The Centurions

by The Centurions (retail) (epub)

  “You’ve improved,” Appius said, and Correus felt a surge of pride. His father rarely bestowed even that much praise. Appius set his shield down, and Correus dropped his own, uncertainly. There was something in the wind…

  Appius motioned to him, and they walked in silence out the gate and down to the edge of the horse pasture. Appius was silent for a long while, gazing at the horses and the newly mown hay and the house on the hill where the red sun, Apollo’s chariot, was beginning to drop down to the darkness beyond the world. “The future comes upon us, my son,” Appius said quietly at last, and Correus found his hands clenching the fence rail tightly. His father rarely called him by those words.

  “You know that I intended to free you,” Appius went on, “when you were grown.”

  “I thought it was in your mind, sir, yes,” Correus said.

  “All this…” Appius nodded at the sunset-shadowed acres of the great estate. “I can’t give you any of this. It is Flavius’s, and I wouldn’t give it to you if I could. It is his by birthright, and that is a thing that the gods decide – I think. But you – Alan and Diulius tell me that you have the skill to make a way for yourself in the cavalry, or even in the Circus. Although the Circus is not what I would choose for you myself, despite the fact that a great many drivers have grown rich there. Tell me – is that what you want?”

  “Of the two, sir, I think I would choose the cavalry. It’s closer to—” He stopped. The cavalry was closer to what he really wanted; and what he wanted was as far beyond him – even as a freedman – as the ownership of Appius’s estate.

  Appius studied his son’s face. “It’s closer to the Centuriate, you were going to say. You want the Centuriate, don’t you?”

  “Yes, sir.” Correus held his voice steady. The Centuriate… an officer’s post in the legions, the Eagles, the elite of the army… his father’s own road. It was the road that Flavius was entitled – expected by birth – to follow. “Would they take me, sir?”

  “The Centuriate will take any son of mine,” Appius said, with subtle emphasis on the word. “Correus, my son, listen to me. You are in my mind perhaps more than you know. What a man leaves behind him is important to him – you will feel that way also when you grow older, I think. I can’t give you what belongs only to Flavius. But there is enough of my name to share. I can give you that to leave behind you in your turn, and with it appointment to the Centuriate.”

  Appius caught the sudden light in the boy’s eyes, the paling of the bleak shadow he had seen there so often when their talk turned to the army. It is little enough I do for him, he thought. Little enough for a part of my bone and blood.

  * * *

  “If my master could keep his feet still, the laces would arrange themselves more smoothly.” There was an exasperated edge to the slave’s voice, and Appius stopped fidgeting and stood docilely while his attendant arranged the intricate crossings of his sandal laces to his satisfaction. The sandals were of soft, supple leather, dyed a plain unpretentious brown, but they were a gentleman’s covering, a house sandal, and his feet would never look at home in them, Appius thought ruefully, no matter what his body servant did to them. His feet had worn heavy marching sandals for too long, and they had left their mark in knobs and calluses from heel to toe. Nevertheless he studied the floor patiently while his servant secured the last knot. The floor tile was inlaid with a bright mosaic of a fish-tailed Triton who calmed the waves about him with a conch-shell trumpet. The surrounding walls, rising as the land does from the sea, continued this soothing theme with scenes of Flora in a blooming garden and small Pan-children in a sun-dappled wood, piping to some unseen deity.

  The windows looked out onto a rose garden. At its center was a pool where the kitchen cat lingered in rapt contemplation of the fish that lurked among the water lilies; and beyond could be glimpsed a graceful marble court dedicated to the goddess Athena. An adjoining room contained a private bath; beyond that was the bedchamber. Appius had adopted the Triton room as his private dressing chamber, but like most old-fashioned Romans, he shared a bedchamber with his wife.

