The Sword of Revenge

by Jack Ludlow

  Titus, standing to one side, had the impression that Lucius was talking about himself, not his late father, as he wondered why he and his brother had been summoned here. Surely the senator, who claimed such close friendship to Aulus, would not have diminished himself if he had called upon them!

  The older man turned to include Titus in his next statement. ‘You will both miss his guiding hand, will you not?’ The brothers murmured in assent, as Lucius, nodding sagely, laid a thin hand on Quintus’s shoulder. ‘Which is why I asked you here. Since your father is gone, I wish to offer, in his place, my humble support. The path to prominence is strewn with pitfalls for the unwary. I betray no trust when I say that Aulus himself depended on my advice.’

  Lucius half-turned, his eyes fixed on Quintus in a way that excluded Titus, this as the tone of the old man’s voice changed, taking on a harder edge than previously. ‘After all, it was I who secured his last two appointments to Spain and Illyricum, just as I supported him in earlier times, giving up my rights as senior consul when we served together so that he could take command in Macedonia.’

  Titus experienced the first faint stirrings of resentment and he fought to remain still so that his feelings would remain hidden. Old enough to see his father as more than just a hero, he was aware, as any son must be, that he had had faults; but he had stood as a paragon compared to this man, who, if rumour was to be believed, had stooped to murder to gain his political ends. Now, by the tone of his voice, Lucius seemed to be implying that Aulus Cornelius would have remained a nobody without his help.

  It was almost a surprise to Titus that he spoke; the words seemed to come out of his mouth unbidden. ‘I’m sure my father was properly grateful for the help he received from his many friends. They must take pleasure from the knowledge that they extended their trust to one of the most able men in Rome.’

  The old man turned his penetrating gaze on the younger Cornelii. Titus had his father’s height and build, as well as his features: the thick, black hair of the younger Aulus, a straight and prominent nose and the kind of brow that denoted both brains and natural dignitas.

  ‘Properly grateful,’ said Lucius, rolling the words around his mouth, as though tasting them. Then he turned his attention back to Quintus, moving closer and placing a hand on his shoulder. ‘I have already said that I admired your father. I shall not labour the point, since that would only debase the sentiment. Above all things, Aulus was a practical man.’

  Even the stony-faced Quintus flicked an eyebrow at the way Lucius had used the word ‘practical’, but he said nothing to interrupt; the importance of the man clutching his shoulder precluded comment.

  ‘The Forum Romanum was not his natural home. I’m not sure he always, for instance, grasped the importance of patrician loyalty. Sometimes it was hard to see him as what he professed to be, a member of the Optimates.’

  Lucius noticed the shocked look on Quintus’s face and he turned sharply, as if aware that it would be the younger of the pair who would speak, and held his hand up as an instruction to remain silent. It was breeding rather than respect that made Titus hold his tongue.

  ‘I express myself in a lame fashion. I have rarely met a more upright man than Aulus Cornelius, incapable of subterfuge.’ He paused for a moment, then produced a thin smile. ‘Which is a handicap in politics. When I spoke of loyalty, I did not mean it in the personal sense. I meant adherence to a higher goal, namely the safety of the Republic. Aulus served Rome on the battlefield and I do not doubt that his sons will do their city the same service, but he was also needed in Rome. There are as many enemies in the city as there are on the frontiers. I asked you to call on me today so that I may be sure that you understand the nature of your inheritance.’

  He was talking exclusively to Quintus now, again excluding Titus, but that was in order; the words he used could only apply to the new head of the Cornelii household. All the family responsibilities fell on Quintus’s shoulders, including firing the first shafts in the campaign to bring Vegetius Flaminus to justice.

  ‘But more important than that, I wish to stand in his place. You are heir to a great fortune and an even more illustrious name. You will both assume, in time, your place in the Senate. After that, with guidance, you could rise to become consul. I intend that you shall succeed and I hope that you will stand by me in the defence of everything that is sacred, and learn the art of politics at my side.’

  Quintus bowed again and finally spoke. ‘I am yours to command, sir.’

  Lucius ignored Titus’s frown, and patted his elder brother on the shoulder. ‘You gladden my heart by saying so, young man.’

