Wolves of Rome

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  Diodorus took his leave and a servant accompanied Taurus to his bedroom. There was some roasted lamb, stewed lentils and a piece of bread. The servant helped him remove his leather corset, then unlaced his sandals and took his travelling cloak off his shoulders. He set the lit lamp on the table and left.

  Taurus bit into the lamb, had a few spoonfuls of lentils with the bread and drank the wine. He went to the latrine to urinate, washed, returned to his room and lay down. Although the hallway outside his door was silent, he heard a watchman pass by a couple of times with two dogs on a lead – Epirote mastiffs, from the sound of their growl. The house’s guests were well guarded; intruders were not welcome.

  In their own room, Armin and Flavus had finished their soup and drunk the water in their precious glass cups. They undressed and lay down. The beds were hard but comfortable, the walls had been freshly whitewashed and the intense, sweet fruity odour that wafted in reminded them of beer before it had fermented. They would have liked to talk, to exchange their impressions on what they had seen, on what they felt at the sight of Rome, the place they would be living in for a long time to come, but they were so tired that their conversation soon drifted into sleep.

  They were shocked awake in the middle of the night by a screeching cry that made them jump.

  ‘What was that?’ asked Flavus, his heart in his throat. ‘If it’s one of the guests of this house, it must be some rule he broke. What are they doing to him?’

  ‘It’s an animal, can’t you tell?’ said Armin. But the dogs were barking; they were frightened too. ‘Go back to sleep.’

  BEFORE THEY KNEW IT, it was dawn and Centurion Taurus was knocking at their door. He took them to a training ring behind the building, gave each one a sword-shaped stick and a round wooden shield and then stood watching them for a while, his hands on his hips. The vitis switch was in his right hand. His leather corset protected his chest.

  ‘Are you awake?’ he asked in their Germanic language.

  ‘Yes, Primus Pilus Centurion Caelius Taurus!’ the two boys shouted in unison.

  ‘Then attack me. Now!’

  Armin shot a look at his brother and moved his head slightly to the left twice. It was a code they used when they’d started to follow their father Sigmer on his hunting expeditions. A glance was sufficient to decide on tactics. In this case, he signalled contact with a bear, given the adversary they found facing them. They’d never done it on their own before; they’d always just watched the adult warriors and imitated their moves and blows. But this time the only adult warrior was their adversary. Armin lowered his head imperceptibly and Flavus rushed forward with his sword held out before him, but just as he got close enough to strike, he twisted swiftly to the side. His approach was supposed to throw Taurus off balance in his direction, while the real attack came from Armin on the right – he shoved his shield towards the centurion’s face and tried to thrust his gladius into the man’s unprotected side.

  Taurus intuited the move and flicked his vitis between Armin’s legs, causing him to trip and fall. He wheeled around to face Flavus, who was now attacking him from behind. Taurus threw his cloak over the boy. Caught like a fish in a net, Flavus tried unsuccessfully to disentangle himself from the fabric, and ended up dragged to the floor by the centurion.

  ‘Pick up your weapons again and do as I tell you. You have to learn how to strike without revealing your intent. You tried to surprise me, but you failed. If you were a bit bigger and I was older and slower, you would have managed to scratch me, but nothing more.’ His lecture was interrupted by the arrival of Diodorus’s servant, who handed the centurion a letter with the imperial seal. He opened it, read it, folded it again and tucked it under his corset. Then he turned to the boys with a peeved expression. ‘It’s as I feared. Augustus Caesar has written me a letter of his own hand, asking me to take responsibility for your military training and instruction. He is the most powerful man in the world and you can be proud of the fact that he has taken a personal interest in your upbringing. I too feel honoured at being selected by him to accomplish a mission that he evidently cares very much about. I will do as he asks because he is the supreme commander of all the forces of the Empire; my sense of duty requires it. I would have gladly shirked such a burdensome task; my place is on the battlefield, fighting. Not pretending to fight in a training ring . . .’

