The Pillars of Rome (17 page)

‘I reckon Fulmina did her best,’ said Clodius, in a rare expression of praise for his wife.

‘Beats me how she kept her looks. For all the work she does, she’s still a fine looking woman.’

‘Made of stone as far as I’m concerned. I hinted that Aquila could use a playmate.’

‘What did she say to that?’

Clodius laughed without pleasure, then took another deep swig. ‘Said that it was me grovelling for a playmate. Told me if I wanted one I could do some extra work and buy comfort at the brothel in Aprilium.’

‘Sad thing when a woman takes her favours away. Makes for a hard life.’

The drink was beginning to affect Clodius. He laughed properly and drained his gourd. ‘You can say that again, Dabo. A sheep’s bum is enough to excite me these days.’

‘Do you remember that centurion and the goat?’

‘Do I,’ whooped Clodius.

They were off, swapping well-worn tales and reminiscences, talking of the good times and relegating the bad, capping each story with a cupful of wine, until life in the army seemed the highest thing to which a man could aspire. The drink
flowed, with Dabo going into the storehouse below and coming back with an ampoule full of his potent grain spirit. How they laughed. All the old jokes were trotted out and soon they were singing the songs, with their filthy words, that the legions had used since time immemorial to ease the pain of a long march. Dabo, who was drinking a good deal less that Clodius, made sure his guest’s gourd was never empty.

They were trying to recover from the pain in the sides after a particularly hilarious anecdote. This concerned an officer who preferred boys trying to persuade his commander to let him raid a nearby town because he had heard it contained an all-male brothel full to the brim of young blond Scythians. He could not say that, of course, and it was not even true, one of the more impudent soldiers having concocted the story as a joke. Everyone had sidled as near to the command tent as they could to eavesdrop on the exchange, which had become increasingly desperate as the man found all his arguments refuted.

Clodius told the story well. He had the officer’s high-pitched voice to perfection, as well as the gruff tone to convey the increasingly irritated responses of the commander. Dabo was reduced to hugging his sides, trying to get his breath, while Clodius, laughing just as much, had rolled down the steps, scattering the chickens, and was now crouched
over, hands around his stomach, half in pain and half in hysterics.

‘What a life eh! Clodius.’

‘Golden days,’ gasped Clodius.

‘You know what we need now, old friend,’ said Dabo, staggering down the three steps and helping Clodius to his feet. ‘We need a woman. What says we get in that there cart and head for town.’

Clodius started to shake his head, patting his belt to indicate his lack of funds. Dabo threw his arm around his guest’s shoulder. ‘Pay no heed to that, old friend. This one’s on me.’

‘Never,’ replied Clodius, with profound disbelief.

‘Damn women, Clodius,’ Dabo slurred. ‘You give them a squeeze and they greet you with an elbow in the ribs. Damn them, I say. They don’t treat their chickens that bad. If the cock don’t perform they get mad, chop its head off and cook it, then go and buy another, but we’re not ever allowed to perform.’

‘That’s right. Mind you, an elbow’s better than a chopper across the throat,’ slurred Clodius, with a wide, knowing grin.

‘Let them hear the sniff of Cerberus on their way to hell, I say. I’m willing to stand you…’

‘Stand me. I think I can stand on my own, thank you!’ spluttered Clodius, reprising the homosexual officer’s arch voice. They both screeched with laughter, doubling up again. Dabo, recovering first,
grabbed his friend and bundled him into the cart.

‘Aprilium, here we come,’ he crowed.

If Clodius had wondered why the mule, which should have been in its stall, had spent the whole night harnessed in the shafts, he was too drunk now to enquire.

Clodius sang nearly all the way to Aprilium, and since Dabo had been clever enough to fetch a flagon of grain spirit along, neither his throat, nor his level of inebriation, faltered. In between the songs and the usual requests for some form of intercession from the gods, Dabo moaned about the prospect of having to go back into the legions.

