carpenters were working with great lengths of timber, which they had erected to form a triangle, now being threaded with ropes. Both dismounted and hitched their animals to the rail, and Flaccus stood for a moment watching the steady procession of labour: all men, all dull-eyed and every one looking undernourished. He nodded slowly, as if in approval, before walking into the shaded interior of the warehouse.
One rotund fellow, with a leather apron over his white smock, and a wax tablet in his hand, stood by a large set of scales. As each basket was filled from the grain store it was put on the scales. He then noted its weight before indicating that it should be removed. Nodding to Flaccus, and without interrupting his work, he pointed to the rear of the building with his wooden stylus. The air was full of fine golden dust, which covered everyone and everything, giving the slaves, with their bare ribcages sticking out, the appearance of skeletons rather than human beings.
Aquila followed Flaccus up a narrow staircase, through dampened screens, carefully placed to contain the dust. The top floor of the warehouse held the cargo that the ships had fetched in from Ostia: bales of cloth, large ampoules of wine, weapons and a whole stack of hardwood tree trunks, grown specially so that one branch at each end formed the point of a plough. At the front, overlooking the wharf, a table had been set up, laden with food and wine, with bales arranged to provide seating, so that the overseers of the various properties could take their ease and feed themselves, all the while able to watch the fruits of their farms being loaded onto the ships. One of them, a fat fellow with a bald white head, was talking loudly and Aquila had a vague feeling of recognition, without being able to place why. Better dressed than his companions, he had the proprietary bearing of a man who owned the place and he was busy explaining to the others his plans for the future.
‘Every time you shift grain you lose a bit. Some ends up on the ground when you’re loading your carts, more when they’re bucketing along some of the interior roads. Now, that’s our money dribbling out. Remember we get paid on the weight that arrives in Ostia, not the weight of what we grow.’
He turned to greet Flaccus and the boy could see that for all his well-fed, carefully barbered look, the round face was hard, the eyes calculating rather than friendly. He greeted them effusively, ran his eyes up and down Aquila, before he bade Flaccus to eat and take his ease. The ex-centurion returned the greeting, acknowledged the others present, then filled a platter for the boy, gave him a cup full of wine and sent him to sit on a bale well away from the table, before looking to his own needs. Aquila accepted with glum ill-grace, his mind still on the sight outside the gates, which earned him an enquiring stare from Flaccus. The look the large fat fellow gave him was different; more to do with his lithe young body than his mood. Aquila ignored him and he turned back to the table, eager to expound his theories. Flaccus, caught between two thoughts, had no time to enquire of the boy what was amiss.
‘And every one of you complains to me about the weight I record, since it never tallies with your own.’ Heads nodded at that, and despite the friendly tone of the meeting, many a black look was aimed in his direction. ‘I lose too, friends. Just cast your eyes over that trail of grain between the warehouse door and the ship. That’s mine, every bit of it. There’s a trail just like it at the unloading, with half the folk of Ostia fetching their chickens down to the wharves to feed for free, and it all adds up to a pretty denarius at the end of the day.’
He stopped to top up the goblets of those nearest him, turning as he did so to look at Aquila again. The boy, slouched across a bale, did not notice; he was looking at the sun, coming in through the open doors, turning the stream of poured wine bright red, which made him think of Clodius. He had seen that very effect as his adopted father had held the wine gourd above his head on a hot day, expertly aiming the contents into his open throat, and the sight further served to take him back to a world he thought lost forever.
‘You have something in mind to solve this, Cassius Barbinus?’
That wiped any thoughts of Clodius and his past from his mind as a flash of hate coursed through his body, because suddenly he knew where he had seen the fat man before. It had been the day the supposedly tame leopards had attacked Gadoric’s sheep. The animals had been intended as a gift for some important visitor, one of them, a scented prick of a boy his own age, who had been just as responsible as Cassius Barbinus for the fact that the leopards had been let loose within sniffing distance of the set of prey animals he was shepherding. The results were all too predictable, though Gadoric had pointed out, when Aquila told him of what had happened, the sheep belonged to Barbinus. If he wanted to feed them to a pair of big cats that was his right.
