The Centurions

by The Centurions (retail) (epub)

  They saw the girl several times again during the following week. Aemelia and Julia became immediate friends, and if Aemelius suspected that it wasn’t entirely Julia his daughter was so eager to see, that also suited him very well.

  Several times Correus caught sight of the girls giggling and watching his and Flavius’s swordplay from a distance. He was fond of his little sister and he raised his sword to them in a friendly salute. Flavius had seen them too, he noted, and looked pleased. They walked the girls through the rose garden later and made plans for the coming excursion.

  The day of the Ludi Ceriales was a green and golden example of the perfect Italian spring, and they made the ride into the City early, the ladies in a curtained carriage, their male escort on horseback so that they could ride close enough to converse on the road. An entourage of slaves from both households accompanied them, clearing a path through the holiday throng that choked the road.

  All Rome came into the City for a festival day, and they threaded their way through crowds of merrymakers peasant and patrician, shepherds herding their charges to market or sacrifice in the temples, pastry vendors, and troupes of dancers jingling with bells. A flock of chickens from someone’s overturned cart ran squawking under their horses’ hooves, and “the girl in the cloak” and her sisterhood were out in full force, smirking slyly at any passing male who might have money in his purse. Julia and Aemelia eyed the prostitutes curiously until Valeria Lucilla reached out and drew the curtains with a firm hand.

  On the outskirts of the City, they exchanged their carriage for a slave-carried litter for the ladies, while Flavius and Correus elected to walk. Aemelia surveyed the boisterous scene, eyes shining. As they ate pears bought from a man with a tray of iced fruit, they paused to watch a dancing bear that cavorted solemnly to its master’s piping, for coins thrown into the box at its feet.

  The streets became more closely packed the farther they progressed into the City, where multistoried buildings sprouted balconies that leaned inward over the street, so that the wary pedestrian kept an upward eye for falling roof tiles and, occasionally, the contents of a slop jar.

  “Well,” Correus said, trying to make himself heard over the din, “are you enjoying yourself in this madhouse?”

  “Oh, yes,” Aemelia said. “I love it – the color and the excitement. You see,” she added naively, “it’s all new to me. My father doesn’t have the time to escort me to festivals very often.”

  Correus smiled. “Perhaps he doesn’t find them entirely suitable for little maids.”

  “I am not a little maid!” Aemelia said indignantly.

  “No, I suppose you’re not.” He swept the folds of his toga (now arranged in mirror image to the usual fashion, so that his left arm rather than his right was free) out of the way of an old woman trundling a grimy cart behind her.

  Flavius, somehow maintaining his usual pristine appearance despite the dirt and the crowd, came up beside them and presented Aemelia with violets done up in a straw holder threaded with sweet herbs. “If the… uh, flavor of the City gets to be too much for you just hold this to your nose,” he said, and she smiled and thanked him.

  “How lovely. My father would never have thought of that. What bliss to have a young man for an escort, who doesn’t keep pointing out a moral just when I’m having fun.”

  “We’re enjoying ourselves too, you know,” Flavius said. “It’s likely to be our last chance for a while. I foresee a long stretch of muddy tents and no such charming companions as yourself before they see my face in Rome again.”

  Correus whistled a little snatch from a popular marching song and she laughed. “Don’t you want to be a soldier?”

  “What we want and what we get to be generally don’t bear much resemblance to each other,” Flavius said seriously. “Yes, I suppose I do, but even if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be given much choice. My family goes back six generations in the Eagles,” he added with a touch of pride that was tinged, Correus thought, with a certain wistfulness.

  “And what about you?” Aemelia asked Correus.

  “Oh, Correus,” Flavius said. “Correus is going to be a great man in the army and slay barbarians by the thousands. He’s happiest in a muck sweat with a sword in his hand.”

  “Won’t you miss Rome?” she said to Correus.

  “Not particularly,” he said. “It’s best to do what you’re suited for, and fighting seems to be my only talent. I can’t compose poetry, and I’m told that my singing voice is enough to drive the crows off.”

  “You can whistle,” she said, teasing.

  “True, but you’ll find it isn’t in great demand at dinner parties.”

  As they approached the gates of the Arena, the road was almost impassable, the crowd overflowing into the street and arguing and jostling.

  “What a mob,” Valeria Lucilla said. “They say the Emperor Vespasian is planning to build a new arena as soon as these games are over. He has given a great deal of money to the City for it. You would think he could find a more civilized way to entertain the masses,” she added primly.

  “The people like it,” Flavius said. “Keeps ’em quiet. But I agree, it’s no place for young ladies. Would you let us take you to the races in the Circus instead?” he asked, seeing the girls’ disappointed faces. “No good for them to come to Rome and not catch some of the fun.”

  Valeria Lucilla nodded and they began threading their way around the Palatine Hill to the gates of the Circus Maximus. The crowd outside the Circus was only slightly smaller and no better mannered than that thronging the gates of the Arena, but the slaves managed to force a path through and the ladies descended from their litter. On the opposite side of the street was the Emperor’s palace, tier on tier of white marble; Correus, although he had seen it enough times, still had to restrain himself from gawking like a peasant.

