The Sword of Revenge (6 page)

Perhaps it was the paper before him that softened his natural disapproval of their youthful playfulness. After many years and careful disposal, he had in his hand the document which transferred ownership of two
Latifunda
farms in Sicily, the last piece of his land not within a day’s journey from Rome. Never again would he be required to think about examining the accounts and organising distant planting and irrigation schemes. Not that he had been to Sicily; his grandfather had acquired these two plots in a distribution of captured Carthaginian land after the Second Punic War.
Huge and difficult to manage, they had, if anything, been a drain on his finances rather than an asset, returning such a low yield that some subterfuge had been required to extract a good price from the purchaser, Cassius Barbinus.

Challenged, Lucius would not have wanted to admit the real reason he had got a higher payment for his property than was truly justified. Cassius Barbinus had had his reasons to bid the price up; he wanted to ensure that the censor did not remove him from the senatorial list and there were grounds, he being a sybaritic fellow, a wealthy man who openly engaged in trade, one to whom the sumptuary laws governing conspicuous consumption were observed more in the breach than the letter. On top of that, the fellow was looking for advancement, even though he had never held any office on the
cursus honorum
, so generosity to a powerful man like Lucius Falerius Nerva might prove profitable.

It had been an unpleasant business; indeed it was a sign of the times in which he lived that Lucius could even consider transacting business with such a man. He had visited Barbinus at his cattle ranch near the small town of Aprilium in the company of his son, this to avoid being seen to have any kind of dealings with such a fellow, which in Rome would set tongues wagging. The luxury of the man’s villa was alone enough to displease Lucius, but the open
way that Barbinus had tried to bribe him with gifts had set his teeth on edge, first with some tame leopards, then with the present of a young slave girl. Having turned down the first proffered gift he had been obliged to accept the second, manners demanded it, but he had seen to it that the girl never entered his house. She had been sent to a farm between Rome and the port of Ostia.

His steward entered silently and, without distracting him, laid the latest batch of reports, fresh in from the Republic’s scattered provinces, on his desk. Lucius threw aside his bill of sale and turned eagerly to read them. Illyricum was now at peace, the governorship having gone to another Flaminus, in part a recognition of his success in turning Vegetius, who had once been a political enemy, into a client, albeit a reluctant one. Locked away in his nearby strongbox he had the private correspondence that Aulus Cornelius, as head of the investigative commission, had sent back to him, reports that were enough to see Vegetius stripped of more than just his Senate seat; indeed they were so damning they could see him impeached, condemned as a thief and thrown naked off the Tarpien Rock.

He remembered the man’s face as he had read them at his legionary camp outside Rome, flabby like his body, with too much wine and food, so that in his soldier’s armour he looked like a buffoon instead of a general. Lucius also made it plain that
he knew the truth about the way Vegetius had left Aulus Cornelius and his men to die, made it clear that his goodwill was the only thing that stood between the ex-governor and impeachment. Vegetius Flaminus had understood with an alacrity that showed his true, shameless character; as long as he toed the Falerii line and supported the
Optimates
in the house, those letters would stay locked away. Stray from that and they would be laid before the people.

That sanction not only locked in Vegetius Flaminus, it also included the faction of which he was a leading member, a group of senators who made mischief by flirting with the opposition, people that had to be continually bought off to keep that mischief from turning into real trouble. With them neutralised, Lucius Falerius now had the kind of power in the house which ensured that any vote that came before the chamber was almost certain to go the way he wanted. Over ten years it had taken to fully repair the damage done to his cause by the defection from his side of Aulus Cornelius, the pity being that he had to acquiesce in the granting of a triumph for a man he considered a slug, a man who could, on the most elementary examination, be denied that reward. There would, no doubt, be those who wanted Vegetius arraigned; they could bleat, but they had no evidence, only he had that.

