Marius' Mules VI: Caesar's Vow

by S. J. A. Turney

  ‘Ah, yes?’ the man replied with a furrowed brow.

  ‘I was told to watch out for you,’ Antonius smiled. ‘The descriptions I was given are startlingly accurate.’

  Hirtius’ frown deepened and Antonius let out another deep laugh. ‘Nothing bad, my friend.’ He turned to Fronto. ‘This, Marcus, is Aulus Hirtius. He’s Caesar’s man, lately of Aquileia.’ He turned back to Hirtius. ‘What brings you out of hiding in the general’s provincial palace, Hirtius?’

  The mantis-like man cleared his throat disapprovingly, and took another step back, grimacing. Fronto suspected the wine on Antonius’ breath had been the reason for that particular retreat.

  ‘I have been summoned to Samarobriva, along with the rest of you, but I was instructed to meet you here and impart further instructions from the general.’

  Fronto’s ears pricked at the news.

  ‘Go on?’ Antonius encouraged the new arrival.

  ‘You are to dispatch a number of your companions to Cisalpine Gaul. Pompey’s former legion - the First - is quartered at Aquileia, courtesy of an agreement ratified by the senate, and you are to send a man to take command of it and lead it north to Samarobriva at the earliest opportunity. That man will have to be accompanied by a second, who will take command of a fledgling legion - the Fifteenth - which has been levied there and supplied with veteran officers from the surrounding cities. I have horses and a suitable military escort ready to leave with them. They can take the Via Flaminia across country for speed.’

  Antonius seemed to take in the surprising news of two new legions without blinking, especially one of them being a Pompeian one. He nodded. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Yes. Another man is to head north to the camp at Cremona, disband the camp and collect every soldier, be he veteran or raw recruit, officer or legionary, taking them to Samarobriva to reform the Fourteenth, who were wiped out a few months ago.’

  Fronto stepped back as if struck. A legion wiped out? Then things were every bit as bad as Priscus had implied. Suddenly, all his attention was on the matter at hand, his sickness entirely forgotten.

  ‘Caesar levies new legions? Then he has a new campaign in the works?’

  ‘That, I cannot say,’ Hirtius replied. ‘I just have the orders to pass on.’

  Antonius turned to Fronto. ‘I do believe that the campaigning season is to begin a little early this year. At least we’ll have no time to pick up cobwebs before we get our teeth into the fight.’ He smiled apologetically at the girls. ‘I am so sorry ladies, but we will have to cut short our visit. For the sake of family and propriety, we will remain long enough for you to pay your respects, but then, the morning after next, we must be aboard the trireme and making for Massilia.’

  He turned his eager smile on Fronto and the veteran legate was suddenly - and worryingly - put in mind of an excited puppy.

  ‘Fabulous,’ he grumbled.

  * * * * *

  Fronto scratched his head as he reached the end of the street and looked this way and that.

  ‘I don’t know. Apart from Pompey’s new theatre and his house, the last time I set foot in the Campus Martius I was a fresh faced tribune. The whole place is different now. When I was last here there were a few scattered houses and insulae and a lot of greenery. Now it looks like the bloody Subura! When did the senate ratify selling off all the land?’

  ‘You’ve been away from Rome for a long time,’ Palmatus sighed. ‘The senate would rip out your kidney and sell it back to you if they thought they could get away with it. Rich men selling land to other rich men to erect shoddy death-traps to rent to the poor.’

  Fronto frowned. ‘You’re an absolute barrel of laughs, you are.’

  ‘I tell it how it is,’ the former legionary shrugged. ‘By rights I should be sitting in one of these side streets joining the rest of the plebs as they glare at you and mutter curses against the nobles. Strange how the fates lead a man, eh?’

  Balbus, his face dark and humourless, gestured to the right hand fork. ‘If you two have quite finished bickering, we’ll go that way first.’

