Unfortunately, what you say is not far off the mark, but it's not quite twenty years." He paused and cleared his throat, managing to inject disgust and distaste into the sound. "The man has improved none in the interim, however — nor would he, I fear, given another ten years. He is still a charlatan and a blusterer, though more daring and more insolent than he would have presumed to be with me twenty years ago. But then, I never found him guilty of a lack of daring."
Alaric was looking from one to the other of us, curiosity stamped on his face, and I explained to him, "Philip Ascanus served with us for a short time before the Invasion, back in '67. He was a bad officer, the worst kind. A brutal bully and a homosexual torturer. Starved his men and spent the money for their rations. Caius straightened him out the only way possible — had him court-martialled, stripped of his rank and expelled from the Legion."
"I should have had him hanged," Caius drawled, his voice bitter.
"I don't understand," I said, turning back to face him. "What in the name of all the ancient gods was he doing here? What's his business?"
His eyebrow went up in surprise that I should ask the question. "What does he want? Why, his own good, of course. Apparently, he thought to be our neighbour."
I was astounded. "Are you serious? How?"
This brought a wordless grunt from Caius, who sniffed and replied, "Apparently, one of the villas to the north of here was acquired by an uncle of his, who promptly died, leaving the place to his favourite nephew."
"Good God! And now Philip Ascanus is here?"
"Was here. He didn't stay."
"Which villa? Is it one of the ones close to us?"
"Close enough," Cay said. "I thought of disputing his claim in the courts, when he told me why he was here. But then I reasoned that I was merely being petty. The uncle never took possession, formally, but he paid the purchase, nonetheless, so the villa and its lands go to his only heir."
"Philip Ascanus!"
"Philip Ascanus. Apparently he lives close to Glevum. Received the news of his uncle's death from your friend the tribune there."
"Scala?" I had met Tribune Marius Scala during one of my trips to Glevum some years earlier. He was a pleasant fellow and our friendship, though brief, had been a delightful one.
"That's the one."
"Good God." Another thought occurred to me. "How did you find out all this? Are you telling me he actually came here, knowing this was your house?"
A chilly little smile flickered across Cay's mouth and his aristocratic drawl became more pronounced. "No, not quite. He seemed quite genuinely surprised to see me here. Quite severely disconcerted, as a matter of fact. Bereft of words. Looked as though I had caught him in the act of buggery again. It would have been quite laughable except for the fact that nothing the fellow did could ever amuse me. I was the last person on earth he could ever have dreamed of seeing here, and he was most upset to find himself a supplicant on my doorstep. He thought he had come to deal with you, you see. Your friend Scala left him with the impression that this was your estate."
"With me? My estate? Why would Scala do that?" I stopped and thought about it. Scala could easily have taken the wrong impression from me; after all, I had spent less than a week in his company and there had been a lot of things going on, including some sustained drinking. I shrugged the thought off and continued. "Even so, I'm surprised Ascanus would have the gall to face me, knowing that I know what I know about him. What did he want to see me about?"
Caius shook his head, his little smile spreading wider. "I've no idea. He was probably looking for information about the area and the district. Yours was the only name he knew, and he had that from your friend Scala. But there's no question of him having the gall to face you. It would never have occurred to him that he might know you, and he would probably not have recognized you had he met you face to face. Bear in mind what you just now said, Ascanus was a bad officer, the worst kind. Such men do not recognize, or even think of, the soldiers under them as living, human beings of import. He was told to look for the villa-owner Publius Varrus. If he remembered anyone of that name at all from his past and long-forgotten army days, it would only be a lowly centurion. Centurions do not own villa estates, Publius. You forget that his time with our unit was before you won promotion in the field and before you came into your own wealth from your grandfather. Philip Ascanus would never have made the association between a common soldier of twenty years ago — a mere subaltern risen from the ranks — and a man of wealth and power today.
"Anyway," he continued, grinning, "he knows who you are now. I told him all about you and warned him that you would not be pleased to see his face again. He knows that he is not welcome on these lands and he will not return uninvited. Believe me."
I attempted to erase the frown from my forehead. "You don't mean you're prepared to accept him as a colonist, do you?"
Caius smiled again. "No, not at all. I think the possibility of that is very slight. In fact, I no longer think it is a possibility. I believe his vision of a life in the country began to dwindle the moment he found himself face to face with me, and died altogether when he learned you were here with me. The thought of propinquity to two people who know the truth about him — and who would have no compunction in condemning him — would be unbearable to the man."
"So you don't think he'll be moving to the Colony?" I was grinning now, too.
"I do not. But I do think my agents should be able to buy his villa for a reasonable price, now that he no longer has dreams for it."
I shook my head. "He'll never sell to you, Cay."
"He'll never know I'm involved. He will take the cash and forget about the place."
"Hmmm!" I mulled that one over, trying unsuccessfully to focus my mind on my twenty-year-old memories of Philip Ascanus, but I could only recall a faintly paunchy, dissolute body and a weak, pasty face with an incipient double chin and a pouty mouth. No eyes and nothing definite to fasten on, not even hair colour. I realized that Cay was correct. Ascanus would sell, and we would acquire more land.
"What's the place like, his villa?"
"Excellent. Not as large as some, but very well staffed and well run. I went and looked as soon as I found out Philip had returned to Glevum." Caius stood up. "No, stay where you are, I'm only stretching my legs," he said to Alaric, who had moved to stand up with him. Alaric subsided and Caius crossed to the big hearth, where he threw a new log on the fire before turning to look back at me.
I was frowning again. "And that was all? He gave no reason for coming here to our villa?"
"Only that he came looking for Publius Varrus, and that Scala had given him your name."
Caius left the fire and came back to sit again at the table, resting his hand on Alaric's shoulder as he passed. He moistened the tip of one finger and dipped it gently into the small pot of salt that still sat in the centre of the table, then transferred the finger to his mouth, licking the salt off absent-mindedly. He glanced over to where Alaric sat watching and listening.
"Alaric? What do you think of this conversation?" The bishop blinked his eyes slowly and thought for a few moments before he began to speak.
"Well, my friends," he said at last in his moderate, deliberate tones, "I hear strange and unexpected sounds and great bitterness coming from two people whom I love and respect. I hear you ascribing a sinfulness worthy of eternal damnation to a man whom neither of you has seen or heard of for twenty years, while both of you admit to each other, and to me as witness, that neither of you has any reason to do so, other than an old dislike. I hear no charity in you, my friends, and I hear none of the forgiveness that the Blessed Christus begged us to apply to our enemies."