The Horse Changer

by Craig Smith

  THE HORSE CHANGER

  ‘Messala Corvinus said it best of the opportunist, Quintus Dellius: “He was the Horse Changer of our civil war.” In the course of a year, Dellius served Dolabella, then Cassius, and finally Mark Antony…’

  Seneca the Elder

  From Suasoriae 1.7 (trans. C. Smith)

  Also by Craig Smith:

  The Whisper of Leaves

  Cold Rain

  Every Dark Place

  The Painted Messiah

  The Blood Lance

  MYRMIDON

  Rotterdam House

  116 Quayside

  Newcastle upon Tyne

  NE1 3DY

  www.myrmidonbooks.com

  First published in the United Kingdom by Myrmidon 2015

  Copyright © Craig Smith 2015

  Craig Smith has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978-1-910183-13-7

  Set in 11/14pt Sabon by Reality Premedia Services, Pvt. Ltd

  Printed in the UK by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CRO 4YY

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written consent of the publishers.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Charles Blaney, Don Jennermann, and

  Frederick Williams:

  hoi didaskaloi – the (beautiful) teachers.

  I was fifteen when Charles Blaney enticed me to open the Iliad, eighteen when Don Jennermann assigned all the extant tragedies of ancient Greece, and thirty-six when Rick Williams walked with me through Plato’s Symposium at the pace of six lines a day.

  We like to say that our teachers make a difference in our lives, but the truth is only a select few have that kind of impact. I have pursued any number of intellectual passions in my life, but I always come back to the abiding mysteries of antiquity for consolation. For that I have three men to thank. First they were teachers then they were friends, constant and true.

  CRAIG SMITH lives with his wife, Martha, in Lucerne, Switzerland. A former university professor, he holds a doctorate in philosophy form the University of Southern Illinois.

  The Painted Messiah and The Blood Lance, the first of his novels to chronicle the exploits of T.K. Malloy, received international acclaim and have been translated across the globe in twelve languages.

  In 2011, his novel Cold Rain was one of five titles shortlisted for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for Best Thriller.

  CONTENTS

  I VIRTUOUS TEMPERAMENT

  II FIRST BLOOD

  III RONDA

  IV THE IDES OF MARCH

  V A SULPHUROUS FOG

  VI ANTONY

  VII THE WILD BOAR

  VIII QUID PRO QUO

  IX LEGATUS

  X CLEOPATRA

  XI BEYOND ALEXANDRIA

  XII JUDAEA

  XIII THE PROSCRIPTIONS

  XIV PHILIPPI

  XV JUDGEMENT

  XVI HORACE’S WAGER

  XVII BACCHUS

  XVIII THE PARTHIANS

  XIX FLIGHT

  XX A KING FOR THE JEWS

  XXI OLD FRIENDS

  XXII FIRE

  XXIII BETRAYAL

  XXIV THE BEAUTIFUL EXILE

  EPILOGUE

  HORACE’S ODE TO DELLIUS

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I

  VIRTUOUS TEMPERAMENT

  Tuscany: 49 BC

  I was sixteen when Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon and rode into Italy at the head of Legio XIII. I knew several of the young men in Tuscany who joined his auxiliaries and begged my father’s permission to enlist as well. He refused.

  I was old enough, or so I thought, but my father possessed a farmer’s slow reckoning of time. He said I would be of more use to Caesar if I finished my education. I protested that Caesar needed me now, but my father assured me a man like Caesar would always have another battle waiting.

  In the three years that followed, Caesar chased the senate out of Italy, routed the legions of Pompey Magnus in Spain and Greece, secured Egypt and sailed to Pontus on the Black Sea, where he defeated an enemy force on the very day he arrived, uttering in the aftermath of that battle the immortal words, ‘I came, I saw, I conquered.’ Then, when the last of the senate’s forces rallied in Numidia, Caesar sailed his wearied legions to Africa and, after a series of desperate battles, brought our great Civil War to its conclusion.

  In the history of Rome, there had never been three more glorious years of war, or any general the equal of Julius Caesar. And all the while I sat in Tuscany adding summons and learning to parse Greek sentences.

  Rome: 46 BC

  When word came of Caesar’s victory in Africa, my wise father kissed my head and sent me to Rome with his blessing. I was nineteen. My eyes were good in those days, my feet swift, my hands strong. I had a heart brimming with ambition. Like a few thousand other young men of my stripe, I had learned from my early childhood onwards to fight with a sword and hunt with a spear. I could box and wrestle with some skill and even had modest talents in archery. As for the art of horsemanship, I was unrivalled in all of Tuscany.

  I was handsome in my youth, taller than most, with powerful shoulders and dusty brown locks. At seventy years of age, I still have broad shoulders and most of my height; the beautiful locks, however, have gone the way of all that is mortal. Judah, my secretary, smirks as I dictate this. It is always the same with young men: they can imagine any fate for themselves except old age and baldness. I was no different.