The man who had trained those leopards from cubs was furious; so was Aquila and there were many reasons why. He sat bolt upright and looked hard at Barbinus, but the object of his attention had turned to face his questioner. Was this really the rich senator whose woods he had raided for game, the man who owned the farm where he had last seen Gadoric, before encountering him tied to the stake today? He had, according to his overseer, Nicos, brutally raped the slave girl, Sosia, forcing from her throat a scream so plaintive that Aquila had mistaken it for the cry of a distressed fox, then sent her away, adding to the woes of that unforgettable day. The thought that anything he might have done these last months could have profited Cassius Barbinus nearly made him throw the platter in his hand at the man’s head. Barbinus, unaware of the effect his name was having on the boy, looked around his assembled bailiffs and provided his answer. ‘Indeed I do have a solution, my friends. If you look outside you will see I’m building a hoist. Once it’s complete, each one of you will be given a plan to make one of your own.’
‘Using what?’ asked Flaccus; as the newest member of this select group he was the most concerned about cost.
Barbinus smiled. ‘Don’t worry, Flaccus, I’ll provide the timber. I will also provide sailcloth, specially cut, with eyeholes all round so that they can be lashed at the neck.’
He looked around to see if any of them had made the connection, only to be greeted by blank stares. Finally his gaze fell on Aquila, the senator mistaking the glare in the boy’s eye for interest. Barbinus walked over, the wine flagon still in his hand, as Aquila dropped his eyes to the floor, in a stew of still-troubled thoughts and uncertainty. The youngster was dirty from his riding, but his tall frame, tanned skin and that red-gold hair were enough to attract a man like Barbinus. Then the senator’s eye caught the golden eagle at his neck, which made his eyebrows arch in surprise.
Cassius Barbinus considered himself a connoisseur of Greek and Celtic art. What was a boy like this doing, wearing such a valuable object? Aquila, unaware of the interest, took the charm in his hand, then lifted his head, his eyes like two sapphires, boring into Barbinus. The senator did not know that the boy wanted to kill him but he did notice that Aquila was not cowed by his status, a fact which only served to increase his attraction. He poured some wine into Aquila’s cup, his eyes never straying from the boy’s face.
‘Can you guess, boy?’
The answer seemed so obvious that Aquila obliged immediately, but his voice had a distant quality, as though he was talking to himself. ‘You load the grain into the bales and the bales onto the carts. Then the bales are loaded straight onto, and off, the ships.’
Barbinus turned and beamed at the others, waving an expansive arm. ‘Without spilling a drop. No more waste, and more important, no more arguments about being cheated.’ A general murmur of agreement followed this, with much nodding of heads. Barbinus turned back, giving Aquila another head-to-toe look. Used to people wilting before his gaze, the stillness clearly disconcerted him. ‘Who is this boy, Flaccus?’
The centurion, who knew Barbinus of old, was frowning. The man was a satyr, not to be trusted with two pieces of warm liver, let alone a girl or a young boy. ‘Aquila Terentius. He’s from a colony near Aprilium. His father was one of my men killed at Thralaxas. I picked him up on the way south. Sort of adopted him, you might say. Like a son to me now!’
‘He’s a bright lad.’ Barbinus had not mistaken Flaccus’s tone or the strength of the last statement; the old centurion was telling him to keep his hands to himself. ‘I have some land around Aprilium.’
The senator’s eye dropped again and lingered for a moment on the charm round Aquila’s neck as if he was about to ask its significance, but he stopped himself and looked up again. ‘You stick with Flaccus, boy, he won’t want to be here in Sicily all his life. Someone young and ambitious, who knows the farms, would be an advantage.’ He did not turn round as he addressed Flaccus, but kept his eyes firmly locked to those of Aquila. ‘Have you educated him?’
There was a distinct note of anger in Flaccus’s reply; the way Barbinus asked the question sounded like a rebuke. ‘Didn’t see the need.’
‘I would advise you to be less short-sighted. If this boy has a brain, take advantage of it. Teach him his numbers and if he can write, Greek as well as Latin, then he could have a future.’
‘Right now he’s learning to fight,’ snapped Flaccus.
