Finally, she summoned enough courage to speak to him.
‘Do you buy items?’ she said.
‘Sometimes,’ came the reply. ‘What do you have?’
She produced the bronze disc from a pocket in her tunic and he took it from her hand, holding it up to the daylight to see the design. He held it for a long time and she didn’t dare speak for fear of angering him. Still he said nothing, just turned it over and over in his hands, examining every last mark on the metal.
‘Where did you get this?’ he asked at last.
‘I made it. Do you know Bant?’
The man nodded slowly.
‘He has been showing me how.’
‘This is crude, but I can sell it on. The execution is clumsy, but the design is very good. The lion’s face is very well scribed, it’s just that you aren’t very skilled with the hammer and awl.’ He turned it over again.
‘Tell me the truth now, you understand? Where did you get the bronze to make this?’
Alexandria looked at him nervously. He returned her stare without blinking, but his eyes seemed kind. Quickly she told him about her bargaining and how she had saved a few tiny coins from the house money, enough to purchase the bare metal circle from a stall of trinkets.
Tabbic shook his head. ‘I can’t take it then. It isn’t yours to sell. The coins belonged to Marius, so the bronze is his as well. You should give it to him.’
Alexandria felt tears threaten to start. She had spent so long on the little piece and now it had all come to nothing. She watched, almost hypnotised, as he turned it over in his grasp. Then he pressed it back into her hands.
Miserable, she put the disc back in her pocket.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
He turned back to her. ‘My name is Tabbic. You don’t know me, but I have a reputation for honesty and sometimes for pride.’ He held up another metal circle, a grey silver in colour.
‘This is pewter. It’s softer than bronze and you’ll find it easier to work. It polishes up nicely and doesn’t discolour as badly, just grows dull. Take it, and return it to me when you have made something of it. I’ll attach a pin and sell it on as a cloak fastener for a legionary. If it’s as good as the bronze one, I could get a silver coin for it. I’ll take back the price of the pewter and the pin and you will be left with six, maybe seven quadrantes. A business transaction, understand?’
‘Where is your profit in this?’ Alexandria asked, her eyes wide at the change in fortune.
‘None for this first one. I am making a small investment in a talent I think you have. Give Bant my regards when you see him next.’
Alexandria pocketed the pewter circle and once again had to fight against tears. She wasn’t used to kindness.
‘Thank you. I will give the bronze to Marius.’
‘Make sure you do, Alexandria.’
‘How … how do you know my name?’
Tabbic picked up the ring he had been working on as she came in.
‘Bant talks of little else when I see him.’
Alexandria had to run to be back before the two hours were up, but her feet were light and she felt like singing. She would make the pewter disc into a beautiful thing and Tabbic would sell it for more than a silver coin and clamour for more until her work brought in gold pieces, and one day she would gather her profits together and buy herself free. Free. It was a giddy dream.
As she was let into Marius’ house, the scent of the gardens filled her lungs and she stood for a moment, just breathing in the evening air. Carla appeared and took her bags and the coins, nodding at the savings as always. If the woman noticed anything different about Alexandria, she didn’t say, but she smiled as she took the supplies down to the cool basement stores, where they wouldn’t spoil too quickly.
Alone with her thoughts, Alexandria didn’t see Gaius at first and wasn’t expecting him. He spent most of his days matching his uncle’s punishing schedule, returning to the house at odd hours only to eat and sleep. The guards at the gate let him in without comment, well used to his comings and goings. He started as he saw Alexandria in the gardens and stood for a moment, simply enjoying the sight of her. Evening was coming on with late-summer slowness, where the air is soft and the light has a touch of grey for hours before it fades.
She turned as he approached and smiled at him.
‘You look happy,’ he said, smiling in return.
‘Oh, I am,’ she replied.
He had not kissed her since the moment in the stables back on the estate, but he sensed the time was right at last. Marcus was gone and the town house seemed deserted.