  In Rome, I spent each morning for nearly a week in the vestibule of the house of Cornelius Dolabella. I had never met Dolabella, but my father enjoyed a long friendship with his great uncle, who was one of the lords of our province and the grand patriarch of the Cornelii. He had therefore instructed me to approach Dolabella before speaking to any other patrician. This seemed good advice. Dolabella, as everyone knew, was then a rising star in Caesar’s party, which happened to be the only viable political faction left in Rome. Dolabella was twenty-eight years old; in the old days that would have made him too young for command and certainly too young for a position of any importance in the government. In the world Julius Caesar had fashioned, Dolabella was a general of the legions. In fact, he had already been promised a consulship in another year or two.

  To my thinking, no man could match Caesar’s accomplishments, and even with all my ambition I never imagined myself overtaking his glory, not if I had three lifetimes. But I thought I could hope for what Dolabella had accomplished. I decided all I had to do was observe his manner and conduct myself exactly as he did. Of course, I came to this dubious conclusion before I had ever set eyes on the man.

  On the sixth morning I visited Dolabella’s house, the steward pointed to me; there were several of us waiting in the vestibule. I followed with some trepidation as he brought me through a splendid atrium then led me back through the house to the great man’s o
ffice.

  Dolabella was at his desk but had turned away that he might vomit into a bucket, the latest of several profuse offerings, from what I could gather. A servant held the bucket for him and then wiped his lips with a damp cloth after he had finished. Dolabella’s secretary stood to the other side of his dominus, serenely indifferent to the stench in the room and of course the suffering of his master. When Dolabella finally sat upright again, or as upright as his misery allowed, he looked at me with a curiously indulgent smile. ‘Come in, come in, young man. Don’t be bashful. Step forward, let me have a better look at you.’

  ‘Quintus Dellius, from Tuscany,’ his secretary remarked. There was a warning tone in this, but Dolabella seemed not to notice.

  ‘From Tuscany. A country boy. I like that!’

  The secretary interceded at once: ‘He carries a letter from your great uncle, Dominus.’

  ‘Oh.’ A moment of disappointment followed, and I naturally assumed my cause was lost. A sly smile followed, if only to see how I would react. ‘I thought you were breakfast.’ When I did not respond to this, he added, ‘Pity it isn’t so.’ His wet eyes rolled back as if he were about to faint; then he spun suddenly toward his bucket, but it was only for the sake of a few awful dry heaves. When he sat up again, Dolabella looked at me with vacant eyes, then at his secretary. The secretary, divining the problem, whispered, ‘Quintus Dellius from Tuscany.’

  When Dolabella repeated this information, I found myself wondering at his sanity. ‘What is your business, Dellius?’ he asked cheerfully. ‘Selling horses or wine? I’ll wager it’s one or the other from a Tuscan eques.’

  ‘I have brought a letter of introduction from your uncle, Excellency.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course you have. How is the old bandit? Well, I hope?’

  ‘Quite well, Excellency.’

  ‘And he encourages me to give you all my business, I expect?’

  ‘The letter is addressed to you, Excellency. I cannot guess what he encourages you to do.’

  ‘Come then. Bring it forward. You don’t expect me to walk in my condition, do you?’ This was apparently a joke, but I hardly dared get too close, for the stench emanating from that bucket was nearly enough to inspire my own vomiting. Oblivious to the odour, Dolabella waited in his chair until I had stepped up to the very edge of his desk. Only then did he reach out and take the thing.

  I had in fact stolen a glimpse of the letter before it had been rolled up and sealed. It provided a glowing estimation of my potential, not false in any particular but neither was it very critical. Fifty years on, I still recall two of the choicest phrases: ‘…a promising public career ahead of him…’ and the capstone of the piece ‘…a young man of virtuous temperament…’

  Dolabella broke the wax seal holding the letter and unrolled it. As he did this, he leaned to one side of his chair for the sake of an eye-watering fart. I glanced at the secretary, but he showed no reaction, not even to wince at the stench of it. As he read, I looked closely at Dolabella’s features; he was not nearly the beauty his stone portraits made him out to be. He had luxuriously curly hair as advertised, but that was the end of it. His body was too thick for his height, his face too puffy. And he was soft, as if he sat perpetually at his desk or too often rode in a litter.

  Scanning the contents of the letter quickly, Dolabella scowled. Then he threw that precious scroll of mine into his bucket of vomit. ‘So Quintus Dellius comes begging an appointment in the officers’ corps of Caesar’s army after the fighting is finished. Is that how it goes, lad?’

  ‘Certainly there must be a fight left somewhere, Excellency,’ I answered. My father’s bland assurances sounded quite stupid when I repeated them to a general of the legions.

  Dolabella studied me suspiciously. Perhaps he thought I was making a jest; perhaps he was only curious at the degree of naiveté I possessed. His eyes swam over me in a way I did not like. I suspected it even then, but I was very soon to have confirmation that Dolabella was a sensualist without respect for custom or gender. In fact, he seduced whatever creature he fancied and did not care if he borrowed a senator’s wife for an evening of debauchery or used a citizen of Rome as a woman. I was certainly handsome enough to tempt him, but I doubt that is why he ultimately decided to give me a position. I expect the advertisement of my ‘virtuous temperament’ appealed to Dolabella’s keen sense of humour.

