FIELDS OF MARS Page 10

  ‘Sir,’ called the centurion arriving at the top of the stairs behind him and breaking the rather depressing spell.

  ‘Yes?’ he asked, turning.

  ‘The carts are ready and I’ve brought forty lads up to start work.’

  Behind the centurion, legionaries were standing in ranks on the steps, waiting for orders. ‘Good,’ Fronto said, mentally swatting at the soul-destroying demons gathering at the edge of his consciousness. ‘Caecilius Metellus was just getting out of the way, weren’t you, Caecilius.’

  ‘Go away Fronto.’

  ‘I’m afraid it appears that the keys have all fled in terror across the sea, Centurion, so we’ll have to smash the doors open. Can your men manage that?’

  ‘We’ve broken open Gallic oppida, sir. I think we can manage a door.’

  ‘Good man. Get to it.’

  Caecilius Metellus hurried forward, waving his hands, the knife seemingly forgotten as he sought to dissuade them.

  ‘No, no, no.’

  Before he’d really decided what to do about the man, Fronto had grabbed hold of a gesticulating arm and yanked. Caecilius, unbalanced, staggered to Fronto, who nodded at two legionaries as the large cooking knife clattered away across the ground.. ‘Be so good as to hold the tribune here still and remove his knife. I don’t want him to hurt himself.’

  As the two men grasped the tribune by the arms and pinned him in place, Fronto joined the centurion at the door.

  ‘Piece of piss, sir,’ the centurion grinned. ‘Atticus? Tauro? Get this door open. Stand aside, sir, if you will.’

  Fronto moved to one side as two legionaries the size of some kind of ancient mythical monster emerged from the group of soldiers, took a look at one another, nodded and broke into a run. They hit the doors like a runaway wagon, and there was a deep, echoing clong as they ricocheted off the bronze, cursing and rubbing their shoulders. But Fronto had distinctly heard a small cracking noise in the midst of the clong that still reverberated inside the temple.

  ‘Again,’ the centurion called. Atticus and Tauro jogged back to the stairs, counted together and ran again. As Caecilius Metellus watched in disbelieving dismay, they hit the doors and with a crunch were through and into the dark interior. The bronze-sheathed wooden leaves crashed back against the inner walls while pieces of the lock clattered across the tiled floor. The centurion bowed and gestured inside.

  Fronto and Galronus entered the temple and allowed their eyes to adjust once more. As the two big men who’d affected entry helped one another up and rubbed their shoulders, wincing, other men rushed around lighting oil lamps to illuminate the interior. With the centurion at heel and his men following on, Fronto and Galronus crossed the temple, the Romans lowering their heads and muttering a respectful prayer to the perfect statue of the god at the far end on its plinth, a red cloak over its shoulders, head veiled and feet bound in wool. As the centurion and his men looked over the trapdoor that gave access to the stairs that led down into the podium, Fronto made a quick and very fervent promise to the god to have the doors mended and to raise an altar to Saturn at the first available opportunity.

  By the time he reached the trapdoor, the soldiers had it open, and he was the first to descend into the aerarium – the state treasury – that resided within the heavy podium upon which the temple sat. A soldier handed him a glowing oil lamp and he emerged into the vaults carrying it for illumination, Galronus right behind him, then the centurion.

  The aerarium, a place few had either cause or right to visit during their time in Rome, consisted of twin vaulted rooms that ran the full length of the temple, openings connecting the two repeatedly along their length.

  Fronto could imagine what the place must have looked like in Rome’s richest days, before Pompey had ripped out all the gold his pet senate would allow. Still, the number of chests standing in neat, ordered lines down the side of the first room was impressive, enough to buy a thousand country estates with enough left over for a warship or twenty. For these chests were not stacked with bronze or brass or even good sestertii, but packed with bars of silver and even of gold.

