Julius called Ciro over and watched as he calmly checked the two Romans, breaking off the remaining bodies with his powerful hands.
“They’re still in me! Can’t you get the heads out?” Suetonius pleaded with him, shuddering in terror as he stood almost naked while the big man searched his skin for the last of them.
Ciro shrugged. “The jaws must be dug free with a knife, they can’t be prized apart. The tribes use them to close wounds, like stitches.”
“What are they?” Julius asked.
“Soldiers of the forest. They guard the column on the march. My father used to say they were like the outriders Rome uses. If you stay clear, they will not attack you, but if you are in their path, they’ll make you jump like Suetonius.”
Pelitas turned a baleful eye on the column that still streamed through the camp. “We could burn them,” he said.
Ciro shook his head sharply. “The line is endless. Better just to move away from them.”
“Right, you heard him,” Julius said. “Pack up and get ready to move a mile down the coast. Suetonius, I want you clothed and ready to go. You and Pelitas can work the jaws out of your skin when we’re settled again.”
“It’s agony,” Suetonius whimpered.
Ciro looked at him and Julius felt a pang of shame and irritation that the young officer was showing such a poor face to the recruits.
“Move, or I’ll tie you down over the ants myself,” he said.
The threat seemed to have an effect, and before the moon moved far in the sky, a new camp was set up, with Ciro and two others finishing their watch. They would all be tired from lack of sleep in the morning after the excitement.
Julius’s head throbbed slowly, seeming to match the rhythms of the droning insects all around them. Every time he drifted into sleep, he’d feel the sting of an insect settling onto his exposed skin. They left smears of his own blood as he caught and cracked them, but there were always more waiting for him to lie still. He made a pillow of his kit and used a rag to cover his face, longing for the distant skies of Rome. For a moment, he could see Cornelia in his mind and he smiled. Exhaustion hit him moments later.
* * *
With itching red swellings on their skin and shadows under their eyes, they reached the next settlement before noon, less than a mile from the coast. Julius led the men into the square, taking in the sights and smells of a touch of civilization. He was struck again by the absence of fortifications of any kind. The old soldiers who had taken their lands on this coast must have little fear of attack, he thought. The farms were small, but there must be trade between these isolated places and native villages farther into the interior. He saw a number of black faces among the Romans who gathered to see his men. He wondered how long it would take for the Roman blood to mingle and be lost, so that distant generations would know nothing at all of their ancient fathers and their lives. The land would return to whatever state it had been in before they came, and even the stories around campfires would falter and be forgotten. He wondered if they remembered the empire of Carthage here, when thousands of ships had explored the world from ports along this very coastline. It was a chilling thought and he put it aside for later reflection, knowing he had to focus his mind if he was to come away from this place with more of what he needed.
As they had been told to do, his men stood to attention in the double line, their expressions serious. With Julius’s sword, only eight more of the men were armed and only three had proper armor. Spots of blood marked Suetonius’s tunic and his fingers twitched to itch the scabs the ants had left all over him. Most of the Accipiter officers were raw from the sun and insects, and only the new recruits seemed unaffected.
Julius guessed they looked more like a troop of bandits or pirates than Roman legionaries, and saw more than a few of the people arm themselves surreptitiously, nervousness showing in all of them. A butcher paused in the process of cutting up what looked like a cousin of the young pig they had eaten the previous evening. He came out from behind his table with the cleaver resting on his arm, ready for a sudden attack. Julius let his gaze drift over the crowd, looking for whoever had the command. There was always someone, even in the wilderness.
After a tense wait, five men approached from the far end of the houses. Four were armed, three of them with long-handled wood axes and the last carrying a gladius that had snapped in some old battle, leaving him with little better than a heavy dagger.
The fifth man walked confidently to the newcomers. He had iron-gray hair and was thin as a stick. Julius guessed he was pushing sixty, but he had the upright bearing of an old soldier, and when he spoke, it was in the fluent Latin of the city.
“My name is Parrakis. This is a peaceful village. What do you want here?” he asked.
He addressed his question to Julius and seemed unafraid. In that moment, Julius changed his plan of browbeating the leader as he had the first. The village might have dealings with the pirates, but there was little evidence that they had profited from it. The houses and people were clean but unadorned.
“We are soldiers of Rome, lately of the galley Accipiter. We were ransomed by a pirate named Celsus. We mean to gather a crew and find him. This is a Roman settlement. I expect your aid.”
Parrakis raised his eyebrows. “I am sorry, there is nothing here for you. I haven’t seen Italy for twenty years or more. There is no debt to be paid by the families here. If you have silver, you may buy food, but then you must go.”
Julius stepped a little closer, noting the way Parrakis’s companions tensed while ignoring them conspicuously.
“These lands were given to legionaries, not to pirates. This coast is infested with them and you have a duty to help us.”
Parrakis laughed. “Duty? I left all that behind a lifetime ago. I tell you again, Rome has no call on us here. We live and trade in peace, and if pirates come we sell our goods to them and they leave. I think you are looking for an army? You won’t find it in this village. There’s nothing of the city here, amongst farmers.”