  Dolabella gestured to his secretary, who leaned forward and whispered something. He nodded and looked at me again. ‘I’m going to arrange an officer’s training position for you with the German cavalry supporting Legio V. When that has finished, you will join my personal Guard. I am doing this for the sake of the friendship of our two families, but remember this well—on your life, Quintus Dellius! If you disappoint me in even the smallest detail, I will see that you…’

  Before he could finish his threat, Dolabella spun toward his bucket again. As he was still heaving and gagging, I offered my sincerest assurances that I would not disappoint him. Whether he heard me or not, I cannot say. The secretary shooed me from his master’s presence before Dolabella came away from his bucket.

  Legio V had served in Caesar’s African campaign. Its cohorts, at that moment, were still in transit back to southern Gaul. I was therefore instructed to wait in Rome until I received orders to report to the Camp of Mars, fully equipped and ready to travel.

  Anticipating this sort of delay, my father had arranged for a Tuscan family then living in Rome to provide me with lodging in exchange for several large casks of Tuscan wine from our estate. A servant and I had brought these by mule and wagon. The servant had sold the remainder of our cargo in the market place and refilled our wagon with non-perishable goods from a list my father provided him. At that point he returned to our estate, taking my riding horse with him.

  The people I stayed with were second or third cousins on my mother’s side, an elderly couple with grown children, all of whom had married and were living somewhere beyond Rome. My father had brought me to their house for a week when I put on my toga virilis, but that had occurred some five years earlier. I barely recalled the house and did not remember the family until I was standing in their presence again. No matter. They treated me as one of their own. The house, which was located in the very heart of Subura, was a fine old building, though it had seen better days. The neighbourhood was reputedly the worst in all of Rome, with every sort of vice on offer at discount rates. To be honest, such was my excitement at being in Rome, I hardly noticed the quarter’s squalor.

  Perhaps a week after my interview with Dolabella I got an invitation to a party at his house. The note, written over Dolabella’s signature, promised an intimate gathering of the literati ‘with a few dancers and musicians performing, if only to make the evening more bearable’.

  I naturally assumed that by literati Dolabella meant poets and writers, not those fellows who paint graffiti on every building in the city; as for the dancers and musicians I had no idea they would perform without clothing. Of course I had heard about Roman decadence, but I enjoyed a rather sheltered view of it, at least up until the night I attended Dolabella’s party.

  I arrived in a toga and looked the perfect fool. This was Dolabella’s aim, I’m sure. Dolabella’s idea of an intimate gathering was to jam as many people as possible into his house. The property was overflowing with persons from every stratum of society. He mixed the dregs with the most illustrious family names, but only the young and beautiful. No greybeards at his party, nor any fellow who even looked like he had fallen on hard times. The only thing everyone had in common was perversion. Or the willingness to observe it at close quarters.

  I had not been at the party long when I heard the very strangest rumour, preposterous actually, that Dolabella had filled a dozen large jars with coins. A veritable fortune, by all estimates. He proposed to award the entire contents of these to the patrician matron who could tally the highest count of male lovers before the conclusion of the last hour of the night. The con
test did not begin at once, but four contestants were reportedly committed to the game and had begun making appointments. There were other matrons about, most of them without their husbands. They were obviously tempted by the prize as well. They only needed to get up their courage.

  Until the main event began, which I never believed was anything more than a bad joke, we had other distractions. Most notable were the naked musicians and dancers who passed through the crowd; these were often pinched as they went by; some were even kissed. Boy to boy, girl to girl, even boy to girl. It made very little difference to that crowd, I can tell you. Pretty got a kiss, and everyone was pretty.

  Gathered around Dolabella was a clutch of young boys dressed in skimpy tunics, the sort very young girls wear. These fellows had painted themselves as fashionable ladies do, darkened eyes, painted lips, and rouge upon the cheeks. If their hair was not naturally long they wore wigs of the very highest quality. I thought it must be some kind of party gag or a running joke that made no sense to an outsider, but in fact Dolabella treated them as his personal harem. Touch one of them and he would growl like a chained dog. Attempt to lure one of his she-males away and the fight was on.

  Food passed by to be grabbed as one desired and of course one’s cup was simply not permitted to remain empty. After the dancers came an interlude of ribald poetry, then a series of acrobatic trysts featuring two, three, and even four players on a couch. At midnight the party favours were let loose, brothel whores brought in by the cohort. These were ready to kneel on request, but they were only there to tease. After their ministrations had begun in earnest, Dolabella called for the matrons to begin the contest, seven in all. These came for the men already inspired, and I must say many of these ladies were quite lovely creatures at the start of the evening, young, well-tended, and expensively dressed. By dawn they resembled jackals quarrelling over scraps of rotten meat. Strangest of all was the solitary slave who followed each woman around the room, witnessing and then recording her accomplishments.