his brother as he did, Titus suspected that such a thing, an act of pure nobility that would have been second nature to their father, would never occur to him.
Senators, magistrates and soldiers of legate, tribunate and centurion rank were assembled, all with their heads covered and all quick to bow to Quintus. There were members of the class of Equites present too, as well as representatives of the allied Italian provinces. Aulus Cornelius had never actually championed the cause of the knights and the allies as they sought a share of Roman power, yet he had been inclined to listen to their grievances without dismissing them out of hand. Other men were there for less respectful reasons; as the richest man in Rome, Aulus had lent money to support many a speculative venture. Those in his debt would now be wondering if his son and heir would call in such high interest loans.
As a younger son Titus received the odd sympathetic look, following on from those given to his stepmother. His brother was now head of the Cornelii household, and as such he was accorded the respect due to a man of huge wealth, great lineage and one who would in time surely rise to be a power in the land.
The funeral party emerged into the street to the odd shout, but mostly to a reverential murmur from those who lined the streets, and that continued as they descended from the Palatine Hill, their route taking them along the Sacred Way to the Porta Querquetulana. Outside that gate in the Servian Walls a sarcophagus had been erected which marked, in sculpted marble bas-relief and written text, the deeds of the great Macedonicus — only fitting as that was the gate that a triumphant general would use, having been given permission to lead his victorious legions into the city. Behind Quintus two priests from the Temple of Apollo carried a second death-mask and a small casket on a cushion.
The mask was the same as that above the altar, a very good likeness taken from one of the many statues that had been sculpted of the hero. The casket should have contained Aulus’s ashes, but they had been trampled into the dust at Thralaxas, as the victorious legions led by Vegetius Flaminus had chased the remnants of the rebel forces south through that same defile after the defeat of their main army. Instead it held earth from that place, brought back by Cholon, which would be placed in the sarcophagus, for somewhere in that would be a particle of the crushed bones of Aulus Cornelius Macedonicus, mixed in with the ash from the wooden palisade which he had set on fire just before he died, as well as traces of the men he had led.
Beside that sarcophagus lay a smaller, square memorial, topped by a pointed column, which listed the names of the legionaries who had died with him. Commissioned and paid for by Claudia, it was, she knew, something of which her late husband would have approved; he was a man who was fond of pointing out that however competent he was as a commander, he was only as good as the men he led into battle. Titus and Cholon stopped by that to read the names of the men listed, each of whose families would find, when the will was read, that the general who had led them to their deaths had not forgotten their dependants.
The mourners gathered by the sarcophagus, a rectangle topped by a heavy flat stone, with a panel on each side denoting some facet of Aulus’s life, set on the roadside between the city walls and the Via Tusculana, so that every traveller passing in and out of Rome could marvel at his deeds. His service as a consul and magistrate was shown on one of the smaller panels, the extent of his wealth, represented by abundant corn and toiling slaves, on the opposite. The two larger panels were reserved for his martial deeds, with that facing the Via Tusculana given over to his greatest accomplishment, the defeat of Perseus, the Macedonian king. It showed that monarch being led in chains behind the chariot of the victorious Aulus, as well as the huge amount of spoils that had come with the triumph, the last part of the panel with Perseus on his knees, Aulus behind him pulling hard on the rope with which he strangled his royal captive.
Lucius Falerius Nerva stood slightly aloof at the beginning, again watching not the ceremony but those attending: Cholon, the Greek body slave, with his smooth skin, carefully tended hair and effeminate looks; Quintus, all gravitas and pomposity, a coming man that Lucius knew he would now have to cultivate; Titus, so physically and morally like his father, which might prove a blessing or a problem; that he would have to wait and see. Then there was the Lady Claudia, now a widow in her late twenties, still strikingly beautiful. If Aulus had been a fool to wed her, Lucius suspected he would not be the last, for the added years and her position had given her presence as well as looks. He smiled, though not at Claudia but at the knowledge he had about her and her late husband.