  A shelf near the stairs held a ledger that contained a neatly written record of deposits and withdrawals. Pausing to examine it, Fronto’s eyes widened at the last entry. The figure was large enough to loosen the sphincter of any money lender. It was under the name of the consul Cornelius Lentulus, but then it would be, for Pompey had no authority to remove it himself and would have had to rely upon the consuls to do so. Caesar was bound by no such niceties, of course. One thing Fronto was sure of as he replaced the book and turned, scratching his head: Pompey had taken more money than remained in the vaults.

  ‘Get to work,’ he said to the men now joining them in the room. ‘Start with this line. Eight men to a chest and make use of the trolleys as much as you can. The legions don’t tend to look after soldiers with bad backs that well.’

  As the soldiers began to manoeuvre the extremely heavy chests into position, walking them to the purpose-built small trolleys, Fronto strolled into the other parallel room, which was filled with alcoves and niches. Galronus followed him, squinting into the gloom. A light glowed at the far end where what had once been the door now admitted light through a thick and thoroughly burglar-proof iron grille.

  ‘Not just chests of coin, then,’ Galronus muttered.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Books and metalwork,’ the Remi noted, pointing at a stack of bronze plaques carefully stored, with linen to prevent chafing, and the collections of carefully-bound books piled neatly close by.’

  ‘Roman law in all its glory, Galronus. Those are the current official copy of the twelve tables – the root codes of all law. And the proceedings of the senate are all stored in books. If you could be bothered and had the time, you could go back through these books right to the early days of the republic and see what men like Cato or the Gracchi said to one another. Mostly insults if I know the senate.’

  ‘You Romans have a peculiar need to document everything, don’t you. I’m surprised you don’t have a little book in the latrines to keep track of your movements.’

  ‘Some men do. I know a Greek medic in the city who insists on it.’

  ‘Your people are weird. However did they find time to grow from a small town into this?’

  Fronto grinned and walked on down the passage listening to the sounds of soldiers grunting and swearing as they shifted the heavy chests. ‘There are things we’ll leave, for all Caesar said to empty the place. We’ll just take money. That’s all. We’re not here to pillage the place.’

  Galronus nodded. ‘Besides, you’d be here for a month filling in your little book with what you’ve taken. What’s that, then?’

  At the end of the second room another five large chests stood, their antiquity clear, a thick layer of dust atop them. A single helmet sat atop the nearest chest, and Galronus examined it curiously. It was most definitely the helmet of a Gaulish nobleman, albeit centuries out of fashion.

  ‘The Gallic Defence Fund,’ Fronto sighed.

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Rome was sacked by Gauls centuries ago. It’s how the animosity all began, really. But there was defiance and indignation in Rome afterwards. They were determined never to let it happen again. A huge fund was gathered and stored here just in case. If the Gauls ever hoved into view again there was enough money here to raise quite an army to stop them.’

  Galronus laughed. ‘And here we are. A conqueror of Gaul and a Remi prince, close enough to place our hands on it.’

  ‘Better than that,’ Fronto snorted and then turned and shouted over his shoulder. ‘Centurion? The Gallic Defence Fund is down here. See it gets taken out to the carts, will you?’ When he caught the bemused look on Galronus’ face, he grinned. ‘Well I for one hope we’ve seen the last threat from Gaul. I figure it’s redundant now.’

  The pair strolled back, pausing to examine legion eagles from the time of the war against Carthage and other priceless treasures,
Galronus quizzing him on various items and then pausing to peer at the books of senate proceedings and the twelve tables of law and pronounce them gibberish even with the good command of Latin he now had.

  They waited for the best part of an hour as the men continually removed chest after chest, including the Gallic fund. Only once the aerarium was hollow and echoed to the sound of the legalised robbery did the soldiers leave, clomping up the steps into the temple above and leaving only the centurion with them. As Fronto and Galronus reached the stairs once more, the centurion was busy making careful notes in the ledger.

  Fronto peered as the man wrote.

  ‘Fifteen thousand bars of gold, thirty thousand bars of silver, thirty million sestertii…’ He grasped the ledger and pen from the surprised centurion’s hand, scratched two lines across the new entry and replaced it with the word ‘everything’.

  ‘Done. Come on.’

