The Pillars of Rome (3 page)

Aulus Cornelius Macedonicus stood alone by the undecorated turf altar, dressed in a simple white garment, worn short and loose in the Greek fashion. The muffled moans of his wife, attended by a single young midwife, seemed to cause him an actual physical pain he struggled to contain. For all his pre-eminence as the foremost general of the Roman world, no guests attended this birth and no
supplicants crowded the room. The walls of this borrowed villa were as bare as the altar and the single tallow wad guttering in the sconce lent the colonnaded room a ghostly feel. None of the normal rules of celebration were to be gifted to the birth of this child and the fact that it was taking place on the day of the Festival of
Lupercalia
was something that mocked rather than honoured the event.

‘Hot, honeyed wine,’ said Cholon, his young personal slave, proffering an unadorned stone goblet. Aulus shivered slightly in the chill of the early spring air as he took the drink. ‘Your cloak, master?’

‘No, thank you,’ Aulus replied automatically, his voice a hoarse whisper.

His servant was unsure if he had heard him right, though he never doubted any response would be polite. It always was, whether the person addressed was a common soldier or the noble monarch of a Roman client-state. No one exemplified more than Aulus Cornelius Macedonicus the virtues of which Rome was so proud; he was upright, honest and brave, a soldier’s soldier revered by his men. The fickle Rome mob cheered him too, as a man who paid more than lip service to ancient freedoms, yet when his city was in turmoil and he was desperately needed in Rome, here he was skulking
in this empty country villa. The mob would not cheer him for that!

Cholon knew that lesser men, enmeshed in the dirty world of politics, sneered derisively at what they saw as his master’s arrogance. They would hold that a senator and ex-consul showed insufficient gravitas when he discarded his home, his responsibilities, his friends, even his toga on such an occasion, but the general who had humbled the heirs of Alexander the Great and brought powerful Macedonia to heel, so that it was now a vassal-state to the Roman Republic, could ignore and withstand the disapproval of anyone. His family was as ancient as any in Rome: the death masks of his ancestors stood proud in their decorated cupboards. These lined the walls of the family chapel in the home of the Cornelii on the Palatine Hill, situated right above the broad avenue of the
Via Triumphalis
.

Had he been in that chapel and sensed the disapproval of those ancestors at this clandestine birth, he would have looked at their masks with disdain. Aulus Cornelius Macedonicus was the greatest of his tribe, the foremost exemplar of the family Genius. His mask, on his death, would take pride of place above the family altar when future generations gathered for prayers. He prized his reputation as much as the next man, just as he felt keenly the need to maintain his honour, yet he
would not see another suffer to retain that, especially one he loved. He could not bear that his wife should be shamed in public for something he held to be entirely his own fault.

Marcia, feeling nervous, stifled a yawn as she sat watching the nameless woman cradle the child to her breast, encouraging it to feed, but the infant, having already taken its fill, did not respond. Occasionally the lady moaned, exactly reproducing the sounds she had uttered in labour through the tooth-marked leather strap, now discarded. She had given birth, fists clenched, several minutes earlier, flat on her back like a peasant. An inexperienced midwife, who had never before attended on a birth unsupervised, Marcia knew that very few deliveries would be as uncomplicated as this, yet for all the ease of the birth, things seemed set to change. The girl sensed trouble and the manner of her summons to attend this lady provided little reassurance. She had been dragged from the Lupercalian celebrations, so pertinent to her trade, with the promise of a rich reward if she came at once.

Since the baby came quickly there had been little time to spare for curiosity. The woman had fought with enormous will power to hold her cries as the child emerged from her womb, her voice never rising above the labour moans that she had emitted with increasing frequency. Marcia had been
forbidden to slap the baby’s feet and the exhausted mother had waved away her attempt to bring the child to life with a sip of wine. Once the cord was cut the woman immediately suckled the infant, which fed greedily and silently, leaving Marcia to wonder anew at the strange circumstances surrounding the whole affair. It would be something to tell her friends, since she had never heard of a child being born in silence. Then with a slight shock, Marcia realised that she could tell no one; before being admitted to this barren bedchamber she had sworn the most frightful oaths to the Goddess
Juno
, never to reveal anything about this event.

