Gnaeus shrugged. ‘He has little time for senators. He’s seen too many who would steal the eyes out of your head.’
‘Are those his words?’
‘They are. He added that, having stolen the eyes, they’d likely come back for the holes.’
Marcellus had been quietly fuming since the conference, and he knew precisely why. Despite his anger at the way it was delivered, the advice that Aquila had given Titus was exceedingly sound. He knew the terrain, the language, and had a comprehensive knowledge of the Celt-Iberian tribes and knew how to fight them, as well.
‘They’ve learnt these last years. You’ll be offered no pitched battles in open country. Neither will you be allowed to march anywhere without being ambushed. Even the whole army’s not safe. They know they can’t defeat Rome in strength, but they can discourage us by drawing the legions into difficult and dangerous country.’
Marcellus cut in. ‘Perhaps with a little cunning we could trap them.’
His initial anger stemmed from the way the newly elevated tribune peremptorily dismissed his suggestion. Aquila made no attempt to hide the contempt in his eyes, remembering the elevated Marcellus Falerius better than the other man knew.
‘A waste of time! As soon as they feel threatened they retire to their forts, which we lack the ability to take, and if we do decide to invest them, then all the tribes gather to oppose us. If we are in one place, they will be there too. We’ll find ourselves up against the Lusitani, the Bregones, the Leonini and a dozen other tribes, all combined under the leadership of Brennos. You may come here from Rome thinking that the solution is easy, Marcellus Falerius, but you’ll discover that you’re just as fallible as the rest!’
‘We’ve taken fortresses in the past,’ said Titus, cutting across Marcellus, whose noble blood was plainly up. He looked set to try to put Aquila Terentius in his place.
‘Not with what you’ve got to hand. You lack siege equipment and the army is in a mess, General, more concerned with creature comforts than fighting.’
Titus dismissed that with a wave of the hand. ‘Most soldiers are.’
‘That’s rubbish, General, and you should know it. Mind, the shit starts at the top, then filters down. Properly led, these men are as good as any in the Republic.’
Titus took that statement better than Marcellus. He flushed angrily to see a Roman consul talked down to in such a disdainful manner; on top of the way Aquila had treated him, it was intolerable. Titus was far from pleased himself, but he did keep any hint of that out of his next question.
‘Do you often address your superiors like this?’
Aquila looked Titus right in the eye, unblinking. ‘I do.’
Titus looked grim. ‘Then it’s a wonder you’re still alive, Aquila Terentius.’
‘Not really, General, the wonder is that all those turds they sent us from Rome got back in one piece. I’ve been sorely tempted to intervene and lop off their heads. Rome would be better served by the public piss-gatherers than senators with ox-dung where they should have a brain.’
Those around the table gasped. The coarseness of his speech was understandable, after all the man was an illiterate peasant, but the bearing, and the way he spoke, was downright mutinous. Titus and Aquila were staring at each other, neither blinking.
‘I shall make you apologise for speaking to me like that,’ said Titus coldly.
Aquila’s voice was as unperturbed as his look. ‘I don’t know how, General.’
‘I was sent here, by the Senate, to finally put an end to the fighting in Hispania and that I intend to do. I’ll take your rabble and remould them into fighters. Then you can forget the other hill forts; we will attack and subdue Numantia.’
‘In a year?’
‘No, Soldier. I will be here for as long as it takes, and before you tell me that I don’t know what I’m talking about, I was here in this province for quite a few years myself. I have fought the tribes and competed with several of their leaders in peaceful games, and at one time I could have truthfully said some of them were my friends. You are not the only one who knows a thing or two about this frontier. I wrote a report for the Senate on Brennos, and in it I said that he was a menace whom we would one day have to remove, because we would never have peace as long as he lived. And my father, who fought him and beat him, said exactly the same thing before me. So don’t presume to offer me advice in that tone of voice again, because even if it causes a mutiny, I’ll break you at the wheel, then decimate the 18th Legion to show them who is really in command.’
Aquila smiled for the first time since the conference had started, and it made an enormous difference to his battle-hardened face. The blue eyes ceased to appear icy, instead becoming warm, the creases on the tanned face looked welcoming instead of threatening.
‘Maybe I will apologise, at that, General,’ he said. ‘Who knows, if I get to see Italy again, I may even say thank you.’
Gnaeus was still talking about his ‘tribune’, annoying Marcellus by the way he passed on the fellow’s radical notions verbatim. ‘You can’t blame him, Marcellus. He’s been here for nearly twelve years, and all he’s seen is dead bodies and a succession of men, already wealthy, trying to enrich themselves even more.’
‘So he would happily see the whole system, which made Rome great, cast aside for the bad behaviour of a few rotten apples.’
‘Don’t underestimate Aquila, Marcellus,’ said Gnaeus. ‘You said he was an illiterate peasant-’
‘He is,’ snapped Marcellus, interrupting. ‘And I might add his manners are a disgrace. I remember him being just as rude to Quintus Cornelius years ago.’
Gnaeus knew that story — after all it was part of the Terentius legend. He rarely subscribed to the generally held view that Marcellus was a stuck-up prig, but he did now and his voice, when he spoke, was unusually sharp. ‘Believe me, Marcellus, if Aquila is proud of anything, it is his Roman citizenship.’
‘Then he should learn to respect it properly, and avoid insulting men who are consuls. If he were still on his farm, any noble landowner he addressed like that would flog him through the district for insolence.’
‘I rather like the fact that he’s not very refined,’ said Gnaeus.
‘I think I already referred to his illiteracy. It’s a disgrace that someone who can’t read and write properly is a tribune.’
‘But he can speak Greek.’
‘The accent is appalling.’
Gnaeus was now genuinely shocked; such condescension was most unlike his oldest friend and he just had to put him in his place. ‘That was unworthy of a Roman, Marcellus.’
He could not know that his companion, as he spoke, could have bitten his tongue and was prepared to curse himself for such a remark. Had Gnaeus known how much this Aquila had got under Marcellus’s skin then perhaps he would have been more forgiving. What was most galling was the way the centurion, now tribune by order of Titus Cornelius, had, in the time they had spent with him, suborned his friends.
‘I withdraw the remark and apologise,’ he said, stiffly.
They walked on in silence, Gnaeus wishing that Marcellus would just spend some time with Aquila, as he had before, during and after the siege of Pallentia. Perhaps then he could be brought to see how rotten the system had become, where poor people lost their land to men already too wealthy to know what to do with their money, where the rich hogged all the power to themselves and, when they were forced to hand some on, only let it slip so far. Not all senators were filthy rich, of course, but these men, in their purple-bordered togas, raised armies and led them either to disaster, or used them as a private band of robbers. They called on the whole of Italy, who had little to gain from the power of Rome, and forced them, as subject peoples, to provide the Republic with yet more blood to spill, denying those same people the rights of Roman citizenship. After two months with Aquila, Gnaeus had ended up ashamed to be rich or associated with the senatorial class.
‘You must understand, my friend,’ Marcellus insisted, ‘what Rome needs is a stronger ruling class, not a weaker one. If we once allow decisions to be made by a mob, then Rome will fall apart.’
‘That’s only part of Aquila’s argument. I think he’s more in favour of one man having the power to sort out the mess first.’
Marcellus’s voice was like a whip. ‘A dictator, is that what he wants? No prizes for guessing who he sees in the role. Well, thank the gods that he’s only a military tribune, so none of these wild notions are likely to get very far.’
‘I cannot come with you, Lady,’ said Cholon. ‘I am already committed to join Titus in Spain.’
