constantly, as you well know.’
Titus was tempted to insist that the Senate should do more, but it was not his place to talk in such a manner to the leading man in Rome. Brennos was probably a menace greater than Lucius would grasp; the censor had not fought the man, both Titus and his father, at different times, had. A Druid from the northern islands, the man preached a message that, if implemented, would indeed make him more dangerous than Hannibal, and his name alone was a warning. Another Brennos, at the head of a great Celtic confederation, had ravaged Greece and burnt half the city of Rome hundreds of years before. His namesake was intent on uniting that same confederation, his aim not to partly burn the city but to destroy the whole empire. The carving on the sarcophagus showed him defeated, yet Brennos was far from that. Yes, he had lost a campaign, had been beaten by Aulus, but that had seemed to do no more than inspire him to continue. If anything, he was more powerful now than he had been years before.
‘I came across Brennos in my last action, just before I was informed of my father’s death.’
‘Really,’ Lucius responded absentmindedly, his eyes still fixed on the carving and quite specifically on that eagle device on his neck.
‘He led a raiding party into the area of my command. A fool of a centurion, who should have known better, with a full cohort, chased them deep into the hills, ignoring strict instructions to avoid such a thing. He got them trapped in a defile from which there was no escape. The right hand of every soldier was cut off and they were sent back to us.’
‘And the centurion?’
‘Was hacked to pieces by Brennos, before my eyes.’
‘This device around his neck, what do you know of that?’
What was it about Lucius’s voice? Titus could not quite place the tone, but it lacked the assurance with which the censor had previously expressed himself. ‘It is some kind of talisman. I have been told that it came from the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, taken by his namesake when he sacked Greece, and that he wears it because of a prophecy.’
There was a definite tremor in Lucius’s voice as he repeated the word. ‘Prophecy?’
‘It is said that one day, a man wearing that will stand in the Temple of Jupiter Maximus and that man will have conquered the city of Rome.’
All that Titus noted was the quiver in the voice; with Lucius looking so intently at the sarcophagus, he could not see the man’s face. If he had he would have been made more curious, because it was a countenance drained of blood, and behind that was a mind in turmoil and a heart beating too fast for comfort. As children Lucius and Aulus had made an illicit visit to a Sybil, wrong because it was something barred to mere boys. Right at this moment Lucius was recalling the events of that night — the fearful stench of the dank cave, the bones of dead creatures at their feet, made more gruesome by the indifferent torchlight, the dark wrinkled face of the old crone of a seer who had not been fooled by their purloined manly garments. She had known them for what they were, yet she had spoken a prophecy to encompass their joint futures, the words of which were burnt into Lucius’s brain…
One will tame a mighty foe, the other strike to save Rome’s fame.
Neither will achieve their aim.
Look aloft if you dare, though what you fear cannot fly.
Both will see it before you die.
The Sybil, without any hint of ink or stylus, had executed on a piece of papyrus the blood-red drawing of an eagle in flight, before throwing it to Lucius. As she intoned those words, and without any sign of physical contact, the drawing had burst into flames in his hand. Try as he might to laugh it off, that prophecy still affected Lucius; he had even questioned those who came back from Illyricum to see if there were any eagle signs connected to Aulus’s death, yet here was one before his very eyes. The censor put a hand out, touching the cold stone of the sarcophagus to steady himself. He felt Titus’s arm on his and heard, through a rushing of blood to his head, the words the young man said.
‘Are you all right, Eminence?’
Lucius loosely waved his other hand; what could a carved stone eagle do to him? He could not die now, his work was unfinished. The prophecy was false; he had convinced himself of that in the past and he must hold on to his scepticism now. Seers were unreliable, prophecies couched as riddles were too obscure to claim to be absolute truth.
‘I am, I am, Titus. Just overcome by the tragedy of the occasion. Your father and I were friends all of our lives, from childhood through to being grown men with sons of our own. Is it any wonder I am affected by grief?’
Titus had to keep a straight face then, to hide his doubts. Lucius Falerius had not been given the soubriquet Nerva for nothing; he was a man of emotional steel, not the type to faint at the graveside. Lucius, keeping his face hidden, was reminding himself that this Brennos had not killed Aulus, he had been defeated by him. The prophecy was mere flummery, made up by the Sybil to justify her fee. Slowly, as he rationalised these thoughts, his heartbeat slowed and the blood returned to his face. Yet he felt he had to say something, to divert the young man standing beside him.
‘Perhaps, Titus Cornelius, you and your father had a clearer idea of the menace of this Brennos than we have in Rome. I shall take heed of that.’
Claudia Cornelia too had examined those sculpted panels, many more times than Lucius, for she had had a hand in the drawings from which they had been made. It was she who had reminded Quintus of the eagle charm that Brennos wore, which he too had heard of but never seen. The look on the face of Aulus’s eldest son when she had suggested its inclusion had been deeply curious, though it was an inquisitiveness that remained unrequited; Claudia would tell no one the truth. In remembering Aulus she had felt again that tenderness she had always had for a man who could truly be termed good. The thoughts of how she had failed him as a wife lay heavy, but at least, she knew, he had died in ignorance of the truth, had died thinking that the child she had conceived in Spain had been the result of a violation.
Now she was watching Titus and Lucius from the other side of the sarcophagus, wondering at the conversation that had made the older man look ill. If he had dropped dead on the spot she would have had to fake sympathy; though she did not hate the man, she did not like him. To her mind he had abused his friendship with Aulus, and her husband, being the man he was, had stuck to a loyalty that had not been reciprocated. She and Lucius had clashed in the past as she sought to barb him with the truth; that he was a devious liar and an unreliable comrade.
The need to attend to the rituals made all present concentrate. Sacrifices were made, the blood of the animals cascading forth to taint the earth at the feet of the priests. Most had their heads bowed, but not Cholon. The Greek was weeping and he wanted everyone to know how much he had loved and missed his master. The man beside him, the newly retired centurion, Didius Flaccus, who had also been saved from death at Thralaxas when Aulus also ordered him away, was actually embarrassed.
‘Contain yourself, man!’ he hissed.
‘I cannot.’
‘It is for women to weep, not men.’
Cholon, through red and swollen eyes, looked sideways at Didius Flaccus. The tanned and scarred complexion under short-cut iron-grey hair were features which marked his occupation. Flaccus had been in the legions for twenty years and he and Cholon had seen, from a distance, the early morning smoke from the fire that had consumed the bodies of Aulus and his remaining legionaries. Cholon recalled that the man had been stony-faced then, and that for soldiers in his own century.
‘Men may weep and wail if they choose. Perhaps you mean it is not for soldiers.’
‘I’m not a soldier any more, mate,’ Flaccus spat, ‘and I am as like to be a pauper if something don’t turn up soon. I had hoped old Macedonicus would sort that one out and load me with booty, but he didn’t, did he?’
That offended the Greek deeply: to be able to attend such a distressing occasion and stay dry-eyed was one thing; to be so callous as to consider one’s own concerns was quite another.
‘I heard,’ Flaccus added, indicating the other, smaller memorial, ‘that the general left some money for his men.’
‘Only those who perished.’
‘What good is that going to do the dead?’