  Titus nodded to the various people they passed, who wished to greet the brothers, while also, they being in mourning dress, silently condoling with them. Quintus seemed not to notice, striding down the street with his mind on distant prospects. It was no secret he hankered after high office, that he longed to serve as a consul. Quintus’s whole life had been bent to that one supreme goal. His brother decided he should be brought back to earth, reminded of just how shabbily they had been treated.

  ‘He should have called on us, and paid his respects to our stepmother.’

  ‘Do be quiet, Titus.’

  ‘You don’t agree?’

  Quintus stopped and faced his brother. ‘What if I do? Am I about to tell the most powerful man in Rome that he lacks manners?’

  ‘I think father would have found a tactful way of telling him!’

  ‘There’s a world of difference. They were of an age and had been friends for years.’

  ‘All the more reason for Lucius Falerius to call.’

  Quintus frowned. ‘You’re just like father, you know, blind to reality. Lucius Falerius doesn’t call on anyone.’

  ‘So you are about to join his circle of arse-lickers,’ Titus snapped.

  ‘Don’t you dare address me like that again, brother. I would remind you that I am now head of the family and as such I have duties, one of which is to seek advancement.’

  Titus was aware that he had gone too far; his brother’s elevation entitled Quintus to a degree of deference, yet he could not bring himself to actually apologise, though he did force himself to speak with a more measured tone.

  ‘I know that, Quintus, yet I would advise you to take care…’ Titus saw the angry glare in his brother’s eye, and spoke quickly to deflect it. ‘I have as much interest as you in the well-being of the family. I would beg you ask yourself one question. If Lucius Falerius values father’s memory and our future so much, why is it beneath his dignity to call? Or is it that he does not truly consider either of those things to be worth the trouble?’

  ‘If a man like that offers me his good offices, then I would not refuse. Neither would our father.’

  Titus spoke softly to take the sting out of his words, taking a gentle grip on Quintus’s arm. ‘Father was the man’s equal, not his client. Do not lash yourself to Lucius Falerius any more tightly than he did.’

  Quintus responded by pulling his arm free and striding off.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Marcellus Falerius felt his right arm go numb, but he was quick enough to transfer the stave to his other hand, dropping his head to avoid the follow-up blow. His opponent had stepped forward to deliver this, his leading leg bent to support the forward movement. Marcellus swung his stave up in an arc, stopping it just as it made contact with the leather pouch on the exposed groin, then he jabbed gently. Gaius Trebonius dropped his weapon and clutched at his genitals, more alarmed than hurt, speaking breathlessly. ‘It was an accident, Marcellus.’

  ‘No it wasn’t.’

  ‘Honestly!’

  Marcellus jabbed at him again. ‘Don’t lie, Gaius. Never lie. You’re a Roman, remember.’

  ‘He’ll be a Vestal Virgin if you keep jabbing him there,’ said Publius Calvinus.

  His twin brother, Gnaeus Calvinus, spoke too. ‘Marcellus is right.’

  ‘Go on Gnaeus,’ sneered Trebonius. ‘Lick his boots.’r />
  Instead Gnaeus started to vigorously rub Marcellus’s right arm. ‘Did it hurt?’

  ‘No,’ he lied, since it stung badly; Gaius Trebonius had given it all he had, in total contravention of the rules of the game, though Marcellus blamed himself for leaving the arm exposed.

  ‘Why do you always cheat, Trebonius?’ asked Gnaeus.

  ‘It runs in the family,’ called Publius, who had picked up the fallen stave.

  ‘Publius!’ snapped Marcellus. ‘Gaius is in mourning for his grandfather, who I would remind you, died as a Roman should.’

  The boy named swelled with pride then; the tale of his grandfather’s death at the hands of the Illyrian rebels was nearly as inspiring as that of Aulus Cornelius. He had faced the men who murdered him as a Roman proconsul should, exuding pride and indifference, with nothing in his hand except the axe and fasces that denote the power of the Roman imperium.

  Publius pulled a face. ‘Officially, maybe, but I bet he’s really thinking how much closer he is to the family coffers.’

