Conspiracy of Eagles mm-4 Read online

  This time it was Lucilia who stopped dead and it took Fronto another five flustered steps to realise and draw himself to a halt.

  “You don’t need to serve, if you don’t wish to” she said, quietly, but with a dangerous edge.

  Fronto shook his head.

  “Caesar is our patron. My family and yours, both. And I am one of his senior officers. If he needs me then I shall have to…”

  “Tripe. Drivel. My father supports Caesar and maintains his patronage out of loyalty. He owes nothing to the man. And you? If I understand what your mother tells me, it is Caesar who theoretically owes the Falerii a small sum, and not the other way round. You run at his beckon because you live for the legions. That will change.”

  Fronto thrust an angry finger towards her, but she smiled and walked past him once more on her way to the villa.

  “Come on. We’ll be late for the meal.”

  Fronto stood amid the buzz of bees and the chatter of birds, the hazy blue of the bay providing a strange background to the seething, roiling churn of emotions that held him fast. After a few moments he realised how foolish he must look — standing and angrily gesturing to the open air — checked for any passing observers and, finding none, hurried after the beautiful Lucilia.

  Two days later, Fronto hurried out into the courtyard before the villa, taking no time to breathe in the joyous warm evening air, with a scent of jasmine and roses. His sandals flapped around him, the straps loose and untied, threatening to trip him with every step.

  “What bloody time do you call this?”

  Galronus, noble of the Remi tribe, beloved of Lug and Taranis, lord among the fierce Belgae, dismounted easily from his roan mare and alighted smoothly, dusting himself down as he released the reins. Fronto looked him up and down with an unabashed grin of happiness.

  A second winter in Rome had wrung even more changes to the rough figure of Galronus the Gaul. Though he still wore the traditional moustaches of his people, his long hair, once wild and untamed, now had that lustrous sheen and smoothness that only comes with regular attention from an expensive barber and was plaited down before one ear and tied back at the nape of his neck. His skin had that clean smooth look of a man who had managed at least three visits a day to the baths. His sole concessions to his native dress seemed to be the continued wearing of the braccae — the Gallic trousers that bulged at the thigh and reached to the ankles — and a torc around his neck, although even that had an unmistakable look of Roman metalwork.

  “Marcus!” The big Gaul left his reins hanging and ran across the courtyard to enfold the dishevelled Roman in a great bear hug. Fronto issued an involuntary squeak at the pressure, but grinned as Galronus let him go. The Belgic nobleman even smelled of scented bath oils. Good job there’d be no chance for him to attend such grand bathhouses back in Gaul; else his tribe would tear him to pieces for womanliness.

  “You have spent the winter in a comfortable villa with your own baths and slaves and servants?” Galronus enquired with a furrowed brow.

  Fronto nodded as one of those slaves hurried across to take the reins of the visitor’s horse.

  “Why then does your hair stand up like this and why do you smell like old amphorae, and why is your tunic stained and creased?”

  Fronto rolled his eyes.

  “I think I miss the Galronus who had never even heard of a heated bath. Come on.”

  Grasping his shoulder, Fronto guided him towards the door that led into the decorative atrium.

  “What draws you away from the delights of Rome?”

  Galronus shrugged off the leather bag that hung over one arm and stopped in the atrium as it dropped to the marble floor with a thud. Stooping, he rummaged in it for a moment and then straightened, holding out a wooden writing tablet.

  “This.”

  Fronto took the item, frowning, and snapped it open. His brow rose as he recognised the handwriting.

  “Caesar gave you this? It’s not sealed or anything.”

  Galronus shrugged.

  “Perhaps he trusts me.”

  Fronto eyed him askance. “Or perhaps you broke the seal and had a good read before you left Rome.”

  Galronus blinked his innocence, his face devoid of expression, and Fronto shook his head as he snapped it shut.

  “I’ll read it when we’re settled. For now, it’s late. We’ve had an evening repast, but I daresay we can rustle you something up. And I’ve just broken the seal on some nice Sicilian wine. How’s the house?”

  Galronus had taken up residence during autumn in the burned out shell of the townhouse of the Falerii on the Aventine hill, keeping the place occupied as the workmen continued to return it to a liveable state after the fights and fires of the previous year.

  “Less than half complete, I’d say. There was more structural fire damage than originally anticipated, and the winter weather has made it difficult for the workmen. It may be another year before it resembles your home again.”

  Fronto nodded. It came as no surprise to him. At least the family could spend the year in Puteoli and not worry about it yet.

  A sudden flurry of activity announced the arrival of the girls and Fronto glanced over his shoulder before raising his eyes skywards again.

  “Brace yourself.”

  Stepping aside, he watched with some satisfaction as Faleria and Lucilia mobbed the large Gaul, almost knocking him from his feet and chattering their pleasure at his arrival. Turning his attention from the spectacle, Fronto snapped open the wooden tablet again and ran his eyes down the message within.

  Caesar’s handwriting had always been tight, small and economic, though gifted with an almost oratorical turn of phrase even in such short form.

  To M Falerius Fronto from C Iulius Caesar, Proconsul of Gaul,

  Felicitations.

