Cast Not the Day (19 page)

She broke off, for I had stepped up to her.

The wall was behind her. She could not back away. I had broadened and thickened out. I was a boy no longer. Reaching out I took hold of her wrist, locking my fingers hard around it and pulling her resisting arm down from the amber necklet she was clutching.

Her blue-painted eyes met mine. I heard her breath catch.

Slowly I said, ‘You will never do that to me again.’

I dreamt that night of my mother, smiling and laughing and taking me in her arms, and woke with a start to a grey dawn and a sinking feeling of recollection.

I had lain awake till long after midnight, brooding. Even in my great anger I had been careful not to hurt Lucretia; there would have been nothing fine in returning her violence. But a barrier had been crossed all the same. I knew that now I should be cast out. Better to leave before that happened and save my pride.

I heard a scratching on my door. It must have been that which had woken me. I called out, thinking it was one of the slaves; but it was Albinus who entered, looking shamefaced.

‘Here,’ he said, holding out a platter of cake and raisins. I had been given no food the night before. He set it down, then paused.

‘What do you want?’ I said, eyeing him warily from the bed.

‘Drusus, I don’t think she meant it.’

I pulled the cover from me and stepped naked across the stone floor, poured water from the pitcher, and splashed it on my face. Sullenly he watched me.

‘She was angry,’ he said.

‘Then she had no cause. I did not lie to her.’

He sighed. We both knew it was not my truth or lies that had enraged her so.

‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘you must make yourself ready; we are leaving. Already the slaves are loading the carriage.’

But at the door he paused, scraping his foot on the floor. I turned from the basin, my towel in my hand.

‘What is it, Albinus?’

‘She went too far, that is all.’

Then he hurried off.

I stood, looking at the open door. It was the nearest I had ever heard to an apology from him.

By the time we reached the river and the waiting barge the low pewter sky had turned to rain, carried in on a damp west wind. Lucretia arranged herself under the awning at the stern, her face pursed and bitter under a scarf and hat, muttering curses whenever water came dripping through the canvas.

All that morning, during the slow wagon-ride from the house, she had not spoken one word to me. Perhaps she was waiting for me to come grovelling to her. If so, I told myself as I stared down into the dull slack water, she would wait in vain. I would find a way of leaving, whatever hardship it brought me.

When I was not brooding on this I was thinking of Marcellus. I imagined him waiting for me, the realization dawning on him with a fading of any liking he had for me that I was not coming.

That he should think ill of me oppressed me terribly. I hoped he had not waited long. Already, as I sat miserable in the bow, feeling cold rivulets of rain meander down my neck and back, it seemed to me he inhabited a world of light, a perfect world which fate and the natural order of things had set forever beyond my reach. Just as well, I told myself, casting a glance at my aunt huddled with Albinus under the shelter of the awning, that the friendship I had hoped for had died before it began, before he should see the base life I led and despise me for it.

Eventually the grey ragstone walls of London showed through the rain ahead. My aunt’s first task, I knew, would be to embellish a tale to Balbus that would have me cast out onto the street. I tried to consider what I should do.

It was not until the following morning that old Patricus the house-slave came to me and said, ‘The Master wishes to see you in his workroom.’

I had been expecting it. I went with my head held high.

‘Ah Drusus,’ he said, looking up from the desk scattered with scrolls and tablets. ‘How did you like the country?’

I gave him a careful look – he was not one for small talk – and answered that I had liked it well enough.

‘You did?’ He prodded at his papers for a moment, then went on, ‘Even so, I have to say it wasn’t all I had hoped. And your aunt disliked it too. Tell me, how old are you now?’

‘Sixteen, uncle. Seventeen in the autumn.’

‘So it is. Then you are a young man now, and I daresay you have been wondering what the future holds for you.’

I fixed my eyes on his heavy bull’s head, thinking, ‘So this is it; well I shall bear it like a man.’ Lucretia had been working on him the night before; that much I knew.

