by Jack Ludlow
There were two methods by which Titus gathered information, both of which involved payment. Some Celts were prepared to sell information on their race, while the Greek traders who dealt with the interior looked for concessions, like reduced tariffs from the people who controlled the routes to their main markets, the Roman governors of the two Spanish provinces. Titus preferred the Greeks since they were less likely to lie. The names of tribes, chieftains and locations, as he listened to his informants, brought back the past into sharper focus. Some of the youths he had competed with eight years before had risen to be leaders. Each was deserving of respect, but amongst those who could trouble Rome, one person stood out above all others; a tall Druid shaman and warrior, with red-gold hair, ruler of a tribe called the Duncani, whose lands lay deep in the central highlands. In a race noted for excessive display he wore nothing but plain cloth and a gold talisman round his neck, shaped like an eagle in flight.
His name was Brennos, the same man who had fought his father and it was he who had commanded the raid in which Titus had been wounded, leading men who had been forbidden to take part by their own, now angry chieftains. As a token of their sincerity, some offered to return Domitius’s gold, but Titus declined to accept, first because he suspected it was designed to elicit a refusal and secondly their possession of Roman money was the one thing that bound them to keep the peace. His refusal also had the added advantage of making them quite open about the real threat, creating the impression that Brennos was a man they feared, a leader persuasive enough to wean their own younger warriors from their natural loyalties.
The shaman had acquired a secure tribal base of his own, deep in the interior and he had only essayed from that and come towards the coast to cause trouble. If the chieftains of the eastern mountains had made him welcome, it was because of their tradition of hospitality more than any love of the man and his aims. They too could remember, just like Titus, what had gone before; the rebellion he had led and the brutal way he had exercised command. It was not something they wished to repeat — being so close to Roman power meant they were also first in line for Roman revenge — yet care had to be taken by tribal leaders in a society of warriors, many of whom saw bending the knee to Rome as cowardice. It was of no help to have this interloper stirring up the passions of those who thought their leaders too supine so they were only too willing to recount to Titus how his re-birth as a threat had come about.
After the collapse of his revolt Brennos had retired further west into the interior of the Iberian Peninsula to lick his wounds, to the lands that bordered the great western confederation of the Lusitani. They occupied a fragmented domain on the eastern side of the Iberian Peninsula that extended all along the rocky coast of the great, heaving, outer sea, sharing only a southern border with Rome around the old Carthaginian port of Gades. It was a relatively peaceful one, since the Romans tended to leave the Lusitani alone; the tribal group was so large and the country so inhospitable that to provoke them would entail a full-scale war in a land that looked as if it would produce little in the way of profit.
Brennos had crossed into Lusitani territory to work amongst the people, employing his skills as a healer, bringing rain to parched crops, telling the future and entertaining the encampments he visited with the long oral tales so beloved by Celts wherever they resided. His reputation spread, until, as a mark of the respect in which he was held as a Druid, the Lusitani chieftains had invited Brennos to officiate at the great festival of Sambain. This was held in a sacred grove, full of tall standing stones like those he had left behind in the north, the home of a temple that was reputed to contain treasures of gold and silver beyond price. From what Titus could glean, the trust placed in Brennos was sadly misplaced, for he had repaid their hospitality by a deliberate attempt to undermine his hosts. Identifying the men who would succeed the present chieftains, hungry for power and not yet wealthy, or tested enough to esteem peace, he preached his previous doctrine of a destructive war on Rome and sought to revive his notion of a great Celtic confederation to smash the power of the Republic.
That was history now. Obliged to move on by the angry Lusitani chieftains, Brennos had taken to travelling once more, returning to the western borders of some of those clans he had led against Aulus Cornelius. He had wandered amongst them, not always a welcome guest, the information Titus was given placing him at some time or other in every tribal encampment in the land as he wandered the length of Celtic Iberia. Finally, he had come to rest at Numantia, home of a clan called the Duncani. Here he had been truly welcomed, with his powers to heal the sick and remove the blight from their meagre crops, for the Duncani were a tribe in decline.
Celtic hospitality had always been the Druid’s most potent ally and it was doubly so here, especially since the chieftain, an old warrior called Vertogani, had accommodated him in his own hut. Fond of food, drink and virgins, the old fellow had welcomed someone new to whom he could boast, proud as he was of the arch of skulls that decorated the entrance to his abode. The tribe had been feared once, and so had Vertogani, but he was now old and useless and his people, squeezed between the Lusitani to the west and the increasingly powerful tribes to the east, who sought to take over their lands, were creeping towards extinction.
Vertogani had lived too long and in the process, through a constant succession of young wives, he had bred too many children, especially sons, each one parcelled out a small piece of tribal land. Tired of waiting, these successors had easily succumbed to the blandishments of greedy neighbours, only to find that promises to elevate them to the leadership of the Duncani tended to evaporate once the aggressors had their land under control. Some of them, prodigals chastened by the experience, had come back to the fold, to be forgiven by their overindulgent parent. There they waited patiently for the old man to die, so they could lay claim to his title, but they had reckoned without Brennos.