Oaths or not, nothing could abate her curiosity. There were strange things to ponder, not least the fact that Marcia’s attempt to summon the slave, so that the husband who had administered these oaths could be told, had been abruptly halted; she found herself ordered by a violent gesture from the mother to remain still. The whole affair was a deliberate mystery and the person paying her fee, pacing to and fro next door, wanted it kept that way. The young midwife knew she was in the presence of nobility; the bearing of the man, despite his plain unadorned dress, left her in no doubt and the woman, this lady, was high-born too; it was obvious by her well-dressed hair, her expensive clothes and her demeanour. She had been given no
names and her attempts to question the Greek slave who had summoned her to this house, pressing on her the first part of her fee, had met with a sharp and unpleasant response.

‘Attend upon the lady, deliver the child, and ask no questions. Be assured that the man who pays you this gold will not hesitate to kill you should you break any oath you are required to give.’

Come to that she did not even know the name of the slave! The child, half-asleep, was offered again, taking the teat in his mouth automatically, but still showing little enthusiasm for milk. The russet-gold hair and striking blue eyes were unusual, in sharp contrast to the jet-black hair and dark pupils of the boy’s mother and father. You could never tell with these things; Marcia knew, better than most, that families often threw up children who bore little resemblance to their immediate parents.

The woman moaned again as though she had not yet given birth. It was all so strange; they really should take him to his father. Then, with another slight jolt, the young midwife understood: this child was not to be acknowledged. Could this infant, this changeling, be the result of an adulterous union? Was the lady, seemingly so noble and refined, really no better than a common whore? The mother, still moaning, opened her clenched fist to reveal a glistening object, which she then wound round the infant’s puckered ankle. The gold of the chain
flashed as it swung by the baby’s foot, causing Marcia to crane forward to see the charm. It was gold, shaped like an eagle in flight, with the wings delicately picked out to show proud feathers. As soon as it was securely attached the lady covered the whole of the small body in swaddling cloths. Then, kissing the child gently on the forehead, she pinched him hard. He immediately awoke from his contented state and in the way of all babies proceeded, in a very noisy fashion, to let the world know of his arrival.

Throughout this charade, Aulus had paced the barren atrium, cursing himself for the events of the past two years. His mind went further back to the triumph, celebrated at the successful conclusion of his wars on the Greek mainland, where, in a part fulfilment of the prophecy, ‘he had tamed a mighty foe’, having brought Perseus, King of Macedon, to Rome in chains, to be hauled along behind his chariot. Others carried the male children of that same king’s court, who would be educated as Romans and held as a blood bond for the behaviour of their fathers. The city had never witnessed such a triumph; not even the defeat of Carthage had introduced such wealth to the Republic. The slave beside him in his four-horsed war chariot might caution that all glory was fleeting, but the cheers of the crowds added to the unstinting praise of the Senate made it both hard to hear and impossible to
comprehend. There was not a soldier in the legions that marched behind him on that day that did not feel immortal.

Aulus had brought back more than Alexander’s heir. The wealth that Perseus’s great ancestor had plundered from Greece and the Persian Empire came too, in a train of carts that took two whole days to wend its way from the city gates to the Capitol. Hundreds of finely wrought and valuable urns, full to the lip with gold coins, were carried in procession behind him. Still others followed, brimming with jewels and precious objects, all borne on the shoulders of men who had once been Macedonian soldiers, the most feared army in the world. Now they would be sold in the market-place and in such quantities that the price of male slaves had plummeted.

Alexander the Great’s armour came too, in his own war chariot; breastplate, helm and shield, which held an almost mythical significance for the whole civilised world. His sword, which no man dared to wear, lest such impiety caused him to be struck down by the angry gods, lay atop the pile. These were the possessions of the greatest conqueror the world had ever known and who had overturned his descendants? None other than Aulus Cornelius, styled now, by order of the Senate and the people of Rome, Macedonicus.

