Masters of the Sea - Master of Rome (11 page)

Hadria’s face lit up as she saw Atticus across the tranquil pool, and she skirted around its edge to run into his opened arms. She breathed in the smell of him, letting it fill her memories, and when she broke his embrace to kiss him, the intensity of the contact drew blood from her lip that mingled with the taste of him. She had lived moments like this before, when he had returned from other campaigns, but each time felt like the first, the surge of emotion overwhelming her. She drew him ever closer, not daring to trust her senses and believe that he had returned once more.

Hours later, Atticus sat at the edge of Hadria’s bed and looked out at the sun falling behind the Quirinal Hill. He felt a light touch on his lower back and he looked over his shoulder and smiled. Hadria was stretched across the bed, her hair cascading across her face, giving her a dishevelled look. He fell back into her arms. He kissed her tenderly, acutely aware of how fragile her naked body looked, but as she moved against him he felt the strength in her slender limbs.

‘The messenger will be here soon,’ he said, and she nodded. Septimus was home, which meant she would be summoned to see him. The anticipation of seeing her brother safe and well was coloured by having to leave Atticus.

‘Can you wait until I return?’ she asked.

‘There’s not enough time,’ he replied. ‘I will need to leave the city before they close the gates at sundown if I’m to return to Ostia.’

‘You could stay here for the night,’ she smiled.

‘But your aunt, is she not here?’

‘She is, but she knows of you,’ Hadria replied casually.

Atticus was shocked by the revelation. He had thought that Hadria was striving to keep their relationship secret until she felt the time was right to tell her parents.

‘I have been resisting my parents’ efforts to have me remarried,’ she explained. ‘That raised my aunt’s suspicions, and with so many servants in this house there are few secrets. She confronted me months ago and I revealed my love for you.’

‘Has she told your parents?’

‘No,’ Hadria replied. ‘She agreed to keep my secret as long as I agreed to tell my parents of our relationship when next you were in Rome.’

‘Then I must accompany you tonight,’ Atticus said.

Hadria shook her head. ‘My father is away from Rome for another week,’ she said. ‘When he returns we will stand before him, together.’

She smiled in anticipation and Atticus embraced her once more, not wanting her to sense the doubt he felt in his own heart. Hadria’s father, Antoninus, was a former centurion of the Ninth Legion, a Roman of the equestrian class. He had always treated Atticus with shifting levels of respect and contempt, his admiration of a fellow commander vying with his suspicion about Atticus’s heritage. Now Atticus would stand before him as his daughter’s suitor, and only Antoninus could decide which instinct would hold sway.

Scipio looked slowly around the candlelit walls of the dining room, studying the familiar murals, which told the story of Aeneas’s heroic flight from Troy and the journey that took him to the shores of Italy, a simple thread of history that led, generations later, to the founding of Rome. Scipio smiled, remembering how – as a child – this private room had been forbidden to him by his father. He had defied that prohibition many times, sneaking in to view the legend that enthralled him; but even now, although his father was gone, Scipio still felt echoes of the fear that had marked each secret visit to the room.

The sound of approaching footsteps caused Scipio to stir and he looked to the doorway. A moment later, his wife, Fabiola, entered. She was wearing a simple woollen
stola
and the modesty of the garment strongly accentuated her classical beauty, her dark brown eyes reflecting the candlelight that flickered as she glided on to her own couch. She held out her hand and Scipio took it, his thumb stroking the back of her tapered fingers. She smiled demurely, nodding indulgently at his offer of wine.

Scipio called out to the doorway and immediately servants swept into the room bearing fresh fruit and cooked meats, each placing their platter in turn on the low square table between the couches. As they left Fabiola began to talk of inconsequential matters, keeping her tone light and sweet, pausing in her conversation only to refill her husband’s wine goblet, her words carefully chosen to relax and amuse.

As Fabiola spoke she felt a keen sense of expectation rise within her. That Scipio had chosen to have dinner in the private dining room could only mean that he wished to seek her counsel, and she longed for her husband to put an end to her idle chatter and reveal his inner thoughts. In the past, their discussions within the house had been overheard by servants who had been paid spies of Duilius’s, a betrayal that Fabiola had exposed. She remembered how he had had those spies brutally tortured and put to death. She paused for breath, and as she did so Scipio spoke.

‘In response to the deaths of Paullus and Nobilior, the Senate has voted to hold emergency consular elections next week.’

Fabiola nodded in reply but remained silent.

‘This may be my opportunity,’ he mused, and he looked intently at his wife.

Fabiola took a moment to gather her thoughts. ‘I agree there may never be a better time,’ she said.

