by Paul Waters
‘Sixteen, uncle. Seventeen in the autumn.’
‘So it is. Then you are a young man now, and I daresay you have been wondering what the future holds for you.’
I fixed my eyes on his heavy bull’s head, thinking, ‘So this is it; well I shall bear it like a man.’ Lucretia had been working on him the night before; that much I knew.
Without looking up he went on, ‘I saw Count Gratian while you were away. He has asked me to attend him at the governor’s palace tomorrow, and now that you are back, I should like you to accompany me.’ He paused, then glanced up, adding, ‘I may as well tell you now: he has asked after you.’
‘Me?’ I said, shocked out of my sullenness. ‘Count Gratian – but who am I to him?’
‘You forget; we are an important family in the city. Besides, it seems he once met your father.’
‘But what does he want with me, sir?’
‘He has not told me, and it is not my place to question him. I expect we shall find out tomorrow.’ He narrowed his eyes at me. ‘What happened to your face?’
‘I cut it, sir.’
‘You should take care. It will leave a mark.’ He returned his attention to his papers. ‘Anyway, we shall make an early start in the morning, so remind the slave to wake you. And now, Drusus, you can take this manifest and go down to the dock. There is a coaster in this morning, with a cargo of Gallic wool for me.’
Next morning I dressed in my one good tunic – white edged with red meanders – and put on my blue-wool mantle, and set out with Balbus for the governor’s palace.
The oldest part of the palace is a marble-faced building with a high pedimented porch, built on three sides of a fountain court. It is as old as the province itself. But the imperial bureaucracy, growing year upon year like a city midden, had found the need for extra space, and the palace had spread over what once had been gardens, into a warren of extensions and annexes, linked by narrow alleyways, covered passages and unexpected doors.
Balbus showed his pass to the sentry at the gate and we were admitted to the inner court. Here a self-important chamberlain received us. He escorted us through vaulted painted rooms of state, and up a marble staircase to an anteroom. He told us to wait, and glided off.
‘I thought he was expecting you,’ I said.
‘Hush, Drusus. He is a busy man.’ He sat uneasily, fidgeting and glancing about. It was as though the grandeur of the place, and the ridiculous pomp of the chamberlain, had cowed him.
At last the chamberlain returned and said Count Gratian would see us now. He led us across the polished floor and through high gilded double-doors.
‘Ah, Balbus, there you are!’
A tall man with a soldier’s lean build and close-cropped grey hair came striding across the chequered floor, leaving a group of uniformed officers. He wore a military tunic and boots, unadorned. But when you were close you could see they were of a fine cut and quality. He took Balbus by the elbow and leading him in said, ‘Now, I have an assignment for you.’
His voice was loud and assured. His Latin had the accent of Pannonia. After the airs of the chamberlain, one might have taken him for some common soldier, as indeed he once was. But I had seen his eyes: they were shrewd and alert.
While Balbus answered with an overlong fawning reply, I glanced about. Loitering at a map-table there were young men in uniform, and a few liveried clerks. Elsewhere I recognized the set of three couches Balbus had shipped from Africa, upholstered in zigzag patterns of honey-yellow, green and blue; and in the corner stood a gilded statue of Hercules, stolid and muscle-bound like a boxer, with a lion’s pelt draped over his shoulder.
I glanced back at Gratian. He was at that time about fifty, older indeed than my uncle, though one would not have thought it. He was lean and hard as a nut. Beside him Balbus looked old and fat and bumbling.
‘Good, that will take care of it then,’ said Gratian, finishing off. ‘The clerk will give you the details, and arrange payment. See him later.’ He spoke like a man used to being obeyed. Then, as if I had been at the back of his mind the whole time, he swung round and looked directly at me.
Though my eyes had been busy, I was still standing straight and respectful (Albinus would have been chewing his nails by now) and had kept my attention on him. I was glad of it: I had the sense, as his sharp eye caught me, that he cared about such things.
‘So this is Appius’s son,’ he said. ‘Yes, I see the likeness, though the boy will not grow as tall.’ He was a man who dealt in fact, not feeling.
