Cast Not the Day (24 page)

A well-dressed elderly steward approached. ‘I have had a room in the west wing made up, sir, if you will come this way.’

‘Don’t worry, Clemens,’ said Marcellus. ‘I’ll take him.’ And then to me, ‘Come on, I’ll show you round.’

Later, when I had washed and changed, and was lying on my bed, the steward came tapping at the door. He enquired if all was to my liking, then said that Quintus Aquinus was waiting in his library, if I would care to see him.

He led me back to the atrium, and through an inner garden court to a long room lined with books. The room was cool and still; the sharp fresh scent of cedar oil hung in the air. Under a sunlit window, Aquinus was seated on a fine carved chair beside a table.

He stood and greeted me, and asked after my journey. Then, seeing me glance at the rows of stacked scrolls and books of bound parchment, he said, ‘My library; I doubt there is a better one in the province.’

He took an open scroll from his desk, fine calligraphy held with a polished wood binding and a tie of scarlet ribbon. ‘This,’ he said, ‘was sent to me recently by a friend in Constantinople. It is a copy of Aristotle on comedy. You would have to travel a long way before you found another.’

For a moment he gazed at it with absent affection, adding, half to himself, ‘There is no education without Aristotle.’ He set the book gently down. ‘To build such a collection has taken years – generations even. Many of these volumes I got from my father, and he from his. I have friends who scout for books I do not have, and trained men whose only occupation is to copy and preserve. It is an endless task . . . But come,’ he said, taking my arm, ‘I am being tedious, talking on of my great passion so soon after you have arrived. Has Clemens seen to your room? Good. Then let us get some air, and sit for a while in the sunshine. I wanted to see you before Marcellus takes you off; he has been talking of nothing else for days.’

We passed through a door to a small courtyard garden. On a stone patio under the mottled shade of a lilac tree there were two chairs and a trestle table, and upon it a flask of chilled wine and a dish of sweet-cakes and fruit. We sat, and when he had poured the wine and invited me to eat he continued, ‘All my life I have worked with one purpose, to see to it that good men rule in the province. Your father was such a man. It is a sign of the age that he was taken from us in the manner that he was. We used to lend each other books. He too had a library, I believe.’

‘Yes sir,’ I said, ‘and now the bishop has it, I expect.’

He turned to me with raised brows. ‘The bishop? Surely not.’

I explained how our estate had been confiscated, and who had benefited. He listened without comment. When I had finished he sat gazing across the garden at the trellis of climbing roses on the far wall, with his face set stern under his white beard.

I began to wonder if I had spoken out of turn, and was about to say I was sorry for bothering him with my own business, when he turned and spoke.

‘That I had not known,’ he said, his voice hardening. ‘Then of course the library will have been destroyed – sold off for what it could fetch, if I know the bishop, though I doubt he would have been aware of its value.’

‘You know him, sir?’ I said, surprised. It seemed somehow contrary to nature that this austere, noble man could be acquainted with a creature like the bishop.

He sighed.

‘Regretfully, yes. There is no one in the government who does not. Indeed it was only a few weeks ago that I myself had an unfortunate exchange with him. It appears he has run out of money to build that wretched cathedral of his, and so he came to the magistrates demanding a subvention. They told him to speak to the emperor, who has already seized the temple revenues and debauched the city finances. It was the emperor, after all, who provided him with the funds, and the bishop seems unable, or unwilling, to give a proper account of them. At any rate,’ he went on, ‘the city does not have the money for such a project. But then, the following day, if you can believe it, he came beating on the door of my London house to protest at the way he was treated, blaming me for it all.’

‘What did you do, sir?’

‘I had the slaves throw him out – him and that odious death’s-head assistant of his, the deacon. Really, he is a charlatan of the worst kind, a false pretender to knowledge. He preys on the poor, and on the lazy of mind, and offers them the prospect of truth without thought, and the grossest kind of mindless intolerance, which he calls piety.’

