The scout looked at us disdainfully. He was the sort who had little use for civilians. ‘You still haven’t stated your purpose for being on this road.’
I looked at the copper band around his helmet and cleared my throat. He and his fellows had once been loyal to Domitius. Now he had sworn allegiance to Caesar – or so we presumed. What if we were wrong? What if Domitius’s troops had turned on their new master? Caesar might be dead, for all we knew, and these troops might be marching back to Rome with his head on a stake. But I had to give the man an answer. I thought of the gamblers in the Salacious Tavern back in Rome, casting dice and crying ‘Caesar!’ for luck, and I took a deep breath.
‘I have a son in Caesar’s service, on his personal staff. Soscarides here was the boy’s tutor when he was young. Call me soft, but I can’t stand the worry any longer – can’t stand waiting idly in Rome for news. So here I am.’
‘You’re looking for Caesar, then?’
‘Yes.’
The man looked at me sternly for a long moment, then came to a decision. He smiled. ‘Just keep following the road then, citizen. You’ll find him.’ His tone changed as completely as his face, like an actor putting aside a mask.
‘At Brundisium? That’s the rumour along the road.’
He smiled but didn’t answer. He was ready to be friendly, but not that friendly.
A second scout rode up. The two of them withdrew to the far side of the road and conferred, casting glances at us. The second scout rode on. The first returned. ‘You might as well get comfortable, if you can. You’ll be here for a bit. Some troops will be marching past.’
‘Are there many?’
He laughed. ‘You’ll see. I’ll stay here with you until the head of the column arrives. No need for you to answer the same questions for my commander. He’ll decide whether or not to cut your heads off.’ He grinned to let me know it was a joke.
I glanced at Fortex, who snorted to show that he wasn’t impressed. Tiro looked calm – philosophical, even. The driver looked nervous.
The column came up through the pass. We saw horsehair-crested helmets first, then the officers who wore them, mounted atop magnificent chargers. They were followed by drummers. The steady tattoo of the marching beat reverberated between the steep hillsides. The officer wearing the helmet with the most elaborate crest signalled to the others to proceed while he broke from the column and cantered over to the wagon. A lion’s head roared from the copper disc on his breastplate.
‘Report!’ he said to the scout, who saluted him crisply.
‘A traveller from Rome and three slaves, Cohort Commander. The man’s name is Gordianus.’
The officer looked at me keenly. ‘Gordianus? Why does that sound familiar?’
‘He says he has a son on Caesar’s personal staff.’
‘Of course! Gordianus Meto, the freedman. I met him in Corfinium. So you’re Meto’s father, are you? You don’t look a thing like him. But of course you wouldn’t, would you? I’m Marcus Otacilius, cohort commander. What in Hades are you doing here?’
‘I’m eager to see my son. Is he well?’
‘Well enough when I last saw him.’
‘He’s not with you, then? Is this not Caesar’s army?’
‘This is Caesar’s army, yes. Every man you see has sworn allegiance to Gaius Julius Caesar. While Caesar tends to business down on the coast, he’s dispatched these cohorts to Sicily, to secure his interests there.’
It was exactly the sort of strategic decision that Caesar would make: not to immediately test the loyalty of troops acquired from a hostile general by throwing them into the chase after Pompey, but to post them elsewhere.
‘My son is with Caesar, then? Where are they?’
Otacilius hesitated, then nodded to the scout. ‘Ride on. I’ll handle this.’
The scout saluted and galloped towards the head of the column. Soldiers poured through the pass in endless rows and proceeded up the mountain, winter cloaks thrown behind them like capes, scale armour glinting across their chests.
The officer smiled. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any harm telling you what Caesar’s up to. He’s already —’
The driver suddenly jumped from the wagon, spun about, and pointed at us. ‘They’re lying!’
Otacilius’s horse cantered skittishly, startled by the sudden movement. Even before he gave a signal with his hand, two rows of men broke from the passing column. In the space of a heartbeat, the wagon was circled by a ring of spears.
Otacilius regained control of his mount. He looked from me to the toothless driver. ‘What is this about?’