  ‘It makes no difference. I should have thought it was obvious that remarks about his family were unwelcome at any time, but especially now. I pray to the Gods that you never insult me that way.’

  Marcellus turned and stalked across the open field, his boots sending up small puffs of dust. Gnaeus ran after him and Publius sighed. ‘There he goes, Trebonius. The most upright prick in all Rome.’

  Gaius Trebonius laughed. ‘Speaking of pricks, do you think his boots are the only thing your brother licks?’

  Publius swung the stave up and hit Trebonius hard in the groin. As he doubled over he brought it down on his neck. ‘The trouble with Marcellus is that he’s too soft. He turns the other cheek. If you’d struck me the way you hit him, I’d have taken your head off and I don’t mean the one on your shoulders. I’d make you scream like that horrible sister of yours.’

  ‘Pax!’ bleated Trebonius.

  Publius lifted the stick and whacked him across the buttocks. ‘Come on, otherwise Timeon, our great and glorious teacher, will fetch you a dozen of those.’

  The noise of the returning children briefly distracted Lucius and made him wonder whether such boisterous behaviour should be allowed. He had noticed that Timeon, the tutor he had engaged to teach Marcellus and his neighbour’s children, had been less strict of late, ever since the time his son had seen fit to give the Greek a buffet around the ears. The boy had received a sound beating for that transgression but that was only half the solution; it could not be allowed to interfere with the pedagogue’s strict methods, which in the past had seen him employ a vine sapling with vigorous regularity. Timeon had cost a fortune to buy and if he was growing soft, not disciplining sufficiently the boys in his care – all of whose parents paid Lucius a good fee to share his services – he would have to be sold and replaced. There was only one way to bring up and teach a Roman, and that was with rigour, but he decided to let what he could hear be; it would not aid Timeon’s authority to have him intervene.

  Perhaps it was the paper before him that softened his natural disapproval of their youthful playfulness. After many years and careful disposal, he had in his hand the document which transferred ownership of two Latifunda farms in Sicily, the last piece of his land not within a day’s journey from Rome. Never again would he be required to think about examining the accounts and organising distant planting and irrigation schemes. Not that he had been to Sicily; his grandfather had acquired these two plots in a distribution of captured Carthaginian land after the Second Punic War. Huge and difficult to manage, they had, if anything, been a drain on his finances rather than an asset, returning such a low yield that some subterfuge had been required to extract a good price from the purchaser, Cassius Barbinus.

  Challenged, Lucius would not have wanted to admit the real reason he had got a higher payment for his property than was truly justified. Cassius Barbinus had had his reasons to bid the price up; he wanted to ensure that the censor did not remove him from the senatorial list and there were grounds, he being a sybaritic fellow, a wealthy man who openly engaged in trade, one to whom the sumptuary laws governing conspicuous consumption were observed more in the breach than the letter. On top of that, the fellow was looking for advancement, even though he had never held any office on the cursus honorum, so generosity to a powerful man like Lucius Falerius Nerva might prove profitable.

  It had been an unpleasant business; indeed it was a sign of the times in which he lived that Lucius could even consider transacting business with such a man. He had visited Barbinus at his cattle ranch near the small town of Aprilium in the company of his son, this to avoid being seen to have any kind of dealings with such a fellow, which in Rome would set tongues wagging. The luxury of the man’s villa was alone enough to displease Lucius, but the open way that Barbinus had tried to bribe him with gifts had set his teeth on edge, first with some tame leopards, then with the present of a young slave girl. Having turned down the first proffered gift he had been obliged to accept the second, manners demanded it, but he had seen to it that the girl never entered his house. She had been sent to a farm between Rome and the port of Ostia.

  His steward entered silently and, without distracting him, laid the latest batch of reports, fresh in from the Republic’s scattered provinces, on his desk. Lucius threw aside his bill of sale and turned eagerly to read them. Illyricum was now at peace, the governorship having gone to another Flaminus, in part a recognition of his success in turning Vegetius, who had once been a political enemy, into a client, albeit a reluctant one. Locked away in his nearby strongbox he had the private correspondence that Aulus Cornelius, as head of the investigative commission, had sent back to him, reports that were enough to see Vegetius stripped of more than just his Senate seat; indeed they were so damning they could see him impeached, condemned as a thief and thrown naked off the Tarpien Rock.

