The Pillars of Rome (28 page)

‘This is my son’s first visit to the games, Hortensius. Would you permit him a hand in the decision?’

Marcellus stiffened as the host replied. ‘Gladly.’

‘Well?’

Marcellus blinked. He barely understood what had happened but he knew enough to be sure of one thing; that his incensed parent had the right to take this Greek gladiator’s life and why? Merely because the man had taken a meaningless decision out of his father’s hands; gladiators were supposed to entertain the crowd. It was obvious that there should be blood to please them, but to deliberately kill your opponent, without permission, was seen as an insult and now Lucius would have the guards spear him to death. Why should he take part in such a charade or a consultation that was equally meaningless? Even later that day, when he had had ample time to think, and describing the exchange to his friends, he could not say what prompted the words he used, nor the insolent tone in which he said them.

‘Am I being asked to decide his fate, father?’

‘What!’ said Lucius, surprised enough to take his eyes off the Greek and look at his son. He declined to speak for several seconds, but when he did, his voice had that tone which warned Marcellus of deep trouble in store. ‘Do you feel qualified, boy?’

‘Would I be permitted to answer a question with a question, father?’

‘Yes,’ snapped Lucius.

‘Are you determined that this fellow should die?’

That took Lucius by surprise, a rare thing, and Marcellus knew he had the right of it for that very reason, but the question forced a denial. ‘My mind is open.’

‘Liar!’ The word sprang unbidden into his mind and Marcellus felt his body go cold. He was still of an age to assume a parent omnipotent enough to hear even his most secret thoughts, so he chose his words very carefully. ‘Then you, sir, will have to judge if I am qualified. If you feel I’m not, I would humbly beg your permission to take no part in the decision.’

Marcellus knew his father always saw dissent instead of discerning logic, so he had no hope of escaping parental wrath by pointing out the basic undesirability of the position into which his father had forced him. But Lucius was no fool either, and he had much more experience than his son at perceiving the truth behind men’s words.

‘You would let him live?’

‘I would, father.’

‘Why?’

‘He fought bravely and I think he responded to the lethal blow his opponent aimed at his head. I think he reacted like a soldier in battle, sir, and not a gladiator concerned to survive and collect his fee.’

‘Indeed?’

The thin smile on his father’s face did little to reassure Marcellus. Then Lucius indicated that the Greek should approach the platform and the man walked forward, stepping over the corpse of his dead enemy. Lucius leant forward to address him, fluently, in his own tongue.

‘Tell me, fellow, how long have you been a gladiator?’

‘Six months, your honour,’ said the Greek, his voice deepened by the metal guards on the side of his gleaming helmet.

Lucius tried to sound friendly, but given the nature of the discussion the effect was chilling. ‘Only six months. Have you had many bouts?’

‘This is my first, sir.’

That brought a frown, plus a sideways glance at Hortensius, with the implied accusation of parsimony quite evident, but the hesitation lasted only a second. Lucius returned to questioning the gladiator. ‘Indeed. And what did you do before that?’

‘I was a slave, but my master sold me to pay his debts.’

A slight note of impatience entered Lucius’s voice, as though he suspected the Greek was deliberately indulging in conversation to add a minute to his life. ‘And before that?’

‘Twelve years ago I was a soldier, your honour, in the service of Macedonia.’

‘May I ask a question, father?’ said Marcellus eagerly, fired by thoughts of that once invincible Macedonian Army that had been defeated by Aulus Cornelius.

Lucius’s head snapped round, his eyes boring into those of his son. ‘No, Marcellus, you may not.’

Then he waved his hand in a gesture of dismissal. The Greek raised his sword in salute, and as he turned to walk away the crowd, which, mostly without the Greek necessary to understand the exchange, had been holding its breath, roared out its approval for this unexpected decision. Lucius frowned even more deeply. He hated anything that smacked of appeasing the mob.

Marcellus had been allowed to return home from the games with Gaius, careful, on the entire journey, to avoid the unwelcome attentions of Valeria. Fortunately she shared his aversion and had gone off to play with her dolls as soon as they entered the gate. The Trebonius household made Marcellus
uncomfortable and just a little envious, since Gaius had many of the things he desired, possessions forbidden him by his father. There were several dogs and cats, as well as cages full of songbirds. It was a family house in a way that he could barely comprehend, full of noise and activity, with six children running around, all under ten years old, and to Marcellus’s ordered mind, completely out of control. They drove their household slaves to distraction.

The dogs chased the cats who, in turn, could not be trusted with the pet mice, or the goldfinches. One child, at least, was always in tears, constantly pleading for justice against an older or younger sibling. Gaius’s mother seemed oblivious to all this turmoil, smiling benignly if she could be made to bother at all, and reassuring her wailing offspring that things would look much better in a few minutes. She was invariably right, because the tribulations of another child took over, submerging whatever it was that was bothering the original complainant.

Gaius and Marcellus had been playing knucklebones, using walnuts as counters with which to bet, but his little brother Lineaus, only four years old, was having terrible trouble building a fortress with his wooden bricks. Marcellus went to help, despite his friend’s protests that the little brat should be kicked out of the room so that they
could continue their game, a remark which reduced Lineaus to a wailing wreck, though there was no sign of a proper tear. Gaius agreed to help, merely to secure some peace and they built Lineaus a wonderful fort, with battlements, towers and an entry port, then helped him arrange his toy legionaries, before going back to the low table to continue their game.

Valeria came in right in the middle of their next set of throws, her terra-cotta doll dressed like a high-born Roman lady, complete with curled wig. She wandered over to the table and stared at the boys for a while, no doubt hoping by her presence to interrupt them. Both studiously ignored her, even when she initiated an imagined conversation with her doll on the failings of Roman boys, compared to Roman girls. When that too fell on deaf ears, she wandered over to the squatting Lineaus, congratulating him coyly on the way he had built his fort.