‘They’re lying!’ The driver pointed at Tiro. ‘That one’s up to something. My master back in Beneventum told me to keep an eye on him. He carries some sort of document with the seal of Pompey the Great.’
The officer looked at me coolly. ‘Is this true?’
I felt hackles rise on the back of my neck. I opened my mouth, wondering how to answer.
Tiro spoke up. ‘Master, may I speak for myself?’
‘Please do, Soscarides.’
He addressed the officer. ‘That worthless driver is the liar! He and I have been quarrelling ever since my master hired him from the stabler in Beneventum. He’s got a grudge against me – thinks I have it too easy because I stayed dry while he was wet and miserable driving through the mountains. I think the cold must have settled in his brain. Give him a few lashes and see if he sticks to his tale!’
The driver’s mouth formed a toothless circle of outrage. ‘No, no! They’re all Pompey’s men, I tell you. My master said so. He didn’t like giving them the wagon, but he had to, on account of that document the lying one carries. Search him if you don’t believe me!’
The officer looked genuinely distressed. He and I shared a bond of friendship, through Meto – but only if I was telling the truth about being Meto’s father. ‘What do you have to say about this document . . . Gordianus?’
I looked at Tiro. ‘By Hercules, Soscarides, what is the slave talking about?’
Tiro looked back at me calmly. ‘I have no idea, Master. Let the officer search me, if it pleases him.’
‘I shall have to search you all, I’m afraid.’
Otacilius confiscated our weapons first. Tiro and I each carried a dagger, and Fortex carried two. We were forbidden to leave the wagon while the soldiers sorted through our saddlebags. They found nothing of interest. Then we were made to stand in the wagon and strip off our garments, layer by layer.
‘Our loincloths as well?’ I asked, trying to play the outraged citizen.
‘I’m afraid so,’ said Otacilius, wincing. He turned his head and caught some of the troops sniggering as they passed by. ‘Eyes straight ahead!’ he barked.
I stood naked and held up my empty palms. ‘As you can see, Cohort Commander, I have nothing to hide. Nor do the two slaves.’
Otacilius looked appropriately chagrined. ‘Return their clothing. What do you say to this?’ he barked at the driver, who quailed in speechless confusion.
I felt better with my loincloth covering me. I pulled my tunic over my head. ‘I only hope, Cohort Commander, as compensation for this embarrassment, that you’ll lend me adequate men . . . and appropriate utensils . . . to see that the lying driver is appropriately punished.’
‘No!’ the man wailed. ‘Return me to my master in Beneventum! Only he has the right to punish me.’
‘Nonsense!’ I said sternly. ‘You were let to me along with the wagon. While you’re in my service, I have every right to chastise you.’
‘Actually, for deceiving an officer of the Roman army in time of military crisis, this slave is liable to be executed by military law, and his master fined, at the very least,’ said Otacilius coldly. I felt a stab of pity for the cringing driver, who was now the one ringed by soldiers with spears. If only he had kept his mouth shut!
‘No, wait!’ He lunged desperately towards Otacilius. One of the soldiers gave him a vicious poke with his spear.
A blossom of blood stained his shoulder. He clutched the wound and wailed. ‘Up on that knob! The two of them climbed up there before the troops arrived, spying on you!’
‘There’s no crime in curiosity,’ said Otacilius.
‘But don’t you see? That’s when they must have hidden the document, or destroyed it. They saw you coming, and they got rid of it. Go look up on that hill! You’ll find it there!’
Tiro rolled his eyes in disgust. ‘The lying slave will have you searching every stretch of road from here back to Beneventum, if you listen to him. Stupid lout! Perhaps if you stop lying and tell the truth, the cohort commander will at least allow you a quick and merciful death.’
Otacilius worked his jaw back and forth and stared at me. I played the affronted citizen and stared back at him. I realized that he had not given back our daggers. That meant he had not made up his mind about us.
At last he called another row of troops from the column. ‘You men, go search that hilltop. Bring back anything you find that a traveller might have left there – any sort of bag or pouch, and any scrap of parchment, no matter how small or burnt.’