He cast aside his Druid vows of celibacy, married Vertogani’s favourite daughter, and immediately began to manoeuvre to replace her father, insinuating his way into the old man’s counsel so that in truth he was the real leader. One by one, in mysterious circumstances, his rivals, Vertogani’s blood children, died. Other relatives of the old chieftain, including those who had related much of this tale to those passing it on to Titus, had summoned up the sense to leave, so when the old chieftain finally succumbed, only one man stood to take his place.
Titus could not fathom it, and his Celtic informants could not enlighten him. Why should Brennos go to so much trouble to take over a tribe weak in men and wealth? Then, slowly, as more and more information filtered through from the Greek traders, he realised that, for him, the Duncani had one precious asset that outweighed all others. The location of the main tribal fort. Numantia, a huge hill with three steep escarpments, stood in the fastness of the central mountains, at the confluence of two rivers. The Duncani huts sat at the top of this great mound, which dominated all the countryside around it. When Titus questioned the Greeks who traded with Brennos, he began to see the outline of his intentions; Brennos had already begun to strengthen the one side of the hill fort requiring defence, his aim to make Numantia impregnable, clear to those with the wit to see.
The sharp-eyed Greek traders drew sketches of what had been achieved, as well as a decent map of the surroundings, which allowed Titus to add the logical extensions that such work would produce. Brennos still preached his message of war with Rome, one that attracted to him the discontented of other tribes, so, whereas the old leader had shed warriors, Brennos was acquiring them in abundance. Secure in his bailiwick, he had begun to aggressively take back what lands had been stolen under his predecessor and he was in the process, through a mixture of fighting and blandishments, of creating fear amongst his neighbours. The result was an increasingly powerful domain in which, through treaty or by threat, he was the acknowledged leader, one quite open in his intention to widen that sphere of influence in a way that was bound to bring him once more into conflict with Rome.
‘So there you have it, sir, the stuff of my father’s nightmares. First a victory in Spain, then the destruction of Rome by bringing together all the Celtic tribes from Iberia, through Gaul, to Dacia.’
‘It’s a pretty story, Titus Cornelius,’ said Licinius Domitius, ‘but I doubt a true one. If you wish to hear three different opinions, all you have to do is question two Celtic chieftains. They never, as a matter of course, agree on anything. Believe me, I know. I’ve fought them in the foothills of the Alps, which is hard, and made treaties of peace with them, which is worse.’
‘He managed it against my father. We fought an association not a tribe.’
‘Only in Spain and he lost,’ the old senator declared. He looked at the scrolls again, the ones on which Titus had written his report, as if to check his facts. ‘This Brennos can spout all he likes, it will take more than words, however potent, to unite the entire Celtic confederation. Their Great God Dagda himself, if he came from the bowels of the earth, couldn’t do it.’
‘I believe their supreme god resides in a tree, sir, not in the bowels of the earth.’
‘There you are! His brains are made of wood, just like those who worship him!’
‘So we do nothing, sir?’
‘We have a road to build, Titus Cornelius.’ He picked up the scroll and began to roll it tight. ‘And this goes to Rome. We have consuls who decide these things. Let them do their work while I do mine.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Lucius Falerius sat looking at the scrolls before him, a set he had had to search for in the packed cupboards that lined his study. With Aulus expected soon, he had not been able to resist the temptation to refresh his memory. It was six years since he had last looked at them, eight years since the event they described. His steward, now standing silently before him with a worried look on his face, had done everything possible; the sheer quantity of the rolls before his master testified to that. He could not be faulted for his inability to discover the information that Lucius required, though he certainly gave the impression of a man anticipating a rebuke.
With the master absent the Cornelii household slaves had been royally entertained in the wine shops, questioned when drunk and in one case directly bribed, but nothing had come of it. His steward, refusing to give up, had even acted as matchmaker to one of the Lady Claudia’s personal handmaidens. A flighty girl, he had introduced her to a handsome Numidian called Thoas, sent to Rome from the Falerii farm in Sicily. This slave, being well over six feet tall and handsome, intended to act as body slave to Lucius, had proceeded to sweep the serving girl off her feet. With his master’s permission the steward had arranged a trade, offering the well-built Numidian to the Cornelii household at a knock-down price that Quintus, left in charge, could not refuse. Thus Lucius had ended up with a spy in the very home of the man whose movements he was investigating, yet even with that, and nearly a year of patient enquiry, he still could not find out where Aulus had gone the night Marcellus was born.
His mind turned immediately, at the thought of his son’s name, to the boy himself. Much care had been taken with Marcellus’s upbringing. Even more care had been exercised in the matter of choosing a suitable tutor. Several had been tried and found wanting, showing alarming tendencies to allow behaviour in his son that Lucius considered inappropriate to a Roman. Of course, each one had come from that damned tribe of educated Greeks so numerous in the catalogues of the slave merchants; that is, if you could afford to pay for them. The one he had finally bought, Timeon by name, an Athenian, had cost nearly as much as his cook, but Lucius had made a handsome profit by enrolling the children of other patricians so that Timeon taught a whole class of boys rather than merely tutoring Marcellus. This had the added advantage of giving his son fellows of his own age and class to play with, and as the owner of the school, his father was in a position to vet these playmates to ensure their suitability. Ten boys, all from the most noble families, attended every day.