He paused and looked at me. ‘It is rare that I call a man my enemy, Drusus; surely such an extreme is not the way of philosophy. But I struggle to find any good in that man. Tell me, is it true, as I have heard, that your uncle Balbus is a friend of his?’

‘He knows him, sir; and it is true my aunt Lucretia is a friend. But I am not.’

‘No; of course. How could you be? Let us not dwell on it – and we are forgetting our refreshments.’

And after that we spoke of other things.

He was an imposing severe man, and though he was quiet, and listened far more than he spoke, his presence always dominated those around him. Nothing he said was pat or second-hand, and he was impatient of imprecision and laziness in others.

At first he made me nervous; but there was nothing harsh or cruel in him. He seldom smiled, and his manner was old-fashioned and exact. And yet, as I came to know him, I was sure I detected humour too beneath that white beard and in those old grey eyes. He took for granted those things which are the ends to most men’s striving – money, status, even power. For Balbus and Lucretia, wealth had been a thing to be coveted, hoarded, displayed, cooed over and nurtured. Aquinus, on the other hand, whose fortune was immeasurably greater, scarcely acknowledged it. He dressed simply; he ate without excess or greed; the house, large as it was, was sparely furnished with a few pieces in understated good taste.

At first I thought this mere affectation; but I came to see that for him wealth was but a tool, which allowed him to pursue those things he considered valuable in life: learning, the cultivation of friends, the good management of his estate, and the well-being of the province. These were his concerns; they represented for him the pillars of civilized life within which good men found their place.

What he made of me I could not tell. He could hardly have failed to perceive my ignorance. But I think he hoped to share a little of his wisdom, if only I cared to listen.

Marcellus I found attractive in ways I understood more easily.

Each day we rode, or walked, or swam, or basked beside the pool under the summer sun.

Mostly we were alone, but on the last evening of my leave we ate dinner with Aquinus in the walled inner-court with its fragrant trellises and gentle burbling fountain. The slaves had taken away the tables and left us with the wine, and we were quietly talking under a twilight sky streaked with pink and magenta. I glanced across at Marcellus. We had ridden that day to the ruined circular temple where we had met, and gone on after to look at Balbus’s villa beyond the brook. The villa stood empty once again, and I had taken Marcellus up the hillside behind, showing him the clearing under the yew tree, and the pool in the dip below; though I did not say what had happened there.

In the flickering lamplight his face looked happy and peaceful. His hair fell curling on his brow; his tanned arm hung lazily over the end of the couch; and with his fingers he was idly touching at the lilies in the fountain basin. He looked, I thought, like some god at rest.

He must have sensed my eyes on him, for he looked round and smiled. I smiled back, wondering if my thoughts showed in my face. Suddenly, in the midst of this, I realized that Aquinus was talking to me.

He had been speaking, when I had last attended, of the city, and justice. Now he said, ‘But tell me, Drusus, how do you suppose a man learns to know the Good?’

If I had answered at that moment truthfully from my heart, I should have said, ‘By being with your grandson, who to me is beautiful and perfect.’ But that would not do, and so I stirred my wine-clouded mind and answered, ‘Why, I suppose, sir, by seeking out good men and trying to be as they are.’

‘That is a beginning,’ he said, fixing me with his eye. ‘And yet, if one is to learn from good men, one must first recognize good when one sees it, don’t you think?’

‘Yes sir,’ I answered, knitting my brow and trying to think.

‘So which, then, would you say, comes first?’

‘Grandfather!’ cried Marcellus laughing. ‘Will you give poor Drusus no rest at all? We have been out riding all day, and he is half asleep with tiredness.’

But I had been thinking, and now I set down my cup and said, ‘I cannot answer, sir, with a theory or a formula; but I believe one knows goodness when one sees it, as a budding shoot knows the light. The words come later, but the knowledge – well, the knowledge comes first.’

