Cast Not the Day (37 page)

It was this news that made me break my self-imposed exile and go to Aquinus’s house. It was a chill bright morning in November, early still, and I found Marcellus alone in the courtyard, swinging and thrusting with an antique bronze-handled sword, which had hung on the wall in the passageway.

Seeing me he laid it shyly aside, saying he had just thought to practise a little, to see how it felt.

‘It seems to suit you,’ I said, picking up the ancient blade and turning it in front of me. And indeed his swordwork had been fine, easily as good as mine, even though I had never seen him train at it.

I set the old weapon down on the garden table and gave him a careful look. ‘Has it come to this?’ I asked.

He shrugged.

‘I shall not let them take Grandfather. Better to die fighting than rot in the notary’s dungeons.’

I sat down beside him and gazed at the pots of herbs on the terrace. Our breath showed in the cold air, mingling in front of us.

‘We must get him away,’ I said.

Marcellus shook his head. He was looking down, with his elbows on his knees and his chin propped in the palms of his hands. In a bleak, quiet voice he said, ‘He will not listen. He told me last night he intends to speak at the Council.’

‘What?’ I said, staring. ‘Has the madness touched him too?’ The Council meeting, long delayed because no decurion could be found to attend, was due in a few days’ time.

‘By God, I’ve tried to tell him, Drusus. He will not listen. He says it is time somebody had the courage to speak out.’

‘But we must stop him. In truth, I wonder he has not been taken away already. Does he really think he can stand up to them?’

He made a small, helpless gesture, as if he had been through all these arguments many times before. I realized he was near to tears.

‘He thinks he can shame Martinus. He says silence is complicity, and words are the only weapon he has left.’

I got up from the bench and stood, frowning at him. I took up the sword from where it lay on the cast-iron table and turned it, holding it up to the light, inspecting the oldstyle craftsmanship. The hilt had been fashioned into a twisting double-headed snake. I touched my finger to the polished blade. It was sharp still. I wondered if it had ever killed a man, or seen battle. I thought then of Gennadius. He had not spoken out; he had avoided trouble, or so he thought. Yet still they had murdered him.

I said, ‘Let me speak to him.’

‘Go ahead. We have all tried – Clemens; the groom boy; even the maids. But yes, go to him. He has been in his study since first light.’

Aquinus was sitting in a high-backed oak-wood chair beside the little charcoal-burning stove that warmed the room, wrapped in his thick winter cloak. He glanced round when I entered. Under his white beard his face looked gaunt and pale.

I greeted him, and in my clumsy way I tried to lead into what I had come for. I saw him regarding me with irony in his eyes, and after a while he said, ‘I know why you are here, so let us dispense with all this talk about the weather and my health, and come to the matter.’

So I said what I had to say.

He listened without interruption. When I had finished he said, ‘You are young; I do not know if you will understand. But I shall try to explain. All my life, I have striven to bring to government a co-incidence of power and wisdom. Without it there can be no good city, and no civilized life. But it is a constant struggle against ignorance and folly, for power is seldom wise, and wisdom seldom powerful. It is, you might say, a Sisyphean task. But if the city becomes destructive of what is best, then men will desert it and find some other, lesser place to fulfil their natures – their high-walled farms and gardens, or, as the Christians do, their monasteries. But these places are not an answer; they are not an alternative. No matter how remote the place or how high the walls, they cannot last if the city is corrupted. For such reasons as this I have served in public life, and I believe that my efforts, and the efforts of others such as your late father, have achieved some success: the province has prospered while Rome squabbled and Gaul was overrun. But now all we have built is torn apart by blind and evil men. My friends are murdered; farmers are chased off the land; the fields are barren and the people go hungry. It must be faced.’

I drew my breath to speak, but he raised his hand.

‘Do you suppose, if I run away, they will not find me? Shall I hide in the forest, cowering in fear, and wait to be hunted like an animal? No, Drusus. This is my home, and there is no place to run. I grow old. I feel it. I shall face the end true to what I have lived for.’

He ceased, but when I tried to speak my voice broke and I choked on my words.

He smiled and, rising from his chair, came to me, and rested his hand on my shoulder.

Presently he said, ‘Come then; the gods have spared us foreknowledge; but they have granted us reason enough to discern what is right, and where our duty lies. Let us not presume to know what tomorrow holds. Now call Clemens for me, and tell him to bring us some warmed wine, for the days are growing chill.’

T
WO DAYS LATER
, on the day, as it happened, of my twentieth birthday, a youth came to the barracks with a message.

I looked from him to the sealed note. The note did not look official. Nor did the youth.

‘Who sent you?’ I asked.

He glanced at me nervously. I was dressed in my uniform. I suppose, to this slender boy, I must have seemed quite fearsome.

‘My master Balbus,’ he stuttered. ‘Lucius Balbus the merchant. He says he knows you, that you are a friend of his.’

I opened the letter. It was the first time I had seen anything written in my uncle’s hand that was not a shipping-list or tally of accounts.

‘Balbus to his nephew Drusus, greetings,’ it began, and after a long stilted preamble asked if I would call on him at his shop in the forum, ending diffidently with, ‘The boy who brings this will direct you, if you have forgotten the place.’

Of course I had not forgotten. I sent the youth off, changed into civilian clothes, and set out across the city.