Not that you would know it; Timeon was not one to brook boisterous behaviour. He had a vine sapling as part of his teaching equipment and Lucius was glad to know that he used it, even on Marcellus. He saw, in his mind’s eye, the sapling cracking across his son’s back. That was the way to raise a Roman; a harsh regime and a strict diet. The steward, seeing the expression on his master’s face, as he contemplated the regular punishment of his heir, mistook it for the coming reprimand, and spoke quickly in the hope of deflecting the coming anger.
‘As you will see from the last report, master, the Numidian has confirmed that Aulus Macedonicus landed at Ostia, yet he did not actually arrive in Rome until the day after the birth of Master Marcellus.’
‘While his sons came home weeks before,’ said Lucius, riffling through the papyrus sheets until he found the one he wanted.
‘Six weeks before, master. Aulus Macedonicus took ship from Emphorae to Massila, instead of coming straight back from Spain.’
Lucius recalled the time with much more clarity than he had the facts, or lack of them, in the scrolls; the Republic in turmoil, riots as a mob intent on supporting Livonius and his so-called reforms threatened to burst out of their slums. Talk of electing a dictator, with the clear implication that Tiberius should be that man, something he had headed off in the only way he knew. To Lucius, he had not sanctioned murder, he had terminated a conspiracy that would have undermined the foundations of the state. The mayhem that followed had appeared to strengthen his own position, but that was incidental and in any case had lasted only days, until Aulus had made the speech that detached him from the optimates cause. He was still having to deal with the results of that defection, still having to deal with a fractious legislature in which he had a constant battle to harness the majority he wanted, often having to give ground not just to his opponents but to men who sought to profit from his need for votes.
Lucius wondered if Aulus knew how damaging his declaration of independence had been, aware that he himself had never underestimated the degree to which the support of such a patently honest man had been in the past. Yet he could also say with certainty that life had been simpler as he and Aulus rose through the cursus honarium. The Republic had been on a sound footing; it seemed everyone knew their place in the scheme of things; change, if any was mooted at all, was gradual; a golden time. He felt a sadness then, for hard as he made his heart when it came to the safety of the state, he could not help but miss the one friendship on which he was sure he could rely, actually feeling a burning sensation at the top of his nose, which he pinched, lest tears begin to flow. The images that flashed through his mind were of the companionship they had enjoyed; mock fights, mischief, fishing and hunting together, learning Greek, with Lucius always ahead in that. Realising he was indulging in nostalgia, Lucius forced himself to be pragmatic; romantics would destroy everything with their well-meaning but essentially useless principles, unless, of course, Aulus was not as honest as he wished to appear.
‘Even the legions got back before their general,’ he said and the steward nodded. ‘Since there was no public reason for it I can only assume he deliberately delayed his return to the city at a time when he knew that matters were coming to a head.’
‘All his body slaves, except Cholon, returned with his sons, Quintus and Titus Cornelius, master.’
Lucius examined the papyrus rolls again. ‘That’s what is so odd. He sent them all back. The Lady Claudia reportedly lost her two handmaidens on the campaign, so his wife was left with no personal servants at all.
Why?’
The steward ventured the same opinion he had all those years ago, for if he could think of a dozen reasons that would lift suspicion from the man in question, he saw no need to avoid feeding this particular bee in his master’s bonnet. It made life easier. ‘Because she didn’t need them. She, and her husband, both in Gaul and in Italy, were the guests of someone who could provide for all their bodily comforts, someone wealthy enough to have an abundance of household slaves.’
‘And from Ostia he could go in any direction. How easy it would be for him to go in to the Campangna hills, which is full of villas which belong to my most persistent enemies? Who did he talk with that so weaned him away from our cause?’
What he meant was, who had exercised more persuasion over his old friend than he could himself? Aulus had always deferred to him in politics, had always trusted his judgement over that of other men. The nose was pinched again, but it was a touch of self-pity that created the need. The steward’s shrug, as he looked up, made Lucius angry and he gestured his dismissal, turning to a pile of scrolls, copies of the most recent despatches, just come in from the provinces.
The sapling flicked stingingly, and expertly, against Marcellus’s ear lobe. He fought to control his features so that Timeon could not see that he had inflicted any pain. The tutor enjoyed delivering physical punishment and the young son of his master was the prime target. He took more care with the others, lest their parents, angry at their treatment, withdrew them from the class, for the same Lucius Falerius, who would nod with approval as Timeon outlined the number of strokes he had administered to Marcellus, would leap into a towering rage if he lost a pupil and the revenue that loss entailed. The Greek knew how much he had cost to buy.
‘I shall ask you the question again, Master Marcellus.’
‘Was the answer incorrect?’ replied Marcellus boldly.