Turning his back on the men, he stepped to one side to allow Lucilia room to pass, Caro, the house’s head slave walking patiently behind her with both arms straining under the weight of her travelling gear. Fronto shook his head in mock disbelief and smiled as he saw the almost-hidden look in Caro’s eye.
As he turned back to the door, the three remaining family members filled the portal. Balbina stepped forward and Fronto crouched to hug her.
“Will you come back soon?”
The legate grinned.
“I will be here in December, at the latest. I try to be away from home during the Saturnalia, as my sister tends to become a little disapproving of my behaviour during the festival, and Galronus tells me that the following day they have a huge festival to a horse goddess called Epona in Gaul.”
Balbus nodded.
“In Massilia they have a full day of horse races and feasting.”
“Yes, I suspect that’s what Galronus has in mind.”
He stood once more and Corvinia reached out and embraced him.
“It has been good to see you again, Marcus. We shall have rooms prepared for you and your friends from the Ides of December onwards, but do not be reticent. Come early if you wish it. Please pass on my regards to your family.”
Fronto smiled as they separated.
“Should you have the chance to visit Rome next year, do call in. My mother would be more than happy to meet you, I’m sure.”
He turned to Balbus.
“Another farewell, eh Quintus?”
The older man smiled.
“A temporary one. Two months and I’ll see you again. Corvinia might even let me join you and Galronus at the circuit.”
“I doubt it” she replied with a sly smile.
Fronto grinned at him.
“It feels like I’ve only been here a minute. I would stay on, but there are things that need my attention at home. You understand?”
Balbus nodded.
“Go help Priscus look after your family. Tell him I asked after him.”
“I will.”
The small group spent a moment in silence before Fronto took a deep breath and picked up his bag of freshly laundered clothes.
“Right. Off to jolly old sea we go.”
With a smile, he turned his back to the villa and strode out to the waiting party. He was amused to see the reactions Lucilia was causing. Crassus was openly admiring her, Varus had a strange smirk on his face as though he were weighing her up in some way, and Crispus was looking almost anywhere but directly at her.
“Very well gentlemen, and lady of course. Shall we depart?”
Caro bowed respectfully.
“Just throw those on the cart, Caro. You don’t need to lug them all the way to the docks.”
The slave looked across at Lucilia hopefully and she smiled at him.
“Go and look after father.”
Caro carefully stacked and wedged the luggage in the cart and then delicately helped the young lady up into it before bowing and returning to the villa.
Watching the family in the doorway, waving their goodbyes, Fronto smiled a last smile at them and clambered up onto Bucephalus and trotted off after the party that had already begun to descend the gravelled path down toward the bustling metropolis below.
Falling in at the back, he stretched and leaned back, exposing his face to the late autumn sunlight before glancing once more with some trepidation at the rocking boats in the harbour and the churning surface of the Mare Nostrum.
“She’s going to cause you trouble.”
He blinked and turned to see the grinning face of Varus, riding along next to him. It took him a moment to realise that the man was speaking of Lucilia and not the sea herself.
“She’s going to meet a suitor in Rome. If anything, I’m just a chaperone.”
Varus laughed.
“I think you could be in for a surprise there, my friend. I saw those looks of hers. Keep your drawstring tight and your bedroom door locked.”
Fronto glared at him.
“That’s Balbus’ daughter you’re talking about, Varus.”
“My point precisely” the man replied with a grin.
Fronto turned back to face the party ahead. Lucilia rode almost regally, her travelling cloak having already fallen slightly to reveal pale, creamy shoulders. He swallowed hard and flashed a nervous look across at Varus, who merely grinned and nodded.
The legate of the Tenth, veteran of numerous wars, recipient of the corona civica, and senior commander in the army of the Praetor Julius Caesar, groaned and heaved once more as what was left of his stomach contents disappeared into the roiling waves.
“I feel bloody awful.”
Crispus smiled sympathetically.
“You’ve gone a very curious colour. I can’t decide whether it’s green, yellow or purple depending upon the light.”
Fronto glared at him and spat angrily into the water.
“Charming of Varus to offer me a nice fatty piece of pork, just when…”
He stopped talking and threw himself against the rail, making retching sounds.
“Stop thinking about it. He was only doing it for a joke. He didn’t know you were as bad a sailor as this. No one did. Gods, I don’t know whether I’ve ever met a worse sailor. The sea’s hardly moving.”
The legate lifted his head once again to glare at his young friend.
“Don’t mock your elders.”
The two men fell silent, a friendly smile on the young officer’s face as he patted Fronto on the shoulder sympathetically.
“You poor dear.”
Fronto turned to stare in surprise at Crispus and then realised the voice had come from elsewhere. Of course. Feminine.
Lucilia strode along the deck, her gait steady and rolling with the pitch of the deck as though she had been at sea all her life. Fronto grimaced.
“I’m alright. Just a little seasick.”
“I shall leave you in my lady Lucilia’s capable hands while I return to the table.” Crispus laughed.
