am, Titus. Just overcome by the tragedy of the occasion. Your father and I were friends all of our lives, from childhood through to being grown men with sons of our own. Is it any wonder I am affected by grief?’

Titus had to keep a straight face then, to hide his doubts. Lucius Falerius had not been given the soubriquet Nerva for nothing; he was a man of emotional steel, not the type to faint at the graveside. Lucius, keeping his face hidden, was reminding himself that this Brennos had not killed Aulus, he had been defeated by him. The prophecy was mere flummery, made up by the Sybil to justify her fee. Slowly, as he rationalised these thoughts, his heartbeat slowed and the blood returned to his face. Yet he felt he had to say something, to divert the young man standing beside him.

‘Perhaps, Titus Cornelius, you and your father had a clearer idea of the menace of this Brennos than we have in Rome. I shall take heed of that.’

Claudia Cornelia too had examined those sculpted panels, many more times than Lucius, for she had had a hand in the drawings from which they had been made. It was she who had reminded Quintus of the eagle charm that Brennos wore, which he too had heard of but never seen. The look on the face of Aulus’s eldest son when she had suggested its inclusion had been deeply curious, though it was an inquisitiveness that remained unrequited; Claudia would tell no one the truth. In remembering Aulus she had felt again that tenderness she had always had for a man who could truly be termed good. The thoughts of how she had failed him as a wife lay heavy, but at least, she knew, he had died in ignorance of the truth, had died thinking that the child she had conceived in Spain had been the result of a violation.

Now she was watching Titus and Lucius from the other side of the sarcophagus, wondering at the conversation that had made the older man look ill. If he had dropped dead on the spot she would have had to fake sympathy; though she did not hate the man, she did not like him. To her mind he had abused his friendship with Aulus, and her husband, being the man he was, had stuck to a loyalty that had not been reciprocated. She and Lucius had clashed in the past as she sought to barb him with the truth; that he was a devious liar and an unreliable comrade.

The need to attend to the rituals made all present concentrate. Sacrifices were made, the blood of the animals cascading forth to taint the earth at the feet of the priests. Most had their heads bowed, but not Cholon. The Greek was weeping and he wanted everyone to know how much he had loved and missed his master. The man beside him, the newly retired centurion, Didius Flaccus, who had also been saved from death at Thralaxas when Aulus also ordered him away, was actually embarrassed.

‘Contain yourself, man!’ he hissed.

‘I cannot.’

‘It is for women to weep, not men.’

Cholon, through red and swollen eyes, looked sideways at Didius Flaccus. The tanned and scarred complexion under short-cut iron-grey hair were features which marked his occupation. Flaccus had been in the legions for twenty years and he and Cholon had seen, from a distance, the early morning smoke from the fire that had consumed the bodies of Aulus and his remaining legionaries. Cholon recalled that the man had been stony-faced then, and that for soldiers in his own century.

‘Men may weep and wail if they choose. Perhaps you mean it is not for soldiers.’

‘I’m not a soldier any more, mate,’ Flaccus spat, ‘and I am as like to be a pauper if something don’t turn up soon. I had hoped old Macedonicus would sort that one out and load me with booty, but he didn’t, did he?’

That offended the Greek deeply: to be able to attend such a distressing occasion and stay dry-eyed was one thing; to be so callous as to consider one’s own concerns was quite another.

‘I heard,’ Flaccus added, indicating the other, smaller memorial, ‘that the general left some money for his men.’

‘Only those who perished.’

‘What good is that going to do the dead?’

Cholon edged away, not wanting to listen to such words, but Flaccus barely noticed. He was staring at the sculpted images of the Macedonian triumph; Aulus on his chariot wearing a crown of laurel leaves, behind him chained slaves bearing jars filled with gold, wondering if one day, as it had been vouchsafed to him by every teller of fortunes he had ever consulted, such wealth would come to him. He had been so close to cornucopia in Illyricum, but it had been snatched from his grasp and the remembrance of that deepened his irritability.

