Marching With Caesar-Final Campaign, page 51
"Well, man?" He was clearly growing frustrated, but I was no less so.
"Perhaps if you could expand on what you're talking about, General?" I asked him mildly.
He did not speak for a moment; just continued staring at me, his expression hard. Finally, he relented.
"What I'm talking about," he bit the words off, "is this nonsense that sees you being recalled to Rome because of what that fat idiot Primus did."
"Oh, that."
"Yes, that," he snapped. "Frankly, I'm surprised that you didn't come running in here, demanding my help."
I was somewhat chagrined that this had never occurred to me, but I had long since stopped counting on the help of the upper classes. Still, I knew I could use every friend I could find at this point.
"And, how would you be able to help me, exactly?" I asked cautiously, torn between wanting to know but not thinking there was any way to ask the question that could not be taken as an insult.
Fortunately, Norbanus was a better man than that.
"That's a good question," he admitted. "I've been giving it some thought."
He reached across his desk to offer me a scroll, which I took and unrolled. It took me a moment to decipher because it had been some time since I had last seen his handwriting, and Norbanus was an old Roman in every sense of the word, disdaining the use of the Caesar's dot to mark the end of a sentence. Once I read it, I looked up at him in not a little surprise.
"Are you sure you want to do this?" I asked him.
"Do what?" he said, sounding defensive to my ears. "I'm not doing anything but telling the truth."
"That may be. But is it a truth that Augustus wants to hear?"
The moment the name was out of my mouth, Norbanus' eyes began darting around the room and, despite the room clearly being empty, I felt a chill before I banished the thought.
"Why wouldn't he want to hear the truth?" Norbanus said this a trifle more loudly than anything that came before, making me wonder why. "I'm trusted by the Princeps! He knows I wouldn't say something that wasn't true. Besides," he lowered his voice back to its previous level, "it's what my father wants me to do, though I don't have any idea why. As it is, I've got a lot to lose."
That, I had to acknowledge, was true, and I looked back at the scroll again. In it, Norbanus went into great detail about how both he and I had been informed by Marcus Primus that he was acting under the express orders of Octavian. True as far as it went, but Norbanus had gone much farther than that; he went on to say that if I was to be considered culpable in this unauthorized campaign into Thrace, then he, Norbanus, should be standing next to me in court. It was an incredibly bold, and some would say incredibly foolish thing to do. As I read it again, I felt a hard lump form in my throat, but I will admit that a part of me was still very suspicious. I did not know the younger Norbanus that well, and while his father and I had gotten over our rocky start regarding my relief of Natalis, we had not been especially close either. Still, if this letter was sincere, I realized that perhaps my situation was not as hopeless as it seemed. After all, I reasoned, if a man I barely knew saw how unjust my situation was, perhaps there were others with similar influence that could help me. I suppose that was when the first glimmering of an idea made its presence known in my conscious mind.
As bleak as my personal situation seemed to be, there were other developments that at least cheered the men of Marcus Primus' ill-fated campaign. According to Diocles' sources in the Praetorium, an acquaintanceship which he immediately renewed on our return with an amphora of Falernian, word had come from Rome ordering that some of the money that Primus had extorted from the Thracians be used to pay the army bonuses, over and above what they took from Naissus. Not surprisingly, this was widely celebrated in the Legion streets of the camp, and the wine shops and whorehouses of Siscia. I wished I could have shared in their joy at the news of these extra funds, most of which would stay in possession of an individual Legionary for the time it took him to pick up the purse from the Legion paymasters and walk into Siscia, whereupon it would almost inevitably change hands. I will admit I sometimes wondered if it would not just save a lot of trouble all the way around if the paymasters just drove the wagons with the bounty straight into whatever town was nearby, and just start handing the civilians the bags of coin. Conspicuously absent in those orders, at least as far as I was concerned, was the share designated for the senior officers of the army, although I will say that I was pleased to see that Flavianus and the Tribunes were taken care of, quite well, actually. But, I remember thinking bitterly, those men are all highborn, and if there is one truth that I believe is absolute at this point, it is that the nobility always takes care of others of their own class before anything else.