Surely they would find nothing, I thought. Tiro had been with me atop the knob. He hadn’t mentioned the courier’s passport, and I hadn’t seen him hide it. The only sign of a human that the soldiers were likely to come across, I thought ruefully, was the deposit left by Tiro when he stole away to relieve himself . . .
I suddenly realized that Tiro had not lingered behind on account of his nervous bowels. He had gone off to dispose of the document.
Parchment burns easily. Parchment could also be torn, ground underfoot, chewed, even swallowed. But had Tiro destroyed it beyond trace, or merely hidden it, thinking to retrieve it after Caesar’s troops passed by? I avoided looking at him, fearful that my expression might give me away. Instead I watched the soldiers scramble up the hillside. At last I could stand it no longer. I glanced in Tiro’s direction. In the instant our eyes met, I knew as surely as if he had spoken that he had not obliterated the document, but had only hidden it. My heart sank. I drew a deep breath.
Perhaps, I thought, the soldiers would be content to search the bare hilltop. But I knew it was a vain hope; these men were trained to follow tracks, watch for signs of passage, ferret out hiding places. Their commander had ordered them to search and retrieve. That was what they would do.
Tiro, Fortex, and I stood in the wagon and waited. The driver clutched his wounded shoulder and sobbed. Row after row of soldiers marched past. I felt the suspense one feels in the theatre, awaiting a reversal of fortune.
At last the soldiers came scrambling down the hillside. They had found not one artifact, but several. What Roman road is without litter? There was part of a cast-off shoe, chewed on by some animal with pointed teeth. There was a bit of ivory which appeared to be a broken strigil, used for scraping oneself clean at the baths. There was a tattered scrap of cloth which might once have been a child’s soiled, discarded loincloth. The most valuable find was an old Greek drachma, the silver tarnished black.
‘We also found this, Cohort Commander. It was rolled up tight and stuffed between some rocks on the far side of the hill.’ The soldier handed a piece of parchment to Otacilius, who unrolled it. His face grew long.
‘A courier’s passport,’ he said quietly. ‘Issued by authority of the Ultimate Decree. Signed by Pompey himself. Stamped with his seal ring.’ Otacilius peered at me above the parchment. ‘How do you explain this, Gordianus? If, in fact, you are Gordianus . . .’
XV
Row after row of soldiers marched past. Face after face peered sidelong at us, some scornful, some merely curious. A few even looked at us with pity. We must have made a sorry sight: four men with arms bound behind their backs, tethered to one another by their ankles, being led down the mountain in single file along the side of the road by a cohort commander on horseback. A foot soldier followed behind, using his spear for a prod.
The wagon driver was hindmost in the group. The wound at his shoulder had rendered him faint and weak. He had a hard time keeping up. The footpath alongside the paved road was rough and uneven. Occasionally he stumbled, sending a jerk through the tether that connected our ankles, making Fortex trip forward into Tiro, who tripped forward into me. The foot soldier would prod at the stumbling slave with his spear; the slave would let out a yelp. The soldiers marching past would laugh, as if we were performing a roadside mime show for their amusement.
Otacilius peered at me over his shoulder occasionally, his face inscrutable. Another tether connected the two of us, one end tied around my throat, the other wound around his forearm and clutched in his fist. Despite my best efforts to keep up and maintain some slack in the tether, my neck was soon wrenched and sore, the flesh chafed and raw. I was lucky to still have a head connected to my shoulders.
We might have died within moments after Otacilius discovered our lies. We were an unexpected anomaly encountered on the road, a hindrance to the army’s progress, a problem to be disposed of. He might have had us all executed where we stood. As soon as the passport from Pompey was produced, I braced myself for that possibility. To avoid the horror of it I let a great tide of recriminations flood my thoughts. If only Tiro had had the sense to destroy the passport, rather than hide it. If only we had stayed on the Appian Way instead of taking Tiro’s ‘shortcut’. If only we had dragged the driver into the woods and cut out his tongue before the first scout arrived. If only we had left the wagon behind that morning, and the driver with it . . .
The list of regrets circled endlessly in my mind as we trudged downhill, the monotony interrupted only by the occasional stumble by the driver, followed by more stumbling up the line and a jerk at the tether around my throat, then the squeal of the driver as he was poked, and the laughter of the soldiers passing by.