‘I’m a man of substance now, Clodius. I had my eye on another place next door to my father’s old farm. Given a bit of luck I can join them all together and go into cattle ranching.’

‘That’s where the loot is, Dabo. Every moneybags in Rome is well into ranching.’

His host slapped his hand hard on the side of the cart. ‘That’s right! The last thing I need is another six years in the army. It will throw my plans right out.’

Clodius tried to console him with a pat on the back. ‘Shame at that, Dabo. If you was to get on, I could say that I know someone who’s a knight. Not many people round these parts can call someone worth a hundred thousand denarii a friend.’ He
leant over and grabbed the flagon. ‘Mind, I hope you drink a choicer brew than this shit when you’re rich.’

For the first time that night, Dabo’s bluff, cheerful manner deserted him. ‘That’s just it, you oaf. If I go into the legions I won’t be rich. I’ll end up like you, on my arse.’

Clodius’s mood changed just as quickly. ‘Don’t say as I take kindly to being called an oaf.’

Dabo ignored him. ‘And it’s only because I’ve got a bit that I’m being called up in the first place.’

Clodius put all the sympathy he could into the reply. ‘But you’re not sure that you are going to be called up.’

Dabo seemed to collect himself, losing his belligerent tone. ‘That’s right, Clodius. Help yourself to another mouthful, old friend, and right sorry I am for any offence. It’s not your fault that you’re near potless. That’s what sticks in my craw. If they was to call you to the ranks what harm would it do.’

‘Depends on who I’m fightin’ with.’

‘I don’t mean that. It’s the law that means only men of property can be trusted to fight. Crap I say. If you’ve got nothing to lose they won’t have you. If you own a farm, you’re taken into the army, ‘cause they reckon you’ve got something to defend. Your farm goes to seed while you’re away, so you end up
a pauper who they can’t call up, living off the public dole.’

‘Blessings on Tiberius Livonius,’ slurred Clodius, helping himself to another swig. ‘Needed that corn dole on more’n one occasion.’

‘Tell me, Clodius, if they called you up, changed the law, like, what would you do?’

‘I’d go. What else could I do? Might be better off in some ways, for I tell you, Dabo, I’m fed up humping sacks of grain for a pittance. Not that the pay in the army would keep a pig in scraps. Family’d likely starve when I was gone.’

‘That’s it!’ cried Dabo, putting as much sincerity into his voice as he could. ‘If’n you had a decent wage, enough to keep Fulmina and your young Aquila in comfort, how would you feel about the Army?’

‘A damn sight better than I would workin’ for that tightwad at the corn mill.’

‘Drink up, old friend,’ said Dabo, placing his hand on the bottom of the ampoule and pushing it up. ‘There’s plenty more where that came from.’

‘You’re a fool, Clodius.’ Fulmina spoke without rancour. Her voice was resigned rather than harsh, for which her sore-headed husband was extremely grateful. ‘Always were, and now you’ll go and get yourself killed, most likely.’

‘I’m not that easy to kill.’

‘You’re going away?’ asked Aquila, who, by the look on his face, was struggling with this strange concept.

‘I’m going to be a soldier again, boy.’

‘Can I come?’

Clodius bent down and put both his hands on the boy’s shoulders. ‘No lad, you have to stay here and look after Mama.’ Aquila had heard that too many times as Clodius departed to his job at the mill to be pleased at the prospect. ‘Maybe, when you’re grown up, you can be a soldier too. And if your papa can just fall in the way of a bit of luck, you might even be a member of the first class, a
principi
.’

His wife sniffed loudly. Drisia’s soothsaying had promised much more than that, but it was not something Fulmina discussed with the sceptical Clodius. Even so, she could not let his remark pass. ‘Some future for Aquila, and all the while Dabo’s eldest brat grows up to be a knight.’

‘Dabo’s a long way from bein’ that,’ said Clodius looking up, for once on safe ground with the promise Dabo had given him to support his family while he was away. ‘But at least I’m getting some of his wealth to rub off on me. At least, this time, I won’t be at the bottom of the pile.’

