Cast Not the Day (23 page)

The ground under my feet thudded with his footfalls. I watched him carefully, gauged the speed and direction of his advance, and prepared to leap. I tensed; but at the last moment something made me hold back and I stilled myself, and thought again. His attack was too obvious: surely it was a decoy, to hide some cleverer trick. I paused, but he kept on coming, grunting as he loped forward, his bulging face set in concentration, as if movement alone took up every resource of his mind.

Remembering what I had learned from Durano, I searched his body with my eyes for the first telltale sign – a twitch of muscle, an involuntary sideways glance – anything that would show me he was about to swerve, or leap, or throw himself down to trip me. But none of these things happened, and at the last moment, when he was almost upon me, I threw myself to the left, rolled and straightened, and thrust out my right leg in his path.

His small feet skidded in the sand. But either his dull mind or his hulking body did not respond fast enough. His ankles struck my outstretched calf, and for good measure I used my other leg to give him a side-kick. He gave a furious bellow, then fell forward, slewing into the ground on his convex belly like some ungainly overweight flightless bird.

All around the paddock the audience broke into merry laughter. This was fun they had not expected. They called to me and whistled, but I had no time to acknowledge them. The Illyrian was already up again, wiping his face and spitting sand. The whole of his thick upper body had purpled with rage. He was not the kind that cared to be laughed at.

I thought quickly. So far, he had supposed I could be toyed with as a cat plays with a mouse. Now he knew different. His next attack would be more dangerous. I remembered Durano’s lessons, and cleared my mind, and silently spoke my little private formula against fear.

This time he tried to trick me with a feint. It was one for which Durano would have slapped me, for being too obvious. I held my ground, undeceived. Then, with a sudden bellowing cry, he came at me like a wild thing, all flailing arms and piggish furious eyes. I crouched, balancing myself with my outstretched arms, and threw a deliberate, nervous glance leftwards; and this he read just as I hoped. I saw him compensating in his step, preparing to move in the direction of my glance; and when the moment came, I jumped not left but right.

I thought I had foiled him again; but this time he was prepared, knowing now I was a trickster. He swerved to cut me off; then lunged at me, snatching with his fingers.

I leapt back. I almost fell. But I righted myself, span round, and as he passed I slammed into his huge broad back with a force that would have felled any normal man. But I might as well have run into a barn wall. I merely bounced off him. I stood and stared, momentarily dazed and at a loss. And all the while he was turning, growling like a bear, and raising his arms to seize me.

I threw myself down before him. He blinked and stared. I think he supposed I was about to prostrate myself in supplication. But I was not beaten yet. He clubbed his fists and took a downward swing at me. It would have broken my ribs; but I rolled and avoided it, then grabbed his thigh with my arms, shoved his back, and pulled. The hold was poor, but he was half-turned and off his balance, and I was using his own force against him.

One moment it seemed nothing would shift him; the next he came crashing down beside me.

At once I scrambled onto his back. He heaved and bellowed and kicked; but I was on his neck with all my weight. I grabbed his wrist and forced his arm behind him, bending it upwards. ‘Yield!’ I cried.

Everywhere the crowd was yelling and whistling.

‘Yield, you fool!’ I shouted again in his ear, ‘Must I break your arm?’

But the great writhing mass beneath me refused to give way.

He tried to get up. I smashed him down. All around me the voices were chanting, ‘Yield! Yield! Yield!’

He cursed and bucked, trying to throw me off. I forced his arm hard up. He cried out. Even prone like this and held in a lock, he was hard to manage. He was too strong for me, and slippery with sweat.

I sensed a change in the crowd, like a false note in a concert. Some of them, their voices hoarse and thick with blood-lust, had begun urging me to break the Illyrian’s arm. It was his sword arm. They knew it was. They did not care.

Then, with a sudden ringing shout, Gratian’s voice broke out over all the rest. ‘Give way, you idiot! Where is your honour?’

