The Grass Crown (65 page)

“What makes you think we’d want to protect you?” Caepio asked, nostrils flaring. Such an odd smell! “You’ve done nothing for Rome.”

“Oh, but I have, Quintus Servilius!” Silo said, and pointed to the donkey. “I stole the contents of the Marsic treasury and would offer it to Rome. There on the ass is a little of it. Only a very little! Some miles behind me, well hidden in a secret valley behind a hill, there are thirty more asses, all laden with at least as much gold as this one carries.”

Gold! That was what Caepio could smell! Everyone was always insisting gold was odorless; but Caepio knew better, just as his father before him had known better. Not a Quintus Servilius Caepio ever born could not smell gold.

“Give me a look,” he said curtly, moving to the donkey.

Its panniers were well hidden by a hide cover which Silo now stripped off. And there it was. Gold. Five rough-cast round sows of it nestling in each pannier, glittering in the sun. Every sow stamped with the Marsic snake.

“About three talents,” said Silo, covering the panniers again with anxious looks all about to see who might be watching. Having tied the thongs which held the cover on securely, Silo paused and gazed at Caepio out of those remarkable yellow-green eyes, little flames leaping in them, it seemed to the dazzled Caepio. “This ass is yours,” he said, “and perhaps two or three more might be yours if you extend me your personal protection as well as Rome’s.”

“You have it,” said Caepio instantly, and smiled an avaricious smile. “I’ll take five asses, though.”

“As you wish, Quintus Servilius.” Silo sighed deeply. “Oh, I am tired! I’ve been running for three days.”

“Then rest,” said Caepio. “Tomorrow you can lead me to the secret valley. I want to see all this gold!”

“It might be wise to bring your army,” said Silo as they moved off toward the general’s tent, the female slave following with the babies. Good babies; they didn’t cry or wriggle. “By now they’ll know what I’ve done, and who knows what they’ll send after me? I imagine they’ll guess I’ve appealed to Rome for asylum.”

“Let them guess!” said Caepio gleefully. “My two legions are a match for the Marsi!” He held open the tent flap, but preceded his suppliant inside. “Ah—of course I must ask that you leave your sons in this camp while we’re away.”

“I understand,” said Silo with dignity.

“They look like you,” said Caepio when the slave girl put the babies down upon a couch preparatory to changing their diapers. And they did indeed; both had Silo’s eyes. Caepio shivered. “Stop, girl!” he said to the slave. “There’ll be no baby-cack in here! You’ll have to wait until I organize accommodation for your master, then you can do whatever it is you have to do.”

Thus it was that when Caepio led his two legions out of their camp the next morning, Silo’s slave girl remained behind with the royal twins; the gold remained behind too, safely unloaded from the donkey and hidden in Caepio’s tent.

“Did you know, Quintus Servilius, that Gaius Marius is, at this very moment, beleaguered by ten legions of Picentes, Paeligni, and Marrucini?” asked Silo.

“No!” gasped Caepio, riding beside Silo at the head of his army. “Ten legions? Will he win?”

“Gaius Marius always wins,” said Silo smoothly.

“Humph,” said Caepio.

They rode until the sun was overhead in the sky, having left the Via Valeria almost immediately to head southwest along the Anio in the direction of Sublaqueum. Silo insisted on setting a pace which enabled the infantry to keep up, though Caepio was so eager to see the rest of the gold that he resented dawdling.

“It’s safe, it isn’t going anywhere,” said Silo soothingly. “I would much rather that your troops be with us and not breathing hard-when we get there, Quintus Servilius—for both our sakes.”

The country was rugged but negotiable; the miles went by until, not far short of Sublaqueum, Silo halted.

“There!” he said, pointing to a hill on the far side of the Anio. “Behind that is the secret valley. There’s a good bridge not far from here. We can cross safely.”

It was a good bridge, wide and made of stone; Caepio ordered his army across at full march, but remained in the lead. The road came up from Anagnia on the Via Latina to Sublaqueum, traversed the Anio at this point, and ended in Carseoli. Once the troops crossed the bridge they had a good road to walk on and stretched out in stride, quite enjoying their outing. Caepio’s mood had told them long since that this was some sort of jaunt, no martial foray, so they kept their shields across their backs and used their spears as staves to ease the weight of their mail-shirts. Time was dragging on, they might have to camp in the rough and without food that night, but it was worth it not to be burdened by packs, and the general’s attitude said some sort of reward was imminent.