Fronto shot him a desperate glance, shaking his head barely perceptibly, but the man slapped him on the shoulder, grinned, and strode off back toward the wooden housing at the rear of the large merchant vessel that served as dining room for the travellers.
He tried to straighten, but the strength seemed to have flooded from him and instead, he slumped against the railing and wiped his mouth on the back of his wrist.
“You really do appear to be very unwell. You’ve been vomiting for almost an hour.”
“Thanks for noticing.” Fronto grumbled. “Crispus is the only one who felt it worth coming to check on me. I could have been turning inside out or thrown up my liver by now.”
Lucilia gave him a gentle smile.
“Don’t be so dramatic. It’s a little seasickness; bad, yes, but hardly terminal. It may surprise you to hear that strong, unwatered wine, with the addition of ginger, is a traditional cure for the ailment among the Greek sailors in Massilia.”
Fronto glared at her.
“I hardly think I’ll be taking the advice of a nation that would bed a goat it if fluttered its eyelashes.”
She laughed.
“You get so very grumpy when you’re ill. And intolerant.”
He issued another growl and returned to looking down at the waves for a moment before he had to close his eyes again and concentrate hard on keeping his innards where they belonged.
“I sometimes wonder if you are alone because of your little quirks, or if you have these little quirks because you are alone.”
The legate heaved himself up from the railing.
“I think that officially ends our conversation.”
With difficulty, he sidled along the rail away from Lucilia, but she doggedly followed, a curious and thoughtful look on her face.
“There must be some reason. I asked my father, and all he knows is that you apparently never had time. That’s a pathetic excuse if ever I heard one. I’m
curious.”
“Don’t be.” He said flatly and without a trace of humour.
“You don’t have to be quite so guarded around me, Marcus. You’d be surprised just how open and understanding I am.”
She hooked her arm around his as he leaned on the rail and he pulled away angrily.
“Will you leave me be? I’m ill and there are some things we are simply not going to talk about.”
She smiled.
“Very well. I’m sure your sister will tell me in time.”
She jumped as Fronto wheeled on her and grasped her by the shoulders.
“This is a subject you are forbidden to raise with Faleria, do you understand me?” he growled, furiously.
Lucilia stared at him and nodded her head, a frightened look on her face.
“Of course… I’m sorry, Marcus. I didn’t mean…”
He turned his back on her and leaned over the rail.
As she turned away, tears in her eyes, and ran toward the wooden shelter, Fronto growled at the passing waves. Curiously, the anger that had risen in him had completely overwhelmed the illness and left him feeling a lot stronger; physically, at least.
He would have to apologise to her eventually of course, but she could stew for an hour first to discourage any further enquiries in that direction.
“You realise that you’ll have to do something soon?”
Fronto turned in surprise toward the prow to find Crassus looking at him with a strange and unreadable expression.
“She may look cowed at the moment,” the young officer noted, “but she’s a fiery one. She’ll not let this rest and sooner or later she’ll hear the story from your sister if she doesn’t hear it from you.”
The legate of the Tenth blinked.
“I wasn’t aware that you knew?”
Crassus smiled sadly.
“I was at her wedding, Fronto. I don’t remember whether Varus was there, but it’s entirely possible that he was too. He was certainly in Rome at the time and moved in Faleria’s circles. It’s hardly a secret, after all.”
Fronto took a deep breath and leaned back.
“Old wounds should not be reopened. You don’t have to be a capsarius to know that.”
“I’m not sure any medicus would agree that this particular one ever truly closed.” Fronto grunted and leaned over the rail again.
“She is a prize, Fronto. She looks at you with little less than naked hunger, and that is rare for a man like you.”
“Thanks. That’s a charming sentiment.”
Crassus laughed.
“I thought you were supposed to be all practical and pragmatic? I’m on my way back to Rome to a glittering future, Fronto. I’m about to meet my twenty sixth year, I have two successful military campaigns under my belt and, when my father gets a province next year, I shall begin my rise through the ranks of Rome. Quite simply, I am a catch that many respectable fathers will consider for their daughters.”
He smiled as he looked Fronto up and down.
“You, on the other hand, have no interest in politics, which means you will likely live out your days taking on officer positions in the army of whatever Praetor is busy warring that season, and face down in a wine mug in the subura the rest of the time. I know why, and I realise that you won’t believe me, but I can understand both the allure and the necessity of that for you.”
He straightened.
“But it means that you’re not a great prospect for most noblewomen, and you’re reaching the age where only the matrons, widows and divorcees will look at you.”
Fronto glared at him silently.
“You know I’m right. And you know that Balbus’ life is what you could have if only you would just pick yourself up, dust yourself off and play the game a little. You cannot wallow in self pity your entire life, Fronto. Clean yourself up, apologise to Lucilia and use the time with her that the Gods seem to have miraculously granted you, or you will still be doing this when you drop dead in a muddy field in Germania as a septuagenarian.”
Fronto continued to glare in silence as Crassus shrugged.
