Phoebe nodded, forcing her eyes away from the drawing, lest by looking at it she betray herself. Claudia felt an ache in her belly, being so close to the truth, yet so far away. If she pressured this girl, she would shut up completely, and Claudia was in no position to call the master of the house and threaten to have the information beaten out of her.
‘Do you have any children, Phoebe?’ she asked, her voice as soft as she could make it. The girl nodded slowly, as Claudia continued. ‘Can you imagine how you would feel, if your child had been taken from you at birth, and you’d never seen him since that day?’
She looked Phoebe in the eye as she said that, encouraging the younger woman to respond to her next question. ‘Does the name Aquila Terentius mean anything to you?’
Sextius came back in to find the slave girl in floods of tears, and Claudia sat frozen in her chair, her face a mask. She’s beaten the wretch, he thought. Serve her right. A bit of pain will do her good. He was wrong of course; all the pain was in the heart of the stony-faced woman who was not crying.
‘I cannot fathom women at all, Barbinus. Perhaps you can tell me what makes them the way they are?’
Sextius took another large gulp of wine. He was very pleased to be back in what he considered to be near civilisation. He would be home tomorrow, for this, near Aprilium, was the last stop before Rome, brought about by Claudia’s insistence that she be allowed to buy the Greek girl Phoebe and her daughter.
‘It’s not sex, is it?’ asked Barbinus, who owned Phoebe, as well as her child, and was afire to know why they had brought her all the way back here to secure his agreement.
Sextius fixed him with a jaundiced eye. Barbinus was flabby now, with all the texture gone from his skin. He still tried to be the man he was as a youth, though the years were against him. Not only that, the potions and love philtres he was constantly swallowing in the hope of reviving his flagging libido had taken their toll on his complexion as well.
‘For if it is,’ he continued, ‘you can have her for free if I’m allowed to watch Claudia with her.’
Sextius gave him what he considered was his manliest look. ‘The gods will have fun with you, Barbinus. I’ve never met such a rogue.’
‘You haven’t answered my question.’
‘It most certainly is not, and if you see them together you’d wonder at why Claudia wants the girl. All they seem to do in each other’s company is cry. It’s a mystery to me.’
‘Well, if Claudia insists on having her, take her as a gift.’
‘No, no, friend. She will insist on paying.’
‘Do you think she might pay in kind? She’s still a handsome woman.’
Sextius snorted. ‘I have a terrible fear, Barbinus. There is an eastern cult that believes that when we die, we return to the earth as animals.’
‘So what’s your fear?’
‘I’d hate to return as one of yours, say a pig or a sheep.’
Barbinus grinned, his lopsided lips thick, wet and red. ‘Nice idea. I could roger you, then have you for dinner.’
The shared memory was important to Claudia, even the knowledge her son had grown up, only to become a rebel against Rome — perhaps because it was in his blood — but not before he had enjoyed a relationship with Phoebe and left her pregnant.
‘He went with the overseer, Didius Flaccus, to Messana,’ said Phoebe, ‘and that was the last time I saw him. All I know is that Flaccus came back in a towering rage and, after accusing me of being to blame, he sent me away. I heard later that Aquila had joined the slave army to fight Rome, but after their defeat I heard no more.’
Then he had disappeared, a victim, no doubt, of Rome’s revenge in the clampdown that had followed the collapse of the revolt. Sometimes she harboured a feeling that he might have survived, but Phoebe insisted that, if he had, he would have come back to her. That produced a slight twitch of jealousy, since this girl had experienced a love that she had been denied. They walked by the riverbank, trailed by the girl that Phoebe had borne after being sent packing by Flaccus.
She was tall for her age, with long raven hair that, when it caught the sun, had a tinge of fire to it; and she was beautiful, with pale skin like alabaster. Looking up from the gurgling waters of the Liris to the mountains in the distance, they could see the extinct volcano with that strange-shaped top that looked like a votive cup. Where had they put him? Claudia wanted to know, wanted to ask Cholon, who would surely tell her now that the boy was certainly dead. She would erect a small shrine on the spot, as a memory to him.
The young man tickling fish in the river was so intent on what he was doing that he failed to hear them approach. This was Barbinus’s land, not that she cared, except perhaps that she should buy the whole place from him, then she would know that the land on which her little boy had been laid was definitely hers. The poacher stood up abruptly, water dripping from his arm and he turned to face them with a nervous smile. Something about his looks tugged at Claudia’s memory, so she walked closer and addressed him directly.
‘Do I know you?’
Rufurius Dabo could see that she was rich. She wore enough to buy ten farms on her neck alone and he dreamt of owning a farm, but Annius, his elder brother, had got everything when their father died. The younger Dabo had just built a hut on a vacant spot, which someone informed him was the place where old Clodius Terentius and his wife Fulmina had lived. Given the stories he had heard about that peasant, Rufurius often wondered if that was why he stayed poor.
He replied to Claudia’s question with due deference. ‘No, Lady.’
‘Odd, I thought I did.’ Claudia smiled, and indicated his dripping arm. ‘I shouldn’t let Cassius Barbinus find you doing that. He’ll feed you to his dogs.’
CHAPTER TWENTY
‘I think Fabius enjoyed it more than me,’ said Aquila. ‘They thought he was a general too, and entertained him accordingly.’
Talking about Fabius was a blind; he was determined to stay off the subject of what had happened to him at the Bregones encampment, given that he had much to ponder, and none of it was any business of his general or Cholon the Greek. His situation, as an envoy of Titus, had precluded questions, and to show curiosity about what was happening might have jeopardised the whole prospect of a truce. Aquila’s height and colour had attracted attention all his life, as had the charm he wore round his neck, but both had deeply affected Masugori and his priests, and had in some way contributed to, if not brought about, the final decision to leave Numantia and Brennos to their fate.
He took the charm in his hand; perhaps, as Fulmina had insisted, it had some magic potency. Though he saw it as his lucky talisman, the prospect had always alarmed him and he had no desire that it should be more than that, especially if he was unable to understand its meaning. Suddenly he realised that both the other men were waiting for him to elaborate and he dragged his thoughts back to Fabius.
‘Don’t be surprised if be behaves like a patrician from now on.’
‘Did he learn anything of use?’ asked Titus, slightly terse at what he saw as levity in a situation that demanded that his envoy be serious.
‘He informs me that, though the Bregones women are ugly by thirty, they are fine at around fifteen, though the drink they brew, a coarse grain spirit, seriously interferes with a man’s ability to test out the notion.’
‘I suppose we should be grateful he came back.’ Titus liked Fabius, because the ranker insisted that no Roman citizen need be overly polite to another, a right he exercised whether he was talking to a consul or a quaestor. Cholon frowned darkly, since another Fabian maxim was that Romans should always be rude to Greeks. ‘But I am less interested in what he was up to, Aquila, than what you did.’
‘I have told you, you have your truce.’
‘Well, all I do is repeat our congratulations. You’ve succeeded beyond my wildest hopes, but I still don’t quite understand how you managed it?’
He lied smoothly. ‘It was so easy, General. I can only think I was telling them what they wanted to hear.’ Then he waited, hoping the look on his face would deter further enquiry.