The shop was just as I remembered it – brightly painted walls done up to look like marble; here and there an expensive vase set into an alcove; costly perfumes ranged on silk-draped garlanded shelves in petite bottles of coloured glass; wines for tasting; expensive draperies.

The same dapper youth who had brought the note was there. Balbus came hurrying from behind. He was all smiles and civilities, as if I were one of his rich clients; but I could tell from his eyes that something was wrong. He dismissed the boy, and asked me to sit and drink a cup of wine with him.

He conducted me through to the lounge at the back, with its upholstered couches and fine furniture, the place where he entertained his most valued customers. He poured the wine himself, from a figured enamelled jar, fussing over it, avoiding my gaze. He had grown fatter, under his rich clothes. His heavy face had become florid. Only his hair, inexpertly dyed an absurd crow’s-wing black, was the same as before.

For a while he talked aimlessly, fiddling with his wine-cup. But eventually he sighed, and setting down his cup with a hint of impatience, came to the point. ‘I was wondering,’ he said, ‘with your connections, whether perhaps you might put a word in for me with Flavius Martinus the governor. Business has been bad, what with the recent troubles. I find I have overspent and am embarrassed.’

I looked at him in his plush clothes, in his lavish shop, and thought of Trebius and Gennadius and Aquinus. I paused before I answered. Even now, at the age of twenty, I was not always master of my anger.

‘I am sorry, Uncle,’ I said, ‘but you have been misinformed. I have no connection with Martinus.’

‘Ah; yes. Of course. But you see, I thought you might call on him, on my behalf. I need the business. I have suffered losses, and my expenses are high, and—’

‘I do not think,’ I said, gently interrupting him, ‘they would even let me through the palace gates. And if they did, I should probably never leave. I am no friend of Martinus, sir; nor of that monster the notary either.’

His head swung round to the latticed partition behind. But I had checked before I spoke: the poison of fear had infected me too.

‘You need not worry,’ I said. ‘There is no one here.’

He nodded to himself, a great lolling melancholy bull, dressed up in silks and gold chains; and as he did so I regarded him, reflecting on how, after these years of silence, he had sought me out only to further his own business, which through his folly and greed he had brought to ruin.

‘What of Lucretia?’ I said. ‘Perhaps she could sell some of her jewels.’

‘We have quarrelled; besides, I dare not. She was always a pious woman, Drusus, as you know, and she feels her husband and her son have been a disappointment and a trial. Nowadays she devotes her time to the bishop and to holy work.’ He paused, and stared sadly at the dainty, gilded table. ‘She tells me I have failed her, and I suppose I have. So you see, I could not ask her for help. Her jewels are important to her. She says they are all she has left.’

I nodded and looked down. I even felt sorry for him.

‘Albinus too?’ I asked, remembering how in her eyes he could do no wrong.

‘Albinus has not grown up quite as we had hoped.’

He fell silent and looked at me helplessly. I reached across to the wine-jar and filled my cup, and filled his too, reflecting on the terrible consequences of what we cannot see. And for a while, before the shop-boy returned, we drank together, and remembered.

The sword-work I had caught Marcellus practising in the garden was no more than a private ritual of desperation. He knew as well as I that he could not fight off the guards if they came.

He knew, too, that it was forbidden for a citizen to carry weapons; though it seemed at that time that only the innocent lacked the means to defend themselves. I was reminded of this myself, one winter afternoon shortly before the Council was due to meet. Marcellus and I had gone to the basilica together, on some small business of Aquinus’s.

The matter took longer than expected. By the time we emerged the night-time cressets had been kindled around the forum wall. We were talking of something or other when Marcellus suddenly paused on the steps. I looked round, following his gaze.

A misty rain had begun to fall. The forum square was empty. Then, ahead, between us and the pillared archway to the street, I saw a group of youths, clustered under the light of a cresset.

‘The bishop’s men,’ I said. ‘Let’s go back inside. We can ask to leave by the rear door.’

I turned. But Marcellus stood firm. ‘No,’ he said, glaring out across the square. ‘Who are they to take away our freedom?’

I heard the steel in his voice and my stomach tightened. Seeing his mind was set I said, ‘Come on then; but by the Dog stop staring at them.’

We descended the basilica steps and strode out across the wet flagstones.

After a moment Marcellus gestured and said, ‘Who is that one, the one looking at you?’

I clenched my teeth and glanced up. At first they all looked the same: surly bitter faces pale in the gloom of evening, turning in on one another or glaring about with an air of menace. But then the night breeze blew and the cresset flickered, and I saw with a start that one of the dark-clad youths was looking directly at me.

Cold recognition dawned. It was a face I knew. Lines had formed there since I had last seen him, setting his sulky, pouting frown into a fixed expression of malice. His hair was hacked, in the style which just then was the fashion among a certain type of city youth. But the round shoulders and slovenly posture were just as I remembered them. Bitterly I said, ‘It is my cousin Albinus.’

I averted my eyes and walked on, aware we were drawing their interest. But I had forgotten I was wearing my uniform; and now, as we drew closer, one of the youths began jeering and calling out mocking insults, as if to be a soldier were disgraceful.

Marcellus stiffened. ‘No,’ I muttered, taking his elbow and urging him on. ‘Remember, we have no weapons. There are at least twenty of them.’

But it was too late. There was a shout, and the sound of running feet. I glanced ahead, gauging the distance to the gate. We could make it, if we ran. But even as this thought came to me, I saw others move out from the shadows under the colonnade, blocking our path.