Marius' Mules V: Hades' Gate (18 page)

"Catullus was in love with Clodia - or at least infatuated enough to obsess about finding out what happened to her. I suspect he pushed that stinking rectum of a rat bastard Clodius too far asking questions about his sister, the poor sod. I suppose I'll have to try and remember the rest of his prophecy now."

Again, Balbus frowned. "Prophecy?"

"I'll tell you later, when I've had a think on it. I sort of dismissed it offhand at the time, but perhaps a little prematurely in hindsight. In the meantime, we're planning a little walk into the woods to pick mushrooms. Care to join us?"

The older man's face creased into a smile. "Sounds pleasant. Why not?"

In the privacy of his head, Fronto ran through the reasons.

* * * * *

Three days had passed since the death of the handsome young poet and still the streets abounded with wailing lovelorn girls - and often boys too - as well as doomsayers and lunatics claiming divine disfavour or the spectre of plague creeping through the twisting thoroughfares of the city. Their numbers lessened with each day though, at least.

The details were becoming distilled.

The cause of Catullus' death was now being attributed to eating the wrong mushrooms - a fact that struck Fronto as particularly unfunny, given how he had passed his time the day of the body's discovery. But the symptoms as they had been recorded and released were also conversant with a man who had taken - or been fed - hemlock. The coincidence was all too much for Fronto, who could hardly blame an innocent mushroom, given his prior warning.

And for three days he had also been wracking his brains trying to recall the prophecy the poet had repeated to him. Four people were going to die and it would be cataclysmic for Rome or some such rubbish. There was something about Vulcan, he was sure, and something to do with the Parthians, but beyond that he was drawing a blank. He doubted he would even have remembered the hemlock part had Catullus not just passed that way.

He had confided what he did remember to Balbus, who had urged him to visit a soothsayer and try and have the prophecy revealed once more. Fronto couldn't think of a more effective way to waste both an hour and a purseful of money and had refused flatly. The day he put his trust in a dishevelled dribbling idiot who claimed to know the shape of things to come because he had got a wart on just the right part of his buttock or because he had been hit on the head with a dead duck was the day he might as well sign away the last of his sanity and stand for the senate. If the prophecy was really true, it would play out and then he would remember it in due course. And, of course, if it was true there would be nothing he could do about it anyway.

Turning his thoughts from such irritating and nebulous matters, he peered at the door in front of them. Lucilia nudged him.

"Stop looking so gormless and distant. And straighten your toga."

Grumbling, Fronto did as he was told like a good soldier and fixed as genuine a smile as he could muster on Pompey's closed door just as there was a click and an olive-skinned man opened it and bowed, ushering them inside. Fronto gave a last longing look at the litter that had brought them here from the Aventine and then followed his wife inside.

Everything about Pompey's new palatial town house echoed the personality of the general or of his beautiful wife. It was tastefully wealthy and with an edge of the austere, as one would expect of Caesar's daughter. No gilt glamour and opulence; almost martial in its severe simplicity. The décor was picked out in pale pastel colours and marble white, with subdued and quiet landscapes and cityscapes painted on the wider surfaces, and yet the upper walls, almost hidden from initial sight, were crimson.

That, to Fronto, summed up what he was rapidly coming to see as Pompey's personality. While the Caesarian blood tended towards Spartan and austere wealth, the Pompeian blood was the boiling red of violent rage, covered or masqued with a thin public veneer of calm white. A dozen times or more now Pompey had socialised with him, always skirting the subject of Fronto's future - something that had occurred during that visit to the Carcer had put the general off the subject apparently. Every time, he felt he knew the general that little bit better. Pompey was as much the soldier as Caesar - that much was plain and clear. But their paths and purposes could not be further removed from one another.

Caesar, as Fronto was well aware these days, had taken to military command like a duck to water. But his love of the campaign, of war and of battle - his sheer ability and comfort in the role - were all born from the need to advance in political and personal circles. Caesar became the perfect soldier in order to climb the ladder to - what? Godhood? A martial man by necessity.