Without looking up he went on, ‘I saw Count Gratian while you were away. He has asked me to attend him at the governor’s palace tomorrow, and now that you are back, I should like you to accompany me.’ He paused, then glanced up, adding, ‘I may as well tell you now: he has asked after you.’

‘Me?’ I said, shocked out of my sullenness. ‘Count Gratian – but who am I to him?’

‘You forget; we are an important family in the city. Besides, it seems he once met your father.’

‘But what does he want with me, sir?’

‘He has not told me, and it is not my place to question him. I expect we shall find out tomorrow.’ He narrowed his eyes at me. ‘What happened to your face?’

‘I cut it, sir.’

‘You should take care. It will leave a mark.’ He returned his attention to his papers. ‘Anyway, we shall make an early start in the morning, so remind the slave to wake you. And now, Drusus, you can take this manifest and go down to the dock. There is a coaster in this morning, with a cargo of Gallic wool for me.’

Next morning I dressed in my one good tunic – white edged with red meanders – and put on my blue-wool mantle, and set out with Balbus for the governor’s palace.

The oldest part of the palace is a marble-faced building with a high pedimented porch, built on three sides of a fountain court. It is as old as the province itself. But the imperial bureaucracy, growing year upon year like a city midden, had found the need for extra space, and the palace had spread over what once had been gardens, into a warren of extensions and annexes, linked by narrow alleyways, covered passages and unexpected doors.

Balbus showed his pass to the sentry at the gate and we were admitted to the inner court. Here a self-important chamberlain received us. He escorted us through vaulted painted rooms of state, and up a marble staircase to an anteroom. He told us to wait, and glided off.

‘I thought he was expecting you,’ I said.

‘Hush, Drusus. He is a busy man.’ He sat uneasily, fidgeting and glancing about. It was as though the grandeur of the place, and the ridiculous pomp of the chamberlain, had cowed him.

At last the chamberlain returned and said Count Gratian would see us now. He led us across the polished floor and through high gilded double-doors.

‘Ah, Balbus, there you are!’

A tall man with a soldier’s lean build and close-cropped grey hair came striding across the chequered floor, leaving a group of uniformed officers. He wore a military tunic and boots, unadorned. But when you were close you could see they were of a fine cut and quality. He took Balbus by the elbow and leading him in said, ‘Now, I have an assignment for you.’

His voice was loud and assured. His Latin had the accent of Pannonia. After the airs of the chamberlain, one might have taken him for some common soldier, as indeed he once was. But I had seen his eyes: they were shrewd and alert.

While Balbus answered with an overlong fawning reply, I glanced about. Loitering at a map-table there were young men in uniform, and a few liveried clerks. Elsewhere I recognized the set of three couches Balbus had shipped from Africa, upholstered in zigzag patterns of honey-yellow, green and blue; and in the corner stood a gilded statue of Hercules, stolid and muscle-bound like a boxer, with a lion’s pelt draped over his shoulder.

I glanced back at Gratian. He was at that time about fifty, older indeed than my uncle, though one would not have thought it. He was lean and hard as a nut. Beside him Balbus looked old and fat and bumbling.

‘Good, that will take care of it then,’ said Gratian, finishing off. ‘The clerk will give you the details, and arrange payment. See him later.’ He spoke like a man used to being obeyed. Then, as if I had been at the back of his mind the whole time, he swung round and looked directly at me.

Though my eyes had been busy, I was still standing straight and respectful (Albinus would have been chewing his nails by now) and had kept my attention on him. I was glad of it: I had the sense, as his sharp eye caught me, that he cared about such things.

‘So this is Appius’s son,’ he said. ‘Yes, I see the likeness, though the boy will not grow as tall.’ He was a man who dealt in fact, not feeling.

At his side, my uncle began saying something about how he had been taking care of me. Gratian listened for a moment, then silenced him.