  Armin had helped his brother to his feet and opened his mouth to say something, but Taurus stopped him with a gesture. ‘From this moment on, you owe me total obedience. I will decide what you do every day, every hour and every instant of your lives. For the first three months you will speak only if I ask you to, because you are not capable of expressing yourselves. But in three months’ time you will speak Latin, thanks to the experience and ability of Diodorus, your educator. Respect him, for he has known slavery and he has suffered greatly. He was not born a slave. He became one due to misfortune.’

  Armin walked up to Taurus and stared straight into his eyes, in the manner of the Germanic warriors. A single glance told Taurus more than a thousand words.

  The brothers continued to mount one attack after another, failing again and again, until the sun projected the shadow of the meridian on the second bar. ‘That’s enough for today,’ the centurion said then. ‘Go and get washed and dress in a decorous manner. The barber will come to take care of your hair. I don’t want a wild mane nor do I want to see any poofy curls on your forehead. A servant will take you to the room in which Diodorus will see to your education.’ Armin and Flavus were beginning to understand almost everything, although neither of them had any idea of what ‘poofy’ was.

  As Taurus was still talking, a handsome lad who seemed to be about the same age as Armin approached the ring. He was wearing an elegant white gown trimmed in purple, with red leather boots. He stripped at the edge of the field, showing off well-developed muscles that belied his young age. He put on a leather helmet, slung on the shield that was handed to him by a servant and hung a belt on his left shoulder that held a gladius, a real one. The ring was soon reverberating with the clangour of two swords clashing: that of the handsome young man and that of Taurus.

  ‘Listen . . .’ said Armin to his brother.

  ‘To what?’

  ‘The sword strokes. You can hear the difference between his and the boy’s.’

  ‘Sword against sword. I wouldn’t like to be in his shoes. Who do you think he is?’

  ‘He’s someone like me and you. A prince. The son of a great man. Maybe one day we’ll meet up with him.’

  ‘But why do they use such short swords?’

  ‘Do you know what carding is?’

  ‘No, I’ve never heard of it.’

  ‘Before you can make cloth out of wool, the fibres have to be separated. They use two curved wooden boards: one is convex, and it moves. The other is concave and is full of thistle needles, or sometimes iron nails. Between them you put the tangled-up bundle of fibres. The top part moves up and down and every time it goes down it crushes and tears at them until there is no longer any one fibre attached to another; all you have is filaments.

  ‘Well, that’s how the legion is: thousands of short, sharp swords instead of needles. Any formation that comes into contact with a front line, rife with those blades, gets gored, torn up, mutilated. They’re bleeding from every surface, they’re screaming with pain. Haven’t you ever seen them carry a warrior back to our village from the battlefield and he’s completely covered with blood? Haven’t you ever looked closely at Father’s chest? All of those scars . . . can only mean one thing. A close encounter with the legion.’

  ‘Are you trying to scare me?’

  ‘No. You asked me a question and I answered you.’

  ‘THAT WAS A short lesson,’ observed Flavus as the boys were walking back to their residence, after the training duel.

  ‘It was long enough,’ replied Armin. ‘That’s the way Taurus is. Remember? He whipped us until we bled, but only once. He’s never punished u
s again, not even when we have maybe deserved it.’

  ‘Are you saying he thinks well of us? He has a strange way of showing it. A drastic way. I’m covered in bruises.’

  ‘Actually, I would say he does. But you know that he never repeats himself. Never, not with anybody. And he never gives you a second chance.’

  ‘First he warns you. Then he kills you.’

  ‘No,’ said Armin. ‘Not us.’

  They reached the villa, which stood at the top of a hill and was surrounded by a big park.

  ‘Look!’ exclaimed Flavus.

  Armin turned in the direction Flavus was pointing. ‘Great Wotan, what is that?’

  ‘A peacock,’ said a thin voice behind them. Diodorus.

  He’d appeared suddenly from behind a thick cane-apple shrub.

  ‘He was pissing and we disturbed him,’ hissed Flavus to his brother.