Two days after the army of Marcus Primus had arrived in Siscia, I spent my last night in my own quarters before setting out for Rome. Without knowing exactly what to expect, I was only bringing Diocles with me. Gaius offered to arrange to take leave to accompany me, but I absolutely forbade it; I had just made sure that Gaius' claim for a corona murales was going to be ratified by Norbanus. Although that was still not an absolute guarantee that it would be accepted, theoretically by the faceless bureaucrats and clerks who had taken over a whole wing of what was now Octavian's palace, which we all knew was a fiction, it would have been an enormous slap in the face, not to me, but to Norbanus. Nevertheless, until he wore the crown on his head, made of gold and shaped like a crenellated wall, I was not about to allow him to do anything to jeopardize himself.
"No, this is something that I have to do alone," I told him as we sat at his table on my last night.
While I believe Gaius' disappointment was unfeigned, there was no mistaking the relief on the face of his wife, but I did not begrudge her. In fact, I was happy that for once I could do something that would ease her mind about his safety. Any reservations I had held about Iras and how she felt about my nephew had long since dissipated; I suppose having one child after another will do that. She was still a rare beauty, even if she was a bit thicker in the hips, but then she had always been a bit thin for my tastes. I also know that another love Iras and I shared was for Miriam, who is never far from my thoughts, and I would catch Iras at odd moments pausing from her chores to look suddenly off into space with a sad smile on her face. I do not know how I knew she was thinking about Miriam in those moments, unless it was because she was on my mind at the same instant, but I did understand why she would feel the way she did about my wife. If it had not been for Miriam, I would have cut Iras' throat, with no more thought or regard than if I was butchering a pig, because of what she had done to Eumenes. But I had accepted that she was just the weapon, wielded by Cleopatra, who bore the ultimate responsibility. And if I had, who can say whether or not Gaius would have found such happiness? In some way that I cannot easily identify, I have come to the conclusion that the one thread that tied us all together, in a bond that ran more deeply than blood, was Miriam. If it were not for her memory, and the fact that the thought of how disappointed she would have been in me if I had completely turned my back on what I suppose I would describe as my home life, I fear I would have become irretrievably lost. I know that her death exposed the rough edges of the hard iron in my soul that made me so respected in the Legions and so brutally efficient on a battlefield. It was my abiding love for her and not wanting to insult her memory that kept that iron from overwhelming me. These were my thoughts as I sat with my family, all of us in morose silence, even young Titus, who had been allowed to stay up late. I knew he was much too young to understand the specifics of what was happening, but he clearly knew something was amiss, and a sure sign of how disturbed he was in his own way was that neither Iras nor Gaius had to admonish him to sit still or stay silent once. As I looked down at his bowed head, I saw that his hair was a mass of curls that Iras insisted women would swoon over, while both Gaius and I were equally as adamant that while hair might be the pride of a woman, it was the shame of a warrior. That was always when she would point out, with a mixture of quiet satisfaction and pride, that even if her son did serve, it would not be in the ranks, because like his father, and thanks to my efforts, he would be an equestrian. Like me, and Gaius, he might not be born an equestrian, but I was sure that he would have very little memory of the time before I achieved my lifelong dream.
However, that was before, and that banter had not been heard between us since my return to Siscia. That night, I watched him as I sipped from my cup of unwatered wine as he played idly with a carved toy Legionary, suddenly striking me with a pang of pain as I remembered another boy, now gone more than twenty years.
Gaius cleared his throat, the sign that he was about to say something potentially awkward or irritating, and I made ready to snap at him to desist from trying to come with me.
"I sent word to Scribonius."
Of all the things he could have said, I was least prepared to hear that.
"How do you know how to do that?" I gasped, so surprised at this point that I was not even angry that he had taken such a risk.
"How do you think?" he asked me levelly and, to my grudging admiration, his gaze never wavered from mine.