The Illyrian froze beneath me. I think, in his blind rage, he had forgotten Gratian was there. Beneath my thighs his great barrel-chest exhaled. Then slowly, grudgingly, he raised his palm from the sand and gave the sign of submission. And, all around me, the crowd broke into a deafening roar.

Later, when I was drying off in the bath-house, Leontius came and found me.

‘Well you’re a dark horse, young Drusus,’ he said, clapping me on the shoulder. ‘You didn’t tell us you could fight like that. Gratian is talking of nothing else.’

‘Good,’ I said. ‘I expect I surprised him.’

I threw the towel down on the bench, and rummaged among my clothes.

‘What is it? You won.’

‘I know, Leontius. It’s just that I don’t care for this kind of fighting. That’s all.’

He laughed and said, ‘Don’t let Gratian hear you say that. Remember, this is the army.’

I turned and looked at him.

‘Yes, it’s the army, and I will kill when I need to. But did you not hear the cries? There were people baying for blood, calling for me to break his arm. He isn’t my friend – even less so now, I daresay. But he isn’t some barbarian either, come to burn our homes and kill our families. He is one of us, a comrade – even if he is as stupid as a peasant’s ox.’

Leontius frowned at me. After a moment he said, ‘I know. I heard them.’

He stood for a while in silence, watching me as I dressed. Then he said, ‘Would you have done it – broken his arm?’

I paused and turned. It was a question I had been thinking about all the while I was in the baths.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Those are the rules, if a man will not yield. But I don’t have to enjoy it.’

He nodded slowly and drew a long breath. I saw him glance up and down the room before he spoke again. Then, dropping his voice, he said, ‘I’ll tell you something, Drusus, but don’t you dare breathe it to another soul. I don’t care for Gratian’s accursed wrestling either, and that’s far worse, because I’m a Pannonian like him, and it’s supposed to run in my blood.’

He looked so grave and concerned that one might have supposed he had confessed his mother was hawking herself at the local tavern, and in spite of my heavy mood I could not help but laugh.

‘Don’t worry, Leontius,’ I said smiling. ‘Your secret’s safe with me.’

He nodded grimly, and waited while I finished dressing. Then together we made our way to the mess, where the others were already celebrating my victory.

After that day, no one treated me as the baby of the corps. For some time, Meta the Illyrian avoided me. When, eventually, he realized I did not revel in his humiliation, he even managed to be civil. I doubt we should ever have been friends, even without the fight. But at least we had not become enemies.

I think, in the end, what shamed him most was not his defeat, but not having conceded honourably. He knew, in his own dull way, that the others thought less of him for it. I was never asked to fight him again.

As Marcellus had predicted, I found my horse-riding came back to me. Of course, I had never learned cavalry skills, and these my comrades taught me – how to wheel in close formation, or throw the lance at a gallop, or stay mounted when struck. I kept myself lean and fast and strong, and grew used to my new life.

I even supposed, with the ignorance of youth, that it would go on forever.

‘I have received a letter from my friend Flavius Martinus,’ said Aquinus, setting down his wine-cup.

‘Oh?’ said Marcellus. ‘Is he in Italy still?’

‘No; he has been summoned to Gaul by Constans. He is at Autun, with the rest of the court.’

‘I thought he kept his distance from the imperial house.’

‘So did I. But Martinus has always stayed close to power, and sailed with the prevailing wind where politics is concerned. And besides, Constans is not a man to be crossed or refused, by all accounts.’

It was the evening of my first day with Marcellus and his grandfather. It was high summer, and, having been granted a few days’ leave, I had ridden out to visit them in the country. We were seated in the great summer dining-room, which opened out onto the loggia and the inner gardens. The lamps had just been kindled. Outside, through a row of columns, the last glow of daylight showed over the flowering shrubs.

‘What does he say?’ said Marcellus. ‘Has Constans changed, now he has the whole of the West to govern?’