His mood was not enhanced on the return to the Cornelii house, as, walking well behind Quintus, Flaccus was too far away to get at any of the coins the man was chucking to the crowd. Not that there was any gold in there; it would be copper at best, though there was one consolation he had on reentering the house. He was treated to a decent meal of the kind he dare not splash out on himself. Taking care to ensure that no one was looking, Flaccus pilfered as much food as he could and drank as much wine as the servants were prepared to pour into his cup, so that by the time he left he had in his mouth the taste which made him want to continue.

The stuff he drank in his local tavern was nowhere near the quality of what he had imbibed in the Cornelii house, but what it lacked in flavour it made up for in potency, so that Flaccus was intoxicated enough to do something he normally restrained himself from; he began to recount his experiences of fighting and leading a century in the Roman army. His fellow-drinkers listened to his stories with respect but when he became really drunk, banging his fist on the table as he tried to persuade them that he had been within an inch of untold wealth, indeed a wagon full of gold, that lifelong comfort had slipped through his fingers due to the stupidity of a legionary called Clodius Terentius, attention wavered. By the time he began to recount the enigmatic prophecy he had heard so often, that indicated he would be rich anyway, he was talking to himself.

‘A golden aura, that’s what the man said, which means great wealth. And men cheering like I’ve won a great victory. It will come to pass one day, you mark my words, and when it does I shall find better company to share a drink with than you arsewipes, that’s for certain.’

It was just as well he was mumbling to himself; anyone close enough to his drunken ramblings would have heard him confess to the murder of an elderly Illyrian soothsayer, in between the curses with which he damned the man for expiring without telling him the truth about his future in plain language.

In the tablinum of the Cornelii house, where Aulus had at one time conducted all his business, an increasingly angry Quintus was reading the will. Cholon heard the words that set him free and even though he had known it was coming, he was again overcome with emotion. It was not the manumission which angered Quintus, it was money; a sizeable sum had been bequeathed to the Greek so that he would be, in freedom, more than comfortable. A fortune already gifted to the Lady Claudia could not be reclaimed and Titus, too, was left a sum enough to avoid the need to beg for corporeal sustenance from his brother. But to top it all came the bequest to the dependants of those who had died at Thralaxas, laid out in a codicil that Cholon had brought back from Illyricum. Quintus first questioned its veracity and, once persuaded that the terms must be met, complained that he would be ruined. It was nonsense of course, as Claudia observed.

‘My dear Quintus, you are just not the richest man in Rome any more. I dare say your father had faith in you to gain that accolade on your own merits.’

The long day ended with each of the Cornelii going to their own suites, to harbour their own thoughts. Quintus had with him a list of his father’s numerous debtors and was looking through it to see whom he could force into early repayment. Titus had visited the family altar on his way and paid private obeisance to his father’s memory, aware that he had been in awe of the man when he was alive and was even more so now that he was dead. Cholon went to the slave quarters for the last time to cry himself to sleep. Tomorrow he must look for a place to live; he could not abide the idea of residing under a roof of which Quintus Cornelius was the master.

Claudia, attended by her maid Callista, prepared for bed, sure that she would not sleep. She would lie looking at the ceiling and wonder, for the thousandth time, about the small russet-haired boy, her love-child by the Celtic chieftain Brennos, that Aulus and Cholon had taken from her just after his birth and exposed. Where was a mystery; she only knew that he had left on horseback and not returned till dawn the next day. Lying in darkness she would envisage gloomy woods and hungry predators, feeding on the small, still living, screaming carcass, waking dreams that were nightmares and her mind would always turn to the charm she had put around the baby’s foot in the hope that someone would find him and, realising he had at least one rich and concerned parent, raise him to manhood.

Solid gold, shaped like an eagle in flight, with the wings picked out in subtle engraving, it had once hung around the neck of the only man she had ever truly loved; the boy’s father, Brennos.