Scipio nodded. ‘But I had not thought to run for the consul-ship for at least another two years,’ he cautioned. ‘If I strike now and fail, it will cost me any future chance.’

‘Now or in the future, a protracted electoral campaign would be difficult.’
Given your past disgrace
, she almost said, but she continued seamlessly. ‘The senators who are allied to you are weak men, subject to their passions. The loss of the fleet is a crisis that favours your oratorical skills. If you fan the flames of their fear and uncertainty, they will support you.’

Again Scipio nodded. He had surmised as much, but to hear Fabiola’s endorsement strengthened his resolve. He gazed at her over the rim of his wine goblet, filtering her words through his own thoughts, and found no flaw in his plan, although it was fraught with risk. Duilius was sure to oppose him, perhaps with a ‘new man’ candidate of his own, and there was still a large block of undeclared senators between the two existing factions in the Senate. He looked at his options again, examining them from every angle, slowly spinning the goblet in his hand, creating a tiny vortex in the deep red wine.

Fabiola watched Scipio in silence, confident that her words had been of use to her husband, sensing that he was close to a decision. The struggle of the past year had been exhausting for both of them, the countless evenings entertaining political guests in the main dining room of the house, each banquet carefully orchestrated to persuade and cajole senators into Scipio’s camp. Fabiola recalled how often she had fawned over men who were but a shadow of her husband in order to secure their support. That struggle had borne fruit in the partial resurrection of her husband’s political strength, but it was insufficient compensation for Fabiola: she yearned for the time when Scipio would once more take his rightful place as the most powerful man in Rome.

L
entulus, the master shipbuilder, stroked the threadlike grey hairs of his beard as he listened intently to the debate raging around the table. He glanced at the Greek sailor at the head of the table, recalling the crucial elements of his report, and looked down at the notes he had made, at the brief scribbled words and crude diagrams that represented his initial thoughts.

He glanced at the sailor again, remembering when he had first met him years before. In many ways he was the same man; still tall and lean with an intense restlessness that often infected those around him – as it did Lentulus’s apprentices now – but in other ways he had changed. The scar on his face was an obvious difference, but Lentulus noticed more subtle changes. His previous openness had been replaced by wariness, and his eyes now seemed to search beneath the skin of every man he looked at, as if trying to discern their inner thoughts.

‘We have to try and rebalance the design,’ an apprentice said, and Lentulus’s thoughts returned to the conversation.

‘We can’t,’ another said. ‘If we counter-balance the weight of the
corvus
on the stern, then the draught of the ship will be compromised.’

‘You’re ignoring the increased ballast of the quinquereme,’ the first said. ‘The
corvus
was originally designed for a trireme. The larger ship can take the weight.’

‘It can’t,’ Lentulus interjected, and he looked to the Greek sailor. ‘Tell us again, Prefect, about the
Strenua
and how she foundered.’

Atticus restated what he had witnessed. As before, the four apprentices were enthralled by the report, particularly when Atticus described the speed at which the galley had been lost in the storm.

‘It is not a question of weight,’ Lentulus said in the silence that followed. ‘It is one of balance.’

He stood up and began to pace one side of the room, his hands clasped lightly behind his back. He began to explain his conclusions, partly for the benefit of those in the room, but also to clarify his ideas by voicing them aloud.

‘Neither the original trireme of the Roman coastal fleet,’ he said, ‘nor the Tyrian-styled quinquereme of the Carthaginian fleet, which we adopted, was ever designed with the
corvus
in mind. Each was built with a finely balanced hull; a balance the dead weight of the
corvus
corrupted.’

‘But we addressed those concerns when we adopted the
corvus
,’ one of the apprentices contested. ‘It was built within the design tolerances of the galley. Perhaps the fault lies not with the ship but with the crews and their seamanship.’

Atticus’s eyes darkened. ‘So you believe the crews are to blame for their own deaths?’ he growled.

The underlying violence inherent in Atticus’s words was not lost on the apprentice, but he held his ground, not wanting to lose face in front of his master.

‘I meant no disrespect, Prefect,’ he said, a slight tremble in his voice. ‘But the design cannot be wrong. It was rigorously tested.’

‘Your designs were tested in the confines of coastal waters,’ Atticus argued. ‘They were never fully tested in open seas, or in battle, or in a storm. Those sailors you speak so ill of lost their lives proving that point.’