Pompey was very much the opposite, Fronto suspected. He had not taken military service in order to build his stature in Rome or advance his cause - after all, he was of a better family than Caesar to begin with. He had little real
need
to do more than achieve one victory. But Pompey was a solider for the love of war - for the love of the fray; for the desire of blood? Far from using military service to gain position, he had repeatedly used his political weight to secure himself military campaigns. Much of what he did in Rome seemed to be an attempt to get back into the field once again. Fronto recognised the trait in much the same way as he had long recognised it in himself.

But even then there was a difference between Pompey and himself, despite their love of the martial life. Fronto loved the simplicity and the camaraderie; he appreciated the sense of order and discipline that came from the life as well as the freedoms it granted. Pompey, he was sure, fought because his blood demanded it. His temper showed sometimes when he was tested and Fronto had, in fleeting moments, seen something in the man's eyes that bore more resemblance to the crazed battle-lust of the Celtic warrior than to anything Roman.

Whether all this was a good thing or bad, he was still trying to weigh up. In the last year he had come to believe that Pompey was the pleasant, popular - even liberal - character that was Caesar's antithesis. He had thought Caesar to be a cruel shadow of Rome's celebrated pirate-killer. Now, he was beginning to reform his opinion. Could it be that for all Caesar's treatment of people like tools and his cold calculating attitude, he was still actually the more human and reasonable of the two. Fronto found himself wondering what opinions he would have been forming of the third member of this powerful triumvirate had he decided to make for Syria and serve under Crassus?

"Lucilia! Marcus!" the lady Julia beamed, waddling uncomfortably from a doorway off the atrium, one hand beneath her swollen belly, lending extra support. Fronto notched up his 'I am greeting someone who is pleasant and yet I hardly know' smile, but it was largely unneeded as Lucilia and Julia were already rushing into close conversation. It had been this way the last few times they had visited.

As often as Fronto met with Pompey out in the city, the couple met with Julia at her house. Pompey's young wife was now in the advanced state of pregnancy and her movements were necessarily restricted. She had stopped leaving the house at all weeks ago and welcomed every visitor as a chance to relieve the boredom and ennui of the same surrounding walls every day. Faleria and Galronus were alternating visits in order to give her all the more social time.

The girls had started wandering off towards the first of the house's two spacious gardens, totally ignoring Fronto as usual, and he pottered along behind, half-listening to their conversation as he studied the walls and images of Pompey's house.

Closer inspection of the decor revealed something else telling about the house's owner: Every scene seemed to have some relevance, now that he paid attention to the individual - very well executed - wall paintings.

The atrium displayed scenes of a lush valley and its surrounding countryside. It was only when one really peered at the detail, though, that one could make out the tiny figures of the Roman legionaries and their foes. Pompey's victory over the gladiators of Spartacus' army in the north: a small victory, but one that the general had blown up enough to claim responsibility for ending the whole damn war. The whole atrium told the story of the battle, but only if you knew what you were looking at. At first glance, they were peaceful country scenes. He wondered whether Julia had not noticed or whether she rather indulged her older husband's militaristic whims.

"The midwife says it is a boy" Julia was announcing to Lucilia. "She's absolutely certain of it, she says. Gnaeus is blissfully happy, of course. He already has his two strapping sons, but what man doesn't want another, eh? Besides…" her voice fell to a loud whisper, "he confided in me that he never truly loved Aemilia or Mucia, and a son made between us would have all of his favour."

Fronto grunted. He remembered the marriage celebrations to Mucia Tertia, back in the day. As
he
remembered it,
that
was supposedly a true match of love after the death of his previous wife.

Lucilia shot him a warning glance, but Julia either had not heard or had ignored his grunt.

"Personally," the waddling mother-to-be added, "I think it to be a girl. There is nothing but difficulty and discomfort. Only girls are this difficult, or so my mother told me!"

The two ladies laughed and Fronto turned his gaze to the décor once more, rolling his eyes at the ridiculous conversations of women. The corridor that led through into the first garden was painted with delightful views of the city in all its glory. Suspiciously, he leaned close and examined it. What he saw made him grin.