“Advice is free, Fronto, but I still don’t give it often.”
With a nod of the head, Crassus walked off along the deck toward the stern, leaving the Tenth’s legate alone at the rail, fuming with himself and entirely unsure why.
Fronto kept his eyes straight ahead. The conversations with Lucilia and then Crassus had ruined what was left of his tattered, sea-sickened mood for the rest of the journey, and he’d felt no relief as the merchant vessel had docked in the port of Ostia and the eager travellers had transferred to one of the numerous barges that ploughed the sixteen miles of Tiber between the great port and the emporium docks by the Aventine.
The curt apology he had planned for Lucilia had never quite come about and she now moved with a sad and offended look that made it all the more difficult to approach her. The journey along the Tiber, in a great barge hauled upstream by heavy oxen on the bank, had been much the same: quiet and depressing.
In fact, as Fronto stepped onto dry land and stared up at the slope of the Aventine before him, he realised that his dismal mood was constructed partly of the ongoing uncomfortable silence between Lucilia and himself and partly of the nerves gradually increasing as he neared home and wondered what he might now find there.
The group of officers, along with the young lady and the baggage carts, made their way along the waterfront and through the Porta Trigemina into the city proper, though with the crowds and the rickety housing along the base of the hill opposite the docks, the fact that they were now actually in the city of Rome could only be determined by the fact that they had passed through the great triple gateway and the inevitable crowd of beggars that gathered outside, clawing at the hems of the passers by.
At the edge of the Forum Boarium, Crassus and his tribunes, along with Brutus, Roscius, Varus and Crispus separated and went their own ways to family and friends. Galronus fell into position beside Lucilia and the wagon of luggage, while Fronto strode ahead, hardly acknowledging their presence as he walked.
The starting gates of the circus were already busy, preparing for the first race of the day, and the murky, swampy ground around them being churned beneath the feet of the workers was evidence that Rome had suffered heavy rain in recent days. The sky now was a sullen grey that matched Fronto’s mood perfectly as he turned and left the great circus, stomping up the sloping street, past the temples of Luna, Minerva and Diana and that drew an unofficial border between the houses of the wealthy and the dwellings of the poor.
A turn to the left and a further one to the right brought the three travellers to the street of Fronto’s youth with its gentle slope and wide walkways, the south side marked by high walls that surrounded the gardens of other houses. The city residence of the Falerii, roughly halfway along the street, was relatively modest for a patrician residence, evidence of Fronto’s father’s modest and frugal nature. The plain walls, almost entirely lacking in apertures, gave an austere impression.
Fronto strode ahead of his companions yet further and reached for the door, rapping hard on the wood.
There was a pause, while the others caught up with him, the wagon squeaking irritatingly as it rolled to a halt.
The door opened slowly to reveal not the disapproving features of the house’s chief slave, but those of four men Fronto had never seen before. Two had the distinct look of brigands, the third a massive man wearing the braids and beard of a Celt of some variety and the fourth a small, steel-eyed man bearing scars that clearly marked him as a professional fighter of some note.
“Who are you?” the latter asked plainly.
Fronto narrowed his eyes.
“I am the master of this house. Get out of my way.”
The other three moved forward, effectively blocking the entrance with a wall of muscle.
“Gnaeus?” the man’s voice called and, between the bodies, Fronto saw with relief the familiar face of Priscus duck around a
corner. The former centurion blinked and stepped out into the hallway.
“Marcus? Thank all the Gods. It’s about time you showed up.”
He turned to the small, wiry warrior.
“Good job, Cestus, but this is the man I work for.”
The four men backed away from the door and fell to one side, nodding respectfully at Fronto. He was on the verge of an irritated outburst but Priscus, recognising the signs, reached out and drew the legate through the door by the elbow, gesturing to the men.
“This is Cestus. He’s my chief enforcer now. Used to be a gladiator… one of the few ex-gladiators in Rome not currently in the employ of Clodius, I might add. These others are Todius, Aranius and Lod; all good men. No bugger gets in here without being cleared by me or Faleria.”
Fronto stopped, an eyebrow raised.
“First name terms now, eh, Gnaeus?”
Priscus looked past Fronto’s shoulder and grinned.
“Galronus! Good to have you back.”
He paused.
“You have company too?”
“I’ll tell you all about it in good time, when…”
“Marcus?”
He looked up past Priscus to see Faleria, dressed in simple pale green and her hair down and damp, fresh from the baths. Somehow, despite the difficulty he always had with her, something eased inside him. She looked healthy.
“Faleria. How are you?”
She laughed a small surprised laugh and then hurried past the guards and threw her arms around her brother.
“It is far beyond time you were home, Marcus. Gnaeus does a perfect job, but mother has been counting down the days to the Armilustrium. She knew you’d be back before then.”
Fronto smiled with a curious sadness and then looked up at Priscus and gestured with his thumb. The former centurion nodded, limping forward, and gestured to Galronus.
Gallia Invicta mm-3 Page 45