Chastened by Atticus’s words and his conviction, the apprentice looked down at the table. Atticus continued to stare at him, his impulsive annoyance refusing to abate. The apprentice was a young man, no more than a boy, probably little older than Atticus himself had been when he’d joined the navy, and Atticus suddenly realized his anger was not directed at the apprentice but at himself. He remembered the day he had rushed to this very room with the seeds of the idea that would become the
corvus
. How he had stood before Lentulus and expounded on his plan for a boarding ramp, and how he had been filled with pride when that idea had become a reality and been proved in battle at Mylae. Although it seemed a lifetime ago, it was but a few years, and Atticus conceded that he had hidden that memory from himself to suppress his own culpability, knowing he had once been the greatest advocate of the
corvus
.

‘The prefect is right,’ Lentulus said, taking control of the meeting once more. ‘In our haste and hubris we ignored the fundamental attributes of a galley, ballast and balance, and we failed to fully appreciate the effect the boarding ramp would have on those.’

The apprentices nodded in silent agreement and Lentulus dismissed them from the room with instructions to begin work on finding an answer to the problem.

‘So you believe there is a solution?’ Atticus asked.

Lentulus looked to the initial thoughts he had sketched out. ‘No,’ he replied after a pause, ‘not if we need our galleys to compete with the speed and manoeuvrability of the Carthaginians.’

‘We cannot fight the Punici on their terms, we need the advantage the
corvus
gives us,’ Atticus said, his defence of the boarding ramp sounding treacherous in his own mind.

‘We may not have a choice, Prefect,’ Lentulus said, pacing the room once more. ‘Everyone in Fiumicino knows how and why the fleet was lost. Already crews are refusing to sail on any galley with a
corvus
, and with good cause. They will not, and we cannot, take the chance of such a loss occurring again.’

The conversation continued, but Atticus found it impossible to focus. He had been back in Rome over a week and this was not the first time he had had this argument, albeit with other men. That the master shipbuilder had asked for his report in person was evidence of the enormity of the problem the fleet now faced, trapped between the opposing forces of the Carthaginians and the weather, one threat calling for the retention of the
corvus
, the other for its rejection.

The meeting ended an hour later and Atticus left the barracks at Fiumicino to walk down to the shoreline to clear his head. The slips and scaffolding that dominated the beach were quiet in the noon heat, and he picked his way through them, the soft repetitive sound of waves crashing on the black sand allowing him to calm the voices of frustration. He turned his back on the beach and found his horse in the stables of the barracks, mounting it in one fluid movement as he set off for the city, his thoughts now focusing on the evening ahead, a smile creeping on to his face in anticipation. Hadria’s father had returned to Rome and it was finally time for Atticus and Hadria’s love to emerge from the shadows.

Regulus cursed as his foot caught a loose stone and he had to throw out his arms to regain his balance. The squad of soldiers escorting him did not check its pace, and Regulus was forced to trot for a half-dozen steps to regain his position in the centre of the formation. He looked up the hill to his left, to the citadel commanding the summit, comparing it to the descriptive reports he had read since he had first arrived in Africa. None of them had captured the essence of the fortress, its sheer brute size coupled with its daunting position, and Regulus was left to wonder how Carthage could fall with such strength at its core.

The squad led him to the quayside, and the traders and merchantmen crowding the docks opened their ranks to allow the soldiers through, the conversations continuing around the obstruction until it passed, voices raised in languages Regulus did not understand. He kept his eyes front, ignoring the baleful stares of the few who deduced his nationality, their incomprehensible curses lost in the clamour.

The commercial docks gave way to the military harbour, and again Regulus took the opportunity to observe it closely. The military harbour was circular in shape, with a raised island circumscribed by a lagoon at its centre and an outer perimeter quay. Boathouses covered every available space and, of the two hundred available berths, Regulus counted a dozen rams jutting out of occupied spaces, the extended claws of the beasts within.

At the far end of the harbour was a barracks house; the squad passed through the arched entranceway to a small courtyard inside. On three sides of the courtyard open doorways led to inner corridors and rooms, but on the side facing Regulus each door was heavily bolted, the metal turned green from exposure to the salt-laden air. The commander of the squad stepped forward alone to the middle door and wrenched back the bolt with a single pull. He turned to Regulus and motioned him forward.

‘You have thirty minutes,’ he said.

Regulus was puzzled but he stepped forward into the darkened room. The door closed behind him and the bolt was slammed home once more.

His eyes were immediately drawn to a small opening high on the opposing wall, which allowed in a pitiful shaft of white sunlight that barely penetrated the oppressive darkness. The opening was streaked with white excrement, and loose feathers fell through the beam of sunlight as birds, disturbed by the sound of the door, flew back to their perches once more.

‘Proconsul?’