Years before, as boys, he and Aulus Cornelius had sworn a blood oath which bound each to attend upon the other in time of need and to aid each other in pursuit of their careers, but Aulus had failed to support Lucius at a time when he should have been present, that being the birth of Lucius’s son Marcellus, on the night of the Feast of Lupercalia. Worse, with the whole edifice of empire in peril, an impious act, the bloody removal of a Plebeian Tribune, had been required to protect that imperium. Lucius looked to Aulus, of all people, for backing; his childhood friend had not met his obligations and neither had he offered an explanation for that failure, thus creating a suspicion that far from being a partisan of the faction that Lucius led, the Optimates, he had joined the ranks of his enemies, the Populares. Bad as that was, it was not as troubling at that which followed; Aulus, in front of the whole Senate, having defended Lucius against an accusation of murder, had gone on to declare himself independent of all factions. He had deserted Lucius and the Patrician cause at the very time when his support was vital to success.
Angry and hurt, Lucius had allowed a spy to be placed in the Cornelii house — indeed the slave was still in place — the aim to ensure that Aulus was a passive not an active enemy. Thoas, a tall and handsome Numidian, had been conjoined with Claudia’s handmaiden, which put him very close to the centre of the household and even closer to the lady herself, and it transpired that it was she who was the key to the mystery of Aulus’s failure to attend and say prayers at the birth of his son. It had taken several years to unearth, but eventually the truth emerged, now all written up in a scroll that Lucius kept locked in his strongbox, and if it vindicated Aulus from any hint of conspiracy, it did nothing to raise him in the estimation of the man he had failed.
On campaign in Spain, Claudia had been captured by the Celt-Iberian rebels. When found, two campaigning seasons later, she had been with child and plainly Aulus was not the father. No doubt she had been the plaything of her captors, to be used and abused at will, and though not a sensual man the thought produced, as it had in the past, a certain pulse of blood to the loins as he imagined her repeatedly taken against her will, perhaps by multiple participants. She must have been quite a prize, only seventeen and striking, so he assumed that whoever had fathered her bastard would have been from the higher reaches of the tribal society, a chieftain perhaps.
It made no odds; Aulus, who should have killed her on sight, had refused to set her aside, had, on the same night as Marcellus was born, overseen a secret birth in a deserted villa in the Alban Hills, before taking the child and exposing him in a place where death was certain. Lucius had to repress a thought that would have made him laugh out loud if he had pursued it. He was conjuring up another carved panel for the sarcophagus, one which showed the great Macedonicus adorned with a pair of cuckold’s horns.
Titus had moved to the other side of the tomb as the priests began their prayers, prior to the sacrifice of a goat, to look at the panel that represented that Iberian campaign as well as his father’s heroic death in Illyricum. Lucius Falerius joined him there to examine those same images, curious and slightly troubled to note on the neck of the man Aulus had fought in Iberia a device, which on close inspection looked like an eagle in flight. Standing beside Titus he could not resist alluding to both it and the wearer.
‘Brennos, chieftain of the Duncani.’
‘You’ve seen the device?’
‘No. Only heard about it from a hundred different throats. No one mentions the man without a reference to his talisman.’
Lucius nodded, as if something obscure had been made plain. ‘Your father ranted to me about this Brennos after their first encounter, and by the Gods he hated him. He said the man was the greatest threat to Rome since Hannibal.’
‘I judge by your tone you did not agree with him?’
‘I thought him obsessed.’
‘Then I too must be that.’
‘I have read all the despatches from Spain these last three years, Titus. They are alarmist to say the least and I know you had a hand in the compilation of many of them. I showed them to Aulus before he left for Illyricum and he backed up everything you said.’
‘My father did not exaggerate, and neither did I. Brennos is a serious threat to Rome.’
Lucius’s gesture was one of uncertainty; he did not want to openly disagree with the younger man on such a day and in such a setting. ‘I am apprehensive enough to ensure that I know what the fellow is up to. He is spied on