At first open glance, it was most definitely a series of views of Rome. When one examined the images close-up, though, one could see that they depicted the route of a victorious general's triumph. Every time Pompey stepped from his atrium into the garden he relived the triumph over and over again. Were three real ones not enough for him?

The light was suddenly blotted out and he looked up ahead, frowning, to the garden doorway. Julia and Lucilia were gone, wandering out among the flowers, talking of children and menfolk. But the light was now blocked by a hulking figure.

"You?" Fronto whispered, straightening and looking up into the eyes of the enormous barbarian that he had last seen behind the bars of the carcer on the slopes of the Capitol.

The figure remained silent, but the very fact that he all-but blocked the exit from the corridor spoke of violent intent. Fronto closed his eyes for a moment and tried not to panic. He bore no weapon of course. He was a nobleman in the city of Rome, in a toga that Lucilia had insisted he wear, visiting a friend with his wife. The thing in front of him bore no blade but with arms like that, who needed a sword? Fronto had the horrible suspicion that if he turned around, he would see a second figure blocking the other exit behind him, but to look around would announce his fears and that would do no one any good.

Would the barbarian really try anything? In the house of Pompey?

Unless, of course, if was by Pompey's will…

"Marcus. Falerius. Fronto. Legatus." Four separate words. Spoken as if they were unfamiliar and at the same time horribly distasteful.

"Listen…" Fronto's voice came out slightly cracked with nerves and he cursed himself for it. "I don't know what I've done to you, but I am here in peace to visit with Pompey's wife. You serve Pompey now, I presume? I remember you understand Latin, if not courtesy."

The bulky barbarian shifted slightly.

"You are worst of Roman."

Finally! Something other than platitudes and vague threats. Something annoying enough to snap him out of the nerves and warm his blood.

"Oh don't be so bloody dramatic. If you know many Romans, then you'll know there's a damn sight worse than me!"

"Not to kin of men who die in river."

Fronto shook his head irritably. "What river? Make sense!"

"Great river. You call Rhenus."

Fronto paused. "The Rhenus?" Something clicked. "You were there last year? When we fought on the banks? You're of the Suevi?"

"I hear you fight and build bridges. But Berengarus remember much before. Long memory, I. Three years in Rome, in chain. And still I know you."

"Three years? So, Ariovistus then? You fought us back then? You've been a slave since our first year in Gaul?"

The giant's glowering silence was confirmation enough.

"Look… Berengarus, was it? You can blame who you like, but remember that you were invading Gaul yourselves. Battle's battle. I hold no grudge against the Suevi who fought us."

The huge man stepped forth and leaned forward, almost nose-to-hairline with Fronto. "That because Suevi not kill Roman children; Roman woman."

"I seem to remember the Suevi rather differently" Fronto snapped. "I think they'd snap a baby in half if they were in the right mood."

"Wife murdered by Roman horse."

"Condolences" Fronto snapped angrily.

"Son drown in river in escape."

The irritated Roman took a step back and folded his arms indignantly, and with some difficulty, given the toga. "Alright, so you had it bad. Tough. War is no walk in the woods for anyone, you idiot. You think the young men I led last year who were pinned with arrows near the river deserved to die? You don't want women and children to suffer? Well here's an idea, you giant genius: don't bring the poor bastards to the battle! Then they won't get killed. I've precious little bloody sympathy for any of your kind. I've met your women before. Four years ago one of them took a bite out of my pissing heel! Blame who you like, but my conscience is clear."

He realised with some surprise that he had become so angry he was jabbing his finger into Berengarus' chest and withdrew it, slowly, so as not to appear timid. The German was actually shaking.

"Get out of my way you shambling heap of pointless horse dung."

Without looking the barbarian in the eyes, he ducked to the side and pushed past him, out into the corridor beyond. Striding off, he emerged into the light and stood in the doorway actually shaking slightly himself, half with nerves and half with anger. How
dare
that big thing accuse him of being a murderer of women and children?