  Within the colonnade out front Caecilius Metellus had clearly given up struggling. The soldiers had let him go and he sat with his back to a column, ashen faced and trembling as he watched the value of an empire being loaded on to carts at the bottom of the stairs. Half a dozen soldiers were just shifting the last chest down the steps.’

  Shame they couldn’t use that doorway downstairs, sir, the centurion mused.

  ‘But if we could open it, so could robbers. Better this way, I reckon.’

  The officer nodded and followed on.

  ‘So that’s it?’ Caecilius Metellus said flatly, pushing himself upright. ‘You’ve robbed Rome. Will you and your despot master be going now or do you intend to stay and start stripping the valuables from the other temples?’

  Fronto reached out to take the man’s arm but he flinched away.

  ‘Don’t touch me.’

  ‘It was inevitable, Caecilius. You couldn’t stop it, and nor could I. But it’s done now. And I don’t think the general has any intention of causing any further trouble in Rome. He will not delay. The senate are once more in control of Rome, there are plenty of sources of funds available to rebuild the treasury in the form of absent enemies, this will pay for the forces who defend the peninsula against the forces in the east, and there are matters to be addressed out west.’

  Caecilius Metellus ignored him and turned to stomp away. Galronus breathed quietly. ‘You think we’ll be off straight away?’

  ‘I do. A few days at most and we’ll be off to Hispania.’

  And the family. Gods, let the family be safe…

  Chapter Four

  18th of Aprilis - Massilia

  The column moved swiftly along the hillside overlooking the great port city. Strangely, the place had come to feel more like home to Fronto than Rome ever had. There were half a dozen new villas on the periphery, outside the heavy, ancient Greek walls, but he could see his and Balbus’ ones well enough. Even from here he could tell they had been empty for some time, given the overgrown nature of the grounds. There should still be a few slaves there keeping the place secure, and Catháin and the staff of the business should still be in Massilia. While the family had left, Catháin had remained to keep the trade active. Surely he was using the villa?

  He glanced behind him at the men.

  Horses. An entirely mounted column. The legions were still following on from Italia, but they would be many days behind, moving through necessity at slow campaign pace, while Caesar had forged on ahead to meet up with his other Gallic veterans who hovered on Pompey’s provincial doorstep at Hispania. As well as the officers and scouts, nine hundred cavalry plodded along behind – the horse contingent from one legion and a mixed unit of Gallic and Germanic cavalry they had collected in Cisalpine Gaul on the way.

  ‘Will Massilia be sympathetic?’ Fronto asked the general, who turned a frown on him. ‘Well, I heard they had spoken openly in support of Pompey and the senate.’

  Caesar’s eyes hardened. ‘I imagine they were testing which way the wind blew. Given my long history with Massilia, the amount of trade I have put through the place and the favoured position I put them in above all other allied independent cities, they will be displaying a dangerous level of ingratitude if they deny me.’

  But Fronto harboured his doubts still as they began to descend, making for the red and brown mass of the city that lay between deep blue sky and azure sea. Caesar had visited the place a few times and put a factor in to maintain his supply system, but Fronto had lived there. He had encountered the xenophobic anti-Roman sentiments of some of the traders. He had seen the boule – the town’s council – arguing in their chamber and knew them for what they were.

  The main roads leading to the gates of Massilia thronged with people, carts and animals going both in and out, but as the long line of armoured riders became obvious, figures stopped emerging from the gates and those seeking entry did so speedily, pushing their way into the city. By the time the newcomers had reached the low grassy slopes outside the walls, where there was a natural dip in the terrain, the last of the travellers and city folk had disappeared through the gates.

  Caesar rode at the head of the column in his gleaming cuirass and red cloak astride his white horse, backed by the cream of Roman military command and near a thousand mounted killers.

  And the gates were shut.

  Caesar’s face did not change, but Fronto felt the anger sweep out of the proconsul like a wave.