  Having received tidings of your joyous situation, it is with regret that I now send news of the opening of the campaigning season.

  Fronto frowned. How in the name of the seven whores of Capernum had the general heard of his predicament?

  It had been my intention to travel late to Gaul, perhaps even during Maius, since there have been no signs of renewed insurrection or hostility to the Roman state and the missives from my subordinates have assured me that the process of drawing Gaul into the fold proceeds apace.

  Again, Fronto frowned. The letter had been clearly written carefully in case it should fall into the wrong hands, or perhaps Caesar had even expected Galronus to open it en route? Fronto remembered clearly his last conversation with the general, when the man had avowed his intent to take the Pax Romana and stuff it down the throat of the next Celtic nation he found.

  However, it would appear that a number of Germanic tribes, driven from their own lands by a vast eastern tribe of even more unyielding barbarians, have crossed the Rhenus and settled in the lands of our Belgae subjects, defending their presence with extreme violence. While it has never been the intention of Rome or this proconsulate to bring war to those tribes beyond that great river,

  Fronto rolled his eyes at the line and shook his head.

  it is now clearly necessary to mobilize the legions in northern Gaul to repel these invaders and support our Belgic people. To this end, I am summoning all of my officers to return to their commands at their earliest convenience. A trireme under my command is docked at Ostia, and has begun to make the journey to and from Massilia as required in order to ferry said officers to the nearest port.

  Our Graeco-Gallic allies in Massilia have agreed to provide a place in their agora for a staging post for us. From there, you will be required to travel north along the Rhodanus, past the allied townships of Vienna and Vesontio, with which you will be familiar. The army will be encamped close to the oppidum of Divoduron in the lands of the Mediomatrici some one hundred and fifty miles to the north of Vesontio.

  I trust you will be able to reach your command by the Kalends of Maius.

  In the name of the senate and people of Rome.


  Your friend,

  Caius.

  Fronto looked up from the note to see that the clamorous reunion between his friend and the women of the household seemed to have died down. Galronus was looking at him over the heads of the two women, a question in his eyes. Fronto nodded silently.

  “Come on ladies. Let our guest at least recover a little from his journey before you bombard him with questions. We’ll come and meet you in the triclinium within the hour.”

  Lucilia flashed him a hard look that he prudently ignored, but Faleria caught his eye and must have recognised something, for she nodded and clasped Lucilia’s hand.

  “Come on. Let the boys play for a while. They have such little time to act like children.”

  Lucilia frowned and the two women made for the doorway to the triclinium, while Fronto collected Galronus’ bag and led him off toward the far end of the villa, where he was wont to pass the time.

  “You read the message?”

  “I did. He moves earlier than I expected.”

  From across the room, a sharp female voice snapped out.

  “What?”

  Fronto turned in surprise and realised that the two ladies had not yet fully left the room, pausing instead to chat in the doorway. He cursed inwardly for having spoken openly and too soon.

  “Nothing, Lucilia. We’ll be along shortly.”

  But the dark haired girl had already torn herself from Faleria’s grasp and was storming across the atrium so resolutely Fronto feared she would walk straight through the impluvium pool in the centre without noticing.

  “Lucilia…”

  “No! You’re leaving? It’s too early. You said you wouldn’t go until the end of Aprilis. My father is going to Rome in a few weeks. I was going to take you there to meet him. We need to speak to him.”

  Fronto quailed and stepped back as the whirlwind of furious womanhood approached.

  “It’s just a few more months, Lucilia. I’ll be back before winter, and then…”

  “No. I will not spend a whole extra summer as a guest with no formal ties to the house. You persuaded me not to travel in winter, else we’d have seen father sooner. You’ll not delay our betrothal any further.”

  “Lucilia, I have to go. I have been summoned to my post by the Proconsul of Gaul. It’s only half a year. I’ve waited this long, after all…” he regretted the words almost before they’d left his tongue and the colour draining from the face of the young lady threatened a violent disagreement and likely some thrown crockery.

  Galronus opened his mouth and took a pace forward, but Lucilia held a hand up, palm facing him.

  “No. You find somewhere to make yourself comfortable. Marcus and I are going to have a talk.”

  Fronto cast one desperate, pleading look at Galronus as Lucilia grabbed his arm and, yanking, turned him back to the door before dragging him through it. The large Gaul carefully avoided meeting his gaze and then turned back to the atrium, wondering whether it would be possible to follow them and ask for his travelling bag. Prudence won out and he decided against it.

  “Galronus, it has been too long.”

  He smiled at Faleria and stepped around the small pool towards her.

  “Have they been like this all winter?”

  Faleria nodded. “I think he missed male company. You should have come earlier.”

  Galronus cast an embarrassed eye down to the floor. ”I had… other pursuits. The games; the racing; I even watched one of your plays, although it lacks the power of the storytellers among my people. The masks are funny, though. And some of the singing made me laugh,”

  Faleria nodded encouragingly. She daren’t ask what play he had attended; she was almost certain it would have been a tragedy. Certainly with Galronus in the audience laughing like a gurgling drain.

  “How long will you be here? Are you taking him straight away?”

