by Paul Waters
‘I suppose,’ I said, ‘she will blame me.’
‘She has no reason.’
I remembered the day in the snow, and her look from the high window; and I thought, ‘No? But what will she have me do? Walk away?’
I leant over and kissed him. ‘There is her reason,’ I said.
He looked at me with his grey troubled eyes, then looked down at the grass between his knees and nodded. ‘Then let it be. I need you, Drusus.’
I drew a slow breath. In his proud male love he had never said such a thing before. I swallowed, and through my longing and desire saw that he was baring to me his naked soul, which it was in my power to nurture or to harm. Part of him was but a hand’s touch away; and yet the greater part, I knew, was forever beyond my reach.
I said, ‘I will be here always. You know that. I love you.’
He gazed out at the sky, as if considering. After a while he said, ‘See, the clouds are passing; it will be clear tonight. We can build a fire, and make a bed from these blankets. Or must you be back in London?’
I turned my head and met his eyes, to make sure I had understood.
‘Is it what you want?’ I said.
He looked back smiling, then pushed me down in the soft grass.
‘You know it is,’ he said.
It was shortly thereafter that the first trouble in the city began.
It started, as such things often do, with something minor. Marcellus and I, having a day to ourselves, had decided to spend the afternoon at the great city baths near the forum. We were on the way to the dressing-rooms – passing through the entrance concourse with its vaulted arches, coffered painted ceilings and high crisscross windows – when there arose a sudden violent shouting, and then a man’s voice crying out for help.
People glanced round. There was another loud cry; the crowd parted, and in the gap three burly slab-faced men appeared, dragging a fourth from the direction of the warm-room, out across the marble floor towards the exit. The man in their hands – around whom a robe had hastily been thrown – was struggling like a snared rabbit, but one had taken his thin white legs, and the others his arms, and soon he was gone.
The people around us shook their heads and carried on with their business. It was a sorry sight, but every day at the baths there were spats of one sort or another; over a dice-game, or a boy, or some such matter.
We went off to undress, and I should have thought no more of it; but in the changing-room the man beside me said, ‘Too bad for old Fabius, eh?’ So I asked him what had happened.
Fabius, it turned out, was a carpenter who kept a small workshop not far from the docks. Earlier that day he had struck his thumb with a hammer; it was sore, and while he was relaxing in the warm-room he had mumbled a charm to himself to take away the pain. Within minutes men had come bursting in, accusing him of sorcery and of conjuring devils. The rest I had seen for myself.
I said, ‘Don’t the bath-slaves have anything better to do than bully old men?’
He paused, and I saw his eyes move to my soldier’s clothes on the bench. Dropping his voice he said, ‘Warned is protected, as men say. Those weren’t bath-slaves; they were the bishop’s people. I do not ask your beliefs, tribune, and you do not ask mine. But take my advice and mind you do not say a prayer before a temple, or wear a charm in the street. The city is full of spies. You saw what happened to poor Fabius, who is no more than a simple working man who hurt his thumb.’
We said no more.
Each person has his own tale to tell of those days, and what first alerted him to what was happening in the city. To begin with, people tried to ignore it and carry on with their lives, as a man will ignore the onset of some fatal sickness, which he has no power to avert.
Suspicion hung in the air. It crept around one like a cold chill. I began to take note of who was near me, and to mind my words; and, having begun to look, I noticed men with evasive eyes loitering on street corners, or the solitary person at a tavern table, nursing an undrunk cup of beer, bending his head to overhear the talk of those around him. I noticed the second glances and careful faces and speaking eyes.
Then the bishop, newly emboldened, turned his attention to the city schools.