  For his own part, Fronto was less than surprised. Caesar had been generous to Massilia, but so had the senate, and the links between the place and Rome itself were ever tightening. The boule of the city almost certainly still thought of Caesar as an outsider – a rebel. There was even a chance that they had not yet heard that Caesar had re-founded the senate in Rome.

  ‘What do they think they’re doing?’ Trebonius snarled.

  ‘They think they’re supporting Rome against a rebel,’ Fronto replied. ‘I could almost see this coming.’

  ‘Can they hold out against us if we decide to do something about them?’ the officer asked. ‘Do they have a strong garrison?’

  Fronto shrugged. ‘They have a garrison. I wouldn’t say it’s particularly strong, but I will say they don’t have to do much to hold out against a thousand horse. Had we arrived with the best of the Gallic legions, I imagine those gates would have been open faster than a whore’s door on a festival day, but with just this small cavalry column, they have to decide whether to hold to their oath to the senate and consuls or to Caesar.’

  ‘You sound surprisingly sympathetic?’ Salvius Cursor grumbled.

  ‘Not especially, but they are rather in the shit. They support Pompey and anger us. They support us, and everything is roses and wine now, but what if Pompey comes west and thrashes us? They would have lined themselves up to be punished by Pompey. If I were them I’m not sure what I would do, that’s all.’

  Caesar huffed angrily.

  ‘Do you have any connection with the rulers, Fronto? You’ve spent time here.’

  ‘Not exactly, General. They never really liked me much. I’ve got people inside, but just traders and workers and scribes. No one important.’

  Caesar shuffled in his saddle. ‘I cannot afford a delay.’

  The other men nodded their agreement. News of events in Rome and of Pompey’s withdrawal might not yet have reached Hispania, but if it hadn’t, it would do soon. And then it was anyone’s guess what Pompey’s men would do. Realistically, in order to control the situation in the west, Caesar had to deal with the forces there as soon as possible, while there was uncertainty, confusion and disarray.

  ‘And yet I can hardly ride for Hispania and leave a strong point between me and Italia, that favours the enemy. Massilia must be taken care of. I am in an unenviable position, gentlemen.’

  ‘How far behind us are the legions?’ Trebonius asked quietly.

  ‘Two weeks at a rough estimate,’ Salvius Cursor spat. ‘Too long.’

  ‘Regardless of the urgency of Hispania, we shall need to dally here after all,’ Caesar sighed. Ac
ross the dip, men were now beginning to line the walls. It was starting to look more and more like defiance rather than uncertainty. ‘Let us start to put things in place. If there is any chance of us frightening them into capitulation, then we must try for it. We need to make it clear that defiance in Massilia will not be tolerated and that we are serious about the matter. Fronto, your villa is somewhere around here, if I remember correctly?’

  ‘At the far end of the land walls, Caesar.’

  The general nodded. ‘Might we prevail upon you?’

  ‘The place has been empty for some time, Caesar, but it should suffice. For the officers, that is. It’s a good size, but not big enough to accommodate a thousand.’

  Caesar smiled for the first time since their arrival. ‘Good. I want to set the cavalry to work on defences, and then the officers can retire to Fronto’s villa to plan.’

  ‘The cavalry, sir? They won’t have a clue. Not an engineer among them.’ Trebonius’ brow furrowed.

  ‘It doesn’t take years of training to dig a straight ditch and pile up the dirt. And there are officers among us who’ve watched it done hundreds of times. There’s a depot at Aquae Sextiae ten miles from here that’s been active since before the Gallic revolt. There will be all the tools and equipment we need there. Have riders go there and retrieve the tools. While they’re gone, get some twine and have men start marking out three legion-sized camps.’

  ‘Three, sir?’ Trebonius echoed. ‘Three legions?’

  ‘Yes, Trebonius. In fact, you’re in charge of it all. I want the residents of Massilia to see what we’re doing. I want them to realise we’re preparing for three legions to arrive and that they mean to stay and deal with Massilia. We’ll give them a day or two of watching the preparations to get nervous and realise what it means, then we’ll have a little chat with their council and see if we cannot get those gates thrown open.’