He bent his neck and his heart thumped painfully with something almost like fear.
He felt her warm breath before their lips touched and then he could taste her and he gathered her up in a natural embrace, as they seemed to fit together without effort or design.
‘I can’t tell you how often I have thought of this,’ he murmured.
She looked into his eyes and knew there was a gift she could give him and found she wanted to.
‘Come along to my room,’ she whispered, taking his hand.
As if in a dream, he followed her through the gardens to her quarters.
Carla watched them go.
‘And about bloody time,’ she muttered.
At first, Gaius was worried that he would be clumsy, or worse, quick, but Alexandria guided his movements and her hands felt cool on his skin. She took a little bottle of scented oil from a shelf and he watched as she spilled a few sluggish drops onto her palms. It had a rich scent that filled his lungs as she sat astride him, rubbing it gently into his chest and lower, making him gasp. He took some of it from his own skin and reached upwards to her breasts, remembering the first time he had seen their soft swell in the courtyard of the estate so long ago. He pressed his mouth gently against one then the other, tasting her skin and moving his lips over the oily nipples. She opened her mouth slightly, her eyes closing at his touch. Then she bent to kiss him and her unbound hair covered them both.
As the evening darkened, they joined with urgency and then again with playfulness and a kind of delight. There was little light in her room without the candles, but her eyes shone and her limbs were darkened gold as she moved under him.
He woke before dawn to find her gaze on his face.
‘This was my first time,’ he said quietly. Something in him told him not to ask the question, but he had to know. ‘Was it the first for you?’
She smiled, but it was a sad smile.
‘I wish it had been,’ she said. ‘I really do.’
‘Did you … with Marcus?’
Her eyes widened slightly. Was he truly so innocent that he didn’t see the insult?
‘Oh, I would have, of course,’ she replied tartly, ‘but he didn’t ask.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, blushing, ‘I didn’t mean …’
‘Did he say we did?’ Alexandria demanded.
Gaius kept his face straight as he replied: ‘Yes, I’m afraid he boasted about it.’
‘I’ll put a dagger in his eye the next time I see him, gods!’ Alexandria raged, gathering her clothes to dress.
Gaius nodded seriously, trying not to smile at the thought of Marcus returning innocently.
They dressed hurriedly, as neither wanted the gossips to see him coming out of her room before the sun was up. She left the slave quarters with him and they sat together in the gardens, brushed by a warm night wind that moved in silence.
‘When can I see you again?’ he said quietly.
She looked away and he thought she wouldn’t answer. Fear rose in him.
‘Gaius … I loved every moment of last night: the touch and feel and taste of you. But you will marry a daughter of Rome. Did you know I wasn’t Roman? My mother was from Carthage, taken as a child and enslaved, then made into a prostitute. I was born late. I should never have been born so late to her. She was never strong after me.’
‘I love you,’ Gaius said,
knowing it was true for at least that moment and hoping that was enough. He wanted to give her something that showed she was more than just a night of pleasure for him.
She shook her head lightly at his words.
‘If you love me, let me stay here in Marius’ home. I can fashion jewellery and one day I will make enough to buy myself free. I can be happy here as I could never be if I let myself love you. I could, but you would be a soldier and leave for distant parts of the world and I would see your wife and your children and have to nod to them in the street. Don’t make me your whore, Gaius. I have seen that life and I don’t want it. Don’t make me sorry for last night. I don’t want to be sorry for something so good.’
‘I could free you,’ he whispered, in pain. Nothing seemed to make sense.
Her eyes flashed in anger, quickly controlled. ‘No, you couldn’t. Oh, you could take my pride and sign me free by Roman law, but I would have earned it in your bed. I am free where it matters, Gaius. I realise that now. To be a free citizen in law, I must work honestly to buy myself back. Then I am my own. I met a man today who said he had honesty and pride. I have both, Gaius, and I don’t want to lose either. I will not forget you. Come and see me in twenty years and I will give you a pendant of gold, fashioned with love.’