  Galronus shrugged. “I think we can squeeze a few days out. The traders in Rome say that the sea is remarkably calm even for the time of year, so we will make good time, especially if we take a ship straight from Neapolis or Puteoli, rather than riding back to Rome.”

  Faleria smiled wickedly. “Marcus does so love to travel by sea. I think we can defuse the situation between the two young lovebirds. If you travel to Gaul by ship, you will make landfall at Massilia. Lucilia and I will accompany you thus far, where we can meet with Balbus, her father, and sort this mess out.”

  “You will come too?”

  Faleria smiled benignly. “Would you seriously expect Marcus to cope with all the betrothal arrangements himself? No, I think I should accompany you to straighten it all out.”

  “I do not wear socks!”

  Lucilia glared at Fronto and snatched the woollen garments from his hand, stuffing them back into his pack.

  “Yes you do. You’ll be traipsing through soggy swamps above the roof of the world. Do you really want your toes to rot and fall off? Because I do not.”

  “I don’t need socks because I wear boots that are perfectly sized and shaped to my feet. They’re closed boots and nice and dry and there’s no room in them for both socks and my feet.”

  “You’re not taking your old boots.”

  Fronto blinked and straightened.

  “Now listen…”

  “You cannot take your boots, Marcus. I threw them out last week.”

  Fronto tried to say something but it came out only as indignant splutters.

  “I saw the manufacturer’s mark on them, Marcus. Those boots were nearly as old as me. And they smelled of stale urine.”

  “Of course! That’s how you shape them to your feet. It took me nearly a year’s pissing to make them comfortable enough for a thirty mile march.”

  Lucilia shook her head calmly.

  “You’re a senior officer from a patrician family and currently the legatus of a legion. You ride; you don’t need to march.”

  Fronto stared at her.

  “Besides, you have a thoroughbred horse of unsurpassed quality. It would be wasteful not to run him. Now try on the boots over there. They’re light leather with a fleece inner to help you in the harsh climates of Gaul.”

  Fronto’s gaze snapped back and forth between the boots on the chair and the woman pointing at them.

  “Is there any chance that at some point in the past you have commanded a legion, too?”

  Lucilia said nothing, but simply gestured impatiently at the boots.

  With a sigh, he capitulated.

  Fronto staggered along the deck and reached an empty stretch of rail almost in time to vomit copiously over the side without splattering the deck. His face had been a pale grey for the past two days, with only a brief return of colour during the overnight stop at Antium.

  “Did you use the embrocation the nice Greek gave you?”

  Fronto spat into the water and tried not to concentrate on the way it moved, undulated, wobbled, oscillated…

  After another copious session of dry heaving, Fronto wiped his mouth again and look across at Lucilia at the rail nearby; neatly keeping her sandaled feet out of the mess he had left.

  “No I didn’t. It smells like feet. I hadn’t thrown up until I opened the jar and smelled it. That’s what set this whole thing off.”

  “Rubbish. And I expect you’ve not had any of the ginger root?”

  “It makes me hiccup.”

  “And vomiting is preferable to hiccupping, is it?”

  “Just leave me alone.”

  Fronto draped himself over the rail for just a moment until the additional pressure and movement threatened a whole new session of agony. Hauling himself back upright, he focused his eyes and frowned.

  “That’s Ostia.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did nobody say we were almost there?”

  Lucilia smiled like a patient parent.

  “If you’d looked up any time in the past hour you’d have seen it. And everyone on board has been talking about landfall. You’ve just been too wrapped up
in your own embrocation-and-ginger-free misery to notice.”

  “I hate ships.”

  “Of this I am acutely aware, Marcus.”

  “When I was a boy, my father took me out fishing in the bay below the villa. I was sick in his lunch basket. He never took me again. Should they even be sailing in this weather? Shouldn’t they wait for a good day, and then I’d have had a better journey.”

  Lucilia rolled her eyes as she took in the cloudless blue sky, the slight heat haze that made the approaching dockside of Ostia shimmer, the glassy, reflective surface of the water, broken only by the lowest, friendliest of waves and the wake of various mercantile vessels ploughing back and forth from the dockside.

  “It is a dreadful day, I have to admit. I wonder whether Neptune is furious at you for ignoring your medically-prescribed embrocation?”

  Fronto glared at her before turning his attention back to the busy town before them, as they approached at speed, a wide dockside presenting a spacious opening for them. More than a hundred merchants, slaves, fishermen and sailors went about their chores on the dock: hauling crates, coiling ropes, arguing and haggling over lists. Beggars and children cut purses, touted their flesh to passing trade, or just called out desperately for a spare coin.

  It was chaos but, as they watched, it was clearly a very organized chaos. Ostia was rapidly becoming a more common offloading point for goods bound for Rome than the older ports at Puteoli or Neapolis.

  Fronto held his breath as the merchant vessel began to slew sideways towards the concrete and the waiting dockhand. That first bump often knocked him from his feet, with his knees as feeble as they were after a day of being sick over a rail.

  His attention, however, was distracted by a sudden glint of blinding light. Squinting, he tried to look past it and suddenly the dazzling beam was gone, leaving the source: a burnished cuirass of golden bronze that had reflected the glorious sun.