‘A fine answer,’ he said, giving me one of his rare smiles. ‘You see, Marcellus, he is more awake than you think. A man must be what he wishes to seem, and in time the man becomes the mask. But Marcellus is right, and I have talked enough for one evening. I shall leave you in peace.’

Presently, when we were alone, Marcellus said, ‘Don’t mind Grandfather. He wouldn’t quiz you like that unless he liked you.’

We were lying side by side on the couch, our bodies touching, looking up at the great sweep of the Milky Way. The day had been hot and close; but now a night breeze was rustling the poplars beyond the wall, bringing a welcome freshness to the air.

I said, ‘I’m glad he asks. He makes me think. He makes me yearn to be more than I am.’ I shook my head, thinking I was making no sense. ‘For instance, yesterday, when you were with your mother, he said that good and beauty and truth are one, to be found in the same place, and that love and reason guide us there . . . He says such things so easily you would think he was making some observation about the weather. But, you know, I can’t get it out of my head.’

He was so long silent that I turned. He was staring up at the dome of stars, his brow furrowed. I propped myself on my elbow and looked down into his face.

‘Yes,’ he said smiling, ‘he always manages to say the right thing. I used to believe it was some kind of magic. Now I think it comes from hard work, and learning to see clearly. That is the hardest magic of all.’

He reached up, and rested his hand on my arm, at the place above my elbow where the muscles tightened. His touch ran through me like fire, and in the silent pause it seemed my mind was aware of every tiny thing – the nightjar chirping in the shrubs, the sound of the fountain, the stirring of the trees. I saw the contours of his face, his nose and lips and sun-bleached brow, and the gentle movement of his chest beneath his tunic. And suddenly there came over me a great wave of longing and love such as I had not known before. I gazed at him, feeling naked, unable to divine what thoughts lay behind the grey eyes that looked up into mine. And so I hesitated; and after a long moment I let out my pent-up breath, and lay back once more beside him, and stared up at the silent sky.

For a long while afterwards we were still, gazing at the vast mystery of the universe, and considering the mystery within us, until eventually the footfalls of a passing servant broke the silence and the moment was gone.

‘Come,’ said Marcellus, sitting up. ‘You have a long ride tomorrow. You must get some sleep.’

I returned to London and my life at the governor’s palace.

The corps of Protectors had been constituted a generation before, when Diocletian was emperor. It was a proving ground for officers, or, under lax generals, a favour to the sons of friends.

But there was nothing lax about Gratian. No officer, he used to say, should expect his men to perform any task he could not, or would not, do himself. And so, each morning, we were up before dawn, running on the parade-ground, or practising sword-work and javelin-throws, or marching and riding in the fields beyond the city walls. He ran us harder, and drove us further, than any regular trooper. For some it was too much: they broke, and left. But I stayed. I would die before I broke. I took whatever was thrown at me.

And when we were not out in the field, he set us to studying ancient battles, laying out the dispositions of opposing armies on the square table in his room, showing us the moves that had led to victory or defeat. We learned administration too: for no army, he told us, could survive without a well-managed supply line, and a good general should know how to organize such things, as much as he should know strategy and tactics.

The summer passed. Out in the fields the ewes were in season, and the farmers gathered the harvest. When I was not occupied with my duties, I was with Marcellus. At the end of the summer, business had brought his grandfather back to the city, and Marcellus came with him.

In the first months of our friendship it had seemed that there was only he and I. But now, in those weeks of autumn when we were in the city, I began to see what I should have guessed at, that he had a life before he knew me.

He was popular – how could it be otherwise? – among the sons of Britain’s well-born families. They kept houses in London, and once they knew he was resident in the city, invitations began to arrive.

To me his friends were always civil. They had been bred to it. The best among them disdained to notice that I was lessened by my father’s death, and by the seizure of all he owned. But I was proud, and defensive, and sensitive to slights; and perhaps because of this I was not always easy with them. I felt I was being brought into a closed circle, a place where I was tolerated, but did not quite belong.