Then he turned his eyes back to the disappointed child. ‘What says Papa makes you a suit of armour, just like the one he’s goin’ to wear?’

That cheered Aquila up no end. Clodius set too, using twigs and bark, carving the decorations for shield and breastplate with a sharp knife, and he had plenty of time to do it, having chucked in his job at the corn mill. Dabo, as well as providing the equipment he would need on service, had agreed to support him until he was actually called to join his maniple. While he was away, Fulmina would receive food, wine, oil and kindling on a regular basis as a wage for his surrogate soldier. Of course, he had made sure that Clodius fixed his mark by Dabo’s name with the recruiting commission, and appended the same to an agreement drawn up by a notary the very night they had gone into town. As far as the Roman State was concerned, Clodius Terentius had become Piscius Dabo.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Claudia Cornelia sat upright in her chair, observing her husband’s eldest son, thinking that, regardless of the way he sought to emulate Aulus, Quintus was totally unlike his father. Virtual strangers since the parental marriage they had finally spent time together the year before, travelling to visit Aulus in Illyricum. Claudia had not enjoyed the experience and she suspected that her stepson had taken from it even less in the way of pleasure. Conversation with Quintus tended to be stilted at best, and quite often disputatious. Even so the journey had been better than the stay, the happiness Aulus displayed on her arrival, after two long years, sinking slowly back into the confused misery that marked their relationship before he had departed Rome.

With the head of the house absent Quintus had moved back with his wife and child to his own family home, a setting that allowed him a greater degree of independence than he enjoyed in the
house of his father-in-law. Prior to the meal he had led the family prayers in a sonorous voice and performed the rituals in elaborate fashion. Quintus liked to entertain but tonight was solely a family occasion. Nevertheless it was typical of him to insist on so ritual a dinner for just two people. Claudia had been forced to dress her hair and don a flowing, formal garment. His own wife Pulchra was with child again and unwell, with no appetite for food, so she had been ordered to bed by her unsympathetic husband.

Claudia had been told that Quintus had been a playful boy and a wild youth, popular with his classmates. That carefree spirit, if it ever existed, had gone; he was very much a nobleman now, full of gravitas and conscious of his station in the Roman world. A praetor, Quintus harboured the ultimate goal of standing for the consulship, though he had a good few years to wait before he would become eligible and many offices to fill on the way. The route of honour they called it, yet when Claudia thought of some of the despicable creatures who had climbed that ladder, including a goodly number who had achieved that eminent, supreme accolade of serving as a consul, she wondered if the appellation was appropriate.

‘Do I have to initiate all the conversation,’ said Quintus from his position on the couch. His voice carried just a trace of that petulance which,
combined with arrogance, had become the hallmark of his behaviour.

Claudia greeted this with a slight smile. ‘A mere woman speak at dinner, without permission, Quintus? I wouldn’t dream of breaching the bounds of what is known to be proper behaviour. I’m surprised that you of all people should suggest such an outlandish thing.’

‘Me of all people! What precisely does that mean?’

‘Oh come, Quintus. You pride yourself on your manners.’

Quintus swung one foot in an arc, his eyes on the toes of his sandals. ‘I do think a stepmother is allowed to open a conversation with her husband’s eldest son.’

That avoidance of the appellation stepson was a roundabout way to deliver an insult, meant to underline that Quintus still regarded her as some kind of interloper in the Cornelii household. Claudia responded by treating him to a look of mock horror. ‘The gods forbid.’

‘You choose to tease me?’

‘You do tend to invite it, Quintus.’

He tried to assume a disinterested look. ‘Do I indeed?’

His lethargy angered Claudia and she spoke sharply, her tone somewhat harsher than she truly intended. ‘Everything you do is undertaken in the
light of its effect on your precious career.’

Quintus stiffened slightly. ‘Precious? That word makes my behaviour sound suspect.’

‘Are you saying that you don’t value your career?’

‘Of course I do.’