freezing night than proximity to a blazing fire? Good manners, as well as prudence, barred him from telling them that he had been sidelined. Quintus had waxed eloquently about the need for him to hone his magisterial skills, insisted that Marcellus was too young for any office in Rome itself; his mentor also seemed determined to keep him away from any form of war. The excuses he gave for that were as threadbare as those he had used to send him here: the need to protect him from danger, so that the Republic could be sure of his services in the future.
So he found himself, at his first court, adjudicating in disputes so tedious as to make it difficult to remain awake. There were none of the scandals in this part of the world that made advocacy in Rome an exciting occupation; the local lawyers he had met were a bone-headed bunch, more inclined to string out a trial through sheer inability than eloquence, and the cases themselves, as he examined the court records, seemed just as mundane.
Arbitration of land boundaries, chasing those who failed to pay their taxes and endless litigation over inheritances, these were his daily lot, but the really galling thing was his inability to refuse Quintus Cornelius’s offer. To do so would release his patron from any obligation to him, an avenue that Quintus would take with alacrity. The Sibyl he had consulted just days before Lucius died had said he would inherit from his father; perhaps one day he would, like Lucius, come to believe in it, but right now, in his present melancholy mood, it was a hard concept to grasp.
He turned away from the small slit of a window as the physician entered the room. The man walked to the fire, holding up his hands to the blazing logs, then rubbed them vigorously before turning to face the praetor. He was smiling from ear to ear, which made the question Marcellus posed seem superfluous.
‘Well?’ he demanded.
‘Definitely with child, Excellency. The gods and the west winds have been good to you.’
Marcellus had to bite his tongue. Did they still believe, in this godforsaken part of the world, that a benign wind was needed to ensure a pregnancy? He wondered what his father’s old doctor, Epidaurianus, would have said, faced with such primitive beliefs.
‘And my wife’s health?’
‘Excellent,’ the doctor replied, rubbing his hands before the fire again as if to emphasise the point. ‘Though the Lady Claudanilla is slight of frame. The actual birth may be a difficult one.’
The conception had been far from difficult. After their wedding night he had managed to quite successfully avoid sexual congress with his young wife. On those occasions when he had shared her bed, he had merely gone through the motions, leaving her as free from pleasure as he was himself. Sosia was still the companion of his dark hours, both physical and metaphoric. Meek and submissive, and entirely lacking in experience, Claudanilla accepted this as the norm, but someone, probably her mother, or perhaps her older friends, had enlightened her as to the true nature of conjugal matters. At the same time, someone in his household had informed the new mistress of the duties performed by the Greek slave girl.
Marcellus flew into a rage when both these things were mentioned, forbidding his wife to allude to them ever again, but she had shown some cunning, as well as determination, in opposing this injunction. Within a matter of days, Marcellus received a visit from her father, who made it plain that the massive dowry he had bestowed on the young man was not provided for decoration. The couple were married in accordance with strict Patrician rules. Appius Claudius expected his son-in-law to behave like a member of his class, instead of some new man, and dismiss the slave girl. Then he should confine himself to favouring his wife with what was her due.
Marcellus was in no position to disagree. In theory, a man owned his wife and could do with her what he liked. This, like most ancient laws, was more form than substance and his father-in-law made it plain that if he failed Claudanilla, then he would not find himself able to keep his complaints about such behaviour within the confines of the family. To any patrician with ambitions, an accusation of that nature was too deadly to ignore. Sosia was removed from his house on the Palatine and sent to the ranch he owned nearest to the city. Marcellus decided on abstinence, partly out of pique, partly out of anger, but then he had left Valeria out of the equation.
All it took to make Claudanilla pregnant was one meeting with Valeria and the most galling thing that happened, when he treated his wife in the same way he had abused Sosia, was the way she took to it, deriving a pleasure from their lovemaking which was completely at odds with what he desired. That had been a matter of weeks ago and on the journey north she had started to be sick. What followed was a sudden emergence of an extremely healthy appetite, a sure sign she was with child. Deep down, her husband suspected that she conceived on that very night, which did nothing to cheer him up.
‘Tell me, Doctor, have you ever heard a Sibylline prophecy?’
‘I’ve never dreamt that such a thing was possible for the likes of me, Excellency.’
Marcellus turned to look out the window again. If anything, with failing light, the landscape was even more grey and forbidding. ‘Believe me, they’re not all they are cracked up to be.’
It was harder to be melancholic the day his son was born. The snow had gone from everywhere but the very highest peaks and the sun shone on green, flower-filled meadows. The sky was a blue of such startling clarity that it hurt the eyes and little Claudanilla, so slight of frame, delivered their child with an ease that would have shamed a brute of a fishwife. Everyone came to the praetor’s house to observe the ritual of sacrifice and acknowledgement. They noticed that Marcellus Falerius was no longer like the ice that bound them in winter; today he was close to a smile, as he raised the black-haired bundle above the altar which held the family masks, specially brought from Rome. He named the child Lucius in honour of his father and he vowed that like his father he would raise his child to be a proper Roman.
The feast that followed was a great event for those in the vicinity. Most had never seen a patrician noble; that they had one serving as their praetor they took to be a sign of great good fortune. He was, to them, as strange a creature as the hairy giants said to inhabit the mountains, and Marcellus, who had all the innate regard for his class that went with his birth, was not standoffish. They knew him to be stiff-necked and strict in pursuit of his duty, but on the day of the birth they saw the true face of nobility; they saw a man at ease with his station in life, who saw no need to be condescending to those who had emerged from a less exalted bloodline.
To them, the Lady Claudanilla, equally noble, was a delight. Each guest, as was the local custom, had brought gifts of food to the celebration. She obliged them all by tasting their offerings, laughing and preening as she accepted the toasts to her fecundity. They were still talking about it when they discovered how fecund she really was; before the first snows once more reached down from the mountains to coat the valley floor, or tinge the pitched roofs of Mediolaudum, Claudanilla was with child again.
The birth of the first child changed Marcellus. Always assiduous in duties pertaining to his office, he became more so, determined that his area of Gallia Cisaplina would be the best administered in the region. Originally reluctant to explore the furthest reaches of his responsibilities, he now instituted a mobile court, taking justice to the very edge of Roman power. He met and spoke with the Celtic chieftains, restating his predecessor’s vow that overzealous rustling would not go unpunished and while he traversed the land they controlled, he studied the terrain, which so benefited the inhabitants that conquest appeared impossible. To those who worked alongside the praetor, it was obvious that his whole attitude to his position had changed. They nodded sagely, casting favourable opinions on the effects of fatherhood.
On the night of the birth, when Marcellus walked under a star-filled sky, he felt, for the first time, that sense of immortality, which is a child’s gift to any new parent. It was a defining moment, one at which he felt some understanding for his own father. There and then he cast off the torpor that had affected him since he came north; he was young, he had time, just as he now had responsibility. Quintus Cornelius would not succeed; somehow Marcellus would get back to the centre of things, to take his rightful place in the City of Rome, and to gain and hold a power that he was determined would one day fall to his son.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
They came year after year, new proconsuls sent by the Senate to fight what had become known as ‘The Fiery War’, all with the same aim; Aquila watched them come and go, despising each one a little more than the last, because Roman legionaries would die for the careers of these avaricious politicians. They arrived mouthing words of noble purpose and, naturally, the soldiers hoped this new man would be different from the last; they were usually disappointed and their discipline suffered for it.