At his side, my uncle began saying something about how he had been taking care of me. Gratian listened for a moment, then silenced him.
‘Yes, yes; all this you have told me already. But what are you going to do with him?’
‘Why sir, I had considered he might become a merchant perhaps, especially with business so good—’
‘A merchant?’ he cried, as if Balbus had proposed making me a slave in a tanning-yard. ‘Is that the extent of his ambition?’
‘I believe not, sir. But sometimes necessity—’
Cutting him short, Gratian looked at me and said, ‘And what do you want, young man?’
Without a second thought I replied, ‘I should like to join the army, sir.’
His black eyes widened. Beside him Balbus chuckled nervously.
‘Is that so? Well, you know your own mind, which is a good sign.’
‘Yes, sir, I do.’
Just then the chamberlain returned and moved to Gratian’s side.
‘Yes, Fadius, what now?’
‘Your next appointment, sir.’ He leant forward, raised a shielding hand, and whispered a name.
Gratian nodded, then turned back to me. ‘I think, son of Appius, we can find you something better than merchanting, don’t you? But today it seems everyone in the province wishes to see me, and tomorrow I leave for Gaul. Come back when I return, and we will talk some more. Fadius will arrange it. Goodbye.’
Two months later I returned. A mild autumn had turned suddenly to a winter of bitter cold, the coldest the old men at the docks could remember. Ice had locked the barges in their mooring places; cattle perished in the fields; and in the vineyards the vines froze and withered.
Gratian was in conference with a group of tribunes. They stood gathered around the map-table, smart in their red cloaks and military boots. He finished his business, dismissed them, then came to where I was waiting, saying, ‘Come, son of Appius, let us eat and talk.’
He led me to what I guessed was one of his private rooms, where a table had been laid with food. The room was hung with tapestries and silks, and filled with too many possessions. But the food was simple soldiers’ fare – olives, cheese, sausage and barley loaves. He launched himself at it like a hungry dog, gracelessly, beckoning while he chewed for the steward to fill the wine-cups. But presently he sat back and regarded me.
‘All my life,’ he said through his food, ‘I have been a soldier. My parents were poor peasants on poor land, and their parents and grandparents before them.’ He nodded over his shoulder at the rich furnishings – a polished inlaid table decorated with garlands and harps; a pair of precious thin-necked serpentine vases; a gilt wrought standing-lamp – and continued, ‘The army saved me from that fate, and I have made something of myself. If you’re ambitious, you can get on.’ He washed down his food with a gulp of wine. His next question took me by surprise, for suddenly he asked, ‘Are you a Christian?’
My mind turned quickly. I asked myself what answer he was seeking. Everyone knew the emperor was a fervent Christian. Had someone told Gratian, I wondered, about me and the bishop?
Inwardly I frowned. I had seen no Christian symbols among the hangings and objects of art; but that was equally true of Lucretia’s rooms, except for the fresco of the sad-faced youth with the knowing eyes. So in the end I answered with the truth. It seemed the only thing to do.
‘No, sir,’ I said, ‘I am not.’
‘So sure?’
‘It is a fact. I know it.’
He considered me for a moment, his face giving nothing away. I wondered if he was waiting for me to retract my words. Then he said, ‘I don’t much care for them myself, not in the army anyway – though my son thinks differently.’
I allowed myself to breathe again, while he talked about his son. The boy had been reared as a Christian, he told me, at the insistence of his wife, the child’s mother, who would have her way in such matters. ‘That is women. You can’t fight them.’ He laughed, then asked, ‘Yet Balbus is a Christian, is he not?’
‘Yes, sir, he is.’
‘But not you . . . Are you happy there?’
‘Sometimes I miss my home, sir.’
‘I expect you do; no boy should be without his father.’ He smeared a wad of cheese onto the last of the loaf and pushed it into his mouth, then dabbed at his lips with a napkin. One might have supposed, after the way he had eaten, that he would merely have wiped his face with the back of his grizzled forearm.
