they all knew that any one who could not walk, could not escape.
The dead, Romans and a number of their enemies, were lashed to the palisade in full legionary dress. The wounded lay on the step ready to haul themselves up when ordered. Futile in itself, any resistance they could offer would give to their departed comrades a better chance of survival. They had pulled the remaining bodies away from the base of the wooded wall and heaped them up in a pile further down the gorge. When their enemies came, they would need to clamber over their dead before they could assault the defences.
Clodius, lying back with his eyes closed, rubbed the rough bandage that encased his leg. Sleep was impossible with the pain he felt, yet he knew he was in better straits than some of his fellows. Aulus had put several of the more seriously wounded out of their misery, but the cries of suffering men filled the night air, despite the orders to remain silent. There was a space beside him and he felt, rather than saw, someone fill it, the air brushing against his shoulder. He opened his eyes to find that Aulus Cornelius Macedonicus himself had sat down.
‘How long now, General?’ he asked.
‘It will be daylight in an hour. They’re sure to attack at first light.’
‘Just before’s a good time,’ said Clodius.
It was hardly customary for a ranker like him to talk thus to a senior officer but approaching death made such distinctions superfluous. Besides, this general seemed to be the most approachable of men. Aulus realised that he was sitting beside the man who had drawn that eagle in the earth. He looked at him, noting the grey in the hair and the lines on the face.
‘How long have you been in service, soldier?’
‘Seven years now, General. I was in the legions before that mind. Helped to capture this godforsaken place in the year of the Scipian consulship.’
‘Recalled?’ asked Aulus.
Clodius laughed. No point in keeping up the pretence of being Dabo now, so he informed Aulus about his background and why it had forced him back into the legions. Given a chance to moan he took it with a vengeance, though his normal bitter tone was gone. He told the general of how he had switched places with Dabo and the bargain they had struck. Clodius could not help noticing that this information seemed to distress him.
‘I sent my slave, Cholon, away with instructions to seek out your dependants. If he’s not careful, the man who’s prospered by your service stands to gain even more with your death.’
‘He wouldn’t dare,’ said Clodius, angrily, but without much conviction.
‘You have dependants, I take it?’
‘I do, General, three grown-up children. They’ve left home now, so they don’t really count, but I have a wife and an eleven-year-old boy, though he’s not my own flesh and blood.’
‘Adopted?’
‘Not proper, your honour. I found him deep in the woods one morning. Been exposed.’
‘In the woods?’ asked Aulus.
‘That’s right. Whoever left him didn’t want him found. If I hadn’t been drinkin’ the night before I’d never have come across the poor little sod in the first place.’ It was plain that Aulus could not make sense of this, so he explained. ‘When I’m a bit the worse for drink, I tend to go out into the country and sing to the gods.’ And a fat lot of good it’s done me, he thought to himself. When he spoke his tone was hard. ‘That’s how I found Aquila.’
Aulus stiffened slightly. ‘That’s the boy’s name, Aquila?’
All Clodius’s resentment vanished, hearing the general say the name; there was no point in it now. Instead he recalled the little fellow who had relished being thrown in the air, who paddled in the river like a dog and called him Papa.
‘Fine little fellow, your honour, hair like fresh straw and tall for his age. Just coming up four the last time I clapped eyes on him. I ain’t seen him in over seven years on account of that bastard Flaccus, saving your presence, but I’ve heard he’s growing tall and straight, head and shoulders above his mates. We tried to find out who he belonged to.’
Aulus’s mind drifted back to that day, so many years before, when he had placed a small bundle in a thickly wooded spot. Nothing in his life had ever been the same since then. ‘If he was left in the woods you might have been unwelcome.’
Clodius slapped the wood of the step with his hand. ‘That’s what I said but my missus wouldn’t have it. You see, your honour, he had this charm around his foot, a valuable one. My missus, Fulmina, insisted someone wanted him alive and that charm was the signal. Happen she was right. We looked, but we couldn’t find out who he belonged to. I wanted to sell that charm, it being gold, but Fulmina wouldn’t hear of it on account of her dreams. Women!’
Aulus was still thinking of the night that child was born and the events leading up to it. His silence allowed Clodius to continue. ‘Said our little foundling child was destined to be a great soldier. Fulmina, in her dreams, saw him in a triumphal chariot, with a laurel wreath round his head. You know what women are like about dreams. Any road, we stopped looking. Ask me, whoever sired him wasn’t from round my area.’
‘Which is?’
‘Near Aprilium, General.’
‘How near?’ asked Aulus sharply.
‘Half a league south, just off the Via Appia.’
‘And the boy’s how old?’
Clodius had to use his fingers to be sure. ‘Eleven, since it’s summer now. I found him in mid-Febricus, the morning after the Feast of Lupercalia.’
Aulus’s voice was hard now. ‘You’re near the mountains, are you not?’
‘Not near, exactly, your honour, but you can see them from my place. There’s one, an extinct volcano, which has a top shaped just like a votive cup…’
Clodius stopped talking as he heard the general swear softly. It had no force in it, rather it was the curse of a man who had failed. All the eagerness was gone from his voice. ‘Yesterday, I came across you when you were drawing something in the sand?’
‘Well, I have to admit it’s upset me. As I said, when we found the lad, he had this charm on his foot. Gold it was, with the wings picked out to show the feathers.’
‘Wings?’
‘Yes, General. Did I not say? The charm was shaped like an eagle in flight. If only she’d let me sell it, I wouldn’t be here now.’ Clodius finally put some passion into his voice. ‘Damn Fulmina and her dreams.’
A great gust of air left Aulus’s lungs. He recalled Claudia, that day in the back of that wagon in Spain, and realised with a stab of despair that the truth had been there in her eyes for him to see, but he had been too stupid, or too relieved that she had survived, to see it. Like dice slowly rolling to show Venus, each act, each word, each long silence of hers fell into a pattern that represented the truth; that the child in her womb was there through desire not violation; that the infant he had tried to dispose of was alive. It was with a sense of despair that the one thing he had prized above everything, his honour, had made him a fool, such a one that the only word for it was Hubris.
‘I shouldn’t go sneering at women’s dreams, my friend,’ said Aulus sadly. ‘They have a way of coming true.’
‘They’re moving, General,’ called a voice from along the other end of the palisade. Aulus looked up. The first tinge of the false dawn lit the sky.
‘You were right, soldier,’ he said, pulling himself up. He reached down to help Clodius to his feet.
‘Could you help me lash myself to the palisade, General? I can’t fight balanced on one leg.’ Aulus took the rope and wound it round the spiked top of the defensive wall. Clodius spoke again, bitterness in his voice, moaning to the very end. ‘Don’t suppose we’ll get a proper burial either.’
‘I’ve done my best, soldier,’ his commander replied.
Clodius’s thoughts had moved on, so he failed even to register the answer. ‘General, I don’t suppose you have a spare coin on you.’
Aulus could not know that for Clodius scrounging was a lifetime’s habit. He reached into his belt and produced a gold denarii, placing it in the legionary’s hand. ‘Make sure you don’t swallow it.’
