Gadoric was in there, dead: there was no way his friend would have allowed himself to be taken alive. He heard the orders for the cavalry to form up, watched as the ring broke and horsemen fell into formation. Three people still sat over the inert body, easily identifiable by the finely wrought armour. One was a Roman officer, the other a youth who looked about his own age, but it was the third man that took his attention. The silver grey hair on that sallow- complexioned face was unmistakable. So was the voice.
‘Well, Porcius Catus, will you and this young man consent to accompany me back to Agrigentum? After all, it is fitting that a general should have an escort.’
The head went back and the man let out that slightly mad laugh, the same one Aquila had heard when Pentheus had buried Flaccus in six feet of golden grain.
Hypolitas and Pentheus, with four of the other leaders, left by one of the smaller city gates and made their way through the Roman lines with just the occasional creak of harness as evidence of their passing. The legionaries slipped into the city through the same gate, spreading out quickly, house to house, to take and disarm the slave army in manageable groups. Titus, with a small escort, made his way to the square before the palace, there to coordinate the actions of his men, while Marcellus, fretting and impatient, waited with Cholon and his father outside the city till the outcome of the operation was certain. No amount of pleading had gained him a place on such a dangerous enterprise.
Men died, Roman and slave, despite Titus’s attempts at a peaceful takeover, but he was successful. The slaves greeted the dawn in a city controlled by Roman soldiers, while the bulk of their forces, camped on the plain or holding the river lines to the east and west, found that their refuge, the city of Agrigentum, had been taken from them. Worse for their morale was the news that Gadoric was dead: that their leaders, in return for personal safety, had sold them back into bondage. Even against the smaller numbers of Romans, whatever hope they had seemed to crumble, for they lacked the heart to put up a proper fight.
Cholon stood by the main landward gate of Agrigentum as the recaptured slaves were marched out. He recognised one face, that of the man who had greeted him at the very spot the day he arrived; then he had been happy, a mite cocky, his eyes full of hope and laughter, now those same eyes took in the figure of the Greek in a different way. They had lost all expression, as though the man behind them had ceased to exist, was in fact a mere shell, not human. Two young boys stumbled along beside him, his sons by the likeness. One carried the same lacklustre expression as his father but the other son looked at Cholon with such spirited loathing that the Greek had to steady himself to avoid taking a step back.
‘You will have the thanks of the Senate for this, Lucius Falerius,’ said the governor. ‘A magnificent result, without blood or financial loss.’
‘Just as long as we have a harvest I’ll be happy. As for the thanks of the Senate, I fear that will be muted when I introduce a statute to protect the working conditions of the slaves.’
The governor, Silvanus, did not want to talk about that, lest by words he became associated with such a dangerous decree. ‘You sail today?’
‘I sail tomorrow. That pompous windbag, Hypolitas, sails today.’
‘I thought you would depart together.’
‘I cannot abide another day with that man,’ snapped Lucius. ‘How he ever came to lead this revolt escapes me. Anyone with half a brain would run a mile from such a creature. As for the others, the so-called leaders, they’re no more than a bunch of peasants, for all their stolen Greek finery. Mutton dressed as lamb.’
Marcellus felt the same as his father; having been exposed to the Palmyran Greek for the entire journey across Sicily, he found his wheedling tone and constant self-regard offensive. He could not know that the fire that had made his words so effective was gone. Only one Roman had ever heard him address a crowd, or listened to him expound the cause of liberty in hushed tones, his hands weaving a spell.
Aquila would be immune now; the arrangements Hypolitas had made with Lucius Falerius Nerva, which were the talk of the island, meant that no one cared about him any more. He did not wait to see the slave army brought back to their farms in chains; he built a pyre for Gadoric, burnt his friend’s body with proper honour, then rode across the island, ahead of Lucius’s party, to Messana. There he took working passage on a small trading ship to Italy and he was waiting in Rhegnum when they landed. A crowd had gathered to see this spectacle, since every boat that put into the port had foretold the event.
His anger, so close to being madness, nearly boiled over when he saw the fine clothes they wore, worse still was the litter waiting to take them to their new home and the escort of cavalry provided by the praetor. They attracted crowds wherever they went, so trailing the party presented no difficulty; it was like a royal progress on the busy road through Brutium, Lucania and on, to the upland Samnite city of Beneventum, which stood at the centre of Italy, surrounded by high mountains.
Their villa overlooked a fast-flowing river, standing on a rocky promontory, affording fine views over the city on the opposite bank. The escort departed to be replaced by a smaller number of locally recruited guards. Hypolitas was ecstatic, standing on his terrace, knowing life would be good, knowing he would no longer have to obey the dictates of other men, and if he had to suffer the company of Pentheus and his like, who seemed incapable of thought, could not read or write, whose sole intent, as they had travelled towards this place, seemed to be the best way to fill the villa with wine and women, that was a small price to pay for a man who, at best, had never occupied any accommodation better than a small square room shared with other household slaves.
He turned from the terrace, looking at the spacious bedchamber that was now his. There were other rooms, a private bath-house for his use alone, a study, and a grand atrium in which he could receive guests. The local magistrates would come, as would the leading citizens of the Samnite state, after all, the King of the Slaves was famous. He would hold banquets that would be the talk of the city, build a library that local scholars would come to consult, engage in learned discussion with philosophers and perhaps write a treatise that would, when he was dead, keep the name Hypolitas alive for future generations.
The local Samnite guards were dumbfounded, for they had heard nothing in the night. Every bedchamber had the same names on the walls, written in blood, but they meant nothing to these men. Who were Gadoric and Flaccus and Phoebe? And what did it mean, that drawing of an eagle in flight? The only thing in Hypolitas’s bedchamber, apart from that and the bloody signatures, was a crushed walnut shell on the floor of the terrace. They found the bodies over the next few days as they were washed up on the rock-strewn banks of the rushing mountain river, well downstream. Four of them had died through having their throats cut, including Hypolitas, who had also lost his tongue.
The grey-haired one who had been known as Pentheus was different. The skin had been flayed from his back, his face was a hollow pulp and they had neither the time nor the inclination to search for his missing hands and feet.
EPILOGUE
The news of the murder of Hypolitas and the others reached Lucius Falerius fifty leagues north of Neapolis, where he had stopped his journey to rest. Titus had gone ahead, to take his news to the Senate, something that would raise his name in the public mind and aid his bid in the forthcoming elections for the praetorship, which would, in turn, provide a route to the command of armies. Marcellus, naturally, had stayed with his father, using the time to visit the nearby shrine of the Sybil at Cumae, one-time home to another, who had made Tarquinus Superbus squirm to get hold of only part of her predictions.
Lucius was on the mend; the conclusion of events in Sicily and weeks in a static camp had raised his spirits and allowed his body to recover. Not that such a thing allowed for any softening in his rigid interpretation of right and wrong. His response to the news from Beneventum was entirely lacking in sympathy. ‘Whoever did this had the best interests of the Roman treasury at heart, don’t you think, and I cannot believe the world will mourn for the likes of Hypolitas.’
‘I thought you’d be pleased,’ said Marcellus, with a look that Lucius understood.