  Fronto nodded, falling quiet. He quite enjoyed his banter with Palmatus. The low-born soldier was unusually outspoken for a pleb among patricians, but that tended to happen when Fronto got to know them, much to his mother’s constant irritation. When confronted with loss and sadness, Fronto habitually resorted to either irreverent humour or vengeful anger, as circumstances dictated. Neither, however, was appropriate today, and he was having trouble maintaining the serenity that he felt his friends and family expected.

  Balbus led the group on towards the family mausoleum of the Lucilii, Palmatus and Masgava prowling along the sides of the party like wolves, watching for trouble. There was no real reason for them to have come along. The streets of Rome were dangerous these days, but Fronto felt certain that he, Balbus and Galronus would be able to handle any trouble that came their way. The pair had refused to stay behind, though, and had appointed themselves as guards in the mean streets of Rome, Masgava occasionally pausing to rest his still-aching gut.

  ‘Sad, the way all the mausolea that have stood out on these roads for so long are getting lost among housing now,’ Fronto sighed. ‘Shouldn’t be allowed, really.’

  ‘Rome grows,’ shrugged the practical Palmatus. ‘New residents have to go somewhere, and the insulae are already too tall. Where else are you going to put them, if you don’t expand the city?’

  ‘Still seems wrong. A decade ago, Balbus’ family would have had a nice little garden plot around their mausoleum. Maybe a few cypresses in a line. Now half a dozen families of dirty scrotes will stand in its shadow, scratching their privates and pissing on the path.’

  His sister shot him a warning glance, and Fronto realised too late how insensitive that had sounded. He opened his mouth to apologise and back-track, but decided he needn’t bother. Neither Balbus nor Lucilia were paying him any attention, their spirits troubled as they approached the tomb’s location, and young Balbina - once a lively spirit - was her usual silent self, unseeing and apparently unfeeling.

  The group wandered on in silence a few more moments, taking two more turns until Fronto could no longer guess which way was north, though the further they went, the less housing was in evidence, with more open green spaces between. The rush of water that underlay the everyday sounds of the city confirmed that they had come close to the Tiber, probably at that section where it turned from north to the west and then south. A large, white residence, clearly the property of a wealthy merchant or suchlike - a ‘wannabe’ noble, judging by the level of ostentation in such a low priced region - stood within an area of untouched scrub land and just beyond it, a small square garden surrounded on three sides by ordered rows of cypresses contained a modest brick-built columbarium, a garland-and-wreath decorative panel running around the structure at head height and a marble panel set into the front bearing an inscription detailing the family who owned it.

  Balbus took a key from the chain on his purse-string and approached the building’s side, unlocking the iron gate and swinging it open. There was no solid door, but the bars on the gate had been spaced close enough to prevent birds entering the mausoleum and nesting there.

  Taking down the small oil lamp from the shelf by the door, Balbus scrabbled around, found the flint and steel and struck a few times until the light-source began to flicker, its guttering flame illuminating the building’s interior with a warm orange glow. Palmatus, Masgava and Galronus arrayed themselves outside like a defensive force, the latter handing over to Fronto the bag he had brought with him as the rest entered the structure. Fronto allowed Balbus and the ladies in first, bringing up the rear and withdrawing a small jar from the bag, cracking the seal.

  As with all columbaria, the building’s walls consisted of row upon row of small arched recesses, reminiscent of a dovecote, each one for a family member’s cinerary urn, though only a dozen or so had been filled. The Lucilii were not old nobility, apparently. Given the lack
of occupants it did not take long to locate the niche with the new urn, the identifying plaque beneath freshly-made.

  Fronto found suddenly, and unexpectedly, that a lump had risen in his throat. Corvinia had been a delight to know. She had been a haven of civility in that first bloody and androcentric year of Caesar’s campaign, with her small and neat Roman house incongruously placed among the military camps near Geneva. She had invited him - a complete stranger - into her home as though she had known him for years and had fed and watered him. She would have been his mother in law, he realised with surprising sadness.

  And she had died - indirectly, admittedly - because of him. Or rather because of blood feuds against him. Though he had done nothing as far as he was concerned to bring it all about, he could not deny more than a sliver of guilt over the matter.