  ‘Nothing of the sort,’ replied Diodorus in an annoyed tone. ‘I was checking to see whether the female of that stunning peacock had laid any eggs.’

  ‘I’ve never seen anything that amazing,’ said Flavus as the bird fanned out his iridescent tail. Just then the peacock let out a bone-chilling shriek.

  ‘No one on this earth is perfect,’ observed Diodorus. ‘This animal expresses total harmony and utter perfection, but nature has given him a voice as shrill and piercing as a man being tortured to death.’ He changed the subject; it was not his habit to waste time on banal chatter. ‘The plants and animals in this garden have been brought here from every part of the world,’ he concluded. ‘And your lessons begin right after breakfast.’

  The lesson was torture. Armin and Flavus had never been forced to sit on chairs for such a long time without moving, attending to something that for them was meaningless and boring. They couldn’t help but think back to long nights around the fire when they would listen enraptured to a bard telling of the endeavours of great warriors. Then they’d never wanted the story to end. The starry skies overhead looking like they were being held up by the oak and beech fronds, the night breezes ruffling the needles of green and blue firs and stirring up the smells wafting from the forest . . . Now they sat tracing out incomprehensible marks on a wax tablet. Diodorus’s voice was drab and monotonous, but he was quick to scold them if they became distracted.

  If that torture had lasted too long, they would have ended up strangling him like a turkey and Taurus realized that. He intensified practice with sword and shield, starting with wooden arms and going on to iron ones. He wore them out so thoroughly that sitting in a classroom with their teacher began to seem like a gift from the gods.

  Then as the winter started, so did boar hunting with javelins in the oak forests of northern Latium. They would leave while it was still dark, wearing Germanic breeches and leather corsets, caps and boots, a supply of javelins strapped to their horses’ sides. Sometimes it was just the three of them, but on other occasions as many as ten, including Hermunduri auxiliaries, Balearic archers and beaters with their dogs. Neither of the boys had ever hunted with dogs before. They were the same animals who prowled around the villa every night, growling on the leads of the watchmen making their rounds.

  The hunt was always arduous and took place on rugged terrain. As soon as the dogs caught a whiff of the excrement and the acrid stench of a wild boar, they would go crazy and tear off at an incredible speed, no matter how dense the forest was. Once the boar was surrounded, the raging beast had to be brought down, and that was the boys’ job. It wasn’t rare for the boar to gore his way out of the circle by sinking his tusks into a dog’s underbelly. He would rush off then, crashing through the forest, until a javelin from one of his pursuers ran him through.

  It was a defeat for the two boys if someone else downed the boar. With Taurus’s help, they worked on refining their skills and their aim. At times, the centurion would find a vantage point from which to watch them from above and, although it was hard to admit it even to himself, he was becoming quite attached to them. The cut of their hair and, even more so, the soldierly way they handled themselves was making them seem increasingly Roman, and closer to Taurus’s own way of thinking and living.

  When the hunt was over, any of the dogs who had been wounded were turned over to the veterinarian who washed out the lesions and sewed them up if internal organs had not been damaged, often saving the animals’ lives. This stoked the boys’ admiration too; they were not at all accustomed to the idea that doctors for dogs and horses existed. The task of flaying the downed prey also went to the boys. They would open the boar’s belly and give the guts to the waiting dogs.

  After every endeavour, whether it was a duel in the training ring or a hunt in the Sabina forests, Taurus had something to teach the boys.

  ‘What did you learn from this hunt?’ he asked Flavus after a successful run.

  ‘That a hunting expedition is the best way to get rid of an adversary by feigning an accident.’

  ‘Interesting observation. Maybe that’s the reason I always try to find a high place to watch you two from. You might be tempted to take the opportunity to make me pay for my strictness! And what about you, Armin?’

  ‘Nothing special. Only . . . I saw a man fall from his horse, one of the archers. It made me remember that a long time ago, when I was little, my father told us that General Drusus died after falling off his horse.’

  Taurus scowled. ‘How would he know such a thing?’

  ‘Oh, it was a very famous event. Everyone was talking about it, all the way to the shores of the ocean. It was a piece of luck for us. A misfortune for you, I guess.’