‘Still,’ he said, tossing the napkin aside, ‘what’s done is done; a man must make the best of it. As it happens, I am looking for young men of promise to join my staff. I warn you though, the life is not all banquets and parades and entertaining the town trollops, as it is under some generals I could name. I expect discipline, and the life is hard. But if you think you can submit to it, there is a vacancy for you in the corps of Protectors.’
I drew my breath to speak, but he raised his hand.
‘No, I do not want your answer now. Go away and consider, for it will mean many changes. For a start you will have to leave your uncle’s house, and when you think about it you may decide you cannot do without such comforts. You will receive no special favours, let me warn you; and I make no promises about your future. So go away and think, and when you are ready come back and give Fadius your answer.’
And so I left him. On my way out I passed on the stairway an erect bearded white-haired man. I daresay I should not have noticed him at all, so full was my mind with my own thoughts. But the chamberlain was fussing over him, and as I passed I heard him say with crisp impatience, ‘No, leave it; I can manage.’ The chamberlain had a well-developed sense of his place among men. Those he considered below him he treated with disdain. This old gentleman, then, I thought to myself with a smile, was someone of consequence. He was elegantly dressed; but sparely, in clothes that made no concession to fashion. He had a natural dignity, and, under his beard, a stern mouth.
Just then he glanced at me and caught me smiling; and I was sure he returned my look of amusement.
Outside, back in the courtyard, I paused at the frozen fountain and considered my change in fortune. I had known immediately I should take Count Gratian’s offer; I would return next day and tell the chamberlain. Hooves sounded on the cobbles and I glanced up. A stable-lad was leading a grey mare from the yard. As he walked he patted her side and whispered in her ear, and she, as if she understood his words of endearment, tossed her head, nodding contentedly, her breath pluming in the cold air. A group of uniformed young men passed by, talking and laughing. Soon, I thought with a smile, I should be one of them.
I found, to my surprise, that I was thinking of my father. I wished I could tell him, and see him proud and pleased. I pushed the thought away. He was gone, along with all my past life. What’s done is done, as Gratian said. Easy words; I wondered if he had ever confronted the hard truth that lay behind them. Yet in his brusque way he was right: there is no return, for all man’s longing, and a man must make the best of it.
I resolved to offer something to Diana the Huntress, whose deserted temple I had found during my wanderings about the city. Within, there was a faded wall-painting of the goddess set against the new moon, clutching her spear, young and proud and dark-eyed. Since my return from the country, I had taken to going there, and pausing alone in the silence.
But first, I thought, stirring myself to leave, I would see Balbus, and tell him my news.
I was just turning, when from across the stable-yard I heard a voice that made me stop and look.
He had his back to me. He was talking to the groom, with one broad hand resting on the neck of the grey mare. His hair, deprived of summer sun, had returned to its natural colour of old bronze. In his simple plain cloak he might almost have been another of the stable-boys. But even in beggar’s rags I should have known him.
‘Marcellus!’ I cried.
He looked round startled, and seeing me he began to smile. But then he frowned.
‘Hello, Drusus,’ he said coolly.
I thought, ‘He is angry with me, and who can blame him? I expect he waited half a day for me.’ I stood staring like a fool. I wanted to tell him all that had happened; but the groom was watching, and I felt ashamed. So instead, as if it mattered to me, I nodded at the horse and said, ‘A fine creature.’
‘Yes, a beauty. She belongs to Gratian.’
I stroked its sleek neck, and spoke a few words to the groom. Marcellus asked what brought me here to the palace, and I told him I had had business with Gratian, and was on my way out.
‘I am waiting for my grandfather,’ he said. ‘He is inside.’
I searched for something right to say; but no words came. An awkward silence fell between us. From the stable-house someone called for the groom. We both watched as he led the mare away. Marcellus shifted on his feet and glanced towards the portico. He was looking for a reason to be gone, and I think he would have left then, except that he was waiting for his grandfather.
‘Marcellus, listen. I am sorry I didn’t meet you; I—’
‘No matter. I expect something came up and you had things to do.’