Regulus’s gaze fell and he perceived four figures approaching him through the gloom. They wore tattered Roman uniforms and, as the sunlight fell across their gaunt faces, Regulus recognized each of them in turn. They were tribunes of his army, the command staff who had been with him in the breakout at Tunis. Regulus instinctively straightened his back, his officers following suit as they saluted him. He nodded in reply and then stepped forward, extending his hand. Each took it in a silent acknowledgement of comradeship.

‘What news of the rest of the men?’ Regulus asked.

‘They have been enslaved, Proconsul,’ one of the tribunes replied. ‘We alone were brought here from Tunis five days ago.’

‘Enslaved,’ Regulus repeated, bowing his head. Over the previous week, Hamilcar had called on him three times at the villa. Each time Regulus had enquired after the fate of the five hundred men taken at Tunis, but the Carthaginian had refused to be drawn on the question, focusing instead on fresh evidence that confirmed his story of the Roman fleet’s destruction. Regulus’s suspicion and Hamilcar’s obfuscation had made him accept that the fate of his legionaries was sealed the moment they were taken in battle.

‘We have far worse news, Proconsul,’ one of the other tribunes said, and he began to tell Regulus of the rumours they had heard of the storm. Regulus held his hand up to silence the tribune.

‘Those rumours may be true,’ he said, admitting out loud for the first time his belief in what Hamilcar had told him. He explained what he knew in detail, and watched as their expressions displayed the terrible realization he had slowly faced over the past week.

Regulus studied them in the silence that followed. They were all young men, sons of senators and, in the case of two of them, sons of former consuls. The Africa campaign was their first, and Regulus remembered their infectious exuberance after the victories of Ecnomus and Adys, a boundless confidence fed by the naiveté of youth. Defeat and capture had shattered that brashness, but Regulus was proud to see that – in some at least – it had been replaced by maturity, a strength they would need in the months ahead.

The metallic grind of the door-bolt broke the silence and Regulus left the tribunes with assurances that he would soon return, already suspecting why they had been brought to Carthage, although unsure as to why he had been allowed to see them. The guard detail formed up around Regulus and they quickly left the courtyard, threading their way once more through the docks to retrace their steps to the villa. As they passed the base of the hill leading to the citadel, one of the soldiers followed a curt command and broke from the formation, striking out towards the fortress at a run.

When they returned to the villa, Regulus went immediately to the familiar surroundings of the inner courtyard. He called for wine and waited patiently in the shade, his thoughts on the tribunes and the wealth of their families in Rome. Approaching footsteps alerted him and he stood up to receive his expected visitor, an unconscious civility to echo the courtesy his enemy had shown him since his arrival in Carthage. Hamilcar entered the courtyard and nodded at Regulus.

‘You have seen your men,’ he said.

‘I have, Barca,’ Regulus replied, ‘as your soldier reported.’ He sat down again and took a sip of his wine. ‘So, you have spared my tribunes from enslavement for ransom.’

‘Yes.’

‘But why let me see them?’

‘So you can confirm that they are safe and well,’ Hamilcar said. ‘I want you to travel to Rome to negotiate their ransom.’

‘Me?’ Regulus replied, astonished by the suggestion. ‘You would release me?’

‘On parole,’ Hamilcar said.

Again Regulus was stunned. Parole was an agreement based on word of honour, one that Regulus would uphold because he held himself to be honourable. But the Carthaginian could not know that for sure, not from their brief acquaintance. ‘It would be madness to release me, Barca,’ he said, revealing his thoughts out loud. ‘You cannot have faith in my honour, and the lives of four tribunes are too insignificant to guarantee my return.’ His eyes narrowed warily. ‘There’s something else, something you’re not telling me.’

Hamilcar nodded. ‘There is something else,’ he said. ‘The ransom of the tribunes is merely a symbol of good faith.’

‘Good faith?’

‘For what I also want from you,’ Hamilcar replied, and he walked over to stand before Regulus, slowly forming and reforming the wording of his proposal in his mind, conscious of its importance. ‘I want you to act as an ambassador,’ he said, his tone wholly confident. ‘And bring, to Rome, Carthage’s terms for peace.’

Atticus balled his fists in anger. He was about to step forward but a desperate glance from Hadria made him stop. She was crying, the tears running freely down her face, and Atticus felt his rage build further. She looked away from him and he felt his restraint waver, every instinct telling him to cross the room to end the vicious flow of invective that was staining his honour and breaking Hadria’s heart.

The room was full of voices and conflicting sounds: Hadria’s trembling sobs, her mother’s wailing cries, her father’s con tinuous tirade, his fist slamming on to the table before him. Only Atticus and another were silent.