“Not all the men with me are from the ship. Some are from villages to the west. I need men who can be trained to fight. Men who are not willing to spend their lives hiding in this village as you do.”
Parrakis flushed with anger. “Hiding? We work the land and struggle against pests and disease just to feed our families. The first ones came from legions that fought with honor in lands far from home and finally received the last gift of the Senate—peace. And you dare to say we are hiding? If I was younger, I would take a sword to you myself, you insolent whoreson!”
Julius wished he had just grabbed the man at the start. He opened his mouth to speak quickly, knowing he was losing the initiative. One of the men with axes broke in first.
“I’d like to go with them.”
The older man whirled on him, spittle collecting whitely at the corners of his mouth. “To go and get yourself killed? What are you thinking?”
The axe carrier pursed his lips against the anger coming from Parrakis. “You always said they were the best years of your life,” he muttered. “When the old men get drunk, you always talk about those days like they were gold. All I have is the chance to break my back from dawn to dusk. What will I tell people when I am old and drunk? How good it was to slaughter a pig at festival? The time I broke a tooth on a piece of grit in the bread we make?”
Before the stupefied Parrakis could reply, Julius broke in, “All I ask is that you put it to the people of the village. I’d prefer volunteers, if there are more like this one.”
The anger sagged from Parrakis, making him look exhausted.
“Young men,” he said with a note of resignation. “Always looking for excitement. I suppose I was the same, once.” He turned to the axe carrier. “Are you sure, lad?”
“You’ve got Deni and Cam to work the farm, you don’t need me as well. I want to see Rome,” the young man replied.
“All right, son, but what I said was true. There’s no shame in making a
life here.”
“I know, Father. I’ll come back to you all.”
“Of course you will, boy. This is your home.”
In all, eight from the village volunteered. Julius took six of them, turning down a pair who were little more than children, though one of them had rubbed soot onto his chin to make it look like the shadow of stubble. Two of the newcomers brought their own bows with them. It was beginning to feel like the army he needed to crew a ship and hunt the seas for Celsus. Julius tried to control his optimism as they marched out of the lush trees toward the coast for the first of the day’s drills. He tallied what they needed in his head. Gold to hire a ship, twenty more men and thirty swords, enough food to keep them alive until they reached a major port. It could be done.
One of the bowmen tripped and fell flat, bringing most of the column to a staggering halt. Julius sighed. About three years to train them would be useful, as well.
CHAPTER 12
Servilia sat on the edge of the couch, her back straight. The tension was clear in every line of her, but Brutus felt he should not speak first. He had been awake for most of the night without resolving anything. Three times he had decided not to visit the house near Quirinal hill, but each time had been an empty gesture of defiance. There had never really been a moment when he wouldn’t have come to her. He felt nothing like a son’s love, yet some nebulous ideal made him return, with all the fascination of picking scabs and watching himself bleed for her.
He had wanted her to come for him when he was a child, when he was alone and frightened of the world. When Marius’s wife had smothered him with her need for a son, he had recoiled from it, unnerved by emotions he didn’t really understand. Still, the woman who faced him had a call on him that no one else had, not Tubruk, not even Julius.
In the unnatural stillness, he drank her in, looking for something he couldn’t name or even try to understand. She wore a pure white stola against sun-dark skin without any jewelry. As it had been the day before, her long hair was unbound, and when she moved, it was with a lithe grace that made it a pleasure just to watch her walk and sit, as much as he might admire the perfect gait of a leopard or deer. Her eyes were too large, he decided, and her chin too strong for classical beauty, yet he could not look away from her, noting the lines that marked her eyes and around her mouth. She seemed coiled and taut, ready to leap up and run from him as she had before. He waited and wondered how much of the tension showed in his own features.
“Why did you come?” she asked, breaking the awful silence. How many answers to that question had he thought through! Scene after scene had played in his imagination in the night: scorning her, offending her, embracing her. None of it had prepared him for the actual moment.
“When I was a child, I used to imagine what you were like. I wanted to see you, even once, just to know who you were. I wanted to know what you looked like.” He heard his voice tremble and a spasm of anger rushed through him. He would not shame himself. He would not speak like a child to this woman, this whore.
“I have always thought of you, Marcus,” she said. “I started many letters to you, but I never sent them.”
Brutus took a grip on his thoughts. He had never heard his name from her mouth in all his years of being alive. It made him angry, and anger allowed him to speak calmly to her.
“What was my father like?” he asked.
She looked away at the walls of the simple room where they sat.
“He was a good man, very strong and as tall as you are. I only knew him for two years before he died, but I remember he was very pleased to have a son. He named you and took you to the temple of Mars to have you blessed by the priests. He became ill that year and was taken before winter. The doctors couldn’t treat him, but there was very little pain at the end.”
Brutus felt his eyes fill and brushed at them angrily as she continued.
“I . . . couldn’t bring you up. I was a child myself and I wasn’t ready or able to be a mother. I left you with his friend and ran away.” Her voice broke completely on the last phrase, and she opened her clenched hand to reveal a crumpled cloth that she used to wipe her eyes.
