Wolves of Rome

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  The boys nodded, but one look at the mules told them that they were too overburdened.

  ‘The crumbly part won’t bear up under all that weight,’ said Armin to his brother.

  Wulf nodded. ‘We can’t refuse now, but I have an idea.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘The Hermunduri are as strong as bears. We’ll have them carry the mules’ loads. Then you and I can lead the animals across.’

  ‘You’re right. It’s the only way.’

  The Hermunduri agreed to divide the load among them and they succeeded in crossing the bottleneck, one after another. Then it was Wulf and Armin’s turn, leading the mules by their ropes.

  Taurus turned towards the men who had refused to comply earlier. ‘These boys have shown you that they’ve got harder balls than you do; you should be ashamed of yourselves. You’ll have no dinner tonight and sleep outdoors.’

  Wulf whispered in his brother’s ear, ‘This is Roman discipline too, I guess.’

  ‘Shut up,’ growled Armin.

  Taurus turned the horses over to them. The boys hung their bags and leapt onto the horses’ backs.

  They continued their descent for many days, without ever leaving the road that never ends. They crossed a valley flanked by high snow-topped peaks and travelled alongside a rapidly flowing torrent.

  The countryside around them was continuously changing as the air became warmer, the vegetation more luxuriant. Along the river were small villages that were similar to the ones that Armin and Wulf knew in Germania, with big pens which held flocks of sheep and goats. Stockades contained herds of cows and gigantic white-hided bulls. The changing stations were bigger and offered more facilities.

  One of them even had a thermal bath, which consisted of a series of rooms with tubs of hot, tepid and cold water, latrines with continuously running water and a furnace that heated the air inside hollow cavities that surrounded the tubs on every side and ran under them as well. The baths had separate entrances for the men and women who came to bathe, to be massaged and to swim. The walls were adorned with figures painted in vivid colours or made of bright little stones that, when placed alongside each other, formed patterns and scenes of great beauty.

  There were also women that the brothers were not allowed to have anything to do with, although they’d already heard them spoken about in the stone city of the Romans on the Rhine. Centurion Taurus called them ‘prostitutes’ and he used their services. One need only pay the price listed on a wooden tablet hanging in the upstairs hall and they would give themselves to anyone. The price depended on several things: how beautiful they were and how skilled in the game of love, and also how clean their sheets were. Wulf would have liked to play with one of them called Iole and he tried to give her a gift of a little silver bracelet, but she only took Roman coins, and Armin kept all of those in a case on his belt.

  They remained at the mansio for several days because Taurus was expecting a letter from a messenger who would be passing through on his way up to Germania. One evening Wulf met Iole on the stairs leading up to the thermal baths. He tried to start a conversation with the twenty or so Latin words he had learned. She smiled, and answered him in the language of the Chatti. ‘Are you Taurus’s prisoner?’

  ‘Something like that. You?’

  ‘I’m a slave of this place. I’m one of the people who work here.’

  ‘But who is your master?’

  ‘Caesar.’

  ‘I thought he’d been killed off a long time ago!’

  ‘Anyone who commands over the Empire is Caesar. But they have another name for it, Res publica. It means every person and every thing: slaves and free men, soldiers and their camps, priests and temples, the elders and the laws they make, judges and courts and then most of the land, the roads and those who build and repair them, the water even, and those who work to see that everyone gets their share. Even the sky above their land is called Res publica.’

  Wulf looked at her admiringly and pretended to have understood. ‘How do you know all these things?’

  ‘Men like to talk after they fuck.’

  ‘Don’t say that word.’

  She laughed. ‘Fuck? That’s all I do, day and night. Should I speak like a fair maiden who thinks she’ll find a beloved who’ll become her husband and then have children with him? That’s never going to happen. The Romans took me away from my village, me and lots of girls like me, and they sold us at an auction. I was bought by a tax collector on behalf of Caesar. Or of the Res publica, if you prefer.’