‘I will,’ he said. He leaned in and kissed her cheek, then rose and left the scented gardens.
He let himself out onto the streets of the city and walked until he was lost and too tired to feel anything except numbness.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
As the moon rose, Marius frowned at the centurion.
‘My orders were clear. Why have you not obeyed them?’
The man stammered a little as he replied: ‘General. I assumed there had been a mistake.’ His face paled as he spoke. He knew the consequences. Soldiers did not send messengers to query their orders, they obeyed them, but what he had been asked was madness.
‘You were told to consider tactics against a Roman legion. Specifically, to find ways to nullify their greater mobility outside the gates. Which part did you not understand?’ Marius’ voice was grim and the man paled further as he saw his pension and rank disappearing.
‘I … No one expects Sulla to attack Rome. No one has ever attacked the city –’
Marius interrupted him. ‘You are dismissed to the ranks. Fetch me Octavius, your second-in-command. He will take your place.’
Something crumpled out of the man. More than forty years old, he would never see promotion again.
‘Sir, if they do come, I would like to be in the first rows to meet them.’
‘To redeem yourself?’ Marius asked.
The man nodded, sickly.
‘Granted. Yours will be the first face they see. And they will come, and not as lambs, but wolves.’
Marius watched the broken man walk stiffly away and shook his head. So many found it difficult to believe that Sulla would turn against their beloved city. For Marius it was a certainty. The news he received daily was that Sulla had finally broken the back of the rebel armies under Mithridates, burning a good part of Greece to the ground in the process. Barely a year had passed, and he would be returning as a conquering hero. The people would grant him anything. With such a strong position, there was no chance of him leaving the legion in the field or in a neighbouring city while he and his cronies came quietly back to take their seats in the Senate and go on as usual. This was the gamble Marius had taken. Though there was nothing else he could find to admire about the man, Sulla was a fine general and Marius had known all along that he could win and return.
‘The city is mine now,’ he muttered thickly, looking about him at the soldiers building ramparts onto the heavy gates for arrow fire. He wondered where his nephew had got to and noted absently how little he’d seen of him in the last few weeks. Tiredly, he rubbed the bridge of his nose, knowing he was pushing himself too hard.
He had snatched sleep for a year as he built his supply lines and armed his men and planned the siege to come. Rome had been recreated as a city fortress and there was not a weak point in any of the walls. She would stand, he knew, and Sulla would break himself on the gates.
His centurions were hand-picked and the loss of one that morning was a source of irritation. Each man had been promoted for his flexibility, his ability to react to new situations, ready for this time, when the greatest city in the world would face her own children in battle – and destroy them.
Gaius was drunk. He stood on the edge of a balcony with a full goblet of wine, trying to steady his vision. A fountain splashed in the garden below and blearily he decided to go and put his head into the water. The night was warm enough.
The noise from the party was a crashing mix of music, laughter and drunken shouting as he moved back inside. It was past midnight and no one was left sober. The walls were lined with flickering oil lamps, casting an intimate light over the revellers. The wine slaves filled every cup as soon as it was drained and had been doing so for hours.
A woman brushed against Gaius and draped an arm over his shoulder, giggling, making him spill some red wine onto the cream marble floor. Her breasts were uncovered and she pulled his free hand onto them as she pressed her lips to him.
He broke for air and she took his wine, emptying the cup in one. Throwing it over her shoulder, she reached down into the folds of his toga, fondling him with erotic skill. He kissed her again and staggered back under her drunken weight until his back pressed up against a column near the balcony. He could feel its coolness against his back.
The crowd were oblivious. Many were only partly dressed and the sunken pool in the middle of the floor churned with slippery couples. The host had brought in a number of slave girls, but the debauchery had spread with the drunkenness and by this late hour the last hundred guests were ready to accept almost anything.