Brutus watched her with a peculiar sense of detachment, as if nothing she did or said could touch him. The anger had drained away and he felt almost light-headed. There was a question he had to ask, but it came easily now.
“Why didn’t you come for me while I was growing up?”
She didn’t answer for a long time, using the cloth to touch away the tears until her breathing had steadied and she was able to look at him again. She held her head with a fragile dignity.
“I did not want you to be ashamed.”
His unnatural calm gave way to the emotions sweeping him, revealed as straw in a storm.
“I might have been,” he whispered hoarsely. “I heard someone talking about you a long time ago and I tried to pretend it was a mistake, to put you out of my mind. It is true then, that you . . .”
He couldn’t say the words to her, but she straightened still further, her eyes glittering.
“That I am a whore? Perhaps. I was once, though when the men you know are powerful enough, they call you a courtesan, or even a companion.” She grimaced, her mouth twisting.
“I thought you might be ashamed of me, and I couldn’t face seeing that in my son. Do not expect me to feel that shame. I lost that too long ago to even remember. I would live my life differently if I could go back, but I don’t know anyone who hasn’t the same useless, idle dream. I will not live my life now with my head bowed in guilt every day! Even for you.”
“Why did you ask me to come back today?” Brutus asked, suddenly incredulous that he had answered the call so easily.
“I wanted to see if your father would still be proud of you. I wanted to see if I was proud of you! I have done many things in my life that I regret, but having you has comforted me whenever it was all too much to bear.”
“You left me! Don’t say it comforted you, you never even came to see me. I didn’t even know where you were in the city! You might have gone anywhere.”
Servilia held up four rigid fingers to him, folding her thumb under them.
“Four times I have moved house since you were a baby. Each time I sent a message to Tubruk to say where I was. He has always known how to contact me.”
“I didn’t know,” he replied, struck by her intensity.
“You never asked him,” she said, dropping her hand back into her lap.
The silence began again as if it had never been broken, suddenly swelling into the spaces between them. Brutus found himself looking for something he could say that would finally confound her, allowing him to walk out and away with dignity. Cutting remarks came and went in his thoughts until he finally saw that he was being a fool. Did he despise her, feel shame about her life or her past? He looked inside for an answer and found one. He felt not a scrap of shame. He knew in part it was because he had led men as an officer in a legion. If he had come to her when he had done nothing, he might hate her, but he had stood and measured his worth in the eyes of enemies and friends and was not afraid to measure it in hers.
“I . . . don’t care what you have done,” he said slowly. “You are my mother.”
She burst into a guffaw of laughter, rocking back into the couch. Once again he was lost in front of this strange woman, who was able to shatter every moment of calm he could summon.
“How nobly you say it!” she said through laughter. “Such a stern face to give me absolution. Did you not understand me at all? I know more about the way this city runs than any senator in his little robe and trim beard. I have more wealth than I could ever spend and more power in my word than you can imagine. You forgive me for my wicked life? My son, it breaks my heart to see how young you are. It reminds me of how young I was, once.”
Her face became still and the laughter died from her lips.
“If I wanted you to forgive me anything, it would be for the years I could have had with you. Who
I am, I would not change for anything, and the paths I have traveled to reach this day, this hour! They cannot be forgiven. You don’t have the right or the privilege to do it.”
“Then what do you want with me? I can’t just shrug and tell you to forget that I grew to manhood without you. I needed you once, but those I trust and love are the ones who were with me then. You were not there.”
He stood and looked down at her, confused and hurt. She stood with him.
“Will you leave me now?” she said quietly.
Brutus threw up his hands in despair.
“Do you want me to come back?” he asked.
“Very much,” she said, reaching out to touch him on the arm. The contact made the room waver and blur.
“Good. Tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow,” she confirmed, smiling through tears.
* * *
Lucius Auriga hawked and spat irritably. There was something about the air of central Greece that always dried his throat, especially when the sun was warm. He would much rather have been enjoying an afternoon sleep in the shade of his house than be summoned to this vast plain, where the constant breeze wore at his temper. It wasn’t fitting for a Roman to be at the call of Greeks, no matter what their standing, he thought. It would no doubt be another complaint for him to deal with, as if he had nothing more to fill the days than to listen to their griping. He tugged his toga into position as they approached him. He must not seem discomfited by their choice of meeting place. After all, they were forbidden to ride, whereas he could simply mount up and be back inside the walls of Pharsalus before dark.
The man who had sent the summons walked unhurriedly toward them with two companions. His enormous shoulders and arms hung loosely, swinging slightly with his long stride. He looked as if he was fresh down from the mountains that broke the horizon all around them, and for a moment Lucius shivered delicately. At least they had not come armed, he thought. Mithridates was not usually a man who remembered to obey the laws of Rome. Lucius studied him as he walked over the scrub grass and wildflowers. He knew the locals still called him the king, and at least he walked like one, with his head unbowed, despite his disastrous rebellion.
Emperor: The Death of Kings Page 14