  Wulf took off the little silver bracelet. ‘Take this, please. You don’t owe me anything. I just want you to have it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it makes me happy to give you something, something that will remind you of me. My name is Wulf but the Romans call me Flavus. It means “Blondie”.’

  ‘You really don’t want to fuck?’

  Wulf dropped his head, then lifted it and stared into her eyes, as green as the lake that mirrored the sky between the village and the woods at home.

  ‘Don’t say that word,’ he repeated, and he touched her lips with his fingers.

  ‘Blondie,’ she said, giving him back the bracelet, ‘pretend I took it. They search me every night. They’d take it off me instantly.’

  She turned around and walked away.

  5

  THOUGHTS OF IOLE ACCOMPANIED Wulf for many days and his distracted expression was noticed by Armin, who never let his brother out of his sight. Similar thoughts were going through his mind too. One day, not too long ago, he had gone with his father to the land of the Chatti – a four-day journey south of his village. Many such encounters took place between Germanic chiefs and served to establish friendships or alliances or to consolidate those that already existed. On these occasions religious rites were celebrated, with dancing and singing. Bards entertained the guests at banquets with tales of their gods and heroes.

  That time there was a procession to welcome the beginning of spring. Everyone came out for it: the most important families, the priests, the warriors wearing their proudest armour. The ceremony was celebrated in a rock sanctuary in the middle of a dense forest.

  A group of young girls, the daughters of the noblemen of the Chatti nation, wearing long gowns embroidered in red and blue, danced and sang hymns to Freya, the goddess of love. Their hair was gathered into braids or worn loose over their shoulders and they wore crowns made of field flowers.

  ‘The finest young men from the noblest stock,’ Armin was telling his brother as they rode along, ‘were all invited so they could see the girls and ask for their hands in marriage.’

  ‘I wasn’t invited,’ grumbled Wulf.

  ‘It wasn’t your time yet . . . At the end of the ceremony, the girls assembled at the entrance to a cavern and they all closed their eyes. At that moment – this is what Father told me – Freya would appear to one of the girls, from behind her closed eyelids, and would give her the gift of second sight. The chosen girl would have to keep the goddess’s gift a secret until the high priest of the sanctuary called upon her to proclaim an oracle, on the eve of a great battle. The Chatti have a tradition: one boy among all those present catches the eye of the girl, who is the first one to open her eyes again, and he remains joined to her in an indissoluble bond.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Wulf. ‘I think I know where this story ends. Go on.’

  ‘The colours of dusk were lighting up the sky. In those lands it was always a magical event when the rays of the dying sun pierced the clouds like swords and made them bleed.’

  ‘Go on, I said,’ repeated Wulf.

  ‘One of the girls, in between two others and flanked by two huge Hermunduri, opened her eyes. I think she was the first. She turned to me and I met her gaze, so her eyes were staring into mine. Just for an instant, no more. Ever since then, all I do is think of her. I am certain that our destinies are joined. I know I’ll see her again and that no one will ever be able to separate us.’

  ‘Jus
t what I thought,’ mused Wulf. ‘That’s why you think you’ve got to get back at any cost. You nearly got the both of us killed.’

  Armin smiled. ‘I don’t know how, but Father noticed right away. Do you know what he said? He told me, “Don’t even think about it. Do you know who she is?” “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “She’s mine.” “She is the daughter of Seghest, a chieftain of our people, and she has been promised,” Father replied. “To whom?” I demanded. “Tell me who it is. I’ll challenge him to a duel and kill him.” Father got really angry then. He said, “A prince and a princess do not marry for love. They marry the person chosen by their fathers, without any further discussion. Their marriage seals alliances, joins territory, and guarantees that pacts will be maintained. These marriages allow us to avoid war and to save lives. Or, if war is necessary, to win that war. Do you think that you getting all excited about that girl makes any difference to me at all? What’s more,” he said, “Seghest is related to us. Don’t you realize what a disaster it would be if the promise were broken? So, son, you will obey me. Listen well,” he told me. “You will never see her again, not even from a distance, not even at a religious festivity. If you are invited by her family for any reason, you will find an excuse not to go.” “I’m sure that she loves me,” I told him.’