With the two legions strung out around the base of the hill as the road curved on its way northeast, Silo turned in his saddle to talk to Caepio.

“I’ll ride on ahead, Quintus Servilius,” he said, “just to make sure everything is all right. I don’t want anyone frightened into trying to bolt.”

Easing his own pace, Caepio watched as Silo kicked his horse into a canter and dwindled quickly in size; several hundred paces further up the road Silo turned off it and disappeared behind a small cliff.

The Marsi fell upon Caepio’s column from everywhere—from the front, where Silo had vanished—from the rear—from behind every rock and stone and bank on both sides of the road. No one had a chance. Before shields could be stripped of their hide covers and swung to the front, before swords could be properly drawn and helms fitted upon heads, four legions of Marsi were amid the column in their thousands, laying about them as if engaged upon an exercise. Caepio’s army perished to the very last man but one, and that one was Caepio himself, taken prisoner at the beginning of the attack, and forced to watch his troops die.

When it was all over, when not a Roman soldier moved on the road and all around it, Quintus Poppaedius Silo rode back into Caepio’s view, surrounded by his legates, including Scato and Fraucus. He was smiling widely.

“Well, Quintus Servilius, what say you now?”

White-faced and trembling, Caepio summoned every reserve. “You forget, Quintus Poppaedius,” he said, “that I still hold your babies as my hostages.”

Silo burst out laughing. “My babies? No! They’re the children of the slave couple you still hold. But I’ll get them back—and my ass. There’s no one left in your camp to gainsay me.” The eerie eyes glowed coldly, goldly. “But I won’t bother to remove the ass’s cargo. You can have that.”

“It’s gold!” said Caepio, aghast.

“No, Quintus Servilius, it is not gold. It’s lead covered with the thinnest possible skin of gold. If you’d scraped it, you would have discovered the trick. But I knew my Caepio better than that! You couldn’t bring yourself to put a scratch in a chunk of gold if your life depended upon it—and your life did.” He drew his sword, dismounted, strolled toward Caepio.

Fraucus and Scato moved to Caepio’s horse and pulled him from the saddle. Without saying a word, they divested him of cuirass and hardened leather under-dress. Understanding, Caepio began to weep desolately.

“I would like to hear you beg for your life, Quintus Servilius Caepio,” Silo said as he moved within striking distance.

But that Caepio found himself unable to do. At Arausio he had run away, and never since had he found himself in a genuinely perilous situation, even when the Marsic raiding party had attacked his camp. Now he saw why they had attacked; they had lost a handful of men, but they had regarded their losses as worth it. Silo had seen the lay of the land, and laid his plans accordingly. Had Caepio searched his mind about this present ordeal, he might have concluded that he would indeed beg for his life. Now that the ordeal was happening, he found he could not. A Quintus Servilius Caepio might not be the bravest of Roman men, but he was nonetheless a Roman, and a Roman of high degree—a patrician, a nobleman. A Quintus Servilius Caepio might weep, and who knew how much he wept for the cessation of his life, and how much for that lovely lost gold? But a Quintus Servilius Caepio could not beg.

Caepio lifted his chin, drew a veil down across his gaze, and stared into nothing.

“This is for Drusus,” said Silo. “You had him killed.”

“I did not,” said Caepio from a great distance. “I would have. But it wasn’t necessary. Quintus Varius organized it. And a good thing too. If Drusus hadn’t been killed, you and all your dirty friends would be citizens of Rome. But you’re not. And you never will be. There are many like me in Rome.”

Silo raised the sword until his hand holding the hilt was slightly higher than his shoulder. “For Drusus,” he said. Down came the sword into the side of Caepio’s neck where it started to curve out into the shoulder; a huge piece of bone flew and struck Fraucus on the cheek, cutting it. But not so deeply as Silo’s cut, down to the top of the sternum, through veins and arteries and nerves. Blood sprayed everywhere. But Silo was not finished, and Caepio did not fall. Silo moved a little, raised his arm a second time, and repeated the blow to the other side of Caepio’s neck. Down he went with Silo following to deliver the third stroke, which severed the head. Scato picked it up and rammed it crudely through the gullet onto a spear. When Silo was in the saddle again, Scato handed him the spear. The army of the Marsi moved off down the road toward the Via Valeria, Caepio’s head sailing before them, seeing nothing.

