‘That’s it!’ cried Dabo, putting as much sincerity into his voice as he could. ‘If’n you had a decent wage, enough to keep Fulmina and your young Aquila in comfort, how would you feel about the Army?’
‘A damn sight better than I would workin’ for that tightwad at the corn mill.’
‘Drink up, old friend,’ said Dabo, placing his hand on the bottom of the ampoule and pushing it up. ‘There’s plenty more where that came from.’
‘You’re a fool, Clodius.’ Fulmina spoke without rancour. Her voice was resigned rather than harsh, for which her sore-headed husband was extremely grateful. ‘Always were, and now you’ll go and get yourself killed, most likely.’
‘I’m not that easy to kill.’
‘You’re going away?’ asked Aquila, who, by the look on his face, was struggling with this strange concept.
‘I’m going to be a soldier again, boy.’
‘Can I come?’
Clodius bent down and put both his hands on the boy’s shoulders. ‘No lad, you have to stay here and look after Mama.’ Aquila had heard that too many times as Clodius departed to his job at the mill to be pleased at the prospect. ‘Maybe, when you’re grown up, you can be a soldier too. And if your papa can just fall in the way of a bit of luck, you might even be a member of the first class, a principi.’
His wife sniffed loudly. Drisia’s soothsaying had promised much more than that, but it was not something Fulmina discussed with the sceptical Clodius. Even so, she could not let his remark pass. ‘Some future for Aquila, and all the while Dabo’s eldest brat grows up to be a knight.’
‘Dabo’s a long way from bein’ that,’ said Clodius looking up, for once on safe ground with the promise Dabo had given him to support his family while he was away. ‘But at least I’m getting some of his wealth to rub off on me. At least, this time, I won’t be at the bottom of the pile.’
Then he turned his eyes back to the disappointed child. ‘What says Papa makes you a suit of armour, just like the one he’s goin’ to wear?’
That cheered Aquila up no end. Clodius set too, using twigs and bark, carving the decorations for shield and breastplate with a sharp knife, and he had plenty of time to do it, having chucked in his job at the corn mill. Dabo, as well as providing the equipment he would need on service, had agreed to support him until he was actually called to join his maniple. While he was away, Fulmina would receive food, wine, oil and kindling on a regular basis as a wage for his surrogate soldier. Of course, he had made sure that Clodius fixed his mark by Dabo’s name with the recruiting commission, and appended the same to an agreement drawn up by a notary the very night they had gone into town. As far as the Roman State was concerned, Clodius Terentius had become Piscius Dabo.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Claudia Cornelia sat upright in her chair, observing her husband’s eldest son, thinking that, regardless of the way he sought to emulate Aulus, Quintus was totally unlike his father. Virtual strangers since the parental marriage they had finally spent time together the year before, travelling to visit Aulus in Illyricum. Claudia had not enjoyed the experience and she suspected that her stepson had taken from it even less in the way of pleasure. Conversation with Quintus tended to be stilted at best, and quite often disputatious. Even so the journey had been better than the stay, the happiness Aulus displayed on her arrival, after two long years, sinking slowly back into the confused misery that marked their relationship before he had departed Rome.
With the head of the house absent Quintus had moved back with his wife and child to his own family home, a setting that allowed him a greater degree of independence than he enjoyed in the house of his father-in-law. Prior to the meal he had led the family prayers in a sonorous voice and performed the rituals in elaborate fashion. Quintus liked to entertain but tonight was solely a family occasion. Nevertheless it was typical of him to insist on so ritual a dinner for just two people. Claudia had been forced to dress her hair and don a flowing, formal garment. His own wife Pulchra was with child again and unwell, with no appetite for food, so she had been ordered to bed by her unsympathetic husband.
Claudia had been told that Quintus had been a playful boy and a wild youth, popular with his classmates. That carefree spirit, if it ever existed, had gone; he was very much a nobleman now, full of gravitas and conscious of his station in the Roman world. A praetor, Quintus harboured the ultimate goal of standing for the consulship, though he had a good few years to wait before he would become eligible and many offices to fill on the way. The route of honour they called it, yet when Claudia thought of some of the despicable creatures who had climbed that ladder, including a goodly number who had achieved that eminent, supreme accolade of serving as a consul, she wondered if the appellation was appropriate.
‘Do I have to initiate all the conversation,’ said Quintus from his position on the couch. His voice carried just a trace of that petulance which, combined with arrogance, had become the hallmark of his behaviour.
Claudia greeted this with a slight smile. ‘A mere woman speak at dinner, without permission, Quintus? I wouldn’t dream of breaching the bounds of what is known to be proper behaviour. I’m surprised that you of all people should suggest such an outlandish thing.’
‘Me of all people! What precisely does that mean?’
‘Oh come, Quintus. You pride yourself on your manners.’
Quintus swung one foot in an arc, his eyes on the toes of his sandals. ‘I do think a stepmother is allowed to open a conversation with her husband’s eldest son.’
That avoidance of the appellation stepson was a roundabout way to deliver an insult, meant to underline that Quintus still regarded her as some kind of interloper in the Cornelii household. Claudia responded by treating him to a look of mock horror. ‘The gods forbid.’
‘You choose to tease me?’
‘You do tend to invite it, Quintus.’
He tried to assume a disinterested look. ‘Do I indeed?’
His lethargy angered Claudia and she spoke sharply, her tone somewhat harsher than she truly intended. ‘Everything you do is undertaken in the light of its effect on your precious career.’
Quintus stiffened slightly. ‘Precious? That word makes my behaviour sound suspect.’
‘Are you saying that you don’t value your career?’
‘Of course I do.’
Claudia thought of his browbeaten wife, sent to bed simply because she might embarrass him for her want of appetite and spoke with a trace of sadness. ‘More than anything in the world, I think.’
‘I refuse to accept the implied rebuke in those words,’ he snapped.
Claudia produced a mocking smile. ‘Oh dear. I seem to have offended you.’
‘Not offended, but I cannot fathom why you mind my behaviour. I cannot think what it is I’ve done to cause you to speak this way.’
Claudia maintained that mocking smile, her voice taking on a note of irony. ‘You have done nothing you should be ashamed of.’
‘Ashamed! That’s another word that is out of place. I know you’re not much given to explanation, Lady Claudia, but I would appreciate it if you would just speak plainly for once.’
‘Now you’re rebuking me.’
‘Perhaps I am, but I would dearly like to know what you’re getting at. What is it I have done to earn your barely disguised disapproval.’
Claudia leant forward slightly. ‘I don’t disapprove of you.’
Quintus swung his feet to the floor, waving aside the slave intent on serving him. Claudia observed that one of his greatest failings was the way he sought the approval of others, even those he probably despised. Aulus, his father, was not like that; he looked at everything with a clear idea of right and wrong, then acted accordingly. Time had even allowed Claudia to see that his actions, when he had come to her in that isolated wagon, sprang from the same trait of natural nobility. That his behaviour had trapped her did nothing to alter the fact; Aulus had acted from the highest of motives, never aware of the despair he had inflicted on her, because there were no circumstances in
