Wolves of Rome

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  Publius Caelius gave him a half-smile. ‘To tell you the truth, I never really liked it. The reason I enrolled was to keep an eye on you and make sure you stayed away from danger, believe it or not. You were all I had left of our family, after all. I’ve just bought a new tavern in Bononia, not far from the theatre. It’s a beautiful place, and I have plenty of clients. When you’re travelling back to Germania, you’ll surely be passing that way. If you let me know, I’ll make sure I can be there too.’

  It was now late and for Taurus it was time to retire. They said their farewells with an embrace; there was no need to add anything else. They both knew that nothing was ever sure in a soldier’s life.

  Taurus and his men left the next day for Ariminum, where there was a way station at the point where the Via Aemilia ended and the Via Flaminia began. Ariminum was also a flourishing fishing port. They watched as boats unloaded crates and crates of silvery-skinned fish at the wharfs.

  Further out at sea, a fleet of warships passed, sailing south. Taurus said that they might all be arriving at their next stop, Fanum Fortunae, at the same time.

  As they marched south, the mountains began to get closer and closer to the sea until the rocky cliffs were pushing up amidst the waves. Flavus watched the sea foam frothing at the foot of the craggy rocks and breathed in the air scented by the sea and the low flowering bushes along the shore. It made him feel intoxicated. It was a sensation of lightness and of deep happiness that was really inexpressible, so much that he didn’t dare tell his brother, who was riding at his side, about it. Armin, lost in his own thoughts, was remembering the melancholy wind that rustled through the boughs of the black and blue firs in Germania.

  Flavus noticed distant shadows out of the corner of his right eye. It wasn’t the first time, but he’d never told his brother about it.

  Armin felt his tension. ‘So you’ve seen them too?’

  ‘Yes,’ admitted Flavus. ‘They’ve been following the mountain ridges for days. But if we’ve seen them, so has Taurus.’

  ‘Of course. But what difference does it make?’ Armin seemed to give no importance to what they’d seen, but Flavus could tell that wasn’t quite true. There was a quiver in his voice and a pang in his look.

  ‘Do you recognize them?’ asked Flavus softly.

  ‘How could I? They’re just dark shadows on the mountainside.’

  ‘Are you sure? Is it you who summoned them?’

  ‘Me? I’ve lost all hope. But maybe Father hasn’t.’

  ‘Father’s not mad. He knows that trying something so reckless could only end up with us dying. Anyway, how long do you think a squad of intruders could survive in the heart of the Empire?’

  ‘Longer than you think. They don’t need much food or a place to stay; they don’t need shelter from the night or the rain. They live like ghosts,’ replied Armin.

  ‘The other night in Ravenna,’ broke in Flavus, ‘I saw one of them galloping out of the fog on a black stallion. But he vanished as quickly as he’d appeared. Did you see him too?’

  ‘I saw nothing.’

  After a great deal of marching, they set up camp in the middle of a pine wood and Marcus Caelius Taurus passed out bread to his soldiers, as a father might do to his sons. The men pitched their tents, as did the two brothers. They spread a blanket over the pine needles and went to sleep.

  ‘Father . . .’ whispered Armin before closing his eyes. ‘Where are you?’

  THEY WERE AWAKENED by a pale sun and they resumed their march, reaching Fanum Fortunae before evening. It was a beautiful city with a temple to the goddess Fortuna. In a construction yard nearby an amphitheatre was being built.

  ‘Gladiators will fight here,’ Taurus offered briefly.

  The horsemen on the mountains had disappeared. Flavus seemed relieved. ‘It’s better they’re gone,’ he said to his brother. ‘What were they doing there anyway? They must have been soldiers making their rounds, or merchants transporting their wares.’

  ‘They’ll be back,’ said Armin.

  They spent the night in the courtyard of the way station and started off again early the next morning on the Via Flaminia, which they knew led directly to Rome. Two days after their departure they passed the city of Forum Sempronii but they did not stop there. Towards evening, the brothers caught another glimpse of the horsemen on the mountain ridge, at a distance of about a mile from the road. It was evident that they were observing the situation from above, or they would have been travelling on the road itself. Maybe they wanted a quick escape route.