Gaius groaned as the stranger opened her mouth on him and he signalled a passing slave for another cup of wine. He spilled a few drops down his bare chest and watched as the liquid dribbled down to her working mouth, absently rubbing the wine into her soft lips with his fingers.
The music and laughter swelled around him. The air was hot and humid with steam from the pool and the light of the lamps. He finished the wine and threw the cup out into the darkness over the balcony, never hearing it strike the gardens below. His fifth party in two weeks and he thought he had been too tired to go out again, but Diracius was known for throwing wild ones. The other four had been exhausting and he realised this could be the end of him. His mind seemed slightly detached, an observer to the writhing clumps around him. In truth, Diracius had been right to say the parties would help him forget, but, even after so many months, each moment with Alexandria was still there to be called into his mind. What he had lost was the sense of wonder and of joy.
He closed his eyes and hoped his legs would hold him upright to the end.
Kneeling, Mithridates spat blood over his beard onto the ground, keeping his head bowed. A bull of a man, he had killed many soldiers in the battle of the morning and even now, with his arms tied and his weapons taken, the Roman legionaries walked warily around him. He chuckled at them, but it was a bitter sound. All around lay hundreds of men who had been his friends and followers, and the smell of blood and open bowels hung on the air. His wife and daughters had been torn from his tent and butchered by cold-eyed soldiers. His generals had been impaled and their bodies sagged loosely, held upright on spikes as long as a man. It was a bleak day to see it all end.
His mind wandered back over the months, tasting again the joys of the rebellion, the pride as strong Greeks came to his banner from all the cities, united again in the face of a common enemy. It had all seemed possible for a while, but now there were only ashes in the mouth. He remembered the first fort to fall and the disbelief and shame in the Roman Prefect’s eyes as he was made to watch it burn.
‘Look on the flames,’ Mithridates had whispered to him. ‘This will be Rome.’ The Roman had tried to reply,
but Mithridates had silenced him with a dagger across his throat, to the cheers of his men.
Now, he was the only one left of the band of friends that had dared to throw off the yoke of Roman rule.
‘I have been free,’ he muttered through the blood, but the words failed to cheer him as they once could.
Trumpets sounded and horses galloped across a cleared path to where Mithridates waited, resting back on his haunches. He raised his shaggy head, his long hair falling over his eyes. The legionaries nearby stood to attention in silence and he knew who it had to be. One eye was stuck with blood, but through the other he could see a golden figure climb down from a stallion and pass the reins to another. The spotless white toga seemed incongruous in this field of death. How was it possible for anything in the world to be untouched by the misery of such a grey afternoon?
Slaves spread rushes over the mud to make a path to the kneeling king. Mithridates straightened. They would not see him broken and begging, not with his daughters lying so close in peaceful stillness.
Cornelius Sulla strode over to the man and stood watching. As if by arrangement with the gods, the sun chose that moment to come from behind the clouds and his dark-blond hair glowed as he drew a gleaming silver gladius from a simple scabbard.
‘You have given me a great deal of trouble, Highness,’ Sulla said quietly.
At his words, Mithridates squinted.
‘I did my best to,’ he replied grimly, holding the man’s gaze with his one good eye.
‘But now it is over. Your army is broken. The rebellion has ended.’
Mithridates shrugged. What good was it to state the obvious?
Sulla continued: ‘I had no part in the killing of your wife and daughters. The soldiers involved have all been executed at my command. I do not make war on women and children and I am sorry they were taken from you.’
Mithridates shook his head as if to clear it of the words and the sudden flashes of memory. He had heard his beloved Livia screaming his name, but there were legionaries all around him armed with clubs to take him alive. He had lost his dagger in a man’s throat and his sword when it jammed in another’s ribs. Even then, with her screams in his ears, he had broken the neck of a man who rushed in on him, but as he stooped to pick up a fallen sword, the others had beaten him senseless and he had woken to find himself bound and battered.
The Emperor Series: Books 1-5 Page 26