  The bustle of a household making ready for the dinner hour drifted through the far doors opening onto the atrium. This was the central chamber of the house, built around its own small pool with a skylight above and small altars to the household gods along the walls. A smell of fish and herbs drifted from the kitchen, and a serving girl scampered by along the colonnade with a bowl of fruit, followed by the cook’s small daughter importantly carrying a tray. There was a shout of indignation and then laughter from the rose garden. Flavius and Correus, scrubbed and brushed and wearing clean tunics, were playing latrunculi at a stone table by the pool and trying to cheat each other as usual. Since neither one had the slightest skill at the game, cheating rarely affected the outcome. They were fond of each other, Appius thought. Maybe that would be enough. Enough to take the sting of slave birth from one, and of being always outshone from the other?

  Appius put up his arms and let his servant drop the white woolen tunic over his head. The plain garment was proper civilian attire for dining, but it made him slightly uncomfortable, as if he had come out in his undertunic by mistake. Scarlet was a centurion’s color, purple for a general, a legate, as he had been. But retired military men who peacocked in their uniforms on country estates had always irritated him. There would be scarlet uniforms around the table again soon enough.

  * * *

  There were no guests that night, and as usual when the family dined alone, they gathered together for their meal: Appius on the main couch, with his wife, Antonia, across from him and their pretty daughter, Julia, beside her, both in pale gowns of blue and yellow silk and the diaphanous scarves which were all the warmth that fashion permitted; Flavius on the third side shared a couch with Correus, in his dual position of attendant to Flavius and unorthodox son to the household. Correus’s mother, Helva, did not dine with the family. In spite of the fact that Appius still visited her chamber occasionally, it would never have occurred to him that she should dine with his wife.

  The dining room also opened onto the garden in a vista of vine-covered trellises that led to a fountain of marble dolphins balanced on their tails and spouting streams of water. The floor was inlaid with mosaics of baskets of fruit at the corners and lobsters that Julia said always made her feel they were snapping at her ankles. The walls, as in most Roman rooms, were brightly painted over every available inch of plaster with scenes supposedly conducive to good digestion: waving palm trees, garlands of flowers, and cavorting nymphs with bells around their ankles, as well as a banquet table spread with wine flasks and dead game. Appius had his doubts about this last one. One of these days he was going to have something more appetizing painted over it. The dining room of Aemelius had a lifelike depiction of the infant Hercules strangling a serpent.

  Appius waited until the first two courses had been served – a light selection of shellfish and salads with honeyed wine; and a rack of roast pork and pheasants cooked in cream – before raising his goblet, which he did just as the fruit and honeycakes came in. The wine steward bent over him with an amphora, and Appius shook his head, murmuring something in the man’s ear. He bustled out again and presently reappeared with another amphora, from which a wisp of cobweb trailed. The steward gave it a hasty brush with his sleeve as he bent to fill Appius’s goblet. Antonia raised her eyebrows.

  “The best wine?”

  “Falernian,” Appius said firmly. “My father always maintained that Falernian wine was for serious announcements and special occasions, and since this is both, I see no reason to differ with him.”

  “What is it, Papa?” Julia looked up from her goblet, interested. She was only fifteen and not often allowed to drink her wine unwatered. This promised to be an evening of excitement.

  Appius splashed a little of the Falernian on the tiled floor for the gods that guard new ventures. “We will drink to my son, Flavius Appius Julianus the younger, who will be eighteen in one month,
and of an age for the Centuriate.”

  Everyone knew that. Julia made a disappointed face. “But Papa—” Her mother reached out an admonishing hand and Julia subsided.

  “And to my second son,” Appius went on, and there was a silence like a caught breath. “Correus Appius Julianus.” He paused. “Adopted son of Appius, who will enter the Centuriate with his brother.”

