by AM Kirkby
***
"There's no council today," Servius said bluntly, as if she had no right to be in this part of the palace unless she had been called; these rooms where she'd lived with Tarquinius for years, where she'd talked with Ancus Marcius for years before that. Biting down on her anger, she smiled blandly.
"I wanted to speak to you in private."
"The place for debate is the council."
"Not for this, it isn't. Believe me, you'll be glad I didn't bring this to the council."
He thought that over for a moment, nodded curtly, and sat, not on any of the couches but on the folding stool he'd brought from campaign, a soldier's refusal to soften his life.
"I've heard you're changing the way the centuries are made up."
"Where did you hear that?"
"I should have heard it from you."
Servius shifted a little on the chair. "The army needs to be better organised."
"It was all right for Tarquinius."
"Yes. But he was lucky. He could pick off his targets one by one, city by city.He could take Collatia like a man picking on a drunk in the street late at night when everyone looks the other way and no one wants to get involved. That game's over. They're warned now, they know what we're doing; it won't be us against one city, it will be us against the lot of them."
"You doubled the size of the army."
"More than that, I think, if the census is right."
"I still don't see why you have to change the way it's organised."
He sighed. He got up, ran a hand through his hair, began to pace.
"Have you not seen the way Rome is breaking up?"
She wondered for a moment if he'd gone mad, the way aspirant augurs sometimes did. Had he seen some strange vision, cracks opening in the walls of Tinia's temple, the great acroteria statues toppling?
"The city keeps growing. More people, more houses, a greater expanse to defend. Its needs are greater; more grain, more oil, more weapons."
Get on with it, she thought; she knew all this.
"It's too big," he said. "No one knows everyone any more. It's breaking down into cliques and factions, neighbourhood against neighbourhood. The Celian men against the Aventine crowd; the old Romans against the new, the rich against the poor. It's falling apart, and the army is the only way to bind it back together."
It sounded so good. She almost believed it, for a minute.
"It's a problem with Tarquin, isn't it?" he said.
He was sharp. Well, if he wanted to see it that way, it made her task easier.
"You're a horseman yourself," she said. "You can see the work he's done."
"Yes," he said, and nothing more.
Oh, he was on his guard, he'd seen how she was appealing to his own pride, and he was resisting it. Time to take another tack; a risk, of sorts. Let him commit himself.
"Tell me honestly. Are they as good as Tarquin tells me?"
"You haven't seen them yourself?"
"I can ride; I'm not a general. How would I know?" If he was going to be short with her, she'd be short with him.
He smiled at that. It wasn't often she made such an admission. "Actually yes. They are good. Any general would be proud of them."
She nodded, waited. Let him think about what he'd just said. She saw his lips move, and just as he was about to speak, she said, quite lightly, "Tarquin's proud of them, too."
"I'm not taking anything away from him."
"He thinks you are. Giving him recruits he doesn't want, moving his best men elsewhere."
"It's change. He has to learn to cope with it."
"He's learned a lot this last year or so," she said.
"He's still undisciplined. I never know what he's going to do. I can't trust him, Tanaquil."
"Exactly why you shouldn't change things."
He sighed, and shifted, and she wondered if he was about to dismiss her; but then he frowned, and said, "Explain."
"First: if he's changeable and undisciplined and temperamental -"
"I didn't say temperamental."
"No, but you meant it. If he is, and you hurt his pride like this, you're pushing him into reacting. He'll do something stupid. Or at least, he'll want to do something stupid, and it'll turn him bitter."
"He has to learn to take orders."
"Not like this," she said. "Is it worth losing him over this?"
Servius didn't reply, but at least he was thinking. He could have his binding-together army of happy mixed-class, mixed-race, mixed-wealth Romans, or he could have his crack cavalry; but perhaps not both. Well, let him think.
"And secondly: he has good men at his back, good men that he trusts and listens to. They'll keep him honest."
"They're young."
"Yes, but they're good; and he trusts them. Break up that group, leave him isolated..."
"He'll be lonely without his friends? You don't expect me to care about his feelings?"
"Leave him on his own, and they'll have no influence over him. Next time he feels wronged, they won't be there to talk him out of his own rashness."
"You expect me to change my entire army to suit one man?"
You changed it to suit yourself, she thought; but it would hardly achieve anything to say that, and though she felt the beginnings of a headache at the corners of her eyes, she smiled, and said no; she was only asking for a little trimming and smoothing, a little more time for Tarquin, a few small changes to a single unit.
Servius shook his head, stroking his chin with one hand, and massaging his cheek with his thumb. Gods, he was ugly when he was thinking; ugly and obvious. "Why couldn't he be more like you?" he asked. "A mother who never does anything without thinking, and a son who never thinks before he does anything. What a pair."
That, agreed, was a mystery, but humans didn't breed true the way horses did, or hounds; "More's the pity," she said, but she was thinking of the two Tullias, not her son.
When she left Servius still hadn't said what he was going to do; but she felt reasonably certain, from his humour, that she'd won at least part of what she'd wanted.