‘Yes, yes; all this you have told me already. But what are you going to do with him?’

‘Why sir, I had considered he might become a merchant perhaps, especially with business so good—’

‘A
merchant
?’ he cried, as if Balbus had proposed making me a slave in a tanning-yard. ‘Is that the extent of his ambition?’

‘I believe not, sir. But sometimes necessity—’

Cutting him short, Gratian looked at me and said, ‘And what do you want, young man?’

Without a second thought I replied, ‘I should like to join the army, sir.’

His black eyes widened. Beside him Balbus chuckled nervously.

‘Is that so? Well, you know your own mind, which is a good sign.’

‘Yes, sir, I do.’

Just then the chamberlain returned and moved to Gratian’s side.

‘Yes, Fadius, what now?’

‘Your next appointment, sir.’ He leant forward, raised a shielding hand, and whispered a name.

Gratian nodded, then turned back to me. ‘I think, son of Appius, we can find you something better than merchanting, don’t you? But today it seems everyone in the province wishes to see me, and tomorrow I leave for Gaul. Come back when I return, and we will talk some more. Fadius will arrange it. Goodbye.’

Two months later I returned. A mild autumn had turned suddenly to a winter of bitter cold, the coldest the old men at the docks could remember. Ice had locked the barges in their mooring places; cattle perished in the fields; and in the vineyards the vines froze and withered.

Gratian was in conference with a group of tribunes. They stood gathered around the map-table, smart in their red cloaks and military boots. He finished his business, dismissed them, then came to where I was waiting, saying, ‘Come, son of Appius, let us eat and talk.’

He led me to what I guessed was one of his private rooms, where a table had been laid with food. The room was hung with tapestries and silks, and filled with too many possessions. But the food was simple soldiers’ fare – olives, cheese, sausage and barley loaves. He launched himself at it like a hungry dog, gracelessly, beckoning while he chewed for the steward to fill the wine-cups. But presently he sat back and regarded me.

‘All my life,’ he said through his food, ‘I have been a soldier. My parents were poor peasants on poor land, and their parents and grandparents before them.’ He nodded over his shoulder at the rich furnishings – a polished inlaid table decorated with garlands and harps; a pair of precious thin-necked serpentine vases; a gilt wrought standing-lamp – and continued, ‘The army saved me from that fate, and I have made something of myself. If you’re ambitious, you can get on.’ He washed down his food with a gulp of wine. His next question took me by surprise, for suddenly he asked, ‘Are you a Christian?’

My mind turned quickly. I asked myself what answer he was seeking. Everyone knew the emperor was a fervent Christian. Had someone told Gratian, I wondered, about me and the bishop?

Inwardly I frowned. I had seen no Christian symbols among the hangings and objects of art; but that was equally true of Lucretia’s rooms, except for the fresco of the sad-faced youth with the knowing eyes. So in the end I answered with the truth. It seemed the only thing to do.

‘No, sir,’ I said, ‘I am not.’

‘So sure?’

‘It is a fact. I know it.’

He considered me for a moment, his face giving nothing away. I wondered if he was waiting for me to retract my words. Then he said, ‘I don’t much care for them myself, not in the army anyway – though my son thinks differently.’

I allowed myself to breathe again, while he talked about his son. The boy had been reared as a Christian, he told me, at the insistence of his wife, the child’s mother, who would have her way in such matters. ‘That is women. You can’t fight them.’ He laughed, then asked, ‘Yet Balbus is a Christian, is he not?’

‘Yes, sir, he is.’

‘But not you . . . Are you happy there?’

‘Sometimes I miss my home, sir.’

‘I expect you do; no boy should be without his father.’ He smeared a wad of cheese onto the last of the loaf and pushed it into his mouth, then dabbed at his lips with a napkin. One might have supposed, after the way he had eaten, that he would merely have wiped his face with the back of his grizzled forearm.