  II The City in Festival

  “To serve and obey, lord. By my gods and by your own.” Forst knelt awkwardly with his hands in Appius’s in the master’s study. The bedraggled trousers were gone (probably to be burned, Appius thought with an inward chuckle) and he looked uncomfortable enough in a slave’s plain tunic of brown wool. Indeed, Forst had fought desperately at the removal of those trousers, but the steward, unyielding, had informed him tartly that when he played at swords with the young master, he could wear any outlandish garment he chose, but about the house he would dress like the servant of a civilized man. That Forst could not understand a word of this had troubled the steward not at all. He had his standards. But the iron slave collar was also gone, and when Antonia’s women had finished cleaning and bandaging the gash in Forst’s chest, the steward had smeared the gall marks on the German’s throat with salve, and when he muttered to himself about barbarians, he was not speaking of Forst.

  “Very well,” Appius said. “Stand up and attend to me. It is my wish that my sons know and understand the warfare of the nations they may in time have to fight themselves. And in view of the trouble your kin are making along the Rhenus, Germany is very high on my list. I want them instructed in how to fight a man carrying either a long sword or a spear, specifically a German so armed. If your loyalty to your people will not permit you to do this fairly, then say so now and I will set you to work in the fields instead. It will not be as comfortable a life, but I won’t send you back to Hafed, either.”

  “I will teach them, lord. I swore it.”

  “Good. I also wish that you teach them your own language. Though I speak it somewhat myself, I know not enough to instruct anyone else. There is no point in their learning bad German from me, when they can learn it properly from you.”

  “Yes, lord.” His mouth moved in what might have been a faint smile. “They will have to if I am to teach them my people’s way with a sword, since I do not speak their language.”

  “As to that,” Appius said drily, “you will pick it up. You will have to, since no one else in this household speaks German but myself. You have one month before they leave for their service in our army, and I give their weapon training entirely to you for that time.”

  Another flicker, this time of something like fear, crossed the German’s face. “And after that, lord… you will no longer need me?”

  “After that you can help Alan with the cavalry mounts. I do not buy a slave with the intention of reselling him, unless he gives me cause. Now take yourself back to my steward Philippos and he will find you a bed in the slaves’ wing.”

  Forst nodded and, uncertain as to what etiquette demanded, dropped briefly to one knee before turning to go. He would give good service in exchange for decent treatment, Appius thought. As Forst left, Appius noted that his steward’s efforts at a civilized appearance had not extended to cutting the German’s hair. It was just as well. That long hair was as much a part of a German’s soul as his manhood; the coiled knot on the side of his head meant he had killed his man in battle. Forst would not have parted with his hair without attempting to part Philippos’s skull in exchange. He must remember to tell his steward to continue to let well enough alone in that respect. You could take so much from a man and no more, before you pushed him to, the brink, and Forst had come very close already with Hafed, he thought.

  This train of thought was interrupted by the light patter of sandals at the door, and Appius raised his eyebrows in surprise. He knew his wife’s step well enough, but she rarely came to him in his study, an entirely masculine room of his own devising that bore more resemblance to a commandant’s headquarters than a gentleman’s fashionable retreat. The severity of the black marble floor and the shelves of books and scrolls which extended almost to the ceiling against buff-colored walls always made her slightly uncomfortable. She preferred her husband’s company in the bright cheerfulness of the atrium or, if the matter were private, in the airy surroundings of their sunny bedchamber with its blue and yellow walls and well-cushioned wicker chairs. Antonia was, however, a lady of much determination, and tonight she had taken all she could stand.

  After Appius had disappeared into his study, the atmosphere at the table had been enough to provoke a Vestal Virgin. Julia had been loudly curious, Flavius congratulatory but tight-lipped. After Correus had gone off somewhere, the gods knew where (eyes shining, he was turning handsprings in the marble courtyard by the statue of Athena), Helva had drifted in, blond hair immaculately coiffed and smugness written on every inch of her lovely, stupid face.

  How could Appius have done this without even consulting her, Antonia thought furiously. She practically slammed the door open.