‘No, no, I didn’t; it wasn’t that, not at all.’
And then, hesitantly, I began to explain – a hard thing to do at that age in life, when one does not like to admit one is not one’s own master.
But he had that open quality which makes one want to talk, and in the end, I even showed him the scar under my ear where Lucretia’s ring had caught me, adding vehemently that I longed to be away, and that today, at last, I had my chance.
He eased my head round with his hands to look at the scratch. His palms smelled of horse and leather, and felt warm on my cheek.
‘What chance is that?’ he asked, inspecting the tiny wound. And when I told him he said, ‘Will you accept?’
‘But yes, Marcellus, of course.’
He nodded slowly. ‘Then I am happy for you. But for myself I wish you weren’t going away.’
I almost cried out, ‘Do you really?’ But instead I frowned at the cobbles and kicked at them with my boot. ‘I don’t suppose I’ll be going far,’ I said, looking up. ‘I think Gratian will keep me in London, with the others; at least for now.’
‘Your friends will be glad of that.’
I thought of the drunks and gamblers and retired whores I wasted my empty hours with. ‘It won’t concern them overmuch,’ I said with a shrug.
‘No?’ He pushed his hand through his hair, then turned and met my eye. ‘That day, when you did not come, I almost went to your uncle’s villa to find you. I guessed something or other was wrong. You didn’t seem the sort who would change his mind on a whim. I’m glad it wasn’t that.’
‘Oh no, Marcellus!’ I blurted out, ‘not at all! If only you knew! I have thought of nothing else—’ I broke off, reddening.
But the fine contours of his face moved in a smile. ‘Is that so? You know, it’s only by chance that I came here today, and now I find you waiting. I think some god had a hand in it.’
‘Yes,’ I said, looking at him seriously, ‘I think so too.’
The low winter sun had shifted, leaving the courtyard in shadow. He took a deep breath and pulled up his cloak. His breath showed in the cold air. ‘You must be proud. To be chosen as a Protector is quite an honour . . . Not,’ he added with a grin, ‘that they’ll have much to teach you about fighting.’
I laughed. My spirits were lifting. Th
ere are times when the heart knows straightaway what it has been seeking. Mine knew it now. I said, ‘You haven’t seen my horse-riding, though. I think I have forgotten how.’
‘You don’t have a horse of your own then? But no, of course, I should have realized. When did you last ride?’
‘Not since I was a boy, at my father’s house.’
‘It’s not something you forget. We’ll go riding one day if you like. At home we have a whole stable, and you can take your pick.’ He glanced at me, adding, ‘But maybe I am presuming too much? . . .’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I’d like that.’
He smiled. ‘Then good.’ His head went up. ‘But here’s Grandfather at last.’
I looked round. Across the square the bearded white-haired man I had seen on the stairs had appeared under the portico. The chamberlain had waylaid him there. The old man’s face wore an expression of bored courtesy while the chamberlain talked on. His eyes were fixed absently on the row of Corinthian capitals under the roof.
‘I’d better go and rescue him,’ said Marcellus. ‘He loathes the chamberlain.’ He paused and looked at me. ‘When shall I see you?’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘Tomorrow – for sure. I’ll be at the basilica in the forum, at the hour when the Council meets. I’ll wait for you on the steps.’
‘I will be there,’ I said.
‘I am glad to hear it,’ said Balbus, glancing up from a shipping-account laid out in front of him on the desk. ‘It is good news.’
‘Yes, sir. I believe it is.’
‘And it is what you want?’
‘It is, sir.’
‘Then you must go. Of course you must. Though I wonder how I shall manage without you.’
That year, he had ejected the neighbouring tenant in the Street of the Carpenters and expanded his offices. Even in winter he was busy. He had taken on new clerks; and just then everyone was working on a large consignment of supplies to the forts along the northern border, for which a small fleet of ships had been hired. The province was prospering, and so was he.
‘Now where is that manifest?’ he said, looking away. ‘I had it a moment ago.’ He began pushing at the clutter on his desk.