  ‘What did he say to that?’ asked Wulf.

  ‘He slapped me as hard as he could.’

  ‘Of course he did. What did you expect?’

  Armin took his eyes off the road for a moment, looking off to the right, where there was a lake bigger than any he had ever seen in his own land. It was surrounded by towering white-peaked summits that mirrored themselves in the water. Groups of wooden huts, but sometimes even houses of stone with tile roofs, formed villages and small cities that could be reached by a branch of the road that never ended. On the hilltops here and there small sanctuaries or images of divinities could be seen.

  Right at that moment, Taurus got off his mount and the cavalrymen in his escort stopped as well, leaving the animals free to graze. A changing station came into sight at a short distance. Its lamps were being lit as people in the fields all around them hurried to bring hay home for the horses and cows, and bags of coal to light the fire in their kitchens and baths.

  ‘What about your little whore?’ asked Armin when they stopped. ‘Do you still think about her?’

  Wulf kicked his brother in the shin.

  ‘Ahh! You really do care about her, then!’ replied Armin. ‘I didn’t mean to offend you. She just does what she has to do. Sooner or later she’ll get used to it.’

  Wulf kicked his other shin. ‘It’s not like she has any choice,’ he said. ‘And anyway, let it go, as our father would say. It’s not like you have better hopes than I do. Anyway, I know how it’ll turn out for her. Sooner or later girls like her get sick. Lots of them die because of the abortions they’re forced to have. They’re not allowed to have children.’

  ‘There’s a lot you know about these things!’ whistled Armin. ‘How is that, at your age?’

  Wulf tried to change the subject. ‘The soldiers. Sometimes they talk. About lots of things, actually.’

  ‘Listen. Neither you nor I can make any plans for our futures. We’re just boys, after all. But no one can take my dream away from me.’

  ‘The girl who was first to open her eyes.’

  ‘Why not . . .’ replied Armin. ‘Don’t you believe in oracles?’

  ‘I believe what I see. What I’m seeing down there, for instance.’

  He pointed at Marcus Caelius Taurus with his vitis at his waist, unrolling his tabula on a little bench.

  Wulf approached him. ‘Do we have much further to go?’

  ‘See what you think,’ replied the centurion, pointing his finger at the parchment. ‘We’re here. This green is the lake we have just behind us. This is our road, and this is Rome. That’s where we’re going.’

  Rome, thought Wulf and it seemed like his head wasn’t big enough to contain the word.

  ‘Who made this?’ he asked again. ‘How did they do it?’

  Taurus rolled up the tabula and placed it inside a cylindrical case. ‘You’re fortunate so see this. This is only the second one ever made. It’s for our emperor, who wants a reproduction of our road system and all of the changing stations. I’m working on it myself. I measure all the distances on the Via Aemilia. Many other centurions in Gaul, in Spain, in Africa and in Asia are working with their instruments to make more measurements like these. We measure time as well: how much distance a legion can cover in one day’s march, how fast a message can travel if it’s carried day and night without stopping.’

  ‘Great Thor!’ exclaimed Wulf. ‘The road that never ends . . .’

  ‘We use a different name for it. Cursus publicus. But it means the same thing.’

  ‘It’s in Germania as well. That’s where you found us. Do you think that the road will reach every single village in Germania as well?’

  ‘No, the cost would be enormous. First you need cities, and then you build roads. All you have now is villages, and the paths that have been trodden by herds and flocks. Or by people’s feet.’

  ‘But why cities?’