  As they made their way under the aegis of Valeria Lucilla to the boxes reserved for senators’ families, the Circus itself seemed almost equally grand: row on row of seats surmounting a track two hundred meters wide by six hundred long, large enough to contain more than two hundred thousand racegoers. Rome took her chariot-racing seriously, and argument over the prospects of the four competing factions was deafening. The spina, the central divider, was embellished with columns, temples, and memorials, including the great Egyptian obelisk donated by the deified Emperor Augustus. At one end a standard held seven bronze dolphins dancing on their tails, which could be upended to mark each lap of the race.

  Dodging the food vendors and the scurrying pages sent by their owners to fetch refreshments or take messages to friends in neighboring boxes, they took their seats just as the trumpets signaled the start of the next race.

  The Emperor himself was present today, in his own garlanded and decorated box, and the four young people, none of whom had ever seen him, studied him curiously. Vespasian was a soldier, as most emperors were these days, but the first whose bloodline came exclusively from equestrian rank. He was a stocky, bull-necked figure in a purple toga, with a wreath of laurel on his graying hair. Beside him stood his son Titus, the Praetorian Prefect, supreme commander of the Praetorian Guard, resplendent in gilded parade uniform.

  “He looks so fierce,” Aemelia whispered, nodding at Vespasian.

  “He is fierce,” Julia said. “Papa says he’s one of the best generals Rome ever had.”

  “It’s the army that gives a man that charging-bull expression,” Flavius said. “That’s how we’re supposed to end up, sweet – all horns and gritted teeth.”

  “He’s a good commander,” Correus said. “A good man to follow, and Zeus knows we need one.”

  The purple-togaed figure in the imperial box raised his hand and trumpets sang out again. The chariots swept through the lower gates, six teams for this race, all four-horse quadrigae. The Blue and Green factions were fielding two teams each, and the Red and White, one. The chariots, gaudily painted with their factions’ colors, took their places in the starting boxes, the hors
es dancing with impatience while the drivers exchanged insults with great meaning. A Circus Maximus race was a do-or-die affair, and a team was as likely to come to grief from a rival driver’s treachery as from a bad turn around the spina. Each faction’s supporters were equally violent in their enthusiasms, and a popular winner was the hero of the day. If he lived that long, a good charioteer could earn enough to retire in comfort, but most spent such fortune as came their way as soon as they got it – they well knew their chances of living into retirement weren’t promising.

  The Emperor raised his handkerchief, and as it fell from his hand the chariots sprang forward, each fighting for the position nearest the spina. The chariots were built as lightly as possible and their drivers wore only a short tunic and helmet. Reins were lashed about their waists, and they carried, besides a whip, a dagger to cut themselves free if necessary. Attendants stood by along the track to pull wrecked chariots away before the race swept around for the next lap. Others held buckets of water to douse the chariot wheels – there was always a danger of friction-sparked fire.

  As the chariots careened out of the straight and thundered into the second turn, the first of the bronze dolphins tipped down, indicating an end to the opening lap. A Green chariot had taken the lead, hard pressed by the White, with the rest of the field strung out behind. In the third turn, the Green maneuvered the White into the spina, and it went down in a crash of screaming horses and broken wheels. The driver emerged cursing from the wreckage as the attendants ran up to untangle the traces. The horses, all miraculously unhurt, were led away to the boos of the crowd, and the attendants began to tow the broken chariot across the track. They had dragged it nearly to one of the inner gates when the five remaining teams bore down on them again. Abandoning the chariot, they dove for their lives through the gate, leaving the oncoming drivers to steer around the wreckage as best they might. As the flying end of the pack passed them, the attendants emerged sheepishly to the catcalls of nearby spectators and pulled the wrecked chariot back in after them.

  The fourth and then the fifth dolphins went down and Aemelia bounced in her seat excitedly. “If I were a man, that is what I would be. I can’t imagine anything to match it!”

  “It’s exciting enough’,” Correus said, “but Diulius tells me that the thrill wears off somewhat after your first accident.”

  “Do you mean you have actually driven?” She looked up at him wide-eyed. “Not here in the Circus?”

  “No, not in the Circus. But I’ve driven the general’s teams in country races often enough, to show off to buyers. I can live without it,” he added. “It seems a silly way to get killed, having some horse put his hoof through your head for the public’s amusement.”

  Aemelia looked up at him, hero worship writ large on her face. His last remark had clearly gone unheeded.

  The last dolphin came down, and the race ended with no more accidents, the popular driver, the first Green, winning by almost a half-lap. They stayed for four more races and enjoyed themselves immensely, Julia and Aemelia watching the spectacle enthralled while Flavius explained the ins and outs of the four factions, and why the Green-Blue rivalry was the most important at the moment. (The Red and White backers were not of the political standing of the other two, nor could they afford to buy teams as expensive.) Valeria Lucilla sat under her sunshade and chatted with friends who paused on their way to or from their own boxes, each giving a critical eye to the other’s attire. She noted with satisfaction that her own gown was fully as stylish as any to be seen, although in more subdued taste than those sported by several ladies of less proper reputation.