  Taurus seemed not to see them, and neither of the boys dared to ask him what he thought.

  Armin and Flavus were fairly certain by now that the horsemen of the ridge were following them. Each was worried, not only about the consequences of any possible action on their part and how the other brother would react, but also about what might happen to the two of them.

  Armin imagined that his brother wanted to get to Rome and to settle there, rather than attempt a return to Germania. He saw how fascinated Flavus was by the spectacle of Roman power, by how her forces were always present, both on the sea and on land, on the warships and in the army. Armin couldn’t stop thinking about the secret friendship that his father had had with General Drusus; Taurus seemed to know a lot about it, too much perhaps. The idea of an empire of two colours. The field half gold and half dark. Could his father and Drusus actually have talked about such a thing before the Roman general died?

  The horsemen got smaller and smaller and then disappeared completely.

  And with them, the boys’ bitter thoughts.

  Taurus himself seemed more relaxed, in a better mood. One night he let them set up camp in a place that was eight miles short of the nearest changing station. The archers had downed a roe deer that day. They flayed it and cut it into pieces and roasted it over an open fire. The moon was full and the air was mild. After they had pitched the tents, they all sat down to eat together, and Taurus handed out the wine that he’d been keeping in reserve. When the men retired to their tents for the night, Taurus ordered two of them to stand guard, with replacements every three hours.

  Halfway through the second guard shift, the camp found itself under attack: a group of horsemen fell upon the guards and stormed the camp. One of them sent a hook flying into the boys’ tent and dragged it away, while the others seized the boys, hoisting them easily onto their mounts. They disappeared into the woods which they’d emerged from, skirting the camp in a wide semi-circle. Taurus flew out of his tent with sword in hand and saw his two legionaries on the ground, wounded. He cursed.

  ‘We can follow them, Centurion,’ said the chief of the Germanic auxiliaries. ‘We’re used to riding in the dark.’

  ‘Go, now. But take archers with you, and four of our horsemen. Bring back those boys unharmed – it’s a question of life or death.’

  The group rode off at a gallop.

  As soon as they were out of sight, Taurus ordered his men to add wood to the fire, so that the blaze would be visible at a great distance. Then he had them bring him a polished shield with which to send signals. He directed the ray of reflected light towards the pass.

  ‘Now we wait.’

  ‘Wait, Centurion? Wait for what?’ asked one of the legionaries.

  ‘Wait until the guard corps posted at the pass see our fire. If we move out of here too quickly, the two wounded men will die. I know what I’m doing. Do you think I haven’t seen that group on the mountain ridge following us? I’ve taken my precautions. Add all the wood you can find to the fire and continue to send signals with the shield.’ The soldiers obeyed. The light of the flames focused on the rounded inner surface of the shield and was relayed again and again to the pass.

  It wasn’t long before an answering beam of light appeared to the north, just under the pass, and then one more towards the west. There was another in between these two as well as an intermittent flashing to the south-east.

  ‘The circle is closed,’ said Taurus. ‘W
e can move on. Three men will stay behind with the wounded.’ He indicated two legionaries and a Germanic auxiliary. ‘Don’t change their bandages; it would put them in danger of bleeding out. Prepare a couple of pallets on the baggage cart and get these men up to the pass. There’s a surgeon up there who will be able to take care of them. I hope. If they seem better, turn back and try to catch up with us. The others with me, now.’

  They lit torches and headed off on foot down a trail which took them in the direction marked by the second and third signals. These two red beams, shining distinctly on two rises, guided them on whenever the vegetation was thin enough to see clearly. Two Germanic auxiliaries rode ahead on horseback, slowing at times to pick up on the tracks of their quarry. They crossed a stream on a wooden bridge and soon after that saw horse droppings. A satisfied grin crossed Taurus’s face.

  ‘We’re on to them,’ he said.