There was a well-known teacher, a woman by the name of Heliodora. It was common knowledge that the bishop had a score to settle with her, for once, when he had objected to the teaching of logic and what he called pagan learning, and had challenged her to a public debate, she had bettered him in front of all the senior professors of the city. She had travelled widely, and had a reputation for outstanding wisdom; she had studied at the schools of Alexandria and Athens, and it was said that there was no one else in the whole province who could speak as knowledgeably as she about Plato and Plotinus. She did not charge more than a person could pay; she used to say, when others suggested that she could have made herself rich, that she preferred her students to possess good minds than rich fathers. Her school was always full, and people of all ages came to her for advice. It was even said that with the aid of music she had cured sicknesses of the mind.
All this the bishop resented. He called her learning sorcery and magic. He called her a corrupter. He mocked her for being a woman, and said she was strange and unnatural because she was unmarried. And now, seeing his opportunity, he moved against her.
I heard it first from Aquinus, one day when I had gone to call on Marcellus. Hearing my voice, he emerged from his study and asked whether by any chance I recalled the name of the bishop’s deacon – ‘that squalid-looking death’s-head of a man.’
‘His name is Faustus,’ I said. ‘But why, sir? Have you seen him?’
‘He has paid a visit to Heliodora. He brought her a warning, saying that if she knew what was good for her, she would close her school and leave the city. I heard it only by chance, through a friend of Gennadius, who has a daughter there. She would not have mentioned it herself; she has no time for women who make a fuss.’
Marcellus said, ‘We’ll go and see her.’
‘Yes; why don’t you? See how she is.’
Her school lay just west of the forum, in the quarter where the copyists and bookshops are.
From the street one scarcely noticed it: there was only a faded wooden door beside a silversmith’s shop. But beyond, a narrow brick passage opened to a courtyard paved with rose-coloured herringbone brickwork, and an enclosing colonnade decorated with frescoes and lined with pots of healing plants. The shuttered windows stood open. From within came the sound of a woman talking, firm and calm, and from elsewhere the plucking of a lyre.
We found Heliodora inside. A class had just finished; a small group of youths and girls were leaving as we entered. The room was simple and unadorned. On one wall a row of musical instruments hung from pegs. There was a cabinet of books, and a table of wooden geometrical shapes – cubes and cones and cylinders.
She was arranging them back in their places, and had her back to the door. Hearing us she turned. She was dressed in a plain workman’s tunic; her hair was cropped short, and her face was fresh and boyish. She was, I guessed, about forty. Her large brown eyes were full of intelligence.
‘Hello, Marcellus,’ she said, ‘I think I can guess why you have come.’ And she gave him a humorous look.
‘People are concerned,’ he said, when he had introduced me.
She looked at the piece she was holding – a pyramid with symbols on its sides – then set it down. ‘That is kind,’ she said, ‘but they must not worry on my account.’
‘What did that deacon want?’
‘He told me to clear out. Are you surprised? The bishop has been waiting a long time to close down the schools, and what better place to start than with me?’
‘He is stronger now.’
She gave him a quick, businesslike smile. ‘Then all the more reason to resist, wouldn’t you say?’
‘What did you tell him?’
‘I asked if love of wisdom had been declared a crime, and when he answered th
at he had not heard so, I told him I would continue then. Besides, I have one or two promising pupils, who, given time, will bear the torch onwards; I could not leave them now, when they are in the middle of their studies.’
‘I can’t decide,’ said Marcellus, frowning at her, ‘whether you are brave or reckless.’
She laughed. ‘Those who cannot face danger are the slaves of their attackers; we cannot unlearn the good that we know, merely to suit the whim of the bishop and his henchmen. It is not just the schools he wants to silence; he wants us to abandon the love of excellence, because the ignorant despise it, and that, surely, we cannot acquiesce to. Or do you have some other answer? Would you have me learn swordsmanship?’
He shook his head, and she continued, ‘But it is a beautiful morning; let us go and sit in the sun, and leave others to dwell on ugliness and vice.’
She took us through to the bright courtyard, and brought a tray of refreshments – some pleasing herbal drink in an earthen jar. For a while we spoke of other things. But when we were taking our leave, Marcellus tried once more.
She heard him out, and smiled, and shook her head.