  Correus watched the spectacle through half-closed eyes, his mind wandering dreamily through pleasant scenarios of success and promotion in the Centuriate, the achievement of much distinction, and the eventual raising of the name of Appius to heights that even the old general had never scaled. He was brought back to earth abruptly as Aemelia became faint with the heat and it was decided that it was time to leave. They made their way back to the street with Aemelia supported by two slaves and a third shielding her with a sunshade. Flavius hovered solicitously at her side, leaving Correus to bring up the rear clutching a collection of pillows, shawls, and half-eaten boxes of sweets. So much for dreams of military glory, he thought ruefully, dodging an enormous senator who was holding forth on experimental farming to a trapped-looking client who bounced up and down in a vain attempt to follow the race over his patron’s shoulder.

  Once installed in the curtained litter and restored with cool water, Aemelia revived, and by the time they reached their carriage she was chattering happily about the day’s events.

  At her father’s gates, she pressed her escorts’ hands affectionately and lifted her flushed face to them. “Thank you so much. This has been the most wonderful day! I shall never forget it.”

  Then she went home to her father and made an announcement that caused that mild and venerable man to throw an onyx paperweight across the library.

  III Spring Leave-taking

  The next day Aemelius packed his daughter into his carriage and paid a morning call on the family of Appius Julianus.

  “All right, miss, take yourself off into the garden until I send for you,” he said sternly, after Appius had greeted them in the atrium.

  Aemelia gave him a stubborn look, then turned and marched through the double doors into the courtyard while Aemelius regarded her with the air of a man whose lap dog has suddenly turned into a slavering hyena. Appius raised his eyebrows and motioned Aemelius into his study.

  Outside, Aemelia looked around her rebelliously. Her eyes were red and she had obviously been weeping. The rose garden gave off a heady scent and she wandered in that direction, unexpectedly encountering Correus lounging on a stone bench by the pool. He had a wax tablet in his hand and a book of Virgil that he was translating into Greek at his tutor’s direction.

  He looked up and gave her a friendly smile. “Hello, little maid. What’s amiss?” he asked, seeing her stricken face.

  “My father is inside speaking to your father.” She gave him a tragic look. “He wants me to marry your brother.”

  “And you don’t want to?” Correus asked gently. Maybe he could change the child’s mind for her. Flavius would make her a good husband – he had obviously begun to dote on the girl. “My brother is a good man,” he began tentatively.

  “I think you must be the most noble man I have ever met,” Aemelia whispered. She sat beside him in a flutter of draperies and tucked one little hand into his.

  Correus began to get an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. “I hardly think I’m… that,” he began.

  “Oh, yes,” she breathed, “but it doesn’t matter.” She raised dark, confiding eyes to his. “I have told my father that I won’t marry your brother no matter what. I won’t marry anyone but you!”

  * * *

  “My daughter has always been the most biddable girl you can imagine,” Aemelius was spluttering exasperatedly in his host’s study, “and now – now she begins mooning over your second son – or whatever the hell he is—”

  “‘My second son’ will do well enough,” Appius said.

  “And swears she wants to marry him!” Aemelius said.

  Antonia, who had joined them, shot Appius a scathing look, which he ignored. “I assure you, my friend, Correus knows I would not permit that.”

  “You wouldn’t permit it! I have reasoned with her, scolded her, threatened her with a beating – something I’ve never done before – and all she will say is that she loves him. She seems quite certain that he loves her!” He glared at Appius.

  “I’m quite certain Correus has no ideas of the sort.” Appius’s voice was soothing. “He’s hardly known her.”

  “She’s been practically living over here, with that girl of yours. I thought it was Flavius she was looking at! Anyway, it seems to have been time enough for Aemelia. Daresay it’s enough for him, too. She’s a pretty little thing, and I’m a wealt
hy man!”

  “I doubt that would influence Correus right now,” Appius said with the ghost of a grin. “He’s army-mad. It would take more than a pretty face. And as for the financial considerations,” he added drily, “he has more sense.”

  “He didn’t have enough sense not to let my daughter go mooning about after him!” Aemelius snapped.

  “Knowing Correus,” Antonia said, “I have to agree with my husband. It probably never occurred to him.” She rose. “I’ll go have a talk with the girl. I take it your wife has already tried?”

  “My wife has gone to bed sick with a headache,” Aemelius said gloomily.

  “How helpful. Well, I shall see what I can do.” She nodded briskly and left the men.

  “In love, by all the gods!” Aemelius said. “I wasn’t in love when I got married. Were you?”

  Appius shook his head. “We’d… uh, met twice,” he said. “But it didn’t seem to have the same effect.”

  “Well, I can’t force her to marry young Flavius,” Aemelius said. “She’d hate me for it, and I won’t have that. She’s my only child. But if that young bastard of yours so much as winks at her, Appius, I’ll cut his throat!”