  He remembered the man’s face as he had read them at his legionary camp outside Rome, flabby like his body, with too much wine and food, so that in his soldier’s armour he looked like a buffoon instead of a general. Lucius also made it plain that he knew the truth about the way Vegetius had left Aulus Cornelius and his men to die, made it clear that his goodwill was the only thing that stood between the ex-governor and impeachment. Vegetius Flaminus had understood with an alacrity that showed his true, shameless character; as long as he toed the Falerii line and supported the Optimates in the house, those letters would stay locked away. Stray from that and they would be laid before the people.

  That sanction not only locked in Vegetius Flaminus, it also included the faction of which he was a leading member, a group of senators who made mischief by flirting with the opposition, people that had to be continually bought off to keep that mischief from turning into real trouble. With them neutralised, Lucius Falerius now had the kind of power in the house which ensured that any vote that came before the chamber was almost certain to go the way he wanted. Over ten years it had taken to fully repair the damage done to his cause by the defection from his side of Aulus Cornelius, the pity being that he had to acquiesce in the granting of a triumph for a man he considered a slug, a man who could, on the most elementary examination, be denied that reward. There would, no doubt, be those who wanted Vegetius arraigned; they could bleat, but they had no evidence, only he had that.

  For all the satisfaction he had had at the moment he had shown Vegetius Flaminus the secret correspondence of Aulus, he had felt a pang of guilt, plus an ache for the friendship he and Aulus had once enjoyed. From boyhood they had been inseparable, an unlikely couple to many; Aulus so gifted physically, he of a lesser build, with a sharp tongue in place of a keen sword blade. Yes, he had soldiered, and though it had been far from a disgrace, it had not brought to him what it gifted to Aulus, an arena for what Lucius wished were his natural talents. Those had lain elsewhere; not in battle and command, but in supply and support. The legions to which he was attached were better equipped and better fed than any others eithe
r before or since, and because of that he could lay some claim to be, even if another was the actual commander, the partial author of their success.

  Prior to the murder of the plebeian tribune, Tiberius Livonius, he had had in Aulus a man with whom he could share his innermost thoughts and concerns and it hurt him even now to admit that he missed that greatly. Marcellus would one day become his confidant, but as yet he was too young. Powerful as he was, Lucius knew he was not immune from struggle. Quintus Cornelius, if not handled properly, could easily become a focus for dissent. He must be brought to see where his true interest lay, not in pursuit of Vegetius Flaminus but in loyalty to his fellow-patricians. It was good to observe that Aulus’s eldest son showed some sign that he understood, proving he had a better appreciation of his duties and prospects than his late father.

  Honest Aulus Cornelius, who had sat in this very room and made him swear he was innocent of murder. Could he have admitted that he had hired the thugs who stabbed and mutilated Tiberius Livonius, a tribune whose person was supposed to be inviolate? No, he could not, any more than he could admit to a living soul that the son he so cherished was not his own, but the fruit of a liaison between his late wife and his own body slave, a man called Ragas, who, physically strong and a fine boxer, had protected Lucius in the streets of a city where violence was commonplace. That was his secret and his alone; his thugs had taken care of that slave on the same night as they had taken care of Livonius. It was an unforeseen bonus that his wife, a woman he had come to despise for her simpering infidelity, in giving birth to Marcellus, had also expired on the night of his birth.

  Three very necessary deaths on one night, the Feast of Lupercalia. That killing of the plebeian tribune had been essential to stop the tide of reforms the man proposed, extending citizenship to Rome’s Italian allies, changing the voting structure in the Comitia in a way that would dent senatorial rule, all this to diminish the power of the Optimates. Even worse was the idea of allowing the Equites the right to sit in judgement in the courts. The class of knights would use that power for only one purpose: against the patricians whose families had led Rome to the greatness she now enjoyed. Empires, Lucius knew, were fragile. There had been many before and they had fallen, to his mind for only one reason: the power of the state had been diluted, so that political infighting replaced firm central rule.