‘No!’
‘Valeria,’ he pleaded.
‘If you go now, Marcellus, don’t come back. Ever!’
‘Master,’ called the slave, with increased urgency.
Marcellus had to drag his eyes away from her, which, since Valeria clung to him, was nearly as difficult as letting go of her hand. Eventually, he had to pull hard to free himself. He rushed out of the door, hard on the heels of his slave.
‘Well, Sister, have you destroyed Father’s hopes of a Falerian alliance?’ Valeria pretended she had no idea what he meant. Gaius, who knew her better than anyone, did a very fair imitation of her voice. ‘If you go now, Marcellus, don’t come back. Ever!’
‘He’ll be back, Brother, and I hope that Father enjoys having him as a son-in-law. I certainly don’t think I’m going to get much pleasure out of him as a husband.’
Gaius yawned. ‘I think I’ll go to the brothel. It would be nice to have some decent female company.’
He was delighted when Valeria stuck her tongue out at him, just as she used to when she was a little girl.
‘You must see, Marcellus, that I cannot accede to what you ask.’ Quintus thrust the scroll back at the young man, as if merely holding a request to give some small rights to Sicilian slaves might contaminate him. ‘It would be political suicide at a time like this.’
Marcellus took the papyrus, turning it round to point at his father’s seal at the bottom. ‘You must, Quintus Cornelius. It was attested to by my father. If anything it is a valedictory request to the Senate.’
Quintus wanted to get up and leave. To his mind this youth had that same expression of arrogant disdain habitually worn by his late father. It was hard to take in someone with the gravitas of age and long service to the state, intolerable in one so young, and it would have been nice to throw it back in his face, telling him that the man they had just buried was a slug, who had become so warped by power that he had even spied on those he called his friends, to tell him that he had caught the Nubian slave Thoas in the act of ransacking his study. Happening just after an attempt on Lucius’s life, one which had nearly succeeded in seeing off the old goat, Quintus had taken no chances. He had stabbed Thoas, but it had been too hard, leaving the man no time to tell him all before he expired. But the slave’s dying words named his father as the man for whom he was working and, given that knowledge, Marcellus would cease to be so smug.
But being a politician, he put that aside, effortlessly keeping his emotions under control. ‘Please do not think that I am ignorant of that, Marcellus. But your father was, above all things, a realist. He may have made promises regarding the Sicilian slaves, but I doubt he saw them as binding.’
Marcellus, too, fought to control his anger; this man would be nothing like as powerful as he was soon to become without his father, who had taken him under his wing and elevated him to occupy his present eminence. Left to his own devices, Quintus would have been just one senator amongst many and the bargain was simple; Quintus Cornelius would have the support of all the Falerii clients and hold matters in trust till Marcellus could come into his own and take over the leadership of the optimates faction. That the man should fail his mentor at the first real hurdle enraged him.
He was less successful than his visitor at masking his feelings and the way he spoke betrayed how he felt. ‘You’re saying that you lack the will to use the one thing he bestowed on you, his political power?’
Quintus went white, yet somehow he maintained the necessary air of calm; quite remarkable, when his sole desire was to give this upstart youth the toe of his boot. ‘I doubt whether your father would have got this through the house. His energy must have been sapped by illness, to even contemplate such a course.’
‘If the conditions don’t improve for the Sicilian slaves, we’ll have another bloody revolt.’
The older man smiled, deciding that he needed to be emollient. He was not yet supreme in the Senate; Lucius had left him strong, but not as formidable as he needed to be. Insulting patricians, even those barely grown up, was a luxury he could not afford.
‘I imagine they’re rather chastened by what happened. They certainly seem to have gone back to their labours with the minimum of fuss. I should think, by now, with the overseers back in charge, they have had any notion of rebellion beaten out of them.’
Marcellus had to stop himself from saying how important Sicily and the grain grown there was to the security of Rome — Quintus knew as well as he that sustaining the distribution of the corn dole which kept the Roman mob from riot depended on steady supply. Nor was there any point in underlining that his father’s tactic, of suborning the slave army leaders by bribery instead of fighting the whole mass, had been based on that one fact; nothing would interfere with the grain convoys more than a protracted conflict and a mass of dead slaves at its conclusion.
‘They have gone back to the farms in peace because of the promises my father made on their future rights, and I would point out it is the beatings they suffered which caused them to revolt in the first place. Please remember, Quintus Cornelius, I was there and I saw what I saw. If you doubt me, ask your brother. Titus, you will recall, was there too.’
‘I have my own sources to consult, and they tell me matters are settled. The slaves are cowed.’
‘I suppose the kind of information you have comes to you from people like Cassius Barbinus, whose sole guiding principle is profit. I am shocked, knowing the man as you do, that you give it credence.’
Quintus cracked finally, the veneer of diplomacy tearing wide open. He was soon to be elected consul, not some nonentity to be lectured by this boy. ‘You will not insult Cassius Barbinus in my hearing, Marcellus Falerius, and you will show the proper respect due to my dignity. Lucius is dead and his ghost holds no sway over the Senate. But I, and those who share my views, do.’
He stood up, intending to intimidate the boy by towering over him, but Marcellus forestalled the senator by standing too, and, being much taller, he reversed the situation, so Quintus’s admonishing tone lost some of its effect by being delivered upwards.
‘You must make your way in the world, Marcellus. I am bound to assist you by the vows I made to your father, but the most compelling oath I swore, in his presence, was to uphold the power and majesty of Rome. Do not thrust scrolls at me which ease the lives of slaves, and demand laws that could fracture the fragile structure that holds the entire state together.’
‘I am concerned for my father’s honour.’
‘And Rome?’
‘Rome’s honour is at stake here too.’
Quintus laughed at that. ‘Honour? Rome has power, Marcellus. We are absolved of the need for honour. Surely your father taught you that.’
Marcellus pulled himself fully upright, as if standing to attention. It was bad enough that his father had died before he could complete his life’s work, but to have this, his last act as a senatorial commissioner, set aside, like the work of a freedman clerk, was intolerable.
‘To have heard one of the leading magistrates at Rome utter such words makes me ashamed.’
Quintus, who was thinking that for all his height he was a pious little shit, brushed aside the approbation. ‘You are young. It is right that you should have high ideals. I held to the same tenets, myself, at your age, but I am now older and wiser, just as your father was. He didn’t let honour stop him when he needed to protect the Republic.’
Marcellus made to speak, but Quintus silenced him, pointing to the pile of scrolls held by one of the lictors.
‘Look at those, Marcellus. Every one is a plea from the Governor of Hispania Citerior, Servius Caepio, asking for legions to quell a new revolt. I helped to get him appointed. Servius is clever. He managed one thing few of his predecessors achieved by bringing some order to the frontier in Spain. It seems only days ago that he looked set to bring about a more permanent peace, but now, all that is changed. The place is on fire again, if anything, worse than before, which is only one problem amongst many that I must face in my consular year.’
Quintus paused, looking worried, as if the weight of all those responsibilities was a burden too heavy to bear, but he recovered and fixed Marcellus with a hard, unyielding look.
‘When your affairs in Rome are settled, you must take up your duties. I have enough honour to remember mine, to recall the vows I made in this very room. You need a military posting by which you can advance your career. You will soon have your orders, appointing you as one of my tribunes. We march for Spain in a matter of days. When you have held your funeral feast, received the contents of your father’s will, and put the affairs of the
