‘I am, I am, Titus. Just overcome by the tragedy of the occasion. Your father and I were friends all of our lives, from childhood through to being grown men with sons of our own. Is it any wonder I am affected by grief?’
Titus had to keep a straight face then, to hide his doubts. Lucius Falerius had not been given the soubriquet Nerva for nothing; he was a man of emotional steel, not the type to faint at the graveside. Lucius, keeping his face hidden, was reminding himself that this Brennos had not killed Aulus, he had been defeated by him. The prophecy was mere flummery, made up by the Sybil to justify her fee. Slowly, as he rationalised these thoughts, his heartbeat slowed and the blood returned to his face. Yet he felt he had to say something, to divert the young man standing beside him.
‘Perhaps, Titus Cornelius, you and your father had a clearer idea of the menace of this Brennos than we have in Rome. I shall take heed of that.’
Claudia Cornelia too had examined those sculpted panels, many more times than Lucius, for she had had a hand in the drawings from which they had been made. It was she who had reminded Quintus of the eagle charm that Brennos wore, which he too had heard of but never seen. The look on the face of Aulus’s eldest son when she had suggested its inclusion had been deeply curious, though it was an inquisitiveness that remained unrequited; Claudia would tell no one the truth. In remembering Aulus she had felt again that tenderness she had always had for a man who could truly be termed good. The thoughts of how she had failed him as a wife lay heavy, but at least, she knew, he had died in ignorance of the truth, had died thinking that the child she had conceived in Spain had been the result of a violation.
Now she was watching Titus and Lucius from the other side of the sarcophagus, wondering at the conversation that had made the older man look ill. If he had dropped dead on the spot she would have had to fake sympathy; though she did not hate the man, she did not like him. To her mind he had abused his friendship with Aulus, and her husband, being the man he was, had stuck to a loyalty that had not been reciprocated. She and Lucius had clashed in the past as she sought to barb him with the truth; that he was a devious liar and an unreliable comrade.
The need to attend to the rituals made all present concentrate. Sacrifices were made, the blood of the animals cascading forth to taint the earth at the feet of the priests. Most had their heads bowed, but not Cholon. The Greek was weeping and he wanted everyone to know how much he had loved and missed his master. The man beside him, the newly retired centurion, Didius Flaccus, who had also been saved from death at Thralaxas when Aulus also ordered him away, was actually embarrassed.
‘Contain yourself, man!’ he hissed.
‘I cannot.’
‘It is for women to weep, not men.’
Cholon, through red and swollen eyes, looked sideways at Didius Flaccus. The tanned and scarred complexion under short-cut iron-grey hair were features which marked his occupation. Flaccus had been in the legions for twenty years and he and Cholon had seen, from a distance, the early morning smoke from the fire that had consumed the bodies of Aulus and his remaining legionaries. Cholon recalled that the man had been stony-faced then, and that for soldiers in his own century.
‘Men may weep and wail if they choose. Perhaps you mean it is not for soldiers.’
‘I’m not a soldier any more, mate,’ Flaccus spat, ‘and I am as like to be a pauper if something don’t turn up soon. I had hoped old Macedonicus would sort that one out and load me with booty, but he didn’t, did he?’
That offended the Greek deeply: to be able to attend such a distressing occasion and stay dry-eyed was one thing; to be so callous as to consider one’s own concerns was quite another.
‘I heard,’ Flaccus added, indicating the other, smaller memorial, ‘that the general left some money for his men.’
‘Only those who perished.’
‘What good is that going to do the dead?’
Cholon edged away, not wanting to listen to such words, but Flaccus barely noticed. He was staring at the sculpted images of the Macedonian triumph; Aulus on his chariot wearing a crown of laurel leaves, behind him chained slaves bearing jars filled with gold, wondering if one day, as it had been vouchsafed to him by every teller of fortunes he had ever consulted, such wealth would come to him. He had been so close to cornucopia in Illyricum, but it had been snatched from his grasp and the remembrance of that deepened his irritability.
His mood was not enhanced on the return to the Cornelii house, as, walking well behind Quintus, Flaccus was too far away to get at any of the coins the man was chucking to the crowd. Not that there was any gold in there; it would be copper at best, though there was one consolation he had on reentering the house. He was treated to a decent meal of the kind he dare not splash out on himself. Taking care to ensure that no one was looking, Flaccus pilfered as much food as he could and drank as much wine as the servants were prepared to pour into his cup, so that by the time he left he had in his mouth the taste which made him want to continue.
The stuff he drank in his local tavern was nowhere near the quality of what he had imbibed in the Cornelii house, but what it lacked in flavour it made up for in potency, so that Flaccus was intoxicated enough to do something he normally restrained himself from; he began to recount his experiences of fighting and leading a century in the Roman army. His fellow-drinkers listened to his stories with respect but when he became really drunk, banging his fist on the table as he tried to persuade them that he had been within an inch of untold wealth, indeed a wagon full of gold, that lifelong comfort had slipped through his fingers due to the stupidity of a legionary called Clodius Terentius, attention wavered. By the time he began to recount the enigmatic prophecy he had heard so often, that indicated he would be rich anyway, he was talking to himself.
‘A golden aura, that’s what the man said, which means great wealth. And men cheering like I’ve won a great victory. It will come to pass one day, you mark my words, and when it does I shall find better company to share a drink with than you arsewipes, that’s for certain.’
It was just as well he was mumbling to himself; anyone close enough to his drunken ramblings would have heard him confess to the murder of an elderly Illyrian soothsayer, in between the curses with which he damned the man for expiring without telling him the truth about his future in plain language.
In the tablinum of the Cornelii house, where Aulus had at one time conducted all his business, an increasingly angry Quintus was reading the will. Cholon heard the words that set him free and even though he had known it was coming, he was again overcome with emotion. It was not the manumission which angered Quintus, it was money; a sizeable sum had been bequeathed to the Greek so that he would be, in freedom, more than comfortable. A fortune already gifted to the Lady Claudia could not be reclaimed and Titus, too, was left a sum enough to avoid the need to beg for corporeal sustenance from his brother. But to top it all came the bequest to the dependants of those who had died at Thralaxas, laid out in a codicil that Cholon had brought back from Illyricum. Quintus first questioned its veracity and, once persuaded that the terms must be met, complained that he would be ruined. It was nonsense of course, as Claudia observed.
‘My dear Quintus, you are just not the richest man in Rome any more. I dare say your father had faith in you to gain that accolade on your own merits.’
The long day ended with each of the Cornelii going to their own suites, to harbour their own thoughts. Quintus had with him a list of his father’s numerous debtors and was looking through it to see whom he could force into early repayment. Titus had visited the family altar on his way and paid private obeisance to his father’s memory, aware that he had been in awe of the man when he was alive and was even more so now that he was dead. Cholon went to the slave quarters for the last time to cry himself to sleep. Tomorrow he must look for a place to live; he could not abide the idea of residing under a roof of which Quintus Cornelius was the master.