The rest of Caepio the Marsi left behind with Caepio’s army; this was Roman territory, let the Romans clean up the mess. More important to make a getaway before Gaius Marius discovered what had happened. Of course the story Silo had told Caepio about a ten-legion attack upon Marius had been a fabrication-—he had just wanted to see how Caepio reacted. Silo did send to the deserted camp outside Varia, however, and brought his slaves away together with their royally clad twin sons. And his donkey. But not the “gold.” When that was unearthed inside Caepio’s tent, everyone deemed it a part of the Gold of Tolosa, and wondered where the rest of it was. Until Mamercus came forward, and someone scraped the surface of the “gold” to bare the lead beneath, thus proving the truth of Mamercus’s strange tale.

For it was necessary that Silo inform someone what had really happened. Not for his own sake. For the sake of Drusus. So he had written to Drusus’s brother, Mamercus.

Quintus Servilius Caepio is dead. Yesterday I led him and his army into a trap on the road between Carseoli and Sublaqueum, having lured him out of Varia with a tall story—how I had deserted the Marsi and stolen the contents of the Marsic treasury. I had an ass with me, loaded down with lead sows skinned to look like gold. You know the weakness of the Servilii Caepiones! Dangle gold under their noses, and all else is utterly forgotten.

Every single Roman soldier belonging to Caepio is dead. But Caepio I took alive, and killed him myself. I cut his head off and carried it before my army on a spear. For Drusus. For Drusus, Mamercus Aemilius. And for Caepio’s children, who will now inherit the Gold of Tolosa, with the lion’s share going to the red-haired cuckoo in the Caepio nest. Some justice. If Caepio had lived until the children were grown he would have found a way to disinherit them. As it is, they now inherit everything. I am pleased to do this for Drusus because it would have pleased Drusus mightily. For Drusus. Long may his memory live in the minds of all good men, Roman and Italian.

Because in that poor family nothing was dulled, or blunted, or rendered mercifully, Silo’s letter arrived scant hours after Cornelia Scipionis had collapsed and died, compounding the frightful problem Mamercus faced. With the deaths of Cornelia Scipionis and Quintus Servilius Caepio, the last threads of stability for the six children who lived in Drusus’s house were irrevocably broken. They were now absolute orphans, not a parent or a grandparent between them. Uncle Mamercus was their last living relative.

By rights that should have meant he would take them into his own house and complete their upbringing himself; they would have been company for his baby daughter Aemilia Lepida, just toddling. Over the months since the death of Drusus, Mamercus had become fond of all the children, even the dreadful Young Cato, whose unyielding character Mamercus found pitiable, and whose love for his brother, Young Caepio, Mamercus found touching to the point of tears. So it never occurred to him that he would not be taking the children home—until he went home after seeing to his mother’s funeral arrangements and told his wife. They had not been married more than five years, and Mamercus was very much in love with her. Not needing to marry money, he had chosen a bride for love, under the fond delusion that she too was marrying for love. One of the lesser Claudias, impoverished and desperate, Mamercus’s wife had grabbed at him. But she didn’t love him. And she didn’t love children. Even her own daughter she found boring, and left in the company of the nurserymaids, so that little Aemilia Lepida was more spoiled than disciplined.

“They’re not coming here!” Claudia Mamercus snapped, before he had quite finished his tale.

“But they have to come here! They have nowhere else to go!” he said, shocked anew; his mother’s death was so recent he had not yet emerged from that shock.

“They have that huge gorgeous house to live in—we should be so lucky! There’s more money than anyone knows what to do with—hire them an army of minders and tutors and leave them right where they are.” Her mouth went hard, its corners turned down. “Get it out of your head, Mamercus! They are not coming here.”

This was of course the first crack in his idol, something she did not understand. Mamercus stood looking at his wife with wonder in his eyes, his own mouth hard. “I insist,” he said.

She raised her brows. “You can insist until water turns into wine, husband! It makes no difference. They are not coming here. Or put it this way: if they come, I go.”

“Claudia, have some pity! They’re so alone!”

“Why should I pity them? They’re not going to starve or lack education. There’s not one of them knows what having a parent was like anyway,” said Claudia Mamercus. “The two Servilias are as catty as they are snobbish, Drusus Nero is an oaf, and the rest are the descendants of a slave. Leave them where they are.”