  ‘In a city there are a multitude of people who need clothing, food to eat, water to drink, stones to build houses and temples and porticoes. All this can’t be transported on pathways; you need roads. When there are a number of cities and they’re all connected, other connections can be formed. One city produces and crafts metals, while another produces mainly fabrics, conserved foods, jars and bricks. Another city might produce beer, or sour milk, the kind that you like to drink. Or the wine that we like. In this way, one city sells their things and another city buys them. People who earn money by practising trade of this sort can then afford a bigger house and more comfortable clothing, and so on. Every city gets rich in the end and the important families want to spend more to build monuments, stadiums and theatres, temples and thermal baths. Everyone lives better. The roads are like the veins in my body and yours. Do you understand?’

  Wulf listened attentively and looked at the fields around him. He saw carts carrying barrels full of new wine that spread its aroma along the way. He could smell the fragrance of dried hay. He had watched as the leaves of the field maples and the grapevines had changed colour from one day to the next, from sulphur yellow to bright red.

  Armin seemed to see nothing; he was too absorbed in his own thoughts.

  Towards evening, as they neared the changing station, the sky began to darken and storm clouds gathered on the horizon. Big raindrops soon started to fall while lightning bathed the countryside in cold light.

  They entered the mansio courtyard and ran for shelter under the stable roof. A rivulet of water descended between each double pair of roof tiles and poured onto the floor outside. The horses tore off mouthfuls of hay from the stacked bales and shook off their wet manes.

  The building’s windows were lit up and the voices of the guests inside wafted out. As soon as the downpour had let up a bit, they all made a run for the door and entered. They could smell meat roasting on the embers and freshly baked bread. The hungry patrons were making a din as they demanded to be fed. Wulf and Armin, Centurion Taurus and the others were given the regulation servings for military personnel.

  Every now and then, Taurus would turn his head towards Armin because he wasn’t talking or laughing; the old centurion would gladly have given a month’s salary in order to read the boy’s mind. That surly young man disturbed him. He was afraid that no discipline could tame him, that none of the marvels of the Empire would ever fascinate him. He’d known others like Armin over his long career as a soldier and in the end he’d had to suppress them. That’s what shepherds did with those dogs that just wouldn’t be trained and never stopped snarling and snapping, even after a beating with the strap had left them more dead than alive.

  Flavus, as Taurus liked to call Armin’s brother, was, on the other hand, curious and even-na
tured, interested in everything he saw or heard about. He understood, he asked questions. Not that he took punishment easily – on the contrary – and he had his moments of melancholy, but it was easy enough to get him out of a low mood by engaging him in conversation. A sudden sparkle of sunlight, a tasty morsel or a good jug of foamy beer would always make him smile.

  THEY RESUMED THEIR march the next day although the weather hadn’t changed much for the better. A light but incessant rain continued to fall the whole day. The legionaries and horsemen donned waxcloth so the rain would slide off their shoulders and they pushed on at a steady rate. To the right of the road ran a wide river brimming with clear water in which they could see schools of trout and silvery pikes swimming. Willows, plane trees and dark, shiny-leafed alders lined the banks. The river was called Ticinum and after three days’ marching they arrived near a settlement that bore the same name. Beyond that flowed another, even bigger, river. Not quite as immense as the Rhine, but almost. They entered the city and the honour guard at the decumanus gate presented arms to the labarum of the Eighteenth Legion.

  Taurus stopped to exchange a few words with the officer in command, who had pointed at the two boys as if he needed to know who they were. The centurion then gestured for his men to follow him to the city centre, to the intersection of the decumanus and the cardo, the two axes which defined the city; he bought supplies at the market there.

  They left the city and set up camp in a wood that was sacred to a local divinity and each one of the soldiers received his ration of food and wine, distributed by the centurion himself.

  After dinner the two brothers lay down and they looked up at the sky. The moon was mirrored in the large river that resembled the Rhine. They could hear her voice nearby, in the swishing of the water along the banks. Flavus was thinking of how long it would take him to learn the language of the Romans, which was so different from his own. Some of its sounds were sharp and difficult, but others musical.

  ‘Don’t you think so, Armin?’

  ‘Think what?’