‘Who are those wretches?’ said one soldier.
‘Spies!’ said another.
‘What will they do to them?’
‘Hang them upside down and flay them alive!’
That elicited a squeal of terror from the wagon driver, who stumbled again. The humiliating sequence repeated itself. The passing soldiers howled with laughter. Not even the most stumblebum troupe of Alexandrian mimes could have put on a funnier show.
What did Otacilius intend to do with us? The fact that he hadn’t yet killed us offered some hope. Or did it? He assumed we were spies. Spies knew secrets. Secrets might be valuable. Therefore we might be valuable. But I suspected that the Roman military in regard to spies, like the Roman judiciary in regard to slaves, recognized only one credible means of obtaining secrets: through torture.
We had been spared our lives, but towards what end? We were being led down the mountain, towards the rear of the army, but for what purpose? I found it easier to scroll mentally through endless recriminations and regrets than to contemplate those questions.
‘Gordianus,’ Tiro whispered behind me. ‘When we arrive, wherever they’re taking us —’
‘Silence!’ Otacilius looked over his shoulder and glared down at us. A crueller man might have given a wrench to the tether around my throat for good measure, but I saw that his gaze was clouded by doubt. If I was the man I claimed to be, then I was the father of a personal confidant of Caesar, a man Otacilius knew. On the other hand, I had lied about the courier’s passport, which linked us directly to Pompey, and if the wagon driver was truthful, Tiro was not my slave Soscarides, but the actual leader of our little travelling party. Had I lied about being Meto’s father, as well? Otacilius faced a dilemma. His soldier’s instinct was to pass the dilemma along to someone higher up.
It occurred to me that I might possibly escape with my neck intact if I kept doggedly proclaiming my identity – but only if I betrayed Tiro. How else to explain the passport? Once he was known to be Tiro, higher ranking officers could probably be called forward to identify him, despite his disguised appearance; as Cicero’s secretary, Tiro was well known in the Forum. What would be done to hi
m? Would he be released, as Domitius had been released, and sent back to Cicero unharmed?
I doubted it. Tiro was not Domitius. He was a citizen and a member of a senator’s household, but only by dint of having been manumitted by Cicero. What would be done to a former slave travelling incognito as a spy, who had brazenly lied to a Roman officer? I couldn’t believe that he would simply be set free.
This vexing train of doubts and apprehensions served at least to keep my mind off the more and more frequent stumbling from behind, the tug of the tether at my neck, and the raucous laughter of the marching soldiers. I was weary and thirsty. My head buzzed as if there were a swarm of bees inside it.
Down and down we trudged, until at last we arrived at a broad, high meadow that overlooked the coastal plain and the glimmering Adriatic in the distance. The meadow appeared to be the site of the previous night’s camp. A single large tent was still standing. We passed the staging area where the last cohort was assembling in ranks to begin the march up the mountain.
In my dazed state, I wondered how many soldiers I had seen in the last few hours. If the army consisted of Domitius’s entire force from Corfinium, they amounted to thirty cohorts in all, with six hundred men in each cohort, and I had passed every one of them. Now I knew what a body of eighteen thousand armed men looked like. How many men did Caesar have in Italy, that he could spare so many troops for Sicily?
Otacilius led us towards the tent, where a team of camp-strikers had begun to pull up stakes. A young officer in splendid armour stepped out, carrying under his arm a helmet with an elegant horsehair crest. There was no copper disc with a lion’s head on his breastplate. He was not one of Domitius’s men, yet Otacilius was quick to jump from his horse and salute him as a superior.
‘Numa’s balls!’ I heard Tiro mutter behind me.
I peered at the officer more closely. It must have been fear and fatigue that kept me from recognizing him at once, for there was no mistaking his curiously brutish yet babyish face. His profile was the brute: seen from the side, his dented nose, jutting chin and craggy brows made him look like an angry boxer. Seen straight on, his full cheeks, gentle mouth, and soulful eyes made him look like a homely poet. At every angle between, his face was a mixture of contradictions. It was a face women found fascinating, and men trusted or feared instinctively.
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