‘We must bear ourselves as we would wish to be judged. Tell Aquinus we stay faithful to philosophy.’
A farmer, who had come to town to stock up for the winter, was caught with a votive lamp in the portico of the old shrine of Ceres. He was accused of offering sacrifice, and when he was dragged before the notary did not deny it, saying he came once each year to the city, and each year when he had completed his business he lit a flame and thanked the god for the harvest. He was never seen again.
One day, a train of mules appeared in the street in daytime, led by a band of the bishop’s supporters. They took the creatures up to the temple of Concord by the Walbrook, tethered ropes around the slender columns, and brought the stone-roofed portico crashing down into the street. Then they set torches to what remained and danced all night around the fire. I could see the glow even from my window at the fort.
It was the morning after this, before dawn when I was still in bed, that I was woken by a knock on my door.
I leapt up naked, then hesitated and turned, and picked up my dagger from where it lay on the chair.
But it was only Marcellus. ‘They have arrested Gennadius,’ he said.
Before answering, I peered out onto the landing and down the stairwell. Then I pulled him into my room. ‘When? What happened?’
‘He went yesterday to Martinus, to protest about the burning of the temple. It was he who had seen to its restoration, and it angered him to see such a fine building destroyed. But Martinus was busy – or so he said – and the notary saw him instead. He told Gennadius he knew nothing about the matter and sent him away. Then, at dawn this morning, guards came banging on his door with a search warrant – you know his house, it’s in the next street to ours. Gennadius admitted them, saying he had nothing to hide. But he had the good sense to send his slave out by the back door to Grandfather, to warn him.’
He poured himself a cup of water from the flask beside my bed and sat down, holding the cup in his hands and staring down at it.
‘I went there straightaway; I ran, taking the alleyway at the back. But by the time I arrived, Gennadius was already gone . . . You should have seen the house, Drusus: it looked as if it had been looted. They had broken up the furniture, and smashed the vases and plate, and torn down the wall-hangings. I found his wife in the pantry, hiding with the maid. I calmed her, and eventually brought her back to the house, and she told us what had happened, once the terror of it had left her enough to get the words out.’
I sat down beside him. ‘What did she say?’ I asked.
‘She said the captain of the guard had produced a letter written in Gennadius’s hand, claiming it incriminated him in treason. And it was his handwriting all right – it was a note he had sent to some merchant a few days before. But the incriminating part was at the bottom, where someone had added an extra line, cursing the emperor. It was in some crude hand, misspelt, clearly not Gennadius – even the colour of the ink was different.’
‘But surely,’ I cried, ‘no one can take this seriously!’
He shrugged. ‘They have already charged him with plotting to kill the emperor, and the sentence is death.’
I stared at him. ‘Where is he now?’
‘In the cells at the governor’s palace.’
I knew the cells. I had seen them when I was still serving under Gratian. They were disused then, a store for discarded furniture and old pots, and anything else that could withstand the damp and the rats. I said, ‘A week in that place will kill him.’
Marcellus drew his hand through his hair and looked at me. ‘That’s what Grandfather said. He has gone to see Martinus.’
‘What?’ I cried.
‘I know . . . I know.’ He shook his head. ‘He says Gennadius is his friend: he will not leave him. I told him at least to take me with him, but he would not. He said it was better that he went alone and spoke to Martinus without an audience, and, if necessary, made claims on their old friendship, privately, one man to another.’
‘But surely he cannot—’ But before I could finish there was a heavy rap on the door. The words froze in my mouth. My eyes met Marcellus’s.
‘I was not followed,’ he said in a low voice, ‘I made sure of it.’
I strode to the door and snatched it open, and for a moment gaped like a fool. It was one of my troop, dressed in his full battle-armour with his marching-pack on his back. He had come to say the men were waiting in the parade-ground, and had I forgotten them? We had arranged for exercises that morning.
I stared at him, and he at me. I was naked still, with my dagger in my hand, like some Homeric image on a carving.
