‘I said get your weapons. If you don’t, I’ll kill you anyway.’
‘You kill me?’ Toger pushed a stubby finger into his chest and turned so that the others could share in the joke. Flaccus, standing behind his horse, eased his sword from its scabbard. If the boy was serious, when Toger killed him, he would have to finish off the mercenary.
‘Want this back, do you lad,’ said Toger, rubbing his hand over the leather amulet which now adorned his upper arm.
The head of the spear moved slightly. ‘That, and the fact that you killed my dog.’
Toger indicated the absurdity of the situation to the other men. ‘Look at him. Skinny runt, he can barely lift the thing.’
Aquila’s voice, so even, so cold, made them turn to look at him. ‘Last chance, Toger. I shan’t ask again.’
The mercenary should not have laughed and it was even more stupid of him to throw his head back in that exaggerated fashion. The point of the spear took him in the centre of the neck, thrown with enough force to come out through the back of the skull. Aquila followed up, yelling madly, but by the time his fists hit Toger on his leather breastplate the man was incapable of further suffering. The blood pumped out of his mouth and neck, frothing as it mixed with his breath and he fell, straight legged, landing in the dust with an almighty thud. Toger croaked once or twice, then his body went limp. Aquila, standing over him, his body shaking, dragged his spear out of the man’s skull. The flow increased to a torrent as the heart pumped the life-blood out of the broken neck, forming a pool by Aquila’s feet. With the spear on his shoulder he looked at the others, standing open-mouthed, dumbfounded by what had happened. They could not believe that a mere boy could kill a man they had all feared.
His voice brought them back to the present. ‘If any one of you ever attempts to do what he tried last night, I will kill you as well.’
Flaccus slipped his sword back into his scabbard and spoke loudly. ‘I’d say the boy’s done us all a favour.’ The heads turned and looked at him, trying to make sense of what he said. Flaccus knew this was the moment; if they did not agree, he might as well leave them all behind. ‘I was set to kill him anyway, so Aquila here has just saved me the trouble. Now dig a hole, bury the bastard, and let’s get on our way.’
Aquila had put the spear down and stood, still quivering from head to foot, with tears now coursing down his cheeks. Flaccus walked over and looked down at the now inert body, then knelt quickly and removed the amulet, fingering the raised eagle before he tied it back on the sobbing boy’s arm. When he finished, he patted him on the back, then he put a reassuring hand on Aquila’s shoulder.
‘We might have to nickname you Hercules, lad.’ Aquila looked up at him, wet-eyed, for he had expected to die, if not by Toger’s hand, then certainly at the hands of his friends. ‘I think I’d best put you on wages and I’ll even give you a special job. You stay with me at all times and if you think I’m in any danger, you use that spear the way you used it on that pig. Better still, you can have his weapons. Learn to use them too and even I might walk round you.’
Using the point of Toger’s knife, Aquila sat unpicking the stitches as they dug his grave, in his mind going over the words Fulmina had used. ‘Wear it when you fear no man’, she had said. He was not sure if that was true now, only that the idea of wearing the amulet was impossible to contemplate, for every time he touched it he would think of Toger and what had happened in the blockhouse; blood had not washed away his feelings of revulsion. The gold flashed in the sunlight as he looked at his inheritance for the first time, marvelling at the way the bird, held up to the blue sky, actually seemed to fly. He unpicked the chain as well, threading it through the gap at the top of the charm, and he held it up in his hands, preparing to put it on, but the shadow that fell across him made the boy look up. Dedon stood there, his eyes fixed on the eagle.
‘It’s a good job Toger didn’t know that was in the amulet, otherwise it would have been you hanging in the barn, instead of the mutt.’
Aquila put the charm on, pushing the cold metal against his warm skin. He closed his eyes and the faces appeared before him. Clodius, Fulmina, Gadoric and Minca. Utterly alone now, he could not help the tears that edged out of the corners of his eyes so he stood up abruptly and walked towards the two pits that the mercenaries had dug well away from the road. All eyes were fixed on the object which swung from his neck, flashing in the morning sun. He threw the leather amulet into the largest grave, and watched as it was covered over. Minca was buried with more ceremony than Toger, the animal’s grave marked and prayer said, which was as fitting as it was heartbreaking.
He did not see Flaccus looking at that gold charm, cursing himself and wondering if he had, after all, been wise. Maybe he had misjudged Clodius Terentius.
CHAPTER NINE
Marcellus knew, just by the atmosphere in the house, that something was brewing. If anything, his father’s workload, plus the number of visitors to the house, increased. The Equites had instituted a move to increase their power by seeking control of certain juries, at present a prerogative of the Senate. The knights complained that these senatorial panels of adjudicators made it impossible to bring a member of the upper house to justice. Few senators were so blameless, so free of corruption as magistrates or provincial governors, as to open the floodgates by convicting one of their own. There had been rumblings of discontent for decades, all part of the eternal struggle between the Senate and the next senior class of citizen seeking to enhance their status, but matters, judging by the riots in the poorer quarters of the city, were coming to a head.
For once he was being spared inclusion in whatever was about to happen. Quintus Cornelius had moved into the position of Lucius’s confidant and constant companion, thus Marcellus was left to his studies and more importantly to his games and military training. He and his companions were free to go to the Campus Martius as soon as Timeon finished their lessons. The pedagogue, once so keen to chastise, had forsaken his vine sapling and long since eased up on his punishments; perhaps he had seen his pupils practising with staves and javelins and realised that these boys, growing to manhood, should they turn on him, would inflict too much damage. He might also have recalled a warning once given to him by Aulus Cornelius: that it was a bad idea to overly discipline a boy who might one day, should his father expire, be his master.
Lucius had engaged the services of an old soldier, Macrobius, to tutor his son in the great tradition of Roman arms. It was a duty he was well qualified to perform: having served all his life in the legions, his body was scarred from a hundred battles, and, despite his advanced age, the muscles still bulged from the constant exercise that was his daily routine. His purple nose and broken-veined face testified to the other part of his daily routine, he being a nightly visitor in the more rowdy wine shops. Marcellus, his body oiled and dusty, furiously attacked wooden posts with his sword; he wrestled, jumped, boxed, threw the discus and javelin, lifted weights and for light relief trundled the hoop and cast darts, all this before plunging gratefully into the swift-flowing Tiber. There he bathed alongside all the other wealthy young men of Rome, as well as the veterans who still came daily to the Campus Martius to practise their weapons drill.
This was the life of a young Roman aristocrat; Macrobius taught him how to ride as well as fight, took him out to the hills around the city and initiated him into the skills of the hunt. There, despite Marcellus’s obvious prowess in all the arts of games, war and the chase, he berated him in a manner of which the boy’s father approved. Mere competence was unacceptable, not even excellence was worthy of praise from the battle-scarred legionary, and Marcellus was excellent, good enough to have an audience of much older men, as well as his contemporaries. He ran fast and jumped long and high, wrestled with guile as well as strength, often beating boys much older than himself. He was dangerous with sword and shield, threw a javelin with both distance and accuracy, and none of this was achieved at the expense of his education.