"Diocles," I breathed, finally understanding.
He said nothing, but just nodded. I sat back, needing time to think. While I had tried to keep the truth from Gaius, thinking it was for his own protection, seeing him so distraught over the supposed death of my best friend, who I had to remind myself had been Gaius' first Centurion, I finally broke down and told him the whole story. When we arrived back in Siscia, some two months after Scribonius' "death," among the various pieces of correspondence waiting my attention were two letters from Valeria, a number of messages from the agents that handled my affairs, and one papyrus scroll that immediately caught my attention, which I opened first, with admittedly shaking hands. The name was unfamiliar to me, especially since it was not a Roman name, but Greek. However, the hand that wrote it was very familiar to me, and I was struck by a stray thought, trying to guess the number of reports I had taken from my best friend and long-time Secundus Pilus Prior. It was in Greek, and it was very banal, and to anyone who did not know both of us intimately, would seem to concern an inquiry I had sent about the acquisition of some books that were hard to come by. When I read it, I found myself roaring with laughter, both in relief that Scribonius had made good his escape, but at the way he told me all that I needed to know about where he was, and what he was doing, without seeming to say a word. At most, it would seem to anyone else to be a spectacularly boring and long-winded, particularly given the subject, letter. By the time I was finished, though, I knew that he was living in a paradise for scholarly types like him, and I knew exactly which of his books he wanted sent to him, and where to send them. I had put Diocles in charge of handling that task. Perhaps it was an excess of caution, but this is the type of job so menial that seeing a Camp Prefect arranging shipment of books would at least raise an eyebrow. It is a credit to my little Greek and his devious mind that, rather than explaining the contents, I just handed him the letter and let him read it. Within a few heartbeats, he was laughing in delight as I had been.
"He couldn't be in a better place," was Diocles' comment, echoing my own thoughts.
Now, Gaius was telling me that he had sent word to Scribonius, and while he had not divulged any details, I could read between the lines, and I knew that it was more than a case of Diocles simply surrendering the information about Scribonius when Gaius asked. They had worked together, I was sure, and although I was touched at the loyalty, of all the people I did not want to involve in this mess, Sextus Scribonius, under any name, was at the top of my list. He had already suffered so much from my indiscretions, and this was the most dangerous situation I had ever been in. This might sound strange, considering the number of times I was literally a sword's breadth away from death, but this was much, much more than my life. And compounding the peril was that, at least at that point, as far as I knew it was Octavian who was the architect of this threat. I do not believe it is treasonous to say that he was, and still is, the most dangerous man, not just in Rome, but I believe the entire world to have as an enemy. Even if he was not out to actively destroy me, if he did not hold me in any regard, I was only in marginally less danger. Yet, I could not deny that a vast amount of the time I spent thinking about my predicament was predicated on one simple question: What would Scribonius advise me to do?
Finally, I could only think to say, "Well, hopefully, he'll stay put. But I do thank you for the thought, nephew."
"Avus," Titus suddenly broke his own silence. Although he was not technically my grandson, at least not yet, since I had not adopted his father at this point, Gaius and Iras had always referred to me as his grandfather. Personally, I saw no need to correct him; frankly, every time I heard him say the word, it gave me a silent thrill. In him, I saw and see the reason why I suffer the dreams I do, and am burdened by the memory of so many, many deaths, of all the decisions that I made where I turned my back on loved ones, or performed an act that under any other circumstance I would find dishonorable.
"Will you take Ocedus with you?"
"Yes, Nepos," I told him gently. "He's my best friend. I wouldn't go anywhere without him."
"Oh," he clearly looked disappointed. "I was just hoping that I could take care of him while you're gone."
"I know he would like that very much." And I was speaking the truth.