Aquinus delayed his answer while the servants took away the last of the dinner things. When they had gone and the door was closed he said, ‘It takes great self-mastery to rule, and Constans came to power too young. His father Constantine would have served Rome better if he had passed the imperium to the man best able to wield it, rather than to his sons. But still. He placed ties of family above the advice of reason, and we must make the best of it. Since the victory over his foolish brother, the sycophants that surround our young emperor have been flattering him that he is master of the world, a man invincible, who may take what he wishes. That is strong wine for such an unformed mind. Power such as his needs restraint sitting at its right hand, not licence.’

He paused, frowning under his white beard. ‘He lives for pleasure, and like all men who live for pleasure, he has become its slave. His self-seeking courtiers know this, and ensure his every whim is pandered to, thinking thereby to control him. He has conceived a passion for hunting, a pastime for which his advisers assure him he has great ability. He spends each day chasing deer and boar in the hills around Autun, and every night celebrating his good fortune with his friends, often until dawn. It is said the grooms take bets on whether he will be sober enough next morning to mount his horse.’

Marcellus laughed. ‘Well it’s no secret he is governed by his desires.’

‘No, it is not. Yet I fear we underestimate them. There are some German princes at the court. They are “guests” of the emperor, as it is called, kept there to ensure the loyalty of their warlike barbarian fathers. It seems there has been an incident.’

‘Oh? What happened? Has he insulted them?’

‘Worse, both for them and for Constans’s hard-won and delicate relationship with their royal fathers. He ravished them.’

I had been reaching forward for my wine-cup; but now I paused and looked first at Marcellus and then at Aquinus, thinking I had misheard.

Marcellus said, ‘What,
all
of them?’

‘Do not joke, Marcellus; it has caused a scandal such as you would not believe. No one dare say anything to Constans, of course; but behind his back the court is in uproar. Even the Bishop of Autun will scarcely speak to him, and he is a man who seldom scruples about morality. One dreads to think what the boys’ fathers will do when they hear.’

‘Perhaps Constans was drunk.’

‘Let us hope he was not sober, or what can we expect when he loses his self-control?’ He brushed a crumb from his fine woollen tunic, sighed, and glanced at the door to make sure the waiting slave had not returned. ‘The truth is that the whole imperial family are nothing but ruffians and yokels; I wonder they do not just elevate some illiterate barbarian to the purple and have done with it. Arrogance coupled with ignorance; over-indulgence, sexual excess: hardly the virtues one looks for in a prince. How does Martinus put up with it all?’

That day, riding in from the east, I had properly seen the great house for the first time. The long approach was flanked by stately poplars, at the end of which a pillared gateway opened to the large enclosed demesne.

Within, there was an orchard, and elsewhere fishponds and well-tended lawns divided by paths edged with low box hedges. Further off, still inside the walls – for indeed the enclosure might have contained a small town – were barns and granaries, and a row of neat whitewashed houses where the farm-hands and servants lived.

The house itself was two and three storeys high, with vaulting arches, tall shuttered windows, and fluted pilasters, with a fountain of leaping bronze dolphins cascading water into a circular pool.

Marcellus had been waiting on the steps when I arrived, dressed simply in his working clothes and looking as fine as ever. The farm-hands had seen my approach, and had called him. We embraced, and then I turned and gazed in wonder at the marble columns and carved pediments, and the summer-ripe gardens that stretched out before me.

‘What do you think?’ said Marcellus, smiling.

‘It’s – well, it’s beautiful.’ And, strange as it sounded, that was the word that came to me, for the house and grounds seemed the very embodiment of harmony and order, an image of perfection, fashioned by man’s patient attention, year upon year.

Marcellus laughed, and put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Yes, and it’s a lot of work as well. Come on, let’s go inside.’

The atrium within was the height of two houses, a great oblong space of inlaid marble panels and rose-pink columns, with sunlight shafting from high windows across a polished floor of dark-green serpentine. The warm summer air smelt of jasmine and resined wood, and through an arch on the far side, from a shaded inner court, came the sound of a trickling fountain.