  Sorry, he mouthed silently to the shade of his mother in law. By tradition, they should be eating a sacred meal - he’d bought cakes, bread and a few bright flowers in the market especially - but he doubted, given the means of Corvinia’s passing, that any of them would have much of an appetite.

  Balbus was talking quietly - barely a murmur really - to Corvinia. Fronto deliberately closed his ears to the conversation - it was a private thing and he had no wish to intrude. He was here mostly for them to lean on should they feel the need.

  But instead of murmuring, Lucilia was silent and still. If she was talking to her mother, it was in the privacy of her skull, while no hint of emotion showed upon her stony surface. Trying not to interrupt their private thoughts, Fronto shuffled quietly across to the small altar in the corner and made a libation of the expensive wine they had bought at an overpriced stall beneath the columned front of the temple of Portunus, filling the bowl-shaped depression on the altar top and mouthing the words of dedication silently. With a small shrug he retrieved one of the cakes from his bag, broke off a piece, placing it on the altar, and then consumed the rest while he waited.

  As the moments crawled by, Fronto started to feel uncomfortable in the almost-silence, pursing his lips curiously as he saw a small smile cross Lucilia’s face as though she had shared a private joke with her mother. More worryingly, as soon as she smiled she turned to look directly at him, and then returned her gaze to the urn with a chuckle. Clearly whatever the joke was, it was at his expense. Under most circumstances, that would irritate him intensely, but given the situation he was inclined to let this one pass uncommented.

  It seemed an age that he stood there, and he kept glancing at the oil lamp, wondering when it would go out, trying to determine where the spare flask of oil was kept to refill it should the room be suddenly plunged into darkness.

  Finally, after a couple of decades of discomfort, Balbus turned and made a questioning face at his daughter. Lucilia nodded, and he took a deep breath. ‘Let’s move on, then.’

  Fronto was the first outside, followed by Lucilia and her little sister. He felt with relief the cold winter air slap him in the face. It felt like emerging from a cave.

  ‘Farewell.’ A voice. Small. Broken.

  Fronto turned in surprise, looking down at Balbina, the younger of the sisters. Lucilia and Balbus’ heads had both snapped round in surprise.

  ‘Balbina?’

  But she had returned to her silent, uninterested façade - so swiftly, in fact, that Fronto would have thought he’d imagined her voice had not the others turned too.

  ‘You heard that?’ Balbus said quietly.

  ‘Yes.’

  The old officer leaned over and reached out, taking his daughter in both hands and gripping her shoulders. ‘You are in there, my girl. Come back and talk to me.’

  Silence. Balbus stood still for some time and waited, but nothing more seemed forthcoming and after a while he straightened and sighed. ‘Well that can only be good,’ he announced with a shaky smile.

  Fronto nodded his agreement but remained silent as the older man blew out the oil lamp and locked the gate to the columbarium before striding back out onto the rutted track that served as a road here. Galronus, Masgava and Palmatus, who seemed to have been having some sort of tactical martial discussion during the visit, fell in once more as guards for the party, their eyes watchful as they scanned the surroundings for any hint of danger.

  ‘I think you’re right, you know, Fronto?’ Balbus said with a restorative breath. ‘I think that when I have the time and the opportunity, I’ll have a new columbarium built somewhere further out and move the family there. Maybe somewhere up the Via Flaminia. Seems to be a popular place for good families these days, so it won’t be lost among insulae any time soon.’

  Fronto nodded his approval, scanning the area. ‘Anyone know where we go from here?’ he asked with a frown.

  ‘I thought you said you knew where it was?’ Balbus replied, rolling his eyes.

  ‘I do. From the forum. But I haven’t the faintest bloody idea where I am now. I couldn’t even find the forum now. Another couple of turns and I’d have trouble finding my own arse!’

  ‘Give me a clue, then,’ Balbus asked wearily.

  ‘It’s across the way from the ovilia, maybe a hundred paces.’

  Balbus turned to the others and pointed off across the road towards a stand of pines that surrounded an almost identical columbarium. ‘Should be down that way, then?’