For all the satisfaction he had had at the moment
he had shown Vegetius Flaminus the secret correspondence of Aulus, he had felt a pang of guilt, plus an ache for the friendship he and Aulus had once enjoyed. From boyhood they had been inseparable, an unlikely couple to many; Aulus so gifted physically, he of a lesser build, with a sharp tongue in place of a keen sword blade. Yes, he had soldiered, and though it had been far from a disgrace, it had not brought to him what it gifted to Aulus, an arena for what Lucius wished were his natural talents. Those had lain elsewhere; not in battle and command, but in supply and support. The legions to which he was attached were better equipped and better fed than any others either before or since, and because of that he could lay some claim to be, even if another was the actual commander, the partial author of their success.

Prior to the murder of the plebeian tribune, Tiberius Livonius, he had had in Aulus a man with whom he could share his innermost thoughts and concerns and it hurt him even now to admit that he missed that greatly. Marcellus would one day become his confidant, but as yet he was too young. Powerful as he was, Lucius knew he was not immune from struggle. Quintus Cornelius, if not handled properly, could easily become a focus for dissent. He must be brought to see where his true interest lay, not in pursuit of Vegetius Flaminus but in loyalty to his fellow-patricians. It was good to
observe that Aulus’s eldest son showed some sign that he understood, proving he had a better appreciation of his duties and prospects than his late father.

Honest Aulus Cornelius, who had sat in this very room and made him swear he was innocent of murder. Could he have admitted that he had hired the thugs who stabbed and mutilated Tiberius Livonius, a tribune whose person was supposed to be inviolate? No, he could not, any more than he could admit to a living soul that the son he so cherished was not his own, but the fruit of a liaison between his late wife and his own body slave, a man called Ragas, who, physically strong and a fine boxer, had protected Lucius in the streets of a city where violence was commonplace. That was his secret and his alone; his thugs had taken care of that slave on the same night as they had taken care of Livonius. It was an unforeseen bonus that his wife, a woman he had come to despise for her simpering infidelity, in giving birth to Marcellus, had also expired on the night of his birth.

Three very necessary deaths on one night, the Feast of Lupercalia. That killing of the plebeian tribune had been essential to stop the tide of reforms the man proposed, extending citizenship to Rome’s Italian allies, changing the voting structure in the
Comitia
in a way that would dent senatorial rule, all this to diminish the power of the
Optimates
. Even worse was the idea of allowing the
Equites
the right to sit in judgement in the courts. The class of knights would use that power for only one purpose: against the patricians whose families had led Rome to the greatness she now enjoyed. Empires, Lucius knew, were fragile. There had been many before and they had fallen, to his mind for only one reason: the power of the state had been diluted, so that political infighting replaced firm central rule.

With a start, Lucius realised he had allowed his mind to wander, to think on things that were past and unalterable. Now mattered, not yesterday or the day before, so he turned to the other scrolls that made up the despatches. The road-building senator, Licinius Domitius, was engaged in the last sections of the road that would run all the way from Rome to Iberia, thus helping to keep that province under control. He was experiencing some difficulty in bridging, at a point near the delta, the great river that ran south from the Alps to the Greek city of Massila; more time, slaves and money would be required. There was a hint of trouble on the border with Numidia where the sons of a client king were competing for the succession and causing trouble, but the Ionian coast was quiet and prosperous, as was the whole of Greece. There was the usual nuisance of the Alpine tribes north of the River Po in Gallia Cisalpina, but the biggest problem was,
and remained, Spain, and in particular the chieftain called Brennos.

It was telling how often, in these last ten years, that name had come up in the affairs of both the state and his own life, first when he had read Aulus’s early despatches from Spain, in which the man had come close, having caught the legions strung out on the march, to winning a major battle. The modesty with which his old friend had explained how he had mastered a desperate situation was still vivid in his mind – he had not, for instance, made any mention of the capture of Claudia. Despite Aulus’s warnings, following on from that campaign, Lucius had seen him as a defeated foe, albeit not a dead one, going so far as to describe the man as a flea. But he was beginning to realise that this chieftain had grown to become first a gnat with a painful sting, before a metamorphosis in his power had turned him into a fully grown and dangerous spider.

