‘Bit of a bugger being exposed,’ said Fabius. ‘Mind, they left you with that thing round your neck, so one of the parents wanted you back.’
‘I’d trade it to know who they are.’
‘You’re mad. Who cares about parents?’
‘Easy to say when you’ve got them.’
‘You can keep mine, and you watch out, that fat old sod of mine will milk you for every penny you’ve got.’ Fabius followed up his words with a deep swig from his tankard, while Aquila wondered if his ‘nephew’ was being cheeky, given that he had been sitting in this tavern happily spending Aquila’s money for several hours. ‘And don’t leave that charm round your neck lying about, or the miserable old bugger will pinch it.’
‘Your father speaks highly of you too,’ said Aquila.
That produced a deep growl, and he said for the hundredth time, ‘Imagine you being my uncle.’
It was hard; Fabius was ten years older than Aquila and looked twenty. The younger man, still well short of twenty summers, had spent all his life in the open air, eaten when he was hungry and drunk little. Fabius liked smoky, dark taverns, day and night. His complexion was puffy, his eyes bleary and, though nothing like his father, he was rapidly running to fat.
‘I’ll have to find some kind of work.’
‘Work!’ Fabius spat, then he looked around the dark tavern, full of people who shared his tastes and his appearance. ‘That’s only for idiots.’
‘You don’t work?’
‘I do the odd day here and there, down at the Tiber warehouses, but there are other ways of making a crust.’ Fabius threw back his head and laughed. ‘Even for the son of a baker.’
Aquila soon found out how Fabius made a ‘crust’. There was no malice in his thieving: it was petty, opportunistic and harmless, relying on a quick eye and even faster reflexes. Walking down a street with his ‘nephew’ was quite an experience. Fabius’s eyes, never resting, looked for something, anything, to filch as if it was some kind of game in which his wits were pitted against the whole world. He would take things that had no use or value to him, just so he could laugh about it later in the tavern, selling the stuff on if he could get the price of a drink.
His ‘nephew’ had undertaken to show him Rome, marching up and down the seven hills, pointing out all the places of interest: the Capitoline, the Forum and the Temple of Janus. They were on the Palatine Hill, among the large houses of the very rich, when Fabius spotted the red shoes on a first floor windowsill, freshly cleaned and drying in the sun.
‘Cup your hands, quick.’
Aquila obeyed without thinking, taking the weight easily as Fabius stretched up and grabbed at the shoes. He knocked one into the room behind, but came down triumphantly with the other.
‘There,’ he said holding it up. ‘A victory for the bare-arsed peasants.’
‘One shoe?’
Fabius waved it gaily. ‘A senator’s shoe, a trophy, Aquila. The bastards usually put these on our necks to grind us down.’
The shout behind them alerted Fabius to danger and he looked back to see a servant hanging out of the window, the other shoe in his hand, yelling for them to stop.
‘Time to extend your tour, “Uncle”,’ said Fabius with a wink.
He dodged down an alleyway, Aquila following, their feet echoing off the walls as they raced away, emerging into another street running parallel. Fabius dived across that and into a second alley, this one going steeply downhill until they emerged into the marketplace near the Forum. Fabius stopped running and began walking at a normal pace, weaving his way through the stalls, eyes and hands ranging all over the place. By the time they had reached the other side he was able to offer Aquila fruit, vegetables and an iron poker.
‘Just the thing for a chilly night, eh, “Uncle”?’
Aquila laughed; it was the middle of summer, the hottest time of year. ‘You’re probably the only customer he’s had all day.’
The eyes shot up in genuine alarm. ‘You’re right. The poor sod is probably starvin’.’ Fabius turned round and retraced his steps. He gave the bewildered stallholder his poker back, plus all the fruit and vegetables he had snatched from the other stalls.
‘Eat hearty, brother,’ he said fulsomely, patting the ironmonger on the back. ‘Winter will be here soon, and you can rest easy. If I ever need any irons for my fire, you’ll be the first man I’ll come to, and I’ll recommend you to my friends.’
They were walking out of the marketplace, leaving the perplexed trader scratching his head, when Fabius spoke again. ‘One thing, “Uncle”. If you don’t mind me saying so, you should get your hair shorn. It’s bad enough you being head and shoulders tall and still growin’, but your hair, bein’ the colour it is, and the length you wear it, makes you stick out like a sore thumb.’
CHAPTER TWO
Servius Caepio had the good grace to admit that he was no soldier, which earned him nothing but gratitude from those junior officers he had inherited on taking command in Spain. Many a serving consul, fresh from Rome, shared the fault but was blind to it; with only twelve months in office they were impatient to lead their troops into action and, since senior officers, quaestors and legates were that same consul’s appointees, it was rare that anyone sought to check their ambitions. This had in the past, inevitably, cost a number of lives — Roman, auxiliaries and native levies — sacrificed to no other purpose than a senatorial reputation. With his small frame and foxy features, Servius was what he looked, a natural intriguer, a man who had climbed to prominence by his slavish adherence to the cause of senatorial pre-eminence, as expounded by Lucius Falerius Nerva.
Warrior or not, his cohorts were forced to fight many a skirmish, since the frontier was never really at peace, though he did everything he could to keep the conflict in a low key. This sensible approach had nothing to do with modesty. Servius Caepio yearned for military success with as much passion as any of his peers; it was what he faced, allied to what he had at his disposal, which induced caution; that and the instructions he had brought with him from Lucius Falerius.
His mentor had been mistaken in his estimation of the main Celt-Iberian leader. Lucius saw Brennos as a pest certainly, but one that could be contained as he had been in the original campaign fought by Aulus Cornelius. Let him skulk in the interior, with his fantasies about the destruction of Rome, with himself at the head of some great Celtic confederacy. It might have happened before, but Lucius Falerius insisted Rome was too strong now for such nonsense, quite apart from the fractious nature of the beast Brennos was trying to assemble. No two Celts ever agreed about anything; millions there might be, but Rome was homogenous, they were splintered.
Yet faced with the actual physical presence of Brennos, he seemed more dangerous than he had been in Lucius’s study. Defeated many years before by Aulus Cornelius, he had retired to lick his wounds, but he had come back with a vengeance in his takeover of the tribe of the Duncani and their hill fort of Numantia. His usurpation had been bloody; having married Cara, the favourite daughter of the elderly chief, Brennos, a one-time Druid bound to celibacy, broke that vow. But he also broke by threat, sword and secret murder the resistance of anyone who stood in his way. He had then attacked the neighbouring tribes, taking back from them lands stolen over the years from an elderly chieftain more interested in wine and fornication than the defence of his patrimony.
His next success was to turn a natural fortress blessed by terrain — high bluffs, natural escarpments, a fertile plateau and a constant supply of water — a place in which the added walls had once been allowed to fall into a near-ruin, into the most daunting stronghold in the whole Iberian Peninsula. Numantia provided security in a troubled land, so the itinerant had flocked to the place, turning it from a hill fort into a bustling town; it had become not only a place to defend, but a base from which to attack Rome. Year on year Brennos was getting stronger, with more men to do his bidding and fewer neighbours able to stand against his wishes. When the chieftains tried, Brennos suborned their younger warriors, holding out his vision, encouraging them to attack the Roman coastal provinces, his aim to keep the border alight.