  Palmatus nodded and pointed off at an angle. ‘More that way. Look over to the right of the trees… you can see the top of Pompey’s monstrosity. It’ll be near there.’

  Trusting their directions to the only member of the group who had spent any length of time in the city in recent years, the party crossed the road and took what looked more like a farm track than anything else, heading towards the monumental marble curve of Pompey’s new theatre which towered distant over the roofs and trees of the Campus Martius.

  They walked on in silence, each with the company of their own thoughts, back through the greenery and into the more populous area of recent constructions which marked the parts of the sacred space that had been parcelled up and sold on to the senate’s cronies. It would have irked Fronto had he not all-but given up caring about the city itself anyway. It seemed these days a seething hive of snakes, rats and cockroaches all in human form, and anyone with any value as a human being seemed to have moved away from the capital into more rural retreats.

  Let them have their city. He would reside in Massilia or Puteoli from now on, as would his family, only coming to the capital when business required. Slowly they approached the estimated location of their goal. Soon enough the great arc of the theatre was lost to sight behind the various buildings of the greatest city in the world, and Fronto once more had no idea of his location, relying on Palmatus’ sense of direction.

  Finally, after half an hour more of travel, the group emerged onto a paved road with a drainage channel - a luxury after the tracks they had wandered ‘til now. Ahead, amid the new houses rising each year and filling the land, and the monumental structures of the rich, the ovilia stood as a strange sight. The place where the population gathered to vote, the ovilia was an open space some thousand feet long and the same wide, surrounded by a neat, well-maintained fence and subdivided into aisles for individual assemblies to vote within, the whole thing dotted with plaques and signs to direct the people to their appropriate places. Despite everything that happened these days in the city, it was somewhat heartening to note that the thugs, drunks, whores, hooligans and so on seemed to have left the place alone, respecting its function in the governing of their city.

  Turning, he was surprised to realise that they had emerged from a side street almost at their intended location. A brick columbarium of some size, graced with a marble façade and a tall statue of Venus stood surrounded by neatly-clipped box hedges and small flower beds, a row of shaped and pruned pines defining the boundaries behind and to the sides. Elegant. A sign of nobility, but with taste and a modicum of modesty.

  ‘There,’ he announced, somewhat redundantly, given that the others had already tur
ned with him to look at the tomb. The building housed the remains of the Julii and the component lines of the extended family. Only a decade ago, when Fronto had first visited with Caesar on the death of his first wife, it had been simple brick - like the others they had seen this morning - but the great general and Proconsul who was currently the shining star of the house had embellished the façade and made sure the family’s progenitor Goddess was appropriately honoured.

  ‘It will be crippling Caesar not to be able to visit his mother at Parentalia,’ Fronto sighed. ‘Is it sacrilegious for us to do it for him? I mean, I knew Aurelia, but she’s not our mother.’

  ‘I suspect the Gods are more flexible and forgiving than most priests would have us believe,’ Balbus smiled sadly. ‘It’s just a shame we can’t get inside, but at least there’s a pleasant garden to sit in while we eat and an altar there by the statue for libations.’

  Fronto nodded. He’d contemplated going to visit one of Caesar’s nieces to ask for a key, but the three Atias were very much not his kind of people - social climbers given to ostentatious displays of new money. Better to steer clear of them for such small favours. Even Caesar had intimated to him more than once how disappointed he was with his sisters’ progeny.

  He peered into the shadows cast by the pine trees and frowned.

  ‘The door’s open, Quintus.’

  Balbus followed his gaze and his own brow wrinkled in surprise and suspicion. If the Julii had come to celebrate Parentalia, there would be a dozen armed ex-legionaries surrounding the place to keep trouble away, so whoever was inside was likely up to no good.

  Fronto turned to Palmatus and Galronus and used what he hoped were clear and obvious gestured instructions for them to circle the mausoleum, check out the rear and then meet him and Balbus at the door, effectively trapping the intruder within. To Masgava he gestured a need to protect the women. The former gladiator nodded and took up a defensive position next to Lucilia, Balbina and Faleria, his eyes darting around the street, taking in every tiny movement.