diminished. He now had to bargain where once he could command.
‘Do you wish me to accompany you?’ Aulus asked.
Lucius laughed. ‘Never in life. I shall be sadly bored by the need. I would not even think of subjecting you to such a thing, especially since you’ve undergone months of such torture.’
Aulus was perplexed and it showed, for the messenger Lucius had sent asked that he return to Rome without delay. ‘Yet your message implied some urgency.’
‘True, and I apologise for it. You must have still been coated with the dust of travel when it arrived.’ Aulus shrugged, as Lucius continued. ‘You will recall my telling you on the way to the Senate, the day you defended me, that the governor of Illyricum was ill.’
‘Is he still in Brindisium?’
‘His ashes are,’ said Lucius, with a sigh. ‘Three months it’s taken him to die. Meanwhile everything in the province is on the perish. I need an immediate replacement, on whose abilities I can rely, and naturally my thoughts turned to you.’
‘Would the house agree, Lucius?’
His old friend laughed, as if amazed at the naivety he was witnessing. ‘You have no idea of how high you stand in the estimation of your fellow senators, Aulus. They see now what I have known all along, that you are a paragon. If you agree, they will!’
Aulus blushed at the word paragon, and as he considered the proposition he knew he should turn it down, given that he had only so recently returned from Spain. To be given another posting, and a lucrative one at that, would cause jealousy in some quarters, and in others, since it came from the hand of Lucius, undermine the independence he was so desperate to maintain. Yet against that was a deep desire to be away from Rome. Titus was on the first leg of a career in military service and Quintus was about to be married. Perhaps the preparations for that event had disguised the deep rift that remained between him and Claudia. The last quarter had been a torture that had nothing to do with travelling round his scattered possessions, more to do with his infrequent, and discreet returns to Rome. His wife had remained cold and distant and nothing he could do seemed to help. She needed even more time to recover from her ordeal in Spain and that painful birth. His presence clearly hindered that process, and it was an old but valid expression that ‘absence made the heart grow fonder’.
‘I am always at the service of the state, you know that,’ he said.
‘Good,’ Lucius exclaimed. ‘You must dine with me before you depart.’
Aulus nodded as Lucius took his arm in a gesture of friendship that was wholly false. Inwardly he was content; Lucius knew that he must hold close those he did not fully trust but there was more than one method by which he could skin a cat. The death of Tiberius Livonius had stilled the clamour for reform, but it had not killed it off and if anything, Lucius, faced with a multitude of enemies rather than one, had to be even more vigilant. He had a task to perform, to sell all his distant properties and concentrate his holdings around the capital. Never again would he face the need for a prolonged absence and he believed that while he had to be out of the city this one last time, to leave Aulus Cornelius in the Senate was too dangerous an idea to contemplate. Even present, Lucius could not be sure of controlling him.
CHAPTER TEN
‘You’re not the same fellow, Clodius,’ said Piscius Dabo, patting his sweating companion on the back.
The contrast between the pair was telling; Dabo, wiry of build in clean, dust free clothes, Clodius Terentius, sturdily built and unkempt, his hair and smock grey from the powdered chaff. He leant down to hoist another sack of corn, gasping rather than speaking his reply as he heaved the load onto his shoulder. ‘I’m older, Dabo, that’s for certain, but as the gods will swear, no wiser.’
Dabo followed him across the yard. ‘That sounds like Fulmina’s words, not yours.’
‘I don’t get many words from Fulmina these days, few words and precious little else, to boot. If she speaks at all, it’s usually to say we need more coin.’
Dabo executed a sad shake of the head. ‘That changeling boy has certainly taken over her life.’
Clodius threw the sack on to the rear of the cart, then leant there for a second, hoping the mill owner. would be too busy to notice him slacking, as he thought about his past; of how a life that had once had some pleasure now seemed just full of toil. In six or seven years he had gone from being the owner of a farm to paid day labourer. Dabo, whose life had gone in the opposite direction watched him closely, thinking that if his old comrade had an abiding fault he was too soft, and nothing demonstrated it more than the way his life was now ordered to suit a child that was not even his own.
‘He’s taken over mine, as well, friend,’ Clodius sighed. ‘Aquila needs this, Aquila needs that. I can’t remember the last time I had the means to get drunk.’
Dabo smiled broadly and patted him on the back again. ‘You’re welcome at my place anytime, mate, you know that.’
Clodius eyed him warily, for to call Dabo a friend was stretching a point. True they had shared many a flagon as they swapped stories about their days in the legions but in the last few years Dabo had prospered, so held himself to be a cut above Clodius the day labourer. Dabo had not only retained his own farm, he had taken over his father’s place as well and with the income from both had bought another from the family of some poor sod who had been cut down in Spain. Piscius Dabo was now a man of property and given sufficient drink he would open up enough to boast, to tell all and sundry that he intended to die a knight. He would need a damn sight more than three farms to have enough property to qualify for such an elevated class as the Equities and his pretensions were a source of much quiet amusement in the vicinity.
‘You don’t hand out the invitations like you used to, Dabo.’
The other man looked shocked. ‘Invitations! Since when did you need an invitation to visit my place?’
Anytime in the last three years, thought Clodius, but he did not say that his old drinking companion had become stand-offish around the time that the child had arrived. That was also, coincidentally, the time that Dabo acquired his third farm. ‘I don’t like to just drop in. It ain’t polite. An’ you might be busy anyway.’
‘Never too busy to see an old chum,’ replied Dabo, in a jolly tone. ‘Why don’t you drop round soon, and we’ll have a proper wet.’
The voice from the mill cut through the hot morning air. ‘What do you think you’re about, you lazy swine?’ Clodius jumped back to work, dashing across the yard and grabbing a sack from the pile. He practically ran to load it onto the cart, while all the while the voice followed him. ‘Why do I employ you? I could get a slave to do your work for the food he needs to eat, instead of parting with hard earned denarii to keep you.’
‘Denarii,’ gasped Clodius as he passed Dabo. ‘I’ve never seen a coin larger than a copper ass from that bastard.’
‘This is cruel work, Clodius,’ said Dabo raising his voice so that his friend could hear him as he raced away to the pile of sacks. ‘Strikes me that you need somethin’ a mite better than this.’
Clodius replied from under another sack. ‘I won’t argue with that, friend.’
‘Best drop over an’ see me soon. I can’t stand by and watch a fellow legionary in a pickle like this.’
‘Will you leave Clodius alone to get on with his work.’
Dabo shouted back at the mill owner in an even louder voice. ‘Put a pair of socks in your mouth, you fat slob. Remember, Samnite pig, that you’re talking to a couple of citizens of Rome.’
‘Citizens of Rome,’ whooped the mill owner. ‘Some citizens, one with his arse hanging out of his smalls and the other a long-winded fart with ideas above his station.’
Dabo growled, and looked set to go into the mill and box the owner’s ears.
‘Don’t, Dabo,’ gasped Clodius. ‘The bastard’ll only take it out on me.’
The mill owner was treated to a glare and Dabo’s eyes were still angry when he turned to talk to Clodius. ‘You come and see me, d’ye hear.’
Aquila raced across the dusty yard, his long golden hair flying behind him, as soon as Clodius came into sight. For all his moans about the little fellow, Clodius was fond of him. He was a tyke, into everything and always in trouble, just like his adopted father. Despite the rigours of his working day, Clodius caught him and tossed him high in the air.