The triumph was complete when Aulus hauled
his royal captive to the steps of the Temple of
Jupiter
, made obeisance to the greatest of the Roman gods, then used the rope that had dragged him through the streets to ritually strangle Perseus before a howling and delirious mob.

Cholon stood near the entrance to the bedchamber watching his master, reflecting that some men could never rest on their laurels. Who else could they blame if the gods, having so favoured them, chose to demonstrate the pitfalls of excessive pride? As an Athenian, he had been glad to see the Macedonians humbled; his city had suffered much at their hands, yet he could not understand these Latins. Having conquered all of Greece they desired nothing more than to speak his language with fluency, to discuss Greek philosophy, read Greek writers and watch Greek plays while spouting endlessly about the benefits of liberty. For barbarians these Romans were not savage enough.

With the Macedonians at his mercy, and having killed more than enough enemies in battle to ensure his triumph when he returned to Rome, Aulus had halted his legions. Those who surrendered he spared, taking only hostages, as well as a token number of captives as slaves. Cholon, being Greek and somewhat wiser, would have killed them all, the land he would have laid to waste instead of handing it back, telling those who had owned it
that they were safe provided they paid enough tribute to the Republic and obeyed the rule of law. They would, in time, rise again and another Roman army would have to be despatched to subdue them.

‘You wait and see if I’m not right!’

This was said under his breath. He was much given to taking liberties with his master but he knew this was not the time to indulge in such behaviour. Cholon Pyliades considered himself a pious man, so if the gods chose to desert the Macedonians and their allies by allowing victory to go to the barbarian Romans, then his master, who had the power to do as he wished, should have punished them properly and having done that he should have lived in honourable retirement and not gone back off to war at the very first opportunity.

As the young slave entered to collect the child, Marcia examined him, staring again at his carefully curled hair, held by the braided band. He had a pale, almost girlish face, soft full lips and a slim, graceful figure, which caused her to wonder at the relationship between him and the man outside. He stood over the woman for a moment waiting for her to hand over the bawling child. Where would they expose it? That was obviously what was intended. The secrecy seemed unnecessary since exposing children was a common enough thing, even among the well-born, who could afford to feed a large
brood. Would a hint regarding a good spot be welcome? After all, the woman desired the child to live, regardless of her husband’s wishes. She had put that charm around the child’s foot to identify him, a sure sign she would want him back at sometime in the future, with perhaps a handsome reward for the person who had reared him. But then she reasoned it would be best to stay silent. There were only so many places round these parts to expose a child; someone would find him and for a tenth of the fee she was getting tonight they would gladly give him up.

‘Cholon!’

The sharp command cut through her thoughts, as well as the child’s cries, like a whiplash. The man stood in the doorway, a black look on his face. Even after the strain of child-bearing the mother’s youth and beauty shone out in stark contrast to the countenance of her older husband. Marcia tried to guess how greatly the couple differed in age, which led her to further speculation, since such unions often ended in tears. The slave, responding to his master, bent down and took the child, slipping through the space left in the doorway. That was when the angry face softened: the man’s straight prominent nose and thick black eyebrows lost their menace, the full lips parted and he smiled at his young wife. Not a joyous smile, more one of relief that her ordeal was ended, but this changed his face
completely, and when he spoke to Marcia his voice, soft and gentle, matched his changed mood.

‘Your work is done, child, yet I would ask you one more thing. Stay with the lady until I return, then my servant will see you safely home.’ Marcia just nodded, too awed by his presence to speak. She could see, as he could not, that the mother was fighting hard to hold back her tears. ‘But do not pry into matters which don’t concern you.’

His face still had the same smile but his black eyes bored into her, warning her of a fate that was certain should she disobey him. Then he spun on his heel and left. She busied herself, making her exhausted charge comfortable and the lady, who gave free rein to her sobs as soon as the husband departed, actually cried herself to sleep. The young midwife sat silently by her makeshift bed, her mind whirling with thoughts of what she had witnessed, and what the future might hold for her after the events of the night.