  ‘General Drusus was the finest combatant I have ever seen . . .’ said Taurus, without acknowledging the boy’s tone of provocation. ‘There were rumours that there was a relationship of sorts between him and your father. Did you know anything about that?’

  Armin shot his brother a look. ‘We heard the same rumour,’ he admitted to Taurus, ‘but that’s all it was. Maybe it was because they respected each other, even though they were enemies.’

  Taurus and the two boys let the rest of the group move on with most of the slain animal while they took a different route, ending the evening up near the deserted city of Veio. The boys lit a fire, while Taurus macerated a good-sized piece of boar haunch in vinegar and onion to tame its gaminess. While the meat was roasting, he told them about the Roman siege of Veio, which lasted ten years like the besiegement of Troy. But before long, he returned to what they’d begun to talk about earlier. ‘I was at Magontiacum when General Drusus was carried there. He was feverish and pale; close to death. When his brother Tiberius in Rome learned how badly he’d been hurt, he jumped on a horse and headed north, accompanied by a small escort. He raced day and night, stopping only to change horses. He covered two hundred miles in four days, across the Alps, leaving most of his men lagging behind him. Drusus was close to death when he heard that his brother was on his way; he sent out a squad of horsemen to meet him and guide him over the remaining territory. When the news came that he was arriving, Drusus gave orders from his death bed that the legions be drawn up to greet him with the highest military honours. Tiberius made it in time to hear his brother’s last words and dying breath.’

  Taurus stopped his narration and fell silent. The crackling of the fire was the only sound to be heard.

  ‘Go on, Centurion,’ said Flavus. ‘If you will.’

  ‘I was given the task,’ began Taurus again, ‘the high honour, of preparing and directing his funeral. General Drusus’s body was borne on the shoulders of six military tribunes in their dress uniforms, preceded by four legates, and escorted by the entire legion of the garrison. Six thousand men in battle armour, with the imperial standard and the eagle. As the procession advanced, the trumpets sounded, joined by bugles and the deep rolling of drums. Last of all, General Drusus’s riderless horse, a magnificent Pannonian stallion.

  ‘I’d ordered a pyre to be raised with oak and fir trunks. It was as tall as a tower. A ramp was built sta
rting at a distance of two hundred steps and reaching all the way to the top. When the legion arrived at the base of the ramp they divided into two columns and marched in step until they completed a formation that stretched all the way around the pyre, in a square measuring half a jugerum. The coffin was carried on the tribunes’ shoulders all the way up to the top of the pyre, where it was placed on the bier and then, at the blare of one hundred bronze trumpets, forty legionaries, ten on each side, set fire to the pyre. The entire legion presented arms, the steel-clad infantrymen stiffened in salute and shouted out his name. No one was left with a dry eye at that sight. Not even the most battle-hardened veteran. Not even me.’

  Taurus’s head dropped to his chest.

  ‘His brother, Tiberius Claudius, took the urn with his ashes to Rome on foot, and laid them in the mausoleum that Augustus had had built for the members of his family. The emperor received the ashes with the highest honours; he wore a long black tunic and a cloak of the same colour, trimmed in gold. No Roman worthy of this name, from the emperor to the last foot soldier, has ever resigned himself to this loss.’

  Flavus and Armin listened in silence to Marcus Taurus’s heartfelt commemoration. Both were astonished at the way in which he narrated these events: it was as if he were speaking to young Romans; to young men whose job one day would be to defend the Empire. Their reactions were quite different, however. Armin, seemingly untouched, stared into the distance. He couldn’t ignore the emotion he felt flowing from his brother but he certainly didn’t share it.

  The air all around them quivered with cold chills and burned bright with oaken fire. Marcus Taurus handed out the meat, cutting off a piece for himself with his regulation knife.

  ‘Eat,’ he said. ‘You must be starving.’

  After having their fill, the two brothers hobbled the horses and laid out their blankets, but they still weren’t tired enough to sleep, despite the long day.