  He ordered his men to slow down and to replace the spent torches with fresh ones. A roll of drums echoed through the valley, and the long blare of the trumpets and horns was guiding them to their destination. Finally Taurus and his Germanic horsemen found themselves in a valley crossed by the same stream, with a number of small waterfalls that mirrored the full moon. At its northernmost edge the squad of raiders were just about to reach the pass, when a numerous cavalry squad, the auxiliaries who had ridden ahead, blocked their way.

  The raiders tried to turn back, but any other way out had already been occupied. They found themselves surrounded by Roman troops on all sides, by all of the units which had been alerted, closing off every escape route. They closed into a circle, ready to fight to the bitter end. The Roman commanders were ready to sound the attack, but Taurus raised his hand to stop them.

  ‘No one makes a move!’ he shouted. ‘I’ll go to negotiate. I don’t want the boys to be hit. They are my responsibility.’

  The legionaries, who had already begun to approach the enemy formation, lowered their weapons and Taurus rode alone towards the warrior who seemed to be the commander of the raiders who had seized Armin and Flavus: a giant of a man wearing lorica squamata, scale armour of Roman construction.

  ‘Who are you?’ asked Taurus in the Germanic language. ‘Who sent you here?’

  The horseman did not answer and the valley became silent. The torch flames exposed the warrior’s glassy eyes. Taurus had seen that fixed grey stare many times on the battlefield: it was the look that came just before death.

  ‘Do you understand what I’m asking you?’

  The warrior shook his head.

  ‘Hand over the boys and I will leave you free to return to wherever it is you’ve come from.’

  The warrior shook his head again. Taurus realized that another question would meet with the same response and he turned his horse to go back to his men but at that very moment the raiders’ war cry rang out; it cleaved the night air and the pounding of horses’ hooves shook the earth.

  Archers let fly from the left and right, from the positions where Taurus’s silent commands had sent them, while the legionaries hurled their spears and the auxiliaries flung their long pikes. In the torchlight and the soft light of the moon, no one failed their target. One after another, the Germanic warriors plummeted to the ground.

  Flavus and Armin, stock-still and uninjured, watched the slaughter wordlessly. Once his orders had been executed, Taurus approached them. ‘Come, we’ll go back to camp. All is well.’

  Armin whispered to his brother, ‘Do you understand what happened?’

  ‘The centurion saw them. He knew they were following us.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘So as soon as they made a move, he had his legionaries and auxiliaries ready to counter,’ answered Flavus.

  ‘No, you’re wrong. Taurus planned this all out. It was he who lured them here, to this specific place. He deliberately took no action; he let them follow us for days and days while he was setting his trap here in the valley. He let them grab us, let them get away, but he knew the whole time that there was only one way out. He forced them into a funnel from which there was a single route of escape. Which he’d already blocked.’

  Back at the camp, the brothers repitched their sorry-looking tent and slept all night. Armin dreamed of that mountain valley and of the lethal trap that the Romans had laid. He would never forget it.

  THE NEXT MORNING, the convoy set off, sinking once again into the Apennine countryside in its continuously changing features. Mountains and hills, rivers and streams, rainbow-hued waterfalls, the cyclopic walls of ancient cities perched on rocky cliffs, temples of incredible beauty mirrored in crystalline pools, majestic bridges stretching over steep valleys, sweeps of silvery-leaved olive groves with enormous twisted trunks, gigantic fallen trees corroded by the elements over time; herds of bulls, buffalo and horses, flocks of sheep which whitened the green flanks of the valleys, lakes as round as volcanic lagoons, little islands barely surfacing, huge solitary oaks on the tops of hills where the asphodels were still blossoming. Images that couldn’t be ignored or erased from their minds. Every scene was a sublime expression of nature and of the labour of man, of different men from different ages, of civilizations that had once flourished and then dissolved over the centuries.