‘You’d better see to your men,’ said Marcellus. ‘I’ll be at the house.’
He moved to the door, but I caught his arm. ‘No, wait. I’m coming with you.’
We ran through the streets to Aquinus’s town-house. Just as Marcellus reached for the bronze lion-head doorknocker, the door swung open and Clemens appeared, with one of Gennadius’s slaves standing behind him.
‘Oh, sir, there you are! I was just coming to find you.’
‘We are going to the palace,’ said Marcellus.
‘There is no need, they are here – the master, and Gennadius too.’
We found them in the formal sitting-room with its four painted panels of the seasons – spring, summer, autumn and winter – each season portrayed as a garlanded nymph, set against a backdrop of fields and vineyards and columned shrines. Gennadius was sitting on the couch, with his plump grey-haired wife beside him, and she was looking at him as if he had just climbed off his death-bier. He had not had time to shave; under the night-stubble his broad face was drawn and wan. One of the house-slaves had brought a cup of warmed wine and a dish of rusks. They stood forgotten on a little threelegged table beside him.
Aquinus said, ‘I think, Gennadius, we had better begin again, now that Marcellus and Drusus are here.’
And so, between them, they told us what had happened.
Aquinus, when he arrived at the palace, had insisted on seeing the governor, and would take no denial. There followed some argument with the officials, but eventually he was admitted.
‘Martinus was still in his night-robe. I had clearly woken him. He told me he knew nothing of the matter. So I asked him to summon the notary Paulus, and when, after a long delay, he finally appeared, I demanded to see the offending letter. The notary, if you can believe this, refused.’
‘I imagine,’ said Gennadius, ‘he had not finished reworking it.’
‘Perhaps so; but this was too much even for Martinus. He ordered the notary to fetch the letter forthwith, and, after an excessive wait and with a good deal of reluctance, it was finally produced. Really, I have never seen such a thing! Only a fool could give credence to such an illiterate scrawl – and that is what I told him.’
‘You told the no
tary that?’ I cried, shocked out of all civility.
Aquinus gave me a grave look. ‘How not? The whole thing was a clear lie, a fabrication. I told the notary he must have been misled by one of his over-zealous subordinates, unless, perhaps, he could think of some other explanation.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He grew angry. I shall not dwell on all he said; but after some dispute he conceded that there might after all have been an error, and he would look into it.’
I shook my head, wondering at his coolness. But only when Gennadius and his wife had gone to another room to rest did I say, ‘You should not have gone alone, sir. You took a great risk.’
He frowned under his white beard. ‘Yes, Drusus, and I am grateful for your concern; but as I have already said to Marcellus, there are laws of friendship which transcend any law the emperor may decree. Besides, I was guided by hard prudential reason, as well as decency. Gennadius was innocent. If we allow the bishop and his notary friend to move against him, then who will be next?’
After this, the last thing I expected was for Martinus to seek Aquinus out. Perhaps he felt shame. At all events, a few days later, Aquinus asked me if I was free next evening to dine, saying with an ironic sparkle in his eye, ‘A guest has invited himself to dinner, and you may like to meet him. It is the governor.’
Martinus arrived next day at sunset, accompanied by an entourage of guards who waited in the street. He greeted us with easy, well-bred courtesy, the kind that comes to certain men without having to think. He was finely dressed in a woollen close-weave tunic with a simple border in green and gold; an inlaid belt; a small swan brooch of chased silver; a signet set with red cornelian. There was nothing forced, nothing showy, nothing out of place.
He complimented Aquinus on the banquet, adding that he prided himself on being a judge of good food; and in between the compliments he talked at length of his Italian estates, which were extensive, and of the schools of Rome where he and Aquinus had first known each other. He related minor political gossip – which friend of his was in the ascendancy and which had suffered a fall. He spoke in affectionate detail about the alterations he was making to his villa near Arpinum, where he was adding a summer dining-room which opened onto a raised terrace.