It was startling just how much Rome knew about Brennos; not where he came from precisely or why, but what he had achieved since he first appeared on the Roman border. He had, against all the odds and previous experience, united the tribes that lived cheek by jowl with Rome and so very nearly turned them into a successful army. Beaten by Aulus the man had retired into the west, first to the lands of Lusitani, which bordered the great outer sea, and,
once obliged to move on from there, to other tribal areas, all the time using his status as a Druid. That gained him hospitality and trust at every hearth, a trust which he abused by seeking to seduce the younger warriors from allegiance to their tribal elders.

Finally he came upon the Duncani, a tribe in decline, and there he stayed, becoming a companion to the elderly chieftain, Vertogani, a man much given to three major faults: drinking, boasting and limitless procreation. Once a great warrior, the man was old and enfeebled by his passions. He had also bred too many sons who hankered to succeed him, each of whom had been given part of the tribal lands as their own fiefdoms. These sons had not only disputed amongst themselves but sought alliances with neighbouring chieftains, foolish because such neighbours sought only one thing: Duncani territory. Many a descendant, cheated by those who had professed to be their friends, had to be allowed back into the family fold, forgiven for their stupidity.

It only emerged later that the weaknesses which this created, especially the rivalry to succeed Vertogani, were the factors that attracted Brennos, that and the location of the tribes’ hill-fort. Numantia was a place of natural defence high on a bluff overlooking the confluence of two rivers. In order to gain control of that Brennos had cast off
his Druid vows of celibacy, married Vertogani’s favourite daughter, then proceeded to murder as many of the man’s sons as were foolish enough to stay within reach. The wiser offspring, seeing that their father was in thrall to this interloper and wishing to stay alive, left before Vertogani died, to become a source of much of the information Rome had acquired.

First Brennos had taken back land that had been lost, before reducing the neighbouring tribes to clients rather than rivals. As his authority spread he became the dominant force in the interior, and at the same time the fortress of Numantia grew more and more formidable. Brennos, now the undisputed Duncani chieftain, had added ring after ring of outworks to his defences. Not that he, according to the reports, trusted to the landscape. Great trenches had been dug in front of the bluff walls to double the scaling height, the ramparts were faced with wood to make a frame filled with loose stones and great earth bastions stood behind these, so that Numantia was impervious to attack by fire.

The central area, sacred home to the original tribe, had been kept free to act as a place of worship and assembly. The small wooden temple, dedicated to the Earth God,
Dagda
, held the treasures of the tribe, much increased, it seemed, through the new chieftain’s efforts. The Greeks who traded with Brennos told of gold and silver objects set with
precious stones, fetched out at all the festivals of the Celtic faith and placed around the altar. This, a circular stone, stood above the spring that gushed out of the earth, providing a source of water that could not be plugged from outside. Brennos anticipated a siege, since he paid as much attention to husbandry as he did to his defences. As recent nomads, the Celts were inclined to rear livestock to the exclusion of all other staples; he had them plough the earth to plant wheat, driving the men to work as well as the women. Great storehouses had been scooped out of the formidable rock, to hold the grain that would be necessary to withstand an attack.

His wife, Cara, was certainly fertile, giving birth annually, and for all that he had seen off the sons and heirs to the leadership of the tribe, his wife had a string of cousins and nephews, so that his personal household had grown to include the male members of that extended family, who acted as his bodyguards. Lucius stopped reading for a moment, his mind playing on an idea. Brennos was certainly dangerous; he encouraged other tribes to revolt, backed them with men, then broke off his support for the insurrection as soon as the Romans gathered in strength to oppose it. That left his clients exposed. Even the Lusitani, hitherto cautious of troubling Rome, had taken to carrying out pirate raids on both sides of the Pillars of Hercules with
their small galleys. Given their strength and location, that was something to which Rome found it difficult to respond.