  Appius, after a glance at his wife’s expression, put down the stable accounts he had been inspecting and gave her a bland look. “I think we’re spending far too much on grain.” He flicked a hand at the sheaf of figures beside him. “I’m thinking of putting that lower field into pasture. It doesn’t seem to grow anything else successfully.”

  Antonia ignored this conversational gambit and drew up a chair before her husband’s massive oak desk. She moved a bronze lamp on a stand slightly to one side so she could look him in the eye. Antonia had never been considered a beauty, even in her youth, but she was slender and straight-backed, with gray eyes and dark hair arranged to suit her face, in a lightly curled style elaborate enough to mark her as a lady of position, but avoiding the frivolity of crimped sausage curls and false topknots. She came of the family of Marcus Antonius, and the great man’s strength of character had been inherited in full measure. She had been a famous man’s faithful and hardworking wife for twenty years and had in the long run grown fond of him. But her deepest feelings were reserved for her children. Now she fixed their father with a steely eye and prepared to do battle. “Appius, you should have consulted me.”

  “My dear Antonia, I have every right to adopt Correus if I wish to. And since I knew you to be fond of him, it did not occur to me that you might object.”

  “Of course I’m fond of him!” she snapped. “I’ve been more of a mother to him than that nitwit that bore him!”

  “Well, then—” Appius let the reference to Helva pass, knowing that it sprang not from jealousy but from impatience with a woman Antonia considered to be of very little use. Theirs had been an arranged marriage, as were most unions among the privileged, and Appius had provided his wife with every consideration and courtesy.

  Antonia had no real reason to object to his bedding a mistress among the slave women as long as that mistress didn’t step out of her place.

  “I have never objected to your acknowledging Correus!” Antonia slapped one slender, ringed hand down flat on the desk for emphasis. “I have always said that you should free him when he was grown, help him to a post in a good auxiliary unit, or anything else his taste ran to! But adopt him – give him my son’s name – no!”

  “It’s not Flavius’s name I’m giving him,” Appius said. “It’s my own. His taste runs to the Centuriate, and you know as well as I do that nothing short of formal adoption will take him there.”

  “I fail to see the need for Correus to join the Centuriate,” Antonia said icily. “Many other men have lived very happy lives without joining the Centuriate.”

  “Correus won’t,” Appius said quietly. “I wouldn’t have. Antonia, the Eagles are bred into that boy – my family goes back six generations in that service – and he’s too good to waste. Correus could go to the top.”

  “And rise to be emperor, I suppose.”

  “I doubt that would appeal to him,” Appius said. “It n
ever did to me, though my troops wanted to try it once – did I never tell you?”

  “You’d have more likely ended with a knife in your belly, like Vitellius,” Antonia said. “I have no patience with sword-made emperors. Now that Vespasian is wearing the purple, there will be no more of that.”

  “How do you think Vespasian got it?” Appius inquired. “Still, he is a good man, and may hold on to it. I shouldn’t expect Correus to go much higher than… oh, say a military governorship,” he teased.

  “At the expense of our son! Appius, you are not going to divert me from this!”

  “I’m not trying to,” Appius said. He was beginning to get exasperated. “I have no intention of leaving Correus any part of what belongs to Flavius. He will make his own way.”

  “By giving him your name, you take away from Flavius. It is an old name and I was proud to marry into your line. It is not something to give away indiscriminately.”

  She was very serious about this, Appius realized. Hades consign all women to his own domain! He couldn’t simply ride roughshod over her. He owed her that much at least. He ran a hand through his hair. “Giving my name to my own son is hardly indiscriminate.”

  “If every man gave his name to every son he’d ever fathered, the patrician families would have some very odd blood indeed!” Antonia snapped.

  “I expect I’ve fathered more sons than Correus,” Appius said mildly. “I assure you I have no intention of rounding them all up for a wholesale adoption.”

  Antonia’s eyes blazed. “You’ve fathered one other son you’d do well to remember! Your own son, by your wife! If I were you, Appius, I’d think carefully before I did this to him!”

  * * *