  They reached the destination of their long journey one dusky afternoon in October. Taurus halted his horse and the entire group drew up in a semi-circle behind him. The light breeze blowing from the west smelled of the sea. Flights of swallows dove towards the surface of a small lake to wet their chest feathers, then shot straight up to the heavens, disappearing into the deep blue. Flocks of cranes crossed the skies of the Urbs in their journey southwards, trumpeting loudly in their long lines. The Tiber River snaked between the houses, temples, colonnades and colossal bronze statues, reflecting the gold and red of the sky. Rome’s seven hills rose in that timeless atmosphere, crowned with light and clouds, with towers and walls, with arches and with age-old red-barked pine trees. The boys spied an island in the middle of the river, connected to its banks by two marble bridges. The island was shaped like a giant ship of stone, beached on the blond sands. A temple rose at its centre, with a sparkling golden statue. To the left was a craggy hill and at its top another temple, grandiose, adorned by a myriad of red and ochre statues and covered with gilded roof tiles which glittered under the setting sun.

  A star appeared in the sky.

  Rome.

  There was a long, dazed silence, and then Flavus’s voice rang out: ‘How long has this place existed?’

  ‘Forever,’ replied Taurus.

  7

  NIGHT HAD ALREADY FALLEN by the time Flavus and Armin settled into their new accommodation on the Aventine Hill, in a house which quartered other children who’d come from far away: from Africa and Mauretania, from Britannia, Cantabrica and Cappadocia, Pannonia and Mesia, words pronounced by Taurus that had no meaning for the two brothers. A freedman named Diodorus, under the centurion’s watchful eye, showed them to their room. There were two beds, a basin of water for washing, a jug filled with water as well and two glass cups. There was also a chest where they could store their clothing.

  ‘Well folded and placed with care!’ warned Diodorus. ‘When you dress tomorrow, there must not be a wrinkle.’

  Then, lamp in hand, he showed them the latrines and the water tap for cleansing. ‘Wash every time you use the latrines, and keep your hair nicely combed. I won’t abide any barbarian habits like long hair,’ he said as he looked the boys up and down. ‘As far as your garments are concerned, you’ll be given something suitable as soon as the tailor gets your measurements.’

  They walked out onto a colonnaded corridor that led to the rear garden. ‘Clean your teeth at least once a day, and be careful to rinse your mouth well. Wash your hands after eating so you won’t stain your clothing. You’ll find something to eat for tonight in your room. Soup is eaten with a spoon, not by slurping it up noisily from the bowl like animals do.’ He led them back to their room. ‘Those,’ he said, pointi
ng to the cups, ‘are made of glass and they cost more than you do. Try not to break them. No one is allowed to leave here unless accompanied by his tutor. No one is allowed to return later than sunset. What you see there on the northern wall is called a clock. You will learn to read it so you can tell the time. Anyone who violates the rules will receive an exemplary punishment, in the presence of all the other guests of this house. Have you understood well everything I’ve told you?’ Flavus and Armin looked at each other, each trying to gauge how much the other had understood.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Diodorus, noting the look in their eyes. ‘I’ll explain everything to you, and I’ll teach you to speak in Latin instead of barking like the barbarians do.’

  ‘Why does he always look at us when he says “barbarians”?’ asked Flavus in a low voice.

  ‘You know full well why,’ replied Armin. ‘The moment will come when he stops looking at us that way, but that won’t be until after we learn Latin and start dressing and wearing our hair as he wants it.’

  Taurus spoke up: ‘These boys have been travelling for many days, sleeping just a few hours a night, and tomorrow they have to get up early. They need to rest now.’

  Diodorus said nothing else and allowed the two boys to retire. Taurus stopped a moment to speak with him. ‘Tomorrow I’ll be turning them over to their tutor. Who is he?’

  ‘You. Primus Pilus Centurion Marcus Caelius Taurus,’ replied the freedman.

  ‘Me? That’s not possible. I have no desire and even less time to care for these snotty-nosed children.’

  ‘That’s what I was told,’ insisted Diodorus. ‘But tomorrow morning you’ll receive word yourself and that will erase any doubts. A servant will take you to your room, where you’ll find your dinner waiting with a jug of red wine. If you’d like something different, you need only ask. I wish you a good night, Centurion.’