truth.’
The Roman ability to build never ceased to amaze those they fought and conquered, but then they could not comprehend the stock from which Roman military ideas had sprung. It was the solid, hard-working farmer who had made the legions feared, not gaudily dressed warriors who saw husbandry and farming as effete.
Cholon put aside his stylus and looked around him, as the very evidence for that sentence lay before him. It was typical of the people he lived amongst to go about a siege this way: no imaginative attacks, nor a search for a refreshing form of tactics. Just plain hard work and time, which produced a slow but certain result. Every one of the seven forts was a complete Roman camp, able to house the entire army in an emergency. The palisade, fifteen feet high, with projecting towers at regular intervals, ran in a straight line, regardless of the state of the ground, from one fort to the next, stopping only at the banks of the river.
Across that stream they had laid a boom of thick logs, chained together to prevent boats coming or going, with razor-sharp blades hanging deep in the water. At night, the wall was manned at regular intervals, with flaring torches between the guards to throw some light onto the deep ditch that ran along the outer edge. Special squads, made up of the best swimmers, stood sentinel at the riverbank, ready to plunge into the icy stream and fight those trying either to escape from Numantia, or bring in news and supplies.
Thinking about guards reminded Cholon of a note he must make regarding the Roman system, and he picked up his stylus again.
Each guard is issued with a wooden token before taking up his post. This token must be handed to an officer at an unspecified time during the night. These rounds are distributed after the guards have taken up their posts, and who visits whom is entirely at the discretion of the duty tribune. Thus it is easy to discover who has fallen asleep at his post, thereby endangering the entire legion, since that man will still have his token in the morning. The penalty for such an offence is a horrible death, delivered by the other soldiers, whose life this man put at risk.
He looked up to see Titus standing over him, politely waiting so as not to interrupt. ‘I hope you’re doing as you said, Cholon, and sticking to a general military history.’
‘You do not wish to be recorded for distant posterity?’ asked the Greek.
Titus smiled. ‘Not without reading what is said about me.’
‘You have nothing to fear, Titus, nothing at all, but I daresay some of your predecessors, and some senators at Rome, might cringe at what is implied.’
‘I’ve come to ask a favour.’
Cholon put aside his stylus and scroll. ‘Ask away!’
‘As you know, I’ve elevated Aquila Terentius to a position he could never have dreamt of. If he thought of the future at all, he would have seen himself as a retired primus pilus, who with luck would, on leaving service, have enough money to join the class of knights.’
‘He may have dreamt of something better than that,’ said Cholon, ever literal in his interpretation of words.
‘Since he has never been taught, he cannot read. That should be remedied.’
Cholon frowned. ‘He also speaks Greek like a Piraeus dock worker. Mind, since he says he’s never been out of Italy, it’s a wonder he speaks Greek at all. It would be interesting to know where he learnt it.’
‘His past is a mystery. I have spent some time with him these last months and he will talk of little but his service in the legions. I know he was raised on a farm near Aprilium.’
There was a nagging sensation in the Greek’s mind that somehow what Titus was saying should mean something, but he couldn’t fix it. ‘What about that relative of his?’
‘Fabius Terentius? He’s from the back streets of Rome. It would be like trying to get blood out of a stone for someone like me to ask him anything.’
‘Is this merely curiosity, Titus?’
The senator shook his head slowly. ‘I’ve raised him above his natural station. Once this campaign is over, and assuming we succeed, where does he go? His appointment as quaestor is my personal gift, yet I cannot see him going back to his previous rank; besides which, he will be a very wealthy man if we take Numantia. After me, he will have the pick of anything that can be made out of this godforsaken land and that will most certainly give him the means to become a senator.’
‘Goodness, Titus. Imagine Aquila Terentius in the Senate, with his language!’
‘It would be fun to watch, that’s for certain.’
‘I should let the gods decide his future. It’s not for men to interfere.’
Titus smiled. ‘Would a little teaching be interference? And who knows, in the process you might unravel the mystery of his birth.’
It was a slave who recognised the drawing: a plump, homely girl of Greek extraction, who worked for the overseer of Cassius Barbinus’s warehouse. That they were staying in the man’s house at all was a constant source of complaint from the fastidious Sextius, who moaned about the size of the accommodation, the conversation of their host, the heat, the flies, the tedious landscape full of wheat, the rumbling of that damned volcano and the smell of the natives. He frowned mightily when Claudia told him to shut up, and if his personality had been as strong as his countenance, more people than his wife would have trembled at the looks he could produce.
Sextius was one of those people who managed to look better the older he became, his profile seeming ever more Roman, the stuff of which sculptors dreamt, and it was that which produced the idea of the drawing. In a rare effort to mollify her carping spouse, Claudia suggested he have a bust done in the fine marble that was locally quarried in this part of the island. Almost by habit, she asked the sculptor — without success — if he had ever heard of a man called Aquila Terentius, so she went on to describe the charm she had so lovingly put round the infant’s foot. All the while, Sextius sat mopping his sweating brow and complaining that this was going to take long enough without Claudia disturbing the ‘poor man’ at his work.
‘Would it help if I drew it for you, Lady?’
‘Drew it?’
‘Yes. This charm. If you describe it to me, I will do the best I can, to give you something you can show to others.’
‘Claudia,’ snapped Sextius, his lips pursed in frustration.
‘Please do so.’
‘I distinctly remember you calling him a “poor man”,’ said Claudia. She was sitting at a table while the Greek maid dressed her hair for dinner with the Barbinus overseer.
‘Well, he’s not poor now,’ replied Sextius, sourly. ‘I’ve never been charged so much for a bust in my life.’
‘It must be the cost of the stone.’
Her husband just grunted; really he was wondering if he could get the Greek girl to dress his hair as well. Claudia slipped the drawing out to sneak another look and the girl’s sharp intake of breath merged with Claudia’s yell of pain, as her hair was tugged violently by the heavy tongs.
‘What happened?’ asked Sextius. ‘Did she burn you?’
‘An accident, Master,’ said the girl, still looking at the piece of linen in Claudia’s hand. The hair trapped between the hot tongs started to smoulder and the girl pulled it abruptly away. Sextius stood up, towering over her. ‘If you pull my wife’s hair, or burn her again, I’ll see you whipped.’
‘Why don’t you go and have some wine, Sextius,’ said Claudia, with a tremor in her voice.
She had noticed that, denied any outlet for his main pleasure in life, he had taken to drinking a great deal. Sextius looked at the back of Claudia’s head, then at the girl who had tugged her locks so painfully. The smell of burnt hair lingered in the atmosphere and he ran his hand over his smooth silver thatch, thinking perhaps it would be a bad idea for him to put himself at similar risk. He fixed the girl again with his sternest Roman frown and left the room.
‘You recognise this?’ Claudia demanded, her heart beating wildly as she held up the linen.
The girl shook her head violently. No slave volunteered information to anyone; it usually got them, or someone they cared for, into trouble. Claudia fought to stop herself shouting at the girl, knowing instinctively that to do so would be fatal; instead she reached out and lifted the tongs out of the girl’s hands.
‘Your name, child?’ she asked, though the girl was far too old for the title.
‘Phoebe,’ she responded, so quietly that it was hard to hear.
‘You’re frightened, aren’t you?’
Claudia was cursing Sextius as a bully; clearly part of the girl’s fear would be a hangover from his strictures.