Despite Titus' inability to pronounce his name, Ocelus had a bond with the boy similar to the one he had with me, except that, as I had witnessed the day we returned to Siscia, Ocelus somehow understood what Titus meant to me and that he needed protection. Part of the daily ritual before we left on campaign had been Titus bringing Ocelus an apple or some other treat. In the beginning, he had been in either my, Gaius, or Iras' arms, but as soon as he learned to walk, he would toddle to the stable. Under escort, of course, of which there was no shortage of volunteers, as the most hard-bitten men of the Legions sought to spend time with the boy. I was not fooled; for a large number of them, they were simply trying to ingratiate themselves with me, and with Gaius, since a disproportionately high number of Titus' guards were from Gaius' Century.
"I know he'll miss you as much as you're going to miss him." I tried to comfort the boy, pulling him into my lap.
"Will you be sure to give him his apple? Every day?"
Suddenly, Titus started to shimmer in front of my eyes, his face peering up at me appearing to be as if I was looking at him from under the water.
"Yes, Nepos," I promised him. "I'll make sure he gets his apple, and that I'm only doing it because you're not there."
"I'm going to miss Ocedus," He leaned into my chest, and I was almost overwhelmed by his smell, knowing that he was not talking only of my horse.
"And he's going to miss you too," I said.
Leaving Siscia at dawn the next day, riding Ocelus, while Diocles rode his own horse, a roan gelding humorously misnamed Thunder, who was as biddable and docile a horse as I had ever seen, we only carried what could be packed on a mule. We traveled quickly, reaching Serbinum in a day, then arriving in Salona just short of four days later. Stuck in Salona for three days because of rough seas, we finally took passage on a ship carrying a variety of goods, spending an uncomfortable night trying to find a spot among the other passengers and crew under the awning, as another autumn storm struck. The rough weather delayed us so that we landed at Aternum shortly before dark of the second day and stayed the night there instead of pressing on as I had hoped. Once on good, Roman roads, we made rapid progress, and my one regret is that I was not in a better frame of mind to appreciate the progress that Octavian had made after so many years of civil war. Gaius had told me of the changes in Rome itself, but that had been five years before, when the 8th marched in the triumph of Marcus Crassus. We reached Corfinium late enough the next day that we stayed there the night, and I did take some time to admire the partially constructed aqueduct that came down out of the nearby hills. Spending the night out in the open the next night, the closer we drew to Rome, the more intense the tingling sensation that I always felt when I was either about to do battle, or in some sort of danger. As we drew closer to the city, we began to encounter the larger latifundia, but I could see a fair number of smaller holdings. Curious about this, I stopped a pair of men driving a small cart, one sitting on the seat, the other walking along beside, and I asked them about it. While neither of them were unfriendly, there was a caution in their manner, their eyes darting to the sword at my belt, as if trying to determine my intentions.
Thinking to soothe their fears, I told them, "I'm just curious. We," I indicated Diocles, "are on our way to Rome. I'm taking a new posting with the army," I made the lie up on the spot.
"Yes, sir," the man sitting in the cart replied, but there was a sullen undertone to his voice, resentful perhaps. "Those," he indicated with a nod, "are settled by men like yourself, but retired, obviously."
"Ah," I thought I understood the man's attitude. "Were these lands you worked on?"
"Yes," the driver said, and this time there was no mistaking the bitterness. "But you soldiers don't hire us anymore. You all have so much money, so that along with the land you buy slaves."
Although I understood his attitude, I felt compelled to point something out to him.
"Well." I kept my tone mild. "In all likelihood, we did take those slaves with our right arms."
"That doesn't help us, does it?" This came from the second man, who I saw was barely that; probably the driver's son. "Now we have to live hand to mouth hauling whatever we can from one place to the next! We haven't been home in a month, and it's all because of the Legions!"
He spat on the ground defiantly and behind me, I heard Diocles hiss, and I will confess I felt the first stirring of anger. But he was young, and while I was no longer a youth, I remembered the strength of the passionate feelings of those days. And I was honest enough with myself to know that he was justified in his feelings, so I held up a hand in a placating gesture, remembering a long-ago conversation with Scribonius about this very matter when we had been stuck on the Campus Martius.