‘Marcellus built it for me,’ lisped Lineaus, half-truthfully excluding his own brother.

‘Did he?’ she replied, her voice high with exaggerated surprise.

Valeria’s foot swept in a wide arc, completely demolishing the fort and scattering bricks everywhere. Marcellus and Gaius were forced to pay attention as the little boy let out an anguished cry. Valeria stood, doll in hand, with a defiant and
triumphant look, directly aimed at them. Gaius dived at her, but she was gone, loudly screaming as she went out through the door, calling to her mother to come and save her from her murderous brother.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Midway through the next morning, Marcellus sat in his sparsely furnished bedroom pondering his fate, the rough wood of his cot scratching his legs painfully. Already in bad odour with his father because of his behaviour the previous afternoon at the Hortensian games, he had done something more serious, in finally reacting to the constant punishment from his tutor, Timeon, not verbally, but physically.

He must sit still and upright ignoring the cold and the discomfort, because his father would come at some point, entering unannounced. When he did, his son wanted to ensure there was no hint of slovenliness or an air of insolence that he would assume was aimed at him personally. He had worked out his defence using the very tenets of oratory his father so admired. If he could not persuade him that he, Marcellus, was in the right, then he must endure, unflinchingly, any punishment
Lucius saw fit to hand down. His father was not the man to portray anger in any form, so when the door did open, it was slowly and somewhat more frightening for that. Marcellus tensed himself and fought the impulse to look down. His father’s unblinking stare held his, registering just the slightest flicker when Marcellus stood up. Then he saw the household slave behind his father; there would be a whip in the man’s hand.

‘This is not a duty that I find welcome,’ said Lucius coldly. ‘It is something for which I do not have the time. Yet I find I must undertake this task, since I cannot have you behaving like some drunken labourer. You are a Falerii. You’ve disgraced me.’

‘Am I to be allowed to defend myself?’ asked Marcellus. He could hear the tremor in his voice, so he assumed that his father had detected it too.

‘What defence could there possibly be for such behaviour?’

‘Is it not a cornerstone of Roman law that each man is entitled to a defence?’

That cracked the studied parental veneer. ‘How dare you address me so!’

Marcellus took a deep breath, still holding the irate gaze. ‘I speak out of admiration for everything you have taught me, Father.’

‘I don’t remember ever teaching you to use your fists. That is, outside the gymnasium.’

‘Yet you have never tired of telling me that it’s my duty to oppose tyranny.’

Lucius frowned. ‘Tyranny! What are you on about, boy?’

This was his chance and it would be the only one. If he did not make the beginnings of a case in a matter of seconds, his father would set the slave to beat him, and Marcellus would have no choice but to submit. He told himself that it was the injustice that fired him, the need to right a patent wrong, not any fear of punishment, but there was a small voice within him that consistently cast doubt on that.

‘Should I refuse punishment that I richly deserve, sir?’

‘Of course not!’

‘And what should I do in the face of the arbitrary abuse of power?’ His father just stared at him and Marcellus wondered how long it had been since Lucius had been unable to reply swiftly to a question. He seized the chance afforded by the pause. ‘Could I propose to you, Father, that opposition to the threat of tyranny is the first duty of a Roman citizen.’

Lucius actually blinked, wondering if he was being mocked, with his son quoting at him words he often used himself, but Marcellus didn’t give him a chance to speak.

‘Could I further propose this. That to expose a pupil to a regime which satisfies the basest instincts
of a man who enjoys inflicting pain, just for its own sake, flies in the face of the teachings that you, yourself, have taken such trouble to instil in me.’

Lucius recovered his composure, then allowed himself a slight smile. There was a chair in the corner of the room, the only other piece of furniture apart from the cot. Lucius gathered up his toga in a most elegant gesture, then sat down. ‘You wish to make your case, boy? So be it. Proceed!’

‘Thank you, Father.’ Another deep breath. He knew he was speaking too quickly, but he could not help it. ‘When I was younger, at the very earliest stages of my education, I learnt, very quickly, that I could never hope to answer correctly every question put to me. I also discovered that the penalty for such inability was painful. This I accepted as quite proper, since the style of my education had been decided by you. It was my duty, not only to abide by the pattern you had set but to actively support it. I was set to learn things and if I could not do so, the consequences, very properly, fell upon me.’

Marcellus was terribly tempted to start using gestures, but he kept his hand as close to his side as he could so that his words would smack of sincerity as well as rhetorical flair. ‘But I wasn’t only taught by a pedagogue. It’s also been my privilege to have you as a teacher. To be initiated by you into the mysteries of Roman law and politics. I have learnt that you have, through your abilities, which I as
your son would give a great deal to emulate, raised yourself to a position in which you are considered as one of the leading men in the Roman state.’

Lucius bowed his head slightly in acknowledgement, for all the world as though he were sitting on his bench in the
Forum
. Marcellus felt the tightness in his chest ease slightly. He also silently thanked the gods for giving him the power, so early in life, of eloquent speech. ‘You have taught me many things, Father, too many to enumerate here. Now I must concentrate on those teachings which are apposite to the dilemma I face.’

A frown came from his father at that, as though Lucius couldn’t countenance that a boy of his son’s age could have a dilemma at all.

‘Firstly I wish to address the problem of respect. While I find respect for your person both proper and easy, I must confess that I cannot always extend that feeling to every adult.’ His voice changed as he asked himself a question. ‘Is that laudable? For me, Marcellus Falerius, respect for an older person should be my primary emotion. That is what I have been taught and I should find no difficulty in carrying out what is my duty.’